Work within the party that most represents you, such as the Tea Party or Sanders fans. If one party has a possibly acceptable candidate, support him or her in the nomination process. If neither party is remotely acceptable to you, then you're sufficiently far from the mainstream that your views aren't going to matter.
For elections that aren't close, having machine counting with spot checks involving hand counting is probably good enough. For close elections (such as the 2008 Minnesota Senate race), there's no substitute for hand counting.
Newton's government job was intended as a sinecure, a way of paying him money without imposing responsibility on him. People were surprised when he took the job seriously.
Credit scores aren't designed to be fair to their subjects; they're designed to be useful for someone who is thinking of lending money or otherwise getting into a business commitment. They're private-sector businesses with no contractual relation to the subjects.
Having a line of credit immediately available is not financial irresponsibility, although it makes it easier to be irresponsible. It's perfectly possible for someone to use credit cards and pay them off monthly. We do. If you would find it difficult to stick to that (and some people do), then perhaps you shouldn't have a high credit score.
I care how my code is positioned. I care so much that I use punctuation to make sure it's right.
Positioning to indicate structure is a good idea. Lisp would be unreadable without it. However, punctuation is useful to make sure it's correct. Lisp uses parentheses. C uses braces and semicolons. Accounting uses decimal points, real or implied. If a C or Lisp program gets its whitespace mangled, there are tools to make it right. In accounting, if the columns get misaligned, people can figure it out.
ASCII is a character set. No more, no less, just a way to denote commonly used characters. There is a very great advantage here: it's just a character set, and doesn't have other meanings shoehorned into it. It can be used by any program without bringing in external baggage, and software can decide how to format it based on ASCII text and whatever markup (HTML, troff, LaTeX, etc.) is provided. We need a character set. We need markup languages. It's best for everyone if we don't confuse the two.
I don't care whether the software was Free or proprietary. Equifax decided what software to use out of numerous alternatives, so from my point of view it's their software system. It's easier to audit open source, but a company can make arrangements to audit a potential vendor's software, or negotiate some sort of trust.
The annual report is intended to be read by investors, not geeks.
In an organization, management doesn't have to have all the expertise of the people doing the work. When you get to the C level, it can be reasonable to have an executive who doesn't really understand what's going on. The executive had better know that he or she doesn't understand what he or she is in charge of, and get good people and trust them. (I've seen that work nicely.) Somebody has to argue about the budget and present business value and such. A section of the company might be better run by a good business person who trusts subordinates.
Software development is hard. Software security is much harder. You have to defend against Satan, not Murphy.
However, Equifax is responsible for the software they choose. I didn't choose their software, and neither did the guys who approved my car loan. They are responsible for running the system as they decide, and therefore bear the responsibility.
So, you're advocating for imprisonment on the basis that there was a breach? We don't know anything significant about the breach or Equifax security. If the security was remiss, that's one thing. If they put real work into security and were vulnerable to a flaw they had no reason to think existing, that's another.
If we imprison security people for being outsmarted, we're not going to have anybody working in computer security.
Most organizations that live on their polling results live off their reputations. This shouldn't be confused with organizations that live on something else and use slanted polls to try to convince people.
Like most mammals, humans have a mix of reproductive strategies. The predominant one is pair bonding and fidelity.
And one is pair bonding and some infidelity. You're more likely to have a good child if you have children with multiple partners. Fidelity doesn't seem much of an issue in the matrilineal societies I know of.
Millennia of social behavior have generally found ways of keeping these tendencies under control, namely marriage, self control, condemnation of promiscuity, etc
And assorted cheating, etc. There never has been a society with sex only within the bounds of marriage. Men in particular have continued hunting, and as far as I know male promiscuity is frequently acceptable. What's the male equivalent of "slut"? What's happening nowadays is that we're being more open about sexual matters. We're taking action against men who have sex with twelve-year-old children, which usually has not been considered a big deal.
The widespread increase in sexual harassment
You must be referring to the widespread increase in reporting of sexual harassment. When I was young, behaviors we'd now consider extreme cases of sexual harassment would be considered normal, and the women involved would be shamed if they talked about it and it got out.
but it is no accident that these problems are so common in progressive and left wing populations.
Left wing by your standards, not by mine.
Those problems were more common in less enlightened eras, but there were few reports, and so every male got to pretend there was no problem. Male privilege is not being assigned to have sex with a client because you're a single woman in the typing pool.
The predictors are done as well as Fair Isaac (if they're still doing it) can manage it. The predictors aren't published, because that would make them easier to game. This is not an exact science.
Criminal penalties require criminal intent, which isn't happening. Nobody's going to take a job where, if they're outsmarted, they lose everything including their freedom. They need to have assurance that they will not be criminals if they try hard enough, and there's no "enough" that will stop all possible breaks.
Consider how balancing the budget would go if a Senator that helped cut $50 billion in waste were more popular than one who got $1 billion of pork for his or her state. If voters thought rationally about the criminal justice system. Things would improve dramatically.
Unsecured credit must be making money for the creditors, since they offer so much of it.
Sticking to secured loans only is going to have a lot of knockoff effects. You can't get a secured loan for more than you're worth, which means forget about loans to start or expand a business, among other things. We don't need pawn shops to be the primary sources of loans.
That's why the credit agencies are legally required to provide you with one free credit report per year. If you're going to take out a mortgage, get at least one, perhaps one from all three major agencies, beforehand.
The foreclosures and debt repayment demands from people you don't actually owe money to is another issue.
If they exercise some diligence in verifying the information, it's not fraud. They don't have to be good at it.
If they have good reason to believe what they're telling people about you, it's not libel. (Not in the US, anyway, which has a very strong commitment to free speech and hence has a high bar for libel suits.)
If they make a mistake and offer a paid service to help clean up the mess, I really doubt that's legally racketerring.
Criminality is a matter of law, not morals. It's possible to do truly reprehensible things legally, and very praiseworthy deeds illegally.
On the other hand, any execs who aren't selling on a fixed schedule are almost certainly guilty of insider trading, which is seriously illegal, and is criminal.
No, it's OK for ID. It's terrible at authentication. I have to give my SSN to lots of institutions. While I don't know about their ability with security, some of them have really stupid password rules.
So, there's lots of people besides me who know what my SSN is, and some of them are probably willing to let any random hacker find it out. I'm not the only one.
If I had a private key, and kept it secure and didn't lose it, that would be a much better ID and authentication.
The credit score is how likely you are to pay off a loan. If you never borrow money, you don't have a history of paying off loans. There's a lot of difference between the attitudes of "I paid for it using my card" and "I used my card, so I didn't have to pay for it", and the agency doesn't know where you fit on that. For all they know, you may live on a cash basis because you know you couldn't handle credit responsibly.
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Work within the party that most represents you, such as the Tea Party or Sanders fans. If one party has a possibly acceptable candidate, support him or her in the nomination process. If neither party is remotely acceptable to you, then you're sufficiently far from the mainstream that your views aren't going to matter.
For elections that aren't close, having machine counting with spot checks involving hand counting is probably good enough. For close elections (such as the 2008 Minnesota Senate race), there's no substitute for hand counting.
Newton's government job was intended as a sinecure, a way of paying him money without imposing responsibility on him. People were surprised when he took the job seriously.
Credit scores aren't designed to be fair to their subjects; they're designed to be useful for someone who is thinking of lending money or otherwise getting into a business commitment. They're private-sector businesses with no contractual relation to the subjects.
Having a line of credit immediately available is not financial irresponsibility, although it makes it easier to be irresponsible. It's perfectly possible for someone to use credit cards and pay them off monthly. We do. If you would find it difficult to stick to that (and some people do), then perhaps you shouldn't have a high credit score.
Both of which I'm against. There are real benefits to being soft on crime, including less money spent and fewer repeat offenders.
I care how my code is positioned. I care so much that I use punctuation to make sure it's right.
Positioning to indicate structure is a good idea. Lisp would be unreadable without it. However, punctuation is useful to make sure it's correct. Lisp uses parentheses. C uses braces and semicolons. Accounting uses decimal points, real or implied. If a C or Lisp program gets its whitespace mangled, there are tools to make it right. In accounting, if the columns get misaligned, people can figure it out.
ASCII is a character set. No more, no less, just a way to denote commonly used characters. There is a very great advantage here: it's just a character set, and doesn't have other meanings shoehorned into it. It can be used by any program without bringing in external baggage, and software can decide how to format it based on ASCII text and whatever markup (HTML, troff, LaTeX, etc.) is provided. We need a character set. We need markup languages. It's best for everyone if we don't confuse the two.
I don't care whether the software was Free or proprietary. Equifax decided what software to use out of numerous alternatives, so from my point of view it's their software system. It's easier to audit open source, but a company can make arrangements to audit a potential vendor's software, or negotiate some sort of trust.
The annual report is intended to be read by investors, not geeks.
In an organization, management doesn't have to have all the expertise of the people doing the work. When you get to the C level, it can be reasonable to have an executive who doesn't really understand what's going on. The executive had better know that he or she doesn't understand what he or she is in charge of, and get good people and trust them. (I've seen that work nicely.) Somebody has to argue about the budget and present business value and such. A section of the company might be better run by a good business person who trusts subordinates.
That sounds an awful lot like MBA talk. Smile when you say that, pardner!
Good for you. The web page just hung for me.
Software development is hard. Software security is much harder. You have to defend against Satan, not Murphy.
However, Equifax is responsible for the software they choose. I didn't choose their software, and neither did the guys who approved my car loan. They are responsible for running the system as they decide, and therefore bear the responsibility.
So, you're advocating for imprisonment on the basis that there was a breach? We don't know anything significant about the breach or Equifax security. If the security was remiss, that's one thing. If they put real work into security and were vulnerable to a flaw they had no reason to think existing, that's another.
If we imprison security people for being outsmarted, we're not going to have anybody working in computer security.
Most organizations that live on their polling results live off their reputations. This shouldn't be confused with organizations that live on something else and use slanted polls to try to convince people.
And one is pair bonding and some infidelity. You're more likely to have a good child if you have children with multiple partners. Fidelity doesn't seem much of an issue in the matrilineal societies I know of.
And assorted cheating, etc. There never has been a society with sex only within the bounds of marriage. Men in particular have continued hunting, and as far as I know male promiscuity is frequently acceptable. What's the male equivalent of "slut"? What's happening nowadays is that we're being more open about sexual matters. We're taking action against men who have sex with twelve-year-old children, which usually has not been considered a big deal.
You must be referring to the widespread increase in reporting of sexual harassment. When I was young, behaviors we'd now consider extreme cases of sexual harassment would be considered normal, and the women involved would be shamed if they talked about it and it got out.
Left wing by your standards, not by mine.
Those problems were more common in less enlightened eras, but there were few reports, and so every male got to pretend there was no problem. Male privilege is not being assigned to have sex with a client because you're a single woman in the typing pool.
Are you sure the decisions are crazy, though?
The predictors are done as well as Fair Isaac (if they're still doing it) can manage it. The predictors aren't published, because that would make them easier to game. This is not an exact science.
Criminal penalties require criminal intent, which isn't happening. Nobody's going to take a job where, if they're outsmarted, they lose everything including their freedom. They need to have assurance that they will not be criminals if they try hard enough, and there's no "enough" that will stop all possible breaks.
I'm not arguing too much against that.
Consider how balancing the budget would go if a Senator that helped cut $50 billion in waste were more popular than one who got $1 billion of pork for his or her state. If voters thought rationally about the criminal justice system. Things would improve dramatically.
Last time I missed a credit card payment was after my stroke. Things happen.
Unsecured credit must be making money for the creditors, since they offer so much of it.
Sticking to secured loans only is going to have a lot of knockoff effects. You can't get a secured loan for more than you're worth, which means forget about loans to start or expand a business, among other things. We don't need pawn shops to be the primary sources of loans.
That's why the credit agencies are legally required to provide you with one free credit report per year. If you're going to take out a mortgage, get at least one, perhaps one from all three major agencies, beforehand.
The foreclosures and debt repayment demands from people you don't actually owe money to is another issue.
People with credit cards are not going to run up prices significantly. They're limited to their income, eventually.
If they exercise some diligence in verifying the information, it's not fraud. They don't have to be good at it.
If they have good reason to believe what they're telling people about you, it's not libel. (Not in the US, anyway, which has a very strong commitment to free speech and hence has a high bar for libel suits.)
If they make a mistake and offer a paid service to help clean up the mess, I really doubt that's legally racketerring.
Criminality is a matter of law, not morals. It's possible to do truly reprehensible things legally, and very praiseworthy deeds illegally.
On the other hand, any execs who aren't selling on a fixed schedule are almost certainly guilty of insider trading, which is seriously illegal, and is criminal.
No, it's OK for ID. It's terrible at authentication. I have to give my SSN to lots of institutions. While I don't know about their ability with security, some of them have really stupid password rules.
So, there's lots of people besides me who know what my SSN is, and some of them are probably willing to let any random hacker find it out. I'm not the only one.
If I had a private key, and kept it secure and didn't lose it, that would be a much better ID and authentication.
The credit score is how likely you are to pay off a loan. If you never borrow money, you don't have a history of paying off loans. There's a lot of difference between the attitudes of "I paid for it using my card" and "I used my card, so I didn't have to pay for it", and the agency doesn't know where you fit on that. For all they know, you may live on a cash basis because you know you couldn't handle credit responsibly.