If you have control over a given piece of intellectual property and deliberately place it into the public domain than you have for all intents and purposes turned that property over to the public domain. Remember this wasn't a honeypot run by law enforcement for purposes of trapping lawbreakers, this was done by the company for the purposes of creating lawbreakers in order to find people that they could sue.
This notion is not entirely without precedent, failing to protect intellectual property from use by the public domain is how aspirin, zipper and heroin all entered the public domain through a process called "genericisation". It's the same reason companies are so zealous about defending their IP for confusion.
There's a reason people sell alternative medicine as herbal supplements. This way you sidestep the FDA and get to avoid any type of medical scrutiny. It's a legal way of selling snake oil. They need to change the law so that herbal supplements, homeopathic and the like all require FDA approval before making claims.
The funny thing is a lot of our medicine did trace back to these old practices. However with medical science they were able to find the parts that actually worked, study them and those get submitted as medicines. The rest are modern snake oils that take consumers in for billions of dollars every year.
This kind of thing already happens. There was a controversy a while back when it was discovered that travel sites show more expensive travel options to Mac users first. Since macs cost more than PC's it was presumed their users had more disposable income.
Why the hell are polygraphs still being used in the 21st century? They aren't admissible in a court of law for a damned good reason. They are junk science and no better than a voodoo board. The only thing they do is tell whether or not your nervous. They are a perfect example of something that provides a false sense of security as Ames and your other famous spies all/passed/ their lie detector tests. These things need placed in the museum of junk science post haste.
Unfortunately between Geo-location based on IP address and GPS it wouldn't take long to establish if someone is outside of state lines. There are problems with either method of course. IP based addressing isn't very helpful behind a gateway, and isn't always 100% accurate. GPS chips can give false readings for any number of reasons. Neither method is foolproof to a level good enough to be able to automatically charge someone money.
My concerns go beyond this being heavy handed. What kinds of checks and balances are in the system? What measures are taken to ensure that a single set of false readings isn't going to cost someone a lot of money? Are warnings given before someone is billed? Region locks were bad enough, but things like this point to the adage that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. The whole thing crosses the line.
First of all, other countries also actively spy on their citizens and almost any place you can think of is going to allow it if they think it is in that nation's interest. Moving from the US to France or any other country does nothing but change the host country.
Incidentally if your the type to stay up all night worried about the NSA boogeyman you'll want to remember that the NSA has pretty free reign/outside/ the US. It's a case where at least they have some legal restrictions within the US (you argue whether these are enough or not, but they do exist to some degree). Remember, gathering information from outside US borders is their job and moving your data outside the US simply gives them legal cart blanche they may not have previously had.
I'm also going to nitpick this 'cloud' thing. Cloud is just another way of saying servers in another location. That location might be somewhere in Iowa or India, however private clouds on your property can and do exist. Originally we called this idea the main frame, than we had thin clients / terminal services and now we call it the cloud. Same damn thing, you log in remotely to utilize services provided by a server. Cloud used to actually have a real meaning, but nowadays really just means 'server'.
I'm not questioning whether or not you can conduct trade in other currencies - you can. The point of the matter is whether or not you can evade regulatory and compliance requirements by using a currency that isn't the dollar - you can't.
Tell you what, why don't you open a foreign exchange business in an international airport - in the US side. How long do you think you could get away with running your business by dealing in every currency except the dollar? Take another example, would you expect to be able to conduct business and sidestep legal regulations by simply conducting your business in Euro's?
What about those countries that don't have their own currency and use the US dollar instead (there are about 20 of them as memory serves). Should these countries be able create regulations on their markets? The idea that you cannot regulate the use of a currency within your borders simply because you did not originate the currency has absolutely no precedent. For the meanwhile nations have been regulating trade conducted with foreign currencies for countless generations.
You just might have posted the least thought out comment I have ever seen on slashdot.
I would suggest you read the book then. They were instrumental in the development of organizations like the Black Panthers, shaping of the BBC, the JFK assassination theories and any number of other similar propaganda works. By way of oversimplification, Vietnam was not lost on the battlefield, it was lost on the printing presses of the West. Influencing outcomes indirectly without it being obvious they were at work was what they excelled at.
The Russians have always been the best in the world at propaganda. A book that covers this really well from a former insider is the Sword and the Shield by Christopher Andrew (Author) and Vasili Mitrokhin.
In the US we fought back using abstract art. Back then great pains were taken to hide propaganda, nowadays the great pains to hide things are taken by advertising companies on behalf of multinationals...
Who's working on the next generation landfill? The last land fill is full now.
We know there are several hundred thousand or million missing generation 1 Surface / RT's out there. No one has ever figured out where they went and Microsoft already publicly took close a billion dollar write down on them. Educational facilities are wisely resisting the dumping bait of the $199 Surface RT. That means all of those RT's were sent to a landfill. What I want to know is where Microsoft dumped their great embarassment (recycle center etc).
It's a self correcting issue. Methane is a fossil fuel, it can be burned to generate energy and the world needs energy. Once the worlds cities start sinking the and the cost of energy starts rising the opposition to exploiting the methane will naturally drop.
If things get bad enough to get this point you have two choices, use the methane and prevent it from going straight into the atmosphere or let it go straight into the atmosphere. Once enough refugees from enough flooded cities start displacing the right / wrong people the opposition will be collapse.
The only question is whether or not we exploit these resources or we let them evaporate into the atmosphere. Of course we could always try to avoid global warming to begin with, but that can only be put off for so long...
Because the greens have killed every attempt to do so. Between environmental impact studies, sound issues, displaced animals and other 'green' expenses the costs have increased several fold to the point of not being financially feasible. It's an unfortunate case of the greens being the worst thing for the environment as they keep getting in the way of mass transit. Here's an example of just one section of the proposed track.
In Japan, France, China and other such places you can just build the thing without going through billion dollar power trips. Since they can, they do. America has a history of building incredible rail networks when were able to, but until the environment changes it's going to remain a footnote in history.
Business practices is a perfectly fair point to be critical on, and one that has a factual basis. Unfortunately business practices like patents and licensing of crops as well as breeding in generational limits on food are practiced regardless of whether or not good is GM. I don't care for those business practices either, but they haven't got a damn thing to do with GM.
If you want to say you don't like Monsato, Cargill or another such company than just say it. However when you do remember that local favorite company probably has many of the same business practices.
1. The pig study has long since been discredited, and there has never been a scientifically accepted study that actually showed any harm from GM foods. These foods have been around for over 20 years, so that is more than enough time for any effects and one can literally say it has been studied for decades. 2. Modified organisms have a significant survival disadvantage because the seed companies breed them so that they can't breed successive generations. 3. Cross breeding is difficult when you can't generate successive generations to begin with. They do this for the wrong reasons (to force sales of new product), but the fact remains that they explicitly develop the plants so that they can't be bred in the manner you suggest. 4. I'm in agreement that patents on food, or any kind of life for that matter are a bad thing.
I've discovered over the years that most people that are anti-GM take that stance because it was the politically correct thing to do. Once they start to examine the facts their opposition typically drops as unfounded.
Hi, I'm the guy you insulted instead of debating. Let's try debating instead, I find it much more civilized.
You find nothing wrong with franken meat, but you don't like GM food (aka franken food). Now, if you don't like GM food, feel free to give reasons you don't like it, it's possible to disagree and debate the merits of something. Personally I don't care for the business practices of the giant food companies, but that has nothing to do with GM food in particular.
Considering I have known vegetarians / vegans of one stripe or another most of my life, including dating several of them over the years, I'm inclined to say you have know idea what your talking about. I find your generalization for the reasons that most people become vegetarian to be woefully ignorant. While many people choose for misguided health reasons, some choose because they don't like the fact that an animal died to provide their dinner, some for religious reasons and some for reasons of taste.
I have introduced no straw man arguments, if you'll note I also picked on meat connoisseurs too. The entire point of the lab grown meat to begin with was to get people to start talking about the ethical implications of meat, lab grown or otherwise. If you don't like the fact that I'm doing the thing that was the very point of this exercise to begin with than your completely missing the point.
I've had several girlfriends over the years that were assorted flavors of vegetarian from no red meat to militant vegan. I have known vegetarians that chose the diet for religious, moral, taste and health reasons. Most vegetarians only stick with the diet for a few years before reverting to a normal diet. As with any diet there are advantages and disadvantages to being a vegetarians. I've never met a single vegetarian that wouldn't admit to longing for meat unless they were on the diet from birth. Go to any vegetarian store and you will find a wide variety of foods (Tofu etc) made for the express purpose of imitating meat.
I respect that you have actually studied the subject before coming up with your opinion. I also agree wholeheartedly with your stance about invasive species being a bad thing. That being said, invasive species have nothing to GM foods. Unfortunately to force additional sales most GM plants are bred so that they cannot generate subsequent generations. If anything your GM plants are far less likely to cause problems such as you have cited.
GM food is food that has been genetically modified from it's previous natural state directly by man instead of through crossbreeding - which is directly by man. Because the lab is involved the Luddites go nuts as this isn't 'natural'. The lab grown hamburger similarly also isn't natural and instead requires man's intervention.
This will divide the extremists. The anti-GM Luddites will go crazy because this is arguably the most anti-organic food on the planet. The vegetarians will celebrate because they get to eat 'meat' once more without killing animals. The vegans will note that animal byproducts are still required for this process to exist at all and still turn their noses up at it.
Will brains explode with delight with the idea that humans can have their meat without killing cows and all of their related carbon emissions? Will brains explode because the lab grown meat is so expensive that only the very rich can afford it? What will the conscious do with the idea that people get to have meat at all? Will the meat connoisseur snub this lab grown meat versus a nice hamburger from cow #156? Will the greens go nuts because a carbon based food source is being replaced with a lab equivalent that will inevitably be owned by the giant food corps?
As someone who's had to do the security audit on a major (make the news) breach I can give some insight. Let's say you got busted a company for hacking their email list so that you could send an angry rant to their CEO. On your way to getting the email list you took a look through their databases and papers just because you could and you were curious. One thing led to another and now your being sent a bill by the judge for 6 or 7 figures and your wondering how the hell they came up with the figure.
The first thing you have to remember is that the people who just got hacked don't have the benefit of knowing the extent to which they have been hacked. There is also the issue that when you opened a vulnerability, that other people - not even working with you - will of then follow you in. It's a bit like breaking open the secure door to a building, someone else you don't even know might decide to walk in behind you.
Cost of staff time to discover the issue (X hours times Y staff cost plus opportunity cost). Cost of staff time to shut down affected system and perform a cursory audit to find out how intrusion went (X hours times Y staff cost plus opportunity cost). Cost of staff time and expert time for a full fledged audit if required (X hours times Y staff cost plus opportunity cost). Opportunity cost is a big deal as this is the cost of your staff being diverted from what they were supposed to be working on in the first place. Don't forget to include the costs of overtime, dinners that you had to order and that nice gift basket to appease the wife who's husband is now working 16 hours in a row...
Cost of business as systems are shutdown and are not available. Cost of performing a clean system restore from a known good point. Cost of performing backup restorations. Cost of bringing the system back into a certified state. Cost of tickets with any affected vendors (they almost always charge per incident).
Cost of time to verify and prove/what/ data was stolen and if the data was encrypted. Depending on the type of data you have your results will be handed over to one or more angry Attorney Generals. Don't forget that Attorney Generals mean the company needs it's own attorneys. Attorneys for companies are much more expensive than for private individuals. You have a major breach and are going to be sued, don't forget the cost of your forensic backup and recovery expenses if needed. Cost of time for management to deal with all of these things.
Depending on how severe the breach was you may have shut down some of their business operations while they recovered. This is costing the business money that they otherwise could have been making or in costs from having to hire contractors or loss of business for not performing their normal work. Their partners may get pissed off and end their business relationship with them.
If it is a hack that is or has to be public (notification laws) than you have a situation where you may also require public notification and all related expenses. This is where you get into damage to the public image of the company, the same image that the company might spend millions of dollars on advertising building. If a company loses just 1 percent of their customers following a public hack than you have the lost revenue from that 1 percent, plus the cost of replacing the customer.
Some of these costs are only going to apply for a major incident, however all of these costs are accepted costs that many companies can and will undergo in the event of a notable hack. Certainly off these costs are the types of costs that courts routinely approve of for recover of losses. Even your routine garden vanilla type of hack is going to cost money in terms of staff time, opportunity cost and remediation cost. Incidentally you could also look at this list as the reason that IT security field is growing.
A surveillance society is still a surveillance society and this story simply reveals how this is done in the real world. While lots of people have fantasies about the NSA reading their email or looking at their porn habits in the real world this is done by peoples employers day in day out.
Put down the tin foil hats, have a wake up call and realize that your employers are the ones performing the real world surveillance on the contents of your browsing, email and other habits.
Your missing the point, greenpeace has absolutely nothing to do with the green movement. Replacement of coal with natural gas powered plants has done far more the green movement than greenpeace has in it's entire history. I could go on and on, but read up on the history of greenpeace, an organization so bad that even their founder has has turned on the.
I'm an old school environmentalist, from years before it was 'politically correct' to be one. Greenpeace has done more to harm the green movement than Koch brothers and chamber of commerce combined.
It's not possible! The results are politically incorrect and will go against the dogma of 'we must be miserable'. Not to worry, someone will quickly find a way to bury this, spin this or otherwise make this moot. We can't let science speak, that's what we have greenpeace for.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have control over a given piece of intellectual property and deliberately place it into the public domain than you have for all intents and purposes turned that property over to the public domain. Remember this wasn't a honeypot run by law enforcement for purposes of trapping lawbreakers, this was done by the company for the purposes of creating lawbreakers in order to find people that they could sue.
This notion is not entirely without precedent, failing to protect intellectual property from use by the public domain is how aspirin, zipper and heroin all entered the public domain through a process called "genericisation". It's the same reason companies are so zealous about defending their IP for confusion.
There's a reason people sell alternative medicine as herbal supplements. This way you sidestep the FDA and get to avoid any type of medical scrutiny. It's a legal way of selling snake oil. They need to change the law so that herbal supplements, homeopathic and the like all require FDA approval before making claims.
The funny thing is a lot of our medicine did trace back to these old practices. However with medical science they were able to find the parts that actually worked, study them and those get submitted as medicines. The rest are modern snake oils that take consumers in for billions of dollars every year.
This kind of thing already happens. There was a controversy a while back when it was discovered that travel sites show more expensive travel options to Mac users first. Since macs cost more than PC's it was presumed their users had more disposable income.
That this comment got modded +4 insightful shows how far Slashdot has fallen.
Why the hell are polygraphs still being used in the 21st century? They aren't admissible in a court of law for a damned good reason. They are junk science and no better than a voodoo board. The only thing they do is tell whether or not your nervous. They are a perfect example of something that provides a false sense of security as Ames and your other famous spies all /passed/ their lie detector tests. These things need placed in the museum of junk science post haste.
Unfortunately between Geo-location based on IP address and GPS it wouldn't take long to establish if someone is outside of state lines. There are problems with either method of course. IP based addressing isn't very helpful behind a gateway, and isn't always 100% accurate. GPS chips can give false readings for any number of reasons. Neither method is foolproof to a level good enough to be able to automatically charge someone money.
My concerns go beyond this being heavy handed. What kinds of checks and balances are in the system? What measures are taken to ensure that a single set of false readings isn't going to cost someone a lot of money? Are warnings given before someone is billed? Region locks were bad enough, but things like this point to the adage that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. The whole thing crosses the line.
First of all, other countries also actively spy on their citizens and almost any place you can think of is going to allow it if they think it is in that nation's interest. Moving from the US to France or any other country does nothing but change the host country.
Incidentally if your the type to stay up all night worried about the NSA boogeyman you'll want to remember that the NSA has pretty free reign /outside/ the US. It's a case where at least they have some legal restrictions within the US (you argue whether these are enough or not, but they do exist to some degree). Remember, gathering information from outside US borders is their job and moving your data outside the US simply gives them legal cart blanche they may not have previously had.
I'm also going to nitpick this 'cloud' thing. Cloud is just another way of saying servers in another location. That location might be somewhere in Iowa or India, however private clouds on your property can and do exist. Originally we called this idea the main frame, than we had thin clients / terminal services and now we call it the cloud. Same damn thing, you log in remotely to utilize services provided by a server. Cloud used to actually have a real meaning, but nowadays really just means 'server'.
I'm not questioning whether or not you can conduct trade in other currencies - you can. The point of the matter is whether or not you can evade regulatory and compliance requirements by using a currency that isn't the dollar - you can't.
Tell you what, why don't you open a foreign exchange business in an international airport - in the US side. How long do you think you could get away with running your business by dealing in every currency except the dollar? Take another example, would you expect to be able to conduct business and sidestep legal regulations by simply conducting your business in Euro's?
What about those countries that don't have their own currency and use the US dollar instead (there are about 20 of them as memory serves). Should these countries be able create regulations on their markets? The idea that you cannot regulate the use of a currency within your borders simply because you did not originate the currency has absolutely no precedent. For the meanwhile nations have been regulating trade conducted with foreign currencies for countless generations.
You just might have posted the least thought out comment I have ever seen on slashdot.
I would suggest you read the book then. They were instrumental in the development of organizations like the Black Panthers, shaping of the BBC, the JFK assassination theories and any number of other similar propaganda works. By way of oversimplification, Vietnam was not lost on the battlefield, it was lost on the printing presses of the West. Influencing outcomes indirectly without it being obvious they were at work was what they excelled at.
The Russians have always been the best in the world at propaganda. A book that covers this really well from a former insider is the Sword and the Shield by Christopher Andrew (Author) and Vasili Mitrokhin.
In the US we fought back using abstract art. Back then great pains were taken to hide propaganda, nowadays the great pains to hide things are taken by advertising companies on behalf of multinationals...
Who's working on the next generation landfill? The last land fill is full now.
We know there are several hundred thousand or million missing generation 1 Surface / RT's out there. No one has ever figured out where they went and Microsoft already publicly took close a billion dollar write down on them. Educational facilities are wisely resisting the dumping bait of the $199 Surface RT. That means all of those RT's were sent to a landfill. What I want to know is where Microsoft dumped their great embarassment (recycle center etc).
It's a self correcting issue. Methane is a fossil fuel, it can be burned to generate energy and the world needs energy. Once the worlds cities start sinking the and the cost of energy starts rising the opposition to exploiting the methane will naturally drop.
If things get bad enough to get this point you have two choices, use the methane and prevent it from going straight into the atmosphere or let it go straight into the atmosphere. Once enough refugees from enough flooded cities start displacing the right / wrong people the opposition will be collapse.
The only question is whether or not we exploit these resources or we let them evaporate into the atmosphere. Of course we could always try to avoid global warming to begin with, but that can only be put off for so long...
Because the greens have killed every attempt to do so. Between environmental impact studies, sound issues, displaced animals and other 'green' expenses the costs have increased several fold to the point of not being financially feasible. It's an unfortunate case of the greens being the worst thing for the environment as they keep getting in the way of mass transit. Here's an example of just one section of the proposed track.
In Japan, France, China and other such places you can just build the thing without going through billion dollar power trips. Since they can, they do. America has a history of building incredible rail networks when were able to, but until the environment changes it's going to remain a footnote in history.
Business practices is a perfectly fair point to be critical on, and one that has a factual basis. Unfortunately business practices like patents and licensing of crops as well as breeding in generational limits on food are practiced regardless of whether or not good is GM. I don't care for those business practices either, but they haven't got a damn thing to do with GM.
If you want to say you don't like Monsato, Cargill or another such company than just say it. However when you do remember that local favorite company probably has many of the same business practices.
1. The pig study has long since been discredited, and there has never been a scientifically accepted study that actually showed any harm from GM foods. These foods have been around for over 20 years, so that is more than enough time for any effects and one can literally say it has been studied for decades.
2. Modified organisms have a significant survival disadvantage because the seed companies breed them so that they can't breed successive generations.
3. Cross breeding is difficult when you can't generate successive generations to begin with. They do this for the wrong reasons (to force sales of new product), but the fact remains that they explicitly develop the plants so that they can't be bred in the manner you suggest.
4. I'm in agreement that patents on food, or any kind of life for that matter are a bad thing.
I've discovered over the years that most people that are anti-GM take that stance because it was the politically correct thing to do. Once they start to examine the facts their opposition typically drops as unfounded.
Hi, I'm the guy you insulted instead of debating. Let's try debating instead, I find it much more civilized.
You find nothing wrong with franken meat, but you don't like GM food (aka franken food). Now, if you don't like GM food, feel free to give reasons you don't like it, it's possible to disagree and debate the merits of something. Personally I don't care for the business practices of the giant food companies, but that has nothing to do with GM food in particular.
Considering I have known vegetarians / vegans of one stripe or another most of my life, including dating several of them over the years, I'm inclined to say you have know idea what your talking about. I find your generalization for the reasons that most people become vegetarian to be woefully ignorant. While many people choose for misguided health reasons, some choose because they don't like the fact that an animal died to provide their dinner, some for religious reasons and some for reasons of taste.
I have introduced no straw man arguments, if you'll note I also picked on meat connoisseurs too. The entire point of the lab grown meat to begin with was to get people to start talking about the ethical implications of meat, lab grown or otherwise. If you don't like the fact that I'm doing the thing that was the very point of this exercise to begin with than your completely missing the point.
I've had several girlfriends over the years that were assorted flavors of vegetarian from no red meat to militant vegan. I have known vegetarians that chose the diet for religious, moral, taste and health reasons. Most vegetarians only stick with the diet for a few years before reverting to a normal diet. As with any diet there are advantages and disadvantages to being a vegetarians. I've never met a single vegetarian that wouldn't admit to longing for meat unless they were on the diet from birth. Go to any vegetarian store and you will find a wide variety of foods (Tofu etc) made for the express purpose of imitating meat.
I respect that you have actually studied the subject before coming up with your opinion. I also agree wholeheartedly with your stance about invasive species being a bad thing. That being said, invasive species have nothing to GM foods. Unfortunately to force additional sales most GM plants are bred so that they cannot generate subsequent generations. If anything your GM plants are far less likely to cause problems such as you have cited.
GM food is food that has been genetically modified from it's previous natural state directly by man instead of through crossbreeding - which is directly by man. Because the lab is involved the Luddites go nuts as this isn't 'natural'. The lab grown hamburger similarly also isn't natural and instead requires man's intervention.
This will divide the extremists. The anti-GM Luddites will go crazy because this is arguably the most anti-organic food on the planet. The vegetarians will celebrate because they get to eat 'meat' once more without killing animals. The vegans will note that animal byproducts are still required for this process to exist at all and still turn their noses up at it.
Will brains explode with delight with the idea that humans can have their meat without killing cows and all of their related carbon emissions? Will brains explode because the lab grown meat is so expensive that only the very rich can afford it? What will the conscious do with the idea that people get to have meat at all? Will the meat connoisseur snub this lab grown meat versus a nice hamburger from cow #156? Will the greens go nuts because a carbon based food source is being replaced with a lab equivalent that will inevitably be owned by the giant food corps?
So many heads to explode, so little popcorn.
As someone who's had to do the security audit on a major (make the news) breach I can give some insight. Let's say you got busted a company for hacking their email list so that you could send an angry rant to their CEO. On your way to getting the email list you took a look through their databases and papers just because you could and you were curious. One thing led to another and now your being sent a bill by the judge for 6 or 7 figures and your wondering how the hell they came up with the figure.
The first thing you have to remember is that the people who just got hacked don't have the benefit of knowing the extent to which they have been hacked. There is also the issue that when you opened a vulnerability, that other people - not even working with you - will of then follow you in. It's a bit like breaking open the secure door to a building, someone else you don't even know might decide to walk in behind you.
Cost of staff time to discover the issue (X hours times Y staff cost plus opportunity cost).
Cost of staff time to shut down affected system and perform a cursory audit to find out how intrusion went (X hours times Y staff cost plus opportunity cost).
Cost of staff time and expert time for a full fledged audit if required (X hours times Y staff cost plus opportunity cost).
Opportunity cost is a big deal as this is the cost of your staff being diverted from what they were supposed to be working on in the first place.
Don't forget to include the costs of overtime, dinners that you had to order and that nice gift basket to appease the wife who's husband is now working 16 hours in a row...
Cost of business as systems are shutdown and are not available.
Cost of performing a clean system restore from a known good point.
Cost of performing backup restorations.
Cost of bringing the system back into a certified state.
Cost of tickets with any affected vendors (they almost always charge per incident).
Cost of time to verify and prove /what/ data was stolen and if the data was encrypted. Depending on the type of data you have your results will be handed over to one or more angry Attorney Generals. Don't forget that Attorney Generals mean the company needs it's own attorneys.
Attorneys for companies are much more expensive than for private individuals.
You have a major breach and are going to be sued, don't forget the cost of your forensic backup and recovery expenses if needed.
Cost of time for management to deal with all of these things.
Depending on how severe the breach was you may have shut down some of their business operations while they recovered. This is costing the business money that they otherwise could have been making or in costs from having to hire contractors or loss of business for not performing their normal work. Their partners may get pissed off and end their business relationship with them.
If it is a hack that is or has to be public (notification laws) than you have a situation where you may also require public notification and all related expenses. This is where you get into damage to the public image of the company, the same image that the company might spend millions of dollars on advertising building. If a company loses just 1 percent of their customers following a public hack than you have the lost revenue from that 1 percent, plus the cost of replacing the customer.
Some of these costs are only going to apply for a major incident, however all of these costs are accepted costs that many companies can and will undergo in the event of a notable hack. Certainly off these costs are the types of costs that courts routinely approve of for recover of losses. Even your routine garden vanilla type of hack is going to cost money in terms of staff time, opportunity cost and remediation cost. Incidentally you could also look at this list as the reason that IT security field is growing.
A surveillance society is still a surveillance society and this story simply reveals how this is done in the real world. While lots of people have fantasies about the NSA reading their email or looking at their porn habits in the real world this is done by peoples employers day in day out.
Put down the tin foil hats, have a wake up call and realize that your employers are the ones performing the real world surveillance on the contents of your browsing, email and other habits.
Your missing the point, greenpeace has absolutely nothing to do with the green movement. Replacement of coal with natural gas powered plants has done far more the green movement than greenpeace has in it's entire history. I could go on and on, but read up on the history of greenpeace, an organization so bad that even their founder has has turned on the.
I'm an old school environmentalist, from years before it was 'politically correct' to be one. Greenpeace has done more to harm the green movement than Koch brothers and chamber of commerce combined.
It's not possible! The results are politically incorrect and will go against the dogma of 'we must be miserable'. Not to worry, someone will quickly find a way to bury this, spin this or otherwise make this moot. We can't let science speak, that's what we have greenpeace for.