I was just learning about h2g2, too. His warm yet wry humor will be with us for generations to come. On the event that members of his family should read this, I offer you my condolences.
I haven't seen such a reasoned article in quite a while. Thanks to the author for that. He clearly points out how, by attacking M$ in such effective methods as calling them the Borg, the Evil Empire, etc., we're playing right into their hands. To the list of reasons why he says we can give to Mr. and Mrs. Home User, I can add this one: If you try to upgrade your software, linux will let you know before the fact, that you're about to break something, whereas Windows just forces the install, dependencies be damned.
Based on the increasingly strange and strident remarks coming from MS lackeys regarding open source, and their steadfast refusal to move away from their almost unbelievably uptight and mean-spirited programming models, this piece of evidence leads me to believe that M$ has really got their backs up against the wall. It's them against the rest of the world. And they want my medical records? Not likely.
So, let's press on. They can't hold out much longer!
I have to say, I've seen both ends of this. I deal on a daily basis with people with an incredibly diverse range of experience as well as problems. Sometimes, I get the impression that the person on the other end of the line actually knows a hell of a lot more about their computer than I do (one can only hope), while other times my job is to patiently explain to someone where the start menu on their winbox is, and what they can do with it. Of course I have occasion to deal with people who really have complaining and abuse as their goal for calling. But that's the way it is. You either get off the phone, or forward the call to your boss, whether or not your boss wants to deal with it. Fact is, it beats the hell out of flipping burgers, which is sole income for a startling number of CS grads these days. I've also been on the other side of the phone line. I remember once spending (I timed this) one hour and fifteen minutes on the clock listening to the hold music at a certain company which makes little NAT routers for your desktop box. When I finally did reach a rep, he sounded seriously ready to go postal. Although I did my best to remain courteous while not letting him blow me off, which is what he wanted to do, he finally ended up saying, "Here's how you fix the problem," and hung up the phone. Wow. I guess that's why some people become lumberjacks, truck drivers, and server admins: so they don't have to deal with human beings with all our annoying humanity.
At any rate, my personal take on the issue of tech support is that it really does come from the top down: when I had to wait for all that time on hold, you can guess that's because the (Unmentionable, but their products can Network Everywhere) company didn't put enough priority into tech support, despite the fact that the box ballyhooed the "24/7" tech support I was entitled to by buying the product. That guy probably was at his wits end. Maybe if he actually had time to deal with one call completely without having to watch all those lights blink on his phone, maybe if he actually knew what he was talking about (he didn't), maybe then he would have been able to actually answer what turned out to be a really simple question.
I don't usually go for the light news:) but that had to be one of the coolest Internet experiences I've had since, well, hell, that was cooler than pr0n! But seriously, panning around the big cities like that was a whole lot of fun, once I got over the nausea of looking at things more or less upside-down. A note to dialup users - you probably won't enjoy the file sizes very much, but the resolution is kickin! 'Course, my cable modem ate it up!
I have yet to call a piece of software complete if it does have a bug in it. Really! Now, I know that certain megalithic sofware companies might not share these values, but I guess I just work harder than they do.
So I really don't think it's fair to blame too much technology here. Maybe the developers. No matter how you look at it, though, it bears remembering that real people died here, which is tragic indeed.
I personally believe we are foolish not to go after this technology. After all, most of what we do with gasoline is burn hydrogen, and then spit out what doesn't burn as dangerous byproducts(of course, CO2 isn't a pollutant, and catsup is a vegatable, if you follow a certain way of thinking). Besides, as I'm sure many previous posts mention, it's just about as dangerous to use gasoline as it is to use hydrogen in terms of unexpected combustion. As any welder will tell you, a fuel gas cannot burn until it's mixed with oxygen. A far more salient concern would be explosive decompression of the fuel container under heat or a good hard knock, but, although I can't remember who it was, there was a company recently experimenting with using a metallic matrix for hydrogen fuel storate, with the idea that even if the tank were cut in two, the gas as it escapes rapidly cools (as gases do) and would freeze over the opening, thereby sealing it. I dunno, but the BMW engineers don't seem the least bit concerned, as they say the liquid H just dissapates, which you may or may not choose to believe. Besides, I see natural gas-powered vehicles all over the place today, and where's the outcry? And what's the difference between powering a vehicle with natural gas or powering a vehicle with hydrogen? The natural gas is, of course, supplied by the oil companies, where just about anyone with the gumption can produce hydrogen with nothing but electricity and water! Which may explain the somewhat hysterical opinions circulated against hydrogen-powered vehicles.
As far as the autopump thingy goes, didn't the nozzle on that thing look sort of like the torture machine Darth Vader used on Princess Leah in Star Wars? Around here, we probably wouldn't use one, though, as it would put people out of work.
Excuse me for saying so, but along with bogus patents, this is starting to look like the business theme of the new millenium: "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine. As your employer, I own the rights to your thoughts." Something's gotta give!
Not only is it useful for job security, but it's a great gotcha for mean-hearted university CS departments who insist on students' first learning introductory Visual Basic, then introductory Java, then more Java, before learning to program in obscure languages such as C++. Of course, one must first successfully complete enough assignments to ensure a good grade:)
At least the Australian law will be up for review in three years. With any luck, that will be exactly how long it will last.
"We didn't want to be perceived as being heavy-handed" LOL!
4c & friends are a little nearsighted
on
CPRM Smokescreen
·
· Score: 1
What strikes me most profoundly as I browse through the various ways that different "entities" are working to protect their assets is just how restrictive things are actually going to become - and at some point it looks to me like a sort of entropy will set in. Think about it: back in the day, or at least back in the post 8-track day, it was absolutely thrilling to people that they could put their LP on the turntable, connect that to a cassette recorder, and get at least one halfway nice recording of the album before Junior used it for a frisbee. Not to mention the fact that the cassette could easily be carried to work, and shared with friends(with no risk of damage to the valuable LP). Indeed, when CDs first came out, some people predicted that they were unlikely to take off because people liked to make copies of their music and you couldn't get that CD quality on a cassette. When consumer-priced VCRs became common, there was then some noise about copyright protection, but back then there was a much more sensible Supreme Court in the US, and in the Betamax decision the court declared that manufacturers of VCRs (or VTRs in the Court's language) could not be held liable for copyright infringement because "findings reveal that the average member of the public uses a VTR principally to record a program he cannot view as it is being televised and then to watch it once at a later time." In a way, then, the Court held that recordings of television programming were within the rights of the consumer. In any case, the court explicitly held up the rights of the manufacturers to make devices which could possibly be used to infringe upon copyrights. IANAL (really) but it seems logical to extend this precedent to cover digital recording devices of various kinds.
So the manufacturers are now playing tidy with the copyright holders. Isn't it ironic that Sony, who after all made the Betamax, is now a major player in Hollywood, the source of many media copyrights, and various other evils? The problem with this is that there may come a time where it is so difficult for the majority of the people to afford the technolgy, and more importantly the liscensing, to view or listen to media that the very companies who are attemting to limit everyone's access to everything will be faced with a revenue stranglehold of their own making. Such sweet irony...
you happen have an internet download and also happen to need DCHP support and drivers for a NIC which isn't on the list! Then you might as well forget about making the distro anything better than a disastro! Or at least that is my (very recent) experience with apt-get.
It becomes harder and harder to believe what the big companies are willing to do to advance their positions. While in the United States we still make occasional noise in the courts about government intrusions of privacy, we are more than willing (or at least clueless) to let big corporations look right into our lives. Remember when the Pentium III came out? Half the people I saw interviewed didn't even care that the computer would now uniquely identify you over the internet. Most of them thought it was a good thing! It seems to me a logical extension of logic to create a tranciever instead of a simple receiver in the product. Probably with the stated goal of catching smugglers. And nowhere in the article did I see anything about disclosure. Does that mean you won't even know your VCR is going to croak until you actually get that job in some foreign country? I hope this project dies the death it deserves.
You know, like watching all those crusty thirtysomething "I've been working with computers since the TRS80 and I am a god and I know everything" types take mortal offence and cower in fear at the thought that a group of well-organized eighteen to twenty-five year olds can get it together and run their college's networks. Feeling a little threatened? Speaking from my own experience attending a small state university, which pays out the big bucks for a disorganized bunch of consultants, only to suffer the slings and arrows of a poorly configured (as if it could be any other way) Novell network. Can you say "Delete my user.dat again?" Personally, I believe that what this university is doing is a terriffic way for its students to get hands-on experience in IT administration, which will give them an almost certain leg up on those of us who are forced to take three terms of Visual Basic and Java before we even have a chance to touch networking. Good for them!
What are you afraid of, whitey? Being a white male myself, I am in favor of affirmative action. Why, you might ask. Look around you. Do you really want there to be a great socioeconomic divide, with race being the dividing line? Because that's what we've got right now. And that can only breed discontent. Use the opportunities that you've been given, which may or may not include more and healthier food, better schools, safer streets, and an absolute lack of people in high places who distrust you due only to the color of your skin. Since you don't have these obstacles to overcome, you should on average do better, in fact much better, than the aggregate of people whose lives have been disadvantaged. If you haven't, then your insecurity only masks your laziness.
I think it truly boggles the mind that anybody would waste their time with shit like this. Of course, if someone would, leave it to Murdoch to give them prime time air. Let's face it, Fox's only good show isn't even a fox production (although why Paramount stoops to fox to air Voyager is totally beyond me).
To me, it seems like the psychological roots of this particular conspiricy theory are pretty straightforward - it is more than apparent that the US government, for all it's ballyhooed glasnost, lies. Often. So some people draw the false conclusion that if the government lies, then everything the government says must be a lie. My question to the loonie folks is, what on or off Earth is the point?
And to Rupert Murdoch, my question is why haven't you jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge yet, you worthless neanderthal piece of scum. Not that I care...
And while we're at it, why not include a ban on using lemon juice on paper - after all, that is also a way to hide your communications. Once we've been protected by these fine efforts of our legislators, we can then work out the troubling problem of personal messengers, who simply won't say unless they're in the right company. A simple attack on free association would take care of that.
Or we could take a close look at ourselves and our societies, and try to (I know I'm being ridiculously optimistic here) actually solve our differences in ways which don't make people feel like secretly plotting to do others harm. 'Scuse me.
Is "tangential" even a word, or did I just make it up? I dunno. But my girlfriend got me for saying "tangenital" not too long ago.(And no, it was not in the context you think. Pervert.) Your beef with people slamming Microsoft out of context, while totally valid, must be taken in the context of people who are increasingly uncomfortable with the increasing reliance on one company's software. I know it's inappropriate, but try to understand. And be nice:)
But my french fries will get cold! (Just kidding) Actually, I was very recently involved in a project using this technology (which I believe used Nichia's instruments). The idea was to use an array of white LEDs bounced off a secondary reflector which could be repositioned for focusing a la Maglite. We did run into a number of difficulties in reflector design, but I believe this technology is certain to take off. A funny point to Shuji Nakamura's statement that:
The resultant white LED can lead to a flashlight that shines for 35 hours, up from the present six-hour limitation for an incandescent flashlight bulb...
In testing an initial mockup, we managed to make six LEDs run off a pair of D-cell batteries for over two weeks without a loss in performance! Might be time to sell off that stock in Duracell...
But seriously, there needs to be more analysis of what causes companies to make such obvious mistakes when it comes to security. It's very easy for all of us to sit back and say. "well, what kind of idiot would keep credit card numbers in a networked database?" Indeed. But take a look at the typical business model, which is even more screwed up where it comes to.com startups: you've got youre IT professionals, some of whom may or may not know what they're doing, but who are mostly competent. But, nine times out of ten, they are not the people who run the show. Instead, marketers make big decisions side-by-side with accountants. Not to say that it's not a good idea to promote your business, or keep on top of the books, but look at the typical scenario - the IT or IS manager comes forward and says something to the effect of, "Look, we have a serious security situation here, and if we don't spend the money it takes to fix it right now, we MIGHT get hacked." Now the marketer, who is generally insecure around the IT person (who, after all, can connect all those scary looking wires and make the computers go), is thinking that the money would be better spent on a big campaign to attract investors. Since these cracking incidents are really flash-in-the-pan news events, the marketer doesn't have a clear sense that the risk is real. The accountant is more impressed by the charismatic marketer than by the somewhat cerebral IT person, and is further swayed by some financial need or another. Thus, the decision is all too often a pat on the head to the IT department, and some paternalistic garbage about "all of us doing the best we can under the circumstances," while the crackers gleefully move on.
While I can't claim to be familiar with the corporate perspective within creditcard.com, I personally find it very hard to believe that anybody who can write more than two lines of code would have been happy with the security situation that must have existed for the crackhead to get all those credit card numbers. More likely, it was a situation of all the money going to fancy-looking animated gifs(Ka Ching!), while the IT department was starved to a point of needing to scramble just to keep the servers running. A brief look around the creditcard.com website tends to bear this out: a lot of pretty pictures, but not much substance.
Slashdot Mirror
I was just learning about h2g2, too. His warm yet wry humor will be with us for generations to come. On the event that members of his family should read this, I offer you my condolences.
I haven't seen such a reasoned article in quite a while. Thanks to the author for that. He clearly points out how, by attacking M$ in such effective methods as calling them the Borg, the Evil Empire, etc., we're playing right into their hands.
To the list of reasons why he says we can give to Mr. and Mrs. Home User, I can add this one: If you try to upgrade your software, linux will let you know before the fact, that you're about to break something, whereas Windows just forces the install, dependencies be damned.
Based on the increasingly strange and strident remarks coming from MS lackeys regarding open source, and their steadfast refusal to move away from their almost unbelievably uptight and mean-spirited programming models, this piece of evidence leads me to believe that M$ has really got their backs up against the wall. It's them against the rest of the world. And they want my medical records? Not likely.
So, let's press on. They can't hold out much longer!
Simple case: MSWin sucks
Complex case: MSWin really sucks
Recursive case: Well, that's what this article is about now, isn't it?
Last step: You've gotta believe
I have to say, I've seen both ends of this. I deal on a daily basis with people with an incredibly diverse range of experience as well as problems. Sometimes, I get the impression that the person on the other end of the line actually knows a hell of a lot more about their computer than I do (one can only hope), while other times my job is to patiently explain to someone where the start menu on their winbox is, and what they can do with it.
Of course I have occasion to deal with people who really have complaining and abuse as their goal for calling. But that's the way it is. You either get off the phone, or forward the call to your boss, whether or not your boss wants to deal with it. Fact is, it beats the hell out of flipping burgers, which is sole income for a startling number of CS grads these days.
I've also been on the other side of the phone line. I remember once spending (I timed this) one hour and fifteen minutes on the clock listening to the hold music at a certain company which makes little NAT routers for your desktop box. When I finally did reach a rep, he sounded seriously ready to go postal. Although I did my best to remain courteous while not letting him blow me off, which is what he wanted to do, he finally ended up saying, "Here's how you fix the problem," and hung up the phone. Wow. I guess that's why some people become lumberjacks, truck drivers, and server admins: so they don't have to deal with human beings with all our annoying humanity.
At any rate, my personal take on the issue of tech support is that it really does come from the top down: when I had to wait for all that time on hold, you can guess that's because the (Unmentionable, but their products can Network Everywhere) company didn't put enough priority into tech support, despite the fact that the box ballyhooed the "24/7" tech support I was entitled to by buying the product. That guy probably was at his wits end. Maybe if he actually had time to deal with one call completely without having to watch all those lights blink on his phone, maybe if he actually knew what he was talking about (he didn't), maybe then he would have been able to actually answer what turned out to be a really simple question.
I don't usually go for the light news :) but that had to be one of the coolest Internet experiences I've had since, well, hell, that was cooler than pr0n!
But seriously, panning around the big cities like that was a whole lot of fun, once I got over the nausea of looking at things more or less upside-down. A note to dialup users - you probably won't enjoy the file sizes very much, but the resolution is kickin! 'Course, my cable modem ate it up!
I have yet to call a piece of software complete if it does have a bug in it. Really! Now, I know that certain megalithic sofware companies might not share these values, but I guess I just work harder than they do.
So I really don't think it's fair to blame too much technology here. Maybe the developers. No matter how you look at it, though, it bears remembering that real people died here, which is tragic indeed.
Of course you do! Right off a cliff. AC. Hmph!
Or else I'm going to seriously gripe about my article on "the courtship and mating dances of orange and black umbrellas" not getting posted.
I personally believe we are foolish not to go after this technology. After all, most of what we do with gasoline is burn hydrogen, and then spit out what doesn't burn as dangerous byproducts(of course, CO2 isn't a pollutant, and catsup is a vegatable, if you follow a certain way of thinking). Besides, as I'm sure many previous posts mention, it's just about as dangerous to use gasoline as it is to use hydrogen in terms of unexpected combustion. As any welder will tell you, a fuel gas cannot burn until it's mixed with oxygen. A far more salient concern would be explosive decompression of the fuel container under heat or a good hard knock, but, although I can't remember who it was, there was a company recently experimenting with using a metallic matrix for hydrogen fuel storate, with the idea that even if the tank were cut in two, the gas as it escapes rapidly cools (as gases do) and would freeze over the opening, thereby sealing it. I dunno, but the BMW engineers don't seem the least bit concerned, as they say the liquid H just dissapates, which you may or may not choose to believe. Besides, I see natural gas-powered vehicles all over the place today, and where's the outcry? And what's the difference between powering a vehicle with natural gas or powering a vehicle with hydrogen? The natural gas is, of course, supplied by the oil companies, where just about anyone with the gumption can produce hydrogen with nothing but electricity and water! Which may explain the somewhat hysterical opinions circulated against hydrogen-powered vehicles.
As far as the autopump thingy goes, didn't the nozzle on that thing look sort of like the torture machine Darth Vader used on Princess Leah in Star Wars? Around here, we probably wouldn't use one, though, as it would put people out of work.
Excuse me for saying so, but along with bogus patents, this is starting to look like the business theme of the new millenium: "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine. As your employer, I own the rights to your thoughts."
Something's gotta give!
Not only is it useful for job security, but it's a great gotcha for mean-hearted university CS departments who insist on students' first learning introductory Visual Basic, then introductory Java, then more Java, before learning to program in obscure languages such as C++. :)
Of course, one must first successfully complete enough assignments to ensure a good grade
At least the Australian law will be up for review in three years. With any luck, that will be exactly how long it will last.
"We didn't want to be perceived as being heavy-handed" LOL!
What strikes me most profoundly as I browse through the various ways that different "entities" are working to protect their assets is just how restrictive things are actually going to become - and at some point it looks to me like a sort of entropy will set in.
Think about it: back in the day, or at least back in the post 8-track day, it was absolutely thrilling to people that they could put their LP on the turntable, connect that to a cassette recorder, and get at least one halfway nice recording of the album before Junior used it for a frisbee. Not to mention the fact that the cassette could easily be carried to work, and shared with friends(with no risk of damage to the valuable LP). Indeed, when CDs first came out, some people predicted that they were unlikely to take off because people liked to make copies of their music and you couldn't get that CD quality on a cassette.
When consumer-priced VCRs became common, there was then some noise about copyright protection, but back then there was a much more sensible Supreme Court in the US, and in the Betamax decision the court declared that manufacturers of VCRs (or VTRs in the Court's language) could not be held liable for copyright infringement because "findings reveal that the average member of the public uses a VTR principally to record a program he cannot view as it is being televised and then to watch it once at a later time." In a way, then, the Court held that recordings of television programming were within the rights of the consumer. In any case, the court explicitly held up the rights of the manufacturers to make devices which could possibly be used to infringe upon copyrights. IANAL (really) but it seems logical to extend this precedent to cover digital recording devices of various kinds.
So the manufacturers are now playing tidy with the copyright holders. Isn't it ironic that Sony, who after all made the Betamax, is now a major player in Hollywood, the source of many media copyrights, and various other evils? The problem with this is that there may come a time where it is so difficult for the majority of the people to afford the technolgy, and more importantly the liscensing, to view or listen to media that the very companies who are attemting to limit everyone's access to everything will be faced with a revenue stranglehold of their own making. Such sweet irony...
That would mean that they "owned" the word diablo. Just how does one own such a word? Surely they didn't buy it from... somebody?
you happen have an internet download and also happen to need DCHP support and drivers for a NIC which isn't on the list! Then you might as well forget about making the distro anything better than a disastro! Or at least that is my (very recent) experience with apt-get.
It becomes harder and harder to believe what the big companies are willing to do to advance their positions. While in the United States we still make occasional noise in the courts about government intrusions of privacy, we are more than willing (or at least clueless) to let big corporations look right into our lives. Remember when the Pentium III came out? Half the people I saw interviewed didn't even care that the computer would now uniquely identify you over the internet. Most of them thought it was a good thing!
It seems to me a logical extension of logic to create a tranciever instead of a simple receiver in the product. Probably with the stated goal of catching smugglers. And nowhere in the article did I see anything about disclosure. Does that mean you won't even know your VCR is going to croak until you actually get that job in some foreign country? I hope this project dies the death it deserves.
You know, like watching all those crusty thirtysomething "I've been working with computers since the TRS80 and I am a god and I know everything" types take mortal offence and cower in fear at the thought that a group of well-organized eighteen to twenty-five year olds can get it together and run their college's networks. Feeling a little threatened?
Speaking from my own experience attending a small state university, which pays out the big bucks for a disorganized bunch of consultants, only to suffer the slings and arrows of a poorly configured (as if it could be any other way) Novell network. Can you say "Delete my user.dat again?" Personally, I believe that what this university is doing is a terriffic way for its students to get hands-on experience in IT administration, which will give them an almost certain leg up on those of us who are forced to take three terms of Visual Basic and Java before we even have a chance to touch networking.
Good for them!
What are you afraid of, whitey? Being a white male myself, I am in favor of affirmative action. Why, you might ask. Look around you. Do you really want there to be a great socioeconomic divide, with race being the dividing line? Because that's what we've got right now. And that can only breed discontent.
Use the opportunities that you've been given, which may or may not include more and healthier food, better schools, safer streets, and an absolute lack of people in high places who distrust you due only to the color of your skin. Since you don't have these obstacles to overcome, you should on average do better, in fact much better, than the aggregate of people whose lives have been disadvantaged. If you haven't, then your insecurity only masks your laziness.
I think it truly boggles the mind that anybody would waste their time with shit like this. Of course, if someone would, leave it to Murdoch to give them prime time air. Let's face it, Fox's only good show isn't even a fox production (although why Paramount stoops to fox to air Voyager is totally beyond me).
To me, it seems like the psychological roots of this particular conspiricy theory are pretty straightforward - it is more than apparent that the US government, for all it's ballyhooed glasnost, lies. Often. So some people draw the false conclusion that if the government lies, then everything the government says must be a lie. My question to the loonie folks is, what on or off Earth is the point?
And to Rupert Murdoch, my question is why haven't you jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge yet, you worthless neanderthal piece of scum. Not that I care...
And while we're at it, why not include a ban on using lemon juice on paper - after all, that is also a way to hide your communications. Once we've been protected by these fine efforts of our legislators, we can then work out the troubling problem of personal messengers, who simply won't say unless they're in the right company. A simple attack on free association would take care of that.
Or we could take a close look at ourselves and our societies, and try to (I know I'm being ridiculously optimistic here) actually solve our differences in ways which don't make people feel like secretly plotting to do others harm. 'Scuse me.
Is "tangential" even a word, or did I just make it up? :)
I dunno. But my girlfriend got me for saying "tangenital" not too long ago.(And no, it was not in the context you think. Pervert.)
Your beef with people slamming Microsoft out of context, while totally valid, must be taken in the context of people who are increasingly uncomfortable with the increasing reliance on one company's software. I know it's inappropriate, but try to understand. And be nice
What about muscle spasms or craps.
Craps?
"The plane went into a prolonged spiral dive before landing into the ocean. The cause of the crash is under investigation."
Actually, I was very recently involved in a project using this technology (which I believe used Nichia's instruments). The idea was to use an array of white LEDs bounced off a secondary reflector which could be repositioned for focusing a la Maglite. We did run into a number of difficulties in reflector design, but I believe this technology is certain to take off. A funny point to Shuji Nakamura's statement that:In testing an initial mockup, we managed to make six LEDs run off a pair of D-cell batteries for over two weeks without a loss in performance! Might be time to sell off that stock in Duracell...
But seriously, there needs to be more analysis of what causes companies to make such obvious mistakes when it comes to security. It's very easy for all of us to sit back and say. "well, what kind of idiot would keep credit card numbers in a networked database?" Indeed. But take a look at the typical business model, which is even more screwed up where it comes to .com startups:
you've got youre IT professionals, some of whom may or may not know what they're doing, but who are mostly competent. But, nine times out of ten, they are not the people who run the show. Instead, marketers make big decisions side-by-side with accountants. Not to say that it's not a good idea to promote your business, or keep on top of the books, but look at the typical scenario - the IT or IS manager comes forward and says something to the effect of, "Look, we have a serious security situation here, and if we don't spend the money it takes to fix it right now, we MIGHT get hacked." Now the marketer, who is generally insecure around the IT person (who, after all, can connect all those scary looking wires and make the computers go), is thinking that the money would be better spent on a big campaign to attract investors. Since these cracking incidents are really flash-in-the-pan news events, the marketer doesn't have a clear sense that the risk is real. The accountant is more impressed by the charismatic marketer than by the somewhat cerebral IT person, and is further swayed by some financial need or another. Thus, the decision is all too often a pat on the head to the IT department, and some paternalistic garbage about "all of us doing the best we can under the circumstances," while the crackers gleefully move on.
While I can't claim to be familiar with the corporate perspective within creditcard.com, I personally find it very hard to believe that anybody who can write more than two lines of code would have been happy with the security situation that must have existed for the crackhead to get all those credit card numbers. More likely, it was a situation of all the money going to fancy-looking animated gifs(Ka Ching!), while the IT department was starved to a point of needing to scramble just to keep the servers running. A brief look around the creditcard.com website tends to bear this out: a lot of pretty pictures, but not much substance.