You're not denying people the chance to buy a house, you're denying them the chance to buy a house they can't afford. With all these ARMs floating around, home prices got inflated because people were capable of buying houses they couldn't really afford, and that drove demand up.
I could have gotten one of those ARMs when we bought back in 2002. I knew better. I'm one of those people who are pissed that everyone who got one of those who suddenly find themselves unable to make a payment they agreed to is getting bailed out. But the fact remains, if the mortgage brokers weren't able to offer them, then we would not have the situation we have now. We have a smaller house than what we might have been able to get with an ARM, but we have a fixed 30 year rate at 5.75. We're not losing our house (small though it may be) anytime soon.
If you're waiting for perfection, you're going to be waiting a damn long time. If the features that you want are only found in more expensive products, then you're going to pay more if you want those features. Since those aren't as important to most people buying the CFLs, they won't benefit from the economies of scale.
That being said, your point about home automation is a good one. As far as the LEDs go, yes, they're not a mature product yet, but are getting there. Don't give up on them just yet.
Could you define 'true, rational human behavior' in this context for me?
And by "price" being the biggest factor in any economics, are you defining price as 'purchase price' or as 'total cost over the useful lifetime of the product'?
I should probably have disclaimed this a while ago: I work for a non-profit ecommerce site that sells energy-efficient/conservation products (CFLs, window sealing products, insulation, etc.) so I guess you should take what I say with a grain of salt. (We ARE non-profit, however, so meh).
I'm sitting on the committee internally to explore LED use for consumer general lighting. They do use markedly less energy, but the initial expense is still a concern, as is the color quality (the predominant technology used for flashlights, holiday lighting, etc is noticeably bluer than incandescent/CFL lighting. There are 'warm white' LEDs on the market, I've got some on my house as holiday decoration and the color is nearly indistinguishable from the incandescent lights I've got up.)
The point is that as soon as CFLs are ACTUALLY cheaper there will be widespread voluntary adoption. No government intervention is necessary.
They're cheaper RIGHT NOW. They cost more INITIALLY but you save more than the price difference in energy and replacement costs over the life of the bulb.
But since you don't care about that (and neither does anyone else), things like this law are necessary.
That would be a valid argument if we had a free market economy. We don't. In a true free market, people would weigh the costs and benefits of each purchase both to themselves and to the society in general. Free markets require educated, thoughtful consumers. We don't have those. We have people who shop at Wal*Mart and think it's great that pickles only cost $3 instead of $3.50.
If you don't like the laws being passed, write your congressman. Until then, they're doing the job we elected them to do. If the majority of voters don't like what an elected official does, they get voted out of office. If the majority of voters find these kinds of laws inappropriate or objectionable, they'll remove them from office.
You're assuming that Joe Sixpack can understand the concept of "savings over time". All he sees is that he can buy a 4-pack of incandescents for the same price as one CFL. As far as he's concerned that makes the CFL more expensive RIGHT THEN, and that's all he cares about.
Of COURSE CFLs are more efficient over time (both in terms of energy consumption and replacement cost). This isn't controversial at all, it's a plain fact. (Granted, the cost of disposal eats into those savings, but you're still ahead of the game in the long run.) It's also irrelevant to most people when they make a purchase. Without the force of a ban, those people will still continue to buy the cheaper incandescents.
You've got a couple good ideas, but there's some issues there:
If the bulbs were not made unavailable (banned) then there are those that would continue to use them because of either some perceived benefit of incandescents over CFLs, an irrational aversion to change, or for no other reason than to be contrary.
The additional market for CFLs that this will generate will create consumer demand for CFLs with as identical a color spectrum as physically possible to an incandescent bulb. I've got several of these bulbs in my house and the light is plenty warm enough for me.
Passing a ban on inefficient technology is orders of magnitude easier than passing a 'new tax'. Try that and you'll get the GOP all up your ass about increasing the tax burden on the working class. Besides, CFLs have enough critical mass for the industry to innovate without requiring government subsidy, and the market for LED lighting is potentially so ginormous that industry will take the chance on the investment required.
This is typical of the 'magic bullet' theory of energy conservation. CFLs are just another small way that we can all use less energy. They are not a cure-all. You still need to get your boiler serviced, seal your windows in the winter, insulate your house, trade in your stupid-ass SUV for something more efficient, turn off lights you're not using, install a programmable thermostat, purchase energy-star rated appliances when it's time to replace them, carpool, set your computers to go to sleep when idle, etc etc etc.
There's no one-step easy solution. CFLs save energy, yes, but they're not perfect. They won't cure the world's ills.
I for one am glad to see legislation forcing energy conservation, because without it, there's a significant portion of the US population that will refuse to conserve energy because it requires effort on their part, and another (overlapping) portion that do the opposite of what people suggest that they do, because they're rebels and good 'merkins who'll do the opposite of what people say "because they can". People need to be protected from their own stupidity sometimes.
If the CC techs planted it there, the defense can try and prove it in court. The credibility of evidence is one reason we hold trials in the first place; the defense attempts to discredit evidence against their clients, and the prosecution attempts to prove its validity. The competency of 'civilians' to assess this evidence when they're no doubt idiots when it comes to the technical aspects of computers is a complication to be sure, but that's what expert witnesses are for.
What also should be considered here is that the possession of child pornography falls into a category of witnessed acts that some people (like EMTs, policemen, firefighters, nurses and others) are obligated to report regardless of the circumstance under which those acts were witnessed. In other words, if I'm an EMT and I notice child pornography (or child abuse, domestic violence, and a few other things) in the course of treating an injured person in their home, I'm obligated to report the fact that I witnessed same. Extending this to civilians is a slippery slope, but I think it can be generally agreed that if anything is going to fall into that category, it's child porn.
There's got to be a happy medium in there somewhere, where people who might WANT to teach but can't because of the salary problems could survive on a teacher's salary.
People should be expected to take care of themselves.
Great. So tell you what, you don't have to pay taxes anymore. Oh, your house burned down because it got struck by lightning and you and your family have lost everything in the world that you had. You could have called the fire department, but oops! There isn't one. Getting invaded by Muslim extremists? Great, call the army. Oops, there isn't one. Fleeing inland to avoid a tsunami? Oops, there's no interstate highway system.
People can take care of themselves by doing their part for the common good. Suck it up, quit whining, and do something positive with your energy, like fighting the real problem here (which is the medical insurance industry).
250K is no small amount of money.
Where are you getting this number from? Is that how much you think doctors get paid these days?
I got news for you. That amount of money is what many doctors pay in malpractice insurance for 2 years. Young doctors are graduating with 200K+ in student loans, and then the HMOs tell them they have to see 10 patients an hour in order to get any money whatsoever. Young doctors are leaving the field because they can't make a living, much less $250k.
I would be libertarian like you if I thought it was realistic at all. Yes, health care is too expensive. Yes, the system sucks. Hiding in your house and bitching about how much you have to pay in taxes doesn't solve either one of these problems. Your family does not exist in a vacuum; like it or not, you are part of a community. People pool their resources to pay for services that benefit everyone. You want to be a jackhole and not pay your taxes? Don't call the cops next time someone's mugging you.
But let's turn it around. Let us say for the sake of argument that from the age of five until the age of 70, you never needed medical care. You never broke anything, never had any serious illness, etc. Now, based on those 65 years of healthy bliss, do you think it is fair that you paid what probably amounted to well over $250K in taxes to subsidize someone else? In other words, you paid for something but got no benefit from your spent money.
What an incredibly selfish point of view.
The benefit from his spent money is that that system was there should he have needed it. The benefit from his spent money is lower cost health care for everyone, including everyone in his family, regardless of income or employment status.
You could say the same for paying property taxes that pay for a fire department you never need. Or for streets you never drive on.
You could say the same for homeowner's insurance that you never have to claim against. It's called "shared risk". The difference in this case is that countries outside the United States see health care as a basic human right.
Oh, and by the way, who the hell do you think pays for it when some poor unemployed, poverty-stricken schlub gets whacked by a bus and needs emergency room care? It's called the "Uncompensated Care pool" and it's paid for by the US taxpayer. We're already paying for part of our health care system through taxation. If we do away with private health insurance, and people give that money to a national health care system instead, I'd bet a paycheck that most people would end up paying LESS money. Have you SEEN how much some people pay for 'employer subsidized' health insurance? Lots of people pay $500 a month for the family coverage. Six grand a year times however many millions of people is a LOT of money.
Considering he didn't have to get a referral, pay a deductible, then wait 3 weeks for surgery, all the while fighting with his insurance company for reimbursement, THEN getting a bill from the hospital/radiologist/surgeon for the part of the cost that the insurance DIDN'T pay (because they'll only finally pay it when the insured complains), yeah, I'd say that was a pretty good level of treatment.
And the fact that it was a broken bone that got screwed up and not a ligament repair. Bones heal, ligaments heal poorly.
'On what timeline will AJAX skills become commoditized like HTML skills became?'"
I think you can read this as "On what timeline can we send our AJAX work overseas in order to make the beancounters happy and get rid of all our expensive in-house developers?"
This is *not* a good thing for American Web developers. They tried this with technical support, and while it worked well in some cases, it was a complete disaster in others. Not to mention the fact that you can't save as much money by outsourcing these days, due to the dwindling/more expensive supply versus increased demand.
I've talked to some very talented Indian developers and tech support reps. I've worked with some extremely competent IT workers from Bangalore. As demand rises, these high-quality workers will become scarcer/more expensive. It gets to the point where the extra overhead/infrastructure and annoyed customers isn't worth putting your own employees out of work.. not to mention when they lose their houses it aggravates the crisis in the housing industry.
The problem is that Joe Sixpack doesn't understand the problem and/or doesn't care. In theory we've paid Microsoft for an OS that *should* have security as a core competency. Microsoft claims to provide a safe, secure OS, such that Joe Sixpack shouldn't have to worry about security holes. At the very least they're guilty of leaving open security holes that they KNOW about and COULD fix in a security patch, but deliberately don't in order to make their product look better (since the number of security patches put out on Patch Tuesday is something Joe Sixpack can understand, being that more patches = less secure is the only understanding needed.)
There's no excuse for delaying a security patch, even a couple weeks. They have the ability to patch vulnerabilities in a timely fashion, and are deliberately not doing so.
This should end up being a class action. Normally I'm not crazy about lawsuits, but there are far too many people and enterprises affected by this issue, and a multi-billion dollar settlement will definitely get everyone's attention. When the stockholders end up making less money as a result of the one-time charge, they'll demand that MS do something to keep it from happening again. Money is all they care about, and they'll scream bloody murder.
Hmm, maybe the stockholders (read: the fund managers) should sue. There's certainly precedent for them to do so.
I can't think of a single reason why it should be a crime to grow & smoke.
You probably don't have a vested interest in tobacco production, pharmaceutical research, nutritional supplements, petroleum production/distribution, cloth manufacture... etc.
A recent scientific study proved that it is not a so-called "gateway drug" that leads to e.g. heroin abuse.
There you go, bringing your silly "facts" into the argument again. It's bad! End of discussion.
George Washington grew it on his farm, what could be more American than that?
Technically, GW grew hemp, which, while being the same species as marijuana grown for intoxication purposes, is bred in such a manner that getting high from it is physically impossible due to low THC/other psychoactive content. I know it's a fine point, but let's not give the prohibitionists another nit to pick.
In the bible _kana_bith_ (cannabis) is mentioned as a component of the sacred incense that was burned in the temple. Shouldn't freedom of religion protect people's right to grow it?
Try telling that to the Rastafarians, who have consistently been told they have no religious right to grow a controlled substance. Nevermind that the 'christian' church uses intoxicants on a regular basis in their worship; that's different because they're 'christian', not one of those hippy blasphemous un-American cults.
All that being said, eventually it will be legal, once people figure out that we have more important things to worry about. (Not holding my breath though..)
This is to say, UAC isn't the whole of the security (just as sudo isn't the whole of the security) and still needs to be backed up by users who aren't complete idiots and a decent setup.
And that is why you fail.
Users must be protected from themselves. Providing "security" that can be ignored with a single click is a waste of effort.
Two words: administrator password. Every time. Can't be disabled. Deal with it. Don't like it? Go get something else.
They do improve security, just not on that computer. They provide job security for MCSEs and their fellow vermin. It also provides plausible deniability for MS; when grilled about a security problem, they can say "Hey, we gave people more security features, it's not our fault if people disregard them."
So you think it's reasonable to expect anybody who works with a computer to be able to tell whether information is stored securely or insecurely on a laptop, without any special training?
What, exactly, is unreasonable about that? You wouldn't leave your wallet in plain view on the seat of an unlocked car, right? I can't understand why people find this so fucking difficult to wrap their heads around.
The companies should hire people who can show that they have been trained in these matters, or they should train their employees themselves.
What "training"? Does "Don't put this information on your laptop" really require a class? If they don't understand when information is on their laptop and when it isn't, why are they being hired to do anything more complicated than empty a trash barrel?
Tolerance of people's incompetence with regard to computer/information security has gone on long enough. Time to look both ways before you cross the street, kids. (Now if we could just make it legal for these twits to be flattened by a bus when they fuck up like this..)
And in case your wondering, refusing to work would be a good offense until you get into the details of 3 hours notice and not being qualified for the job. Tell me, how many hearings did you go threw?
The one hearing that I was entitled to. I detailed the circumstances, and was using the "not provided with suitable work" argument. I still lost.
Did people hear you yelling in an office to the manager? Have your threatened to kill or injure or other wised threatened physical violence to someone before?
Would it have mattered if there weren't any witnesses? The burden of proof falls on the applicant, not on the employer. It's hard to prove that you didn't say something behind a closed door; providing "proof" that you did, in the form of testimony, is much easier.
The world might be out to get you. Every one might be after you. IT might all be some grand conspiracy to get you. But I doubt it. You need to either look in the mirror and get a good grasp on reality or let go of some of the fears and anger you have built up in your hear. Most of it only exists there you know.
I'm telling you things you don't want to hear. I'm speaking from my own direct experience, from things I have seen with my own eyes. I didn't make up getting fucked out of my benefits over that 3 hour notice deal. I didn't make up the fact that the state has a vested interest in providing low-wage workers to the business community. And I'm NOT making up the fact that you're guilty until proven innocent in employment matters, effectively (as most people I know don't have the money to retain an attorney. I looked for an attorney. I looked *hard* for an attorney. Nobody would take my case, money or not, as I stood almost no chance of winning.)
When someone looks you in the eye and tells you "We don't HAVE to tell you [why you're being let go]" in THOSE EXACT WORDS, calculated to be as personally devastating as possible, you bet it'll color your outlook. Strike me dead, that's exactly what happened, whether you want to believe it or not.
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You're not denying people the chance to buy a house, you're denying them the chance to buy a house they can't afford. With all these ARMs floating around, home prices got inflated because people were capable of buying houses they couldn't really afford, and that drove demand up.
I could have gotten one of those ARMs when we bought back in 2002. I knew better. I'm one of those people who are pissed that everyone who got one of those who suddenly find themselves unable to make a payment they agreed to is getting bailed out. But the fact remains, if the mortgage brokers weren't able to offer them, then we would not have the situation we have now. We have a smaller house than what we might have been able to get with an ARM, but we have a fixed 30 year rate at 5.75. We're not losing our house (small though it may be) anytime soon.
If you're waiting for perfection, you're going to be waiting a damn long time. If the features that you want are only found in more expensive products, then you're going to pay more if you want those features. Since those aren't as important to most people buying the CFLs, they won't benefit from the economies of scale.
That being said, your point about home automation is a good one. As far as the LEDs go, yes, they're not a mature product yet, but are getting there. Don't give up on them just yet.
Could you define 'true, rational human behavior' in this context for me?
And by "price" being the biggest factor in any economics, are you defining price as 'purchase price' or as 'total cost over the useful lifetime of the product'?
I should probably have disclaimed this a while ago: I work for a non-profit ecommerce site that sells energy-efficient/conservation products (CFLs, window sealing products, insulation, etc.) so I guess you should take what I say with a grain of salt. (We ARE non-profit, however, so meh).
I'm sitting on the committee internally to explore LED use for consumer general lighting. They do use markedly less energy, but the initial expense is still a concern, as is the color quality (the predominant technology used for flashlights, holiday lighting, etc is noticeably bluer than incandescent/CFL lighting. There are 'warm white' LEDs on the market, I've got some on my house as holiday decoration and the color is nearly indistinguishable from the incandescent lights I've got up.)
Do you heat your house with that electricity as well? If not, servicing your heating system will still save fossil fuel.
And using less energy is always a better idea, if for no other reason than your electric bill goes down.
But since you don't care about that (and neither does anyone else), things like this law are necessary.
That would be a valid argument if we had a free market economy. We don't. In a true free market, people would weigh the costs and benefits of each purchase both to themselves and to the society in general. Free markets require educated, thoughtful consumers. We don't have those. We have people who shop at Wal*Mart and think it's great that pickles only cost $3 instead of $3.50.
If you don't like the laws being passed, write your congressman. Until then, they're doing the job we elected them to do. If the majority of voters don't like what an elected official does, they get voted out of office. If the majority of voters find these kinds of laws inappropriate or objectionable, they'll remove them from office.
You're assuming that Joe Sixpack can understand the concept of "savings over time". All he sees is that he can buy a 4-pack of incandescents for the same price as one CFL. As far as he's concerned that makes the CFL more expensive RIGHT THEN, and that's all he cares about.
Of COURSE CFLs are more efficient over time (both in terms of energy consumption and replacement cost). This isn't controversial at all, it's a plain fact. (Granted, the cost of disposal eats into those savings, but you're still ahead of the game in the long run.) It's also irrelevant to most people when they make a purchase. Without the force of a ban, those people will still continue to buy the cheaper incandescents.
You've got a couple good ideas, but there's some issues there:
If the bulbs were not made unavailable (banned) then there are those that would continue to use them because of either some perceived benefit of incandescents over CFLs, an irrational aversion to change, or for no other reason than to be contrary.
The additional market for CFLs that this will generate will create consumer demand for CFLs with as identical a color spectrum as physically possible to an incandescent bulb. I've got several of these bulbs in my house and the light is plenty warm enough for me.
Passing a ban on inefficient technology is orders of magnitude easier than passing a 'new tax'. Try that and you'll get the GOP all up your ass about increasing the tax burden on the working class. Besides, CFLs have enough critical mass for the industry to innovate without requiring government subsidy, and the market for LED lighting is potentially so ginormous that industry will take the chance on the investment required.
This is typical of the 'magic bullet' theory of energy conservation. CFLs are just another small way that we can all use less energy. They are not a cure-all. You still need to get your boiler serviced, seal your windows in the winter, insulate your house, trade in your stupid-ass SUV for something more efficient, turn off lights you're not using, install a programmable thermostat, purchase energy-star rated appliances when it's time to replace them, carpool, set your computers to go to sleep when idle, etc etc etc.
There's no one-step easy solution. CFLs save energy, yes, but they're not perfect. They won't cure the world's ills.
I for one am glad to see legislation forcing energy conservation, because without it, there's a significant portion of the US population that will refuse to conserve energy because it requires effort on their part, and another (overlapping) portion that do the opposite of what people suggest that they do, because they're rebels and good 'merkins who'll do the opposite of what people say "because they can". People need to be protected from their own stupidity sometimes.
Maybe you shouldn't have bought the cheapest ones you could find. Either you got a bad batch, or the wiring in your house is seriously messed up.
There's more important things here than money. Less energy used is still less energy used.
If the CC techs planted it there, the defense can try and prove it in court. The credibility of evidence is one reason we hold trials in the first place; the defense attempts to discredit evidence against their clients, and the prosecution attempts to prove its validity. The competency of 'civilians' to assess this evidence when they're no doubt idiots when it comes to the technical aspects of computers is a complication to be sure, but that's what expert witnesses are for.
What also should be considered here is that the possession of child pornography falls into a category of witnessed acts that some people (like EMTs, policemen, firefighters, nurses and others) are obligated to report regardless of the circumstance under which those acts were witnessed. In other words, if I'm an EMT and I notice child pornography (or child abuse, domestic violence, and a few other things) in the course of treating an injured person in their home, I'm obligated to report the fact that I witnessed same. Extending this to civilians is a slippery slope, but I think it can be generally agreed that if anything is going to fall into that category, it's child porn.
There's got to be a happy medium in there somewhere, where people who might WANT to teach but can't because of the salary problems could survive on a teacher's salary.
Unfortunately the bank won't take those returns/rewards as payment for the mortgage they hold on your home. You can't eat job satisfaction.
Until we regard teachers as being as important as police or firefighters the public schools will continue to deteriorate.
People can take care of themselves by doing their part for the common good. Suck it up, quit whining, and do something positive with your energy, like fighting the real problem here (which is the medical insurance industry).Where are you getting this number from? Is that how much you think doctors get paid these days?
I got news for you. That amount of money is what many doctors pay in malpractice insurance for 2 years. Young doctors are graduating with 200K+ in student loans, and then the HMOs tell them they have to see 10 patients an hour in order to get any money whatsoever. Young doctors are leaving the field because they can't make a living, much less $250k.
I would be libertarian like you if I thought it was realistic at all. Yes, health care is too expensive. Yes, the system sucks. Hiding in your house and bitching about how much you have to pay in taxes doesn't solve either one of these problems. Your family does not exist in a vacuum; like it or not, you are part of a community. People pool their resources to pay for services that benefit everyone. You want to be a jackhole and not pay your taxes? Don't call the cops next time someone's mugging you.
The benefit from his spent money is that that system was there should he have needed it. The benefit from his spent money is lower cost health care for everyone, including everyone in his family, regardless of income or employment status.
You could say the same for paying property taxes that pay for a fire department you never need. Or for streets you never drive on.
You could say the same for homeowner's insurance that you never have to claim against. It's called "shared risk". The difference in this case is that countries outside the United States see health care as a basic human right.
Oh, and by the way, who the hell do you think pays for it when some poor unemployed, poverty-stricken schlub gets whacked by a bus and needs emergency room care? It's called the "Uncompensated Care pool" and it's paid for by the US taxpayer. We're already paying for part of our health care system through taxation. If we do away with private health insurance, and people give that money to a national health care system instead, I'd bet a paycheck that most people would end up paying LESS money. Have you SEEN how much some people pay for 'employer subsidized' health insurance? Lots of people pay $500 a month for the family coverage. Six grand a year times however many millions of people is a LOT of money.
Considering he didn't have to get a referral, pay a deductible, then wait 3 weeks for surgery, all the while fighting with his insurance company for reimbursement, THEN getting a bill from the hospital/radiologist/surgeon for the part of the cost that the insurance DIDN'T pay (because they'll only finally pay it when the insured complains), yeah, I'd say that was a pretty good level of treatment.
And the fact that it was a broken bone that got screwed up and not a ligament repair. Bones heal, ligaments heal poorly.
This is *not* a good thing for American Web developers. They tried this with technical support, and while it worked well in some cases, it was a complete disaster in others. Not to mention the fact that you can't save as much money by outsourcing these days, due to the dwindling/more expensive supply versus increased demand.
I've talked to some very talented Indian developers and tech support reps. I've worked with some extremely competent IT workers from Bangalore. As demand rises, these high-quality workers will become scarcer/more expensive. It gets to the point where the extra overhead/infrastructure and annoyed customers isn't worth putting your own employees out of work.. not to mention when they lose their houses it aggravates the crisis in the housing industry.
The problem is that Joe Sixpack doesn't understand the problem and/or doesn't care. In theory we've paid Microsoft for an OS that *should* have security as a core competency. Microsoft claims to provide a safe, secure OS, such that Joe Sixpack shouldn't have to worry about security holes. At the very least they're guilty of leaving open security holes that they KNOW about and COULD fix in a security patch, but deliberately don't in order to make their product look better (since the number of security patches put out on Patch Tuesday is something Joe Sixpack can understand, being that more patches = less secure is the only understanding needed.)
There's no excuse for delaying a security patch, even a couple weeks. They have the ability to patch vulnerabilities in a timely fashion, and are deliberately not doing so.
This should end up being a class action. Normally I'm not crazy about lawsuits, but there are far too many people and enterprises affected by this issue, and a multi-billion dollar settlement will definitely get everyone's attention. When the stockholders end up making less money as a result of the one-time charge, they'll demand that MS do something to keep it from happening again. Money is all they care about, and they'll scream bloody murder.
Hmm, maybe the stockholders (read: the fund managers) should sue. There's certainly precedent for them to do so.
All that being said, eventually it will be legal, once people figure out that we have more important things to worry about. (Not holding my breath though..)
Users must be protected from themselves. Providing "security" that can be ignored with a single click is a waste of effort.
Two words: administrator password. Every time. Can't be disabled. Deal with it. Don't like it? Go get something else.
They do improve security, just not on that computer. They provide job security for MCSEs and their fellow vermin. It also provides plausible deniability for MS; when grilled about a security problem, they can say "Hey, we gave people more security features, it's not our fault if people disregard them."
Tolerance of people's incompetence with regard to computer/information security has gone on long enough. Time to look both ways before you cross the street, kids. (Now if we could just make it legal for these twits to be flattened by a bus when they fuck up like this..)
When someone looks you in the eye and tells you "We don't HAVE to tell you [why you're being let go]" in THOSE EXACT WORDS, calculated to be as personally devastating as possible, you bet it'll color your outlook. Strike me dead, that's exactly what happened, whether you want to believe it or not.