....Otherwise we get a jungle law of "who has the longest dick wins".....
Actually, it was a Chinese guy by the name of Mao who put it a little more realistic: "Power comes from the barrel of a gun". That's what it really boils down to and always has throughout all of human history -- unfortunately.
Armageddon will come at the time and in the place it is predicted to occur. Man is a warring creature, always has been. As Katrina has shown, the veneer of civilization is thin indeed. There have always been and will always be persons who want to impose their will on others. Ultimately it is always the one who has the biggest stick who succeeds at doing that. The only way that will ever change is if someone from outside of our planet comes with a bigger stick than all mankind put together can wield.
.....such as a small island, preferrably of very unhospitable climate.....
How about a very BIG island, already a very international place -- Antarctica! It's a really cool place, well isolated and there is NO parking problem!
......The internet is now a key part of the infrastructure of many countries.....
So what? Many countries also use our Global Positioning System and other satellite resources. These also fulfill critical functions in many countries. Should we also turn that over to the UN? It is OUR GPS and it is OUR Internet and we are letting the entire world use it for free. Isn't that good enough for the ungrateful UN members?
.....You cannot force someone to like you. You cannot force someone to love you.....
We are not talking about liking, love or a popularity contest, but simply running a utility that started in this country and we have kept it running just fine for everybody all free for nothing. Whether they hate us or Israel or anybody else doesn't affect the operation of the Internet one bit. It doesn't affect the operation of our GPS system either. I suppose the UN will ask to control that next because everybody all over the world uses it for free, just as they do the Internet. If the UN disappeared under a mushroom cloud there would be no difference at all in the operation of either of these important technolgies initiated and kept going by the USA.
If the UN really cared about freedom and democracy they would exclude from membership dictatorial despot nations from membership. Let them continue their petty squabbling and rampant corruption, but we should not allow them to break a system that has been running without their meddling for over 25 years now.
....When copyright law follows the Constitution in protecting the individual authors and inventors....
A simple change to copyright law: Allow only real, physical people to have and control copyrights, not a ficticious entity called a corporation and the copyright dies with the original creator of the work. The creator may sell the copyright to any other real physical person, but the copyright only lasts until the death of the originator of the copyrighted work. If such were the copyright law, Mickey Mouse would now be in the public domain.
......The threat to "forcibly remove control" however, isn't even credible.....
Indeed, will they come here and take the servers away by force? Maybe the Internet will cease to be an International thing, but a number of mostly isolated networks. There can be a EU slashdot.org, a Chinese slashdot.org, an Australian slashdot.org etc. Maybe that's what's behind the whole reason for wanting to take the Internet away from the US. Dictatorial governments would not have to work nearly so hard anymore to prevent their citizens from getting information and points of view contrary to what their government wishes them to have. Organizations such as the **AA might be happy to remove the access of US Internet users to tools that circumvent the DMCA or sources of copyrighted content for example. Phone companies having to compete against cheap VOIP technology might not object if the Internet were fractured into national or at least regional islands.
The present Internet works reasonably well. What interest would the US government have in messing it up?
....Classify people into "cool" or "uncool" based on their use of allofmp3.com if you like.....
It may also be "uncool" to give your credit card information to some site in Russia. Who knows where that may end up and what it could be used for. That may be a bigger reason for many to not use this music service. I've traced a number of phishing e-mails I got to Russia.
.....I can't put Yahoo music on an iPod and I can't put iTunes music on my RCA MP3 player.....
The reason you can't has nothing to do with Apple, M$, Yahoo or any other technology, but with the fact that the recording companies think they'd get ripped off wholesale if the did not require the various DRM systems before they let their music files be downloaded. Standard mp3 files will play on every music player and computer. There is no standard music DRM system equivalent to the file standards you mention. There is a standard DVD DRM system and that has been hacked so that movies can be copied to a HD in a laptop, allowing the owner of the DVD to leave it safely at home when travelling. Apple's DRM has also been hacked, but it is much less neccessary use that hack since their DRM restrictions are not so draconian as not to allow users to do the things most want to do.
.....iTMS songs are so low-res that they are not worth burning to a music CD.....
For many purposes compressed audio is plenty good enough. I don't think there is a human alive that can tell the difference between an original CD or an 192bps AAC while going down the highway in a car or walking down the street with an ipod in the average city. Only on a top notch audiophile system in a quiet environment will the differences become readily apparent. The audiophile market is a very small part of the overall music listening consumers. Like MS software, it isn't tops, but just good enough for most users.
....I'm not sure what people here have against the subscription model, but trust me, it makes sense for a lot of people...
It seems that Apple could do both subscription and download. Maybe they will someday. Some people complain that ipods only work with iTunes. The subscription services only work with Windows and not Macs or Linux as far as I have heard. Subscription is best for those who get tired of most of their music easily and want to constantly listen to new songs. Ownership works better for those who have a set of favorites they like to hear again and again without getting tired or bored. How can rented music be played in my car? I can burn downloaded iTunes music onto a CD and then play that in the car CD player. AFAIK than cannot be done with rented music. It seems music renters are stuck more than iTunes users.
....I have to go back to pressing records... real vinyl records....
Originally manufactured CDs are legally for sale in numerous resale shops all over. If someone sells your CD they bought it is their right to re-sell it. They must however get rid of all copies of your content from their posession first. I think I am in the majority of ipod owners whose music thereon largely came from their legally purchased CDs.
If you sell your own content online, you should be doing a lot better than an artist enslaved to a label, even if some percentage of your content is illegally copied. I think the number of honest music lovers still is greater than the cheaters who copy illegally. Someone who cheats is not likely to buy your work even if the cheating were not possible.
...What argument will you present to a court to support the idea that you have a right to distribute....
It's called the doctrine of first sale. I bought 10,000 copies of your book or CD from your publisher. I now OWN these 10,000 copies and can do with them whatever I wish. It's the same as if I had bought 10,000 pairs of socks. I can sell anything I legitimately purchased if it is an otherwise legal commodity. What I may NOT do is make another, say, 10,000 copies and then sell those.
If you give or sell me the manuscript, conditioned on a duly executed legal agreement that I may NOT give or sell it to whomever, then I am bound by that agreement. I has nothing to do with copyright. Absent of such an agreement, I may sell that ONE copy to anybody I want. I may only make and distribute COPIES if you give me permission.
Even theoretically that can never be done. In order for the recipients of encrypted data to be able to decrypt the it, they need to have the key. For widely distributed entertainments, that key must either be included with the data or the player unless the player must be connected to the Internet, in which case the key can be kept elsewhere. An Internet connected player will likely not be popular, ever. If the key is available to decrypt the data, then the bits representing either the key or the decrypted data itself can be retrieved and used in any way the recipient of the data wishes. The people that make the various DRM schemes know this, but the content creators are duped by the DRM vendors into accepting their sales pitch. Since the DMCA is not world wide, DRM defeating software will always be obtainable.
Software makers get around this to a degree by by sending the key (registration number) on a separate path (Usually a sticker with a serial number) from the data itself. This is mostly acceptable because software is not installed as often as music and movies are played and runs only on equipment where the user can input the keys.
.....This is one example; the laws in states like Oregon requiring all petrol stations to have attendants to fill your car up for you are more....
I'll have you know that it is VERY nice to have someone fill up the car and wipe the windshield, especially when it rains, which is a lot here. That used to be the case EVERYWHERE in the US until the oil companies bought the legislators in most places to allow self service gas pumps. They called them SERVICE stations back then. Here in Oregon the legislators were limited by the voters. The oil companies spent millions to try to get the voters to allow self service, but it was soundly defeated at the polls. They also lied to the voters by saying that gas would be cheaper, but it is more expensive in California where they do have self service. The extra money goes straight into the pockets of the already rich oil companies. Pumping gas is one of the few jobs that a person who otherwise has few skills can get, thereby staying off welfare.
...Copyright law doesn't force anyone to distribute....
What does copyright have to do with distribution? Copyright law basically is just that, the right to copy. The owner of the copy right can make copies and sell those to whomever and however and wherever. If I buy 10,000 copies from the copyright owner, I can distribute those copies any way I wish, whether the copyright owner likes how or to whom I distribute them or not. If of course I have an agreement with the copyright owner as to the distribution details, then I have to abide by that. Still that has nothing to do with copyright law.
..... It won't be long before you won't be able to buy a new CD that won't have copy protection on it... a copy protection that won't play on computers except with expensive new players and special software.....
Copy protection is so lame. If I encrypt a message and send it to someone, that person must also have the key. If I want to send that message to everybody, then everybody must somehow have the key. In music recordings and movies, of neccessity, that key must somehow be included within the message or the player and be made available to decrypt the data.
That is why, the DMCA notwithstanding, there are software programs that recover the keys and then apply them to the data, which then is saved in unencrypted form. If (when) the keys are placed in the hardware, it makes it a little tougher to get the keys, but at some point they have to be applied to the encryped data which means they have to be somewhere in the system where they can be intercepted and after that used to decrypt all future files. At some point the data, sound or picture, has to be presented to the human sensory organs and therefore can be intercepted and sent whereever wanted. I would like to know of only ONE copy protection scheme that has never been broken. The content creators are surely wasting their money on DRM schemes. Only ONE person has to decrypt the content and put it on the Internt and the cat is forever out of the bag. All the lawyers and judges on the planet can't put it back in.
No government anywhere has ever prevented anyone from getting what they really want, whether that be alcohol, drugs, guns, porn etc. and decryption software for every DRM scheme that has ever been invented. It seems that politicians are piling law on top of law and yet nobody has ever kept a single one of them that they did not WANT to keep.
You don't really "buy" a house or a piece of land either. All land belongs to the king (govt) and you get to rent it for a certain sum of money each year. Nowadays it's called property tax. In some places you don't "own" other things either. There is personal property and inventory tax and who knows what other taxes related to stuff you have. You don't even "own" your life. It is loaned to you by a gracious creator thereof for a certain amount of time, whether you choose to believe that or not. Ownership is a stubbornly persistent illusion.
.....so I think ultimately Apple will blink first.....
I hope not. Much depends on what percentage of songs on most customers ipods are from iTMS and what percentage from CDs and other sources including P2P and other files from the Internet, legal or not. I think that ipod sales may drop some, but not all that much if the greedy labels shut down the iTMS. If the plug gets pulled, I hope Apple publicises that as much as they possibly can by giving out the phone numbers of all the top recording co. execs so that their phones can ring continuously for while giving the what amounts to a DOS attack on their phone lines. E-mail might work also.
.....If told over and over that the music industry is beating a trail from iTMS, Joe Shopper will look at other products......
What percentage of music on the average ipod is from the iTMS? In my case it is maybe 2%. The rest is from my CD collection and after that from CDs of friends and Internet radio recordings. If the music content of most ipods is distributed somewhat like mine, then the pulling out of the greedy recording companies from the iTMS shouldn't affect iPod sales all that much. Steve is right by saying that copyright infringement downloading will supply much of the music that customers can no longer legally buy. The RIAAA may have to hire anonther 10,000 or more lawyers to sue 13 year old children and their Grandmothers.
You use the wrong term. It's called copyright infringement. When you steal something, the original owner no longer has whatever you stole. It's not piracy either, since you never board a ship on the high seas. Words must still have true meaning.
....top companies have engineers/science ppl with MBA as CEOs......
Yes, these are the engineers that have finally figured out that an MBA will allow you to live in a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood and drive a fancier car. Engineers are not quite as underpaid in our society as teachers however. That's why so few teachers in our public schools are truly outstanding. Really great teachers have abilties that are rewarded much better almost anywhere else financially, than teaching a bunch of little ill behaved brats how to do the three Rs. Even in expensive private as well as public institutions of higher learning, the teaching aspects are also undervalued and the job is often relegated to underpaid TAs. Research and the writing of learned papers is in much higher regard. Teaching at all levels, though foundational to a society, does not have nearly the financial nor prestige value it should have in our country.
....The right way to get more engineers into circulation would be better pay.....
As long as an investment banker, stock trader or lawyer makes several times what an engineer or engineering teacher gets, there is a big disincentive to study engineering. Supply/demand appears not to be working or there is too much supply or too little demand for engineers. Liberal arts graduated company execs want to hire engineers for cheap and have convinced the govt. to let them get that cheap labor overseas.
....figure out what you were doing and swipe your wallet....
If someone swipes my wallet I'd have bigger problems than a few compromised passwords. A number of credit cards and the drivers license loss for starters.
One thing my bank does is to prominently display on the screen when my account was last logged into. If that showed a date and time when I knew I did NOT log in, I'd know someone has my password. This should be part of every login procedure. The Mac OSX keychain is a rather easy way to deal with passwords, since the user only has to remember the one login password. This of course is not too helpful for someone who must log in from various public computers. Any of those could have a key logger installed.
Slashdot Mirror
....Otherwise we get a jungle law of "who has the longest dick wins".....
Actually, it was a Chinese guy by the name of Mao who put it a little more realistic: "Power comes from the barrel of a gun". That's what it really boils down to and always has throughout all of human history -- unfortunately.
Armageddon will come at the time and in the place it is predicted to occur. Man is a warring creature, always has been. As Katrina has shown, the veneer of civilization is thin indeed. There have always been and will always be persons who want to impose their will on others. Ultimately it is always the one who has the biggest stick who succeeds at doing that. The only way that will ever change is if someone from outside of our planet comes with a bigger stick than all mankind put together can wield.
.....such as a small island, preferrably of very unhospitable climate.....
How about a very BIG island, already a very international place -- Antarctica! It's a really cool place, well isolated and there is NO parking problem!
......The internet is now a key part of the infrastructure of many countries .....
So what? Many countries also use our Global Positioning System and other satellite resources. These also fulfill critical functions in many countries. Should we also turn that over to the UN? It is OUR GPS and it is OUR Internet and we are letting the entire world use it for free. Isn't that good enough for the ungrateful UN members?
.....You cannot force someone to like you. You cannot force someone to love you.....
We are not talking about liking, love or a popularity contest, but simply running a utility that started in this country and we have kept it running just fine for everybody all free for nothing. Whether they hate us or Israel or anybody else doesn't affect the operation of the Internet one bit. It doesn't affect the operation of our GPS system either. I suppose the UN will ask to control that next because everybody all over the world uses it for free, just as they do the Internet. If the UN disappeared under a mushroom cloud there would be no difference at all in the operation of either of these important technolgies initiated and kept going by the USA.
If the UN really cared about freedom and democracy they would exclude from membership dictatorial despot nations from membership. Let them continue their petty squabbling and rampant corruption, but we should not allow them to break a system that has been running without their meddling for over 25 years now.
....When copyright law follows the Constitution in protecting the individual authors and inventors ....
A simple change to copyright law: Allow only real, physical people to have and control copyrights, not a ficticious entity called a corporation and the copyright dies with the original creator of the work. The creator may sell the copyright to any other real physical person, but the copyright only lasts until the death of the originator of the copyrighted work. If such were the copyright law, Mickey Mouse would now be in the public domain.
......The threat to "forcibly remove control" however, isn't even credible.....
Indeed, will they come here and take the servers away by force? Maybe the Internet will cease to be an International thing, but a number of mostly isolated networks. There can be a EU slashdot.org, a Chinese slashdot.org, an Australian slashdot.org etc. Maybe that's what's behind the whole reason for wanting to take the Internet away from the US. Dictatorial governments would not have to work nearly so hard anymore to prevent their citizens from getting information and points of view contrary to what their government wishes them to have. Organizations such as the **AA might be happy to remove the access of US Internet users to tools that circumvent the DMCA or sources of copyrighted content for example. Phone companies having to compete against cheap VOIP technology might not object if the Internet were fractured into national or at least regional islands.
The present Internet works reasonably well. What interest would the US government have in messing it up?
....Classify people into "cool" or "uncool" based on their use of allofmp3.com if you like.....
It may also be "uncool" to give your credit card information to some site in Russia. Who knows where that may end up and what it could be used for. That may be a bigger reason for many to not use this music service. I've traced a number of phishing e-mails I got to Russia.
.....I can't put Yahoo music on an iPod and I can't put iTunes music on my RCA MP3 player.....
The reason you can't has nothing to do with Apple, M$, Yahoo or any other technology, but with the fact that the recording companies think they'd get ripped off wholesale if the did not require the various DRM systems before they let their music files be downloaded. Standard mp3 files will play on every music player and computer. There is no standard music DRM system equivalent to the file standards you mention. There is a standard DVD DRM system and that has been hacked so that movies can be copied to a HD in a laptop, allowing the owner of the DVD to leave it safely at home when travelling. Apple's DRM has also been hacked, but it is much less neccessary use that hack since their DRM restrictions are not so draconian as not to allow users to do the things most want to do.
.....iTMS songs are so low-res that they are not worth burning to a music CD.....
For many purposes compressed audio is plenty good enough. I don't think there is a human alive that can tell the difference between an original CD or an 192bps AAC while going down the highway in a car or walking down the street with an ipod in the average city. Only on a top notch audiophile system in a quiet environment will the differences become readily apparent. The audiophile market is a very small part of the overall music listening consumers. Like MS software, it isn't tops, but just good enough for most users.
....Because you're violating copyright.....
How is that any different from recording from the radio, satellite receiver or Internet audio streams?
....I'm not sure what people here have against the subscription model, but trust me, it makes sense for a lot of people...
It seems that Apple could do both subscription and download. Maybe they will someday. Some people complain that ipods only work with iTunes. The subscription services only work with Windows and not Macs or Linux as far as I have heard. Subscription is best for those who get tired of most of their music easily and want to constantly listen to new songs. Ownership works better for those who have a set of favorites they like to hear again and again without getting tired or bored. How can rented music be played in my car? I can burn downloaded iTunes music onto a CD and then play that in the car CD player. AFAIK than cannot be done with rented music. It seems music renters are stuck more than iTunes users.
....I have to go back to pressing records... real vinyl records....
Originally manufactured CDs are legally for sale in numerous resale shops all over. If someone sells your CD they bought it is their right to re-sell it. They must however get rid of all copies of your content from their posession first. I think I am in the majority of ipod owners whose music thereon largely came from their legally purchased CDs.
If you sell your own content online, you should be doing a lot better than an artist enslaved to a label, even if some percentage of your content is illegally copied. I think the number of honest music lovers still is greater than the cheaters who copy illegally. Someone who cheats is not likely to buy your work even if the cheating were not possible.
...What argument will you present to a court to support the idea that you have a right to distribute....
It's called the doctrine of first sale. I bought 10,000 copies of your book or CD from your publisher. I now OWN these 10,000 copies and can do with them whatever I wish. It's the same as if I had bought 10,000 pairs of socks. I can sell anything I legitimately purchased if it is an otherwise legal commodity. What I may NOT do is make another, say, 10,000 copies and then sell those.
If you give or sell me the manuscript, conditioned on a duly executed legal agreement that I may NOT give or sell it to whomever, then I am bound by that agreement. I has nothing to do with copyright. Absent of such an agreement, I may sell that ONE copy to anybody I want. I may only make and distribute COPIES if you give me permission.
....manage to implement a fool proof drm .....
Even theoretically that can never be done. In order for the recipients of encrypted data to be able to decrypt the it, they need to have the key. For widely distributed entertainments, that key must either be included with the data or the player unless the player must be connected to the Internet, in which case the key can be kept elsewhere. An Internet connected player will likely not be popular, ever. If the key is available to decrypt the data, then the bits representing either the key or the decrypted data itself can be retrieved and used in any way the recipient of the data wishes. The people that make the various DRM schemes know this, but the content creators are duped by the DRM vendors into accepting their sales pitch. Since the DMCA is not world wide, DRM defeating software will always be obtainable.
Software makers get around this to a degree by by sending the key (registration number) on a separate path (Usually a sticker with a serial number) from the data itself. This is mostly acceptable because software is not installed as often as music and movies are played and runs only on equipment where the user can input the keys.
.....This is one example; the laws in states like Oregon requiring all petrol stations to have attendants to fill your car up for you are more....
I'll have you know that it is VERY nice to have someone fill up the car and wipe the windshield, especially when it rains, which is a lot here. That used to be the case EVERYWHERE in the US until the oil companies bought the legislators in most places to allow self service gas pumps. They called them SERVICE stations back then. Here in Oregon the legislators were limited by the voters. The oil companies spent millions to try to get the voters to allow self service, but it was soundly defeated at the polls. They also lied to the voters by saying that gas would be cheaper, but it is more expensive in California where they do have self service. The extra money goes straight into the pockets of the already rich oil companies. Pumping gas is one of the few jobs that a person who otherwise has few skills can get, thereby staying off welfare.
...Copyright law doesn't force anyone to distribute ....
What does copyright have to do with distribution? Copyright law basically is just that, the right to copy. The owner of the copy right can make copies and sell those to whomever and however and wherever. If I buy 10,000 copies from the copyright owner, I can distribute those copies any way I wish, whether the copyright owner likes how or to whom I distribute them or not. If of course I have an agreement with the copyright owner as to the distribution details, then I have to abide by that. Still that has nothing to do with copyright law.
..... It won't be long before you won't be able to buy a new CD that won't have copy protection on it... a copy protection that won't play on computers except with expensive new players and special software.....
Copy protection is so lame. If I encrypt a message and send it to someone, that person must also have the key. If I want to send that message to everybody, then everybody must somehow have the key. In music recordings and movies, of neccessity, that key must somehow be included within the message or the player and be made available to decrypt the data.
That is why, the DMCA notwithstanding, there are software programs that recover the keys and then apply them to the data, which then is saved in unencrypted form. If (when) the keys are placed in the hardware, it makes it a little tougher to get the keys, but at some point they have to be applied to the encryped data which means they have to be somewhere in the system where they can be intercepted and after that used to decrypt all future files. At some point the data, sound or picture, has to be presented to the human sensory organs and therefore can be intercepted and sent whereever wanted. I would like to know of only ONE copy protection scheme that has never been broken. The content creators are surely wasting their money on DRM schemes. Only ONE person has to decrypt the content and put it on the Internt and the cat is forever out of the bag. All the lawyers and judges on the planet can't put it back in.
No government anywhere has ever prevented anyone from getting what they really want, whether that be alcohol, drugs, guns, porn etc. and decryption software for every DRM scheme that has ever been invented. It seems that politicians are piling law on top of law and yet nobody has ever kept a single one of them that they did not WANT to keep.
.....I want to really own stuff I buy....
You don't really "buy" a house or a piece of land either. All land belongs to the king (govt) and you get to rent it for a certain sum of money each year. Nowadays it's called property tax. In some places you don't "own" other things either. There is personal property and inventory tax and who knows what other taxes related to stuff you have. You don't even "own" your life. It is loaned to you by a gracious creator thereof for a certain amount of time, whether you choose to believe that or not. Ownership is a stubbornly persistent illusion.
.....so I think ultimately Apple will blink first.....
I hope not. Much depends on what percentage of songs on most customers ipods are from iTMS and what percentage from CDs and other sources including P2P and other files from the Internet, legal or not. I think that ipod sales may drop some, but not all that much if the greedy labels shut down the iTMS. If the plug gets pulled, I hope Apple publicises that as much as they possibly can by giving out the phone numbers of all the top recording co. execs so that their phones can ring continuously for while giving the what amounts to a DOS attack on their phone lines. E-mail might work also.
.....If told over and over that the music industry is beating a trail from iTMS, Joe Shopper will look at other products......
What percentage of music on the average ipod is from the iTMS? In my case it is maybe 2%. The rest is from my CD collection and after that from CDs of friends and Internet radio recordings. If the music content of most ipods is distributed somewhat like mine, then the pulling out of the greedy recording companies from the iTMS shouldn't affect iPod sales all that much. Steve is right by saying that copyright infringement downloading will supply much of the music that customers can no longer legally buy. The RIAAA may have to hire anonther 10,000 or more lawyers to sue 13 year old children and their Grandmothers.
....just go back to stealing music.....
You use the wrong term. It's called copyright infringement. When you steal something, the original owner no longer has whatever you stole. It's not piracy either, since you never board a ship on the high seas. Words must still have true meaning.
....top companies have engineers/science ppl with MBA as CEOs......
Yes, these are the engineers that have finally figured out that an MBA will allow you to live in a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood and drive a fancier car. Engineers are not quite as underpaid in our society as teachers however. That's why so few teachers in our public schools are truly outstanding. Really great teachers have abilties that are rewarded much better almost anywhere else financially, than teaching a bunch of little ill behaved brats how to do the three Rs. Even in expensive private as well as public institutions of higher learning, the teaching aspects are also undervalued and the job is often relegated to underpaid TAs. Research and the writing of learned papers is in much higher regard. Teaching at all levels, though foundational to a society, does not have nearly the financial nor prestige value it should have in our country.
....The right way to get more engineers into circulation would be better pay.....
As long as an investment banker, stock trader or lawyer makes several times what an engineer or engineering teacher gets, there is a big disincentive to study engineering. Supply/demand appears not to be working or there is too much supply or too little demand for engineers. Liberal arts graduated company execs want to hire engineers for cheap and have convinced the govt. to let them get that cheap labor overseas.
....figure out what you were doing and swipe your wallet....
If someone swipes my wallet I'd have bigger problems than a few compromised passwords. A number of credit cards and the drivers license loss for starters.
One thing my bank does is to prominently display on the screen when my account was last logged into. If that showed a date and time when I knew I did NOT log in, I'd know someone has my password. This should be part of every login procedure. The Mac OSX keychain is a rather easy way to deal with passwords, since the user only has to remember the one login password. This of course is not too helpful for someone who must log in from various public computers. Any of those could have a key logger installed.
.....I hope you don't start with 31415926......
No, he starts at the other end of PI.