You can figure out the reason for doing this if you read between the lines:
...you'll no longer be able to stream...unless you subscribe to a participating cable service, or are a Hulu Plus subscriber....Worse, the list of participating cable services isn't comprehensive. Right now it includes AT&T U-verse, Cablevision Optimum, Charter, Comcast XFINITY, Cox Communications, Google Fiber, Midcontinent, and Verizon FiOS. At the least, those of us stuck on Time Warner Cable are out of luck. DirectTV and Dish subscribers are also left out in the cold. Maybe your provider isn't included either, and if you live in a city and get your TV OTA you're definitely not covered.
They probably have a contract with all the cable & streaming providers saying that they won't compete with them by offering their shows directly. They might even have agreements with advertisers that forbid the advertisers from showing their ads on competing networks. Could there even be a cartel behind this? Perhaps some of the cable TV companies have banded together and agreed to prevent streaming services from coming online to protect their business model. I'd love to see the DOJ look into this.
The commenters on the eweek article point out that EMV would not have prevented the problem Target had. (I didn't see any video though.)
The relevant comments:
GWsaid on January 2, 2014 12:43 pm ...The security breach happened most likely because the data was unencrypted as it crossed from the terminal to the register. What is needed is encryption that happens at the terminal.
Shawn Ackersaid on December 25, 2013 10:16 pm Your article makes a number of good points regarding EMV. However, EMV chipped cards don't force the data to be encrypted as it leaves the PIN Pad. In fact much of the data including the PAN(Card #), Expiration date, etc. is by default sent unencrypted and may be captured during transmission over the merchants network. But, it would be next to impossible to reproduce an EMV card unlike magstripe. This would prevent the in person fraud occurring as a result of the Target breach.
Oh, you thought I pegged you for an American because I quoted an American source? No wonder you think everyone mistakes you for an American. It appears that any reference to America sets off your trigger. Yes, I saw your use of "province" and realized you were not in the US. But that doesn't change anything in this discussion. FYI: I found lots of information about fuel mixes from various EU governments, but the US source was the first I found that quoted percentages of power used for lighting.
Everyone also missed my sarcastic comment about using computers for heat.
I didn't. I didn't feel the need to comment on it since every computer geek I know has had the same thought. This seems like another case where you want people to misunderstand you, so the lack of a reply on the topic served as proof enough that I missed it.
I get so sick of replacing light bulbs that I went out and paid $50 for quality LED bulbs before they plummeted to $5. I suppose we have different tolerances for maintenance. I would pay big bucks for a set of dishes I never have to clean.:-)
I bought 96 bulbs for $75. a lifetime supply for me
Why is it preferable to store 96 bulbs and periodically replace them than to buy one that lasts forever?
I don't care about a trivial power cost.
The power cost of each individual bulb is trivial, but when you add up all the bulbs in the house it is not. According to The US Energy Information Adminsitration, 13% to 17% of household energy use is lighting.
I need the heat. Doesn't matter if it comes from a bulb or natural gas.
Electricity is an expensive way to get heat. That is why most houses are not heated by electricity.
You can pry my incandescents from my cold dead hands!
lol. This made me look at your comment history to make sure you weren't trolling. But you even claim to be a grumpy old man!:-)
Wouldn't it make more sense for each user to have their own database? I don't want it to display names of people I haven't met. That would be distracting, unhelpful, and a potential privacy violation. And since it scans social networking sites, what keeps people from associating a picture with the wrong name?
...UL is just a baseline safety test done against test units. It doesn't mean it's a robust design...
I work for a company that got UL approval for a device.
For our product, UL did look over our designs. They have some rules, for example, about how safety interlocks should be designed. You have to either use previously UL approved switches and sensors, or submit your sensors for approval. You cannot have software in the safety loop. Ex: You can't have software that monitors the voltage then sends a shut-off command to a relay. The sensor must be electronically connected to the shut-off. FPGAs are okay sometimes - they don't call that software.
I'm not sure what classes of devices this applies to though.
What if, and I'm just wildly speculating here, one very large client were able to offer them a higher a rate for exclusive access,
Typically, laws that establish regulatory monopolies explicitly forbid such exclusivity contracts. The first such example I can think of is railroad. When the US government was funding the expansion of the railroad, it was critical that the railroads would allowed anyone to ship goods. An exclusive contract that says "I will pay you double if you ship my goods, at the exclusion of my competitors goods" was bad for the country. This was basically the first "network neutrality" law. The only mistake they made was that the company laying the tracks was the same company that ran the trains. Oops. At the time it made sense.
I mean, it's a lovely optimistic view of the free market you have, but I think you aren't seeing all the angles.
Suggestion: Don't add things like "I don't think you understand" or "you are so naive" or "you aren't seeing all the angles" to your post. Let you point stand on its merits. You can get away with that as an AC on Slashdot, but you will quickly get booted out of a real-world meeting for that kind of attitude. Best to learn that lesson here. Often times you will say that then realize you are talking to an expert on the subject who has already heard your objection before and addressed it 20 years ago.
You were under the mistaken assumption that I came up with this idea just now. Don't try to be clever and shoot it down quickly without realizing that this problem has been known and understood for hundreds of years.
When establishing a monopoly, such as transit, power, or telephony, there are some lessons we humans should have learned. One is to create the monopoly over just the one thing you intend. Ex: If the problem is laying track, then make a monopoly to lay track. If the problem is laying utility wires, make a monopoly to run wires. Often times we forget that, and instead make a monopoly over transporting goods + laying track, or providing phone service + running wires, or providing power + maintaining power lines. Usually, we learn our lesson some decades later. Some times this happens because we can't imagine those things being separated until the technology comes along. "What, you could have 10 different train companies running over one set of tracks! Trains would collide! That's dangerous!" Or imagine this one: "How could you have *multiple* phone companies cooperating over one set of lines? How would the telephone switchboard operators share the lines? That's crazy." Then, computers and packet-switched networks were invented. Oh, and there was the old "Only the phone company can sell phones! If other companies made phones, they could damage the phone lines!"
One that we still come across today is "How could you have multiple internet service providers one one wire?" (sigh)
Many states learned this lesson with electricity generation. I live it Maryland and they finally decided that the "power company" should not be a company that provides power, runs lines, and bills customers. So Baltimore Gas and Electric was split apart into two companies. Unfortunately, one company bought the other -- that's another loophole to get around. If you split a company, forbid one from buying the other, or merging, or some workaround like that.
We sorta learned this with telephony when we split up Bell Telephone. But they also all merged back together until there is really only 3 of them or so now. Instead, we should have a local monopoly who builds and maintains telephone wires, and separate companies who provide the services that run on the wires. Otherwise, the company will make barriers to prevent other services from running on the wires. (Which is what is happening in this article.) Unfortunately, our telecom regulation doesn't quite do it right. (They half-heartedly tried. Some states tried laws that required the telephone monopoly t
Nothing that has been revealed so far shows any wrongdoing.
That is simply false. There are discussions about whether it was illegal, or immoral, or merely procedural. But the original leak was at the very least wrongdoing. Perhaps, in all the hubub, we have forgotten what Snowden originally leaked? Let's go back to the beginning.
The NSA submitted a single request to wiretap all Americans for (6 months? 1 year? what was it?). The reason they specified was approximately "because it might become part of a future investigation. We won't know until we listen." That request, and the approval by the FISA court, violates both the FISA and the US Constitution. There are lots of articles by lawyers - including former FISC lawyers - who agree that it was unconstitutional.
The 4th amendment of the US Constitution states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The NSAs request to FISA did not describe a probable cause. Therefore, the court should not have granted the warrant. The fact that the NSA even submitted it is wrongdoing. The court granting it was wrongdoing. The fact that people either forgot this, or think it is okay, is frightening.
But in the months since that release, we have been inundated with so much dirty NSA laundry that I think the perspective has been lost. If anythnig, Snowden's subsequent releases have put the NSA and FISC's actions into perspective. Maybe, we are all thinking, that if it is really okay to tap foreign embassies and presidents, then maybe violating court procedures isn't such a big deal?
1) He didn't say all apps. Clearly, some apps do need to launch and boot. 2) In the example you listed, the launch could be "daily" instead of "at boot" although I don't know if Android supports that.
The issue is most prominent on Windows, where things like PDF readers, Microsoft Office, and Java pre-load at startup to make their startup times seem shorter.
The entire point of the article is that there is no free market here. So you have drawn the wrong conclusion.
The problem is that AT&T has been granted local monopoly power over utility poles while monopoly power as the local telecom company. If they were a for-profit company who built and maintained utility poles, they would have incentive to get as many wires onto those telephone poles as they could safely fit. This is why many states are deregulating power by separating the local power company, who maintains the power lines, from the power providers who put power onto those lines.
I think there are a bunch of links in this Slashdot discussion claiming otherwise. On the surface, it makes sense: shut down nuclear plants, and what else are you going to do? Solar just can't produce that amount of power (yet).
I don't know what to believe now. Ultimately, we would need to see the energy mix numbers from the German power companies/government to know for sure. Just pointing out that new coal plants are being built doesn't mean much. They might be replacing existing ones, or making cleaner/smaller ones.
It's not the buying and selling that is the issue. The issue is that they are still burning the same amount of coal, while claiming they burn less. The trick is that the coal is being burned across a geopolitical border. So the politicians and pseudo-environmentalists can claim a victory, with no actual environmental gain.
I wish I could find it, but someone just recently posted an explanation on Slashdot as to why it is really really expensive to send something to the sun. It's apparently one of the most difficult places to get to. In short, since the earth is in a stable orbit around the sun at a ridiculous speed, you have to decelerate enough to cancel-out all of that speed, or you wind up orbiting the sun or the earth. It would use more in fuel than you gained from the material in the first place.
1) Use DroidLight. It's by Motorola, but it works on non-motorola phones too. It requires no permissions.
2) We are in a sad state of affairs.
9 out of 10 flashlight apps in the Android store require unnecessary permissions. The Android store needs ONE flashlight app. Maybe 2. Unfortunately, idiots download apps that requires 100 permissions, then rank it a 5/5. This is such a trivial problem for Google to solve: one Google Play Store employee could ban 90% of those apps with a day of research and resolve the problem for the most part.
Even in the wild wild world of PC shareware, malware wasn't as bad as it is in the Google Play store.
Whenever evil corporation X has done something wrong (left a back-door in their router, put a virus in their game) people want to hold the CEOs personally responsible. It's often questionable if the CEO/VP/directory/manager even knew what was going on. But the engineers sure as heck did.
The first link in the summary to muktware is 90% ads, with a cheesy Photoshopped headline image and a blurb shorter than the Slashdot summary. That link should be removed.
Even better: Add that site to a blacklist so that Slashdot never links to it again. This is just a blogger trying to make money by getting hits from Slashdot.
This isn't a flaw of comparing the digital crime to the physical counterpart. The comparison is accurate.
In this case, it took hundreds of people throwing bricks to break the window continuously for 15 minutes. Do you charge each one of them for the entire replacement cost of the window? If so, companies would be profiting when people break expensive stuff! And what if the replacement window cost $1000, but the company paid a contractor $50,000 to install it. Should the person who threw the brick pay $1000 or $50,000? In this case, they paid the larger amount. So again, crime pays - just have someone to throw a brick at your window, and use that to channel money to a partner or contractor.
(And No - I'm not suggesting that Koch did any of these underhanded things. I am pointing out how just an unjust form of penalty could be abused.)
Main password: stinkybutt Home password: stinkybuttHome Work password: stinkybuttWork Slashdot password: stinkybuttSlashdot
If you want to get more secure, add something like the number of vowels in the word "Home" or the ASCII value of the 3rd consonant, or something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
You can figure out the reason for doing this if you read between the lines:
...you'll no longer be able to stream ...unless you subscribe to a participating cable service, or are a Hulu Plus subscriber....Worse, the list of participating cable services isn't comprehensive. Right now it includes AT&T U-verse, Cablevision Optimum, Charter, Comcast XFINITY, Cox Communications, Google Fiber, Midcontinent, and Verizon FiOS. At the least, those of us stuck on Time Warner Cable are out of luck. DirectTV and Dish subscribers are also left out in the cold. Maybe your provider isn't included either, and if you live in a city and get your TV OTA you're definitely not covered.
They probably have a contract with all the cable & streaming providers saying that they won't compete with them by offering their shows directly. They might even have agreements with advertisers that forbid the advertisers from showing their ads on competing networks. Could there even be a cartel behind this? Perhaps some of the cable TV companies have banded together and agreed to prevent streaming services from coming online to protect their business model. I'd love to see the DOJ look into this.
The commenters on the eweek article point out that EMV would not have prevented the problem Target had. (I didn't see any video though.)
The relevant comments:
GWsaid on January 2, 2014 12:43 pm
...The security breach happened most likely because the data was unencrypted as it crossed from the terminal to the register. What is needed is encryption that happens at the terminal.
Shawn Ackersaid on December 25, 2013 10:16 pm
Your article makes a number of good points regarding EMV. However, EMV chipped cards don't force the data to be encrypted as it leaves the PIN Pad. In fact much of the data including the PAN(Card #), Expiration date, etc. is by default sent unencrypted and may be captured during transmission over the merchants network. But, it would be next to impossible to reproduce an EMV card unlike magstripe. This would prevent the in person fraud occurring as a result of the Target breach.
People here all think I live in America.
Oh, you thought I pegged you for an American because I quoted an American source? No wonder you think everyone mistakes you for an American. It appears that any reference to America sets off your trigger. Yes, I saw your use of "province" and realized you were not in the US. But that doesn't change anything in this discussion. FYI: I found lots of information about fuel mixes from various EU governments, but the US source was the first I found that quoted percentages of power used for lighting.
Everyone also missed my sarcastic comment about using computers for heat.
I didn't. I didn't feel the need to comment on it since every computer geek I know has had the same thought. This seems like another case where you want people to misunderstand you, so the lack of a reply on the topic served as proof enough that I missed it.
I get so sick of replacing light bulbs that I went out and paid $50 for quality LED bulbs before they plummeted to $5. I suppose we have different tolerances for maintenance. I would pay big bucks for a set of dishes I never have to clean. :-)
You provide an interesting perspective.
I bought 96 bulbs for $75. a lifetime supply for me
Why is it preferable to store 96 bulbs and periodically replace them than to buy one that lasts forever?
I don't care about a trivial power cost.
The power cost of each individual bulb is trivial, but when you add up all the bulbs in the house it is not. According to The US Energy Information Adminsitration, 13% to 17% of household energy use is lighting.
I need the heat. Doesn't matter if it comes from a bulb or natural gas.
Electricity is an expensive way to get heat. That is why most houses are not heated by electricity.
You can pry my incandescents from my cold dead hands!
lol. This made me look at your comment history to make sure you weren't trolling. But you even claim to be a grumpy old man! :-)
This could have a home on smart phones. A smaller memory footprint is *key* on smartphone apps.
http://mobithinking.com/blog/google-mobile-seo
Two key highlights from the article:
including those irritating download-our-app interstitial ads
Faulty redirects - i.e. PC sites that redirect automatically to a mobile-optimized site that doesn’t have the same content
Wouldn't it make more sense for each user to have their own database? I don't want it to display names of people I haven't met. That would be distracting, unhelpful, and a potential privacy violation. And since it scans social networking sites, what keeps people from associating a picture with the wrong name?
...UL is just a baseline safety test done against test units. It doesn't mean it's a robust design...
I work for a company that got UL approval for a device.
For our product, UL did look over our designs. They have some rules, for example, about how safety interlocks should be designed. You have to either use previously UL approved switches and sensors, or submit your sensors for approval. You cannot have software in the safety loop. Ex: You can't have software that monitors the voltage then sends a shut-off command to a relay. The sensor must be electronically connected to the shut-off. FPGAs are okay sometimes - they don't call that software.
I'm not sure what classes of devices this applies to though.
Huzzah!
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/12/16/1946235/judge-nsa-phone-program-likely-unconstitutional
What if, and I'm just wildly speculating here, one very large client were able to offer them a higher a rate for exclusive access,
Typically, laws that establish regulatory monopolies explicitly forbid such exclusivity contracts. The first such example I can think of is railroad. When the US government was funding the expansion of the railroad, it was critical that the railroads would allowed anyone to ship goods. An exclusive contract that says "I will pay you double if you ship my goods, at the exclusion of my competitors goods" was bad for the country. This was basically the first "network neutrality" law. The only mistake they made was that the company laying the tracks was the same company that ran the trains. Oops. At the time it made sense.
I mean, it's a lovely optimistic view of the free market you have, but I think you aren't seeing all the angles.
Suggestion: Don't add things like "I don't think you understand" or "you are so naive" or "you aren't seeing all the angles" to your post. Let you point stand on its merits. You can get away with that as an AC on Slashdot, but you will quickly get booted out of a real-world meeting for that kind of attitude. Best to learn that lesson here. Often times you will say that then realize you are talking to an expert on the subject who has already heard your objection before and addressed it 20 years ago.
You were under the mistaken assumption that I came up with this idea just now. Don't try to be clever and shoot it down quickly without realizing that this problem has been known and understood for hundreds of years.
When establishing a monopoly, such as transit, power, or telephony, there are some lessons we humans should have learned. One is to create the monopoly over just the one thing you intend. Ex: If the problem is laying track, then make a monopoly to lay track. If the problem is laying utility wires, make a monopoly to run wires. Often times we forget that, and instead make a monopoly over transporting goods + laying track, or providing phone service + running wires, or providing power + maintaining power lines. Usually, we learn our lesson some decades later. Some times this happens because we can't imagine those things being separated until the technology comes along. "What, you could have 10 different train companies running over one set of tracks! Trains would collide! That's dangerous!" Or imagine this one: "How could you have *multiple* phone companies cooperating over one set of lines? How would the telephone switchboard operators share the lines? That's crazy." Then, computers and packet-switched networks were invented. Oh, and there was the old "Only the phone company can sell phones! If other companies made phones, they could damage the phone lines!"
One that we still come across today is "How could you have multiple internet service providers one one wire?" (sigh)
Many states learned this lesson with electricity generation. I live it Maryland and they finally decided that the "power company" should not be a company that provides power, runs lines, and bills customers. So Baltimore Gas and Electric was split apart into two companies. Unfortunately, one company bought the other -- that's another loophole to get around. If you split a company, forbid one from buying the other, or merging, or some workaround like that.
We sorta learned this with telephony when we split up Bell Telephone. But they also all merged back together until there is really only 3 of them or so now. Instead, we should have a local monopoly who builds and maintains telephone wires, and separate companies who provide the services that run on the wires. Otherwise, the company will make barriers to prevent other services from running on the wires. (Which is what is happening in this article.) Unfortunately, our telecom regulation doesn't quite do it right. (They half-heartedly tried. Some states tried laws that required the telephone monopoly t
Nothing that has been revealed so far shows any wrongdoing.
That is simply false. There are discussions about whether it was illegal, or immoral, or merely procedural. But the original leak was at the very least wrongdoing. Perhaps, in all the hubub, we have forgotten what Snowden originally leaked? Let's go back to the beginning.
The NSA submitted a single request to wiretap all Americans for (6 months? 1 year? what was it?). The reason they specified was approximately "because it might become part of a future investigation. We won't know until we listen." That request, and the approval by the FISA court, violates both the FISA and the US Constitution. There are lots of articles by lawyers - including former FISC lawyers - who agree that it was unconstitutional.
The 4th amendment of the US Constitution states:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The NSAs request to FISA did not describe a probable cause. Therefore, the court should not have granted the warrant. The fact that the NSA even submitted it is wrongdoing. The court granting it was wrongdoing. The fact that people either forgot this, or think it is okay, is frightening.
But in the months since that release, we have been inundated with so much dirty NSA laundry that I think the perspective has been lost. If anythnig, Snowden's subsequent releases have put the NSA and FISC's actions into perspective. Maybe, we are all thinking, that if it is really okay to tap foreign embassies and presidents, then maybe violating court procedures isn't such a big deal?
Is this NVidia's attempt to keep market share given that the latest consoles are all ATI based?
1) He didn't say all apps. Clearly, some apps do need to launch and boot.
2) In the example you listed, the launch could be "daily" instead of "at boot" although I don't know if Android supports that.
The issue is most prominent on Windows, where things like PDF readers, Microsoft Office, and Java pre-load at startup to make their startup times seem shorter.
Forbes calculates the price of a Nissan Leaf battery to be between $7,700 and $3,888. So the cost is, at most, $7,700 x 6 = $46,200.
The entire point of the article is that there is no free market here. So you have drawn the wrong conclusion.
The problem is that AT&T has been granted local monopoly power over utility poles while monopoly power as the local telecom company. If they were a for-profit company who built and maintained utility poles, they would have incentive to get as many wires onto those telephone poles as they could safely fit. This is why many states are deregulating power by separating the local power company, who maintains the power lines, from the power providers who put power onto those lines.
I think there are a bunch of links in this Slashdot discussion claiming otherwise. On the surface, it makes sense: shut down nuclear plants, and what else are you going to do? Solar just can't produce that amount of power (yet).
To confirm this, I just did a quick Google search for "Germany Coal Nuclear Solar":
https://www.google.com/search?q=germany+coal+nuclear+solar&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
which seems to confirm the increase in coal burning, although the Poland connection seems to be false.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Germany/
"More than half of Germany’s electricity was generated from coal in the first half of 2013, compared with 43% in 2010." but it says nothing about the shutdown of nuclear reactors.
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/05/debunking-common-myths-about-nuclear-coal-power-in-germany-this-time-repeated-by-the-guardian/
"coal (including lignite) is up around 5%...have nothing to do with nuclear in Germany."
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0716/The-dirty-coal-behind-Germany-s-clean-energy
This sites the 5% figure but doesn't mention why. "Germany has managed to be praised by environmentalists more than any other developed nation and yet is building more coal plants than more or less any other developed country" but it has no specifics.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/green-energy-bust-in-germany
This one claims the same thing.
"Germany is indeed avoiding blackouts—by opening new coal- and gas-fired plants. Renewable electricity is proving so unreliable and chaotic..."
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/57035
"they are now building coal-fired electricity generation and shuttering nuclear power plants..."
I don't know what to believe now. Ultimately, we would need to see the energy mix numbers from the German power companies/government to know for sure. Just pointing out that new coal plants are being built doesn't mean much. They might be replacing existing ones, or making cleaner/smaller ones.
Xolotl didn't explain the key point.
It's not the buying and selling that is the issue. The issue is that they are still burning the same amount of coal, while claiming they burn less. The trick is that the coal is being burned across a geopolitical border. So the politicians and pseudo-environmentalists can claim a victory, with no actual environmental gain.
Found it!
http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/shooting_for_the_sun/
I wish I could find it, but someone just recently posted an explanation on Slashdot as to why it is really really expensive to send something to the sun. It's apparently one of the most difficult places to get to. In short, since the earth is in a stable orbit around the sun at a ridiculous speed, you have to decelerate enough to cancel-out all of that speed, or you wind up orbiting the sun or the earth. It would use more in fuel than you gained from the material in the first place.
1) Use DroidLight. It's by Motorola, but it works on non-motorola phones too. It requires no permissions.
2) We are in a sad state of affairs.
9 out of 10 flashlight apps in the Android store require unnecessary permissions. The Android store needs ONE flashlight app. Maybe 2. Unfortunately, idiots download apps that requires 100 permissions, then rank it a 5/5. This is such a trivial problem for Google to solve: one Google Play Store employee could ban 90% of those apps with a day of research and resolve the problem for the most part.
Even in the wild wild world of PC shareware, malware wasn't as bad as it is in the Google Play store.
You don't get sued for it. The company does.
Whenever evil corporation X has done something wrong (left a back-door in their router, put a virus in their game) people want to hold the CEOs personally responsible. It's often questionable if the CEO/VP/directory/manager even knew what was going on. But the engineers sure as heck did.
The first link in the summary to muktware is 90% ads, with a cheesy Photoshopped headline image and a blurb shorter than the Slashdot summary. That link should be removed.
Even better: Add that site to a blacklist so that Slashdot never links to it again. This is just a blogger trying to make money by getting hits from Slashdot.
This isn't a flaw of comparing the digital crime to the physical counterpart. The comparison is accurate.
In this case, it took hundreds of people throwing bricks to break the window continuously for 15 minutes. Do you charge each one of them for the entire replacement cost of the window? If so, companies would be profiting when people break expensive stuff! And what if the replacement window cost $1000, but the company paid a contractor $50,000 to install it. Should the person who threw the brick pay $1000 or $50,000? In this case, they paid the larger amount. So again, crime pays - just have someone to throw a brick at your window, and use that to channel money to a partner or contractor.
(And No - I'm not suggesting that Koch did any of these underhanded things. I am pointing out how just an unjust form of penalty could be abused.)
Those passwords are completely trivial.
Of course they were: they were examples.
The point of the system is that you can increase the complexity of your passwords without having to write down each one.
Just add the site name to the password:
Main password: stinkybutt
Home password: stinkybuttHome
Work password: stinkybuttWork
Slashdot password: stinkybuttSlashdot
If you want to get more secure, add something like the number of vowels in the word "Home" or the ASCII value of the 3rd consonant, or something like that.