darksaga

The main reason they hire MBA types instead of engineers is because the main purpose of the company is to make money. A lot of MBA's don't take a long view on technology for various reasons. Thus, when every product you make isn't shipping a million pieces a month, these guys get worried and make stupid moves. In HP's case, they made a succession of stupid moves.

Apple does have genius technology, but you can't underestimate the influence of Steve Job's eye for design in the success of Apple products.

T-Mobile is a third rate carrier as it is. They can barely compete with AT&T Verizon at this point. The only reason wireless carriers buy each other is for infrastructure and customers to boost its bottom line. Apple has neither. To buy a wireless carrier would be suicide for Apple.

Unfortunately, this is the beauty and the beast of a capitalistic economy. One the one hand, you have incredible opportunity to achieve success. While on the other, you end up with a concentration of wealth and power to a small group of individuals or corporations.

I'm wondering how many people actually take this as purely entertainment and not a show where they can glean useful information about new cars on the market.

I've never watched the show, but it seems like they're trying to blur the two lines. When they get called on it, they use the excuse "it's just entertainment" as justification for misleading their viewers.

I think they sending a clear message to the US government to get their financial house in order. The fact this has never happened (to either democratic or republican presidents in the history of the country) is a major issue.

Imagine if we actually passed the balanced budget amendment back in 1997 - things would be a LOT different.

First of all I fail to see how taxing people sustains jobs. As a business, if you're having to give more money to the government, and putting less of it back into your business, it would seem you're actually creating an incentive to lay people off as opposed to hiring more. It makes it harder to grow and hire more people if your business is taking in less money. I know it's obvious but. . .

There are a million ways to cut spending. Taking Obama's 2.5 TRILLION dollar "Obama Care" would be a great start. Take out his TRILLION dollar stimulus which was an epic failure and guess what? You just saved 3.5 TRILLION dollars without cutting any jobs.

Even if you tax the hell out of the rich, it still leaves this country TRILLIONS in debt.

It's a fact - you don't tax your way out of a recession and you sure as hell don't tax people to create jobs. It simply doesn't work.

And yeah, great idea. Let's cut military funding while we're fighting a war on terror in three countries. Apparently you don't remember Clinton's military cuts which removed almost 300,000 people from the federal payroll. When you make military cuts, you're not just removing tanks and guns. You're also sending a lot of people to the unemployment line.

Interesting for hackers who like to use this type of information. Although almost six years old, I'm not sure exactly how useful it would be.

Completely lame for anybody outside the hacker culture. We're all looking for the juicy stuff, not lists of email addresses. I give this one a 7.

After reading the article, it appears as though Anon were lured into the attack by PayPal. Then it sounds like the Feds already had all their stuff in place to collect the data while the attacks were happening.

Well, Mr.Swartz should probably thank Anonymous and Lulsec for provoking the US Government. They're fed up and have determined whoever they get their hands on (minor hacking or not) they're going to drag you into federal court and make an example out of them.

This reminds of back in the 90's when there wasn't any laws in place to address hacking. But man, the Feds did not like kids making them look like fools. Once they got the laws of the books, it was open season on hackers.

I'm pretty sure the next few years are going to see a major crackdown on hacking again. Just like the recent arrests of supposed Lulsec and Anon members.

This guy will be lucky to get out of federal prison in 15 years.

I've been on Twitter since the beginning and have had the same experience. Start following some people, post some interesting things and you'll get followers.

Another way to get followers is to either pimp a product or complain about a product. More often than not, you'll get some followers and you might get a response.

Either way, I've loved it. It's very stream of conscious and a great sounding board for me.

Well it was fun while it lasted. If they delete my account, I'm not going to lose much sleep over it since 95% of the people I interact with are on Twitter or Facebook. None of them have Google+ accounts yet.

Easy come, easy go.

Agreed. I had the same reaction. The guy outs the problem and the blatant use of cheating by his students and all he gets in return is a kick in the teeth by doing so.

I'm glad I never stayed in academia.

It has nothing to do with activist history - this how economics works. What happened to the price of gas when there was a disaster in the gulf of Mexico? Oh yeah, gas prices went up and up and up. Who really paid for the disaster? BP or us the consumer?

It's not like one day their TV's are $300, and then overnight they're $1000. All they have to do is edge the price up moderately over time to make back their losses. But in the end, the result is the same. The loss and increased cost is passed on to the consumer.

Also, when you're talking two or three dollar differences in prices compared to other companies. Sony owns a large portion of the gaming industry. It's not like there's 10 console makers. Choice is limited, so your point about "cold equations of economics" unfortunately doesn't hold true in this case.

My point stands - when large corporations lose money, it's normal for businesses to pass the loss of revenue onto consumers.

I wonder if they'll ever understand the people they're trying to protect are actually the victims in their actions.

They hack Sony. Sony loses millions. How do you think they're going to recapture their loses? By passing the loss onto consumers. Increased prices for TV's, games, anything Sony makes is going to increase in price to recoup their loses.

Clearly they haven't thought this all the way through.

I thought about that or just do what the wireless companies do and charge him per KB over his limit. The first $2,000 bill should get him back into line pretty fast.

I think this is the main issue I'm seeing in this discussion. I'd say yes, there are other options available. You use a lot of bandwidth? They have your roomies chip in and get a T1 or something higher. There are alternatives, but you have to consider the price.

Whether he wants to admit or not, there are tons of alternatives, he's just too cheap to lay down the cash to get what he needs. Besides telecom company options, there's always satellite as an option.

Good story, good life lesson. You tried to game the system and got jacked in the process.

Let me tell you, I hate bugs as much as the next guy and I feel for you. I lived in some dumps, but never with any roaches. I went to college up north in Minnesota and we used to all pitch in and get bug bombs for our house. About once every 6 months always did the trick.

You don't say in your article why you needed to move to Austin in the first place. What was it about where you were living which wasn't conducive to your start-up succeeding?

For all you unfamiliar with sales, this is what's referred to as, "the close". I highly doubt Zuckerberg thought about the biblical overtones. It is, an easy way to close a prospect, and a great way to convince somebody to join Facebook.

It would be the same as a highly recruited athlete in high school. You take the tour of the college campus, then they lead you to the stadium and say, "Imagine Nick, 30,000 fans screaming your name every Saturday afternoon."

It's just a sales pitch, nothing more, nothing less.

Not only that, but it says right in the terms and conditions they can change the terms at any time without notice. It also clearly states if they feel like a party is using their services for illegal activity, they can block any payments or transfers to their accounts.

Most of the stuff they do is borderline criminal activity, and it won't take a judge long to side with the credit card companies.

You don't have to go these lengths. I use quite a bit of social media and none of the sites I use, has my correct personal information. All my ID's are all made-up personas and connected to junk email accounts. It would take a lot to get to my real identity. It's not hard to do, and it keeps me plenty safe.

Oh Julian, how arrogant you are. Every time I read this guy spouting off, he just continues to lose credibility and respect. If you don't want employers or any other companies looking you up on social media, then don't use it - or just use an alias or a fake name.

Nobody HAS to have a Facebook page or partake in social media. If you don't want people tracking you, then don't use it. DUH

Some alert congress so we can update the constitution.

You are correct in terms of state and local ordinances, and I did do some more research and came up with the landmark case of CALIFORNIA v. GREENWOOD, 486 U.S. 35 (1988) where this very issue was argued before the Supreme Court: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US...

It basically says if your trash is visible, you can't assume privacy of the contents. If it's inside your garage, then it's off limits. Interesting case nonetheless.

As my friend likes to say frequently, "It just depends on who's OX is being gored - right?"

I'm pretty sure the FBI and most likely CIA are already tracking these guys and building cases on them as we speak. They've broken enough laws in enough countries to go after them. You'd be pretty surprised how much money is available to these agencies and task forces to infiltrate, track and bring down these guys. I figure its only a matter of time before they get at them.

You might want to read up on the laws regarding digging through trash. If the trash is on your property - it's illegal. Even if its in your driveway waiting for pickup, it's still illegal to go through. Also, In most states dumpster diving at any business is considered a felony.

My bs meter was high for a number of reasons. This paragraph was the most notable:

"Meanwhile she refuses to be chained to her computer, limiting herself to a few hours a night online. She rarely visits online forums "they’re boring"and a few days a week takes a course in college to further her goal of being a teacher. She lives in an English-speaking country not the U.K.but won’t say more about it"

So the previous paragraph stated she was "memorizing Windows Opcodes and scouring source code for exploitable bugs", but then suddenly she only spends a few hours online? Not likely. Most hardcore hackers I know don't just drop off the radar. The hunt to break into systems is like a drug. I have yet to read about, or know any hacker who simply spends a few hours online a day. At the speed internet security moves, this person's knowledge would be useless inside of 6 months.

Also, how does this person maintain her expert hacker knowledge with a few cursory hours a day on the internet? Literally impossible. Add in the admission she deletes all her emails and wipes all her drives clean? Really? Does this person memorize every line of code she uses then?

My conclusion? A carefully crafted profile of an Anon personality. Although I have no doubt this person probably exists, it certainly is not a 16 year old girl, and a majority of the information in the article is total BS. When you apply some very basic logic, the story just falls apart.

I would think the people who designed the system would have had several layers of security as it relates to their database. I've only designed a few myself, but even I know all your users shouldn't have the same privileges. The more I read this story, the more I wonder why a private 1st class had full blown access to classified documents. It seems like security was an after thought, and now they're paying the price.

For me, it's too little too late. I know a lot of people who have already moved to different search engines. Google lost a ton of money in the process. They didn't help themselves any when it was revealed JC Penny had successfully gamed Google for almost an entire year - and Google had no idea until the NY Times broke the story.