This isn't stupid at all, it is something missing from a lot of security advice: a hint of reality. The amount of effort any person will put towards security, or any other goal, is finite. Therefore it is useful to put at least some thought into how that limited effort can be used for the maximum benefit. For the most part, I don't care what my gawker password is or all the other silly little logons. I use the same simple password for all of them because there is zero risk to me if they are compromised, other than someone else can now post with the screen name I picked (and don't care about) To suggest that I should lug around a password safe and log into it every time I need to use one of these zero risk logons is to suggest that I squander my limited security effort. It is far better to conserve that effort for things that are actually important.

One more thing. I didn't mean to say that no one gave a crap because of my consumer statement, I meant that no one gave a crap because it was a $50 dispute with Verizon

Just a quick link for more details here

In the USA at least, if there is some black mark on your credit report the credit agency has to allow you to put a comment on it. In one of my cases I put "Verizon told me I could get DSL, then later told me I could not, and still expected me to pay a setup fee"

I did exactly this a couple of times and my credit wasn't ruined. I just attached the little protest note they let you attach and then no one gave a crap about my $50 argument with Verizon. I suppose my score would have been higher without that on there, but it was by no means ruined.

It is not hard to issue denial that isn't overly specific. From the summary "Apple does not track users' locations — Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so," is much better. But, yes, that could be picked apart also. But for me, Apple's denials are, like so many others orgs recently, far too specific to be reassuring. For instance, they could say "we do not know of any backdoors in our products that are not actively being patched" instead of "we have not *created* any backdoors" See how much of a difference that makes? They could even throw in, "If we learned of a back door we would patch it as quickly as always regardless of which government or other agency might be using it"

Doubtless Apple's statement is true. Of course, accepting SQL queries over a TCP socket isn't 'allowed access to our servers' is it?

This only benefits exporters, not importers or entirely domestic businesses. And this second statement makes no sense either in light of the thousands of times prices have risen when governments devalued their currencies.

Who is doing this scanning and how does that eliminate anonymity? I've worked in a few cash handling businesses and never even heard of number scanning, nor have I ever seen a device to do this. I imagine the bank might scan serial numbers off of bills at some point for tracking physical currency still in circulation. Are you claiming that when a business makes a cash deposit, the bank reports all the serial numbers to the government and says "business X deposited all of these" and "we gave bills X,Y, and Z to Tom Smith when he made an ATM withdrawal"? I'd have to ask for some proof of this claim, it seems rather expensive and pointless.

"only a couple of percent" is the whole profit margin for a lot of businesses, especially small ones.

I don't doubt it. In the USA there are some areas that have tons of used book stores around. Other areas, none at all. Sadly, I live in the latter.

And let all the poor people be damned, yes? Well, at least they will have some outdated business kept around where they can browse books they can't afford. Let them read library books!

Looks like you got this in just before robbak

I really want to meet the cop who said, after failure 35: "Hey come on guys let's ask one more time!"

And nuts I just saw this was on /. earlier.