That's boring, think of all the stuff you could do while...

hold on, I gotta change lanes...

The general idea of hashing passwords is that even if an adversary gains access to the password file it can still be secure. This accounts for things that you might not have foreseen, such as intercepted communications. They don't have to access it in storage necessarily. Now you can always say that your users should be using encrypted connections to your server, but the point of the hash is to have a second line of defense, since a password is a very unique type of information where the data doesn't need to be accessed, simply matched. Even if you encrypt your communications, are you sure it is secure? Will it always be secure?

Also this

The funny thing though, is that I know plenty of people who make music for free, and have no problem even just giving it away. The thing that makes taxi cabs different from music, is that people make music for fun, and will do it for free. I have no doubt that if copyright no longer applied to music, the only people who would stop making music would be the giant corporations who have just turned music in to mass produced shit. Mainstream artists will still be rich, even if they never sold an album, because they'll be able to draw massive crowds to live performances. They just won't be AS rich. However, everyone else will be benefiting from a tremendous boost in culture, when they are able to download as much music as they want from the mainstream artists who are still making money, but would be exposed to more music created by people with no ulterior motive other than to have fun.

Now as a disclaimer, I don't want to step on anyone's toes here, but I personally think there is no reason being a musician has to be someone's career, it can just be a hobby, which is why if they abolished copyright laws on music tomorrow, I wouldn't have the slightest care about society's wealth of music, because people have and will continue to create it.

You mean, "I use GNU/Linux!"

You left out the critical, "I know I'll get modded down for this, but..."

The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

credit

Keep the government off my medicare!

I agree, and what is the problem? When I buy something from anyone else, I don't use it, and then demand my money back. Likewise, Google hosts emails for free, in exchange for the fact that they can look at them at any time and do with them what they please. Why should I be upset when there is a breach in privacy? The only difference between posting a message on Facebook, and sending an email through GMail, is that Google has better security settings. It would be ridiculous to use GMail for anything sensitive, just like it would be ridiculous to use Facebook for anything sensitive.

Most people are lulled into a false sense of security because Google doesn't release email data. It's in their best interest not to. But people forget that they have it all there.

Google Settles Buzz Privacy Suit - Refund Issued to All Gmail Users

I've thought about this problem for a while, and here is my guess how it will proceed. When cars started being made with cruise control, the responsibility in an accident still belonged to the driver. There are cars being built today which automatically apply brakes when they sense an oncoming collision, but in the event of a malfunction or accident, the human driver is ultimately held responsible.

I don't believe anyone is going to drop an autonomous car into the market, but instead it will simply be more and more iterations of the computer taking control. The human driver will always have a manual override though, and will be responsible for the accidents, simply because that was the status quo. My guess is by the time we do get autonomous cars, people probably won't be paying attention to the road since their cars are driving themselves fine anyway, but they will have signed a disclaimer claiming responsibility anyway. I do think there will be uproars when accidents do occur, like we have seen with the Toyota problem, but not for a long while after we have become comfortable with autonomous vehicles will any law change regarding responsibility.

Here is the link:

http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/12/02/2029202/SETIHome-Install-Leads-To-School-Tech-Supervisors-Resignation

MONKEY PAW!!!

Just like when you stand on the moon and look down at the earth you see the landscape we ruined?

I mean, I don't want to be pompous and promote my own language, but it seems obvious if you look around and see what people are speaking everywhere. The world would be better off if everyone just learned French.

You're doing it wrong. If there's anything I've learned in dealing with people, it is never try to create a technical solution to a social problem. If someone wants to make a copy of some secret document, they will quickly learn that the copiers have this software installed and will use a different machine. You need to figure out why they would want to make copies of something you don't want them to, and solve that problem. I could see this being marginally useful for preventing accidental release of information, however the article seems to state that they are trying to stop deliberate users.