Not yet clear what system was breached and what platform it was running. Do you have a link to details of the attack vector? I haven't run Cold Fusion in years, once Adobe purchased it and moved it to JRun I migrated my code off Cold Fusion.

I agree...my wording wasn't clear. I meant that the technical musical performance is not the only thing fans consider. The Beatles were certainly sloppy early on, so were Springsteen's early recordings. Their "raw talent" (and Rihanna is another example) shines through. Speaking of Bruno Mars, it will be interesting to see how they pull off the Super Bowl performance. IMHO, that has been a good showcase for live performers, and some (Madonna, Springsteen, Petty) really excelled while others (I'm looking at you Black Eyed Peas) fell flat on their faces.

Professional musicians with record contracts use auto-tune tools all the time, so why can't amateur musicians have access to the same tools? I have no sympathy for the recorded music industry, they have been crooked since day one and reaped plenty of profits off the hard work of underpaid performers and songwriters. Live performance is even changing as performers can have their vocals corrected "on the fly" instead of trying to lip sync as marginally talented musicians did in the past. So the recorded music industry will go the way of the travel agency, which is just economic reality. The record industry was created to get music recorded and out to the people, and they are no longer needed. People will still find music they like, and performers will find ways to make money in local clubs until they build up a larger audience. Quality of the musical performance is not a requirement...look at The Sex Pistols or The Ramones. Interesting that as some industries (retail, banking) become more and more concentrated in the hands of fewer companies (Walmart, JP Morgan Chase) the music business is becoming more eclectic and wide open. Sure, the media companies have consolidated, but any kid with a PC and an internet connection can get his/her music to the world. Seems like progress to me.

I run a Tor relay at home with our Verizon FIOS service and so far no throttling or bandwidth capping. The one issue I've run into is my daughter can't access Hulu via our FIOS connection as they have detected that our IP address has been used for Tor. It likely was because I ran as an exit relay for a month or two, but decided to configure as a plain non-exit relay after getting a semi-threatening email from Verizon.

FTFY

Director elections are stacked in favor of the incumbents due to the way the elections are structured. The directors nominate candidates for the board, usually through their governance or nominating committee. It's in their interests to keep the status quo and nominate themselves to be the only choices on the ballot. Nearly every corporate ballot (proxy ballot) has just enough director nominees to fill the available slots so there really isn't a choice. Corporate governance is a slow process and companies don't really want a lot of turnover on the board. In most situations this is a good thing, for investors and for the company as a whole.

However, this process does have the effect of protecting directors when things go south as it takes a real grass roots movement from stockholders to get other names nominated for the director slot. Most commonly you'll see this when a large holding company decides to pool their stocks and distributes an alternate proxy.
 

Macau's Banco Delta Asia, the new HSBC for hiding your money.

They may not be afraid of the nations of the world when it comes to diplomatic and economic sanctions, but they'll cry uncle once the RIAA starts serving them with lawsuits.

True, but for diligent retailers a chargeback is extremely rare. We lose more each year in cash shortages and counterfeit bills than we do in chargebacks. The best for a retailer is PIN debit transactions as they are like cash and can't be disputed or charged back. We use a feature called "debit steering" at our POS stations so that any transaction over $25 will default to debit if a customer swipes a debit Visa/MC. I love seeing a $500 or higher sale go through as debit, saved me on the credit card percentage based fee and also no chance for a dispute.

Believe it or not, in addition to the internal handling costs for a retailer to count cash there are bank fees. Most commercial banks actually charge businesses a fee to accept cash deposits. Yes, when I make a deposit of cash to the bank they charge my business a fee to count that cash and put it into their vault. In addition I must pay for change (rolled coin, singles, fives, and tens) and keep a stock of change in my business safe. We really love it when a customer pays by debit and gets cash back at the same time...less cash for us to handle at the end of the day.

Cash also attracts thieves, hence the traditional targets for holdups are convenience stores and smaller businesses that don't do much (if any) credit card business. Years ago liquor stores didn't accept credit cards (might have been a law prohibiting it in NY, not sure) and they were always targets for late night armed robberies.

We use a loyalty program to track customers, not their bankcards, so cash or credit card makes no difference from that aspect. I'd say most retailers do very little tracking via the bankcard numbers since they would be exposed to PCI issues if they stored the data and it was hacked. However, at the Mastercard/Visa level they definitely are tracking consumer buying patterns and even selling that aggregate data back to retailers.

John

Very amusing, thanks for pointing this one out.

The Onion skewered the "sponsored content" concept nicely yesterday. Even sponsored content needs to meet editorial standards, maybe even more so since you are accepting compensation for allowing them to use your brand name to promote theirs.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/01/flu_deaths_influenza_cases.html

The most common strain this year is H3N2 and it's one of the strains covered in this year's flu shot.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is a well known conservative medical association. Considering they only have about 3,000 members it's kind of silly to even seek their opinion. They certainly have a right to lobby for changes to government health care policy decisions but when they cross the line and contradict verified and tested scientific and medical research they should be ignored. They were one of the groups on the anti-vaccine bandwagon back in 2003.