...if it weren't for those pesky kids in the stoner van.

"their most bizarre case involved a scuba diver dressed as a monster."

So its only insufficient because your wireless might be insecure? Does that mean that if they can prove that your particular setup was reasonably secure, then it _was_ your responsibility? So you should leave a spare wireless router open for plausible deniability?

[/sarcasm]

I don't mean that as a flippant smart-alec remark, I mean it as real advice. You probably do have legal recourse about which you should consult a lawyer, but after its all said and done your servers are still going to be in the hands of someone else, who can do this again.

... is the name of the board game that encapsulates this perfectly: flying around in a ship while also running around inside the ship. Its a good game.

Loved that one too... and Jack of Shadows... and Isle of the Dead... and Creatures... and Roadmarks...

Like I said: Read anything he did _but_ Amber (and then go back and read Amber too; its good, its just not his best stuff.) And when you do get to Amber, make sure you get the ones written by Zelazny himself - the Betancourt prequels, that have Zelazny's name plastered all over them, were pretty dismal, to my mind.

Zelazny gets a lot of press - at least amongst all us old folks - and I love the Amber series to death... but to be truly honest? Read almost anything else he ever wrote first. Nine Princes is good, but Lord of Light is the real stuff.

Yes!

I normally hate "me too" posts, but I have no mod points and I must scream. Cordwainer Smith dying young is one of the greatest losses SF has ever suffered. And if you get tired of his books, you can just read about his life.

But whats cool about the article is that AT&T is actually producing statistics demonstrably proving their own staggering incompetence as the reason why we should feel good about giving them more money.

I mean hello? So this trend of staggering growth has been going on for FIVE YEARS, and even after finally noticing that the problem has already gotten pretty bad, and noticing that its directly related to smartphone usage, you sold more new smartphones last quarter than ever before without first doing something to fix it? And I got all those numbers from YOUR OWN PR?

I can't decide which is more incompetent: the management of your core buisiness, or your EVP's attempts a damage control.

Perhaps a tie.

True, but from the original article:

"Marriott said it had to engage more than 100 of its employees in a thorough search of its network to determine the scope of the incident and to identify the data that may have been compromised. As a result, Marriott claims that the incident cost the company between $400,000 and $1 million in salaries, consultant expenses and other costs."

The expenses quoted weren't run up catching the guy, they were run up finding the holes in their security. This is not an expense incurred because ToolBoy the Idiot HaX0r broke into their system, its an expense incurred because their security system has holes in it. They should have spent that money locking down the system from the outset.

ToolBoy is still an idiot, but claiming those expenses are his fault is a bit much.

"The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas"

Oh, that's all right then. I'll just go leave the car running in the closed garage - carbon monoxide is a colorless odorless gas, so it must be safe!

And cut the gas lines in the kitchen - natural gas is colorless and odorless, so it must be safe!

And fill the house with Radon - nevermind that its the second-largest cause of lung cancer in the US, its colorless and odorless gas, so it must be safe!

Ayup. Doesn't matter if its worthless; it has to _appear_ worthless.

Lifetime job security fixing or replacing badly-written code, here we come!

Yeah fine; descend into pedantic word choice arguments if you like. Copy-replace "infringe" for "steal" (in the appropriate tense, since we've decided to be pedantic) in my original comment, and you'll find that my original point still stands; they're trying to plug the leak in the wrong place, with the wrong guy, and they've punished Sanchez disproportionately because of that misplaced effort.

Honestly, you people who can't get past shouting "NOT THEFT" every time anyone so much as thinks the word copyright, regardless as to whether the distinction is in any way relevant to the argument at hand, are not doing your own cause any favors.

And yet, this was never a discussion about how much of the pie the multimedia conglomerates should get vs. how much the artists should get - its about whether we should give them any pie to divide up at all. If you steal a dollar's worth of movie, you may only be stealing a tenth of a cent from the writer, but you're still taking from them. And the megacorp you stole the rest from was the one that chose to make movies you like; they're going to make decisions about what to make next year based on how much profit things made this year, and you didn't vote for the movie you liked. (Mind you, since this started with a story about Wolverine, that's probably an argument _for_ stealing that movie, if you're going to watch it at all...)

On the divvy-up, I totally agree with your rational artist friends. I'm a strong supporter of various writer's strikes, and new technologies that allow artists to sell directly to consumers bypassing the corps. But cinema-grade movies are still heavily capital-intensive - you don't generally just pop out and make one yourself in your backyard. So the production companies that support the artists are important too.

You left out "artists". They're the third group that use that argument regularly.

I'm not one of them either, but I know quite a few.