Here in Wisconsin, micro-brews have risen in popularity quite a bit over the last few years. I'm told by the older folk the trend started more than 20 years ago, but it has really picked up in the last 5 or so. Quite a few good microbrews around madison and milwaukee, fun to tour too. What is your area, mainly so I know to stock up if I'm out that way... :)

Here's a list of things that I wish the major consumer OS's especially the desktop ones would do, and they'd be fairly easy to implement:
-push hardware vendors to use full disk encryption by default with a hardware managed key
-password manager built into the OS that logs in when the user logs in and "integrates" with the OS/browser well, and automates most of the bullshit picking new passwords and so on, so users actually use it and use it properly that is no longer use weak passwords, reuse passwords etc
-two factor authentication to log in
-update automatically in the background system that requires no user interaction to run updates, doesn't noticeably slow down the system, and doesn't require the software to be installed from the OS's "app store" to work, and doesn't require user interaction to add new programs to the list
-No list is complete without: not run admin by default (but this one has been repeated a thousand times)

Things I wish they'd do that would take a little more work:
-push software vendors to use ASLR (and to really take advantage of that, push them to make 64-bit versions of their programs)
-push software vendors to use DEP, with these two I am specifically talking about, the major web browsers, browser plugins like flash and financial software like quicken

Overall, I guess it's still a young industry and these things take time. I think that security will hugely improve once the hardware underneath stops evolving, at least quite so quickly. OTOH that won't happen for the forseeable future so stuff like this could go a long way towards helping.

Also while I'm asking for diamond studded saddles for my herd of ponies, get the government to abolish the SSN system. Stupid friggin system. And they have the gall to investigate other entities for poor security practices, gimme a break.

So did you run out of rum to drink and beatles' songs to listen too, and then promptly decide to post to slashdot? No seriously:

and even better:

So let me get this straight, there are folks who can afford private jets, expensive vodka for those long flights, expensive strippers for the same, and a huge ass boat as the destination but they sit around all day trying to figure how to screw welders, carpenters and the like? And amongst these vast numerous conspiracies against the common man, some are in no small way perpetrated by the Kennedys' or their followers, who are also right wing. Say whaaaaat? I mean holy shit dude, just damn.

Ya I wouldn't be too optimistic about upstream bandwidth or any other decent service from them until they get some competition. For what it's worth, my cable provider is pretty darn good in all respects except one: upstream bandwidth. I get a decent price, fast down speed, high reliability so far, quick resolution when it does go down, and they even showed up on time to install it. But VNC or RDP into the home box from the lab is painful. Ah well, good things take time right?

Well maybe they'll finally start providing some decent upstream bandwidth then. Who woulda thunk it.

In the real world this will be unflattering to people watching how fat they are on screen. Better idea: 3D online shopping. You can get a 1:1 (for small objects like clothes, toys, consumer electronics etc.) 3D object model of the product you're viewing. Of course you'll need a 3D monitor etc. Even better is that it works for all products, not just clothes. Anybody know of a site that supports this tech? I don't. hmmm.

Seriously, should they not already know how to organize a scientific community for sharing/publishing/researching/peer reviewing stuff? It's not like the field has been around for a while... Also, let's play a game. It's called spot the problems with this statement from the perspective of the scientific method, "One guy has already run simulations ... finding that a group of 65,000 chemicals has a good chance..."

Overall /. editors are busy being morons again, or this was a horribly written article, or a horribly organized event.

First off, if your machine is controlled by your adversary your probably fucked one way or another regardless of what your bank does if you give your attacker enough time. Also I run windoze 7... feel free to troll me.

With that out of the way I highly recommend using keepass or something similar, not only do you get the obvious benefit of stronger and unique passwords but if a form wants answers to secret security questions, just pick a question, any of them it doesn't matter, and use a long random hex key as the answer, then store it in the notes section of that key entry in keepass, or don't store it at all, your choice. In short, bank security could be better, there are a few creative ideas above me that could be offered on their end like the firewall between your account and other accounts idea, but there are smart things you can do to avoid the pitfalls of these stupid ass "security" questions.

Also, if you want to sync the database across machines, but are worried that your password may not be strong enough in the event that your online service for syncing is cracked into do this:

1) set up a keepass database with both a password and a key file for encryption
2) share the encrypted database through your favorite online syncing service, personal home server, dropbox, whatever
3) set up syncing with online service on each machine you want to access the database
4) put the key file on each machine you did in 3, if you want this to be more secure than just a password you CANNOT share the keyfile through the net, but it literally never changes unlike the database so copy pasta across machines with a usb key or similar manually is easy enough
5) additional note: this will save your password database for a non-trivial amount of time if someone has both your online service's password and your keepass password but cannot access the key file, hopefully long enough for you to realize what happened and change your passwords.
6) as a corollary to that: if your machine is hacked and the hacker is smart enough to search for the keepass database and the key file then your screwed, note that naming the file cleverly, using a clever file type extension, or putting it somewhere obscure does not help since keepass "remembers" where it is, so all the attacker has to do is find where keepass stores that info and the easiest way to do that is simply start keepass...

Reading that article I almost laughed myself into a coughing fit. Wow, if there was ever an incisive literary critic of horrible literature, he takes the cake.

If the U.S. Congress could fix their debt problem they would have already, I rather doubt they like pissing away money in interest payments. My personal opinion is that it is politically and physically impossible for them to do so, thus the US will wind up defaulting. It's just a matter of how and when you want the default to go down. Do you prefer straight up telling your creditors to go take a hike or do you try to inflate your way out, hoping that with the addition of magic fairy dust you can somehow avoid the resulting market correction due to your actions? The US chooses the latter and that is how they will default, it just won't be called that. To mutilate a quote from Warren Buffet, "the market is a voting system in the short run and a weighing system in the long run."

It's too bad really, I quite like my country despite all of our shortcomings, and I'd rather not see major social upheaval on my doorstep and on my streets. On the upside, it means there is a chance that after all that happens we won't be financing a global imperialistic military, a welfare state, or foreign dictators. There is always a silver lining.

I hadn't gone to much more than 1 movie a year (Ironman and I couldn't even remember the others, mediocre obviously) for the past couple of years being underwhelmed with well most of the products, the prices steadily going up, so on.

So recently I've been trying to make an effort to see more flicks and I did go to two recently, and these problems immediately stood out to me:
1) The picture is kinda grainy, it isn't a dealbreaker for me but for what they're charging it's definitely annoying
2) The sound is just loud enough to make my ears hurt. I mean if they just turned it down a bit it'd be fine but at least till your drawn into the film it's a huge detractor for me, I guess I could sit in the back but it's all surround sound anyways right?
3) Maybe it's just inflation but the prices seem to be a bit high, even the matinee isn't all that cheap, but also not a dealbreaker

Well I guess I wouldn't care if I about the price or get too picky about picture quality if I had a good time, but films continue to underwhelm and the sound continues to be too damn high. Also I'm only in my mid-20s so it's not like I'm some old geezer going on about kids and their new fangled noise. Oh well maybe I'll try to do more outdoors stuff instead, more personal too.

I didn't buy the game because of these... issues. So if 3 and 4 are more or less untrue then I guess my friends who bought it don't know what they're are talking about. But I'm dead positive 2 and 5 are true which is enough reason for me not to buy the game. And by not buy the game I don't mean hit the torrents, I refuse to sink to blizzards level.

Okay, so it may not seem like a big deal if you have a decent net connection, heck even satellite would be fine, however if you don't it's a nightmare. Hence no sale. Yes it's trivially easy to just install the game on 10-15 PCs, it's also pretty easy to pirate the stupid thing from what I hear so the bloody mess is just token resistance (as others have pointed out). I guess we'll just have to politely disagree.

Are you being serious? Okay let me list off all the things SC2 does that I find to be jerk-ish, call them DRM or Flying Monkeys With Tophats, I don't really care they're asinine:
1) Online activation for install (this one I'm cool with, especially if it means I don't need to type in a bloody CD key again... either or would be cool but whatever)
2) Periodic activation every 30 days - this one seriously ticks me off after I've already activated once then wtf?
3) Can only play offline/not logged in under guest account, prisoner on your own machine blah blah, also that play can't be translated to your battlenet account
4) must make a battlenet account to install the game, and that comes with several onerous restrictions which I won't go into here
5) no LAN - where I grew up, which is where my parents still live, which is the only place where I see all three of my brothers at the same time, there is no freaking internet. Now where I'm at the 'net is very nice, beyond nice, but I will never pay money for a game which asks me to be beholden to what the dev's thought was 'enabling piracy' when that feature is and has been part and parcel of games since I was old enough to hold a mouse, as regards LAN, I don't care if the shadow copy comes back or not, we can each buy a copy that's cool, but I want my game to just work, not install haxxorpatch.exe just to play the stupid thing, I hear DOW2:R has very nice LAN capabilities, guess which one I bought?

The reason I can live with a one-time on install online activation but not the periodic one, and not the must be logged into "really use it", and not the no LAN play is practical too: at my parents house we'd haul our machines to somewhere with a connection get the games working and installed, unplug, test, then haul them back home, ya it was a PITA but it worked. But with the periodic or always on stuff... that's no longer viable. And any dev' who thinks it's "ok because everybody has internet and if they don't they must live in the backwoods lol" will never see a red cent from my ass.

With that in mind:

is either ignorant or very dishonest.

Right, so what makes a better computer product is just some dude in a lab with exotic mathematics, groundbreaking chemicals, new ways to make magnets etc? This is flagrant bullshit just as much as the "I don't need no stinkin' math n' science" type of thinking is, it's just better disguised. I wish slashdotters (and the rest of the psuedo-intellectual crowd re: I 3 science but I couldn't lift a finger to help cuz you know...) would remember the point to a market is to sell things other people want. That is to say if people are paying money for it, then they probably value it for some reason. Maybe it annoys them less, maybe it looks better, maybe it helps them get shit done, maybe it helps them remember stuff and the list goes on. You know what, you're right there have been some tech bubbles in our short little history but life goes on and if you are dumb enough to get ensnared by one well then you were gonna waste your money somewhere, BS vaporware company was just an outlet. In short if this is really how you think you are going to be very bitter for a very long time. I hope you're not.

I'd tell the CA legislature that if a user 'opts out' they also opt out of the ability to use my services.

On a more serious note, users already have multiple ways to opt out:
1) Use a different frickin website
2) Don't use the websites
3) disable cookies for that site
etc.

But never let it be said that the CA legislature thought through its actions or that it didn't try to stick its nose in other people's business while they had plenty of their own self-created problems.