Sure, the damage is done, but at least you know who did it. For a firm dealing with medical, financial, or other sensitive data, that's kind of important.

Actually I doubt you'd have a case against Cisco or even the company; it would be the employee who knowingly initiated a connection that could be snooped on who would be at fault, if anyone.

In security, you have to start with the assumption that everyone is untrustworthy until proven otherwise.

No, they're not quite the same thing. But in the case of ring species, by normal standards A and B would be the same species and B and C would be the same species but A and C would not.

For some people, yes.

Actually, no. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

People who don't have one. In many parts of the world, people can't afford personal computers, and only have access to them at work, at internet cafes, etc.

What about users at the office or at a public computer (e.g., library) who have no control over the browser they're using?

Actually, there used to be an IE for Mac.

That's what hearing aids were like back in the1950s... http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/gallery/Transistor%20(Body)/Sonotone/info/sonotone1010.htm

Exactly. If someone came up with a business plan to sell hearing aids of comparable quality at half the price, the insurance companies would push customers to use that vendor. Those insurers who did so could offer lower premiums and thereby attract more customers (or keep their current ones). The fact that this hasn't happened suggests that it's not so easy to sell hearing aids for less, contrary to what many commenters are saying.

Chicken-and-egg: if such monitors were cheap and widespread, OS makers would quickly adjust.

Everywhere. Not telescope-quality, but historical records do mention unusual sunspot activity and the like. Something this big would have been noted, had it been visible.

I sort of do. I rely on Outlook's holidays to know, for example, whether to expect banks and government offices to be open or when my trash should be put out a day later than usual. My employer (a university) provides an .ics calendar of its schedule--it follows some official holidays but not others. So I need to be aware of both, and generally assume that Outlook's holidays are reliable (though an unusual change like this would likely have been well-publicized).

And will let other countries build military hardware with them?