Though I see this tried often, it just isn't true. Regardless of the merit of the specific post in question, you can't invalidate a post of any scope by invalidating a marginal point.

Easy workaround: Give them non-tradable stock?

That's why it's good that people from "outside" (well, a shareholding company) sued. If only it wasn't such an idiotic case. I'm not saying Hurd was doing everything right, but there are far more people out there who did really, really bad things, and no one sued then.

Why doesn't this whole suing people who fucked over the shareholders, fucked over the company itself, fucked over customers, government, environment, basically fucked over everyone except their close circle of "friends", and then the company and shareholders again via severance package-- why doesn't it happen much more often, as in every single time it's clear they did something against the law and morality, and still walk away with remuneration and the next executive job already in their pocket?

I beg your pardon? Software that phones home without telling you, even if it's free, has been the source of all kinds of deserved geek rage over the decades. How is this suddenly different?

Oh, not only most Americans do that.

I agree about and welcome the impasse. The discussion happened elsewhere in the meantime. Another time, MacLeod!

Why don't you take the conditional to be a form of emphasis as I intended it ("even if he was stupid and careless" in the sense of "it doesn't matter that he was stupid and careless")?

If you did that, maybe you'd realize this isn't "much ado about nothing" as whether he changed his password is totally irrelevant to those questions and besides the point.

What are you all on about? He said he disabled administrative access from outside. No matter the password, there's intrusion going on here, so there is something to talk about.

If a password was all there is to protect your router from outside, all hell would break loose for simple brute forcing. You also can't expect Aunt Irma to change her password first thing when she gets net access.

Finally, even disregarding all that, even if he was stupid and careless, they can't just access the router if he didn't explicitly give them the right in a contract somewhere. I get you're all supercomputerexperts, but maybe we could talk about what he's asking?

Why is there an open forced access port/back door?
Is that ok without telling the owner?
What security is in place that entities besides Verizon can't access it?

You know, this isn't D&D. You can't just say you make an excellent point, you have to actually make one.

Oh, wait. Were you just being redundant?

In any case: "Useless reply."

Commercially Canonical is proving that "Linux on the Desktop" is a failure.

It can't prove any such thing, as it isn't trying to be, yet. All it proves is that if you put enough marketing behind Linux and give your product away for free (to increase its adoption instead of your account balance), adoption does increase and your account balance doesn't.