This isn't dissimilar to what I did to the Apple II machines in my 7th grade math and computer classes. (The math room doubled as the "computer room") I loaded all the machines up with a short program that would perform a countdown to get it a few minutes into the next period and then randomly produce a high-pitched beep every 60 to 600 seconds. If I recall correctly, the speaker was internal to the Apple II so the monitors stayed off. There were about sixteen machines in the room so you can imagine the results.

If a tree falls in the woods.... Seriously, are there any real first-person witnesses to a HP3000 with BASIC actually installed? Granted, I came into the MPE game pretty late, but as I recall, getting BASIC running involved a trip to a far away land, climbing to the peak of a mountain to get tape reels blessed by monks, and forging disc platters in the fires of a volcano. I might be forgetting a step, but I remember it wasn't on the machines by default and getting it running wasn't something you'd care to do.

Apple has already perfected their method of remotely disabling phones. Don't believe me? Let iTunes upgrade your iPhone 3G to iOS4.

Re-read my statement and take special care to look for the words "most" and "among". :) That said, I still think it's a fair statement, even when comparing the 64 to the Apple II. Sure, you could replace most of the Apple's components with plug-in parts that mapped over the originals' memory space and have a sweet system... but how many of the Apple IIs in use had a 80 column card, sound card, RAM expansion, etc? I'd bet that of all sold by 1982, (the 64's release) the percentage of machines with any ONE of those expansion cards was in the single digits. If it makes you feel any better, I gave up my C64 long ago and made the switch to Apple!

I suspect that you had no first-hand experience with the 64, or that you experience was well after its heyday. When introduced, the 64 was more capable than most of its competitors and lower-priced as well. Remember, we are talking about a machine that occupied store shelves unchanged (save for cosmetic and cost reductions) for over a decade. By the time home users of any machine were considering hard drives, the C64's day was long-since over. At launch, its graphics were among the top available and its sound capabilities blew absolutely everything in the consumer market out of the water. Yes, the serial disk interface was slow even by 1982 standards, but only as an early example of a company opting for backwards compatibility over performance. The fast loader programs and cartridges didn't do some kind of magic, or fix a bug that Commodore let ship for 11 years; They simply rewrote the disk drive code to favor speed over compatibility with old PET systems.

There are many adequate replies to this already, but I'll go so far as to add that the entire electronic banking system is flawed, at least in the US. There is no careful management and validation of authorizations like most people want to imagine. A party interested in withdrawing money from your account needs only your account number and your bank's routing number to do so. Misuse of this is discouraged mostly by the difficulty of doing it anonymously... Which isn't so much of a concern to a corporation you've been allowing to dip into your account already. They'll merely say "it's legitimate" and the bank will tell you to deal with them. There are no protections like those afforded to credit card users. It's been well over a decade ago now, but I once left a job in a blow-up argument and was "unpaid" through reversal of a direct deposit that occurred days earlier. When I spoke to my bank manager, she basically told me "tough luck". Sure, I could have contacted a lawyer, etc, but the point isn't that I didn't have recourse; It's that the system is broken if anyone, at any time, can cause you rack-up a series of $30 NSF charges and keep you from paying your bills for days or weeks.

In fact, I've used it. Until last year I worked for a credit union and frequently described a scenario almost exactly like this to justify things like a least-privilege security model for end users. It's scary to consider what an attacker might be able to accomplish with a scheme like this. The article only touches the surface in pointing out that credit unions are typically smaller than banks and lack security resources. Mine was one of the largest and probably the most technologically progressive credit union in my state but I had a lot of interaction with smaller credit unions due to their cooperative, less competitive nature. (less competitive with each other, that is.) My experience is that most credit unions have IT departments that can be counted on one hand, and no security-oriented individuals on staff at all. (IT or otherwise) In fact, there are many credit unions whose ENTIRE staff can be counted on one hand. Not long before I left, we absorbed a failed credit union's assets and member base at the NCUA's request. This particular example's infrastructure consisted of three desktop computers and an Access database. Credit unions make great financial sense but only the largest ones have the kind of IT and security resources most of us associate with a bank.

Thank goodness! Like everyone, I've felt the crunch since the economy's been in the tank but I knew that eventually the jobs would return.

The drug in the study is a beta blocker. They are used heavily to treat high blood pressure, heart rhythm issues, and specific aspects of heart failure. The study indicates that they MAY be useful in helping to dampen the negative feelings associated with traumatic memories when combined with specifically designed therapy. There's no claim that they can actually cause a memory to be forgotten. It's not a potential lifestyle drug poised for widespread abuse. Most links I've seen to this article and others covering the study seem to suggest that simply popping one of these pills will make you forget an entire event at will. It's nowhere near that simple. If it were, I'd be a lot more laid-back than I actually am.