It's ironic how close P and R happen to be. Ruby fan, I take it?

If not Ruby, what do you use for a scripting language? Please don't tell me you decided long ago that if it's possible to do everything in assembly, it must be done in assembly.

Yep, I found it rather quickly myself. I'm not about to touch it myself with a 70 foot pole, but I wasn't looking to rip off any account info either.

As far as advice goes, you're in pretty deep already. Given the discussion here and the information that is already available, I don't think you're going to be able to back out now. You've already reported it to the company, but now it's publicly available and I worry that they might implicate you in damages. IMHO, get a lawyer. Now. They should be able to tell you what kind of liability you're facing. They should also be able to give you good advice on how to mitigate your own risk.

Frankly, I think it's stupid that someone pointing out a security flaw could be liable in any way, but that's the way our screwed up system works. Best of luck.

Nah, I have an older computer that I upgraded from 4GB to 12GB. In a few years when that computer no longer performs in the way I need for compiling code and running games, I'll get a new computer. At that point, my current computer turns into the family model for browsing the web and doing homework. Those tasks don't take next year's top end computer to run.

The point here is that some people still use hardware until it dies rather than buying a new computer every three years. For most tasks, older computers are perfectly capable. Some of us are already "lessening our impact" and have been doing so for years.

Agreed, but phones are a poor example right now.

My phone is getting replaced at the two year mark this time because I caught the front end of the android market with a cheap android phone two years ago and the advance in hardware/software is too great to ignore. Once phones slow back down a little, I'll go back to long spans with a single phone (my last phone was 8 years old when I replaced it, good old Motorola V550). Stuff's just changing too fast right now for that to be realistic on phones.

On the computer front, it's now more realistic to run a computer for 5-10 years without upgrading. Current upgrades are pretty small jumps and even newly released games are running on much older hardware than they have before. I increased RAM on my desktop from 4GB to 12GB a couple days ago and that should extend the life of that machine by another 2-3 years before being handed down to my kids.

The actual statement that you make is that "x is UNLIKELY to case y" along with a degree of confidence. artor3's comment is stated as an absolute so don't bother tossing stats into the discussion. Stats deals with estimation, likelyhood, probability, forecasting, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_intervals and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance

artor3's comment is also stated without citation. Not a good start :(

Ah ha, it came from the second link rather than the PDF it appeared to be linked to. Come on guys, at least link silly quotes like that to the right article.

---- http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/security-privacy/231700161
Tricare did not indicate whether SAIC encrypted the information on the stolen tapes, but Raley said, "It's very hard to encrypt a backup tape." Tricare did not respond to a request for comment on the HIPAA issues.
---

Brilliant :(

I didn't see any mention of encryption in the PDF linked off of that quote either. Wonder where it came from?

"The constant barrage of updates for Firefox"....
"I switched to Chrome and have progressed through 8 whole versions"

Really? Is the release cycle really the problem for you or something vague about extensions? I find the release cycle of Firefox rather awkward but I'd never switch to Chrome if that was really my problem.

Further, it doesn't really need to measure user experience as that is going to vary based on the audience. You can take this benchmark and then compare that with your own user experience to decide if the wins for Firefox are worth the user experience.

I used to have nightmares that played out almost exactly that way. Also, who's going to test this and tell us they had a good time?

I think it's the lawful owner part that's in question.

Microsoft is implying that it will sue and extorting money to protect against that possibility.

"Hey Johnny... You wanna do business on this block, just remember that windows get broken from time to time by... well.. let's just say people. Pay us and we'll make sure you personally don't have a rock thrown through your window."

Pretend I did a mobster impression.

I don't believe Raspberry Pi is available yet (see http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs/, first line), but I'm seriously considering picking one up when it's available. Arduino is definitely an amazing platform, but I just don't need something quite that low level. I'm currently toying with turning one of those cheap $10 "cameras" into a wireless surveillance cam. As far as ARM goes, I'm not deep enough into the hardware to care either way anyway.

That's a little naive. I can promise you PLCs running unpatched versions of software are running accessible from the internet and no amount of "You shouldn't have done that, dummy" is going to magically secure them overnight. The reality is that our industry simply isn't as security conscious as it needs to be and while some of us recognize the PLC systems should be air-gapped anyway, I doubt that's the norm.

If your power goes out tonight, I'm going to smile a little inside. Deserved?

Read the article and note the increased support and hardware costs.