To be clear, because it appears I was not, I don't consider it a corporate responsibility to be truthful, or in any way moral at all. I expect them to pursue profit. Period. Call it whatever you like, I'll use the word "trust" to describe my expectation that no corporation would be so fucking brain-dead stupid to do something like this because, as we have seen, it's going to hurt their profits, a lot.

Right, because the private sector is all about looking out for the consumer. The free market will take care of everything. Do you have any fucking idea how stupid that sounds?

You are clearly no student of history (like most of the Rand fanboys here on /.) . You have not a clue as to how much better your lot is because of the many things "the government" regulates. No longer can someone sell you "medicine" that is not only ineffective but would stand good chance of hurting or killing you. No longer do a large number of our fellow citizens suffer from food-borne diseases because of shoddy processing and storage practices. And if you think you can negotiate on your own for effective health care coverage, you are clearly ignorant of the realities of that marketplace.

Worse than just spyware, far worse. They installed a trivially easy-to-exploit vulnerability which affects the security of every web app their customers might ever use.

So you say, and I am inclined to believe it is so. Nevertheless, Lenovo has demonstrated, in clear and undeniable terms, that profit outweighs the needs of their customers, including the need to have a secure and trustworthy computing platform. The have violated that trust.
"And for that reason, I'm out."

Oh please. Laws are for little people. You know, the ones who aren't corporations. No one is going to jail for "just doing what it takes to 'compete' in a free market". What did you think we meant when we had our Spokesman In Chief tell you that "government is the problem"?

More often than not, the "messages" are coming from God/Jesus or Satan, according to the patient. Mind you, my sample population is almost completely Judeo-Christian in orientation. It should be completely unsurprising that such perceptions are often ascribed to powerful supernatural entities from the patient's own psyche. If you want to argue that it's really Jesus calling, you're going to have to explain why He never calls the Muslim or Hindu schizophrenics.

Mind you, I'm not trying to discount the possibility of the paranormal in general, but when it comes to the sensory experiences of those who suffer from certain disorders, this is well plowed ground. Peddle it someplace else.

Yes, you do. We all do. Some of us call it greed, and in a less nuanced way, that's what it is. Comcast is a corporation. It's single overriding mission is to generate profit for it's shareholders. Anything that detracts from that mission is to be avoided. Indeed, shareholders would have legal cause to seek action against a board that failed to pursue profit with due vigor.
Now, with that in mind, would someone kindly explain why a public that has been demonstrably ill-served by such a corporation should not regulate it just as vigorously?

No. Did you read TFA? Any of them? Do you know what a challenge all of us, public and private sector alike, are up against when it comes to cyber security? Probably not, unless you work in the field and have to face not only the malignant threats, but the regulatory morass that is the current patchwork of laws and compliance rules. The message today was not about "backdoors". Not even close. So, since you have nothing but partisan bitching to contribute, kindly STFU.

Yeah, but...
Though TFA is pretty short on details, it's a safe bet that the auto makers have made only a half-assed attempt at security, at best. Time will tell, of course, but I've got money to wager that within the next few years, we're going to see just how little those companies knew and/or cared about security.

Yes, but... Most gases, in any concentration likely to exist in the atmosphere around a target, won't obscure. Smoke will, of course, but then the visible parts of smoke aren't gases.

Fail. At some point, somebody has to have access that allows them to view/copy/steal sensitive data in that system. We can, and should, make the path to gaining that access as tortuous as practically possible, but if you've got system-wide admin creds (and it sounds like the attackers had that) all the encryption in the world isn't going to help.

What might have actually helped a fucking ton, would have been some awareness of what was going on in their network. Bad guys were in there for over a month before anyone noticed. For an outfit with that much sensitive data, that's inexcusable.

And if the "old monopoly" only delivered third-party electricity at 80 VAC, what would be your proposed solution? Better question - What would be the response of all the other vendors? Come on, at least try to make an apples to apples comparison.

TFTFY.

Riiiight. Because it totally makes sense to let all comers string their own wires, bury their own fiber, etc. That doesn't need any regulation at all.