I imagine that cable companies have no intention of making CableCards easier to obtain or use. The profits they make on an (HD) DVR + Remote rental every month far exceed the much lower fees for the CableCards. If I were the cable company, I'd make sure it was a PITA to obtain one vs renting a cable box. The best way that TIVO becomes easier for most end users to select is for cable/satellite providers to include it as a DVR rental option - I've heard that some companies do this. Unfortunately, Cablevision (my provider) does not.

While I'm not certain that the risk of death is the cause of the manned space program's demise, this is certainly the reason we haven't planned any manned missions to Mars. There are other branches of the military where the risk of death and the consequences are well accepted. For example, mining, offshore fishing and armed conflict all accept a certain level of risk due to the nature of the job. If politicians and the public accepted the risks then we could easily organize a 1 way trip to Mars with a remote possibility of getting a team back to earth within 10 years, presuming advances in technology and supplies sent via unmanned capsules.

More interesting to me than how the intrusion occurred or how lax Sony's security practices are will be what the public backlash level is like. IT security departments tend to whip up a frenzy with the potential for "end of the company" concerns for data breaches on a regular basis. However, reality is that data loss doesn't always seem to have a particularly negative effect for the company that loses the information. Point in example would be the TJX data loss - http://it.slashdot.org/story/07/03/29/1618239/TJX-Is-Biggest-Data-Breach-Ever. Somehow this hardly seems to have put a dent in corporate profits. TJX's stock is up 100% since 2006 when the breach occurred. http://www.google.com/finance?q=tjx Point being is, if nothing seriously negative happens to Sony then it's no wonder that firms continue to have poor security practices. After all, why bother spending the effort and money to secure data when there is no return on the investment?