in fact, forget the motivation ...

Agreed, although Jonathan Swift was Irish. I'm American, so close enough as far as I am concerned.

So if the defendant is trying to get back pay, then aren't they just going to pull the "freeloader's debt" thing, and sue him for unpaid auditing?

Riiighhht. When I want news done properly, I'll PAY FoxNews to do it properly. Just think about that for a second. The only reason anyone should be remotely concerned about this is because he now controls the WSJ.

No, not for news. Try searching for "2009 election results" or "apple earnings 2009" and see if you can make sense of it (although "who beat rihanna" actually kind of worked). Nobody can use that crap. Even Google News doesn't provide usable news in their largest digest. FoxNews.com charging would be fun to watch, glad to see them go first.

The worst thing is, I think that I may remember that number for the rest of my life. What a waste of space.

And if you didn't get the joke,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ

WOOSH

It is trivial to write a script (on Windows or Unix) to simply attack the default gateway. Hopefully, that is what they do as opposed to using the default configuration, but maybe they aren't so cl3v4r.

Do you think that more people record passwords via CCTV cameras and RF, or shoulder surfing? Now what happens to that number when you remove masking?

Does masking help, yes. Is it fool-proof security, no. It is a layer, and a decent one at that. The biggest issue is that it does reveal length, which really is way too much. No echo is better.

If we let lusers decide for themselves, they would choose weak passwords, write them down on post-it notes and stick them to their screens, take out full-page adds in the New York Times with them in 256 pt Arial.

Seriously, end users don't understand security. Maybe it can be an advanced setting. ;-)

Unchecked, and with low thresholds, this can make it easy for a malicious person to deny service to valid users. Blocking requests from that particular IP address is a far safer option. Introducing long delays before authentication can be attempted again could also be used.

If you think that you are adding to security by locking out users that types the password in 5 times, 10 times, or maybe even 100 times, you are fooling yourself. If you require strong passwords (e.g. 3 classes, at least 8 characters), there is no way anyone is going to do an online dictionary attempt with that few amount of tries.

Right, and when we unmask all passwords, people will just shoulder surf, much easier! No recording equipment, plausible deniability, easy to do in public places. It's a real win-win.

I'm not sure that you really thought this through.

Are the two mutually exclusive?

Pretty much any benefit that post-reproductive individuals have on the survival of their offspring (or the species in general) is a "use" for those individuals.

Including, but not limited to:
hunting
gathering
meat (cannibalism)
war
care of other offspring

Am I missing something?