Unless they were milled from a block of gold, no headphones are worth $350, much less $500.

Well, they did use the word "fired", which to me means "for cause". I've never been anywhere that would _fire_ a person and let them walk back to their desk and keep working. Layoff's and "down sizing", maybe, but even there care must be taken to avoid letting a pissed (now or soon to be) ex-employee back where they could make a mess.

Too lazy (or stupid) to use a search engine?

Here's one to get you started... http://cs.unc.edu/~fabian/pape... Feel free to continue down the rabbit hole from their references.

Well, yeah, that's other drawback... a ceramic rotor won't take much abuse before shattering. (that said, my brake pads are ceramic.) And they aren't balanced for 10k RPM. The steel ones can cope with it better, but I wouldn't trust them at that speed for long -- enough for a run, sure -- and never more than once. (after a full braking, I would never trust them again.)

In order for friction to destroy steel, it needs to actually wear it away one particle at a time.

Not entirely correct. While that may be the most common aging / failure method on a road car. On a race car, heat effects are what kills rotors -- of all construction. When you heat a steal (cast iron) rotor near (or past) the glass transition point (the point where it "melts", or transitions from solid to liquid) it will wear quickly and unevenly, begin to warp, and start developing cracks. Look at any used rotors from a race car; almost all of them have small, spider cracks in the braking surface from the repeated heat cycles. (heat causes metal to expand, but the heat isn't applied evenly over the entire disc, and it's a circle so the inside will expand more than the outside.)

But yes, in this equation, mass wins. Carbon fibre is great for many repeated, brief, super high heat cycles -- which is why F1 uses them. In this case, it's one HUGE prolonged dump of energy. That sort of thing will shatter a carbon rotor.

And none of that is remotely a secret. Wow, they stole a page out of a phone book! (mostly, email and DoB are a google away.)

There has been volumes of research proving the exact opposite. Increased complexity and forced password changes invariably lead to much weaker passwords. People find a password they can remember that passes the (often idiotic) complexity rules, and add a rotating tag (0, A, symbol, etc.) to the beginning or end every time they're forced to change it. Or WORSE, they write it down and stick it on the monitor, wall next to the monitor, side of the computer, etc.

Actually, once a code is used, it cannot be reused. So even if you watched me login, and typed in the exact same thing within seconds, SecureID would deny the second login, and most likely flag the account -- your next login would be answered with a "next code" challenge. (I've worked at a place that would disable your account if that happens.)

Already happening. (note: most things that have the bandwidth to actually be useful for such things a) don't run SNMP (colo hosts), or b) are run by people with a clue who limit access to SNMP.)

Actually, for phones that have GPS, when dialing a recognized emergency number (911 in the US), the phone automatically enables the GPS and sends it's location. You don't even have to speak for police/fire/rescue to find you.

Correction... they know the address of where the line is supposed to terminate. If you tap the line, which is trivial -- and also a felony in the US, it's very hard to know where the caller actually is. And if there are bridge taps on the line -- which is still a large number today, it's that much harder to trace, as the line literally branches all over the place.

...or a buttset (aka. lineman's handset) at a crossbox. There's still a lot of POTS in the world, and those boxes are the least "secure" shit around.

VoIP "toll fraud" (hacking, spoofing, out-right theft, etc.) is by far the world leader today.

*cough*VoIP*cough* (toll fraud is everywhere)

It's *possible*, but the attacker would have to be close enough for almost any weapon to be useless from the start. I.e. if you want until the attacker is touching you to draw, it's not going to go well. If she draws at 6 feet, the gun will be empty by the time the attacker gets to her. (and hopefully, some of those bullets will have hit said attacker -- in a panic, your aim will be "off".)

Indeed. They were sniffing around the College of Textiles (!) in '95 when I was graduating. We were one of the few departments that required FORTRAN (77).

(I had been campaigning since '93 to stop that shit. 'tho it paid well as a Lab Instructor (aka "TA".) They switched to Java (ugg) in '96-97.)