So there's absolutely nothing unusual there.

Which is sad, really.

The 9/11 attacks are more successful than Bin Laden probably ever dreamed of.
The terrorists have won.

This isn't really "loudness", it's "compression".
And it's been done for years on commercial radio and, more recently, on TV adverts.
Every album you listen to has been mastered or mixed with compression of some sort on the master tracks.

A good example of how things have changed: listen to Violently Happy by Bjork for an example of when Compression is done correctly (i.e. subtle), then listen to any autotuned crap made within the last 2 years (Ke$ha) for an example of when not to do it.

A bit off topic, but I was always amused by the fact that when you play versus the computer 1v1 in Starcraft 2, the computer says "gg" when it realises that they can't possibly win.
And then they surrender.

I'm just waiting for the days when they start swearing at you and you can't tell the difference between AI and a person.

I think the more important question here is: are they (the companies) being attacked more or are they being more honest about being breached?

Another pet hate of mine is those stupid fucking disclaimers at the bottom of emails sent from companies.
They usually bang on about "if this email has been sent in error you agree to delete it and inform the sender and must not disclose the contents to a third party... " etc.
Yeah right...what a load of bollocks.

I'm not a lawyer but I'm betting that virtually all of this junk is legally unenforceable because to enter into any kind of agreement or legal contract you have to agree to it first - that's why it's called an agreement...
Email sent by mistake can be considered the same as spam - unsolicited email.

I've not got a massively popular surname, but thanks to having a FirstInitialSurname@gmail account, I get tons of the stuff.

I've had the following:

- Job offer for the Vice President of Communications (ha!) for the Carlyle Group
- Invoices from storage companies
- Bills from Qwest Communications which unbelievably include a temporary username/password to log into the customer's account, imagine the fun to be had here
- Party invitations
- Bank statements
- Random email conversations that I have been CC'd into
- Pictures sent from mobile phones (usually by the owner to what they think is their email address)

Occasionally I email back, but most of the time I don't bother - it's their own damn fault.

Root does matter, but if I were writing Mac malware I would grab their Safari passwords then try a "sudo -i" with each one on the system.
You can bet most users will use the same password for websites as they do for their computer login.

Also, I'm not sure how feasible it would be - but it would be theoretically possible to flag a binary setuid by modifying the underlying filesystem or exploit another binary which is already set to +s.
And then, boom - root access.

Ummm, what viruses would it be looking for? There aren't any real, in the wild Mac viruses unless you count Mac Guard, which barely qualifies and is only delivered via trojan that happens to spawn a separate app at run time.

Windows malware.
Say your colleague gives you .zip archive full of files that he's worked with on a Windows machine and wants you to review some of the data for whatever reason (imagine they are some kind of self-extracting Powerpoint .exe files along with the source .ppt files).
One of the files is infected, but you would have no idea until you email your company CEO the archive and infect his machine...
Most machines in workplaces will share SMB drives between Mac and Windows machines - this is a good example of why you need an AV program for every computer no matter the OS.