A resignation might look better than a firing to a prospective next employer. Of course, if the resignation or firing is in response to a well-publicized event that point is moot...

You forgot pedophilia

A nice story indeed, but utter bullshit. It has enough snippets sounding vaguely plausible, and similar enough to real facts, but assembled in a way that makes it wrong. To get info about the real deal about the A20 address line, check Wikipedia instead. Interestingly this wikipedia article is also linked from the "nice story" article.

Here's where the "nice story" is wrong:

1. The keyboard controller is actually located on the motherboard, and available even if no keyboard is connected. Its job is to talk to the keyboard, but it's not part of the keyboard itself
2. the A20 issue is not at all due to the BIOS memory test
3. Re-enabling wrap-around for real-mode programs doesn't involve any computing power anywhere. So, no need to find a co-processor that is "idle", you only need to find one with a spare I/O line

The real explanation for the strange error message is actually the following: "No keyboard (or broken keyboard) connected to the computer. How could anybody possibly use a computer without a keyboard? Please connect a (working) keyboard to the computer, and Press F1 when done".

It's still stupid, but for a different reason (servers don't need keyboards). That's why modern BIOSes allow you to disable keyboard check, if you want to deliberately run your computer without a keyboard.

If you already had to wait for 20 minutes listening to elevator music for this call, you think twice before considering that option... :-(

What if you work in a company or administration that doesn't allow you to install the software you need? In such case, you might well be forced to stoop to using Notepad or Wordpad for lack of a more sensible choice... :-(

... or even better: we are able to say with almost 100% certainty that it will rain sometimes next year (we're just unable to tell the specific days, obviously...)

So, even if some aspects of a chaotic system are not predictable (almost by definition...), others are.

Not really...

... and this patch makes MinGW use its own implementation of printf (and family...), rather than trusting Microsoft's buggy version.

Sounds like pressure cookers really have gone out of fashion, if people think they are that big. Hint: only slightly larger than a normal pot.

Think about it: if it fits into a backpack (he!), it fits into the trunk of any car, no matter how small.

I think GP meant, "why should the e-commerce site care, after the customer has already left his money on the table".

The correct answer would be "the repeat customer", but maybe those sites that are pulling such stunts deliver such shitty service or merchandise that it would be highly unlikely that a customer ever came back, even if the checkout page loaded faster...

If that were the case, the mountains would actually need to displace less of the heavier mantel material than they otherwise would (because part of the load would be absorbed by the crust around), so a hypothetical observer standing on a mountain would still observe more mass beneath him than his colleague standing in a plain.

The only way it could work is if actually the plains were "supported" by the mountains rather than the other way round, but that somehow sounds unlikely...

So, in a way, it would behave light an iceberg floating on water. However, what I don't get is why there's less mass beneath, rather than equal amount. Indeed Archimedes stated:

Or even better: Yubikey is an authentication token that acts as a USB keyboard that "types" a long one-time password at the press of a button.

Actually, it supplies the password. When you plug it into an USB port, it acts as a keyboard, and "types" a one-time password as soon as you touch its button.

Huh? How does being connected to a computer guarantee that it is tamper proof? Or is that the other way round?

Actually, methinks the issue here is poor word choice. Yubi should have touted their product as "tamper evident" rather than "tamper proof".

For its main application, tamper evident is enough. If some ill intentioned third party wanted to read the seed from the Yubikey's chip, they can, but it will be very obvious to the owner that this has been done (casing is gone), and so the owner can have his key blacklisted by his provider (making the seed worthless for the attacker).

Oh, an if you're worried about a "fast" attacker that uses the pilfered credentials immediately, rather than sleeping on them for a while: he can achieve this much easier by just stealing the yubikey, and using it normally, rather that bothering to dissolve its casing first.

Good point on that one. Accidental destruction (causing hassle, but not a security issue) is indeed a real concern with the device.

In simple words: It's a bounty on finding bugs in their terrestrial infrastructure (reservation web sites, etc.), not in their on-board systems.

Scanning of networks is allowed, but only their ground networks.

... and even if a satellite stayed in place forever, they wouldn't stay operational that long. In less than twenty years, all its transponders would go silent, and it would just be an inert mass, just like my roomba without electricity and a full dust pan.