At a place I used to work, one of my coworkers reported a simple potential security problem: the username for the admin account on all our machines is the same as the computer's name. This just eliminates one less thing for a hacker to figure out. He was accused of "snooping", whatever that means, and almost lost his job. The only thing that saved him is a higher-up with a brain.

Whenever I hear a story about a person\firm reporting security risks, I am reminded of the story of my coworker, and I have heard too many similiar stories. It has trained to me keep my mouth shut about these problems.

I got to this thread late, this may have been mentioned, but I wanted to explain my reason for adblocking websites. Ads come from a third party, usually. It's that simple. If I visit a site I know and trust, I enable scripting and active content on their page (No Script for Firefox). But, not for their advertising affiliates. I really have no idea where the ads are coming from. If the NY Times can get hit by rogue ad servers, anyone can. Yes, they are not a tech site, but they are a well established major web presence with security and policies on par with most others. ( Article here for that story http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10351460-83.html ). I agree there should be a balance somewhere, but when I visit a page, look at my No Script alert and see the page trying to load scripts from 15 websites aside from the one I'm at, I don't exactly feel inclined to add to their revenue stream.

My problem with it is entering a PIN to unlock a door; it's easire to just stick a key in and turn it. My car already has a remote unlocker, and all I have to do is push a button. It's a step forward from the mechanical key, having to enter a PIN is a step backwards.

Yes, insomnia and having atypical schedule are different. The OP equates the two. But I'd like to discuss the prejudice there is against people who get up late. For some reason generally people believe someone who gets up at noon is lazy. And someone who gets up at 3:00 pm is a misfit. Actually, civilization wouldn't function without people getting up at those times.

Except that was an OPEN BOX. But I agree about badness of the quarterly earning game. I did a lot of research about this and other problems of shareholder value and agency theory. I even submitted articles on this to both Slashdot and Reddit.

I just turn Flash off, except on sites that need it. (Actually, all plugins - Opera is all or nothing for a given site.)

And, one tech site that I'm on (come to think of it, it spun off of Ars circa 2000) actually watches the forums for complaints about the ads (from their content, to CPU hogging Flash, to unsolicited sound (maybe all sound, I forget.))

How is a child going to throw a kill switch placed under the dash to the door-side of the driver, like where the bonnet/hood release lever is normally positioned?

If your child is unruly enough to reach there while you're driving, and you are incompetent to prevent them, you already have a serious safety issue.

The n in cartoneros has the squiggle over the top (enya?), but I can't (or rather don't know how to) do it on this keyboard.

You're missing the point, bans work only as effectively as the means to enforce them are. Beer is easy to brew by oneself and marijuana is surprisingly hard to keep from being smuggled. The suggestion you're making isn't one that's particularly apt.

When I look at AWstats for my site:
Google 18020 pages (linked to from Google)
Google (Images) 976 pages
Bing 226 pages


And from Google Analytics:
Top traffic sources:
Google 26,738 visits 85.24%
Yahoo 676 visits 2.16%
Bing 346 visits 1.10%
Admittedly the site is not about shopping or entertainment - it's mainly about technical topics which maybe colors the results.

I've been seeing a lot of machines lately with the Bing Toolbar installed, and the client having no idea how it got there. Automated updates on a Windows machine are nice, but sometimes you get the latest helpful tool bar offering along with it. Sun Java, Adobe Flash, etc. often offer tool bars and other goodies that although are not harmful, might be unwanted. I'm not sure how much this would skew actual results, but it has to count for a few points of market share and larger reported install base of tool bars and hence search engine use.

Ned: Ned... Ryerson. "Needlenose Ned"? "Ned the Head"? C'mon, buddy. Case Western High. Ned Ryerson: I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing! Ned Ryerson: got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson: I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple times until you told me not to anymore? Well?

Phil: Ned Ryerson?

Ned: Bing!

Phil: Bing.

So because someone's job is to teach people about a being of questionable existence, he should be exempt from taxes? If they want to be a charity, register as a charity. If you want to be a religion, you should get taxed. Teaching people about beings of questionable existence (you say only god X exists? Man down the road says only god Y exists. Clearly there is question to which one, if either, exists) isn't something society should be forced to burden.

"If you pay this contractor, we guarantee this contractor will provide this minimal service."

But he doesn't have to pay. And it's not called slavery, it's the conditions if you to agree if you want to provide that service, but no one forces you to enter that business. It's no more slavery than an EULA.

No, it means a large number of people thought the MP3 is what it *should* sound like. Most people are use to crappy music encodes these days, so wouldn't realise higher quality encodes as it should sound like.

Doesn't help that the DAC/ADC etc are pretty poor in the common mans PC too, and the higher quality ones of those also have some awesome DSP that can help get over some of the deficiencies in the encoding. I wonder if that USB card they used allowed them to totally deactivate all DSP. My ASUS D2X allows me to do such, but most cards do not.

If it was true that people just couldn't tell the difference the results for choosing one over the other would be roughly equal.