As of 10am EST this morning I have completely secured the Internet. The NSA director and my immediate management have been notified. I closed the ticket.

This is hilarious. A company specializing in identity theft prevention could not safeguard personal data of its own employees. The problem, of course, is not that some bigwig mistakenly sent a spreadsheet with names and SSNs. The problem is that such a spreadsheet existed in the first place and how it was released is really a secondary issue. I assume the guy just downloaded this information from HR database and put it in a spreadsheet for his personal managerial convenience. Probably so he can make pretty pie charts of the upcoming layoffs. This medieval approach to storing and transmitting employee PII suggests a possibility that KCI treats personal information of its customers in a similar manner.

I agree and I blame the comic book industry's irresponsible, apolitical position on the issue. I think more comics should be dedicated to in-depth discussion of new legislation. Who owns the copyright on the character of the Socialistman?

It doesn't, actually. It is much easier for an "OK" programmer, sysadmin, network admin, etc. working as a teacher in school to find a better paying job in the industry than it is for an "OK" mathematician, chemist, or physicist. Unless you work at the Max Plank Institute for Physics or the Fermilab, chances are most commercial organizations have more IT staff than they do scientists.

You also need to consider what education your teachers received themselves. Physics, math, chemistry have well-established curricula at most colleges. Comp Sci, on the other hand, is still very much work in progress. As every other problem with our education system, low quality of IT education in schools is caused by a combination of factors. I attended school in USSR. I had programming classes and the teacher sucked. In every other respect the school was top-notch. Entry-level teaching positions back in those days paid much better than similar engineering positions.

I think the most important factor is lack of established college programs that teach IT education, as opposed to just IT. Being a brilliant mathematician, for example, doesn't necessarily qualify one as a good math teacher. I consider myself a proficient programmer and sysadmin, but when someone asks me to explain something to them, after a couple of minutes I just want to punch him in the face. So, probably, a teaching career would not be the optimal choice for me.

Your point is...?

Incidentally, if you run a business that mails purchases to IL, that means you have customers there, ergo, you conduct business in the state. Not a complicated concept.

Lenovo is not breaking any new ground here. My 1.5-year-old Toshiba Qosmio can with face-recognition software. The software works equally well with my face or a 1:1 photo of my face - either color or b/w. I think I will stick with passwords for now.

Let me also make a guess, you don't think you are a moron, do you? From my personal experience of living next to a well-respected university for the past fifteen years - after graduating from that same university - this is just a place were people who think they are smart naturally congregate. The people who are in fact smart prefer to congregate at the Cote d'Azure. Hopefully, one of these days I will finally do something smart that will allow me to sell my house in New Jersey to someone in need of proximity to the academia. And I will settle for groping silicone tits at some Mediterranean resort.

Perhaps, but it would appear that the real problem is the incompetent assgobblins holed up in the US Patent and Trademark Orifice. I think a good first step would be to introduce compulsory IQ testing at the USPTO and lay off employees scoring below seventy, confiscating all of their square pegs and round holes. The remaining six patent analysts should be offered early retirement with full benefits and a conciliatory "years of service" plaque.

Congrats, you are an idiot.

If I was Russia's prime minister, I would hire a recent comp sci grad as my anti-spam adviser. You know, somebody fresh out of college, unburdened with superfluous knowledge; somebody who once read a book about spamming. This way my reputation as a thrifty and ethical bureaucrat would be safe with the Russian tabloids.

One of the HP Linux clusters I support has an odd mix of WD and Seagate SATA drives. The system is about a year old. The drives are arranged into hardware RAID sets of four usually with one Seagate and three WDs in the mix. When one disk fails and the red LED doesn't come on, figuring out which disk went bad is a real drag. I am lazy, so I assume its a Seagate and just replace it with a spare. I would say four out of five times it is the Seagate that fails.

The word "won" has a positive connotation not appropriate in this particular case.

Probably because it makes sense. Most pharmaceutical companies are publicly traded and their primary obligation is to the shareholders and not to the customers. If you can charge a customer fifty grand for one course of chemo treatment for the rest of his life, then what is the incentive to find a cure? It's the process that makes them money, not the end result.

A tearful story usually follows comments like mine: what about all those wonderfully dedicated researchers working for the pharmaceutical companies day and night searching for the cure? Well, I follow the news, so I am sure I will hear if they actually cure cancer.

As you know, when it comes to intellectual property rights, common logic rarely applies. Stranger things have happened.