Seriously, why would you require conformity between all existing installers in such utter detail? Surely, we must allow some room for diversity.

The reason would be that when you are setting a password, it is much more important to get it right. Furthermore, this is normally a rare activity, so the risks of displaying the password are proportionally reduced. I'm not saying this reason necessarily outweighs the risk of shoulder surfing, but I don't think the argument is as black-and-white as you make it.

Perhaps because you didn't actually read the post before you entered rage mode and assumed (s)he was of opposing opinion?

This one is supposed to be older still, at an impressive age of 9550 years.

Indeed. However, the main issue as I see it isn't the ultimate fate of Aaron Swartz, but what lead up to it. His suicide is relevant only insomuch that it has drawn attention to what appears to be a rather gruesome prosecutorial overreach. These actions from these prosecutors (and possibly MIT, if it turns out that way) would be equally wrong, should Swartz have chosen to live on and endure.

It could probably be translated to "cohabitation partner". The legal term "sambo" refers to each of two people living together as a couple in a long-term relationship with a shared economy (like they were married). So simply sharing an apartment would not qualify from a legal perspective. (This is for example relevant if one of them were to die.)

...in a different country. (But don't let that detail stop you from being 99% sure.)

To be fair, isn't that a rather pointless description? The same could be said of any software that is developed evolutionary. Windows 8 is just a heavily modified version of Windows NT 3.1, Linux 3.6 is just a modified version of the original Intel 80386 exclusive release from 1991 that could run a maximum of 64 processes, and so on. It doesn't really tell you anything.

I'd take the word of anyone who has actually gone through implementing a complete X server over that of some random guy on slashdot, though.

This isn't exactly total guesswork. I live by the Baltic Sea, which for a long time has been over-fertilized by sewage treatment plants and agriculture in the surrounding countries, and vast areas of its bottom is today completely void of life due to oxygen depletion. I'm suspecting that by "possible" he means we have don't (yet) have any empirical evidence that it would also happen in that area of the ocean.

Well, so what? The intention may not have been to have the passwords written in plain text to a file, but they were. It doesn't matter how much you salt and encrypt the "master store" if you f*ck up and write them another file in clear text as well. They are there, readable on the disk. The fact that it was a log file doesn't diminish the error the least. In fact makes it even worse, since the security of a log file is likely not looked after to the same degree as a password database (as we can clearly see in this case, where they left it on an ftp). If you write clear text passwords along with user names to an unencrypted file under any circumstance whatsoever, you fail. If you have a clue about security, you simply never, ever do that!

And for that matter, what has invalid attempts got to do with it? Security through infinitesimal obscurity? Unless you have something like a million times as many invalid attempts as valid ones, it is of no consequence.

To be fair, there seem to be at most a few percent having lousy passwords. The other 98% or so of users deserve better protection, wouldn't you say?

Also, if you think about it, looking only at which passwords are the most common isn't a terribly useful metric of anything. If almost everyone choose very strong passwords (meaning few collisions) and 3 people choose "12345", then that would still be the most common password. In part precisely because the rest used strong passwords.

So, in other words, they were stored in plaintext.

Technologically, you don't really have to choose between a locked down cloud and native only apps. It would be perfectly possible to have independent cloud storage services working with web based applications storing data in open and standardized formats, letting you choose where to store your data and which applications to use to work with it. The problem is it's usually not in the interest of individual corporations to open up in this way -- it's easier to develop when you control the whole stack, and it makes it harder for customers to leave.

Indeed, organically grown vegetables often make less efficient use of land area -- not a problem per se, but since the World's population has already exceeded 7000 million, and is still growing, it is an important factor to consider.

I believe the most popular organic foods around here are actually dairy products, eggs and to some extent meat, mostly due to better treatment of animals. I also think organic bananas are quite popular, because of the banana industry's rather awful reputation of excessive chemical use and destruction of natural environments.

Interesting contradictory fact. Scroll down and look at the payment statistics. Linux users evidently pay about twice as much as Windows users when given the choice. I have bought two bundles before, and both times the pattern was the same as with the latest bundle.