With pointers, I thought the general rule was just to be careful to avoid other peoples' eyes (especially with laser pointers. IIRC this can be seen as assault.)

As far as bits are concerned, bits of what?

Not entirely sure the focus on slamming Apple for this was due to their profile... perhaps more for their obscene profit margins being made at the workers' expense. Sure, most of the big names in tech were turning a profit at the expense of the poor down-trodden factory workers, but, on the face of things, none in so blatant a way as Apple.

Another point to consider is that journalists want their stories to strike a chord with their readers, and this is most easily done by making the story personally identifiable to the reader. They had a story about Foxconn. Response of most potential readers - "So what? Who are they?" Now the writer needs to make it identifiable to the reader, so they pull out a list of Foxconn's clients and look for the one most likely to elicit a "Oh, I know who they are... So they push their workers til they make like lemmings, do they?!?" type response, because more readers will identify with the story, and therefore buy more papers. I've worded this for written media, but it could just as easily apply to tv or radio journalists. The choice of Apple from the list of Foxconn's clients was due to the instant recognition the name would trigger. Had they chosen, for example, Acer, most outside the tech arena (unless they had an Acer product themselves) would have responded with "So not only do I not know who Foxconn are, I don't know who Acer is either! Why should I give a damn about companies I've never heard of exploiting workers half a world away?" The Apple brand, on the other hand, has become so pervasive that for many their devices are considered "de rigueur" and thereby their name has permeated society.

I'm not suggesting that there is intent in (the majority of) the media to paint Apple in a bad light, but bad news sells better than good news, but any news sells better if it is personable. If you can take a bad news story and tie it to a pervasive brand, readership goes up.

On the other hand, I could be wrong. Maybe there really is some massive media conspiracy to try to force the great unwashed to perceive different companies in different ways. Until I see concrete evidence, however, I'm prepared to work along the lines of "never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by lazy reporting" (My apologies to Hanlon).

...you mean like your spelling "faux pas"?

Your post doesn't have to be directly security-related for the business to be placed at risk when you get suckered by social engineering attacks.

That being said, even my comment above was kinda tongue-in-cheek attempt at playing devils' advocate. I'm sad to say that we live in a world where I don't honestly think that any but the tiniest proportion of those businesses requesting FB (or any other, for that matter) passwords would be doing so for the reason I stated.

Fact of the matter is, it's an employers' market at the moment, so unless it is specifically legislated against, employers will use these and any other dirty tricks they like to help narrow down their pool of candidates. Whilst, in an ideal world, anyone who gives such information to a (potential) employer should not be considered for the job for security reasons, my concern is that instead, whether they ultimately use the password or not, the employer will simply hire those that co-operate due to seeing them as being more compliant, lacking the ability to think for themselves and therefore ideal worker-drone material.

...may not apply, as the act of handing over your password may be considered by the court to be at the very least a de-facto, possibly even de-jure, grant of authorisation to access the data/system in question. Furthermore, the definition of "computer" in the statute would only protect your pc, it does not appear to be worded in a way that protects your accounts and data held on FB's computers.

Potentially, you could be putting yourself on the hook as conspiring to commit such a breach. Whether the fact that you would be in breach of FB's TOS means that any further access you make to FB's systems is considered "without proper authorisation" or "exceeds authorised access" may be something of a grey area.

I should make clear, however, that IANAL and, furthermore, even if I was, I'm in the UK, so would unlikely be considered an expert in US laws.

I'm thinking (hoping) more of a security/sanity check. i.e. If you're daft enough to give it to them, they'll drop you from the interview list as a high risk to social engineering attacks against them.

Not to mention repairs caused by collisions occurring when the vehicle locks up mid-update. This may save the dealers from having to expend hours (billable to MB) on warranty software updates, but may increase the workload of their body-shops.

On the other hand, they could be sensible about it and have a system whereby updates never happen whilst the ignition is in the on position, updates are downloaded to a separate area of the firmware chip and hashes compared to ensure viability before being made accessible, possibly also with a reference version stored in ROM in case all else fails. If they have any plans to get anything along these lines out the doors without TÜV standing in their way, they'll no doubt be implementing at least one or more of these.

Brings to mind a wonderful quote from Ted Lowe, commentating on a snooker match for the BBC.

From TFS:

Glad to see it's still situation normal around here with few reading TFS, and fewer still TFA. They say the Slashdot effect has mostly disappeared due to advances in server capabilities, but I'm starting to think it's because the percentage of us who actually bother to follow the links is dwindling into insignificance!

Personally, my first solution was laser-mapping of the structure. Then I thought that what was probably more likely was some kind of ridiculously cumbersome database with all such structures incorporated into it to feed into the navigation system alongside mapping data such that that type of route is avoided. In other words, whilst I like the phrase "convertible trailer", I think the boffins at Google should be able to prevent such an occurrence from becoming commonplace.