Bear in mind, the kid has been charged, not convicted. I would agree, if found guilty, with your reasoning; until then, you're proving a point that may or may not need to be made.

In other words, when you get older, a twat is a twat, tits are tits, and you'll stop minding the jiggly bits in between as much.

Problems I see here...

ICCIDs as sequential numbers - Untrue. 89nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn1 may be a valid ICCID; if it is, 89nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn2 will not be (where n are digits). There may be a pattern utilised, but n+1 is not a reliable method for a given known ICCID.

He immediately alerted the media - Not the company? Sure, the public might have need or right to know, and though his intentions were more or less good, giving up details of an exploit without giving the (in this case) company a good-faith chance to fix what went wrong--thus giving the black-hat types a window to do what they will, with probably more nefarious intent--is in NO way responsible behaviour.

There was no evidence that the addresses were disseminated - gives guy some leeway on the ID theft and probably fraud charges. Conspiracy to commit unauthorized access charge, though? Pretty much indefensible, and probably a non-issue if he'd made a good-faith effort to bring this directly to AT&T's attention and/or if it hadn't been used to the extent of 100k+ addresses.

That said, AT&T isn't in the clear here. Further efforts could have been made on their part to secure this information, though an email address doesn't mean or lead to much except for those a) in the spam business or b) with more nefarious purposes and the appropriate tools at hand, ready to use. Is a stiff sentence fair here? I don't believe so, but nor is acquittal.

To a point, I'll agree; being a person who has played mostly online (though not horribly well), there are ways of figuring people out (betting patterns, how they jabber if they participate in any sort of chat either during or between hands) that serve as fairly rough analogues. These don't translate well to live games in and of themselves, but folks who play live games and dabble online that I've known tend to key in on those things when (naturally) nothing else is available, with slightly decreased returns.

Even when I escape to the real world (the one that exists for a few hours when the children sleep and vulgar language is allowed), I can't escape mention of that little bastard whose only resemblance to a square is the fact that his faces (not the space where his annoying face-parts are, but rather the surface faces of the prism of his being) are quadrilaterals (rectangles, in fact).

What. The. Fuck.

- Online gambling - More or less gambling of most any sort...otherwise online poker sites wouldn't have to set up shop in the Isle of Man to begin with, this isn't an internet issue.

- "Obscene" or violent porn, even if only acted - [citation needed]

- Ordering cheaper medical drugs from other countries - Import laws apply here, not necessarily internet related (the 'net only makes it a bit easier)

- Ordering pot or drugs - Laws against well predate a prevalent internet

- Sharing knowledge if it's copyrighted - Not directly the Government's will; most of that is civil litigation, though it might be enabled by poor legislation.

- Sharing entertainment if it's copyrighted - See above

- Revealing wrongdoing within US government (Wikileaks) - Might have a point here...certainly, there's some stuff that ends up in closets that shouldn't be, but let's also note that the DoJ hasn't directly done anything on this front, they're only probing as hard as they can.

- Posting knowledge of how to make bombs or certain other technical information - I can agree with letting this information be free, just go after the asshats who use it...

- Implementing your application or website in a certain way if it's software patented - Yes, patents are bullshit, but in a sane world, companies wouldn't try and patent a method for someone moving their finger across a glass surface for a distinct surface...i.e., companies don't have to patent the blatantly obvious.

- Anything else that hurts the business of Big Money Intangible Industries (Pharma, RIAA, MPAA, BSA) - Don't even really know what you're getting at here. You seem to be getting on a Copyright point, addressed above.

That said, the only things the US Government is really only actively cracking down on are alleged large scale piracy sites; and that only by domain seizure. Compare that to other locales where SWAT are engaged and seize equipment, the whole nine yards, talk to me then.

It's more the hypocrisy being showcased than anything. Apple are more than happy to go after a generic name that they just happened to use, and so did Amazon--yet, at the same time, they're doing the same damn thing with this. If they hadn't taken Amazon to task for using App Store, this bit would be pretty much non-issue (likewise, if they had chosen a variation on the name...maybe, 'Wireless Sync', or perhaps 'iSync' even)--then it would be simply a matter of whether or not Apple already had this in the pipe when it was submitted, and if not, if they took the idea of their own...and to a lesser degree, if they were already working on this or something like it, was it right to prevent a third-party from having their app out there being as they had no suitable solution in place themselves at the time.

And BOOM goes the dynamite.

Thank god I set my beer down before getting this far down in the comment thread, or my monitor would have required the attention of some Lysol wipes.

Sidenote: Voicemail can somewhat tell people how full your voicemail is, by whether it's ABSOLUTELY full or not (which is my preferred voicemail status, if I'm not able to set up call forwarding to my own LRN).

But yes, Read-receipts are a pain, and I never let my mail client send them. Usually the people who want to know if I've read their message are the ones (in my experience) who are just wanting to be sure I've read their bullshit excuses for not doing their job, and want to continue not doing their job even though I've spelled out for them what steps they need to take. Such is the life of the customer-facing group versus the non-customer-facing asshats.

Just be careful around Bill, will ya?

Ghostbusters?

You're right, those are all examples of overkill.

However, it is about the only way to get the woman in your life--mom or significant other--to make you a goddam sandwich.

I think the point that's being made is that people need to be a little more educated on shit like this (or, alternately, that people aren't paying attention to or are too dumb to comprehend the reliable information out there).

I think most of us understand that this is meant to prey on those who are a little less wise with their systems. Any good scam targets the idiots, because a successful scam generally depends on the target not seeing that 1 and 1 aren't making 2 any longer.

Did this on HS with an admin account I found perusing the Active Directory. Except, instead of moving the icons, I used a VBScript-created error box that looked real bad, and wouldn't go away when clicked on (it was there in the screencap).

The freshmen and teachers panicked for a few minutes, and a day or two later, that admin account was gone. But not the other two, named Test2 and Test3.