The fundamental problem here isn't the data loss (other than a possible loss of privacy), but one of what someone other than the authorized owner of that information can do with it. Credit reporting agencies, property title offices, passport offices, and a whole host of other people need a much stronger form of authentication. These fools have ignored this problem for years, and impose costs not only on the victims but on everyone else due to prosecution, police investigation, etc..

From a practical security perspective, security on data use is really limited to the "something you have" aspect (i.e. your name/SSN/DoB/address), less on the "something you know" and rarely the "something you are" categories. Both government and private industry needs to wake up and start making it much more difficult for people to have anything bad done to them simply because someone uses their data ON TOP of mandating cryptography and security for information (which I deem to be separate concepts).

An idea - digitally sign the hash of a person's fingerprint, retina, signature and a non-obvious PIN (i.e. pictures, phrases, numbers, questions), put the root certificate authority in a government-controlled secure bunker or military base with FIPS 140 secured HSMs and multiple independent layered checks and balances, and use the signature/verification chain for both government and commercial uses.

That man in the middle would still be selling dial-up if it weren't for the Google offerings that consumers want, specifically Youtube. There are others too such as Hulu and Veoh and even the major TV networks' sites that stream episodes on demand, plus all the Shoutcast streaming radio stations.

What this is really about is whether the ISPs still have common carrier status, and how that conflicts with their vertical service integration for services like TV and phone. These ISPs are charging for what is either free or for less money elsewhere.

The solution is very simple. The FCC grants the ability for these anti-net-neutrality ISPs to charge whatever they like for whatever content they choose to carry over their networks, in exchange for the return of every government subsidy and grant given over the last five decades, with interest, in addition to the rescission of their common carrier status. The government can then take that money and give it to companies that will act like common carriers and build net-neutral data infrastructure.

One of the consequences of Rambus' actions is that standards bodies now take extraordinary measures to ensure that all contributors fully disclose all ideas that could be patented by the company so that they don't get submarined by them. Evem VESA, which is a video standards body, got to the point where all of their calls start out with a disclaimer by the moderator saying something to the effect of: "You cannot discuss patented or soon-to-be-patented ideas, and the contributor releases all claims to the same for use by members of the organization." All of this because of the way the Rambus situation panned out legally over the last decade.

On a slightly related note, there are all sorts of Rambus fanboi trolls who go around and post some nonsense that JEDEC is an evil cartel and that Rambus helped teach the industry how to build memory. A recent story on this subject on the EE Times website had deleted a post saying exactly this, and I've seen it in many different forums, financial and technical. The stock story being foisted all over the web s especially funny considering the old P4 i815 chipset could never take more than two RAMBUS RIMMs (despite having three slots) because of unresolvable signal integrity issues.

laptops.

ie. on the road: single processor running
jacked in: dual processor