While I do agree that the company that leaked the data should be fined for every record that was stolen, hacking does have to have a punishment to curtail it. It is true that there is no perfect security, at some point there exists some hacker who given the time and will to crack your system, they will probably get in. Combine that with the fact that the cost to secure a system is exponentially higher then the tools it requires to crack the system and you run into the case that if hacking were legal none of our information would ever be safe again.

However, the problem is there are also simple solutions to stop this sort of attack from being possible. For instance on the web page I run I have session variables that are checked on every page load, and if they do not match what I expect then they get thrown back to the log on screen. I also don't execute anything from the address bar outside of quotes and I strip any ' characters from the address bar to ensure that no-one can simply escape to their code. That said I am sure I have missed something, but I am a one man developer at a small company that handles mostly public information. There should be laws enforcing companies like AT&T to pick up their act when it comes to security, not to crush those who find the holes in said security. While I don't condone what he did, I also agree that he should not be spending 3 years in jail for it, at worst their should be a fine, but at the same time AT&T should also be fined for every record that was stolen in this method in the same way as the HIPAA laws call for.

They are not just used to test for success, for instance in my case I was tested in the 4th grade and came up with a 138. BUT they had not tested me just for that, they tested me because although I was excelling at math and science I could not write a compound sentence. So after the test showed I had the capacity to learn they pushed to keep me in the highest level of classes and also put me in special education in order to give me additional teaching in English. Now I am writing my dissertation for a PhD in Computer Science and I am grateful for the additional help. Without that testing they most likely would have dropped me into remedial English and I would have been lucky to get in to college with the essay I would have written never mind made it into graduate school.

First off, Pluto was originally called a planet back before all of the objects that are in the same orbit as Pluto were spotted, thus under the definition that a planet must clear its orbit fails. Second if kilobytes are so clear and unambiguous, why do hard drive manufacturers consider them 1000 bytes when all computer scientists and programmers consider them 1024? http://www.glyphtech.com/suppo...

So funny, I wish I had mod points for this.

There is currently not a push for 4K TV's and content because the current network throughout the US is largely incapable of transmitting 4K content. 4K requires around 15-20 Mbps while the average in America is 7.4 Mbps. This is pathetic and needs to be upgraded

Missing Option: Traded in to upgrade to a new phone.

Exactly, in most cases piracy is a indication of a service problem. It is amazing the number of times I have and have seen others have to pirate a game I already own, just because the DRM-copy fails to function as advertised due to draconian DRM restrictions. Furthermore the pirated copy doesn't require things such as disks in the CD drive which I would rather not have to look for. On the other hand all of the games I have gotten off of Steam, although using Steam's DRM system, I have not had to pirate because their system just works for me.

Whenever a pirated copy is better then the legal copy, there is something wrong with the legal copy.

Exactly, and apparently the students are being better monitored for the study, every time I was bullied in the past it was while no one was watching or around, and I almost never reported it. That said it is only a matter of time until some kid is seriously hurt (or killed) falling out of a tree (or similar activity) and regardless of the effects on bullying those rules will be right back in place.

I believe the parent was thinking of the incoming FTP port not the outgoing port. This does show however the common problem that the average person does not understand how most of this technology works, and many of them believe that they have secured themselves with steps such as above when in reality all they have done is made themselves feel safer without any actual security in place.

The number of times I have accidently clicked on an ad Download button instead of the actual download button on sites I am not familiar with is astounding. I always have caught on quickly, stopped the incorrect download and then gone looking for the correct one, but as a Comp Sci PhD candidate and computer security practitioner, the fact that it can fool me even for a minute is astounding. Sites really should remove ads that confuse where you should be clicking to download what you came there for.

Exactly, the hashes are the best way to tell the two apart and anyone downloading software from the internet should learn how to check them.

For reference you can find FileZilla's hashes at:

http://sourceforge.net/project...

Or to get their yourself go to Download, then click on "Show additional download options" and it will be the last one in the list.

I agree, it is a rather dissenting opinion here on Slashdot but he even stated in an interview with the South China Morning Post that he only took the job in order to gain access to privileged information for the sole purpose of leaking classified information. Now maybe some of the information that he leaked shouldn't have been classified but as to the NSA breaking the law the courts have ruled that they were not. There is a big divide between being a whistle-blower and a traitor and I think he crossed that line significantly and should have the book thrown at him. Remember any clemency we give to this guy will result in more people thinking it is OK and possibly harming national security. Just because you don't agree with everything that is done to keep our nation safe does not mean that some of it isn't necessary and could result in meaningless deaths that could have been avoided.