This is what passes for hacking these days? Scraping publicly available information and sharing it? Puh-leeze.

Thanks slashdot, for allowing crap like this to get into my RSS reader.

Listen man, The best system administrator is the one who keeps things running smoothly. I want the most BORING SA report-out ever. I don't want to see graphs and charts with spikes and trends, I want UPTIME. Flat lines. Predictability. If there are problems, face into those and knock them out. Shift that flat line upward once in a while and wow them with your ability to troubleshoot and problem solve. But if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and remember that executives need to focus on other things to ensure you keep your job. Uptime and reliability are paramount from the executive standpoint. Good questions.

Users are accepting of system outages when it's their personal stuff, and even then, only barely. When your clients start asking for "Free IT Stuff", remind them that nothing is free, and that when Gmail goes down, there is nothing you, as their support staff, can do about it. And yes, confidentiality is important, and no, Google doesn't provide it.

"Cheap 2.0".

When it comes to authentication, or any security scheme for that matter, I'll take the "as proven as it gets" mechanism, whose weaknesses are known and more easily mitigated. When someone proposes something new like this, my inclination is to wonder how long until it is hacked and beaten.

The answer depends on the nature of the websites you built, how critical they are to their owners, and the sensitivity of the data contained in them. In other words, if you built a few blog sites or simple DB-driven PHP inventory sites, you're not likely to invite any potent hackers for there is no payoff. However, if you are protecting critical data (PII), or the sites are mission-critical, you will need to invest resources to properly defend them. I imagine you live someplace in the middle, so Google for the top ten web security threats and start at the top.

In short, read something, dude. The only difference between a developer and a white hat is knowledge. Get some.

Doesn't ease of use make it superior rather than inferior? Your comment reminds me of how lots of programmers reacted to the .Net framework ---

"This is script kiddy stuff that requires zero programming skill!"

You're absolutely right. Now don't let the door hit you on your way out.