I fear it is a common occurrence. The problem is not so much risk, as the IT professionals are generally safer about where they go on the web. The problem is one of perception, and of policy. When IT professionals ignore stated policy and do what they like, it tends to do several things. One is resentment, and it helps degenerate the relationships between It and the users, which hurts the company. The second problem is it creates problems amonst policy. If IT doesn't follow policy, then users may feel free to ignore or go around policy as well. In addition it makes policy harder to enforce, when some people get away with ignoring policy while others are punished for the same. If you have a good security department, they will make sure policy is enforced equally for all users, otherwise your policy is as bad as never haven been written at all. I am sure I will get slammed by some here for saying it, but it is true. IT needs to foster better relationships with its users. One way to do that is not to ignore policy, and pretend it doesn't apply to you. Your security is at stake here, and the bottom line of the company.

It would also seem popular amongst people who vote. Massachusetts had, on the ballot last year, a proposed change to the marijuana laws, reducing the offense for being busted for marijuana to a $100 fine. It had no problems passing.

I can see it now, a big Jedi crime wave! We must take action against the Jedi who have no respect for the rule of the senate and continue to cause problems in the outer rim!

Ummm, while a hoodie is generic, and may lend an air of anonymity to the criminal, a Jedi robe would not. You would have a VERY hard time in court saying that wasn't you. If you are shoplifting in Jedi robes and they nab you, they will have a very easy time convicting you based on the surveillance tapes, face or no. How many people wander around in Jedi robes?

It depends greatly upon the contract he signed. If he released copyright to all songs written during that period, then he will not win. If the contract is simply limited to seven albums, and the rights to music on those albums (as opposed to music written for the albums, whether or not they made it on) then he may have some recourse. Without knowing what the contract involves it is very hard to say.

Funny that the leadership of Scientology is looking more and more like the big bad dictator Xenu. Shouldn't they be more about freedom? And how can a government restrict sites stating things about Scientology as false if Scientology will not tel people what all their religious beliefs are?

I just don't think the cloud will take off as much as they think. Sure, there are a lot of people drooling over the prospect of everyone moving to the cloud. They see dollar signs. However I just do not see it. There are some advantages, like easy collaboration, but there are too many downsides as well. First and foremost, for business, is the security nightmare. Trusting all of your security to the cloud? Umm, no. The second is bandwidth. The ISPs in the US guard bandwidth heavily, and unless they release that bandwidth, the cloud will not happen. People will become frustrated with the slowness and lag of their apps as more and more people hit the cloud, and will go back to their fast local operating systems and apps. Sorry cloud, but your future is a bit more limited than you think

I understand the threat. Of course any in any interview no one is going to speak against dear leader etc. I will also admit clearly that not everyone believes all the propaganda, and that not all the propaganda is believed by any one. What I am saying is that quite a bit of what is said is actually taken as fact, because they have no reason to believe otherwise, and nothing to contradict it. For instance, many believe that if it comes to war with the United States, that NK has the upper hand. Why would we not have attacked if it were otherwise? Because of the sheer volume of disinformation, and the incredible lack of evidence otherwise, enough of the propaganda is actually believed as fact. Sure, much of it is hard for most of the populous to swallow, but enough of it gets sunk in by the average person. Heck, even in a "free" society such as the United States, people swallow whole lies hook, line, and sinker quite easily. Quite a few people believe that Iraq led the 9/11 attacks, that Obama wasn't born in the U.S., and that socialized medicine will kill the elderly, even though the elderly are almost all participating in socialized medicine currently. Like the woman wrote to Obama: "I don't want socialized medicine, and don't touch my medicare!"

Unfortunately the citizens of NK do tend to believe the things they are told by "dear leader." The interviews and contact that we have had with the North, which is incredibly limited, tend to indicate that, while they do not believe EVERYTHING, most of the principles stated by the NK propaganda machine are believed. It is a result of extreme isolation, poverty, and being bombarded with the message since birth. It comes from EVERY source. So while tactics like this did not work incredibly well in the Soviet Union, at least not in the last couple of decades of the cold war, that was mostly due to the fact that information about the rest of the world was readily available. The people of NK are completely cut off, and really do believe many of the things said about the rest of the world. This isn't true in many cases, which is why, in the neutral zone, the soldiers there are set up so they can stop people from getting OUT as much as stop people getting IN.

"Other studies have suggested that that long-term consumption of a high-fat diet is associated with weight gain." No. I wonder who did that study and how much they were paid? I would love, just once in my life, to get a gig like that. Maybe I could do a study on how being hit by gunshots affects overall lifespan.

As far as I know there is no sure fire way of deleting the data once the book is already stolen. They might not even power it up, but remove the hard drive and read it as a slave drive. Your BEST option is to encrypt the drive with something like TrueCrypt. You can either encrypt the entire thing, or just a data holding area you want to keep your sensitive files on. I recommend doing the whole disk encryption if you can. To securely erase all hard drives on your notebook, I recommend DBan. Essentially this is a bootable Linux disk, and will allow you to wipe all data when you boot from the disk. You can choose a quick wipe, simple DoD wipe (3X), Standard DoD wipe (7X), or a 32X wipe (which takes forever). However, initiating such a wipe once the notebook is already stolen? That could be tough. This is especially true because wipes take time, and the thief might get wise to what is happening, shut it down, and read the disk by some other method. You are MUCH better off using encryption. Used properly, there is little to no chance that they will be getting your data that way.

This stuff is kind of obvious to those who are familiar with the technology. Password strength is good defense against certain types of attacks, such as dictionary and brute force, but have always been vulnerable to keyloggers and phishers. If you are stupid enough to download and install a keylogger or you get fooled into a phishing site, your password strength is meaningless. Passwords have always been the weakest form of security. The other two forms, smartcards (what you have) and biometrics (who you are) are more secure. Combinations of these forms are even stronger (passwords in combination with a smart-card, for example). Passwords also suffer from other drawbacks. Passwords strong enough to be decent are hard to remember, so people tend to write them down. Passwords weak enough to remember are vulnerable to dictionary and brute force attacks. Passwords are, and will likely remain, the weakest form of security for those reasons. Yet they will also likely remain the most common form of security. Companies simply don't want to take the expense of building computers that require smart card or biometric access. Even on laptops this type of added security still remains uncommon.

The problem is that this is not limited to "free." In the computer age it applies to free as well as non-free. When you release any product, it will eventually be replaced by something better and made obsolete. Not only that, but it will likely happen relatively quickly. Computers become faster and better very quickly, allowing competitors to produce better products that take advantage of this. Doesn't matter if it is a free product, or one that is based on profit. If you don't keep on top of the curve (something very hard to do) then someone will produce something better than yours. The only companies that have beat this trend are companies like Microsoft, which use a large variety of tactics (not all of which are exactly ethical) to stay on top, even though they may no longer have the best product available.

Not sure where you are going with this, but I disagree with a couple of your statements (assuming I have interpreted them correctly). First, information does not "want" to be free. Information has no wants whatsoever. YOU may want it to be free, but that does not make it universal. There is a lot of information out there that should not be "free." Information is one of the three aspects of the triad of power. Physical force and monetary force being the other two. It us usually the recipients of information who want it to be free. Those who work hard to create that information usually do NOT want this, as they would like to be rewarded for their hard work. If you build a house, can I move in for nothing? Or would you like to be paid for that work? Information is no different. You wish to give it away? Great. Most of us who are in the business of getting that information to students would rather be compensated for the work. Your second paragraph makes little sense to me. However what I WILL say is that the freedom of speech refers to your right to say whatever you want (with some restrictions). It does NOT refer to the price you pay for information. I am free to charge whatever I wish for the speech I am free to spew. You are free to pay for it or not. If I write a text, and I, or another professor, declares that you must have that text for the class, you may pay for it, or you may feel free to not take the class. It is that simple.

I never said that free books are not and will not equal the quality of non-free books. I do not issue sub-standard reading to my students. What I said was that any free book system will never replace the non-free book system. Without the incentive, you will not get enough authors to continue on. Also, since many professors depend on this revenue, they will not issue or write free books. Yes, it is my choice. However, if I were paid enough to do my work, I would gladly write free. Unfortunately that is not the case. Free books are great. They are also a great way for authors to break into the field. Once their works get known, it becomes easier to publish further works. Again, I never said that free books were not as good. I am not sure where you got that. What I said was I do not see them replacing paid texts any time soon.