I would love to see a follow up story on what happens to his employer. They say no press is bad press. But I am sure "they" did not consider this type of press. I also wonder if other people in the company knew about this behavior? You could reasonably expect that a victim called the company to ask about the warning? It seems hard to believe that no one else at the company knew what was going on.

I pretty much shred everything. I only keep paper copies of things like tax returns, and only for seven years. All that stuff fits in a hand held file box.

At the last company I worked for the ops center was on a raised floor, but with carpet tiles. Some enterprising tier 1 folks discovered that at the very back of the room was a 3 foot tall crawl space. At some point they brought in those cheap folding lounge chairs, and left them with jackets under the floor. I think that 3rd shift was very very comfortable for them.

Paris by Night http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0711-paris-20100711,0,6607368.story/ The LA Times is running a story on a production show that relies on DVD sales. The show is a unquestionable hit, but DVD piracy might end the show.

The question is what tool do slashdotters use? That is part of the problem, backups are the other. I have passwords for myself and all of my clients, so the tool I use (Password Safe) has hundreds of passwords that are not easily retrievable, or not retrievable at all. So I have to keep all of my passwords, but loosing a laptop with my passwords, would mean more than worrying if someone would get into my bank account. It would mean I have tons of customer passwords lost.

I store all of my passwords on a USB key. The password files are encrypted on this device, it is also my "master copy" When I update a password, I copy the password database to my home computer (Unencrypted I am not concerned about a theft resulting in my password tool being cracked) My home computer is backed up to Mozy. I then copy the update to my laptop (Unencrypted)

I have 4 copies of my password files. I can tolerate loosing any one of them.

Please keep in mind that these patents are actually cheap knock offs of other peoples patents. (but they cost less, and contain lead, and might have ground up melamine etc.)