I wonder how many times a company can install trojans on your computer, destroy your OS's security, secretly watch all your actions, then proceed to not properly protect your data when you voluntarily give it to them...before going out of business.

Sony's size and momentum must be pretty crazy. Or maybe it's our society. I just can't imagine a small record store in the 1960s, after being caught spying through the bedroom windows of its customers, ever staying in business.

I feel terrible for anyone caught in this. But maybe, just maybe, Sony isn't the company to do business with anymore?

People can be wrong about things, and comment scores are useful information that helps us know if they are.

"that is not how mysql works" with 2 Points And "that is not how mysql works" with 102 points Are not the same piece of info.

I don't see any benefit to hiding this from people. It also helps newbies understand the customs here (they can get feedback on other people's comments)

edit now that I'm not on my phone:

When you google things, you probably skip over results like daniweb, about.com, or expertsexchange.com, and hope for a stackexchange page.

The little URL at the bottom of the description tells you "hey, this is from $foo source" and you're a smart human being that can put this information to good use.

Of course, you could make a case that this is bad, because you should read each one of the results and judge it based on its merits. Maybe we should even strip all of the identifying information away from the page, and just let it stand on its own (this would be a neat experiment, actually [and that's the experiment that I think we're performing here]).

The point counts on the comments act just like the URL does on google results. It's not saying "this is definitely 100% accurate", but it is useful piece of information that we can put to good use. Depriving us of this information doesn't break the comments, but I have certainly found myself reading comments a bit less lately as a result of it (instead of actually reading comments, I'm usually just skimming them now). With comment scores, things seem to have a bit of order to them, without, it just feels like a lot of people shouting at one another.

(Maybe this was the point?)

Naturally, I'm never going to stop reading HN; it is by far my favorite website on the internet. Complaining about the lack of comment points here is like complaining that my favorite bar switched to a new, very slightly different glass. I can see the difference, but it's not really going to change my habits.

The subject of this post may be the number one reason for a good programmer to stop being an employee and to start being an independent business person.

2 of my own examples (I have many more, as many of you do too):

As a one man IT department, in 15 months I reduced my annual budget from $2.3 million to $600K, cleared up 500 old tickets, and implemented 4 mission critical applications. My reward? A 4% salary increase. (I gave my notice during that review.)

As a contractor, I maintained all the software for a $100 million company that was shopping for an ERP package. They were stunned by the 6 & 7 figure price tags and 2 year project timelines. I proposed a project that would add everything they needed from these ERP packages to their current system in 90 days. I hit the target and got paid $225K.

If you're a programmer who is 10x to 100x more productive than your peers, the last place you should be is as an employee without equity. Get out there and find someone who needs what you can do. You'll both be much happier.

It's amazing how common that is.

"We want top people."

"We want to pay average."

I really like the lack of comment scores. Things are still sorted, so the cream floats to the top, and it made me realize I felt group-impulses based on the score.

Now, there is little to no incentive to one-up someone, and I don't consider people refuted based on their score, but rather based on what I think of their comment. That last part has nurtured my curiosity, I find myself exploring thoughts I didn't on the 'old' HN