I think that you've missed the point.

Stealing credit card info is only one potential bad thing. Stealing your list of e-mail contacts for a spam run... Setting up a trojan so that your machine becomes a zombie for either a DDos attack or a potential way to get around a corporation's firewall.

I'm sure there are more things than just reading that your credit card account is maxed out from all those lattes and pints using your favorite hotspots, that would attract hackers.

Being one of the good guys means that we haven't taken the time to think of all of the potential bad exploits one can do...

You equate having an office mate politely tell you that you're left your machine wide open to getting hacked. Thats like equating a kiss on the cheek with rape.
You do attempt to salvage the article by making a minimum of common sense percautions, but you've clearly missed the boat.

Bad people are out there and if you don't make any attempts to secure your pc in a hotspot, or your private wifi home network, you're asking for trouble.