Go fuck yourselves, you fascist pigs!

In which case, computers which are not backdoored will start being manufactured in other countries... If there's a market demand, then someone will fulfil it.
Also each country is likely to want their own backdoor, so the terrorists will source their computers from countries which are not friendly to their enemies.
And they could always use old computers which never had hardware backdoors.

Also governments are guilty of both corruption and incompetence, if they have a backdoor then sooner or later it will leak and then law abiding citizens will suffer greatly. The terrorists won't suffer, as they will already know to avoid any government backdoored equipment. On the other hand, they may make use of the new found leaks to aid them in whatever attacks they wish to perpetrate.

As for leaks themselves, for everyone like snowden who wants to get the word out to the general public even to his own significant detriment, there will be many more unscrupulous actors who would rather make personal gains and will sell their information privately to the highest bidder. There are many well funded groups who could afford to buy such information, and it's highly likely that they already do so.

And therein lies the fundamental flaw with such a system...
Most people aren't upset because they aren't aware of, or don't fully understand the problem.
The primary source of information for the majority of the population is mass media, media which is controlled by the incumbents who have no motive to rock the boat because their absolute worst case is sharing power with the other incumbent party.

If you don't control the media, you can't get the word out to enough people, so it doesn't matter how good your policies are nor how bad everyone else's are, even if the truth is so bad that 99% of people would vote for you if they were in full possession of the facts, you have no way to get those facts out to enough people that it would make any difference.

Exactly that.

The extra information is irrelevant. It doesn't matter that his idiot identified as a feminist, and it didn't matter that the creep I described identified as a men's right's activist. They are an idiot and a creep, respectively, and it says absolutely nothing about other people who may have some label in common.

Given that I didn't say whatever it is you think I said, I'm not entirely sure why you seem so miffed.

I said that by changing the way they presented the company they were able to appeal to a segment of the workforce that previously had not been applying. I said nothing about what men value or that men stopped applying, just that more women began applying after they emphasized certain existing benefits.

In fact, given that I described the company's engineering group as mostly married men with children, and those benefits were already existing, one could infer that men can (and do) value child care and work/life balance.

You need to socialize with real human beings more if you think a minor disagreement with you on an internet forum is enough to ruin someone's day, princess.

Thank you for demonstrating my point perfectly.

You have zero problem saying feminists as a group (a group you don't belong to) are stupid/crazy fucks, yet you get your panties in a twist because someone does a similar thing about men's rights activists (a group you pretty clearly belong to).

The thing is - when I see your stupid/crazy stuff, I just dismiss YOU as being a stupid/crazy person. I don't dismiss all men or all men who are in the men's rights activist movement.

My entire point with my anecdote was that by putting in the (completely irrelevant, in my opinion) fact that the perv in question was in the men's rights movement is a painfully obvious attempt to paint an entire group of people as being fucked up by association, and that's pretty fucked up. Thank you for being a lovely demonstration of how easy it is to manipulate people.

However, internal combustion engined vehicles require fossil fuel to run

Internal combustion engines can run quite well on hydrogen, ethanol, methane, and any number of other non-fossil sourced flammable gases.

In addition, plug-in hybrid vehicles offer a possible path for oil demand to drop drastically, without requiring any more improvements to battery technology. The vast majority of trips can be powered by electricity, while only longer trips need consume any oil. They need only drop in price.

Oma gehts gut!

But as is typical for MS, there are multiple different versions of "docx", none of which are entirely compatible with each other...

The PC platform also lacked any form of DRM, and is flooded with all manner of software much of which is either low quality or in many cases downright malicious, and yet the platform is very successful.

A lack of DRM or other stupid platform restrictions is overall a good thing, albeit with some side effects.

Think of it as evolution in action. You can stay on one planet while some disaster takes it out. We have lots of choices of disaster, don't we? The human race can continue via those "space nutters".

Sure, we should try to avoid the disaster, etc., but planets are not forever.

So, no intellectual honesty then. I'll help you out:

Had you simply described her as a "person" rather than a "feminist" would it have changed anything meaningful about the anecdote? If so, what would have changed?

Do you feel that her identifying as a "feminist" somehow contributes to the absurdity of her actions in this case or provides insight? If so, why?

I posted a response to the GP, but the fact is that many times applicants won't even apply to a position if the position is presented in a way that makes it look like there will not be a fit.

In many cases, jobs for tech positions are posted in such a way that they appeal very much to a certain type of candidate (young, male, unmarried, no kids, wants to have fun!) which absolutely turns off candidates not in that group. It isn't (usually) intentional - it's just that the people doing the outreach go "hey, that's where I'd want to work" and don't try and see things from another perspective.

It's actually kind of stunning just how unintentionally myopic many people trying to hire in the tech industry are. Often when it's pointed out to them that the whole approach they've been taking is making people not even try for the positions, they are quite surprised.

Did you intentionally use the term "feminist" in your anecdote to describe the subject of it?

If yes, what was your intent in using that term?

I'm doubtful that you'll be able to give intellectually honest answers to those questions that don't speak directly to the point that I very clearly made after my anecdote and that don't make you look like a giant asshole.