Thanks for clearing that up. I have some followup questions: Will clothing stop bullets if we simply print "bulletproof" on it? Also, is it safe to use bleach to remove the pigment in my iris?

No. ;)

How much do you think they pay me?

You can look at the careers on their website. Exploit Engineer pays $64,923 to $96,931. I'm sure that matches up with a GS payscale number somewhere, but I'm too lazy to map it.

How much could I make selling the stuff I code at the NSA to various "businesses".

Not much, or at least not for very long. You can bet your ass you sign an ironclad NDA, and if anyone's going to know whether you violated that, it's the NSA.

Does anyone in that position believe in nationalism?

Most of them, yes. Employment is actually pretty competitive, and people don't become government employees for the money. Job security, maybe, but the money is usually below average.

What the summary said was that the timestamps are consistent with an 8-5 day in those time zones, not that the timestamps came from those timezones. Timestamps aren't UTC anything -- they're milliseconds since epoch (generally), and the OS converts on the fly when displaying. I can't speak for the NSA, but core hours are 10-3 for many government workers, and many people go in to the office early to beat traffic. Also, the NSA is under the DoD, and DoD tends to get an early start. All of that is consistent with what one would expect to see.

And to address the GP, the odds of finding a string that matches a codeword, especially a unique codeword, are very slim. Probably millions to one. You're not going to find, say, "XKEYSCORE" in Microsoft or Apple source code. That's the most convincing evidence -- the timestamp stuff is just icing.

I expect to see future exploits released with standardized timestamps and obfuscated strings.

the industry's activities, which occurred more than 40 years ago, are reminiscent of the tobacco companies' efforts to minimize the risks of smoking.

Yeah, except, uh, brushing your teeth won't prevent lung cancer. We know how to combat sugar -- don't eat candy that's going to stick to teeth and remain there for prolonged periods, drink/rinse with water after eating it, and brush regularly. It's simple enough that most people can handle it, and people aren't exactly dropping dead from cavities anyway. So reminiscent maybe, but not really the same thing at all.

I haven't found that to be true at all. If someone doesn't understand the fundamental types, operators, objects, iterators, and data structures, they shouldn't be using the language professionally. If they do, then they can read any code.

I don't know about strict feature counts, but Java and C# have features that C++ lacks, like anonymous classes/types, and they can be just as opaque if you don't know what you're looking at, or if you're trying to divine the functionality by looking at the methods that consume them.

Are there many ways to skin a cat? Sure, but they're all going to involve cats and skin. If you know what objects a method/function/class is working on, it's usually not a huge leap to figure out what it's doing to them. If the inputs and outputs aren't documented, well, that just sucks, but it's not a function of the language.

I don't know if you know many rich people, but any established wealthy person is not going to taint themselves with this junk. The likely market will be teenage kids of rich people, and new and upcoming rappers/football players.

That's "many rich people." What you're describing are self-made entrepreneurs, who maybe break 1-2 million of net worth -- a small subset of all rich people, almost by definition -- their spouses and children outnumber them without even counting athletes, celebrities, successful startup (i.e. Facebook) employees, and lottery winners (but I repeat myself), actual and pseudo-royalty throughout the world (especially the middle east), and successful criminals with gaudy taste (loan sharks, bookies, etc.). And many self-made entrepreneurs are still subject to ostentatious displays of wealth. Never underestimate the allure of the status symbol, regardless of practicality. Where do you think high heels came from?

Jamming only delays the inevitable. A device today can still use dead reckoning to continue its flight without GPS, albeit with less accuracy. From a short distance, it could be good enough. On a windless day it could be good enough over the range of the device. Fast forward a few years, and onboard processing will be good enough to do automated terrain and target recognition.

I think automated drones (flying or otherwise) are the single greatest threat to physical security in the future. They're force multipliers, they're relatively cheap and getting cheaper, and it doesn't take a genius to think of many ways to cause harm with them, or at least fear and chaos. One person with 50 drones and the intent to do harm? That's going to be a very bad day.

Just curious, you're also against DNRs and various end of life things for terminal patients with painful diseases right? I don't care to argue about those one way or the other, but for the sake of understanding I'm kind of curious.

Absolutely not. I think people should have the right to suicide, or "death with dignity," or whatever anyone wants to call it to make it palatable. They're separate and distinct issues.

At one point I used to think a lot like you in that I assumed mental illness was one of those things where someone could just suck it up and get over it.

No, that's not what I'm saying either. Some mental illness is worse than others. Most depression resolves itself -- we know this. That is not at all to discount or equate those cases with other, more serious cases of either depression or any other illness. Mental illness is a *huge* problem in our country that doesn't get nearly enough attention. I come from a family of psychotherapists, and I've witnessed the shift from state-run facilities to privately-run prisons as the treatment of choice. Which is not to say that state-run facilities were great to begin with, but that's no reason to run in the wrong direction.

And that's my point here. People are quick to say "that won't solve every problem," and they're right. And they're also right that death should be an option in some cases -- arguably every. But reducing impulsive suicide is still justifiable and worthwhile.

Yes, but 7.5 is still within it's support lifespan, which means it's getting patches and security fixes. I was only addressing the IIS aspect of your post.

But since you're persisting, the protocol, transport layer, and authentication mechanisms are all separate concerns. HTTPS is not inherently less secure than any other protocol, and could be configured to require certificate-based authentication just as easily as IMAP. The oldest and weakest versions of TLS are slightly concerning in theory, although the biggest vulnerability with TLS 1.0 in practice is the potential for it to be downgraded to SSL 3.0, which does not appear to be true in this case.

I'm disinclined to believe we have a serious labor shortage in the tech sector, but that said, if you know anyone that's been looking for a job >1 month (the time to do a few interviews and wait for callbacks), then they need to relocate, because there are tons of jobs. Houston, DC, Denver, and North Carolina are all huge markets, and there are definitely people willing to relocate from much farther away -- like overseas on an H1B -- to take those jobs. I realize some people can't move, but if and when the people who can move do, there will be openings for the people who can't. If you're refusing to move because you don't like change, well, I don't know what to tell you, except that the world doesn't owe you anything.

Depends on your definition of overpriced. If it's simply "what people are willing to pay," and prices are fixed forever, then you're correct. If it's "what people are willing to pay when they're well informed of their options," then it's a much tougher point to argue (either way).

If you bought a widget for $100 based on your incorrect belief in scarcity, and then you walked next door and found the exact same widget for $0.10, then you could quite correctly conclude that the first one you bought was overpriced. The price didn't change, nor did the market; just your knowledge of it.

IIS has been as secure a web server as any for quite a few years now.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

I am not alone in the opinion that the horrible American diet does not only cause obesity. It also causes all manner of health problems, including mental ones.

And I am not alone in the opinion that you're wrong.

Caloric intake has actually remained fairly steady. It's physical activity that has declined.

http://www.foodinsight.org/new...

And there are few, at best, established connections between any given food type and risks of any disease. And it's not because we haven't looked -- we just aren't seeing them.

Not that evidence has ever affected "nutrition" advice...