If they do, the US is probably suffering badly for it.

Think who has the most intellectual property. Ponder who does the most research. Consider that spying is cheaper than researching. Know that a backdoor does not care who is using it.

And now ponder what using this backdoor in the computers of a US corporation by a Chinese corporation could do to the GDP of either country.

And that is exactly the problem. Let's even assume for a moment that they actually are the good guys.

Wanting a backdoor for the "good guys" means wanting a backdoor for everyone. By definition. A backdoor in encryption is what everyone who tries to spy on someone else wants. The FBI wants it to spy on their enemies. Corporations want it to spy on other corporations. And I'm pretty sure China and Iran would love to use it to take a peek into some US government information.

Access to such a backdoor is hard to control. Mostly because the entity that COULD control it, the one where the backdoor is installed, is not supposed to even know it exists. In other words, such a backdoor will not stay secret for long. The relevant people will be bribed, bullied or forced. We're talking about nations here, not some petty hacker groups.

That's like the "do not track" thing in my browser, right?

Well, to be fair, this particular politician actually holds a relevant degree.

Yeah, the alternatives would have made all the difference.

Whether a broken vase is red or blue matters little concerning its usefulness.

And their role. Sadly, many think it's their job to tell people how to do their job. A former boss of mine, who I owe a lot of my knowledge on management, put it best: When you're coaching an NFL team, you needn't tell them how to play football. They know that. You have to make sure they can do it.

Management is not about breathing down your people's back and crack the whip. That's not going to accomplish jack. Maybe it feeds your ego. Ok. But I don't care about your ego, I care about results. And results, you won't get that way. You will get workers that spend more time pondering how to find a new job without a gap in their resume rather than doing any meaningful work. Which will only tell those idiots that they didn't crack that whip hard enough.

Good management is not about squeezing your people dry and getting the last bit out of them. Good management means that this isn't even necessary to get peak performance. Of course, that means that the manager has to actually work rather than just sit or stand there and yell at people.

My job as a manager is to "pave the way". To clear out obstacles for the people working for me to make sure that they can do their job without interruption, distraction or stumbling blocks. I have to make sure they have the resources they need, timely and completely.

Yes, correct. I am working for them. That's the whole point. That's why I have the clout and the "power" that my position carries. They can't go and stand against a department head who doesn't want to cooperate. I can. I can make decisions and I can back them up. And I can get a decision from other departments and I can ensure that they will deliver. I can do that. They cannot.

Of course, cracking the whip and burning your staff is easier, and it sure will not make you appear "difficult" to your peers in management who have to deal with you instead of someone they can brush aside. But that is your damn job as someone who should manage his team. You're the manager not because you're the best in whatever your team is doing. You're their manager because you can get them what they need to do their job!

So do your damn job, manager!

I think it's some manager term. Must be one of their buzzwords they use to feel like they're important or something.

So instead of climbing the ranks 'til they are useless, the go right from MBA degree to useless?

Seriously, the unrest is brewing in our towns. The powder keg is filled to the brim, all it takes is a spark, and any kind will do, to blow it up. You're getting close to a critical mass of people who are severely unhappy with how things are going, the only thing missing is a focal point for this anger. As soon as a justification is found to vent that anger, you have a riot.

Sure worked great for Mubarak et al.

Funny how quickly we forget how we berated those middle east regent when they tried to prop up their failed regime by banning social medias, then promptly turn around and want to squelch dissent at home by monitoring and controlling them when it threatens our own regime.

- wrong. 2 things are necessary for free markets to exist:

1. equal application of all laws to all individual regardless of their individual circumstances.

2. protection of ownership and operation of private property against the government intrusion, against the mob and the collective.

A feudal system does not treat all people the same under the law. Neither does any of of the current socialist / fascist systems. As an example the so called 'progressive' income tax increases tax rates on a smaller and smaller percentage of the population relative to their greater income. This is unequal application of the law, as it creates a gigantic divide between people who run businesses, own assets and the rest, who want to steal from those who run businesses and own assets.

- actually this is one of the worst forms of government, since it creates oppression that cannot be eliminated by taking down any one particular individual. A dictator can be shot, even a single party system (like what we had in the USSR) can be stopped, but a hydra that is 'democracy' cannot be simply shot or stopped because it pretends that it exists on the voluntary participation of the electorate, which is nonsense and it does not give power to any one particular governer, instead it provides power by proxy to the most connected individuals (companies) and it keeps a puppet in the spot light.

You can go ahead and shoot that puppet but not the puppeteer, and the puppeteer is intelligent enough to give you the impression that you are in control of the government.

Democracy is a horrendous system, where few in power (the puppeteers) use the mob to keep the power structure going by setting up the useful puppets that promise to keep the mob happy by stealing from the minority (employers, 1% or whatever) and handing the stolen goods to the majority (electorate).

Of-course the reality is that the mob gets crumbs, the money is stolen from everybody and the puppeteers have direct access to the actual reigns of power and to the fake money printing presses.

- wrong. Every time humanity actually did get to experience freedom (free economy means economy not centrally planned, economy built by people without government meddling with it) the people built the biggest economies, which later were crashed by the mob, which set up government to steal from the fruits of labour of people who built the economy.

As for 1000 years of feudalism - the feudalist system is a system of government that destroys freedom. Free market requires that people are free from regulations and from government, you can't be born into slavery and call that a free market.

- wrong, freedom is the exact opposite of coercion, which is what communism entails, given that no free person would stay in a communist system on his or her own volition unless they were ruling it somehow.

When you're done playing, kindly place it next to the Kinect, will ya?

Worldcom and Enron were simply not big enough not to fail. They should've gone into banking. Or car manufacturing.

Name one. In recent history, please. I'm aware that the American dream once existed (and it could actually work out).