"If you cant figure out how to set up your own lab, then you have no business even thinking about Cyber Security or computers in general."

Also, if you can't afford bread you should just eat cake. Not everyone has the resources, which can include space, to set up a security lab, and nobody is going to do so without first deciding that they actually want to get into cyber security. If you're going to force that catch 22, then the field really won't have anyone other than those raised by incumbent professionals... not exactly a great model.

Keep in mind that the NYC subway is also one of the oldest in the world: they had very few predecessors to learn from and far more limited technology to work with when it was designed and constructed. Occasional retrofits are possible, and several have been made, but any sort of substantive upgrade is hard to implement when you're working on a finished, active subterranean system that runs, as you not, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.

Because there is nothing nerdier than arguing, in 2013, about what kind of train is the best. NOTHING.

Language is imprecise and governed in actual far more by guidelines than by immutable rules.

Inserting commas would have been entirely acceptable for most forms of written English, and would have improved parsing for laymen interested in his work (presumably a target audience for his homepage). It may, however, conflict with legal syntax; a lawyer would be more qualified than I to assess that possibility.

Hmm... interesting, but no, it almost certainly didn't happen that way.

For one thing, the retraction will never make as much news as the initial announcement. For another, there is enormous risk that, whatever they say, people will suspect that these schemes still exist (even if they are, for the time being, disabled) and avoid the system out of fear that they will be implemented later.

If this manages to work out in their favor, which is almost certainly not going to happen, it will be a miracle. Far more likely is that they are hoping to win back those customers who were fleeing toward the PS4 due entirely to the DRM issues but honestly prefer the XBox experience and crossing their fingers that by the time the consoles actually drop people have either largely forgotten (which is certainly possible) or, even better, that Sony screws something up even more (which is also certainly possible, Sony did think it was a good idea to deploy pirated rootkits). Expect them to walk on eggshells for the next few months, just to make sure they don't reignite the matter.

Presumably not with speech-to-text.

Sounds like a great reason to bring back the middle class trade guild as a meaningful part of professional development.

You can get in so long as you can pass the tests, then once you've worked under an experienced professional with genuine, demonstrated knowledge of how things happen in the real world for a period of time you get the stamp of approval to strike out on your own, and eventually take neophytes under your wing as well.

Of course anything even remotely resembling a union is "communist", so we can rule that option right out.

"Children being born today will have access to far more and better education than any generation ever, if we don't mess it up in some way."

No need to worry, we will definitely find a way to mess it up.

...he's Canadian.

And stop being so cynical. Sometimes stuff can be cool without being "viral marketing".

It turns out that having a universal unique idenitifier is really handy. There are reasons you WANT to be able to be affirmatively and uniquely identified as "you", but you want that capability under your own control. Even with PKI (a system that could be trusted, anyway), someone has to hold a central database. Guess who that would likely be? And if it shouldn't be "the government", then who?

...just do the same thing we do with cryptographic tools that are considered munitions, which is ensure they aren't exported, and make efforts to provide/limit them to US persons instead of making it freely downloadable for anyone.

It's not the DOD. It's the State Department Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance, and it's about EXPORT.

Yes, it is about "controlling firearm dissemination"...for EXPORT. That's why the State Department Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance is involved. If you've already made up your mind that the true motive relates somehow to American citizens in a country with as many privately owned firearms as people, no amount of logic or reason will change your mind.

No, then it would have a classification marker struck from it. This document was never classified, but it was also never released publicly.

The point isn't that DOD thinks the files are going to disappear, and it doesn't matter anyway since the purpose isn't to "disarm Americans" or "keep the files out of the hands of Americans" or some other utter garbage.

There are treaties and various arms control export restrictions (ITAR) at stake, and US-based corporations or entities cannot provide arms in violation of these constructs. If this sort of thing is on the Pirate Bay or elsewhere, DOD trade control doesn't care.