This proposal by NSA mirrors the Clipper Chip/Skipjack + Key Escrow system proposed back in the early 90s. People didn't trust the government with their keys THEN... why the hell should they do so NOW, given that government intrusion into our lives has only increased in the interim?

Unlike the 90s, by now they have proved they can't be trusted.

Don't be ridiculous. Asia has made good on cheap manufacturing, but the majority of design AND cutting-edge fab is done in U.S. and Europe.

Intel should not have been allowed in the first place; it is a surprise to me that they have only been blocked now. There is a thin but very definite line between simple international commerce and treason.

IBM and Thomas Watson crossed that line in WWII.

Are you for real? It is hard to tell whether this is sarcasm, but I suspect that it is.

There are no "betters", in America. Hell, I had a very hard time trying to teach my British manager that, way back when. He felt justified in taking credit for my work, because he was a manager and a "better".

Haha.

But again, that's sarcasm. Here's what I actually suggest: pretend to respect your "betters", because in fact that's all they require: the facade. Then when they're not looking, prove they're not "better".

I don't mean backstabbing. I mean frontstabbing. Make the truth plain to all.

Anybody. Just get a .sucks domain and create a .sucks.sucks subdomain. Hell, you don't even have to know how to build a website to use cPanel or similar.

I'm of divided mind. I think she might actually be sincere but misguided. It seems like it must be one of the two. I think that we can agree that either way, it won't result in overall advantage for the employees, women or not.

I wonder if she will also propose that from now on, all employees will get the same raises.

Nonsense. What we're talking about here is supposed to be a labor MARKET. In a market, people negotiate for prices. That's how markets get "price signals" that allow them to find the proper balance between supply and demand.

Pao wants to make it a "take it or leave it" deal, with the result, as one GP said, that the "price" will almost surely go down across the board over time.

No thanks.

While you have a point about message boards, again the result of not playing in the market is (which you have given kind of a sideways nod to): you will end up with lesser quality employees.

Well, I agree with some of the point but not some of the details.

You'd have to know the number anyway.

It wouldn't necessarily mean "a cable" coming out of a suspicious package. It could be a couple of fine wires leading out of the phone, under the couch. In the case of a pay phone, it could actually be inside the phone.

But I agree; in general a cell phone is more mobile and more concealable. Even so, I don't think there's enough of a difference to justify shutting off cell phones but not landlines.

Funny... they never even considered "turning off" land-line phones to prevent them being used to detonate bombs... though they are at least as capable and always have been.

In fact, a landline phone has enough voltage and current to ignite a fuse or squib all by itself... a lot easier than a cell phone.

It's happening, you just don't notice it.

Have a toy helicopter or drone with a gyro or accelerometer or both? Guess what those are.

Etc. Like most true innovations that are adopted, it affects us mostly in a quiet way, used in things you don't even think twice about.

Anybody who takes from you without permission and gives to others is a tyrant. It doesn't matter who it comes from, or who it goes to. Taking is taking.

There are a few rare times when that is justified (certain forms of taxation, for example), but it isn't justified nearly as often as it actually happens.

OP and TFA are very misleading. XOR is not a "worthless" encryption method in itself... it all depends on how it is used.

For example, if used with a good quality key in a one-time pad, it is one of the few encryption methods that is even theoretically unbreakable.

But it does require a well-constructed key, and as with any one-time-pad scheme, key management is everything.

Well stated.

Actually, I don't think Alaska is at all obvious, with its relative "frontier" attitude.

WTF? What does that have to do with Feinstein, who has been a radical Left-winger from Day 1?

I hate to tell you this, but California has been failing in many ways, and weather is only one of them. CA government has gone broke twice in recent memory, and it never managed its water, despite all the decades of warnings. That's not a climate fault, it's a fault on the part of the people who live there, and their government.

This time they won't get a bailout.

I'm not the one who has trouble reading. You apparently missed everything past the first paragraph. Because the second paragraph starts with:

The article says exactly what I stated it did.

Not to mention: if price were really their top consideration, they'd probably have included Rhodes.