Stuxnet prevents a nuclear exchange, Skynet initiates one.

You don't get to pick which state agencies are spying on you. The reality is that it's probably all of the above plus a bunch of other ones that aren't listed.

Going along with some of the comments - you do maybe have a choice in some of the other entities that are spying on you (Google, MSFT, Facebook, etc.) The question is whether you want to avoid all useful Internet services in the interest of your own privacy. Bottom line - if you're accessing something, someone is recording that access and probably selling or commoditizing that recorded data point in a dozen different ways. Possibly/probably including giving or selling that data to foreign and domestic intelligence agencies.

Absolute privacy on the Internet is a zero sum game. The only way to win is to not play.

To confirm - power-down reboot doesn't clear the lock on your phone? If that's accurate, that's cool. Can I ask which phone and OS you're running?

Yes. The point I'm trying to make is that if:
1) You set your SSID to "my_secret_ssid" and then disable broadcast
2) You configure your laptop to connect automatically to "my_secret_ssid" and check the box that this is a non-broadcast ssid

Then
3) Every time you bring your laptop to work or the airport or the donut shop, it will start beaconing to look for "my_secret_ssid".

Evil nefarious types have the tools to look for those beacons and automatically reply with "my_secret_ssid" to trick your machine into connecting to them. Theoretically they can then pass this connection to a legitimate network connection, but leave themselves in the middle. You and your laptop won't necessarily know that this has happened.

How to avoid this: Don't automatically connect to wifi, and don't configure non-broadcast SSIDs on your machines any longer than you need to.

Disabling SSID Broadcast should not be considered more secure than standard WPA2/PSK. Clients configured to connect to a hidden SSID will beacon constantly to see if that SSID is available. Take a look at Hotspotter to see if you can figure out why that might not be a great idea. Also, whether you are broadcasting SSID or not, your network is pretty easily found by anyone who is actively looking for wireless networks in the area. This equates to introducing a potential vulnerability for your client systems and no increase in security for your network - so broadcast away. Your best bet is a complex pre-shared key. Change it once in a while if you're paranoid. Tunnel over VPN or SSH if you're really paranoid.

That grammar is correct. Phonetically, the "N" begins with a vowel sound so "an NSA" is correct.

FTFY - Grammar police should endeavor to avoid use of the double negative.

Interesting argument. What does it cost to feed and maintain a horse? What is the maximum speed and range of a horse? Can a horse power air travel? The energy cost efficiency of internal combustion is pretty hard to beat with today's technology.

That undersea oil was there 100 years ago, but there was more readily available oil that was easier and cheaper to get to so we didn't have a motivation to go after the harder stuff. Technology also improved to enable us to go after the harder to retrieve resources.

We've been approaching peak oil for twenty years now. What is the forecast for hitting peak iron or peak nickel? Maybe that will be motivation to drive us after the asteroid resources or maybe it will be motivation to more aggressively recycle our local resources. If you look at the pyramids in Egypt and the coliseum in Rome - a lot of the stone work was recycled into building materials for nearby construction. Yes, they had stone quarries they could have gone to get material for the new construction, but it was cheaper and easier to re-use the easily scavenged stones from the previous generation's efforts. Similarly as we hit the back side of peak oil maybe it will push us back to horses - or maybe (hopefully) drive investment into wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear.

I appreciate a good sci fi yarn as much as the next guy, but do try to keep in mind the "fiction" aspect of it. In fact, the overwhelmingly defining characteristic of space would be the tremendous amount of emptiness that it is comprised of. The vast distances just within our own solar system immediately decry the abundance and easy access to useful resources. That will hold true at least until you solve the problem of cheap and efficient energy. I would argue that when you have solved that problem, you will still be able to fix the earth's issues at the same or lower cost than going out in to space. (Props to the termite infested house analogy posted earlier.)

Looking at this another way, if it was cheaper and easier to get iron, gold, or boron by mining asteroids I'm pretty sure someone would be doing it right now. The reason they aren't doing it is because it's cheaper not to. Something about skipping the roughly 180M mile round trip to the asteroid belt probably explains that.

You don't need to bribe people, just leave a compromised USB key in the parking lot. Or if you're more industrious, host an industry-specific "lunch and learn" for the target audience. Make sure everyone goes home with a trojan door-prize - iPad, smart phone, camera - something that can deliver your payload and will likely be hooked up to a computer for registration or activation.

Cost of 20 steaks + 20 iPads is pretty affordable, even for a malefactor of limited means.

Hmm, well that needs to extend one level past the "enemies" to include all of the countries/geographies/etc. that do connect with the "enemies." You don't launch your exploits from your cyberwar directly from your connection. First you compromise a bunch of systems in other countries and use those as the launch point. Possibly nesting this several layers deep. Yep - just like in the "hacker" movies. You are creating plausible deniability and muddying up the water for anyone trying to figure out who is really behind the attack. This approach is also in pretty much direct opposition to the whole concept of the global economy. If you prevent Internet commerce and communications with large countries deemed to be the "cyber enemy" but who also happen to be a "major trading partner" it will certainly be disruptive to that trade. Go ahead and ask the obvious question as to why we are trading partners with our enemies - I can't figure it out either.

Really? I think the defining characteristic of space is the mind boggling emptiness of it all. Resources are not abundant, as there is a whole lot of nothing between us and anything else.

If outer space really is the land of milk and honey, we'd be mining already. The reason we don't is because it is more expensive to do it "out there" than it is to do it "down here."

Drive-by download exploit of browser or browser helper applications is prevalent. Firewalls won't help with these, and AV software can struggle with this vector as well.

Also, for the pattern-matching component of AV software, this technology is pretty reliable once a new variant is discovered and the AV vendors know about it. There is usually a window of time when a new variant is released and infecting systems *before* the pattern is added to the AV software. This means that there are some lucky winners who have been infected. These are new variants and not necessarily targetting 0-day vulnerabilities.

*slaps head* Yep. Java should do it, but you're also dead on with respect to the slowness.

Maybe this is how it already works - but if it isn't here's an avenue I would investigate:

Shouldn't it be possible for Steam to build a hypervisor type environment? If they have a common hypervisor they port the game once to run in that environment. Then all they need to do is get their hypervisor running on Windows, *NIX, MAC, whatever.

There's definitely some additional processing overhead on this, but it seems that it would be a very efficient model once you have the hypervisor built. I would think you could probably push the specs/API/etc to the game publishers and have the game developer team adopt their game to the platform.

I don't know anything about how Steam works under the covers so maybe they're already doing this. I'm curious, but not enough to do the legwork.

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains. The stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion