But even here, again, when you look at a typical OS X desktop system, now many people:

1. Have apache enabled AND exposed to the public internet (i.e., not behind a NAT router, firewall, etc)?

2. Even have apache or any other services enabled at all?

...both of which would be required for this exploit. The answer? Vanishingly small to be almost zero.

So, in the context of OS X, it's yet another theoretical exploit; "theoretical" in the sense that it effects essentially zero conventional OS X desktop users. Could there have been a worm or other attack vector which then exploited the bash vulnerability on OS X? Sure, I suppose. But there wasn't, and it's a moot point since a patch is now available within days of the disclosure.

And people running OS X as web servers exposed to the public internet, with the demise of the standalone Mac OS X Server products as of 10.6, is almost a thing of yesteryear itself.

Nothing has changed since that era: all OSes have always been vulnerable to attacks, both via local and remote by various means, and there have been any number of vulnerabilities that have only impacted UN*X systems, Linux and OS X included, and not Windows, over very many years. So yeah, nothing has changed, and OS X (and iOS) is still a very secure OS, by any definition or viewpoint of the definition of "secure", when viewed alongside Windows (and Android).

You could just suggest paying blood donors. It would simplify a variety of things.

An oversimplification. The US, UK, and allies variously broke many cipher systems throughout WWII. Still the US benefitted from this.

What if the Germans were using, say, Windows, Android phones, SSL, Gmail, Yahoo, and Skype, instead of Enigma machines?

I presume you wouldn't say it was "wrong" of the United States to crack the German and Japanese codes in WWII...

...so when US adversaries (and lets just caveat this by saying people YOU, personally, agree are legitimate US adversaries) don't use their own "codes", but instead share the same systems, networks, services, devices, cloud providers, operating systems, encryption schemes, and so on, that Americans and much of the rest of the world uses, would you suggest that they should be off limits?

This isn't so much a law enforcement question as a question of how to do SIGINT in the modern digital world, but given the above, and given that intelligence requires secrecy in order to be effective, how would you suggest the United States go after legitimate targets? Or should we not be able to, because that power "might" be able to be abused -- as can any/all government powers, by definition?

This simplistic view that the only purpose of the government in a free and democratic society must be to somehow subjugate, spy on, and violate the rights of its citizens is insane, while actual totalitarian and non-free states, to say nothing of myriad terrorist and other groups, press their advantage. And why wouldn't they? The US and its ever-imperfect system of law is not the great villain in the world.

Take a step back and get some perspective. And this is not a rhetorical question: if someone can tell me their solution for how we should be able to target technologies that are fundamentally shared with innocent Americans and foreigners everywhere while still keeping such sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques secret, I'm all ears. And if you believe the second a technology is shared it should become magically off-limits because power might be abused, you are insane -- or, more to the point, you believe you have some moral high ground which, ironically, would actually result in severe disadvantages for the system of free society you would claim to support.

Possibly that's because they're advertising for things like "minimum 5+ years experience with Java" or PHP.

A meaningful distinction, but have you tried getting hired in Europe as an American? It's kind of intense. I'm still working on it. :b

(Still, certain it's far better than the other way around).

I'm holding out for the next generation of the Cintiq Companion (which currently stands at a whopping 4lbs, keyboard not included.)

It's so ridiculous when climate change deniers point out the Antarctic sea ice thing. That is happening despite record temperatures in the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere. There is no doubt that Antarctica is warming at tremendous rates, and if that trend continues the increase in continental ice will obviously be a short-term phenomenon.

I don't know about that. You could say that final goods and services (e.g. food, massages) have intrinsic value too.

That is an incredibly complicated thing to determine, and is certainly not one-sided like you make it seem. In the 20th century, over a billion people died prematurely due to smoking for example. That's about ten times more people than in every 20th century war combined. Approximately two million people die from occupational hazards each year? How much of that is preventable?

"After all, the chief advantages of C# isn't really C#, but the .NET libraries."

You can't be serious! C is *substantially* lower-level than C#; you should only use C as a portable assembly language. I've spent decades writing assembly, C, and higher level languages and I'd pick C# over C in an eyeblink for anything that doesn't require access to the bare metal (well, personally I'd pick a functional language, but these days I work in industry...)

OKCupid's next step should be a button all users see on login: "Do you support the marriage-equality movement?" [yes/no]. If you click No it deletes your account.

In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

No, it's not about money. It's about fulfilling his adolescent fantasies of being the guy who programs a lame facebook-branded Second Life knockoff. I MEAN, programming the Metaverse from Snow Crash.

(Sorry, dropped out of the fantasy too early there.)

Pfff... He cited both wikipedia and talk radio. I think he's got a pretty good handle on the situation, Professor Fancy Pants.