As I said in another post, it's possible that Duqu was written by the NSA for their ally Israel, or more exactly for the Mossad.

In other words, Duqu would be the second class attack vector, so it doesn't really matter if it gets caught.

About the manipulation skills, I believe that you are biased towards Obama (I'm french and not really interested in politics).
In fact, all political leaders need to develop their charisma and manipulation skills, otherwise they'll never be elected.
At a national level, the manipulation involves mass propaganda.
For me, it's a normal game, I just try to not be abused by it.

It's possible that Duqu was written by the NSA for their ally Israel.
It would explain why the technology is less advanced that Equation Group.

I think that you are right about Kaspersky.
They may have been infected since a few months, but only noticed the attack recently.

However, since they have been attacked, I doubt they'll share the signatures of the attacks to other vendors, so it'll be a huge marketing advantage for their product !

Why did the attacker sacrificed such a nice tool ? And to obtain what kind of information ?

My hypothesis is that the attackers wanted to retrieve all source code from Kaspersky Labs, in order to prepare future attacks.
I have no doubt that they have the resources to analyze the source code and find some ways to evade Kaspersky's detection.
The most wanted target was probably Kaspersky's internal tools, which are not in the final product, like virus analyzers, detection algorithms, and also how they build their virus signatures.

It's probable that the attackers also wanted to confirm the ties between Kaspersky and the Russian government.

You give too much importance to charisma and persuasion, in other words manipulative skills.

Sure, if you need to sell something, it may be useful, but from my experience, I noticed that people having high social skills don't really care about others.
They care about themselves, because they are too focused on their own importance.
And in companies, they tend to become managers, but it's the workers that really produce something.

In France too, we have the "ligne 14" in Paris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... which was completely automatic from the beginning and the "ligne 1", which has been automated since 2013.

From what I read there: http://photofucket.software.in...

It appears that Photofucket is a backup tool for downloading pictures from your Photobucket account, if you have the login/password.

Otherwise, it will simply bruteforce all urls (probably by using counters with base filenames) in order to grab the pictures.

Unless they collected the passwords entered by their users, I don't see any crime here, except the offensive name for Photobucket.
WTF ?

I exactly do the opposite: I never comment on Slashdot.

I'm not a rockstar, but my daily programming job is boring like hell.
You can imagine how much I'm productive ;-)

While you are partly true (in France, we use the term "savoir faire" -expertise- opposed to "faire savoir" -publicize-), I think another factor is more meaningful: intrinsic interest.

If you let me program something interesting, I'll be the best programmer in the world, following the strictest guidelines without complaining.

But if you let me program some boring shit, I'll be as useless as any lazy guy.

In your case, this can be expressed as: the rockstar does all the interesting work, and delegates all the menial tasks to other people.
When you are a beginner, everything is interesting.
As you grow older, a lot of things become boring.

He doesn't seem overweight for me.

I don't believe he led a stressful life.
But I'm sure he never listened to his own body, because he was completely obsessed with his job.
Heart attacks have clear symptoms, and if you are a "normal" person, as soon as you have an alarming symptom, you go immediately check your health with a doctor.
He probably over-exhausted his body, working 12 to 16 hours every day, never listening to his body, and having a weak heart.
This reminds me of Karoshi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...

I believe that you have a bias about "ideal teams".

The OP described the 2 profiles that you can find:
Side A: collaborative type
Side B: competitive type

When you work in a collaborative team, everybody unconsciously reduces their effort to a comfortable rhythm for the team.
When you work in a competitive team, everybody do their best, so they work at their own rhythm.

I experienced these 2 extreme environments, and the competitive spirit is the most efficient, BUT the collaborative spirit is more focused on relationships.
I believe a good balance is achievable, but you cannot reject the competitive profiles just because they don't fit your view of an "ideal team".

I'm working right now in a collaborative company, where people spend a lot of time about handshaking and various relationships activities.
But I'm very dissatisfied technically, since outside of relationships, the job is boring.
Before that, I worked at various companies which promoted technical excellence. It was much more interesting technically.

No, this won't work.

Why should they surpass you ? What happens if they don't have the ability to surpass you ?

Even if you do your best in education, your children may become thugs.
Or they can reject your education, since you want them so much to succeed.

Also, if you believe you're helping mankind, I think you are thinking a little too high of yourself. Do your feet touch the ground ?

Why not simply make them feel loved unconditionally ?
Punish them when needed.

Help them develop their own talents, not yours.
What do they like to do ? Do you even care ?
Is "success" so necessary for them ?

What is happiness for you ?

Is it earning a lot of money ? Having a beautiful wife ? Building a family ? Succeeding in business ? Possessing expensive objects ? Travelling around the world ?
Solving difficult mathematical problems, and be known for that ? Having lot of sex with beautiful partners ? Drinking the most expensive alcohol ? Having good kids ? Helping others ?

In fact, you are seeking for pleasures and not for happiness.
Of course, you can find a lot of pleasures in life, in a lot of various ways. But what is happiness ?

Happiness is very easy to achieve, since it's not related to the outside.
It can be reached when you feel at peace, for example when you had an orgasm (but this sentiment vanishes quickly).

Your problem is that you are thinking too much, and that's the curse of the intellectually gifted.
If I did that, or that, or even that, could my life have been better ?
The answer is: NO !
Why are you doing all these things ? Do you seek recognition or fame ?

I'll give you a little technique, which doesn't require meditation (although it would tremendously help in your case, but meditation is difficult when you are so obsessed with your thoughts):
act without expectation

This is called Karma Yoga, and the goal is to purify your mental from expectations.
Since you seem to have plenty of money, it should be easy for you.

In your job, work without expecting promotion nor bonus (but you still have to be paid !).
If you want to help others, do it without expecting thanks from them.
If you don't want to help others, it's also fine.
Do things that you love during your free time.
If you can have a job from that passion, I'm jealous ;-)
In fact, when you receive a promotion/gift/thanks, be thankful and surprised.

Discover your passions, what you can do without focusing on money.
Focus on your inside, instead of your outside.
When you'll stop focusing on the outside, on expecting something from your actions, you'll discover that happiness is here and now, not elsewhere and in the future or in the past.
Good luck !

In fact, you are wrong on several points.

First, the strongest program is Stockfish 6. It's still improving at a rate of 50 ELO points at each version, and is already is above Komodo:
http://www.inwoba.de/
You can see that Stockfish 6 is already 200 points above Rybka.
Stockfish is improved by a community and by using a distributed network: http://tests.stockfishchess.or...
The current version is already stronger than SF6.

Secondly, Rybka has been demonstrated as a copy of Fruit (an open-source chess engine), with only bit-tables added.
There has been an incredibly detailed decompilation about Rybka http://www.chessvibes.com/plaa... which leads no doubt about this.
The only difference in recent versions of Rybka is that the evaluation function has been improved by GM Larry Kaufman, but he works now on Komodo.

I have no doubt that Stockfish is stronger than Carlsen, except that it does not use a creative style.

The problem is that this "positive reinforcement" is mostly trying to not get people hurt and inflating their ego.
You get people that have never been hurt in their lives, and who knows what happens when something meaningful happens, like the death of some parent, or being rejected by others.
Life is hard, and "positive reinforcement" is a way to create a fake sense of security.