Furthermore, having an affair can cause you to lose your security clearance because it puts you at risk of blackmail.

Having security clearance is mandatory for the director of the CIA, so his resignation is pretty much required.

This is not correct. Some platforms are secure by default. Others are not. For .NET languages, as an example, you have to try hard to get SSL wrong. The Android dev kit, however, makes it easy to fuck this up.

That is a myth. Technological advancement is accelerating. Entire new branches of technology are being born. Comparing a decade to a century (with hindsight) is hindering your vision.

You may have been in IT for 20 years, but you haven't worked at a level that gives you much exposure to security, clearly.

"Data breach from lack of encryption" is a common problem. From a legal standpoint, data on an unencrypted laptop must be assumed leaked if the laptop is stolen or lost. So when HR loses a laptop and has to buy the whole company credit monitoring - that's an expense saved by FDE. The problem is much worse if you have customer data or data worth stealing.

Is one lock enough? Fuck no. The principle of defense in depth exists for a reason. Because in the computer world locks are constantly being picked and break for no reason. You need multiple overlapping (not identical) security measures or you are already owned.

Seattle? The home of Amazon? Why on earth don't they just move their datacenter to Amazon Web Services? They could probably do it for less than the $2.1 million they're spending on this single part!

Bitcoins are secure and stuff. Nobody can steal your bitcoins unless they get your private key.

Every tech company is losing staff, because none are willing to hire junior-level workers and train them. So companies keep competing over the same fixed number of people. And the quickest way to get a raise is to jump ship. So there you have it.

It's not just tech, either. There are lots of college-educated bartenders these days, because every "entry level" position requires 3 years of experience. It's absurd.

Creating numbers and telling people they have value is not being a producer of value.

Mining metal and telling people it has value is no different. And in both cases, "telling" people has nothing to do with it. It's an open market with prices set voluntarily by the participants.

Now hold on - they obviously don't have profit as their primary motive. That doesn't mean they are throwing money away. It's an extremely high risk business, but it is still a business and could still return a profit in the very long term.

The article states that senior software engineers price themselves out of the market. This implies that they are turning down high-income development jobs because they can make even more elsewhere - but where? Sales? IT? Freelance consulting? They can't all become managers. Anyone have a good feel on what careers developers tend to age into?

Perhaps you can explain how you fit the gold into your intertubes when trying to send it to someone online...

Will slashdot ever stop upmoding this copy/paste spam? It was kinda funny the first time it was posted. By now, most of slashdot has seen the joke multiple times already.

People, if you're into cryptography, infosec, parallel programming, economics, or finance, you will probably find bitcoin interesting. If you don't find it interesting, however, then don't click on bitcoin stories. And for the love of Bob don't paste tired old joke spam into such stories.

I go for functional fictional space names. My flagship desktop system is named "enterprise," my netbook is named "hovercraft," and my HTPC is named "holodeck."

(the iPad is "Wesley")

claiming that this volatile currency would not be traded long

Bitcoins are being traded. A single, independent exchange is down. But if you knew how bitcoins worked, you would realize that you don't even need an exchange to trade them.

So in conclusion: can bitcoins currently be traded? Yes. But can they be bought/sold for US dollars? Also yes. Are your predictions proving correct? Not at all.

Now that some big player(s) have cashed out

Did you make that part up? Which big player are you referring to? According to the MTGOX exchange, they were hacked and the hacker sold stolen bitcoins. This cannot be honestly described as "a big player cashing out."