No, in fact it's a fundamental principle of infosec. Unless you keep keys close to your chest and perform tightly controlled, end to end encryption, there are opportunities for subpoenas by TLAs or for top tier hackers to compromise your keys. Trusting a middle man is a fundamental compromise in the provability of your security.

After it's a year overdue and 200% overbudget and everybody is completely blindsided by the fact that you can't quickly and trivially reimplement mature software systems, we'll hear a different take on this story. Of course, we get to pay for all this. *sigh*

Since multiple governments mandate that Blackberry share back doors with them, it's not clear to me what benefit more encryption will really add. Won't they be sharing keys with governments (and thus potentially hackers can get the same data)?

The only secure encryption is end to end encryption where you understand and actively control/limit how the key transmission works.

News Flash: the Republicans are taking control of the Senate in January.

Hassle ton of Slashdot readers, get flamed in the comments. Seems to be a pattern, huh editors?

Somehow the tasks would involve reading Bennett Haselton essays and harvesting the scintillating nuggets of shared wisdom to...

*laughs until cries* Man, this guy is so much fun to hate...

No, your partial quote of my sentence is misleading. Of course lots of things may be true, i.e. have a nonzero probability. We don't believe these things because we consider them to have a very small probability based on nobody being able to demonstrate them scientifically.

Before going any further in this conversation... do you know what homeopathic medicine is?

By the way, I replied in a bit of haste before noticing your part about laying down the **** weopons. I could not agree more. Africans are by far the worst enemies of Africans today, and it's a problem without any easy solutions.

First, your comment is actually hilarious given the subject matter. Simply drinking tap water or inhaling air wherever you are may involve inadvertently taking in homeopathic "drugs", because there are always trace amounts of interesting things floating around in different places. (Yes, the land of homeopathy is a silly, silly place to be.)

To answer your question seriously, absolutely I would like a medication to inform me whether it is merely homeopathic. And relax, because the government is way ahead of you on this. When companies provide "remedies" that are not scientifically shown to treat or cure any disease, they are already required to have it clearly labeled that they have not been shown to treat or cure any disease. Go and look, and you will already find such labels on homeopathic "medicines" sold (at least legally) in the USA.

For drugs prescribed under the auspices of Western medicine, they have been shown to be worthwhile (in some measure), by scientific methods. And similarly, GMO foods have been shown to be safe (in some measure) by scientific methods. So the government shouldn't give GMO food producers any grief unless further scientific inquiry gives a reason to do so.

My point was that homeopathy has the same level of peer reviewed, scientific research supporting it as do hippie paranoias about GMO food. Specifically: none at all.

Look, I sympathize with your concern. But until there's a scientific basis, it's not fair for government to mandate stuff. For example, many Jews and Muslims care very deeply about labeling in regard to religious handling of foods. But since there aren't any substantiated scientific concerns in regard to any of that affecting people's health, it wouldn't be fair for the government to legislate Kosher labeling etc.

The 4H? Seriously?

GMO foods are harmful in exactly the same way that homeopathy can cure major illnesses. i.e. it may be true, but nobody has proven it yet, so it hasn't entered the pages of peer reviewed research, just like homeopathy hasn't penetrated Western medicine. I would guess that's the reason that laws about labeling of GMO foods aren't ubiquitous. If you are aware of respectable studies that prove otherwise about GMO foods, I'd love to see them -- seriously.

Perhaps the alternative is seeds for fragile crops that will die in a drought and never yield much despite access to cheap chemical fertilizers? Look, I get that it's fun to hate on "Big Ag", but I also get that hippies are fond of biting the hand that feeds them. And Big Ag doesn't just feed hippies, it feeds the world, and there currently isn't any good substitute for it.

Instead of disparaging charitable works in Africa that a rational person will perceive to be doing good to feed hungry people, why don't you focus on donating money to promote "open source" crop lines somewhere in the States so there are good alternatives to give to Africa and the rest of the world? Put your money where your mouth is (in a couple of senses).