I read your posts, and other people's posts. How else would I have been able to point out your repeated poor reasoning skills and ignorance regarding the English language? How else would I have known you were fabricating information contained in those posts to back your position? You on the other hand failed to comprehend or read (I am not sure which) 98% of my first post, and complain about the content. Then failed to read, or simply lied about, the contents of other responses to my post.

I'm socially retarded because I correctly used an expletive? Seriously, you still never bothered to read anything about written language after me pointing out your ignorance? No, I'm not surprised really because the first paragraph explains exactly where you are wrong in every conceivable way. You never demonstrated how "Wholly fuck" as a statement could possibly be a personal attack, or why a different expletive would not be attack. Obviously you see me as socially retarded, because you refuse to admit that you are factually wrong!

To the other piece of that sentence: Show me a single text book that claims ignoring facts and basing your opinion opposite of facts is not delusional, irrational, and illogical. I have at least 6 college text books on my book shelf and every one of them defines your position almost exactly as I have. You ignore the definitions of words, but if you bothered to look for those definitions you would see they also match my statements. Like this these.

delusion
A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or other effects of perception.

exclamation: a sudden cry or remark, esp. expressing surprise, anger, or pain.

explative
a : a syllable, word, or phrase inserted to fill a vacancy (as in a sentence or a metrical line) without adding to the sense; especially : a word (as it in “make it clear which you prefer”) that occupies the position of the subject or object of a verb in normal English word order and anticipates a subsequent word or phrase that supplies the needed meaningful content
b : an exclamatory word or phrase; especially : one that is obscene or profane

Personal attack: see 'ad hominem'
An ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.[2] Fallacious Ad hominem reasoning is normally categorized as an informal fallacy,[3][4][5] more precisely as a genetic fallacy,[6] a subcategory of fallacies of irrelevance.[7] Ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, for example, when it relates to the credibility of statements of fact.
Ad hominem arguments are the converse of appeals to authority, and may be used in response to such appeals.
Ad hominem as it is discussed in this article refers to the logical fallacy argumentum ad hominem, and not to the literal Latin phrase ad hominem.

Now, show me one single fact that backs your opinion that my statements "Wholly fuck!" and "Absolutely wrong!" are personal attacks without changing either statement or combining them. Don't come back without proof, your opinion thus far has been based on dishonesty and ignorance (feigned or otherwise). You won't be able to do so, but I'll look for a fact based reply.

... ask yourself a question, why is it that everything in USA was done "up until the 1970s" and then all of a sudden there was a gigantic decline (from building, to meaningful manufacturing jobs, to wage disparity, to ability to afford anything, etc.etc.etc.)?

So what is it that happened in the 70s that changed the USA economy so much? 1971 - Nixon defaults on the gold US dollar. The reason? Inflation that was caused by the Fed, all the massive government that could never be paid for with any amount of taxes (never mind the insane tax rates before that time).

It's the government, my dear, USA government has destroyed USA economy.

I'm sure it's not always the case. There are various reasons why people get hired to jobs-- some better than others. However, I'll tell you that I wouldn't hire someone as a sysadmin who hasn't had experience as a sysadmin unless I knew that they had prior troubleshooting and support experience in a real-world setting. There are lots of reasons for that, some of them more obvious than others. I'll also comment that my position seems to fit along with other people that I've known who would hire a sysadmin or network engineer, though that's still all anecdotal.

Yup. Honestly, I've found I just don't like programming. I don't even like scripting and web development. I like logically solving problems, product design, and I'm even interested in some of the math involved, but I don't enjoy the process of actually coding or the project planning involved. I actually prefer the support side, though it's not tons of money, and it's been a long time since I was tier-1. Also, even when I was tier-1, I wasn't doing the sort of work where people read a script sitting in a huge support farm.

Starting at a higher point... I think it probably depends on the industry. In my experience in IT support, it's definitely not the huge determining factor. We're always looking for young people who can be trained. I think you have a better point in saying, "have vastly greater chances of reaching the upper echelons", but I suspect it's for a weird mix of reasons. I do expect that there are bosses who won't promote you to a certain level without having the "college degree" box checked on your records. I also think that, to some degree, there are qualities that help you be successful in business and also make you more likely to go to college, e.g. a tendency toward conformity and willingness to jump through required hoops, or the idea that people with a certain kind of intelligence are more likely to be able to finish school and do well in business.

Actually though, it's true that there are businesses who will hire IT purely based on college education and certificates. Those people tend not to know what they're doing.

Which introduces another potential benefit to OpenSource (inadvertently perhaps). Many times bugs are reported "with" a fix to the bug. This is why impact is generally much lower than closed source. This cuts a few steps out of the bug correcting cycle.

I have on rare occasion seen similar reports on bugs to Microsoft, so realize it's possible to some extent with closed OS code. Without your name getting attached to the bug or bug fix there is little incentive to do so as a developer.

Data point: the NSA reportedly discovered this bug within days of its placement, and didn't disclose it.

When the bad guys have a lot more eyes than the good guys, it skews the math.

Closed source is not inherently safer. Raymond's proposition is theoretically sound, however in actual practice, the NSA has "many eyes"...

What if this was not 'OpenSSL' but instead it was some form of 'ClosedSSL' library that had this problem in it?

NSA would still have access to THAT code, you can bet your ass they would, they wouldn't leave a project like that alone. However nobody else would know (unless stumbling upon it by chance or being able to access the source OR if some insider SOLD that information to somebody on the outside and now you'd have a vulnerability that is exploited by the gov't and by shadiest of the organisations/people out there).

This does not change the discussion in terms of open source code being safer, this changes the discussion around certain practices of development / testing and also this may attract more attention of people towards the SECURITY of our information on the Internet and hopefully we'll move in the direction of working out the details of actually much more SECURE methods of communications.

I certainly have a few ideas of my own that I would like to implement now, but never mind that. The point is that this is good stuff, it finally shed a light on this topic, that should have had much more light on it for a much longer period of time in the first place.

We need better methods around building security within our systems and I think this raises the bar.

If you really thought you were trolling you would have said "I was trolling dumbass!" and left. Instead you continued to defend your irrational ignorance based opinion.

Since innocent bystanders may see your drivel and believe it's a good example, I corrected all of your easy to spot logic errors and had a bit of fun doing so. It's not often that a person continues to argue from ignorance after someone demonstrates that ignorance to them.

I'm glad you are done responding now, and don't worry.. with proper TV exposure your brain will be back to normal in no time, and all memories of this conversation will vanish leaving you back in a state blissful ignorance.

by "whining" are you implying that I do not vote in firehose? Is that your professional opinion, I mean, are you paid to believe that or is this just a result of being an ass, your statement here?

Um, no! I am not sure how much you know about network security, but I sniff packets all the time and decrypt traffic. If you have a private key this is simple to do. With a massive computer, I can store conversations and brute force a key lateer. This was made easier by the NSA introducing some weak algorithms into encryption protocols. Even without those weaknesses, it is possible to brute force. We are better today after knowing about introduced weaknesses, but still not immune.

Unfortunately the exploits do not always require physical access. It would certainly take more computer than you suggest, the devices in the leaked presentation are server class machines. Your recommendation for using a cheap PC is good. Personally I build my own more powerful PCs for that same reason.

This same issue exists with someone running forensics on your hard drive. The OS running on Read Only media minimizes the footprint drastically, it does not remove the footprint completely.

Now I'm more unsure of your security experience and knowledge. If I make a cloned Distro package and host my own MITM web site, I can use my own key and users would not know necessarily. Looks like chicken, tastes like chicken and all that. It's expensive to do, but happened already (whistle blowers reported this too).

As mentioned previously, I'm not saying the system is bad. I'm claiming is not the best terminology, and a person reading TFA is possibly mislead by the chosen terminology.

By the way, if we are already on the topic of taxes, anybody who is interested should listen to this show, not only does it discuss the illegality of taxes, but also it provides some insight on what the USA citizens doing today to reduce their taxes (offshore accounts, etc.etc.)

Americans, you need to listen to this of-course, you should eliminate your federal government, a good step towards that (before you end up shooting the bastards) is to stop paying your taxes.

There were no other people complaining about my post. It's terribly sad that you can not read what people write and invent your own words. That is not illiteracy, that is called delusional. Hint: One person corrected my use of "insight" instead of "incite", which I thanked them for correcting. You are lying about the other example as well, no need to continue down that path.

Further, correcting your broken logic and demonstrating your ignorance is not being butthurt. It's an attempt to make you a better person. If you believe you should get stickers and candy for getting wrong answers, you are at the wrong school. If you had a correct answer I would congratulate you, maybe.

You failed to take the examples and definitions that explain that exact point into account, then claim those clarifying points are 'incoherent blather'. I believe you just explained your own ignorance and irrationality very well!

If I had used all capital letters it would have been considered an internet shout. As it was written it is what we in the English language call an expletive exclamation. It is not written "at" anyone because there is absolutely no direction to the statement. If you take a statement and invent your own words (as you have repeatedly done here) to assign a direction then the exclamation becomes an attack "at" someone. By your irrational position, a person posting "Damn!" is also directing that at someone. Note that your position is "irrational". No, I won't provide further word definitions because you have a tendency to not comprehend them when definitions are provided. In fact I'm skeptical that you read anything that may harm your irrational opinion.

You are wrong on every single point you have made. I don't need to resort to ad homimen as you did calling me 'dumbass'. You have repeatedly provided your own material demonstrating your ignorance and irrationality.

Buh bye now!

Turn on your Heartbleed,
Let it shine, wherever you go
Let it make a happy glow
For the NSA to see...

Traffic sniffing does not require files on the target and this is the biggest source of data for agencies like the NSA. It may protect you from key loggers being installed (unless they were inserted ahead of time).

I'm pretty sure that part of Snowden's leaked information showed that exploits are occurring at the hardware level as well as software. Entry points like LOM modules were explicitly called out in the leaked presentations.

I'd agree that forensics becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible (memory analysis can still occur). I don't agree that the systems are immune to malicious software at least in a general sense. Immunity would require a lot of control for the hardware running the OS, and monitoring to make sure things have not been tampered with. Relying on a repository build of an OS imaged is still a target for potential a MITM attack feeding a user a kitted image.

It's all good in my opinion, I'm just being picky about the terminology chosen. Immunity implies absolute safety, and very little in the world is absolute.