" I'm just saying that there's a journalistic reason for Gawker to do what it did"
Err...what "journalistic reason" could there possibly be for offering a ransom for an illegal activity, then publishing the results of that activity, for the sole purpose of generating adview/click revenue? Aside from gawker not even having any journalistic content, what in the world is the "journalistic reason" for that?
Now that said, I think there's a moral/ethical reason for creators to willingly do it - and somewhat for the consumers to share it even if it is against the will of the one who created it - but that's because I'm a biased open society guy, and a complete nutjob. I can't though, in all my madness, envision a world/perspective/banana in which there is a "journalistic reason" for this. Someone help me here?
but it's not some intelligent entity that's "better" at it than us
are you so afraid of religion that even science scares you? Over the course of billions of years, systems which fail will cease, and systems which work will succeed. A working system is/was present; saying we could be "learning from nature" means little more than being observant and realizing that many of our problems have already been solved in the system (aka Nature). Where the system has a solution which is too slow, or has a few steps we don't like per se, maybe we tweak it a little...but when you learn from someone you don't simply mimic them - that's not learning. When you learn from someone, you take what they are showing you and adjust it to fit your experiences. Like we can, with Nature.
"some intelligent entity..." - yeesh! Lighten up, Francis!
a better response than my previous...
If such a virus was found that affected a large portion of the computers out there. If that is so, stopping a single virus deployment attempt is worthless; the virus still exists, and more importantly the vulnerability still exists. If they are being truthful in any way, then they have done absolutely nothing useful. As you say, where's the CVE? Where's the details? Without details this is useless.
With a terrorist attack or something, "trust us, it happened!" can sortof work...I guess. For this though - it's useless without details. More, without details - we're forced to believe that the NSA is just making crap up. Did they think about getting a person with any sort of compsci background to help the marketing/PR at NSA person come up with a valid "threat" that was being stopped? In theory there should be one or two there....
you don't understand - they secretly patched everyone's machines, so now we're all safe. It's all good!
I went to high school between 1987-91, and somewhere in there (I think it was my softmore year?) there was a computer class. We learned BASIC on computers which had green characters on a black screen (no windows), and if I recall used 8.5" floppies. There were also some TRS-80s there, but I didn't use them there.
Now personally, since my father owned a VAR that sold minis and mains by IBM, I had already had experience with PCs for many years by then. But that was literally over 20 years ago, in a mandatory high school class.
Was that really that unusual? 20 years later has the rest of the US not caught up with where my high school - in a town of 40k (at the time) - was? If so, then I have a new appreciation for the place...
"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love." -- Albert Einstein