wouldn't it be cool if there were any chance that a FOIA request could somehow get a line-item budget of all payments to outside companies, by the NSA, so that such a list could be parsed to find payouts such as the one to RSA?

"Why are you not rioting then?" - several riots were attempted to be formed, but the NSA learned about them through their surveillance programs, and blew up the areas in question with drones, declaring them terrorist attacks. They then used their control over the internet to squash all news about it.

No. It is not possible they did this. Doing this would require fixing the vulnerability - did they hack into the bios programming tools at all the motherboard manufacturers and secretly fix this problem? Did they hack everyone's computer and install the firmware update? An OS patch is one thing, but a firmware patch? This particular problem can not have been fixed with just a handwaving. It's one thing to say they intercepted a phone call and foiled a terrorist plot. It's another thing to claim they updated all current and future disparate BIOS firmware to protect against an undisclosed vulnerability. That is impossible, and makes them even more ridiculous.

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!

"People forget that the NSA has actually done a _lot_ over the past century..." - it's easy to forget such a thing, since they've only been around for a half century. Hopefully you'll forgive us for that.

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...

you just...answered why it wouldn't work. If that much garbage is actually coming into the conditioned power, it will kill the system in very little time.

It's a good thing the US government hasn't done anything like that to Google, eh? Moral high ground, and all...

err...uhhh...well, ok, yeah - any gov with a "few billion on hand" (short list of govs these days) could, sure - except how does that make the clause dumb? The point was to encourage private enterprise to do it before that very thing happened. And yes, anyone could cut the time short by spending even more, but why would a gov do that? Also, sure - put the pirate bay servers up there. The servers themselves rarely if ever go down - the overwhelmingly vast blocking of traffic to/from piratebay is done via IP, not at layer1. So sure - put it on the moon - where there is only one single feed to/from, so that everyone has a much smaller IP space to block. See if that makes the problem better.

Uh, there was never a time in the history of mankind that Microsoft was able to just sell whatever they want at whatever price...in China. That has never, ever, occurred. China is simply officially saying that this is still the case, as it has always been the case.

the SNI extension to TLS is one of the biggest differences... The argument from China seems odd though. Microsoft's options are a) no one buys anything (since they already own it, or already know how to generate keys) or B) they use pirated versions of Windows...in neither option, does Microsoft make any money.

my mother had a pacemaker at age 18.

it's not just an engine outage - it's an engine outage coupled with distractions right before and during the outage. Your dash, lights, radio, cell phone, etc all suddenly start going nuts...and oh btw your engine died too. Or worse, your engine didn't die, but you still got all the distractions, and the guy driving a manual transmission in front of you /did/ get a dead engine, so he's slowing down rapidly. Or perhaps you were merely doing something other than cruising in a straight line - maybe you were in the middle of a sharp turn, or you were slowing down, or you needed to speed up rapidly to miss something... But as a motorcyclist, I say kudos to you that you cannot be distracted while driving, and that you can always react perfectly to every situation. I wish the prius being driven by a teenager whose mother was yelling at him had been a little less distracted when he suddenly crossed over the double yellow and into my path, from which I had no place to dodge and had to just eat his car with my face...I agree, he shouldn't have been driving. Most people probably shouldn't be. But they are, and making it worse is a horrible idea.

even despite whether one exists, steering has been assisted ("power" steering) for quite a long while now - some cars are nearly impossible to steer without it. As an example, when in highschool I worked rodeos and baled hay for my off-school activities, and I was a linebacker on my school team. I had, at the time, a truck and a car - the car was a 1979 mercedes 280sel. I had the good fortune of having a sudden engine failure while going about 60mpg on a very curvy road (2222 near Austin) and had a *really* hard time, despite being a pretty buff fellow, keeping the car on the road. I've been in other cars where the power steering made quite a lot of difference (but none quite as much as that mercedes...). That car also had an electro-mechanical fuel injection system, as well as electronic controlled braking system. And, it weighed almost 3 tons. So whether or not an actual mechanical failsafe exists for the steering wheel on a 2013/2014 vehicle, A) there are other vehicles on the road too, and B) non-assisted steering is very difficult on many cars, even new ones