Your understanding of what is required is a little off - the root CA holder can indeed "retroactively" sign any certificate they want, and your browser would merrily accept such a signed alternative cert without raising any errors because it would never see the original cert. The very act of installing the root CA in the browser allows them to completely replace any other cert signed by any root CA and not cause errors to occur. The only opportunity they would have however to do this would be if they were proxying the traffic between you and the internet.

This is the UK, totally different wiretap law - this doesn't breach it, its their network and they can intercept what they wish.

You can look them up; I saw them in the local newspaper a few years ago. I don't remember what the grunt officers made, but the police chiefs in Palo Alto and Mountain View make about $300K (and I think even the second most expensive cops were over $200K.) And that's in a town where almost all the crime is white collar.

On the other hand, Facebook's closer to East Palo Alto, which is across the county line from Palo Alto, and is the town where the poor people were allowed to live back when there was racial segregation.

Not only is there the cost for insurance and pensions, and equipment like police cars, but also 1/N the cost of their boss, and 1/N**2 the cost of their boss's boss.
And if you look up the salaries of Palo Alto employees (which are public record), you'll find that cops in Silicon Valley get paid a lot; I think the police chief makes $300K (which probably includes benefits), but I may be mixing that up with Mountain View's police chief. And yes, these are towns where almost all the crime is white collar. I doubt Menlo Park is cheaper.

That's really what Einstein's paper was about.

If I remember what I read somewhere, the Russian/Soviet side lost something like 2500 tanks in the Winter War, mainly due to the Finns figuring out how to interfere with the treads to immobilize the tanks before setting them on fire...

A tank without a crew would go a long way in explaining how that happened, as there wouldn't be personnel to see the attack on the tank or to repel it while clearing whatever was used to jam the treads.

As a side note, that war explains why Biathlon is so culturally significant to the Scandinavian countries...

I think the person the questioner was talking to was a tad out of touch. And we see that regularly on Slashdot with people absolutely convinced that $TECHNOLOGY is never used because they don't see it used in their circle of technology acquaintances.

The four most commonly used platforms right now are LAMP with PHP (not Perl, not Python, Goddamnedfuckingawful PHP), JEE, .NET, and "front-end web (Javascript/HTML/DOM/CSS)". Coming up the rear are Objective C on iOS, Java on Android, and Native (non-.NET) C++ on Windows. Anyone who claims any of these seven (well, six and a half - Java on Android and JEE obviously share quite a bit, including an entire programming language) platforms are "legacy" are completely out of touch.

JEE and .NET are big in the corporate world and usually one or the other is the core platform for their modern web-based business software infrastructure, usually built as web applications (that is, servlets and .NET's equivalents serving HTML and Javascript for standard browsers, we're not talking not applets) accessing backends via web services.

LAMP is generally used for a lot of new projects that end up phenomenally successful but start as essentially hacks where someone wanted something and didn't know much about coding, but knew enough PHP to put something together that did what they needed.

Objective C on iOS and Java on Android are, obviously, the two major mobile platforms. And C++ is used on Windows because it's what was, until recently, the only standard Windows platform and a large number of Windows developers are still wary of .NET.

Even outside of the golden seven, we have languages like C that still serve a critical purpose in some domains such as kernel level systems software. And what remains is mostly a set of platforms that aren't "legacy", just not as popular. Python, Perl, node.js, Coldfusion (another platform I'd wish would die already, even more than PHP), Ruby, and others.

Legacy? I guess nobody's doing new COBOL development to the best of my knowledge, or new Fortran. Some would dearly like Adobe Flash to be legacy, but until a viable cross-platform DRM scheme gets added to HTML5, I don't see it going away.

But .NET? Claiming it's legacy shows astonishing ignorance.

You also make it virtually impossible for the average citizen to carry a firearm for self-defense, an activity that's allowed with very few questions in 43 of the 50 States. You can't even legally carry pepper spray in MA without a license, something that I'm pretty sure is allowed without a license in every other State in the Union.

Thanks, but no thanks. Plenty of States to choose from that don't regulate self-defense or abortion.

Umm, seriously?

Really? The same people? You have proof of this, I assume? 'Cause there's a hell of a lot of people using Linux these days, in all sorts of forms, and all sorts of environments. Many of these people have (and I realize this may come as a complete shock) wildly differing opinions on things! Some love SELinux, some hate it, and some are neutral. Some even think it's appropriate in some situations but not others, and these might fit in your hypothetical category, but in my experience, most of those think SELinux is mainly useful for servers, and a waste of time for personal desktop systems, which makes it unlikely that they'd be complaining in this instance.

Now I don't mind some hyperbole. I personally know several linux subforums that contain no mention of SELinux, pro or con, but I understand what you meant by your last sentence, and agree with the underlying notion, even if the words aren't literally true. But your suggestion that it's actually the same people who say "disable SELinux" who are complaining in this case strikes me as so preposterous that it needs to be challenged. You're basically trying to paint all Linux users with the hypocrite brush. (Or, at least, all those with an opinion on SELinux.) And I want some damn good evidence before I buy that line of crap!

Do you also think the people who proclaim that consoles are dead and that PC gaming is king are the same ones out buying all the new consoles? Because that makes just about as much sense. They're all gamers, and all gamers think exactly the same. Right?

Really not sure how you got modded "insightful", but hey, this is slashdot...

The kind of person who thinks an education has value?

The kind of person who prefers to learn things in an orderly fashion, rather than digging through random piles of source code and "free" advice from the internet of questionable utility and accuracy? And who is willing to pay for that privilege, or who works for a company that has a budget for ongoing education?

I have a friend with an Asus Transformer hybrid and he likes Windows 8, but it's also exactly the kind of device it's designed for. The hate comes from trying to force everyone down that road, I mean if you big non-touch monitors then you don't want the tablet interface. I don't want to use it at work. I don't want to use it on my gaming/workstation rig. I might want to use it on an alternative to having an iPad or Android tablet. Sadly Microsoft knows they can totally ignore that market and it's not going anywhere. No, really it's not. Most of the "heavy" users are so stuck with Windows-only thick clients it'll take ages to migrate to something else. See Vista, it sucked donkey balls. Did users leave the Windows platform? Largely no. I left Windows in favor of Linux for 3.5 years and came back to Windows 7.

I hate to say it to geeks but if you look at Microsoft's stock performance they're still making money hand over fist despite what geeks think about Win8. They're not hurting. They're not failing. We hate them but Apple has largely abandoned the professional market (one trashcan design swallow does not a summer make) and Linux well I probably don't need to tell you about the current holy wars between Unity and Gnome 3.0 and KDE and whatnot chasing the tablet, nobody is taking charge to kill Microsoft on the desktop. I don't understand why everybody is leaping after the next big thing, it also means the competition will be intense. Why not try to outflank your competition or hit them in the rear in the markets they mostly ignore? When giants clash it's best not to be an ant with delusions of grandeur, you're likely to get stomped.

With all due respect, you are pretty much talking 100% bullshit - mono is way more advanced than you suggest it is, and its a no-brainer that of course it won't run native code, but as I have yet to come across a library which is actually mixed mode that doesn't seem to be an issue.

But it isn't restricted at all, as I've used the same .Net code in apps on Windows, Linux, IOS, Windows Phone, Windows RT and Android.

Add to that the fact that Microsoft is leaning more and more toward Portable Class Libraries delivered via nuget rather than monolithic libraries delivered centrally, and PCLs are targeted toward a base standard which runs on all .NET platforms (full, micro, WP, Metro, Mono) and its getting better all the time.

Why was .Net mentioned as a legacy technology? Its actively developed, has a decent community, and is widely used - apart from some poor articles and conclusions that were jumped to here on /. There is no reason to consider .Net a legacy technology.

What is more likely is that the person was referring to projects that are stuck on specific versions in maintenance hell, which can happen with any language - Ive been stuck with VB.Net 2.0 WebForms projects, while at the same time I've been using MVC 4 and .Net 4.0. One I would consider a legacy project, the other not, but both use the same line of tech.