...or it was turned down because other people submitted better, more technical, talks, that included actual data and demonstrations
(All three of which are what the Defcon CFP team actually look for in a talk, if you want to know how their minds work)

You're an idiot.

Jeff hasn't been a part of Black Hat for years now, and the last connections between BlackHat and Defcon were broken last year. ,there's nothing about 'silencing' this guy, he's just another one of the many hundreds of CFP submissions that don't make it to the top of the pile.
and No, it's loaded with *quotes*, not facts.

so you've personally seen the other 600 submissions for Defcon this year, and can unequivocally say that this deserved to be at the top of the pack?

No. this dude is just making a song and dance about being one of the 550 people who get a rejection letter every year.

exactly, this was just rejected.

not like he couldn't still submit it to Skytalks, we don't record those talks either, so he's got a lot more scope to speak off the record there too.

speaking from experience, it comes down to this. the people with a critical eye to all this stuff (like me) don't have access to the big picture. I can only speak to the stuff I've worked on personally, and it doesn't add to what people are telling us.

Conversely, the people who *do* have access to the bigger picture stuff, have no vested interest in giving us the unfiltered truth (or any truth at all), so although they're in a position to know that's actually happening a little more clearly, we have no reason to believe that they're telling us anywhere near the truth of the matter

(remember, Mandiant told us the Chinese Sky Is Falling for *years* before they finally decided to 'show their work' with the APT1 document, until that point, their whole proof was "Trust us, we see more than you do". The government wonks take the same approach.)

yes, because the vendor booths selling TShirts, make up the bulk of Defcon funding.

you've never actually been to Defcon, have ya.
.

yeah, I got the same feeling too, the meat of the presentation seems to be stuff that those of us that do this for a living have know for years (there is no head of the dragon, but there are a lot of snakes out there). Kudos to someone standing against the warhawk cyberwar types, but the whole preso, while interesting, seemed more like a book pimping session, wrapped up in a lot of pandering to people's existing knowledge.

my lawyer pointed out the date of publication on the employment IP agreement. April 1st, asking if it was intentional.

EMC's legal council did not appreciate the humor.

Ex employee here, my lawyer pretty much laughed at the incredible reach of EMC's employment agreement, which effectively states that "If at any time, any point in the future, you publish an idea, which we believe you may have originally thought of while working for us, even though you never used it, wrote it down, or discussed it with anyone during your employment; you agree to immediately turn over all rights to said idea, including buying out the rights from any co-creators, at your own expense".

Beta is just recognizing our value as cherished site readers, by giving us more of that delicious empty space, tasty thumbnail images, and comforting large-type fonts, for the consumer on the go who doesn't have time for focusing on tiny letters in today's busy world.

As symbolic as this is, It's worth pointing out that the RSA Conference and RSA Security are two separate corporate entities (and I worked with both, producing RSA Security's own booth content at RSA Conference 2011). They do however, all funnel back up to EMC (y'know.. the world's largest storage systems corporation).

It's not like this is one of the cases where the, the wrong version flows well enough to let it slip ("12 items or less"), it even reads awkwardly. You'd think the writer would have stopped to go 'wait, that doesn't sound right' at the very least.

Everyone is an editor on wikipedia, many edits are entirely anonymous (IP address only).

what you're talking about is an Admin.

please tell me this is some attempt at sarcasm, and you aren't actually that ignorant?

Many states (such as the one I reside in) specifically ban the registration of firearms in their state constitution.

Welcome to the self-hatred that is working in the infosec business - any illusions we held about trying to improve the state of things for the greater good fell away many years ago when people started realizing that there was no profit in working towards making ourselves obsolete - casualties be damned. When it comes to computers, you're either responsible for your own OPSEC 24/7, or you accept that your systems will be interfered with in perpetuity. Nobody is looking out for you, least of all the infosec business.