It is a private convention and they are free to prohibit anyone they like.

They may be able to get their secret court to issue a warrant to have officers present, or to eavesdrop on the convention.

They just have to have one person suspected of a crime -- or persuade a judge of reasonable suspicion that illegal activities may be planned at this convention.

You can ban people by name, but there's no legal mechanism that allows you to select "No law enforcement activity on the premises"

You can't use that to recognize the feds. All hackers wear black. And sunglasses the whole day long.

The resolution to this is; hack everyone. If they were a fed, you'll be able to figure that out by the contents of their e-mail account and their My Documents folder.

If they didn't turn out to be a fed, you just scribble a quick apology and leave it as a note on their desktop; after you phinish bragging.

Are you trying to say that government programmers aren't any good?

The government offices are mostly a culture of cretins, morphodites, and old COBOL programmers.

Basically, anyone who said they didn't use tobacco but had sufficient levels of nicotine in their system was given two choices: either pay up the surcharge, back to the last enrollment period (about 6 months' worth at that point), or be summarily fired.

It sounds like cause of action for a wrongful termination suit.

Non-smokers can receive nicotine exposure; and the testing for nicotine is likely an illegal invasion of privacy, subjectin the employer to potentially large liability.

if your records are incomplete then it'll be taken as evidence against you.

Incomplete records can incompetence or human error, not necessarily theft. There is also nothing to say that a human error or inadvertent negligence does not cause the records to be incomplete at the same time as there is a computer error.

Even if that could only be expected to happen 5% of the time; it is still a very real possibility, and one that cannot reasonably be dismissed.

Of course if it was theft, the thief (whoever that was) might also have been able to arrange destruction or damage to the records, also.

In that case, the thief could be some random cashier, not the subpostmaster.

How it's even possible that someone goes to jail before a thorough investigation is another big mystery.

Apparently in the modern world of financial accounting; here are the numbers the software says, passes for a "thorough investigation"

If they say something's wrong -- then guilty until proven innocent.

Any discrepancy you cannot explain must be the result of a theft or intentional fraud.

Go to jail automatically, or be forced to pay the difference, unless you can prove it's not.

Try to find a machine without Windows 8 on it, if you can do so. That way you don't pay Microsoft any money for their misbegotten operating system.

My Macbook air did not come with Windows 8 on it.

If the Desktop Linux bunch had spent time making Desktop Linux a closer replacement for Windows XP, very many organizations and people would have moved over when Vista came out. More so with Windows 8.

There is the problem that; even the Linux distributions based on KDE that can [and some do] look very similar to Windows XP; cannot really run windows programs, and no, Wine doesn't count.

So no matter the appearance of the Linux desktop chosen, there will be terribly significant differences from XP, in regards to people's ability to run software. Windows 8 /can/ still run Windows XP software on the desktop.

Windows 8 isn't really "Windows" as they knew it, it requires change. People hate change and if they're going to change, maybe they'll look at alternatives. If they have the cash, they might go for Macs (look at the sales figures lately).

Truly... now is an opportune moment. Unfortunately; I'm afraid there's no nice shiny Linux package available in stores for people to buy instead.

They have misplaced trust in their computer system.

And misplaced lack of trust in human beings.

Accounting shortfall should not mean someone goes to jail.

It should mean a thorough investigation is launched, and the tool that first reported the shortfall should not be assumed to hold accurate information.

OSS groups release security fixes, they are applauded for caring about people's safety and security. Microsoft releases security fixes, they are appaled that they would let such a problem exist.

They often engage the community in totally different ways. The OSS groups often disclose vulnerabilities, workarounds, and print advisories very early --- they are honest and alert about the threat early.

Closed source OS vendors avoid publishing anything until they have a fix.

Closed source OS vendors have been known to refuse to acknowledge a vulnerability or provide a fix, because there's no exploit code, or because it's just a local vulnerability, or just a harmless DoS or resource exhaustion condition that can be caused.

Closed source OS vendors have been known to attempt to "steal credit" for vulnerabilities or mitigations from researchers who discovered them, for example by patenting ICMP mitigations. -- See Fernando Gont/ICMP mitigations article

The open source products often have a smaller "window of vulnerability"; that is, time between reporting of the issue, and time that a patch is available to those who need it.

The OSS groups don't generally give "special heads up" to large corporations and government security agencies and other organizations, including exploit code, with an imposed delay period before announcing to the public.

The OSS groups often have vulnerabilities fixed before there is an exploit in wide circulation.

Closed source vendors often have malware in circulation, long before remote code exec vulns are patched, AND due to the fact that they are lackadaisical about reporting security issues to the public and rapidly providing fixes.

All joking aside, can any of us trust their patches now that it has been comfirmed that Microsoft is effectively a branch of the NSA?

No you cannot; HOWEVER, you can trust not patching even less. Because Microsoft have been known to share vulnerabilities with the NSA, before they even share the fact of their existence to the public.

The NSA has loads of cash available, and all the research and engineering resources required to work on developing reported vulnerabilities into exploits, to add to "surveillance malware deployment packages".

There's something seriously wrong with the present-day computing that such vulnerabilities are continually being discovered.

It's not very surprising. It takes less than a minute of programming to accidentally make a mistake --- millions of vulnerabilities can be crafted in an hour by pure accident, or by incompetence.

It takes months or years to discover the vulnerabilities, and longer to prove to people's satisfaction, that yes, they are indeed exploitable.

As long as such disparity exists; vulnerabilities that have been around and about for a long time will continuously be discovered at a low rate --- far lower than the rate that new vulnerabilities are accidentally created.

Remember Google recently added Malware to Google transparency report Take a look at the major uptick in malware warnings in 2013..... perhaps a sign that more and more popular destinations are getting compromised and actually leveraging remote code execution exploits, or other trickery, that may be among that covered in the patches.

There's this thing called Patch Tuesday; first Tuesday every month. There are almost always plenty of remote security vulns, with patches. If there aren't -- then there are plenty in the pipeline that they have just delayed another month (in most cases), OR that they put off patch development for.

There are no shortage of windows vulnerabilities.

If you want to get out of the patch grind... I would strongly suggest switching to Chrome on Linux or MacOS :)

That's not what the trend in their financials shows is happening though. Cash from operating activities has been decreasing, free cash flow declined dramatically over the past year, they are borrowing an enormous amount of money -- getting more and more money by taking out more and more debt.

And they wind up with a negative EPS and declining margins, which essentially means that they are moving towards a trend of destroying shareholder value.

They are not dying, but the picture shows essentially that they are distressed, and probably not that big a threat to the brick and mortar stores in the long run. Definitely not a $130 billion company. Possibly a $40 billion company.

Unless they take some steps such as major cutbacks or raising prices...