On the plus side - when I lost the most recent Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupon, the NSA helpfully provided another copy to me.

Give it time - I'm sure in a year or two they'll remove the freedom to do that as well.

"Here lies Bob Johnson. He was convinced he could walk and chew gum at the same time. Unfortunately for him, he was wrong".

Well, to be fair to the blasters and lambasters:

- This is a protocol developed by Microsoft, and it's fundamentally broken
- Knowing it's fundamentally broken, Microsoft still included it on their phone and enabled its use by default

In 1952 there were over 3000 deaths caused by polio. Thanks to the vaccine, the disease was eliminated in the US by 1979.

I'd suggest we should, at a minimum, arrange for 100,000 people to swing by their house and say "thank you".

Thank you - I haven't had to deal with these phone alerts yet so I hadn't noticed this setting; but now I've disabled them preemptively.

I don't know about other areas of the US, but around here (Puget Sound region, Washington state) we've got all sorts of computer-controlled signage on our major freeways. For the past couple years these have included Amber Alert notices when those occur. There's no real benefit to having them also appear on my phone - if I'm not in my car, I'm not likely to notice random automobile makes and license plates.

There are people in the organization who understand where things are heading in the future, and have convinced the company leadership that they need to be on iOS and Android or get left behind. But the old school mentality dies hard, and Microsoft has painted itself into a corner by making Office one of the fundamental selling points for its tablets (which is flawed thinking anyway, and shows they still don't grasp the market). So this is what you end up with - a crappy office experience on iOS and Android that only serves to make the company look bad.

I'm a state employee (state university), not a federal one. But here's my counterpoint to your (valid) points.

Pay is definitely lower, but the benefits (vacation days, retirement, etc.) are often better. The overall workplace pressure is often less. And, as in the private sector, the "quality" of your coworkers really varies from one group to another - so it's not a given you'll only be working with "mediocre employees".

This was conclusively proven in a Hogans Heroes episode - except it was a WW2-era walkie-talkie hidden in a potted plant.

Yes, because there's no way Microsoft would assist the government in circumventing the encryption used in any of their products...

Isn't that like Luxembourg deciding its at war with Germany? Or Polish knights on horseback charging the Panzers?

I'm guessing you'd have kittens if I refer to him as "Doc Who".

Yes, at least as the linked story explains these vulnerabilities - he'd have to lure you to a page or else have code running on your computer to effect these attacks.

Also, "reading any information he wants" seems to actually be "see which linked websites youve previously visited on this page I control" and "see the contents of iframes if I have a way to run some other code on your computer or have physical access to it".

These could turn into serious vulnerabilities - but the summary contains significant hyperbole.

Sounds like most of the people for whom I've done web projects. They always try to tell me what it should look like, what drop down menus they think they'll need, etc... but when you try to pin them down on specifics regarding what it actually should do, it turns out they haven't spent much time thinking about that.