Huh?

I'll break this issue down into three levels. First there's the compromised algorithm itself. The algorithm and source code for it is public. Anyone can trivially test that it's about a hundred times SLOWER than the alternative algorithms. It has zero redeeming features. And anyone with the slightest security knowledge can see that it was covered in huge red flags all over it (unexplained magic numbers pulled out of the algorithm-submitter's ass are a HUGE security no-no). It had squat track record of being vetted by the global security community for flaws. No one with the slightest security expertise would ever willingly use it, much less set it as a default algorithm.

Second, there's RSA's products. Anyone who bought it can check the configuration to see that the compromised algorithm is in there, and that it's set as the default. Anyone with an internet connection can do a search and check the product specs. I'll admit I haven't personally checked this detail, but it's beyond implausible that the story has run this long without anyone here posting a fact-check on it if it were false.

So that just leaves the third aspect. Whether RSA got paid twenty pieces of silver.... errr.... I mean ten million dollars....to set the compromised algorithm as the default in their products. I would say that is a forgone issue when RSA's response on the story was an astonishingly lame we-didn't-know-it-was-compromised and we-would-never-knowingly-compromise-our-customer's-security. If they hadn't been paid $10 million by the NSA to do, then the first words out of their mouths would have been to deny the $10 million NSA payment.

So that just leaves us with two possibilities. Either RSA knowingly took a $10 million payoff to look the other way and install a compromised back door as the default setting in their products, or they don't have a single competent security person on their entire staff.

It's hard to say which of those two possibility would be worse for a security company, but we don't have to ponder which applies here. It is utterly implausible that RSA doesn't have competent security experts on staff. They make highly sophisticated security products. They know damn well how to make products that will strongly protect you from attack by random hackers. However they are also willing to sell out your security so that the US Government has a back door into your system.

So... if you want top tier security products to protect your business and you don't give a hoot that it comes with a back door for US spook agencies, sure, go with RSA. They've got some of the top security experts. But if you want security products that don't come with back doors, there are other world-class security companies to turn to. World class security companies with world class security experts who, even in a drunken stupor, would neverselect an unproven absurdly slow ugly blatantly-backdoored random number generator to use.

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I'm going to have to disagree. A company's CEO getting involved in child porn would definitely be worse.

What sort of company has a child as CEO?

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You had a room? Sheesh! When I was a kid we lived in 2D, all we had were a couple of lines for walls.

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But with the wind chill it feels like -40K.

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I have no idea where people get these ideas.

Humans are irrational, superstitious, paranoid, panicky herd animals.
And those are just the ones without any psychological abnormality.

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That would indeed be an effective means to stop cancers and some other diseases, but comes with a rather noteworthy side effect. It also brings human evolution to a halt.

In the medium term (many generations) the percentages for the various existing checksummed genes will shift, but no new genes will enter the gene pool. And in the long term it becomes a statistical certainty that one particular variant of each gene will eventually reach 100% in the population. At that point the entire human population would be genetically identical, identical "clones". The only remaining variation is that there would be male-clones and female-clones.

(For this discussion I am setting aside the potential matter of human genetic engineering creating babies with experimental new genes. That's a rather thorny issue, and it doesn't contradict my original point that natural evolution of humans would halt.)

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Would you also say all infections be categorized as one disease? Cholera, syphilis, anthrax, leprosy, bubonic plague, tuberculosis, strep, tetanus, typhoid fever, diphtheria, chlamydia...

The "pathological replication of cells (human cells or bacterial cells) in the body" is a pretty generic problem. When the particular cells involved are quite diverse, when the mechanisms and processes and behaviors involved are quite diverse, it seems to me approximately equivalent to categorize various infections and various cancers as different diseases.

If you're going to classify either cancers or infections as a single disease, it maybe seems more reasonable to classify infections as a single disease. At least in that case you have the common target that they are all non-human cells, making it vastly easier to find a single drug or treatment that effectively targets them all. There's no common target in cancers because cancer cells are nothing more than broken human cells, and they are all broken in different ways.

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I think you mean van fuckin halen \m&m/

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Exactly!
That's why I don't wear poly-cotton underwear, no mixed-fiber clothing for me, no-sir-ee.
And I don't have kids, but if I ever do they damn well better be sufficiently respectful or I'll stone them to death.

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God is a SIMILE for evolution, and God has told us to gather our weapons and smite thee for such blasphemy!

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The most amazing thing about this vaccine is that it's a tachyon based vaccine.
First the testing is Finnish, and now it begins.

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Those roaming charges are going to be....
astronomical.

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No, they have the same size pools.
They just have really small bladders.

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they plan to re-engineer the Flu virus to come in pastel colors and to manufacture vitamin D.

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The same researchers plan to do a study on the new electronic social networking phenomena. All of the test subjects will be given pagers for two hours a day.

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