That's cute how you put words in my mouth and then tell me I'm a moron with a persecution complex for saying what I didn't say. I personally think you're an idiot because you admitted you built a shrine to Tim Burton's dirty underpants in your room. If you now deny it, that will just confirm my suspicion. (And if you don't deny it, you will be convicted by your telling silence.)

Since context clues seem to escape you, let me explain (and I'll use small words so you'll be sure to understand, you warthog-faced buffoon) (I don't generally resort to name-calling, but that seems to be the direction of the conversation). I do not believe in the dichotomy of "Global Warming" vs. "Denialism." In fact, "Global Warming" and "Climate Change" don't even mean anything. They're emotionally-charged political buzz words that dumb politicians chant to get their respective brain-dead constituencies stirred up into a partisan fervor. But since you are an admitted True Believer in the Church of Global Warming and believe that the voice of James Hansen speaks to you through Tim Burton's dirty underpants, I don't expect you to understand that.

No, this is more like, "Airplanes crash every single day, all over the place, so there's no reason to report the crash in San Francisco as though it's something special." There's nothing special about this crash except that somebody was able to make a tenuous link between "Google" and "Global Warming denier." If you're bothered by political cronyism, then work to do something about political cronyism. Pretending like it's newsworthy that Google contributes to politicians isn't doing something.

Seriously, how is this news? A large company is schmoozing politicians. It's fine to think it's evil and corrupt and whatever. But news is generally something that you didn't already know. And the title is just trolling for True Believers who think that "Global Warming" is a single monolithic issue, with exactly one meaning and with exactly two sides ("Evangelist" and "Denier"), with no nuance or discussion possible. (As evidence, watch the flood of comments that will follow labeling me a "denier" because I used the words "nuance" and "discussion" in connection with Global Warming.)

Polls are wonderful things... they can be skewed to show anything you wish. Take the same gun poll in, say, New York City and El Paso, Texas, and you'll get entirely contrary results.

I think Jeff is a sincere fellow who seeks to have a nice conference and avoid issues that could be tough on either the Fed side or the Hacker community side.

I don't take his request as retaliation over government policies, and mroe as recognition that the community coming out to DefCon is very different from the one that will be attending BlackHat.

The point of the conference, regardless of anything anyone wants to say, is to have fun. My take is that he is trying to preserve that spirit for the conference.

Crayons are very easy. Writing an award winning novel is ridiculously hard.

Get over yourself.

Heh, someone the other day was trying to convince me about the 1970s speech recognition program. I was rather skeptical. Glad to see I'm not the only one.

-l

I know this was probably posted sarcastically, but it's a difficult path to walk. On one side you have rape-culture feminists saying "don't tell me how to dress, teach your sons not to rape" and on the other side you have the police and others trying to give advice on risk minimisation such as "don't dress like a slut".

I think the answer is somewhere in between.

A friend of mine recently blogged how she trained in martial arts, dresses conservatively if out at night and engages in other risk minimisation behaviours, but worries that while it makes her safer, it potentially just means the hypothetical attacker, if out on the prowl, may simply go for another, 'tastier' snack. She feels guilty that while she may be safer, she has made someone else less safe by comparison.

We definitely need to teach our children that 'no means no' and that they don't have the right to force themselves on an unwilling partner. But while that message is sinking in, we need to teach them to consider the risks in how they behave.

Children and adolescents are especially at risk because they still haven't formed the ability to assess risk and make judgements as to their own safety. In some ways it's easier to protect very young children than it is to protect teens, who will be trying to prove their own individuality while feeling immortal.

TL:DR it's complex and something we really should treat as a joke.

It just occurred to me, one of the researchers pulling out was slated to give a presentation on how to hack sharepoint.

While it would be an enormous loss for the community not to have the opportunity to learn more about the specific ways this guy attacks M$'s premium CMS ... ... how much effort would it really take for a bunch of Defcon attendees to put together a session with equally useful information about hacking sharepoint to replace it?

Were it not for the fact I don't believe there is any anonymity in the world anymore, I would agree with you and say something even more cavalier. But I don't, and like to be thought of as a nice person.

I can't speak for the people who have chosen not to participate or their reasons for doing so.

I am sure it will be a loss for the event, but not as much as the one that comes from the lack of a public dialogue about the government's actions and activities tracking internet traffic.

Saying that Defcon fosters an open community where there are no sides is a little misleading. The government has it's own reasons for showing up and they are not all related to sharing ideas, learning and having a good time. It's just the other people who really lack an agenda.

I know people who are not going to Blackhat because the NSA is giving the keynote. What kind of strange alternate future is it we live in where this even happens?

The silos at Microsoft were built in part as a way to get the DOJ to leave them alone, to at least make it look like the Office division didn't have an unfair advantage over Lotus or WordPerfect Corp in developing Windows applications. Getting rid of the silos is a test to see if they can get away with it (again). They probably can, but only because the DOJ settlement worked, and Microsoft is no longer the 800-pound gorilla of the industry, but just another 300-pound gorilla facing serious competition from Apple and Google.

One little-noticed aspect of this is that Steve Ballmer is changing his last name to "Jobs".

Seriously, it sounds like he's trying to change Microsoft into Apple.

Fuuuuuuuuck off.