And no one. Not one agency has backups? Or off site backups? Even the chincy little agencies I've worked at have off site backups in their disaster recovery plans.

Do you know the price of fuckleberries these days? Through the frickin' roof!

I should have back pedaled on that one. Who's going to power all my stuff in the future?

I need you ugly flesh weasels. There. I said it.

You are an old white male. You speak into the wind as your opinion to them means nothing. As an ally they will eventually eat you alive when you are the only ones left standing.

It's no longer about justice or equality. SJWs are never satisfied. Ever. Their victim narrative will forever consume them as they topple each person higher then them on the oppression pyramid.

RC Helicopters we're as ubiquitous as drones. Also, RC Helos didn't have affordable, real time cameras. So they are no longer the oddities of a hobbyist, but remote surveillance equipment.

Equal in the meaning that Abraham Lincoln expressed. We were physically nor mentally the same, but were equal in the capacity to be treated the same under the law and by our system of government.

Even the rich need human capital. If they are healthy as a horse and easily led then so much the better. It's going to go along the lines of Alphas, Betas and Deltas.

The women-in-STEM supporters are really happy to hear about women being in STEM, but they can't do a damn thing about all the assholes.

Yes. So am I, but you know how to get rid of the assholes?
Dismantle their arguments.

They can't bitch about quotas when there are none. When will we take away the training wheels and treat women and men the same regarding merit? Yeah, the STEM field is full of arrogant assholes, but that never stopped real pioneers and innovators. The STEM professions are not for the faint of heart and trying to cultivate a special space for women does a disservice to capable women everywhere. Talk to Sallie Ride about the shit she had to deal with during her astronaut training. They kept puttin' front and center misogyny right in her face and she kept going. It wasn't easy, but it proved point and her experience puts current workplace microagressions and diversity issues in their place.

It's a self fulfilling prophesy. "Oh well, I don't want to go into a STEM field because the men will just be assholes." Meanwhile, "Women don't want to be in STEM field, because they don't choose those fields thus they aren't interested". Break the cycle! There's more women than men attending universities in the US. They can be going for STEM fields and make women in those fields commonplace. When more women are available in the technical labor force and as company founders the less arguments can be made. The labor pool diversity takes care of itself, since it'll be real obvious in a hurry that all the unemployed STEM workers all of a sudden happen to be women.

I work with some very intelligent women who code and project manage circles around me. Some were hired before quotas and some were hired afterwards. The ones after and their co workers always have that niggling doubt of being hired for 'diversity' reasons. It's time to take off the crutches and remove the hypersensitivity. In another two decades it's going to be the Gen X crowd at the helm and we can do away with this bullshit.

BS of the highest order.

The more probable scenario.

"What's that, little girl full of hopes and dreams? Line right up and get a degree in a STEM field! We need women in engineering of all disciplines, and game development! We need scientists! We have scholarships and funding for women willing to enter STEM fields! If you're having problems you can meet at the Campus Women's STEM group and mentor program! We also have paid internships for diversity candidates and you qualify!"

"No. I'm not interested in Computer Science or Game Development. Maybe become a Biologist, but I want to be a Nurse or a Veterinarian. Maybe a Fashion Designer or a Singer! Or maybe get an art or psychology degree."

"Please! Enter a STEM field!! We need a diverse field, since there aren't so many women in it right now and women can do anything!"

"Nnnnnno!"

Put one data sheet on top of another and play some Barry White music?

Why are you looking at me like that? That's how we were taught in Health Class.

Even if Hillary was guilty as sin, you really think Obama wouldn't pardon her?

Encryption or not, if I had access to the internal network how long until I had the DB system account credentials? Then I can bypass all the data access rules, or even create database clones and start stripping the logs. The possibilities are numerous. Then feed the data out a bit at a time.

More than likely it's not that nefarious or complicated. Someone did a bit a social engineering and got lucky or planned to get a very close set of credentials. Then physically walked in and grabbed the data. You don't even need the whole database. It's possibly a couple HR or project tables.

tl;dr Encryption wouldn't have stopped this when the crackers had internal access.

Hi there, Morbo! How's the family?

Companies pay what the market will bear. Unfortunately, it's been a race to the bottom when you add in the H1-Bs. If everyone in IT walked off the job there would be some serious salary and wage adjustments. And that's the other problem. Good IT people are individuals, and don't really play well to a group idea unless that's the nature of the job.

Lighten' up Francis.