In many cases encryption is simply necessary to protect your customers' data in case of computer theft, just to comply with the regulations on the processing of data.

Clippy strikes back. And he's disgruntled for all the uncorresponded love!

damn, i already had a nightmare with HAL 9000 in my siesta

They are necessary to increase market liquidity and if they really manipulate prices, in the end, they are only creating interesting divergences for long-term value investors.

Just a correction: it should say "dominance" instead of "domination".

There is a word in my comment that got me thinking for a while. How can you express the condition of being clearly the best in a single word? I can think of three words: supremacy, domination and hegemony. They all sound rather unpleasant, after all who would dare achieve such a condition?!

For a European, the US military institutions are surprinsingly sincere about their intentions. The NSA clearly says in their vision statement that they seek "global cryptologic domination". (Conversely, most european military institutions only say that they want to pacify the world).

So after some thinking, i chose supremacy as the most neutral term. Just think of two examples:

* Most countries use "supreme" to refer to their highest court. It would really be suspicious for a country to have an "hegemonic" court or even worse a "dominating" court.

* There is a singing group called "The Supremes". However, I could hardly think of a group called "The Dominators" (unless it were an underground rock band) and I prefer to not even use the third word in respect to those great singers.

There's also a film called "The Bourne Supremacy", in which they try to convey the same idea of being clearly the best. Interestingly, in most european countries they used a diferent word in the translation: in Spain, "El mito Bourne".

After writing the comment, i checked that the NSA uses the word "domination" in their website. They also refer to "cryptology" instead of the more common word "cryptography", maybe to emphasise on the idea of crypto being a science rather that a way of representation.

If I were American, I think I would be a Democrat.

Cryptography is still the same science as it was some years ago, when nobody doubted about NSA's supremacy. Surely there's been a huge breakthrough in telephone networks and mobile technologies, but not in cryptographic techniques that protect them. So, do we have to believe that they couldn't keep up with "commercial innovation"?

I prefer an independent Sun Microsystems, they have an excellent track record as innovators. But if it can't succeed on its own, my suggestion is that SAP AG should buy Sun.

Good article, I'm fond of naval battles and sailing warships. No doubt superguns helped Britons, but severe storms disrupted the Armada.

And which is the rastafarian computer language? The true one that will save us from Babylon and lead us to Zion.

Toshiba PX1252S-1DAC is so far the best membrane keyboard that i've ever owned, better than Logitech and Microsoft. I've tried Model M but i think it's overkill for me.