Well, they don't need if they're willing to simply kill prisoners.

Well, to be fair, Russia does actually have to deal with them from time to time unlike the US who nearly never does.

How many really odd deaths of people who had information the NSA wouldn't like getting out before we consider the possibility?

What a disgusting post. "Pay your dues just like I did". Just because you chose to be exploited with the hope that you'll some day get compensated for it doesn't mean the model is right. And your quip about where the highest quality innovate work comes from is unproven and probably unprovable.

Maybe the issue here is that I know 100% that the effort I put in now will lead me to success in the future.

If you "know" that then you're wrong. Success isn't a guarantee even if you work hard. Ask Nikola Tesla.

Except there are plenty of places that expect 50+ hours/week and pay 20% less than market at least. Likewise, I'm sure there are jobs that pay market or better and get close to 40 hour weeks.

The market doesn't work as efficiently as you imagine it does, nor could it since companies do all they can to hide what salaries actually are (i.e. imagine trying to buy fruit when nothing had prices, no one would tell you what they paid, and you had to negotiate in private for what they cost you).

Agreed, employers often take advantage of market illegibility as it allows them to underpay people who don't know what their market value is. The employment market has very imperfect information, and the information asymmetry is usually in the employer's favor.

In order to get the best of both worlds (reasonable hours and high pay) as an employee, you not only need to be a top-notch employee, but you also need to find a top-notch company to work for. Middling employers will either underpay you or overwork you, and the worst employers will do both.

>We know that people behave better when they're accountable for what they do and say, and worse when they're not.

What you're saying here is that people conform to social norms better when they can be "held accountable" for not doing so. Now imagine some of the unhealthy social norms of the past and how people were "held accountable" for violating them.

Anonymity has a cost, but it is a cost that must be paid or we do not have a free society in any sense of the word.

So if I want to edit some open source project, I would be forced to dick around with vim if the person who made the project wrote it in that? Are you trying to go forwards or backwards?

And actually Sun approached Viacom to license Smalltalk at much less than what they were currently charging. Viacom wouldn't budge so Sun invested in "Oak" that they were already playing with in house.

Thanks for sharing the information.

np, sorry I was too lazy to post any links but I think I gave enough info to find it on the internet.

How do you know Wireshark isn't compromised? Further, MS does phone home all the time to check for updates and so on. If something extra was hidden in there would we know?

Build it from audited source?

As for updates, I imagine if you set up a domain you can run your own WSUS update server, MITM the connection, etc. - and then compare the behaviour with a "regular" home PC.

The problem really is how deep the hole goes - as per Ken Thompson "Reflections on Trusting Trust", 1984.

Actually people in Europe do care and I would expect something to happen as a result. I don't expect MS to go out of business, but it wouldn't surprise me if they lost certain key projects over the next decade.