And someone probably forced her to buy a sports car. Sorry, sympathy for losing his daughter, but there really is only one person to blame and we all know who it is.

The article states = 'Your computer is now only as secure as that database of keys held by Microsoft, which means it may be vulnerable to hackers, foreign governments, and people who can extort Microsoft employees.'

Yes, because your everyday user's are so much more capable of protecting their data on their computers.

Silliness...

People can't really be so naive that they think other countries, even allies, are not also spying on us. Really?

Anyone with half a brain also already knew what they revealed. Our major short-fall was immediately after 9-11 the majority of Americans decided that it was okay for the government to impose a much more comprehensive surveillance program. Not only was it allowed to move forward, most actually welcomed it. Now, we realize what we have freely given the government permission to do and we're not happy about; big surprise.

Snowden wasted his time, put people at risk and didn't actually achieve squat that couldn't have been done in a safer and more reasonable way; but hey, there are a bunch of over-privileged impressionable kids that will hold him up on a pedestal.

Manning was a poser that was used by an organization and threw him under the bus; they got what they wanted and Manning paid the price.

Holding either of these children up as examples of 'standing up to the machine' is just ridiculous; they both fell on their swords for absolutely nothing.

... and that's just the way they want to keep the people -- stupid and unaware. It's the only advantage they have over "we the people" after all -- informaiton and knowledge control.

If a big name came out to admit "yes, the talk is true. I'm gay, but it DOESN'T MATTER! I've got a business to run!!" Who cares were he takes it or where he puts it?! Apple is big business and what that jerk does or prefers to look at is almost meaningless.

Are we almost done with "gay pride"?!

As much as I have looked into the general subject of why women don't "Y" and why men don't "X." People keep wanting to believe that it's "male domination" and completely forget about the functions of our bodies and how they drive and support our behaviors.

If it were a cultural issue, there would invariably be some example somewhere of an exchange of roles between men and women on earth SOMEWHERE. There really isn't.

At the core is essentially a way of devaluing ALL people (both male and female) by removing their significance and importance in any given role. This serves to further weaken families and other structures which invariably compete with other control structures like... uhm... government.

I don't have nearly the "protection" you have and neither have I. Just don't do stupid things.

Spoken like someone who didn't even read the summary -- and seriously, that's all you need in this case. It's standard trojan nonsense. You have to install an app which then sets about installing another app... secretly.

The whole point of this article, I think, is to make all platforms "equally bad." I smell microsoft or apple sponsorship. If you can't make what you have "better" you "compete" by trying to make others look worse.

Ah, it's been a while, Green Site!

Ok, there's a great deal of confusion I see here. It's a question of use-case.

Drag queens are performing artists. See Rue Paul or Pandora Boxx, neither of which iirc use HRT or intend to transition to adopting their performing identities as their own 24/7. Companies get FB pages, so why shouldn't their performing identities get FB pages in addition to their own personal pages?

I find it odd that FB is apologizing to drag queens or that they would even target drag queens. (I'd also like to add that one curious thing I read in Whipping Girl is that drag queens are often welcomed into the female restroom, but trans women are shunned from that place.)

In the case of trans men and women, if FB has targeted them (I haven't been), FB is clearly wrong and the apology is justified. Especially in the case of trans women, proceeding with a legal name change is a risk that can land one homeless in a gutter. I'd also like to add that in my personal experience that I'm gendered female by others quite often (just lucky I guess), however changing my real name without being able to go without a job for a year or two would be suicidal. Employers have this little habit of demanding documents that contain one's legal gender. If one's legal gender doesn't match with the gender of one's identity and the gender others assign to one, it's OMG fucking holy shit GTFO.

There's also the complication that a name change is not enough to get those documents to match one's lived gender. My state requires bottom surgery before the documents can be amended, although some clever trans women are able to get the gender on their driver's license changed at the DMV with a little social engineering (others aren't so lucky). Other states make it impossible to change those documents even with bottom surgery.

My friends know me by one name. My employer and clients know me by another. However, FB is not a network for professionals so instead I have a LinkedIn profile with one name and a FB profile I haven't touched in probably two years with another name (just a few more years and it'll be my real name), the one my friends know me as.

What is straight peoples' clothes, exactly? Do homosexuals wear something different to the office? In my experience, gays and lesbians tend to dress just the same as their heterosexual peers.

Yes, I'm intentionally being obtuse. I hope I addressed the confusion about drag above. This is a question of identity.

I'd also like to give you something to think about. Currently I'm between genders, so it's all wibbly-wobbly. However, should I obtain bottom surgery after going full time as a woman, I will then be a heterosexual woman and indistinguishable from any other straight woman who cannot have children due to whatever medical problem.

Your head will asplode the day the procedure for a barren cisgendered woman to receive a transplanted uterus (I'm too lazy to find the link, but I believe the procedure involved transplanting her mother's uterus into her so that she could have children) is expanded to transgendered women.

Why would a cisgendered woman want to have a male identity? If this is a case of a trans man or somebody experimenting with presenting a male identity, then I would say it's justified.

I've met a few trans men, and the decision to undergo gender transition is an even bigger hurdle for them than trans women. There is no bottom surgery they can hope for, and they have to be absolutely certain before they expose their bodies to testosterone. Estrogen is easy, and its changes to the body can be hidden or even reversed. That's not true of testosterone.

The voice drops, facial hair develops, and it's all permanent. If there were a magic pill I could take that would change my brain from female to male, I might take it. My breasts can be easily removed, and the other changes will fade over time as testosterone becomes established in my body. A trans man does not have this option of an easy out once he makes the decision to transition .

It's been established that homosexuality and transgenderism exist in the animal kingdom, at least as far as mammals are concerned. However, I can't comprehend why somebody would make a FB profile for a pet, so I don't think I can advise on this one.

Coming back to this to summarize, I'm confused that FB didn't limit the apology to the transgendered or why they were even targeting drag queens. Drag queens are performing artists. If companies can have a FB profile, their performance should also clearly get a FB profile.

Let's also be more clear. The term "cross-dresser" can mean any number of things and is too vague to be useful.

At any rate, this all illustrates how brain-damaged a "real" name (I hope I've called the idea of a real name into question) policy is.

Gender transition isn't something where you just throw a switch and it's done in 5 minutes with liberal hounds chasing down anyone who doesn't recognize the new identity. There is a period of time--years and years--where one is in varying degrees of legal limbo, and free Obamacare sex changes are a delusion of Faux News. Not every trans woman is perceived as a woman as easily as I. Assume your ability to spot a "cross-dresser" is infallible and perform the Crocodile Dundee maneuver enough times, and eventually you'll grope a cisgendered female and find yourself in a world of shit while I go unquestioned.

All of these are necessary and none are a substitute for one-another. And even in concert and combination, they are not 100% effective and never can be.

The fact is, there are people who think the ability to get beyond security measures is tantamount to the "right" to break, enter and utilize. That is the source of the trouble. And until those humans are addressed effectively, there cannot be any progress against the problem. And why isn't that happening? Should be obvious.

With government writing themselves laws exampting themselves from prosecution (and simply ignoring laws, and refusing to prosecute themselves) and business of every kind, everywhere "lobbying" [read: buying] legislation which enables them to legally circumvent personal privacy and security measures while at the same time criminalizing circumvention of playback control measures? Well the picture sure be clear enough. They can't easily go after anyone without potentially offending the people who support them -- their sponsors.

The establishment itself is the problem. The establishment problem is best addressed by a mob of rebellion. Start with simple things: MS Windows for work and Linux/BSD for home. I don't care which flavors of Linux/BSD anyone uses and variety is a great thing -- no one-virus/malware to rule them all. Similarly to "the truth" Open Source will set you free. It's simply harder and less frequent to get malware through in any consistent and predictable way. With Windows and MacOS, consistency and predictability is far greater.

We preach "defensive driving" in motor vehicle traffic. But we ignore it where communications, privacy and data flows are concerned? And of the two, which are presently more important? (Still a contest but it's not about which is "more" important... that's a matter of context)

I'm aware there is malware for all. There are reasons to go with something other than windows:

1. Windows is #1 for known vulnerabilities
2. Windows is #1 for the rate of new vulnerabilities
3. Windows is #1 for the general weakness of the security model which exploits use to excallate themselves
4. Windows is extremely homogenous which means it's far simpler to write one exploit to pwn them all

Those facts alone are more than enough reason -- if they want in, make them work for it.

And the nothing of separating machines by function? It's pretty fundamental. Even if one stays with Windows, separating functions over different machines is just best. And they just aren't as expensive as they once were and "just for internet" requires the least amount of cost imaginable.

Well there you have it. If you're running Windows you get what you deserve. "Oh! but my games! My precious distractions! My fake 'acheivements!'" Yeah. I completely understand. Keep your Windows computers off of the internet for anything other than gaming! No email! No web browsing!

"But the applications I need to run my business!" Okay, I'll definitely go along with that to a degree. Once again, Keep your work machines off of the internet! If your work is important, and I'm sure it is, then keep it safe off of the internet.

Is MacOS safe? Not as long as Apple enjoys a pretty cozy government relationship. Is Linux safe? I wouldn't go that far either. "Safe"-er! yeah. But people need to simply be more aware of what affects them and how. It's like walking through life without washing your hands and not avoiding filth. You wouldn't do that would you?

I was thinking the same thing about restaurants with "all you can eat" deals. :) Mostly because I'm hungry and haven't eaten since lunch time. :)

1) The political push is for getting more women into studies in school they don't want and when they can't get the numbers they want in those schools, they close the programs down. In the workplace, the same sort of numbers games are being played in a way rather similar to race baiters. And women are being "shamed" for not being successful career women. Smart women don't buy into it, but we live in a consumer society -- smart people are increasingly rare.

It's getting late... want to sleep. I think I am happy with this discussion especially as I find many like-minded people who actually see the harms our society is experiencing due to the cost [read "LOSS"] of the family and thus children which are the next workers and leaders of our nation as the years continue to count forward. We seem to be taking a LOT for granted and not the least of which is the importance of women, families and children.

We knew this decades and centuries ago. We have always sought to honor and protect women -- we called it by many names including chivalry. But some whack-job women decided it was "oppression." And as their agenda became adopted into the system, the results have been catastrophic. And if you don't agree that children are our future and that whole families are needed to raise good, strong, healthy sons and daughters, please tell me who and how our society will not become "Idiocracy" any worse than it already is? That's a serious question.