You can either despise them or pity them or both. I can only agree with Bret Stephens wholeheartedly

Computer security is a very complex issue and quite frightening. Overall, I'd say you are "damned if you do and damned if you don't".


The government doesn't exactly seem to have the agility to adapt to rapid changes in technology, due to overall bureaucracy (fill out 20 forms and get approval for any change), lack of funds (stories of people using really old gear because of budget restraints), and lack of 'star players' (who would want to work for the US Govt IT when you could work for Google or Symantec or whoever ... more money, more fun). As an aside, I worked in the Bay Area for 25+ years, and then in Scottsdale, AZ for 5 years. In Scottsdale, just about every IT guy we hired/interviewed was ex-military IT and I was appalled at their quality. I ended up using Bay Area-based consultants whenever I could.


One sees many examples of private companies being hacked too - Sony, Target come to mind but there are many more; so it's not that private companies have a guaranteed advantage.


In summary, I don't think one can infer anything based on the 'public/private' angle.


I would focus entirely on the 'quality' of the environment. If you have only one or two 'users' connecting to the server, you can greatly simplify the environment, and lock it down heavily. Imagine any 'big' environment - thousands of users, using everything from Macs to Windows, iPhones to Blackberrys, windows XP to Windows 10, etc .... you have to 'allow' for each of these types. But if you have just a couple of known clients, you can say, don't allow any devices other than 'x' - and one can imagine that 'x' would be some pretty high-end, recent device. So you can just 'bounce' a huge amount of otherwise necessary connection attempts.


Ultimately, security is a multi-faceted discipline and you have to cover every possible 'attack vector' to be safe. I can't tell you the number of times a 'CEO' type would 'demand' that I stop forcing him to change his password every 30 days, or allow him to plug a USB device into his laptop, or whatever. It all comes down to a trade-off between convenience and security.


Hand-in-hand with security goes 'logging' - recording 'what happened in the past'. Again, for a big organization (public or private), logging is an almost impossible task due to the inability to see the wood for the trees. If you have only a small number of valid users trying to connect, you have a better chance of actually making sense of the data you have.


I believe that these days, most breaches are caused by 'human engineering' - generally, having a person masquerade as someone else with the intent of tricking a human into giving out information. I believe this was the root cause of the Sony and Target breaches ... not sure now.


If I were Hillary I would have erred on the side of going with my own environment, but I can't argue that the 'visuals' here are not so good.

Did you guys see Scott Adams (dilbert creator) on Bill Maher on Friday? Pretty scary analysis of Trump's strategy and success.


'Dilbert' Creator Scott Adams to Bill Maher: Donald Trump Will Win Election In A Landslide | Video | RealClearPolitics


(link above seems to be only partially successful, but all the other sites that carry it seem to be rabid Trump sites so I don't want to give them any more popularity by posting links to them ...).


Actually this one seems to be the meat of it all:


His comment about the branding of Bush as "Low Energy" was telling.


This really did not cheer me up!

A bit ad hominem but I vaguely recall that Scott Adams had gone off the deep end recently and was associating himself with the whole men's rights, misogynist, racist types? i.e not that level headed so I'd take his opinions with a pinch of salt. Though his point is taken, Trump knows his audience.

I haven't followed Scott Adams as a person (though I used to love Dilbert the cartoon), but I'd say, regardless of his 'credentials', his message was powerful ...

It's depressing but not surprising. Carnival barking has been around for a long time. It makes me think of high-pressure sales people with a million tricks up their sleeve --- they do it because it works.

So Bill Kristol has David French lined up for an independent bid at president.

Who the fck is David French?

The same Bill Kristol that gave us Sarah Palin?

Wasn't he in DeadEnders years ago?

Oddly enough one bio I saw said David French's wife was Palin's ghostwriter.

Clearly we need to "build a wall" to stop things like this happening:

Trump angry as golf tournament is moved to Mexico - BBC News

He is too arrogant to understand that his bloviating bullshit drove sponsors away from the tournament being held there.

I see sponsors are pulling out of the Republican Convention as well.

Yes..that started a while ago. Looks good on him.

I think he has suddenly realized he has sole possession of the spotlight right now, not sure he likes it so much.