The analogy between sex and race isn’t very good. There are few, if any, ways or situations in which being black gives you any noteworthy advantage over being white. There are many, some of them quite common and quite grave, where women qua women have been and still are privileged over men. But these tend to be primarily experienced by men who aren’t in the upper echelons of the social or economic hierarchy, and the typical advocate of gender “equality” usually seems only dimly aware that such men even exist, much less have their own experiences that might differ from what feminists tell men men’s lives are like. (To be fair, feminists didn’t invent the attitudes about gender that tend to keep male distress and weakness invisible- they merely benefit from and reinforce them.)

Two examples of child porn in one story. The menacing threat of child porn is tearing this nation apart!

This isn’t a matter of having a protective program that allows or disallows access to data. Simple protection like that can usually be bypassed if you’re able to move the hard drive to another computer or boot the computer into a different operating system.

Encrypting data with any modern symmetric cipher (such as AES), on the other hand, means that you’re rendering the data incomprehensible to anybody who doesn’t know the key. The data you’re looking for is indistinguishable from random noise unless you decrypt it.

Now, there’s always the possibility that the DoJ could try to guess at the key, but a 256-bit key (pretty common) means that there are 115792089237316195423570985008687907853269984665640564039457584007913129639936 possible keys to try. Right now, a good supercomputer can knock out a 64-bit key (18446744073709551616 possible keys) in a day or so. That means that the same computer would take something like 17 billion billion billion billion billion billion years to try all the possible 256-bit keys– which is significantly longer than it is anticipated to take before all the stars have burned out and nucleon decay has ravaged all matter.

Or, for another vivid example– if every atom on the planet were turned into a computer capable of testing 1 billion keys per second, it would take their combined computing power about 40 billion years to check every possible key.

So, no, they don’t have any sort of magical “override” button or program they can use in this case. Assuming that this woman didn’t pick a passphrase that can be easily guessed (the name of her dog, etc.), then there’s a VERY strong likelihood that they’ll never know what’s encrypted unless she tells them the passphrase.

Getting to societal change on a given issue is a difficult and lengthy process, which is probably why it’s so tempting for people to just campaign for a new law. Obviously that doesn’t make it the right fix, but I can see why it appeals to so many.

“Saying the ads suck because they’re pandering to stereotypes shouldn’t be ridiculous. Campaigning to ban such ads would be. And there’s a lot of space in the middle, too.”

Very well said. The issue is when people automatically conflate the former with the latter. In the discussion here and in the article, I didn’t see anyone advocating banning the ads… just pointing out the problems with them. Personally, I’m curious how many people actually read the article (it was one long paragraph).

“I don’t think telling people that this crap reinforces internal stereotypes that many people aren’t even aware of is a bad thing. I just don’t think the people who are saying it are the spokespeople who’ll get respect.”

I don’t know enough about the writer of the article to determine whether she is the type of person who’d be respected on the issue. Part of the problem is that raising these issues often automatically disqualifies the speaker from getting respect from some people.

Some people are simply unwilling or unsympathetic to complaints of sexism (or racism or homophobia or ageism, etc, etc, etc). They will dismiss anyone who raises them out of hand as oversensitive, whiney, wanting special treatment, and other such similar criticism that seek to immediately invalidate their position. It is why combating such issues is such an uphill battle. I think your point is a really sound one and gets at the nuance necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff on these issues. The issue is the many, many people who simply think it is all chaff.

I respectfully disagree. Not only do women have to achieve a higher standard to earn that respect, but there is far less of a guarantee that once achieved they will maintain that respect and have it honored as it should be.

A woman shows she’s a force to be reckoned with by being one; it’s that simple. Real respect is always earned; it cannot be given as a gift or extorted as tribute. And whining about stereotypes and an “unlevel playing field” just reinforces the notion that women are comparable to children, a “protected class” to be coddled and patronized rather than treated like adults.

“******* July 15, 2011 at 8:59 pm

Tom, Tom. I have no problem with women running the planet. Like as not, they’d do as well as any man. There would be no wars. But it would get pretty damned interesting every 28 days or so.”

This comes from a poster who I don’t know personally but has generally demonstrated himself to be an intelligent, rational actor. He later indicated it was a joke (not under any pressure, just as he and another poster shared similar jokes). It is not an uncommon sentiment, with many men feeling quite sincere about the belief. How exactly does a woman show she is a force to be reckoned with when that is the opposition she is facing? Tube-tying?

Yes, but do men have to prove they are a force to be reckoned with? Or is it assumed? And, if you agree that this is something unique to women (as compared to men), do you not think that such stereotypes are part of the reason for this disparity? I don’t think someone is going to look at these ads and say, “Ya know what, I was going to vote for Hillary but… if she doesn’t get her milk, who knows what could happen!” But they do contribute to and, more importantly, reflect a narrative that exists within our culture about what women are: overly emotional, irrational creatures completely at the whim of their hormones.

The ads are lame. AND, any woman who is offended by them needs to grow up. There are real problems with the way people in power see women (http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/sisters-in-arms/), but reacting like stupid, oversensitive crybabies who can’t take a joke will only amplify those problems rather than solve them.

Oh, and for the guys who are quoting feminist claptrap about how ads make men reluctant to vote for women or promote them to high positions: I guarantee you that any woman competent to hold such a position hasn’t wasted her life bitching about how women are portrayed in stupid ad campaigns; she’s been out there proving she’s a force to be reckoned with.

b | July 15th, 2011 at 3:35 pm

your second sentence is not only unchivalrous and ungallant,

AYPI?

but also erroneous if directed to me. i am a prince, not a princess.

If it quacks like a duck….

Direct “art” funding in the UK is for targeted pieces of art for certain uses, yes. Art-as-in-art funding is handled via a number of non-governmental bodies, precisely to keep government objectives out of it.

So…no, not really, Radley.

It’s even more laughable than that helicopter’s pilot’s idea you can set up a proper online registration and accreditation system for a few thousand dollars. Someone should tell him about the costs of software development for aircraft compared to normal software. I’m sure he’d blow a gasket, but the same principles apply.

I’m hoping this is the key to get my adolescent kids into math, because this is what math was made for!