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Do we know that for sure? The linked article requires a subscription, but if it is the same as this story then it was based on an analysis of the DNA of a single individual from circa 5000BC, who was closely related to northern Europeans but was living in Spain. There are many interpretations one could make from that: that all Europeans were similar to this man, that this guy was of mixed parentage and was relatively unique, that he belonged to a splinter population that got wiped out... I am sure there are many other plausible hypotheses. At the end of the day, you are trying to make a guess about the entire population of Europe from a sample size of one individual near Europe's borders. Was this some other study, and if so can you provide some details please?

Would appear you are correct http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scie...

This would seem contrary to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scie...

Only if they get to keep them.

They did. You should really read a bit more about a topic before posting: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/busi...

Joking. Interesting read. Clearly some drugs, by all means not all, should be legalised - better quality, increased safety, less incentives to invent untested and often hazardous chemicals and, last but not least, PROFIT for the country's budget! Old school politics and the WOD nonsense have caused enough damage already. Even the head of UK Police is saying it: End war on drugs, says Durham police chief Mike Barton

They didn't leave cave paintings or anything that indicates capacity for symbolic reasoning.

We aren't so sure about that.

I'm far more concerned about the emission of methane gas by dragons

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

When I arrived on the shore of America I had nothing.

I didn't even speak English.

To make the long story short - two of the three factors were very vital for my survival, and ultimately put me to where I am - except for the "superiority" factor, because I was less than a nothing back then.

As I grow more accustomed to the American lives, I get to know people from different cultures - for one reason or another, I find one group very very interesting - the Jews.

They are in so many ways so similar to the Chinese - and yet, they are far superior to the Chinese (yes, insecurity complex at play here) in that the Jews have a purpose in their own private lives and also for their community lives - on the other hand, most Chinese do not.

At the end of the day, the success of the Jews is not a fluke - their culture is structured in such a way that death of one member is nothing - even a massacre of millions to the Jews is nothing - as long as their culture gets to live on.

BBC has a very interesting program on the revival of Jewish culture in Krakow, Poland -

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...

What the Chinese have is number. What the Jews have is determination.

But other than that, in many other aspect in lives, what the Jews are can very much be found in the Chinese.

And I am not the only one who is saying this - read the following article (written by a Jew) to find out what he says ---

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/C...

===
As a Jew, we were given the top three important qualities to rank careers. Teacher, Doctor, and Business Man.
Teacher to spread knowledge, Doctor to heal the sick, and Business man to give employment to the citizens, so that they may live without stress. The rabbi was number 4.

Our parents wanted us to have careers that are portable. If we had to leave a country because of war, we would be able to start up elsewhere. That obliged us to do well in school, to include fluency in a second language, and to chose friends who were as studious as were we. We also shunned wine, women and song.

Today, we have become soft, seaking leasure instead of knowledge and skills. We live in the TV set age, where we want to watch shows, instead of study. I believe that is the reason that Jews, Chinese, and other first and second generation immigrants surpass native borns is due to their instinct to have security.

France actually dropped the bans from the 3 strike law in July last year, and only fines remain.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/tech...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
"the government's Constitutional Council on Friday ruled that portion of the much-criticized law to be unconstitutional."

I can't believe nobody has mentioned this; there was an article on the BBC last October about "The Japanese men who prefer virtual girlfriends to sex". They take them on dates and everything, so people are already doing what happens in the movie only with a way shittier version of the Girl.

I'm not normally much of a racing buff, but the BBC did a fascinating documentary about Group B rallying which is well worth a watch if you can find a copy. Lots of interviews with the drivers and the engineers who created such monsters.

.....he is also believed to have made contacts with Chinese and Russian operatives before he fled the country.

Believed by whom? Anonymous Crackpots on the Internet? Sure. They're completely trustworthy.
The only people who say Snowden was working with the Russians are the various lawbreaking members of the US government, who are actively running a smear campaign against Snowden. The FBI, however, has maintained for some time that Snowden acted alone.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25806855
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/26/usa-security-snowden-idUSL2N0L00BR20140126

I'm sure that the HSBC executives will also be arrested for their money laundering soon. Any time now.

Nah, they're too busy telling depositors they can't withdraw their money.

Interestingly enough, in some of the currency market circles they're already making noise that this is to limit a run that's already going on. Being a trader myself, I put it at a 40% chance that it's true...it's enough to make me jittery on anything that they're involved in.

They have edited out a single black and white photograph from the original cut. Compare the first thirty seconds from the two versions:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-2...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

I wonder who asserted a copyright claim on a grainy seventy year old photograph to get this taken offline?

When I arrived on the shore of America I had nothing.

I didn't even speak English.

To make the long story short - two of the three factors were very vital for my survival, and ultimately put me to where I am - except for the "superiority" factor, because I was less than a nothing back then.

As I grow more accustomed to the American lives, I get to know people from different cultures - for one reason or another, I find one group very very interesting - the Jews.

They are in so many ways so similar to the Chinese - and yet, they are far superior to the Chinese (yes, insecurity complex at play here) in that the Jews have a purpose in their own private lives and also for their community lives - on the other hand, most Chinese do not.

At the end of the day, the success of the Jews is not a fluke - their culture is structured in such a way that death of one member is nothing - even a massacre of millions to the Jews is nothing - as long as their culture gets to live on.

BBC has a very interesting program on the revival of Jewish culture in Krakow, Poland -
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...

What the Chinese have is number. What the Jews have is determination.

But other than that, in many other aspect in lives, what the Jews are can very much be found in the Chinese.

And I am not the only one who is saying this - read the following article (written by a Jew) to find out what he says ---

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/C...

That's historical though and many are quick to forgive and forget. Global pollings over the past few years have shown the UK to be one of the most respected global nations only just a bit behind nations like Germany. I can't recall the ranking but it was top 5, whilst the US was down at 30 something.

As a British citizen this actually surprised me as I thought after we stupidly joined America in Iraq that we'd struggle to shake that off for far longer than it appears we've actually had to.

Here's one such study, there was a better one that had more nations in it but I can't find it now:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

Presumably the next ones will be coming around in a few months as they all seem to be yearly studies. Keep in mind that this particular one benefited from the Olympic/Jubilee/Royal Pregnancy effect because of those sorts of things occuring in the year previous which boosted our ranking somewhat.

I'm not saying we don't deserve to be seen in a negative light, as I say, I'm not happy with what our country has done, and still is doing (particularly the fact that GCHQ seems to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the NSA) but the fact is that for the most part Britain is seen in a very positive light, whereas the US just isn't so much.

Of course, if the far right wing of part of our current government (the Tories) still keep acting like the little bigotted xenophobic fascists they are in trying to push a highly isolationist agenda for no other reason than they hate foreigners then I can't see our ranking staying as high as it is.

iinm, something similar happened in the UK too, if you can count the Isle of Man as the UK :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...
"Isle of Man church service marks Manx link to Holocaust"

"The Manx Holocaust memorial service is a "poignant" reminder of the Isle of Man's role as an internment centre during WW2, said organisers.

Between 1940 and 1945 thousands of Jewish refugees were held as "enemy aliens" in six island internment camps."

Shameful. Kind of reminds me of Gitmo...

Russian spies in Australia at 'near Cold War level'

China's spies come out from the cold

Chen Yonglin, a Chinese diplomat who recently defected in Australia, claimed Beijing had as many as 1,000 spies in Australia alone.

Humm, mine run in the 30+ range and one gets about 45, so if you're going to use a big paint roller to cast everybody in the US as a massive polluter you should look inward, we also have tougher standards on Diesel emissions than Europe. The 2014 standards in Europe will start matching what we're doing.. As a matter of fact, this article kind of puts a few holes in your argument there because EU standards don't go quite far enough. We passed emissions standards here essentially outlawing two-stroke transportation engines in this country quite awhile back while in Europe, people still can drive them because of the great mileage you can get with a small two-stroke engine. So while the government gets fatter on fuel taxes you all can pollute more saving money on gas, while over here our pollution issues have been getting better. They're not perfect by any means but not everybody here drives around in a 5 ton H1 Hummer as I suspect not everybody in Europe drives around on a 30 year old Vespa two-stroke.

That's awful, pretty closer to "as bad as it can get". I hope that the protesters can manage to elicit real change in the face of such brutality but you've provided a stark example of how difficult it can be.

Looks like the pro-EU protesters are still fighting tho...

Why in the world the UK, with a supposedly "ELECTED" and "DEMOCRATIC" government, want to follow China in erecting their "Great Firewall" ??

Careful with that word: your message may be blocked by UK 'inteligent' filters.
Not because of the critique implied by your message, it happened before.

Driving in to work I usually listen to the BBC World Service and they have been running a series on the Elements. This morning was Carbon, Part II - which covered Graphene and flixable displays, due to the nature of Graphene's transparent nature. While it's been interesting to see the series of articles on /. regarding Nanotubes and Graphene, this brought it more to life.

The prospect of using Graphene as custom-tailored filters, perhaps to trap CO2 was also pretty good.

At some point it should appear on the PodCast directory

According to the latest genetic therapy news, it appears that bionic eyes may be a much smaller segment of the population than you imply.

And yes, you are currently being told how to use your biological eyes and memory. You are prevented from recreating or copying copyrighted works, whether by hand, mechanically, or digitally, are you not? So expect your digital memory to be wiped upon leaving the show.

Maybe this will help you: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl... I would separate hunting for food from hunting "just because we are fucking retards"

nah.. didn't you hear that its because the government legalised gay marriage. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-25793358

Of course, if you cherry pick 1996-2012 you can get a small trend line... but if you start in 1996 (instead of 1998 like the article states, as most skeptics avoid that since it's such an easy counter-point) you have no statistically significant warming 17 years. Benjamin Santer in http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JD016263/abstract declared that "Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature."

Translated, it essentially means that if there is no significant warming for 17 year periods we need to start searching for the real causes and not just sink money in to finding more human causes to blame.

Then you add in that the sun goes in to a lull and suddenly we have no more warming and a huge number of record colds being recorded in the northern hemisphere yet the alarmist have been shouting it from the rooftops that changes in the sun are too small to affect climate citing the TSI changes rather than the changes in different frequencies (which are quite large). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25771510

Maybe instead of people having a decrease of scientific understanding they are just waking up to the facts and as they learn more they realize the alarmists are hand waving ninnies.

It's not global warming, at least not caused by our burning BILLIONS of tones of fossil fuels.
Simply, it's all God's fault for being such a homophobic sociopathetic but supreme being

A UKIP councillor has blamed the recent storms and heavy floods across Britain on the Government's decision to legalise gay marriage.
David Silvester said the Prime Minister had acted "arrogantly against the Gospel".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-25793358

Steganography, not stenography.

I doubt he ever found any true stenography in there.

A few experts years ago found an effective way to detect commonly used forms of stenography in jpegs, and tried feeding two images from ebay through the detector, plus another million from usenet. Not a single one had any stenographic information that they could find, and their detector was demonstrated as very reliable.
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/papers/detecting.pdf

The NSA leaks did reveal that they have an interest in porn though: They've been monitoring the porn use of some unnamed 'radical muslims' in the middle east were planning on using it to blackmail them into silence or destroy their credibility. It's not clear if they actually pulled off the blackmail or discrediting part though, the leaked document is from the planning stage.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25118156

Zero consequences indeed. Haven't you heard that God has turned the sun down to compensate for our profligate use of fossil fuels?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25743806

Now just as long as we stay on his good side ... pray dammit, pray. Of course first you have to work out which of the numerous Gods is the one with his (or her) hand on the temperature dial...

What I want to know is if it's hot enough to melt the baffles currently holding the scientists. I like how they're certain the planet is heating, but baffled about the sun. Probably has something to do with funding.

It's all locked down hard until someone finds the key: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25550512

yes, you're giving other drivers too much credit.

If they get arrested for reading text messages, you can be 100% sure too many morons will be using it to read and post facebook messages.

At least the idiots who post "just hit a child while driving, he houlda looked both ways first lol" can be easily prosecuted.

"The applicants contended that the right to remain silent and the right not to incriminate oneself are absolute rights and that to apply any form of direct compulsion to require an accused person to make incriminatory statements against his will of itself destroys the very essence of that right. The Court is unable to accept this."

which was done decades ago, I laughed at the 80s mention, I was taught as child in the 60s and in 70s this was popular science fair homemade wind tunnel experiment.

About once a month slashdot runs article on "discovery" or "invention" that is decades old

The interesting thing is, this was being covered by the BBC this morning, so clearly the people behind it think it's newsworthy.

Reading the original article, it does sound like there are a few new points in there, above and beyond the simple fact that it's an energy-saving technique.

I would love to see you propose something better and implement it. The truth is that we live in a world that was quite literally saved by a single guy who refused to follow orders.

But it's not like he was the only one. There was this guy and also (arguably) this guy.

To realize just how close we really came, this movie is an eye opener.

The NSA claims that it doesn't steal trade secrets from foreign companies in order to give US businesses a competitive edge. I suspect they are lying, given that it seems like they lie about everything, and that we already have reason to suspect they are lying about this in particular.

However, the implication is that it would be wrong or immoral for them to do so (unlike the French or Chinese who have no such qualms). E.g., in the article, we read:

At that session, Mr. Obama tried to differentiate between conducting surveillance for national security — which the United States argues is legitimate — and conducting it to steal intellectual property.

It goes on to quote Peter Singer saying that for the Chinese, economic advantage is part of national security.

Maybe the Chinese are right. And here's the thing - the U.S. already behaves as if securing economic advantages for our domestic industry is a critical interest. In trade negotiations, we ram our IP laws down the throats of every other country while dangling our domestic market in front of them, all the while never actually liberalizing agriculture at home. I don't understand why it's acceptable for us to promote our domestic businesses through trade diplomacy, but somehow it becomes unacceptable to do so through spying.

In my mind, we are trying to accomplish the same thing as the Chinese, just via a different means (or probably, via both means). Yet we criticize them as if we are somehow morally superior in the way we do it.

Yeah, but a drunk guy on a bike can't kill pedestrians, but with a car, he can.

Guy on bike vs. pedestrian:

San Francisco, US:
http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/07/23/san-francisco-cyclist-pedestrian-death/

Dorsett, UK:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/dorset/8197430.stm

He has been charged with second-degree murder; if law enforcement believed he left to get his gun, the prosecutor would likely go for first degree (though we may never know). So GP indeed may be jumping to conclusions on that account. As for the rest of your argumentation, yes, one punch from a strong guy could kill a 71-year-old (and yes, it has happened more than once) but the chance of it happening is very small compared to the chance of 1 bullet of killing a young father. So that's disproportionate force. In my home country, disproportionate force automatically rules out self-defense, though things may be different in Florida. Either way, willfully shooting an unarmed man in this kind of setting will always be murder to me. And in my book, murdering someone makes one a bigger jerk than jumping to conclusions on an Internet message board. Your moral values are very alien to me.

Should sell well in India: Condoms 'too big' for Indian men (although I don't really see how being shorter than international norms is a problem: I just doesn't unroll as far, but it still unrolls snugly all the way).

The pope didn't murder health workers. Pope John Paul II is however directly responsible for many dead people in Africa, by forbidding the use of condoms.

Forbid? You speak as if condoms were outlawed. The Church only "forbids" condoms in the sense that vegan literature "forbids" eating meat. It is up to individual choice.

All this in the name of a corrupt and inmensely rich institution that claims to bring the word of god.

You speak as if priests and bishops chose such lives seeking money and comfort. In fact, it is much more comfortable to live a secular life than it is to be a celibate priest.

Also, see
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/03/aids_expert_who_defended_the_p.html

Didn't say you made it up. I'm well aware of the theory - it shows up on Slashdot and elsewhere every now and then. But I don't think it's a better theory than some other random one.

Just because a few tribes do persistent hunting doesn't make it so plausible that persistence hunting is why we evolved to run. A few tribes do some other random stuff too. There could be other reasons. My theory makes about as much sense if not more so.

Warfare seems a lot more prevalent in hominids, especially humans than persistence hunting. And I'd claim the selection/evolutionary pressures are a lot higher.

Chimpanzees conduct warfare and genocide quite regularly: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/science/22chimp.html?_r=0
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/extinction-countdown/2011/05/17/ugandan-chimpanzees-may-be-hunting-red-colobus-monkeys-into-extinction/
Babboons go to war: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8400000/8400019.stm
Even monkeys: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/videos/monkey-gang-turf-war/

Maybe running started with a few persistence hunters, but once a bunch of hominids started going to war running around with spears the survivors were mostly those who could run whether with spears or not. That's a far stronger evolutionary pressure than failing to chase down some meat - could survive for a fair bit by eating some grass bulbs, insects or worms which don't run that fast.

You realise it's also the case that nowhere near every job is filled too right? some are open indefinitely unable to get candidates, even some unskilled jobs? If it were the case that everyone wanted to work then every open position would be immediately filled but that is not the case.

"Where is the evidence these people do not want to work ?"

Where is the evidence they do? A long time ago when I'd finished my A-Levels I was a neets, I didn't want to work because it was quite nice being sat at home getting money in. When I grew up I learnt how bad a thing that was but try explaining to an 18 year old who lives at home and has never had an income why he shouldn't sit and enjoy it rather than work for an income.

"You are arguing a 45 minute commute is unusual. In actual fact itâ(TM)s common if you live in London."

You're making things up now. I've never argued this. But regardless, other studies including those directly from the ONS suggest that the vast majority of people in the UK have less than a 30 minute commute:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13627199

My commute has wavered between about 55 minutes and 1hr and 5 minutes everywhere I've worked for the last 6 years, I do not find this exceptional nor do I find it a reason not to work.

"You have a scheme that picks children up from their homes, takes them to childcare and returns them at the end of the day ? From anywhere ?"

It depends on the local council as to the details but yes there are many schemes involving the use of everything from private taxis to scheduled buses. Parents have a legal obligation to send their children to school but as part of that local councils are obliged to ensure parents can get them to school by providing help.

"A quick Google says the base tax credit is 500 quid. I know the cost of living there is a lot lower than Australia, but I still doubt that would be enough turn a profit on the annual costs of child rearing."

Er, I think you kind of missed the important part. The £500 is just for having children, you then get upto £2690 extra per child, double that again if the kid is disabled and another £1000 on top if severely disabled. This is on top of the standard child benefit which is around £1000 per year for your first child and around £700 for every other child after that. If you work and are on less than or equal to the national average salary you can get the full benefit, diminishing as you earn towards £50k a year (i.e. roughly double the national average salary). If you're working at least 16 hours a week you also get working tax credits on top.

So no, it's not just £500. Again you're demonstrating your complete lack of knowledge, you're way out of your depth in this discussion.

Welfare spending in the UK spiralled out of control because it could, because whilst the last government was turning a blind eye to the questionable practices in the financial sector they were also bloating welfare and benefits spending higher and higher off of the profits from doing that. When it all came crashing down we were suddenly left with all these welfare and benefits payments that were unsustainable in the face of a crippled financial sector.

Fraud is a problem because when we were all getting so fat and rich off the taxes pouring in from our financial sector it also didn't matter that people were taking the piss, because we could afford to ignore it. It became too easy for people to opt not to work if they couldn't be bothered. As I said to the other guy there's a reason why disability claimants rose by 30% in that period despite there being no statistical explanation for such a drastic increase in severe disabilities to go with it, and again, the reassessment that was done recently that weeded out 27% of claimants as not having a need for it is evidence of the fact that the vast bulk of it was fraudulent. As clampdowns on benefits

India will still be at constant risk. This modern secular country is right next to a muzzy hell-hole where attacks on polio workers are frequent.

Depressingly, Pakistani muslims are correct in thinking that vaccination programs may be controlled by western governments. The CIA used a fake vaccination program (not polio) to aid in the hunt for Bin Laden.

Among the many other things that Islam forbids they have now decided that polio vaccines are unislamic.

Islam does not forbid vaccination.

India will still be at constant risk. This modern secular country is right next to a muzzy hell-hole where attacks on polio workers are frequent.

Depressingly, Pakistani muslims are correct in thinking that vaccination programs may be controlled by western governments. The CIA used a fake vaccination program (not polio) to aid in the hunt for Bin Laden.

Among the many other things that Islam forbids they have now decided that polio vaccines are unislamic.

Islam does not forbid vaccination.

India will still be at constant risk. This modern secular country is right next to a muzzy hell-hole where attacks on polio workers are frequent. Among the many other things that Islam forbids they have now decided that polio vaccines are unislamic.

yet again this (literally) diabolical 'religion' brings death and suffering to the world.

It takes a remarkable amount of calories to run each mile.

You overestimate how much running takes. Running is only about 40% more calorie burn than walking the same distance. About 150 v. 110 for a 200 lb. man. You also underestimate the amount of calories in lean meat. 1 lb of venison is 540 calories or so. Obviously, it's profitable if you make more than one meal of it, and it's profitable for a small tribe to take turns doing it.

Here's an example of a person doing it in real life. Takes about 8 hours of tracking and periodic chasing.

Humans are the only primates that can do endurance running. (Not many other kinds of animals can; canines and horses are notable exceptions). As the video above notes, we're one of the few species that sweats for thermoregulation (horses again being a notable exception). We're uniquely well adapted to exploiting heat exhaustion in other species in the part of the world we were thought to have evolved in.

Hell, humans have ran down cheetahs this way.

I'm hoping it's just ignorance of how EMV actually works that makes you say that. Some people are under the mistaken belief that EMV means account details are encrypted (yes their are private keys on it), or that EMV somehow protects your account details from being used to charge your account - and they're wrong on both counts.

You should read the EMV wiki page.

Wikipedia huh?

Maybe if I get bored I'll add a link to a paper recently published by, um, some Australian researcher showing much simpler techniques. Though I expect the industry shills will just pull it off Wikipedia (again) - it's the only way they can avoid losing in the courts as EMV isn't to protect you - it's to protect banks from liability.

And math skills aren't required - EMV can also be defeated with a paper-clip. I'm sure you can do your own reseach (clicking on Wikipedia barely qualifies as research). Replacing the merchant generated nonce with one embedded by the bank would be a step forward - as will the proposed one-time-key code display for Mastercard. Emue is even more secure.

In some of these states, there simply aren't many students of any race or gender taking the test, which helps explain the dearth of young women and minorities. (Indeed, no women or minorities took the exam in Wyoming—but that's because no students at all took it.) But Idaho had nearly 50 students taking it, and Utah had more than 100.'"

Did you know that feminists and social justice warriors need funding for their political careers? Did you know they continue to purposefully present bad statistics and rely on misleading evidence to further their political goals and funds?

You are now aware that Idaho is 93.8% white. and Utah is 91.8% white. The USA is 77% white, what's your fucking point? That minorities make up a minority? I really can't take anything else they say seriously. It's just that same old bullshit brain rot, like the wage gap myth. There are lots of sick folks in hospitals, doesn't mean hospitals make folks sick. Percentages enrolled and employed don't dictate school or employee policy. Men and women are different. Women and men make different choices and have different personality traits cross culturally. Yes, I'm generalizing, that doesn't limit the choice of individuals to point out trends. Get over it. However trotting out this tripe as news is just fucking dumb.

I was also skeptical when I first saw the news articles (like this one) that said that RSA had published a statement where they supposedly refuted the existence of that NSA deal. The existence of the deal was originally broken by Reuters in this article, where they cite "two sources familiar with the contract" as their sources. But then, after more in-depth analysis of the RSA blog post where they supposedly "denied" the existence of the deal, it was revealed that actually RSA neither denied nor acknowledged that such deal existed in their statement. They are just using general wording to give an impression, that they would certainly never do such thing. But they are not directly denying the existence of the deal.

Now, thinking logically, it's pretty damn clear that they would have denied that such a deal was ever made, if they were in the position of making such a claim. But given they don't directly deny the claims presented by Reuters, it would seem a much more logical explanation that the deal indeed was made, and RSA just went into damage control mode after the publication of the Reuters article. Lying to the public would have meant more damage if Reuters would have later been able to present the actual paper of the deal, so I suppose we can take their lack of directly denying this deal's existence as an admission of sorts. This is also the reason why speakers are canceling their appearance in the conference ("Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim.")

So, I think we have grounds to believe that there is actually quite much truth to the original story by Reuters. As they say, the deal was "handled by business leaders rather than pure technologists". I am pretty sure that this is a yet-another example of a major manager-level f*ck up. Tech companies very often have all the expertise on the technical personnel level, while managers are a "necessary evil" who often have much fewer insight into the technical field where the company actually operates. Of course, anyone with even the slightest idea of how the IT security field functions, would never ever endanger their company's credibility (at least for such little reward as $10 million), because deals like this tend resurface in the public sphere sooner or later. All we can assume that someone in the management made a very major f*ck-up and made this secret deal with NSA without much consulting from the technical folks. But I am pretty sure that now that this deal has surfaced in the public sphere, it will end up costing RSA a great deal more in lost sales than what the "business leaders" anticipated they could gain in short term from making the deal with NSA.