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GmailFS - The Google File System
Scott Granneman writes "Looking to use that new Gmail account for something really innovative? How about combining it with a brand new filesystem for Linux? Then GmailFS might be the answer: 'GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium. ... GmailFS supports most file operations such as read, write, open, close, stat, symlink, link, unlink, truncate and rename.'"
This is really nice, but as i see it, there are two options: ;)
1) He gets his ass sued to hell
2) He gets a nice job at google
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
This could compliment a knoppix (or any liveCD) CD perfectly.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Of course this is interesting, and shows the talents and ideas that can occur in the world of free/open software.
But Google is a business and they do need to make money and this would be a surefire way for them to lose money (a load of their storage used up, no way to show their adverts, etc) so if anyone seriously used this I can imagine their account disabled.
What I want is google officially creating (or officially blessing the ones that already exist) a gmail notifier app for Mozilla. Technically, using the 3rd party ones that the Mozilla community develop are against their terms of service. They already do an official notifier but it's Windows only - a Mozilla based one would be cross platform.
with some nice integrated encryption (saving a manual gpg step) for backup of small, important files.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
When you reach more than 100MB of 'your' storage space, Gmail contacts you and asks to remove some data, even if (in our case) it were legitimate hi-res surface-scans of metal structures, entirely educational.
I confess that I assumed they would do something like that. 1GB per quasi-anonymous, non-profit user is too ridiculous for them to keep it up.
We're seeing far to many cases of one black hat who comes up with the "forbiden hack" that causes a company that puts out a hack-friendly device to wish they never had and want to take the hacking tools they gave the world back.
You give companies too much credit. If a company wanted something to really be hack friendly, there would be no complaints when it was hacked. They are not hack friendly if they complain about hacks. Your script kiddy comment is pretty lame. If the company made a product that someone with no skillz can hack it then the company got what they deserved. They choose to cut corners on security/development/testing or choose the wrong method to deliver the product to the users, either way it was a specific decision made by the company to maximize profits and they got burned. Any company can develop an encryption system in about 5 minutes and sell it for $50 a user. Imagine the profit that company can make until some script kiddy realizes it is only ROT15 and hacks it. It happens all the time with software and hardware. It is not always hacker friendly on purpose, it is cost cutting and/or a questionable business model. Remeber the CueCat?
Wireless phone companies and makers (Cellular and cordless phones) started with and to some extent still use this exact business model. They were using analog signal totally unencrypted for anyone with a radio scanner to hear, cellular in the 860mhz region and cordless in the 49mhz and 900mhz region. These devices started to catch on and get a foothold. Suddenly the consumers started to wake up and realize anyone with a scanner or a UHF TV tuner could pick up these signals. Yes, on purpose, they chose to use something very unsecure, made no real attempt to make it known it was unsecure [1]. How did they fix it? Went to congress. Congress eventually gave them what they wanted and banned the cellular region from new scanner radios and made it illegal for people to knowingly listen to cellular and cordless freqs. The phone making companies knew all along these transmissions were open to anyone with a radio that picked up those bands, they chose to ignore it, not develop anything or use readily available technology at the time to encode or encrypt it because it would have cost them more money. They were not hacker friendly, just trying to make more money. To this day, analog cordless and wireless phone signals are still able to be picked up by anyone in plain form, although it illegal to do it (yeah, that is the only thing preventing it). Luckily for the most part, analog has been replaced on the cordless side with digital and digital spread spectrum and wireless has gone almost all digital with various methods of encryption and encoding. With that, it takes more then a consumer radio to eavesdrop now.
Can't we be nice to the suppliers of such devices so that such devices keep coming out?
The only reason companies make and sell products is to make money. If they think it will sell, they will produce it.
[1] I have never seen an analog cordless phone that mentions that it is easy to eavesdrop on. Many claim 65000 codes, extra privacy or security features, prevention of unauthorized use etc.. but they are all refering to the code needed to get a dialtone from the base station, not to hear the actual conversation in progress. It appears to be on purspoe that these security descriptions are very vague.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Because of NialScorva's Law, derived from Godwin's law.
NialScorva's Law:
Given enough time, all legal battles in the tech industry will invoke the DMCA.
But you're right. Not insightful.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC