As demonstrated by their refusal to use it? Sometimes that's the greatest power of all... the ability to stand by and do nothing with zero consequences.
I have a grocery club card for several stores. They offer you the further discounts since the information on your spending habits is so valuable. From the application they also get valuable age, gender, and ethnicity information. From your payment methods they can also infer your relative level of affluence. All very valuable information, hence the discounts for it. While I agree with the majority of your post, I think it's worth pointing out that every time I've shopped in a grocery store that used discount cards the clerk has scanned his/her employee issued discount card when I asked. Hence, I still get the discount without compromising my personal information (at least when paying in cash). When asked if I'd like a card of my own, the answer is always a flat "no, thanks."
So you're using your impressions of the actions of a few of your friends as a yardstick to judge the philanthropic efforts of countless charities? That doesn't sound terribly intelligent. Why don't you navigate over to a site like charitynavigator.org and do a bit of research on your own?
There is some responsibility on the part of users to ensure that computer systems actually perform the tasks they expect them to. There's a lot of responsibility on the part of users to ensure these systems perform as advertised. Your position does nothing to reduce the negligence of the manufacturer in this case.
I followed your advice and dug out a hard drive full of BASIC code from 15 years ago... I replaced all the GOTOs with GOSUBs and feel much more secure!
It seems obvious to me that people who care a lot about their privacy won't be terribly quick to hand over their personal information to any "social networking" system. Whatever happened to the "good old days" of people paying a few bucks for a basic hosting account, slapping up a few pages of basic HTML describing themselves and their interests, with maybe a few photos? Anyone can do this for a few bucks a month, or for free if they're willing to put up with ads on their pages.
How do you trust the trusted third party? Dennis Nedry was paid lots of money to build Jurassic Park's island management system, and just look at how well that turned out;).
Not everyone lives in jurisdictions that consider the act of reverse engineering a cryptographic device illegal. Even at that, generally people would only have a legal case if the reverse engineering / circumvention were to circumvent a copy protection mechanism. IANAL, however.
Of course the donor and recipient would be better served in a direct exchange of currency. Now how do you get them in touch with each other to facilitate the transfer? How do you know they actually need the money, compared to someone else? That's where charitable fund raising foundations come into play, which cannot be effectively run on any large scale at zero cost. Like any other class of organization, there are good ones, bad ones, and some in between. In any event, the primary focus of the Gates Foundation is dispersing funds that are directly earned and controlled by, well, the Gates. Different animal entirely.
If you don't believe you accomplished anything in five years of working for a charity, why in God's name did you do it for that long? Surely you could have better spent your efforts elsewhere.
Defining security is the process of calculating that magical combination of (1) the value of what you're protecting, (2) what is costs you to protect (encrypt) it, and (3) the computational cost a determined adversary would have to expend to break the crypto. Determining an adequate level of protection for personal data is left as a personal exercise.
I'm aware it's not the same thing:). While I understand the performance benefits of doing the heavy computation with specialized hardware, I'm questioning the wisdom of trusting any embedded encryption platform that isn't easily audited for correct operation. What about devices that actually perform encryption using the algorithms claimed, but the implementation of the crypto routines contains a flaw that isn't easily detected? What do you do about it when your organization has a few of them in production? Closed platforms make me nervous when security really matters.
All the fobs are encoded with the special key: QWERTYUIOP1234567890. Don't worry though, the key is copyrighted internationally and cannot be used without proper authorization. Devilishly ingenious, those wily engineers...
For God's sake, can't the company's executives be charged under a criminal statute? Fraud, anyone? I guess their next product will use advanced ROT13 encryption technology.
I'd rather know about the issue immediately. At least then I have the option of using alternate software until a fix is released. Would you feel the same way about a server vulnerability that affected both Linux and Microsoft platforms?
I predict a large number of technically savvy people (a) creating new tunneling networks to allow for encrypted surfing to an Internet endpoint not controlled by traffic-sniffing ISPs, and (b) a large number of technically savvy people making use of the provisions described in (a). It could be as simple as buying a router with the functionality built in. Speaking of which, why hasn't anyone marketed such a device to consumers? While it might be expensive compared to "plain vanilla" home routers, it would certainly have a devoted following of geeks.
The Russians didn't drop old reactor cores into the ocean. They merely took a wrong turn on the way to ecologically responsible long-term storage facilities. Darn that Mapquest and its outdated Siberian directions. It was an honest mistake, Comrade.
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I am Oracle's calendar, you insensitive clod! See if I ever give you a date again.
He could always try using OpenDNS as a test to see if his ISP's DNS service is the issue:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
Could that governor have been the guy discussed in this article. He sure sounds like the mind-ray fearing type...
So you're using your impressions of the actions of a few of your friends as a yardstick to judge the philanthropic efforts of countless charities? That doesn't sound terribly intelligent. Why don't you navigate over to a site like charitynavigator.org and do a bit of research on your own?
I followed your advice and dug out a hard drive full of BASIC code from 15 years ago... I replaced all the GOTOs with GOSUBs and feel much more secure!
It seems obvious to me that people who care a lot about their privacy won't be terribly quick to hand over their personal information to any "social networking" system. Whatever happened to the "good old days" of people paying a few bucks for a basic hosting account, slapping up a few pages of basic HTML describing themselves and their interests, with maybe a few photos? Anyone can do this for a few bucks a month, or for free if they're willing to put up with ads on their pages.
How do you trust the trusted third party? Dennis Nedry was paid lots of money to build Jurassic Park's island management system, and just look at how well that turned out ;).
Not everyone lives in jurisdictions that consider the act of reverse engineering a cryptographic device illegal. Even at that, generally people would only have a legal case if the reverse engineering / circumvention were to circumvent a copy protection mechanism. IANAL, however.
Of course the donor and recipient would be better served in a direct exchange of currency. Now how do you get them in touch with each other to facilitate the transfer? How do you know they actually need the money, compared to someone else? That's where charitable fund raising foundations come into play, which cannot be effectively run on any large scale at zero cost. Like any other class of organization, there are good ones, bad ones, and some in between. In any event, the primary focus of the Gates Foundation is dispersing funds that are directly earned and controlled by, well, the Gates. Different animal entirely.
If you don't believe you accomplished anything in five years of working for a charity, why in God's name did you do it for that long? Surely you could have better spent your efforts elsewhere.
Take a look at this publication on an open source cryptographic coprocessor. Sorry about the PDF format.
Here's a link to the manufacturer's website. Why don't we all ask them what they were thinking?
Defining security is the process of calculating that magical combination of (1) the value of what you're protecting, (2) what is costs you to protect (encrypt) it, and (3) the computational cost a determined adversary would have to expend to break the crypto. Determining an adequate level of protection for personal data is left as a personal exercise.
I'm aware it's not the same thing :). While I understand the performance benefits of doing the heavy computation with specialized hardware, I'm questioning the wisdom of trusting any embedded encryption platform that isn't easily audited for correct operation. What about devices that actually perform encryption using the algorithms claimed, but the implementation of the crypto routines contains a flaw that isn't easily detected? What do you do about it when your organization has a few of them in production? Closed platforms make me nervous when security really matters.
All the fobs are encoded with the special key: QWERTYUIOP1234567890. Don't worry though, the key is copyrighted internationally and cannot be used without proper authorization. Devilishly ingenious, those wily engineers...
Would something like TrueCrypt, where you can easily look at the source, be a better solution? At the very least, it could avoid problems like these.
For God's sake, can't the company's executives be charged under a criminal statute? Fraud, anyone? I guess their next product will use advanced ROT13 encryption technology.
As a sailor, I can confirm this practice :).
I'd rather know about the issue immediately. At least then I have the option of using alternate software until a fix is released. Would you feel the same way about a server vulnerability that affected both Linux and Microsoft platforms?
I predict a large number of technically savvy people (a) creating new tunneling networks to allow for encrypted surfing to an Internet endpoint not controlled by traffic-sniffing ISPs, and (b) a large number of technically savvy people making use of the provisions described in (a). It could be as simple as buying a router with the functionality built in. Speaking of which, why hasn't anyone marketed such a device to consumers? While it might be expensive compared to "plain vanilla" home routers, it would certainly have a devoted following of geeks.
The Russians didn't drop old reactor cores into the ocean. They merely took a wrong turn on the way to ecologically responsible long-term storage facilities. Darn that Mapquest and its outdated Siberian directions. It was an honest mistake, Comrade.
The triplets were born at a university hospital, therefore the Campus and School Agreement clearly applies.