At my workplace if you need a mobile device with email, IT will supply you with a blackberry. If you want something else, then they will pay you half of your subsidized device cost (i.e. if you need to pay $200 for a new phone, the company will pay you $100), and will pay the monthly fee they would have paid for the Blackberry (I think it's around $55, so it won't cover the entire plan, but should more than cover work usage). You own the phone and the plan, if you leave the company, you get to keep the phone, but you're still on the hook for the plan. LIkewise, if you drop it in a lake, you're on the hook to replace it.
IT will help you set up the phone for Wifi and Exchange email. Your phone has to allow remote wipe through Exchange to qualify.
It seems like a cheesy way to get employees to help shoulder some of the phone expenses, but also lets employees have pretty much any phone they want, so I see it as a net win for me. And most people don't *need* an Android/iPhone for work - a Blackberry could take care of all of their true work-related needs. Another nice advantage is that the company doesn't get my phone bills, so they can't see who I'm calling (like a job recruiter). And, I don't need to worry about losing purchased apps on a phone that's owned by my company if they take the phone back - it's my phone and my apps.
Not a perfect solution, I'd rather that they just gave me an Android for free, but with dozens of choices out there, the IT qualified device is probably not going to be the one I want anyway.
I could ask the same about you and PCMCIA cards. I have had many, SCSI, NIC, modem, Wifi, and USB 2.0 and used them extensively and interchangably. I never managed to bend any pins. Same thing with USB, though.
I blame poor tolerances in the computer's PCMCIA slot - too much clearance let the card shift enough that the pins didn't quite line up. This seemed to be a common problem back in PC cards were popular - we always ended up with a computer or two at the office with pins mangled so badly that we had to replace the PCMCIA slot module.
Apparently I'm not the only one to have this problem, since the howto guide on fixing the pins mentions the problem:
However, the pins in the slot where the card connects can sometimes bend, making it impossible to insert the card into the slot. Forcing the card to insert will only make the problem worse and can bend other pins
I'd guess it's for upgrading a laptop. PCMCIA would give the board a chunk in memory-map space, as well as being in a robust form-factor. USB dongles tend to end up having damaged connectors to the point they are unusable.
I have never mangled a USB connector badly enough to make it unusable, but I have to fix up my laptop's PCMCIA connector a few times after bending pins while inserting a card. One pin broke off completely when I was trying to straighten it. And I plug/unplug my USB peripherals *much* more than I ever plugged in a PCMCIA card.
What are you doing to mangle your USB connectors? Stepping on them?
I'm surprised that there are no anonymous competitors by now. Sort of a bittorrent model where videos are spread across many hosts, and are encrypted such that the hosting computer doesn't even know what it's hosting.
Caller: Hi, this is Judy from Visa. We have reason to believe that your credit card number has been stolen, do you have the card in your possession now?
Victim: Yes
Caller: Can you verify that the last 4 digits are 1234?
Victim: Yes, that's my card
Caller: Can you verify the answer to your security question?
Victim: My mother's maiden name is "Cartwright"
Caller: yes, that is correct, thank you for verifying your identify. Our system has detected $17,372 of fraudulent charges on your card. but don't worry Mr Smith, we can immediately block the card and reverse the charges. We'll just need to you read the full 16 digit card number and security code so we can get started.
Many people will fall for the scam - the caller obviously knows the last 4 digits of their card number and their security question. (which, of course they don't, but it sounds like they do), so they must be legit.
While Google Wallet hides the full credit-card account number, the last four digits reside in plain text in the app's local SQLite database.
The same last 4 digits that are printed on your credit card receipts and show up as plain text on many web sites that store credit cards.
Doesn't seem like a big deal - people should know better than to give their card number to someone that has the last 4 digits of their card number since they could have gotten them anywhere. (or just guessed - send a spam email to 10 million people with a randomly generated 4 digit number, and you'll have guessed right for 1000 of those people.)
So your statement "Most people buy it because the device is at a better pricepoint than the iPhone or has features/formfactor that they want." is very relevant, but it is only relevant because Android is free as in "speech" - because any manufacturer can use it, increasing competition, reducing the price, and allowing better market segmentation.
Not necessarily. If Google said, we'll give you the source code for free for use in your product if you sign this NDA and promise not to make it available, then most manufacturers would be happy to sign it and get the source, even if the end user had no access to it. In fact, some manufacturers may prefer it that way.
Once I used Swype, I stopped caring about mobile keyboards. The one-size-take-it-or-leave-it ecosystem of iPhone allows them to do keyboards the way they should be done. As an add on accessory.
Interesting device, but it looks like it adds quite a bit of bulk to the phone and must be somewhat heavy since it has its own battery. Amazon reviews were poor. I'd rather have a built-in keyboard that doesn't add much bulk or weight. I'm pretty happy with my Droid-1 keyboard and am looking forward to the Droid-4
It's not just the feel of a virtual keyboard that I don't like, but the fact that it takes up so much screen real estate. When I'm SSH'ed into a server or router, I don't like 1/3 to 2/3's of the screen being obscured by the virtual keyboard.
Android vs iOS. The same is happening here with the Android platform having a significantly larger userbase.
But I think this is more because Android is "free" as in "beer", not "free" as in "free speech".
Very few people buy Android because they can download the source code for it (some of it), or because they can root it and run a custom version of Android.
Most people buy it because the device is at a better pricepoint than the iPhone or has features/formfactor that they want.
I love my Android device, but think IOS is more polished and runs better. But I don't want to give up my keyboard.
So why do accident rates go up when states ban cell phone use?:) I realize that's not a fair question, but it's an important question here. Just because cellphones cause accidents doesn't mean banning cell phones will prevent accidents. We can't uninvent cell phones, so we need to learn how to live with them.
Do any states ban cell phones? I'd only heard of text messaging bans and hands-free requirements, not an outright ban.
I can see why a hands-free law would increase accidents - a hands free device does nothing to prevent distraction while driving, and it just ads complexity to the phone. Instead of picking up the phone and answering, the driver needs to first connect it to the hands free device (if he didn't do that automatically when he got in the car). Even built-in blue-tooth connectivity is not always trouble free, at times I need to turn off bluetooth on my phone and turn it back on to get it to connect to my hands free bluetooth device.
I have to agree here. There is no substitute for an e-ink display when reading. I end up with horribly bloodshot eyes if I read an LCD non-stop for hours (whether for lack of blinking or something else, I don't know). I suffer no ill effects from reading off an e-ink display though.
I was surprised at the difference as well. I have an eInk Kindle, but got a Nook Color (with CM7 so I can run the Kindle app) for reading books in bed without needing a light that might keep my partner awake. I figured that the backlit display with the brightness turned down to low would be perfect for reading in a dark room.
Well, I was wrong, reading the Nook for more than 30 minutes is uncomfortable while I can read the Kindle for hours, even with a clip-on book light.
So now I use the Nook for web surfing and the Kindle for reading.
But your money isn't even remotely going to the artist through them, might as well just torrent the album.
But it could be:
Do you pay artists? We pay Russian Licensing Societies 15% for all music. The Russian Licensing Societies will in turn pay the copyright owners, not necessarily the artists. Despite no legal requirement to do so, we are currently considering paying original performing artists 5%, regardless of who owns the copyright to the underlying work.
Can the copyright owners actually collect from Russian Licensing Societies like ROMS. Yes. Similar to Music Licensing Societies in other countries (like ASCAP and BMI in the US), all a copyright owner needs to do is contact the Russian Licensing Societies (e.g., ROMS) and show proof that they own a copyrighted work; after which they can collect accumulated proceeds.
But from what I read at the time, no one in the recording industry was willing to legitimize allofmp3, so they didn't even ask for the money they were owed. So while some money could have gone to the artists, none did.
I still don't think the legality of the site was ever definitively decided, but I guess it's a moot point since they've been effectively strangled by cutting off their ability to process credit cards.
Metrics work if you are comparing two workers on an assembly line doing the exact same work - you can compare their widgets built-per-hour rate (offset by any QA problems).
But when you're dealing with a helpdesk team, the work is no longer homogeneous. The more senior helpdesk person usually gets the hard problems... and he spends more time mentoring his peers (at least he'll do that in a well run team). But tell him that his time-to-resolve metric will determine his bonus and suddenly he'll focus on solving tickets as quickly as possible and instead of volunteering to track down that intermittent printing problem reported by the finance team, he'll leave that for his cohorts and instead will jump on the fast easy tickets.
2. Surely there's some episode of Knight rider where Michael told KITT to wait until a predetermined time to take some action.
I'm pretty sure fiction doesn't count as prior art. Or did I just get wooshed?
I don't know if fiction can be used as prior art for a utility patent, but Samsung seems to think fictional depictions can be used as prior art against a design patent:
Back when allofmp3 was still alive and well, I bought hundreds of dollars of music from them. Even a lot of stuff that I already owned on CD since it was much more convenient to download the album than to find a good ripping program and to sit around and load CD's.
After I lost the ability to add funds to my allofmp3 account, I pretty much stopped buying music at all, except the very occasional MP3 album. At $2.00/album I'm willing to buy lots of music, even bands I don't know well. At $10/album, I'm much more selective to the point of almost never purchasing.
Not to mention the fact that I already have a few hundred albums of music I like, so I don't really feel a strong urge to purchase more. The more music I own, the less I'm willing to spend on new music. If I have only 2 albums, I might be willing to spend $20 on a new one just to get variety. But if I have 200 albums I don't add much variety to my collection by buying something new, so I might want to pay only $5 for a new album unless it's some artist I really like.
These are "assets", not revenue so aren't tied to GDP. If someone stole all of the gold out of Ft Knox, they'd have $200B worth of assets that would have no relation to GDP. Likewise, if they steal a secret chemical formula valued at $1B, that has no relation to GDP. (though the valuation is related to how much revenue it could earn).
In any case, the numbers are very suspect. No one knows who exactly is stealing the data, what data is stolen, or what they are doing with it, yet somehow they came up with a surprisingly round figure of $500M for the value.
More likely it's just a wild-assed guess that has no basis in reality, just like the piracy numbers that the MPAA likes to throw around.
That's why I said "reasonable timeframe". I don't expect them to delete the data immediately, maybe provide for 90 - 180 days to allow off-site tapes to be recycled. I'm not even asking for a secure delete, I'm ok with the data being technically recoverable from a disk or tape using forensic analysis.
Maximum retention times are nothing new in the corporate world.
I find this attitude so ignorant. How does a company instantly delete backups on redundant servers? How do they delete redundant hard copies kept in closets separated by meatspace? Furthermore, if you upload something to Facebook, and someone ELSE downloads it and saves it to a CD, and you delete it off facebook, should THEY be forced to magically know you deleted it, and delete their copy as well? Does Google have to delete their caches of your facebook page? Or maybe you are saying that Facebook, Google, etc should never make backups?
Few large companies are using tape when they already have redundant disk storage in redundant datacenters, so typically deletes happen at the speed of replication.
But if there was interest in enforcing a non-retention policy, regulators could say that no user deleted data can be retained longer than XXX days (maybe 90 or 180 days). This gives time for off-site tape backups to be rotated back and recycled. And plenty of time for remote disk replication to occur. A smart company could think of even more clever ways to quickly and securely delete data. Maybe instead of deleting the data itself, the pointer to the data is deleted (which also holds the decryption key to decrypt that piece of data). Then once that pointer is deleted (along with any backups), the data is unrecoverable even if it's on a WORM drive.
The truth is that once you upload something to a site like Facebook, it becomes publicly viewable and accessible and ANYONE can download it. The unfortunate truth is that you can never really UNDO that action, and no matter what arbitrary laws or draconian regulations you force companies to abide by, you can never truly take it back, even if you hit the delete key.
That depends on where I upload it. If I upload an photo where the visibility is set to only allow my girlfriend to see it, then I delete it 2 days later, why should it be recoverable at all? I understand that she may have downloaded it and emailed it to her mother, but I trust her not to do that. So why can't I trust Facebook to not allow it to reappear later in a legal subpoena? Or to resurface 2 years later in a new "undelete" feature that makes all of my deleted content visible?
The paradigm shift needs to be in how people view sites like Facebook, Photobucket, etc: Don't upload anything you want to keep private. If you want to keep it private, upload it to a company that guarantees your privacy... NOT Facebook.
Why not a paradigm shift for companies that acquire personal data that requires them to protect that data.
You haven't deleted it if you expect it to be recoverable from a version control system.
But when I have a reasonable expectation for something to be deleted forever (like when I empty my Gmail trash folder), then the carrier should take reasonable steps to make said item unrecoverable within a reasonable timeframe.
Or maybe they decided to house it in a school gymnasium so if the USA does decide to launch an attach against it, Iran gets to parade around video of the USA destroying a school.
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At my workplace if you need a mobile device with email, IT will supply you with a blackberry. If you want something else, then they will pay you half of your subsidized device cost (i.e. if you need to pay $200 for a new phone, the company will pay you $100), and will pay the monthly fee they would have paid for the Blackberry (I think it's around $55, so it won't cover the entire plan, but should more than cover work usage). You own the phone and the plan, if you leave the company, you get to keep the phone, but you're still on the hook for the plan. LIkewise, if you drop it in a lake, you're on the hook to replace it.
IT will help you set up the phone for Wifi and Exchange email. Your phone has to allow remote wipe through Exchange to qualify.
It seems like a cheesy way to get employees to help shoulder some of the phone expenses, but also lets employees have pretty much any phone they want, so I see it as a net win for me. And most people don't *need* an Android/iPhone for work - a Blackberry could take care of all of their true work-related needs. Another nice advantage is that the company doesn't get my phone bills, so they can't see who I'm calling (like a job recruiter). And, I don't need to worry about losing purchased apps on a phone that's owned by my company if they take the phone back - it's my phone and my apps.
Not a perfect solution, I'd rather that they just gave me an Android for free, but with dozens of choices out there, the IT qualified device is probably not going to be the one I want anyway.
I could ask the same about you and PCMCIA cards. I have had many, SCSI, NIC, modem, Wifi, and USB 2.0 and used them extensively and interchangably. I never managed to bend any pins.
Same thing with USB, though.
I blame poor tolerances in the computer's PCMCIA slot - too much clearance let the card shift enough that the pins didn't quite line up. This seemed to be a common problem back in PC cards were popular - we always ended up with a computer or two at the office with pins mangled so badly that we had to replace the PCMCIA slot module.
Apparently I'm not the only one to have this problem, since the howto guide on fixing the pins mentions the problem:
http://www.ehow.com/how_8690286_fix-bent-cardbus-pins.html
However, the pins in the slot where the card connects can sometimes bend, making it impossible to insert the card into the slot. Forcing the card to insert will only make the problem worse and can bend other pins
I'd guess it's for upgrading a laptop. PCMCIA would give the board a chunk in memory-map space, as well as being in a robust form-factor. USB dongles tend to end up having damaged connectors to the point they are unusable.
I have never mangled a USB connector badly enough to make it unusable, but I have to fix up my laptop's PCMCIA connector a few times after bending pins while inserting a card. One pin broke off completely when I was trying to straighten it. And I plug/unplug my USB peripherals *much* more than I ever plugged in a PCMCIA card.
What are you doing to mangle your USB connectors? Stepping on them?
I'm surprised that there are no anonymous competitors by now. Sort of a bittorrent model where videos are spread across many hosts, and are encrypted such that the hosting computer doesn't even know what it's hosting.
I think it goes more like this:
Caller: Hi, this is Judy from Visa. We have reason to believe that your credit card number has been stolen, do you have the card in your possession now?
Victim: Yes
Caller: Can you verify that the last 4 digits are 1234?
Victim: Yes, that's my card
Caller: Can you verify the answer to your security question?
Victim: My mother's maiden name is "Cartwright"
Caller: yes, that is correct, thank you for verifying your identify. Our system has detected $17,372 of fraudulent charges on your card. but don't worry Mr Smith, we can immediately block the card and reverse the charges. We'll just need to you read the full 16 digit card number and security code so we can get started.
Many people will fall for the scam - the caller obviously knows the last 4 digits of their card number and their security question. (which, of course they don't, but it sounds like they do), so they must be legit.
So what if it's stored in plaintext on the phone itself? What matters is what's transmitted off of the phone.
I think it matters because if someone's phone is lost or stolen (or infected by malware) they don't want the card number to be stolen.
From TFA:
While Google Wallet hides the full credit-card account number, the last four digits reside in plain text in the app's local SQLite database.
The same last 4 digits that are printed on your credit card receipts and show up as plain text on many web sites that store credit cards.
Doesn't seem like a big deal - people should know better than to give their card number to someone that has the last 4 digits of their card number since they could have gotten them anywhere. (or just guessed - send a spam email to 10 million people with a randomly generated 4 digit number, and you'll have guessed right for 1000 of those people.)
So your statement "Most people buy it because the device is at a better pricepoint than the iPhone or has features/formfactor that they want." is very relevant, but it is only relevant because Android is free as in "speech" - because any manufacturer can use it, increasing competition, reducing the price, and allowing better market segmentation.
Not necessarily. If Google said, we'll give you the source code for free for use in your product if you sign this NDA and promise not to make it available, then most manufacturers would be happy to sign it and get the source, even if the end user had no access to it. In fact, some manufacturers may prefer it that way.
They have keyboards for iPhones.
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=keyboards+for+iphone&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=8862461336801209181&sa=X&ei=VpHqTv6oJOGUiQLG0bDyBQ&ved=0CLoBEPICMAQ
Once I used Swype, I stopped caring about mobile keyboards. The one-size-take-it-or-leave-it ecosystem of iPhone allows them to do keyboards the way they should be done. As an add on accessory.
Interesting device, but it looks like it adds quite a bit of bulk to the phone and must be somewhat heavy since it has its own battery. Amazon reviews were poor. I'd rather have a built-in keyboard that doesn't add much bulk or weight. I'm pretty happy with my Droid-1 keyboard and am looking forward to the Droid-4
It's not just the feel of a virtual keyboard that I don't like, but the fact that it takes up so much screen real estate. When I'm SSH'ed into a server or router, I don't like 1/3 to 2/3's of the screen being obscured by the virtual keyboard.
Sure, as long as Google decides to release the source code you want to download:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/google-android-30-honeycomb-open-source-no-more/2845
Android vs iOS. The same is happening here with the Android platform having a significantly larger userbase.
But I think this is more because Android is "free" as in "beer", not "free" as in "free speech".
Very few people buy Android because they can download the source code for it (some of it), or because they can root it and run a custom version of Android.
Most people buy it because the device is at a better pricepoint than the iPhone or has features/formfactor that they want.
I love my Android device, but think IOS is more polished and runs better. But I don't want to give up my keyboard.
So why do accident rates go up when states ban cell phone use? :) I realize that's not a fair question, but it's an important question here. Just because cellphones cause accidents doesn't mean banning cell phones will prevent accidents. We can't uninvent cell phones, so we need to learn how to live with them.
Do any states ban cell phones? I'd only heard of text messaging bans and hands-free requirements, not an outright ban.
I can see why a hands-free law would increase accidents - a hands free device does nothing to prevent distraction while driving, and it just ads complexity to the phone. Instead of picking up the phone and answering, the driver needs to first connect it to the hands free device (if he didn't do that automatically when he got in the car). Even built-in blue-tooth connectivity is not always trouble free, at times I need to turn off bluetooth on my phone and turn it back on to get it to connect to my hands free bluetooth device.
I have to agree here. There is no substitute for an e-ink display when reading. I end up with horribly bloodshot eyes if I read an LCD non-stop for hours (whether for lack of blinking or something else, I don't know). I suffer no ill effects from reading off an e-ink display though.
I was surprised at the difference as well. I have an eInk Kindle, but got a Nook Color (with CM7 so I can run the Kindle app) for reading books in bed without needing a light that might keep my partner awake. I figured that the backlit display with the brightness turned down to low would be perfect for reading in a dark room.
Well, I was wrong, reading the Nook for more than 30 minutes is uncomfortable while I can read the Kindle for hours, even with a clip-on book light.
So now I use the Nook for web surfing and the Kindle for reading.
But your money isn't even remotely going to the artist through them, might as well just torrent the album.
But it could be:
Do you pay artists?
We pay Russian Licensing Societies 15% for all music. The Russian Licensing Societies will in turn pay the copyright owners, not necessarily the artists. Despite no legal requirement to do so, we are currently considering paying original performing artists 5%, regardless of who owns the copyright to the underlying work.
Can the copyright owners actually collect from Russian Licensing Societies like ROMS.
Yes. Similar to Music Licensing Societies in other countries (like ASCAP and BMI in the US), all a copyright owner needs to do is contact the Russian Licensing Societies (e.g., ROMS) and show proof that they own a copyrighted work; after which they can collect accumulated proceeds.
But from what I read at the time, no one in the recording industry was willing to legitimize allofmp3, so they didn't even ask for the money they were owed. So while some money could have gone to the artists, none did.
I still don't think the legality of the site was ever definitively decided, but I guess it's a moot point since they've been effectively strangled by cutting off their ability to process credit cards.
Metrics work if you are comparing two workers on an assembly line doing the exact same work - you can compare their widgets built-per-hour rate (offset by any QA problems).
But when you're dealing with a helpdesk team, the work is no longer homogeneous. The more senior helpdesk person usually gets the hard problems... and he spends more time mentoring his peers (at least he'll do that in a well run team). But tell him that his time-to-resolve metric will determine his bonus and suddenly he'll focus on solving tickets as quickly as possible and instead of volunteering to track down that intermittent printing problem reported by the finance team, he'll leave that for his cohorts and instead will jump on the fast easy tickets.
2. Surely there's some episode of Knight rider where Michael told KITT to wait until a predetermined time to take some action.
I'm pretty sure fiction doesn't count as prior art. Or did I just get wooshed?
I don't know if fiction can be used as prior art for a utility patent, but Samsung seems to think fictional depictions can be used as prior art against a design patent:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/23/samsung_cites_science_fiction_as_prior_art_in_us_ipad_patent_case.html
I see two pieces of prior art:
1. Automated driverless trains that automatically go from stop to stop with predetermined waiting times at each one.
2. Surely there's some episode of Knight rider where Michael told KITT to wait until a predetermined time to take some action.
Back when allofmp3 was still alive and well, I bought hundreds of dollars of music from them. Even a lot of stuff that I already owned on CD since it was much more convenient to download the album than to find a good ripping program and to sit around and load CD's.
After I lost the ability to add funds to my allofmp3 account, I pretty much stopped buying music at all, except the very occasional MP3 album. At $2.00/album I'm willing to buy lots of music, even bands I don't know well. At $10/album, I'm much more selective to the point of almost never purchasing.
Not to mention the fact that I already have a few hundred albums of music I like, so I don't really feel a strong urge to purchase more. The more music I own, the less I'm willing to spend on new music. If I have only 2 albums, I might be willing to spend $20 on a new one just to get variety. But if I have 200 albums I don't add much variety to my collection by buying something new, so I might want to pay only $5 for a new album unless it's some artist I really like.
Aww ... that's so adorable! Another genius that thinks he's the hottest thing because he can make a "stocks vs flow" argument!
It still doesn't change the fact that 3% of one year's entire GDP is way too high, it just means the supposed assets came from different times.
Thanks, I think you're cute too. We should have sex.
Why is 3% too high? Is there some law in finance that says that stolen information assets must be less than 3% of GDP?
At least you no longer think that the USA GDP is only $1.5T.
Stole informational assets worth $500 billion over the past year? Um, does anyone bother to do basic reality checks?
$500 billion is about 1/3 of the US's GDP for all of 2010.
So ... no, just ... just no.
These are "assets", not revenue so aren't tied to GDP. If someone stole all of the gold out of Ft Knox, they'd have $200B worth of assets that would have no relation to GDP. Likewise, if they steal a secret chemical formula valued at $1B, that has no relation to GDP. (though the valuation is related to how much revenue it could earn).
In any case, the numbers are very suspect. No one knows who exactly is stealing the data, what data is stolen, or what they are doing with it, yet somehow they came up with a surprisingly round figure of $500M for the value.
More likely it's just a wild-assed guess that has no basis in reality, just like the piracy numbers that the MPAA likes to throw around.
"backups"
That's why I said "reasonable timeframe". I don't expect them to delete the data immediately, maybe provide for 90 - 180 days to allow off-site tapes to be recycled. I'm not even asking for a secure delete, I'm ok with the data being technically recoverable from a disk or tape using forensic analysis.
Maximum retention times are nothing new in the corporate world.
I find this attitude so ignorant. How does a company instantly delete backups on redundant servers? How do they delete redundant hard copies kept in closets separated by meatspace? Furthermore, if you upload something to Facebook, and someone ELSE downloads it and saves it to a CD, and you delete it off facebook, should THEY be forced to magically know you deleted it, and delete their copy as well? Does Google have to delete their caches of your facebook page? Or maybe you are saying that Facebook, Google, etc should never make backups?
Few large companies are using tape when they already have redundant disk storage in redundant datacenters, so typically deletes happen at the speed of replication.
But if there was interest in enforcing a non-retention policy, regulators could say that no user deleted data can be retained longer than XXX days (maybe 90 or 180 days). This gives time for off-site tape backups to be rotated back and recycled. And plenty of time for remote disk replication to occur. A smart company could think of even more clever ways to quickly and securely delete data. Maybe instead of deleting the data itself, the pointer to the data is deleted (which also holds the decryption key to decrypt that piece of data). Then once that pointer is deleted (along with any backups), the data is unrecoverable even if it's on a WORM drive.
The truth is that once you upload something to a site like Facebook, it becomes publicly viewable and accessible and ANYONE can download it. The unfortunate truth is that you can never really UNDO that action, and no matter what arbitrary laws or draconian regulations you force companies to abide by, you can never truly take it back, even if you hit the delete key.
That depends on where I upload it. If I upload an photo where the visibility is set to only allow my girlfriend to see it, then I delete it 2 days later, why should it be recoverable at all? I understand that she may have downloaded it and emailed it to her mother, but I trust her not to do that. So why can't I trust Facebook to not allow it to reappear later in a legal subpoena? Or to resurface 2 years later in a new "undelete" feature that makes all of my deleted content visible?
The paradigm shift needs to be in how people view sites like Facebook, Photobucket, etc: Don't upload anything you want to keep private. If you want to keep it private, upload it to a company that guarantees your privacy... NOT Facebook.
Why not a paradigm shift for companies that acquire personal data that requires them to protect that data.
What if I want them to? Version control, anyone?
You haven't deleted it if you expect it to be recoverable from a version control system.
But when I have a reasonable expectation for something to be deleted forever (like when I empty my Gmail trash folder), then the carrier should take reasonable steps to make said item unrecoverable within a reasonable timeframe.
If the NTSB is finally recognizing that driving while distracted is a problem, will they ban police from using phones and computers while driving?
Or are police somehow immune to driving while distracted dangers?
What I find the most hilarious, is that their secret facility appears to be a basketball court/high school gym (see the markings on the floor):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16098250
Or maybe they decided to house it in a school gymnasium so if the USA does decide to launch an attach against it, Iran gets to parade around video of the USA destroying a school.