If I were Google and seriously concerned about this, I'd encrypt the data in a chaining mode and keep half(+-) of the bits in different data centers in different jurisdictions.
Right. Sounds good in a paperback novel.
But when they can compel you to hand over your data and not tell anybody, they can compel you to hand over all your data, including how to assemble the bits again. A National Security Letter is an all powerful writ if they want them to be.
You really think "no sir" or "we don't know how" are going to hold up to this kind of pressure? When they can march everyone involved off to jail and simply find the next batch of Google folks who know how to do it?
Are you missing the whole thing where they can compel you (under threat of secret federal law), detain you (under whatever secret provisions they have), and generally make life miserable for you and your family? "Sorry Ma'am, but, yes, we do need to seize your house and your kids' college fund. No Ma'am, we can't tell you why. No Ma'am, we can't tell you where your husband is. No Ma'am, nobody is going to give a job to someone married to someone who helped terrorists."
I seriously doubt as a practical matter Google could keep the NSA out. Because as long as they're legally entitled to it (so they say) and in possession of the paperwork from the right judge (who may or may not just rubber stamp it)... what is your recourse when the all powerful Big Brother shows up?
The terms of the PATRIOT Act more or less say that if Uncle Sam comes knocking with the right paperwork, non-compliance isn't an option, and telling someone about it isn't an option.
If you as a private individual hold out and are willing to go to jail for your convictions, I'm sure they'd accommodate you. But a corporation? No way that would happen -- which is why they get compensated for their manpower and reminded not to tell anybody. But it really is a case where there's nothing voluntary about this when you're talking about corporations. Unless the company more or less caves in and decides to be as helpful as possible to make their lives easier.
I wish you were right, and that what you say could happen. But I fear the US has more or less created their own all-powerful agency of State Security, which is ruthless, powerful, and capable of doing whatever the fuck they want.
And that's before you start assuming they're doing more than is either strictly legal, or that they're even willing to allow us know is happening.
If that's truly the case, there's basically nothing google can do to stop them.
Walk in with a couple of FISA warrants and a few guys in dark suits.. and guess what? There's still not a fucking thing Google can do to stop them.
At best Google will encourage better security from other parties, but if you think you can stop Big Brother carrying a FISA warrant that says your ass goes to jail for a long time if you tell anybody... well, you're awfully naive.
This is good PR, and it's good security practice. But it can do nothing at all from having the feds simply demand they hand something over, or give them hooks into the system where it's unencrypted, or handing over their entire database, or any other thing they want.
The PATRIOT Act more or less guarantees that no American company could legally keep the NSA out (or whatever agency has the right paperwork).
No company operating in American soil has that ability any more. Period. And in other countries, either they just do it by sneaky means, or the local government steps in and makes the same kind of request.
We have entered a world in which the most raving tin-foil hat conspiracies are essentially true. And due to the secrecy requirements of the secret laws, if you tell someone (or try to) they'll just unleash those powers on you personally. And that will not end well for you.
Big Brother is here, right now. And he'll neither give up the powers he's got, nor allow you to tell someone when he exercised them.
I wonder how the SEC and FTC will feel about materially false statements.
Good question... but if you found yourself in this position where one department of the government said you must lie and the other said you must tell the truth... wouldn't you more or less tell the judge to tell you which of the two contradictory laws you should have followed?
I'm betting the secret courts and terrorism investigation (or, at least that's how they justify it) trumps the SEC and the FTC. Of course, if the people with the secret laws deny their involvement you're really screwed.
I think you're screwed either way, but if you can make the case that the men in black suits and sunglasses forbade you from saying anything that you acted with best intent under the circumstances.
I have no idea if there are laws and court decisions that tell you when two laws contradict which one you go with. For all I know, we're in new territory on this one.
It would have been nice if someone would have shown some spine here.
How do you know they didn't? Did some front-line tech guy say "no fucking way" only to be dragged off under a secret warrant?
However, the fact that no one had the balls to stand up to the NSA really doesn't get them off the hook for anything.
Indeed, I view this as the legal equivalent of saying that once you'd cocked the hammer on the gun and your rape victim stopped struggling she was a "voluntary participant".
"Why yes your honor, we did threaten the accused, but once he realized we might throw him off the roof he confessed" used to be the poisoned fruit, now it's Standard Procedure for the government agencies.
A government which works in secret and through intimidation under secret laws has ceased to be just, and will only get worse.
The question is, which liars lies are the most believable? Is there a choice where they are all lying?
At least the ones who had threat of breaking secret Federal laws prohibiting them from telling the truth have an excuse.
Sure, they lied to us. But they'd been told by the feds that if they didn't, they'd be charged under secret laws and dropped into a deep, dark hole.
The people who got the ability, and subsequently used that ability, to force companies into collecting this information and lying to the public are the real criminals here.
If I lie to you while someone is holding a gun to my head, and I'm pretty sure they mean it, I had little choice. If I was the one holding the gun to your head and forcing you to lie... well, I can hardly protest my innocence (which is what they're doing now).
Even if these companies did lie to us, it was under the direction of these people who are now acting as if the companies were complicit. When in reality, there was the legal equivalent of a gun pointed at their head.
The message is you can't trust either of them, and you should stop trusting them with your personal information -- because even if they don't want to be, they're not effectively arms of state security.
Which means you can bet that US based cloud services and the like will probably start to see losses of business around the world as people realize that they have no choice but to comply.
Under the PATRIOT Act, anything Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, or any other company in the US knows about you can and will be handed over to the feds if they demand it.
Too many cheap crap-hounds (*cough*couch*abrams*cough*) try to extend a story as long as they are able to squeeze money out of it and are eventually revealed to have no idea what they were doing or where they were going with it.
LOL... sounds like Highlander. A script which left no real possibility of a sequel (let alone ones people had to pretend never happened in the first place).
I never quite understood how they justified the series, but it was entertaining for a while if you pretended you didn't know how the movie ended.
The problem right now, the only people using BitCoins, are traders. It may end up being just a tool to hold accumulated wealth, and that would be a shame.
Why does that sound like those "Ty Beanie Babies" which were worth bazillions for a while and are now essentially worthless?
It's like a stock market frenzy to own the latest fad, and getting in an out makes you money, and the last one holding the bag is out of luck.
If I had only looked at the version number I could have saved myself from making $50,000
Hey, if you want to get involved in speculative investment, that's your right. But you also can't deny that theft was occuring at those lower version numbers and you could just as easily have nothing left.
You could do the same with penny stocks and day trading as well.
But I wouldn't do it, which is my entire point.
So far nobody has given any reasons why BitCoin is a good idea or should be trusted, they've given the intellectual equivalent of "I know you are but what am I".
Feel free to make you case, but if all you have is that you made money on speculative investments and therefore all speculative investments are good... well, you're going to have to do better.
As to being "regulated" by government, -- what is that, exactly? BTC is one possible crypto-currency, so it is of interest what you think this "regulation" should look like.
Banking laws. Deposit protection. Rules about how they can't just decide that your money is now their money. Legal oversight.
There's also a huge difference between issues of government notes (which are still legal tender even if someone counterfeits them), and the underlying system of transfers and transactions.
To me, Bitcoin and all cyrpto currencies are in their infancy, and have yet to deal with all of the issues real banking systems have been doing for decades.
And, I'm sorry, but I'll go with decades of experience when it comes to my money. Because if the bank fucks up there's rules in place for how they deal with it. There's deposit insurance. There is established case law to determine what happens.
Cryptocurrency is pretty much the wild west, and is going to go through far more growing pains until it's 'respectable' to some people. And, like I said, by then it will be either regulated or under control of corporations.
While I do agree calling it something like 0.9.0 is stupid would it make a difference if it was called 9.0? It's the same software.
Major vendors do the same thing.
The thing is, the customers still know you went from 1.1 to 9.2, and they assume it's a steaming heap of beta and stay away from it for a while.
But, for me, between the news coverage and relative newness of this, I just don't see why I would be inclined to either want it or trust it.
That doesn't mean it doesn't sound vaguely cool. But it also isn't something I'd entrust my money to. Then again, I also refuse to entrust my money to PayPal, because they're not a bank either.
Real banks and the real banking system operates under rules and laws. Anything outside of that falls into the "buyer beware" category, as we keep seeing in news stories. How many BitCoin services have been ripped off in the last few months?
Do people expect someone to take seriously a piece of software to manage financial transactions with a version like that?
Sorry, but some of us have always looked at BitCoin and thought some combination of "why?" and "no frigging way".
New stories over the last few months aren't doing anything to change that.
This whole thing sounds like it's several years away from being trustworthy, by which point it will either be regulated by governments, or controlled by corporations.
But, hey, if you want to put your money into a currency which is still getting bug fixes, go right ahead. That's your choice.
Also, older workers have higher costs for medical and sick leave and are more often injured on the job.
Oh for crying out loud, he wants to be a programmer... do you know of a single job related injury of a programmer that didn't involve something involving a nomination in a non-fatal Darwin-award category (like chair races)? A freak mouse accident in which someone lost fingers? The coke machine falling on you?
Finally, who wants to hire somebody they know won't be working more than a few more years?
Ever heard the joke about the two bulls on the hill, and one says "hey, let's run down and fsck one of them cows"?
Sometimes experience and having learned some mistakes along the way can be very valuable, because not all of the kiddies have learned these things.
Kids straight of school may churn out large quantities of code and do cool things. But they also haven't yet learned all of the reasons for doing things with caution and diligence and all of the things which come with having spectacular failures.
Eventually, your skillset becomes more valuable for your breadth of experience and knowledge, than your specific ability to code.
For the poster, I would suggest that either you tough it out, or recognize that your ability to provide adult supervision and a longer view might be more valuable to companies (and in the long run you).
At a certain point, if you look like you're just gonna hang on in the corner doing the same old thing until you retire, your company might decide to get rid of you. I know people who started as Help Desk grunts, and have moved on to become Directors of entire departments, because they were smart, learned stuff, and became responsible adults. I don't know many programmers in their 50s who have done nothing but.
I'm in your cohort, give or take a little, there is life after programming. These days, organizations have more of an "up or out" mentality.
I thought I was the only competent project management person here.
LOL, I work on the tech side of house... which means I've seen quite a few projects end up going this way.
Often, the client is the biggest impediment to successful completion -- either because they have no clue what they want, or all of the players are still trying to carve out and preserve their own little fiefdoms and protect their own little patch they've had for years.
Usually, the goal of the project conflicts with the people who want to retain absolute control over one aspect or another, or clients who can't even tell you what the specifications are and should be -- and when they do, you inevitably find out they're all bloody well wrong in the first place.
With government contracts (not exclusively, but often), I find it even worse as every little petty manager insists his little widget is the single most important thing in the world, or the political infighting between departments.
It really becomes impossible to do anything when the client tells you 5 contradictory statements in the same meeting, and changes those in every other meeting.
At a certain point, "refusing to articulate "business requirements" effectively and repeatedly increasing the scope of the project" becomes the primary reason for project failure.
This invariably gets blamed on the project people and the contractors by the client, but the reality is if the client makes it impossible to get the job done through their own stupidity, blaming everyone else for that failure is just CYA by those who really caused the project to fail.
You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
I'm betting the exact same things happened with the Federal one.
Because it points to how little we can trust a lot of science because it's not being done by honest players.
It's also why a lot of people neither understand nor trust science any more, because a lot of it is fraudulent -- or at least enough of it to undermine confidence in it.
If the first 20 pages of your thesis have been cribbed from something else and nobody noticed it (and apparently never got reviewed by her own advisers) then academia and science has some big problems.
If high school students get their essays scanned for plagiarism, why the hell aren't doctoral theses?
In a democracy, everyone is responsible and accountable when, decade after decade, private profits are allowed to trump public well being, time and time again.
Welcome to the dystpoian oligarchy, where the only thing which matters is corporate profits, and where you assume it's safe until someone proves otherwise -- all the while making it impossible for people to study it enough to find out.
Slashdot Mirror
Right. Sounds good in a paperback novel.
But when they can compel you to hand over your data and not tell anybody, they can compel you to hand over all your data, including how to assemble the bits again. A National Security Letter is an all powerful writ if they want them to be.
You really think "no sir" or "we don't know how" are going to hold up to this kind of pressure? When they can march everyone involved off to jail and simply find the next batch of Google folks who know how to do it?
Are you missing the whole thing where they can compel you (under threat of secret federal law), detain you (under whatever secret provisions they have), and generally make life miserable for you and your family? "Sorry Ma'am, but, yes, we do need to seize your house and your kids' college fund. No Ma'am, we can't tell you why. No Ma'am, we can't tell you where your husband is. No Ma'am, nobody is going to give a job to someone married to someone who helped terrorists."
I seriously doubt as a practical matter Google could keep the NSA out. Because as long as they're legally entitled to it (so they say) and in possession of the paperwork from the right judge (who may or may not just rubber stamp it) ... what is your recourse when the all powerful Big Brother shows up?
The terms of the PATRIOT Act more or less say that if Uncle Sam comes knocking with the right paperwork, non-compliance isn't an option, and telling someone about it isn't an option.
If you as a private individual hold out and are willing to go to jail for your convictions, I'm sure they'd accommodate you. But a corporation? No way that would happen -- which is why they get compensated for their manpower and reminded not to tell anybody. But it really is a case where there's nothing voluntary about this when you're talking about corporations. Unless the company more or less caves in and decides to be as helpful as possible to make their lives easier.
I wish you were right, and that what you say could happen. But I fear the US has more or less created their own all-powerful agency of State Security, which is ruthless, powerful, and capable of doing whatever the fuck they want.
And that's before you start assuming they're doing more than is either strictly legal, or that they're even willing to allow us know is happening.
Walk in with a couple of FISA warrants and a few guys in dark suits .. and guess what? There's still not a fucking thing Google can do to stop them.
At best Google will encourage better security from other parties, but if you think you can stop Big Brother carrying a FISA warrant that says your ass goes to jail for a long time if you tell anybody ... well, you're awfully naive.
This is good PR, and it's good security practice. But it can do nothing at all from having the feds simply demand they hand something over, or give them hooks into the system where it's unencrypted, or handing over their entire database, or any other thing they want.
The PATRIOT Act more or less guarantees that no American company could legally keep the NSA out (or whatever agency has the right paperwork).
No company operating in American soil has that ability any more. Period. And in other countries, either they just do it by sneaky means, or the local government steps in and makes the same kind of request.
We have entered a world in which the most raving tin-foil hat conspiracies are essentially true. And due to the secrecy requirements of the secret laws, if you tell someone (or try to) they'll just unleash those powers on you personally. And that will not end well for you.
Big Brother is here, right now. And he'll neither give up the powers he's got, nor allow you to tell someone when he exercised them.
Good question ... but if you found yourself in this position where one department of the government said you must lie and the other said you must tell the truth ... wouldn't you more or less tell the judge to tell you which of the two contradictory laws you should have followed?
I'm betting the secret courts and terrorism investigation (or, at least that's how they justify it) trumps the SEC and the FTC. Of course, if the people with the secret laws deny their involvement you're really screwed.
I think you're screwed either way, but if you can make the case that the men in black suits and sunglasses forbade you from saying anything that you acted with best intent under the circumstances.
I have no idea if there are laws and court decisions that tell you when two laws contradict which one you go with. For all I know, we're in new territory on this one.
How do you know they didn't? Did some front-line tech guy say "no fucking way" only to be dragged off under a secret warrant?
Indeed, I view this as the legal equivalent of saying that once you'd cocked the hammer on the gun and your rape victim stopped struggling she was a "voluntary participant".
"Why yes your honor, we did threaten the accused, but once he realized we might throw him off the roof he confessed" used to be the poisoned fruit, now it's Standard Procedure for the government agencies.
A government which works in secret and through intimidation under secret laws has ceased to be just, and will only get worse.
Aint double-speak grand?
Papers please comrade, and thank you for your 'voluntary' compliance -- we will stop pointing guns at you for the time being.
Time was, this kind of thing would have caused outrage in the US. Now it's just considered normal, and something to be accepted.
Orwell and Huxley had nothing on what's really happening.
At least the ones who had threat of breaking secret Federal laws prohibiting them from telling the truth have an excuse.
Sure, they lied to us. But they'd been told by the feds that if they didn't, they'd be charged under secret laws and dropped into a deep, dark hole.
The people who got the ability, and subsequently used that ability, to force companies into collecting this information and lying to the public are the real criminals here.
If I lie to you while someone is holding a gun to my head, and I'm pretty sure they mean it, I had little choice. If I was the one holding the gun to your head and forcing you to lie ... well, I can hardly protest my innocence (which is what they're doing now).
Even if these companies did lie to us, it was under the direction of these people who are now acting as if the companies were complicit. When in reality, there was the legal equivalent of a gun pointed at their head.
The message is you can't trust either of them, and you should stop trusting them with your personal information -- because even if they don't want to be, they're not effectively arms of state security.
Which means you can bet that US based cloud services and the like will probably start to see losses of business around the world as people realize that they have no choice but to comply.
Under the PATRIOT Act, anything Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, or any other company in the US knows about you can and will be handed over to the feds if they demand it.
Cannot say. Saying, would know. Do not know. Cannot say. ;-)
LOL ... sounds like Highlander. A script which left no real possibility of a sequel (let alone ones people had to pretend never happened in the first place).
I never quite understood how they justified the series, but it was entertaining for a while if you pretended you didn't know how the movie ended.
And yet, people keep talking about 4K porn ... *shudder*
Some things just can't be unseen.
Bah, if there's enough interest someone will probably do the entire series as a "Lego B5", they've done it with damned near everything else. :-P
Why does that sound like those "Ty Beanie Babies" which were worth bazillions for a while and are now essentially worthless?
It's like a stock market frenzy to own the latest fad, and getting in an out makes you money, and the last one holding the bag is out of luck.
Bah, if you were a Mt Gox user you could call it the "Money-none-ium Edition" and it would have been accurate. ;-)
Hey, if you want to get involved in speculative investment, that's your right. But you also can't deny that theft was occuring at those lower version numbers and you could just as easily have nothing left.
You could do the same with penny stocks and day trading as well.
But I wouldn't do it, which is my entire point.
So far nobody has given any reasons why BitCoin is a good idea or should be trusted, they've given the intellectual equivalent of "I know you are but what am I".
Feel free to make you case, but if all you have is that you made money on speculative investments and therefore all speculative investments are good ... well, you're going to have to do better.
Banking laws. Deposit protection. Rules about how they can't just decide that your money is now their money. Legal oversight.
There's also a huge difference between issues of government notes (which are still legal tender even if someone counterfeits them), and the underlying system of transfers and transactions.
To me, Bitcoin and all cyrpto currencies are in their infancy, and have yet to deal with all of the issues real banking systems have been doing for decades.
And, I'm sorry, but I'll go with decades of experience when it comes to my money. Because if the bank fucks up there's rules in place for how they deal with it. There's deposit insurance. There is established case law to determine what happens.
Cryptocurrency is pretty much the wild west, and is going to go through far more growing pains until it's 'respectable' to some people. And, like I said, by then it will be either regulated or under control of corporations.
Major vendors do the same thing.
The thing is, the customers still know you went from 1.1 to 9.2, and they assume it's a steaming heap of beta and stay away from it for a while.
But, for me, between the news coverage and relative newness of this, I just don't see why I would be inclined to either want it or trust it.
That doesn't mean it doesn't sound vaguely cool. But it also isn't something I'd entrust my money to. Then again, I also refuse to entrust my money to PayPal, because they're not a bank either.
Real banks and the real banking system operates under rules and laws. Anything outside of that falls into the "buyer beware" category, as we keep seeing in news stories. How many BitCoin services have been ripped off in the last few months?
For me, I'll just pass on this whole thing.
Do people expect someone to take seriously a piece of software to manage financial transactions with a version like that?
Sorry, but some of us have always looked at BitCoin and thought some combination of "why?" and "no frigging way".
New stories over the last few months aren't doing anything to change that.
This whole thing sounds like it's several years away from being trustworthy, by which point it will either be regulated by governments, or controlled by corporations.
But, hey, if you want to put your money into a currency which is still getting bug fixes, go right ahead. That's your choice.
You could also subject them to horrific imagery and aversion therapy.
I heard that works too -- oh, wait, that movie didn't work out so well in the end as I recall.
In which case, if people know it's a conspiracy to do that, people would stop believing in conspiracies. Which is phase two of my conspiracy.
There, I've run rings around you. ;-)
I see my conspiracy to make people believe in conspiracies is proceeding according to plan ...
Oh for crying out loud, he wants to be a programmer ... do you know of a single job related injury of a programmer that didn't involve something involving a nomination in a non-fatal Darwin-award category (like chair races)? A freak mouse accident in which someone lost fingers? The coke machine falling on you?
Ever heard the joke about the two bulls on the hill, and one says "hey, let's run down and fsck one of them cows"?
Sometimes experience and having learned some mistakes along the way can be very valuable, because not all of the kiddies have learned these things.
Kids straight of school may churn out large quantities of code and do cool things. But they also haven't yet learned all of the reasons for doing things with caution and diligence and all of the things which come with having spectacular failures.
Eventually, your skillset becomes more valuable for your breadth of experience and knowledge, than your specific ability to code.
For the poster, I would suggest that either you tough it out, or recognize that your ability to provide adult supervision and a longer view might be more valuable to companies (and in the long run you).
At a certain point, if you look like you're just gonna hang on in the corner doing the same old thing until you retire, your company might decide to get rid of you. I know people who started as Help Desk grunts, and have moved on to become Directors of entire departments, because they were smart, learned stuff, and became responsible adults. I don't know many programmers in their 50s who have done nothing but.
I'm in your cohort, give or take a little, there is life after programming. These days, organizations have more of an "up or out" mentality.
LOL, I work on the tech side of house ... which means I've seen quite a few projects end up going this way.
Often, the client is the biggest impediment to successful completion -- either because they have no clue what they want, or all of the players are still trying to carve out and preserve their own little fiefdoms and protect their own little patch they've had for years.
Usually, the goal of the project conflicts with the people who want to retain absolute control over one aspect or another, or clients who can't even tell you what the specifications are and should be -- and when they do, you inevitably find out they're all bloody well wrong in the first place.
With government contracts (not exclusively, but often), I find it even worse as every little petty manager insists his little widget is the single most important thing in the world, or the political infighting between departments.
It really becomes impossible to do anything when the client tells you 5 contradictory statements in the same meeting, and changes those in every other meeting.
At a certain point, "refusing to articulate "business requirements" effectively and repeatedly increasing the scope of the project" becomes the primary reason for project failure.
This invariably gets blamed on the project people and the contractors by the client, but the reality is if the client makes it impossible to get the job done through their own stupidity, blaming everyone else for that failure is just CYA by those who really caused the project to fail.
You can't force the client to actually do what is required, no matter how you'd like to.
I'm betting the exact same things happened with the Federal one.
And I suspect most of us have been there.
Because it points to how little we can trust a lot of science because it's not being done by honest players.
It's also why a lot of people neither understand nor trust science any more, because a lot of it is fraudulent -- or at least enough of it to undermine confidence in it.
If the first 20 pages of your thesis have been cribbed from something else and nobody noticed it (and apparently never got reviewed by her own advisers) then academia and science has some big problems.
If high school students get their essays scanned for plagiarism, why the hell aren't doctoral theses?
Welcome to the dystpoian oligarchy, where the only thing which matters is corporate profits, and where you assume it's safe until someone proves otherwise -- all the while making it impossible for people to study it enough to find out.
Not when they suddenly find themselves on the receiving end it isn't.