Strangely missing from the summary is the fact that this only affects Android devices
Do Google provide a backup service for anything else?
I happen to know that all desktops and laptops with Windows XP-7 do the same
Upload it to the cloud unencrypted? I don't think so.
So if you think plaintext or reversible encryption storage of passwords is the problem, that's all devices everywhere, with or without Google.
But made worse by the fact that on newer Android devices this is enabled by default, and uploads all of your data to the cloud and apparently stores stuff completely unencrypted -- this is not the same thing at all.
The problem is Google actually having your password.
No, the problem is that Google is interested in harvesting all of your data and don't give a damn about your security or your privacy, and they will provide this information to government agencies upon request.
It's time to start assuming that you can't trust Google with your data.
suggesting that Tesla is becoming more than just a fad of rich folks in California. According to the story, 75 percent of Tesla's sales now come from outside of California
So, it's not just a fad for rich folks in California, it's becoming a fad for rich folks in other places too.
Unlike other PDAs, the BlackBerry device does not log into your email account for you, and check for new messages.
So let's highlight what you pasted here... if it doesn't log into your account for you, WTF does it need the password for?
On the other hand, if you had someone to bring your mail to you, a Postal worker wouldnâ(TM)t that be a better alternative? All you have to do is sit at home and when the mail arrives you have it
What an incredibly stupid analogy... it's an electronic device which can trivially pull email any time it's within range of the network... so you can sit at home and the mail will arrive either way. It sounds like they're just trying to explain a terrible architecture.
For a site apparently loaded with Computer professionals its astounding how many here do not know how BlackBerry e-mail works.
I'm sorry, but if they need to store my username and password, they're either incompetent, or there is no real integration point and they've just hacked something onto it.
If everyone in the world has been using BlackBerries thinking them secure, but some three-letter-agency could go to them and demand your passwords then the entire architecture and platform is crap.
I wouldn't trust them at all, and I believe a lot of people should reconsider how much trust they assign to them.
So either RIM feels they should have this, or they're really stupid.
There is no reason to send your email credentials to RIM... the local device needs it, but I can't think of a single defensible reason to send your credentials to their servers.
Why do companies feel they're entitled to this kind of information? Pretty much everyone who owns a BlackBerry should be asking if they can really trust the device.
People are bitching because an alert for a missing child woke them up? So a child's life is less important to you then a few minutes of missing sleep?
If you wake me up in the middle of the night to ask me if I've seen a car, my response is going to be a good solid "fuck off".
Bad things happen all of the time, I don't need a personal notice of every damned one of them -- and nowadays they'll trot out an amber alert if a kid is 10 minutes late getting home from school.
I'm not on the taskforce to protect children, and I'm not willing to be dragged into the weeping and gnashing which happens every time anything happens and people panic over it.
All I hear is "ZOMG, a child is missing, quick everybody stop what your doing and look for it". It might serve to keep the populace in near panic most of the time, but I'm betting it does very little else.
So they're going to forcible alert everybody for everything now?
People will rapidly start tuning them out or finding ways to disable it.
Do not go straight to "notify everybody every time anything happens" -- because then you're just crying wolf.
What next, go beyond wireless and automatically phone every land line? This is so incredibly stupid it isn't funny -- if you have a missing child, don't call me about it.
He may have done so, but it was 20 years ago and I was not fully aware of some of the stuff he was teaching me until I got out in the real world and realized he had taught it to me.
One of those profs who imparted a lot more knowledge than the direct classroom stuff, and to whom I have been eternally grateful as a result. He also taught me egoless programming and code reviews, but more because when we were working together that's how we worked than it was him saying "you should do this because it's a good idea". It was just how we worked, and I didn't think much of it at the time.
No matter who is the source of the notion, it's damned fine advice. The number of times I've had to explain something technical without having to use technical terms (until later in the conversation) I couldn't even begin to count. And I still meet people who have been in the industry as long (or longer) than I who utterly fail at communicating with non-technical people.
As to your PM, for as much as I would like to get into project management, the more I see the folks in the industry the less it becomes viable.
Like anything, it depends entirely on the PM -- I worked on a project the other year that had 3 PMs (out of necessity due to the scale of it).
The lead PM had a very clear path to how we were going to do it, and what had to happen first... he's the best PM I've ever worked with. He was hard-assed, and demanded a lot. There was a damned good reason for all of it, his timelines were as reasonable as they could be, and he ran with all of the administrivia to ground to make sure it got done so when we finished one set of tasks everything we needed to start the next was already in place. I've respected only a handful of PMs, and he was head and shoulders above the rest.
One of the PMs was utterly useless and everything assigned to her she tried to foist off on me -- and I had to keep telling her the reason she was doing the 'boring' tasks of getting approvals was so we could focus on actually building it.
We got a massive undertaking done on-time, and with great success.
So, if you have a PM who has been in the industry a while and isn't going to get bamboozled by someone, understands you need to have a good clear plan for what you're doing, and can keep everyone on track -- a good PM can be the difference between the success or failure of a large project.
And, a PM who hasn't got enough domain expertise to follow the plot, isn't focused on every detail and staying on top of them... then, yeah, some of those can be complete wankers who don't help anything get done.
There are PMs out there who are are really good, have enough domain expertise to understand what you're saying (and know when they need to ask questions), and will focus on making it possible for you to do your part. Those ones are really valuable to have around.
If you can do that, you might find yourself very much in demand, because good, thorough PMs are hard to find.
This does not mean dumb down the science, just explain more clearly what is taking place.
This is a valuable lesson for us in tech as well.. my mother in law was recently surprised I could explain something to somebody without using a single technical term and waving away the boring details.
I had a prof in university who said if you can't explain it to someone who doesn't have a solid background in it, you don't understand it yourself.
Being able to describe at least the overall gist of something to a non-technical person is a very missing skill for a lot of people. I once had a PM laugh that I could describe something complicated using only monkeys and bananas as the metaphor -- but everyone in the room followed what I was saying, and could subsequently cite my metaphor to ask questions. (Obviously, it isn't perfect, but it can be very helpful)
Some people just can't (or won't) try to simplify what they're saying without dumbing it down so far as to not convey any information.
Oh right, this is just a cynicism race-to-the-bottom, driven by paranoid conspiracy theories.
Sadly, I have found that both of those tend to be surprisingly accurate in the long run.
Assuming the worst of politicians (and, really, everyone else) proves right more than by simple chance. Assuming you can trust them just leads to more problems than assuming you can't and keeping a close eye on them.
I don't think we can use rules, laws and regulations to keep them in line. They need to be good people.
See, you simply have to assume that, sooner or later, someone who isn't 'good people' will get in -- or some misguided idiot who thinks that the ends justify the means.
If you don't assume things will go wrong, and actively build ion checks and balances (and consequences)... it will turn on you.
People demonstrate time and time again, that if it can be abused, it will be.
"Trust, but verify" is a damned fine motto when talking about this kind of thing. And I'd go so far to say that trust should be limited and adversarial.
Keep them in sealed tubes in hibernation when not in use? Keep 'em dependent on drugs? Neural implants? Let 'em run wild? Take any of a dozen sci-fi tropes and run with it.
What the military does with psychopaths is their business. I should think the same as they do now -- make 'em generals.
I was merely responding to a post which said nobody would fund this because it doesn't benefit the military industrial complex, and how you could spin it so that it does.
The rest is just logistics, details, and science fiction -- not my department, I'm just the ideas guy.;-)
What is the point of 1984, Brave New World, Minority Report and Gattaca if, instead of drawing important lessons from this kind of dystopian work, a bunch of nutty scientists & government do PRECISELY WHAT SCIFI WARNS NOT TO DO
You presume a uniform response to what should and shouldn't happen.
There are always going to be people whose ideal of a perfect, ordered society is exactly this kind of thing.
They will proclaim loudly they're Doing It For The Common Good, and believe we should be thanking them for it. In their mind, it will be Right and Just as long as Everyone Follows Their Plan (by choice or by force don't matter so much).
No, the US government will not fund this. Why? The US government doesn't expand funding on any kind of science, unless it directly benefits the military or the military-industrial complex.
OK, so spin it that you can find the most suitable soldiers and weed out the conscientious objectors and the pussies. This way you can get the super-soldiers.
Slashdot Mirror
Do Google provide a backup service for anything else?
Upload it to the cloud unencrypted? I don't think so.
But made worse by the fact that on newer Android devices this is enabled by default, and uploads all of your data to the cloud and apparently stores stuff completely unencrypted -- this is not the same thing at all.
No, the problem is that Google is interested in harvesting all of your data and don't give a damn about your security or your privacy, and they will provide this information to government agencies upon request.
It's time to start assuming that you can't trust Google with your data.
I turned it off before I ever knew this, because I'm increasingly finding that I don't trust Google -- either in intent or execution.
All they want to do is collect all of your information and use it to sell advertising, they don't give a damn about your privacy.
And that stupid Google+ might be the last straw since everything is trying to foist it on me and I have no interest in it.
But, I gotta ask ... if we don't trust Microsoft and Google, who is left?
So, it's not just a fad for rich folks in California, it's becoming a fad for rich folks in other places too.
Right.
So let's highlight what you pasted here ... if it doesn't log into your account for you, WTF does it need the password for?
What an incredibly stupid analogy ... it's an electronic device which can trivially pull email any time it's within range of the network ... so you can sit at home and the mail will arrive either way. It sounds like they're just trying to explain a terrible architecture.
I'm sorry, but if they need to store my username and password, they're either incompetent, or there is no real integration point and they've just hacked something onto it.
If everyone in the world has been using BlackBerries thinking them secure, but some three-letter-agency could go to them and demand your passwords then the entire architecture and platform is crap.
I wouldn't trust them at all, and I believe a lot of people should reconsider how much trust they assign to them.
It's a little different, this sends it as soon as you set up the account apparently.
I've set my Android devices to not use Google's cloud backup because I'm increasingly distrustful of them. That, and keeping the Google+ shit at bay.
But in this case, it sounds like as soon as you create an account RIM has your password -- that to me is a terribly designed system.
And RIM wants to make their messaging client available on other platforms? Suddenly it doesn't look like a trustworthy system to me.
So either RIM feels they should have this, or they're really stupid.
There is no reason to send your email credentials to RIM ... the local device needs it, but I can't think of a single defensible reason to send your credentials to their servers.
Why do companies feel they're entitled to this kind of information? Pretty much everyone who owns a BlackBerry should be asking if they can really trust the device.
If you wake me up in the middle of the night to ask me if I've seen a car, my response is going to be a good solid "fuck off".
Bad things happen all of the time, I don't need a personal notice of every damned one of them -- and nowadays they'll trot out an amber alert if a kid is 10 minutes late getting home from school.
I'm not on the taskforce to protect children, and I'm not willing to be dragged into the weeping and gnashing which happens every time anything happens and people panic over it.
All I hear is "ZOMG, a child is missing, quick everybody stop what your doing and look for it". It might serve to keep the populace in near panic most of the time, but I'm betting it does very little else.
So they're going to forcible alert everybody for everything now?
People will rapidly start tuning them out or finding ways to disable it.
Do not go straight to "notify everybody every time anything happens" -- because then you're just crying wolf.
What next, go beyond wireless and automatically phone every land line? This is so incredibly stupid it isn't funny -- if you have a missing child, don't call me about it.
He may have done so, but it was 20 years ago and I was not fully aware of some of the stuff he was teaching me until I got out in the real world and realized he had taught it to me.
One of those profs who imparted a lot more knowledge than the direct classroom stuff, and to whom I have been eternally grateful as a result. He also taught me egoless programming and code reviews, but more because when we were working together that's how we worked than it was him saying "you should do this because it's a good idea". It was just how we worked, and I didn't think much of it at the time.
No matter who is the source of the notion, it's damned fine advice. The number of times I've had to explain something technical without having to use technical terms (until later in the conversation) I couldn't even begin to count. And I still meet people who have been in the industry as long (or longer) than I who utterly fail at communicating with non-technical people.
Like anything, it depends entirely on the PM -- I worked on a project the other year that had 3 PMs (out of necessity due to the scale of it).
The lead PM had a very clear path to how we were going to do it, and what had to happen first ... he's the best PM I've ever worked with. He was hard-assed, and demanded a lot. There was a damned good reason for all of it, his timelines were as reasonable as they could be, and he ran with all of the administrivia to ground to make sure it got done so when we finished one set of tasks everything we needed to start the next was already in place. I've respected only a handful of PMs, and he was head and shoulders above the rest.
One of the PMs was utterly useless and everything assigned to her she tried to foist off on me -- and I had to keep telling her the reason she was doing the 'boring' tasks of getting approvals was so we could focus on actually building it.
We got a massive undertaking done on-time, and with great success.
So, if you have a PM who has been in the industry a while and isn't going to get bamboozled by someone, understands you need to have a good clear plan for what you're doing, and can keep everyone on track -- a good PM can be the difference between the success or failure of a large project.
And, a PM who hasn't got enough domain expertise to follow the plot, isn't focused on every detail and staying on top of them ... then, yeah, some of those can be complete wankers who don't help anything get done.
There are PMs out there who are are really good, have enough domain expertise to understand what you're saying (and know when they need to ask questions), and will focus on making it possible for you to do your part. Those ones are really valuable to have around.
If you can do that, you might find yourself very much in demand, because good, thorough PMs are hard to find.
This is a valuable lesson for us in tech as well .. my mother in law was recently surprised I could explain something to somebody without using a single technical term and waving away the boring details.
I had a prof in university who said if you can't explain it to someone who doesn't have a solid background in it, you don't understand it yourself.
Being able to describe at least the overall gist of something to a non-technical person is a very missing skill for a lot of people. I once had a PM laugh that I could describe something complicated using only monkeys and bananas as the metaphor -- but everyone in the room followed what I was saying, and could subsequently cite my metaphor to ask questions. (Obviously, it isn't perfect, but it can be very helpful)
Some people just can't (or won't) try to simplify what they're saying without dumbing it down so far as to not convey any information.
After "Very Large" comes "Hella Big" and then "Freakin' Huge" followed by "My God, Look at that thing"
Yo dawg, I heard you like keystroke loggers ... ;-)
No matter where he did this, he stole people's credentials (illegally), and used it to access system (illegally).
CFAA is a federal statute, so he broke federal law -- and therefore gets federal prison.
I have no sympathy for him. None at all.
Sadly, I have found that both of those tend to be surprisingly accurate in the long run.
Assuming the worst of politicians (and, really, everyone else) proves right more than by simple chance. Assuming you can trust them just leads to more problems than assuming you can't and keeping a close eye on them.
See, you simply have to assume that, sooner or later, someone who isn't 'good people' will get in -- or some misguided idiot who thinks that the ends justify the means.
If you don't assume things will go wrong, and actively build ion checks and balances (and consequences) ... it will turn on you.
People demonstrate time and time again, that if it can be abused, it will be.
"Trust, but verify" is a damned fine motto when talking about this kind of thing. And I'd go so far to say that trust should be limited and adversarial.
Hmmm, without following the link, I'm guessing either Octomom or Joan Rivers. ;-)
Welsh, I assume? ;-)
I kid, I kid.
No, you're doing it wrong ... your.momma.fat, your.momma.ugly, your.momma.whore ... you wasted one of your words.
Sheesh, amateurs. ;-)
Bah, once you dry the cigar again, it's no more toxic than the rest of the chemicals they already use.
But, but ... I like the olive oil ... it feels nice and squishy, it makes me feel pretty and it's fun when we wrestle.
No shit, really? Boy, I didn't see that one coming. Glad you were around to point that out.
Keep them in sealed tubes in hibernation when not in use? Keep 'em dependent on drugs? Neural implants? Let 'em run wild? Take any of a dozen sci-fi tropes and run with it.
What the military does with psychopaths is their business. I should think the same as they do now -- make 'em generals.
I was merely responding to a post which said nobody would fund this because it doesn't benefit the military industrial complex, and how you could spin it so that it does.
The rest is just logistics, details, and science fiction -- not my department, I'm just the ideas guy. ;-)
And why should we expect that to be a unique identifier?
"Miserable.lying.bastards" could be applied to so many places it's not funny.
And people will immediately start injecting their beliefs into it, and it will devolve into competing sides trying to "define" a specific thing.
So if I say "fetid.corrupt.assholes" for Washington DC, and someone says "freedom.defenders.awesome", those two aren't reconcilable.
This is just a chance for everyone to try to shout loudest to assign their own description of something.
It's a "big.pointless.exercise".
You presume a uniform response to what should and shouldn't happen.
There are always going to be people whose ideal of a perfect, ordered society is exactly this kind of thing.
They will proclaim loudly they're Doing It For The Common Good, and believe we should be thanking them for it. In their mind, it will be Right and Just as long as Everyone Follows Their Plan (by choice or by force don't matter so much).
OK, so spin it that you can find the most suitable soldiers and weed out the conscientious objectors and the pussies. This way you can get the super-soldiers.
Problem solved.