Isn't that also the same woman he claimed he caught sneaking around office spaces and he claims removed a HDD from an employees computer without having notified anyone she was going to be doing so? If so then yeah I'm not sure I'd be coughing up passwords to her either. Especially since policy specifically mentions not giving passwords to your boss, over the phone, or in front of groups of people.
And gee look! It says CLEARLY not to give a password over the phone or to discuss it in front of others! It goes on to say that if you do not follow those guidelines you could be in for both civil and criminal charges.
It doesn't say anything about to whom you CAN give passwords to either but it does say you cannot share them with someone covering for you on vacation. IMO the policy is pretty clear and if that is the one he was operating from coughing up the password to a room full of people and an open speakerphone would have been a VERY bad idea.
Well... if a voice on the end of a speakerphone claims he's the COO and there's a half dozen other halfwits standing around when the question is asked umm NO!
Or if someone who says he is the COO is standing in front of me with an open speakerphone to some halfwit with another dozen halfwits standing around eagerly awaiting my password then NO!
If I'm asked to provide my password after having been fired and am no longer employed then NO!
If instead the written policy states that I can give my password to the COO and I meet with this person 1v1 with perhaps a single witness and I'm employed at the time then yeah I will give the password in exchange for a written document that's witnessed stating that I am no longer responsible for the account I've just handed over a password for.
Now which of these scenarios do you think occurred in this case?
And another - where is this cited? Who reported this? Nothing I've seen has said this and I read most of the Inforworld and Computerworld reporting. If you saw that crap on CNN I wouldn't give you a dime for it...
Then I guess they should have backed them up huh? They fired him! Told him to take a hike. Then they asked for information. If he had told them sorry I forgot they would have been SOL and rightfully so. Suppose the man had been so upset he stepped out in front of a bus? Whoops!
There's nothing illegal in not continuing to work for someone once they have fired you and it's certainly no felony. The people demandingr the passwords were also not qualified and technically not someone he was responsible for handing over passwords to even IF he had still been employed - which he wasn't.
Sorry but if I'm fired my employer doesn't get access to ANYTHING in my head unless I decide to give it out of the kindness of my heart. More likely I'd be asking for a charge number and dreaming up a rate which he would've been well within his rights to do.
And even if Terry had still been employed, the policy laid out who he was supposed to allow that information to pass to and it was NOT some anonymous voice on the end of a phone or a room full of idiots making demands. Those passwords protected important information, he was obligated to protect them. The city screwed up all around and are trying to nail this guy to cover their ass - I hope they fail.
Ya' know a fast food cup doesn't bother me nearly as much as a cigarette butt. If I had a dollar for every single time I saw an asswipe toss one of THOSE out the window I'd be rich. Pull up to most any intersection, open a door, and look at the curb - it's disgusting! Hundreds upon hundreds of butts at some intersections like little snow drifts. These things are smoldering when tossed too, lovely. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen something like a cup tossed out however I see butts thrown probably every other day. I think jail time is a bit much but maybe some steep fines that are actually enforced? I'd support that over bogus speed traps to increase revenue that's for sure!
P.S. I think Terry will and should be let off. Everything I've read about this that wasn't sensationalized aka not mainstream media has led me to believe the guy was really just trying hard to do his job and protect the network. I think he took it a little too far but I hope the jury comes forth and blasts his crap management before letting him go....
First the client does most of the work not the hubs. I'm using and playing with uHub, runs on Linux. Simple compile but config is ALL via text files - ick. Gee it's Linux so no big surprise - have their web site handy for config help. DC++ is the client I'm using but I will likely look for another since it cannot handle UNC shares as targets. It chunks up transfers like a torrent does so if things drop you can restart and pull from multiple sources if needed.
Anyway, the client does the heavy lifting in this scenario with the hub just sort of pointing users at one another. Some of the software out there to run hubs looked interesting but also fairly old and this one seems to work pretty well. I have yet to get uHub working with SSL, it has to be compiled with a switch to enable the support, yup Linux!
Bottom line, pick a good client and this software seems pretty light to run if you have a Linux box around - mine is an ATOM HTPC and the load is negligible. Not sure this is the solution to my particular issue but it does seem to work fairly well...
Wow, a filesharing protocol I hadn't stumbled across! Thanks Slashdot!
So, I've been trying to figure out how best to share some files with friends who are spread all over the place. Some of them are fairly large - think customized Linux distro of several gigs for instance. We've tried several programs that do all sorts of indexing and crap but in each case they well.. sucked. But this sounds fairly promising! What I am trying to figure out how to do is setup a hub for myself and for my limited number of friends. I want only those people to access it and I want them to be able to see each other's files too. I see the DC++ client has support for PKI certs and whatnot which looks promising. the client software seems fairly mature and there's several packages out there. But what about HUB software? I looked at YNHUB, last updated in 2K8, and Yabba who's date I cannot yet figure out. What are these campuses using for their HUB software? I'd prefer Windows as the host but if I must use Linux I can. I'd like to find something that won't advertise itself anywhere and would require me passing out certs etc. to use. Client software looks pretty easily available but HUB software is much less talked about - and I'd rather not have to delve Python scripts to use it either. What's available that works well? Something light would be nice as this is a very limited number of users. Honestly I'd consider using a private Torrent tracker too if I could find something equally light and secure. Shipping HDDs all over the place has been done but I'd really rather be able to do this on a more on-demand basis and this software looks promising. I just don't want to have to become a full on expert to set it up and maintain it securely...
Here's a good one... I lived in Manassas for over 15 years and only recently moved. This is THE first time I've even heard of them trying to "pioneer" BPL! I thought surely it was some other Manassas but nope, I looked and there's a web site and everything - holy crap! You're talking about an area that dragged it's feet FOREVER to get cable internet. an area where I had to BEG to get the local phone company to sell meDSL - they refused but a third party sold me ISDL at some ungodly rate over the same lines the phone company said couldn't support me. The cable company told me for two YEARS that they were "rebuilding their cable plant" and would contact me when they were ready to sell me 'net service! Meanwhile just a few miles away in Fairfax there was cable internet and the phone company kept sending me fliers for their high(er) speed DSL but duh couldn't cross county lines to give it to me. Finally after years of this crap cable came though and gee not too long after that we finally got FIOS. Cable can kiss my ass with FIOS available.
Why they ever thought BPL would fly in an environment like that is beyond me. DSL in that area was stupid because the phone company wasn't interested, cable is actually pretty decent and most of the area is older with overhead wiring so not hard, and FIOS is making huge inroads also using the overhead wiring in many places. FIOS is smoking fast too and the cable was decent. What exactly did they think BPL was going to offer?!
Ah yes, police love to drop entries into their databases for folks to watch. They expire after something like 30 days but obviously word gets around and they can reenter if they wish I would guess. what's interesting aorund here is that they ALL use Nextel phones for the push to talk feature. Why? Well it seems they got into trouble for chatting back and forth on their computers. Seems that stuff is logged and much of what they were saying wasn't PC, work related, and in some cases considered profiling... So they don't use the official comms nearly so much now. I can't say that I completely blame them but there guys are pretty good at the do as I say not as I do if I ever saw it. The proliferation of "thin blue line" stickers here is also pretty amazing. If you're "in" as a part of the community you seldom get ticketed - cute...
When an officer testifies that "the wheels were spinning so wildly the back of the car was swinging side to side" and the car is FWD it's a bit obvious there's a story being told. I agree that people lie but an officer is supposed to be above that. They say one bad apple spoils a barrel, in this case one bad cop with an axe to grind pretty well spoiled any chance I'll ever have of respecting them. Funny thing is the next TWO cops who tried that kind of crap when I got older got a rude awakening. I'll take a ticket if I've done wrong and not say boo but try to pull a fast one and I'm in court fighting. Sitting in traffic court is a pretty eye opening experience, some of the crap pulled by both sides is amazing...
And Virginia... they have already removed one red light cam where I lived because of accident issues apparently. I even know of someone who had to goto court to fight his ticket despite the picture clearly showing his having been rear-ended and SHOVED through the intersection by the other car.
My favorite quote in this article is for others to come forward who think they were shorted! Hello! Why does this seem like guilt is assumed unless innocence is proven? Why can't they simply check the lights and rescind the tickets? Oh yeah - traffic court aka kangaroo court. Never have I seen a court in which a police officer can be caught in a bold faced lie and the driver still convicted but it happens in traffic court!
So much for that - got up this morning and Firefox was toast again. No troubleshooting info available for them to dissect either which has been happening more and more often. I can say I was able to watch more video on Break and YouTube than I'd been able to watch in the past without issue so for that I'm happy. We'll see... Sadly IE is rock stable for me but I think if I pushed it nearly as hard as I do FF it too would fail - it has in the past.
I crash Firefox several times a day right now. I leave it running all day and when I come back to the machine it's toast 9 times out of 10. I think it's a combination of Flash! and Java but other things seem to take it out too. I finally got pissed and found out more about how to look at the Firefox bug reports and am slowly trying to add more info to the ones that plague me! this one https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=537630 is a bitch for instance. If you want to see yours put this in the address bar -> about:crashes and it will show you what it has and hasn't submitted successfully. I've loaded this new code up and will take it for a spin on sites that normally trash me - so far so good though and it is handling session saver etc. just fine! Painless "upgrade"...
Odds seem low? Have you truly not been paying attention to that degree? Any company losing 100mill in research is going to be hurt and who says it will happen just once? I mean hey if Google loses source to their search engine no biggie right? Or Microsoft the source to Office? Cisco the source to their IOS. It's all no big deal right and they should have been prepared somehow?
Backups might be a long shot but it IS doable. Even if you have backups you've lost everything else. How exactly do you verify backups to the nth degree for accuracy? If you were Walmart could you do backups and verify them before the data was stale?
As for contingency you're thinking like someone who's watching out for a company and not their parachute. This is occurring far less than you think I'm sure and frankly a company shouldn't have to do this.
So no, not just old cars. Current cars too and as recently as the last auto show. But hey, chances of them really doing this are low right? Hell they have cloned entire companies to produce counterfeits - to the point that when people tried to shut down the factories the companies thought they had a legit license to produce. Seriously, do some research and you'll see this isn't benign.... Sadly many companies don't come forward.
It costs you 100million to research and perfect a new technique. They steal it and setup a production line for 20million and begin competing with you for a far lower, possibly Govt. subsidized, cost. Ooops. Oh and those backups? Maybe they break into those servers and trash them or flip a bit in the firmware of the router, HDD, or whatever spiffy device you backed it up on....
Oh and how many companies do you really think are building contingency funds? That would cut into profits that effect the CEO's bonus and he could give a shit about the company after he takes his money and runs. In a soft pink fluffy fantasy land we'd all be prepared for the worst, we'd all be employed, there would be no debt, and a country who's values oppose ours wouldn't be taking all of our IP.
The Chinese are even copying CARS for kripes sake - closely enough that parts like entire DOORS from theirs fit our designs...
The technology to produce solar panels is much like a chip fab, that is valuable technology for the Chinese. For that matter so is solar cells in a world where everyone wants more of them! We're handing over the IP to the Chinese and teaching them how to run the machinery and likely service it too. That's experience we don't get to keep and they get for free. The 75 year lease on that building isn't worth the paper it's written on if they decide they want to seize it and if they decide to do so there's nothing we can do to stop them...
Yes but not until you've taught all of their citizens how to run the factory and maintain the gear.
I know folks who have had things built in China. They tell me that the production line runs 24 hours a day and 12 hours of that is for their parts. The other 12 hours is for the clones that go out the back door! Everything from USB sticks to engine headers. Send a design to China, even if it's just to get a quote for production, and you can kiss your IP goodbye...
First of all China is robbing the West blind intellectually. They are breaking into computer systems left and right, stealing anything not nailed down, and bringing all that IP back home. Popsci or Popmechanics had an excellent article about how the Chinese are doing this for anything ranging from helicopter engines to night vision chips. Secondly China is drawing as much big industry to their country as possible. They want us to setup factories, show them how to do the work, and in the end they know all of the ins and outs of how we became such a production powerhouse and they will have a trained workforce. They will have the facilities on their soil, they will have the workers, and that 75year lease is worth exactly jack shit if they decide one day they would politely like you to leave NOW. Third China is buying up our debt like crazy and it won't be long before they can begin to exert all sorts of "pressure" on our country - we're mortgaging our future in more ways than one! Fourth China is undercutting big industries like telecom and networking in order to get their eqioment sown all over the place - and often managed by their employees. Lets hope they never flip the switch! Last but not least China is taking the lead in manufacturing "green" power like solar and wind. This is in many ways the future and while it's true they need power badly by taking the lead in this and drawing companies to setup shop there on their soil they effectively OWN it all should they decide to take it. China is the last place I'd want to place any sort of advanced chip fab that's for sure!
Whether we realize it or not we're mortgaging our future. CEO are worried about the next quarter's profits and not worried about building a strong company for the long term. They see short term gains by moving their IP overseas and that bumps stock prices - and in turn their bonuses. Even if they totally screw up they have ensured golden parachutes that provide them with plenty of money - scre everyone else.
Yes, this sounds awful paranoid but I do not see the Chinese as benign by any stretch. They police their citizens with draconian laws, the censure their press and internet, and they have a history of taking the long view - something we sure as hell aren't doing right now! We're building a house of cards...
Good luck getting it into the public domain, even if you did no one would be able to make heads or tails out of most of it. the manufacturers put in HUNDREDS of hours on calibrating their ECUs and they gain efficiencies and drivability doing so - they aren't going to simply release this information.
The change described is a pretty simple one as these things go and every other manufacturer does it. I'm sure Toyota writes updates for their software all the time, I would take this one in a heartbeat and not think twice if it were my car.
FWIW, I've done some tuning of aftermarket ECUs to include beta testing of buggy firmware (heh) and I've seen what it takes to reprogram an OEM ECU...
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Isn't that also the same woman he claimed he caught sneaking around office spaces and he claims removed a HDD from an employees computer without having notified anyone she was going to be doing so? If so then yeah I'm not sure I'd be coughing up passwords to her either. Especially since policy specifically mentions not giving passwords to your boss, over the phone, or in front of groups of people.
The Govt's policy specifically mentions not giving passwords to your boss. It also mentions not discussing them over the phone and not discussing them in front of a group of people. http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/dtis/coit/Policies_Forms/CCISDA_security.pdf
And gee look! It says CLEARLY not to give a password over the phone or to discuss it in front of others! It goes on to say that if you do not follow those guidelines you could be in for both civil and criminal charges.
It doesn't say anything about to whom you CAN give passwords to either but it does say you cannot share them with someone covering for you on vacation. IMO the policy is pretty clear and if that is the one he was operating from coughing up the password to a room full of people and an open speakerphone would have been a VERY bad idea.
Well... if a voice on the end of a speakerphone claims he's the COO and there's a half dozen other halfwits standing around when the question is asked umm NO!
Or if someone who says he is the COO is standing in front of me with an open speakerphone to some halfwit with another dozen halfwits standing around eagerly awaiting my password then NO!
If I'm asked to provide my password after having been fired and am no longer employed then NO!
If instead the written policy states that I can give my password to the COO and I meet with this person 1v1 with perhaps a single witness and I'm employed at the time then yeah I will give the password in exchange for a written document that's witnessed stating that I am no longer responsible for the account I've just handed over a password for.
Now which of these scenarios do you think occurred in this case?
And another - where is this cited? Who reported this? Nothing I've seen has said this and I read most of the Inforworld and Computerworld reporting. If you saw that crap on CNN I wouldn't give you a dime for it...
Citation please - I've never seen this asserted anywhere.
Then I guess they should have backed them up huh? They fired him! Told him to take a hike. Then they asked for information. If he had told them sorry I forgot they would have been SOL and rightfully so. Suppose the man had been so upset he stepped out in front of a bus? Whoops!
There's nothing illegal in not continuing to work for someone once they have fired you and it's certainly no felony. The people demandingr the passwords were also not qualified and technically not someone he was responsible for handing over passwords to even IF he had still been employed - which he wasn't.
Sorry but if I'm fired my employer doesn't get access to ANYTHING in my head unless I decide to give it out of the kindness of my heart. More likely I'd be asking for a charge number and dreaming up a rate which he would've been well within his rights to do.
And even if Terry had still been employed, the policy laid out who he was supposed to allow that information to pass to and it was NOT some anonymous voice on the end of a phone or a room full of idiots making demands. Those passwords protected important information, he was obligated to protect them. The city screwed up all around and are trying to nail this guy to cover their ass - I hope they fail.
Ya' know a fast food cup doesn't bother me nearly as much as a cigarette butt. If I had a dollar for every single time I saw an asswipe toss one of THOSE out the window I'd be rich. Pull up to most any intersection, open a door, and look at the curb - it's disgusting! Hundreds upon hundreds of butts at some intersections like little snow drifts. These things are smoldering when tossed too, lovely. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen something like a cup tossed out however I see butts thrown probably every other day. I think jail time is a bit much but maybe some steep fines that are actually enforced? I'd support that over bogus speed traps to increase revenue that's for sure!
P.S. I think Terry will and should be let off. Everything I've read about this that wasn't sensationalized aka not mainstream media has led me to believe the guy was really just trying hard to do his job and protect the network. I think he took it a little too far but I hope the jury comes forth and blasts his crap management before letting him go....
Okay so I've done some research...
First the client does most of the work not the hubs. I'm using and playing with uHub, runs on Linux. Simple compile but config is ALL via text files - ick. Gee it's Linux so no big surprise - have their web site handy for config help. DC++ is the client I'm using but I will likely look for another since it cannot handle UNC shares as targets. It chunks up transfers like a torrent does so if things drop you can restart and pull from multiple sources if needed.
Anyway, the client does the heavy lifting in this scenario with the hub just sort of pointing users at one another. Some of the software out there to run hubs looked interesting but also fairly old and this one seems to work pretty well. I have yet to get uHub working with SSL, it has to be compiled with a switch to enable the support, yup Linux!
Bottom line, pick a good client and this software seems pretty light to run if you have a Linux box around - mine is an ATOM HTPC and the load is negligible. Not sure this is the solution to my particular issue but it does seem to work fairly well...
Wow, a filesharing protocol I hadn't stumbled across! Thanks Slashdot!
So, I've been trying to figure out how best to share some files with friends who are spread all over the place. Some of them are fairly large - think customized Linux distro of several gigs for instance. We've tried several programs that do all sorts of indexing and crap but in each case they well.. sucked. But this sounds fairly promising! What I am trying to figure out how to do is setup a hub for myself and for my limited number of friends. I want only those people to access it and I want them to be able to see each other's files too. I see the DC++ client has support for PKI certs and whatnot which looks promising. the client software seems fairly mature and there's several packages out there. But what about HUB software? I looked at YNHUB, last updated in 2K8, and Yabba who's date I cannot yet figure out. What are these campuses using for their HUB software? I'd prefer Windows as the host but if I must use Linux I can. I'd like to find something that won't advertise itself anywhere and would require me passing out certs etc. to use. Client software looks pretty easily available but HUB software is much less talked about - and I'd rather not have to delve Python scripts to use it either. What's available that works well? Something light would be nice as this is a very limited number of users. Honestly I'd consider using a private Torrent tracker too if I could find something equally light and secure. Shipping HDDs all over the place has been done but I'd really rather be able to do this on a more on-demand basis and this software looks promising. I just don't want to have to become a full on expert to set it up and maintain it securely...
That's the Streisandeffect right? ;-)
Here's a good one... I lived in Manassas for over 15 years and only recently moved. This is THE first time I've even heard of them trying to "pioneer" BPL! I thought surely it was some other Manassas but nope, I looked and there's a web site and everything - holy crap! You're talking about an area that dragged it's feet FOREVER to get cable internet. an area where I had to BEG to get the local phone company to sell meDSL - they refused but a third party sold me ISDL at some ungodly rate over the same lines the phone company said couldn't support me. The cable company told me for two YEARS that they were "rebuilding their cable plant" and would contact me when they were ready to sell me 'net service! Meanwhile just a few miles away in Fairfax there was cable internet and the phone company kept sending me fliers for their high(er) speed DSL but duh couldn't cross county lines to give it to me. Finally after years of this crap cable came though and gee not too long after that we finally got FIOS. Cable can kiss my ass with FIOS available.
Why they ever thought BPL would fly in an environment like that is beyond me. DSL in that area was stupid because the phone company wasn't interested, cable is actually pretty decent and most of the area is older with overhead wiring so not hard, and FIOS is making huge inroads also using the overhead wiring in many places. FIOS is smoking fast too and the cable was decent. What exactly did they think BPL was going to offer?!
Ah yes, police love to drop entries into their databases for folks to watch. They expire after something like 30 days but obviously word gets around and they can reenter if they wish I would guess. what's interesting aorund here is that they ALL use Nextel phones for the push to talk feature. Why? Well it seems they got into trouble for chatting back and forth on their computers. Seems that stuff is logged and much of what they were saying wasn't PC, work related, and in some cases considered profiling... So they don't use the official comms nearly so much now. I can't say that I completely blame them but there guys are pretty good at the do as I say not as I do if I ever saw it. The proliferation of "thin blue line" stickers here is also pretty amazing. If you're "in" as a part of the community you seldom get ticketed - cute...
When an officer testifies that "the wheels were spinning so wildly the back of the car was swinging side to side" and the car is FWD it's a bit obvious there's a story being told. I agree that people lie but an officer is supposed to be above that. They say one bad apple spoils a barrel, in this case one bad cop with an axe to grind pretty well spoiled any chance I'll ever have of respecting them. Funny thing is the next TWO cops who tried that kind of crap when I got older got a rude awakening. I'll take a ticket if I've done wrong and not say boo but try to pull a fast one and I'm in court fighting. Sitting in traffic court is a pretty eye opening experience, some of the crap pulled by both sides is amazing...
And Virginia... they have already removed one red light cam where I lived because of accident issues apparently. I even know of someone who had to goto court to fight his ticket despite the picture clearly showing his having been rear-ended and SHOVED through the intersection by the other car.
My favorite quote in this article is for others to come forward who think they were shorted! Hello! Why does this seem like guilt is assumed unless innocence is proven? Why can't they simply check the lights and rescind the tickets? Oh yeah - traffic court aka kangaroo court. Never have I seen a court in which a police officer can be caught in a bold faced lie and the driver still convicted but it happens in traffic court!
So much for that - got up this morning and Firefox was toast again. No troubleshooting info available for them to dissect either which has been happening more and more often. I can say I was able to watch more video on Break and YouTube than I'd been able to watch in the past without issue so for that I'm happy. We'll see... Sadly IE is rock stable for me but I think if I pushed it nearly as hard as I do FF it too would fail - it has in the past.
I crash Firefox several times a day right now. I leave it running all day and when I come back to the machine it's toast 9 times out of 10. I think it's a combination of Flash! and Java but other things seem to take it out too. I finally got pissed and found out more about how to look at the Firefox bug reports and am slowly trying to add more info to the ones that plague me! this one https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=537630 is a bitch for instance. If you want to see yours put this in the address bar -> about:crashes and it will show you what it has and hasn't submitted successfully. I've loaded this new code up and will take it for a spin on sites that normally trash me - so far so good though and it is handling session saver etc. just fine! Painless "upgrade"...
This article is from 2006. I promise you that things have not changed for the better but perhaps it will help you understand some of what's going on. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/3319656.html?page=1
Odds seem low? Have you truly not been paying attention to that degree? Any company losing 100mill in research is going to be hurt and who says it will happen just once? I mean hey if Google loses source to their search engine no biggie right? Or Microsoft the source to Office? Cisco the source to their IOS. It's all no big deal right and they should have been prepared somehow?
Backups might be a long shot but it IS doable. Even if you have backups you've lost everything else. How exactly do you verify backups to the nth degree for accuracy? If you were Walmart could you do backups and verify them before the data was stale?
As for contingency you're thinking like someone who's watching out for a company and not their parachute. This is occurring far less than you think I'm sure and frankly a company shouldn't have to do this.
As for cars... Mini Cooper\Lifan 320, Matiz\Cherry QQ - (body panels interchange!), Honda CRV\Laibo SR-V, Frontera\Landwing X6 (priced 50% less and a ZERO star crash rating), BMW 5 series\Brilliance M2, Yaris\Florid, MB CLK\BYD S8, Landcruiser\Dadi Shuttle, Fortwo\Houyun's electric car, RR Phantom\Geely GE. More info: http://www.theautoindustrieblog.com/2009/03/chinese-clone-cars.html Jalopnik covers this stuff often -> http://jalopnik.com/371517/take-a-look-inside-a-chinese-smart-fourtwo-cloning-factory
So no, not just old cars. Current cars too and as recently as the last auto show. But hey, chances of them really doing this are low right? Hell they have cloned entire companies to produce counterfeits - to the point that when people tried to shut down the factories the companies thought they had a legit license to produce. Seriously, do some research and you'll see this isn't benign.... Sadly many companies don't come forward.
In case you haven't noticed many of our bridges and infrastructure is aging and not aging well at that! Seen anyone making massive efforts to fix it?
It costs you 100million to research and perfect a new technique. They steal it and setup a production line for 20million and begin competing with you for a far lower, possibly Govt. subsidized, cost. Ooops. Oh and those backups? Maybe they break into those servers and trash them or flip a bit in the firmware of the router, HDD, or whatever spiffy device you backed it up on....
Oh and how many companies do you really think are building contingency funds? That would cut into profits that effect the CEO's bonus and he could give a shit about the company after he takes his money and runs. In a soft pink fluffy fantasy land we'd all be prepared for the worst, we'd all be employed, there would be no debt, and a country who's values oppose ours wouldn't be taking all of our IP.
The Chinese are even copying CARS for kripes sake - closely enough that parts like entire DOORS from theirs fit our designs...
The technology to produce solar panels is much like a chip fab, that is valuable technology for the Chinese. For that matter so is solar cells in a world where everyone wants more of them! We're handing over the IP to the Chinese and teaching them how to run the machinery and likely service it too. That's experience we don't get to keep and they get for free. The 75 year lease on that building isn't worth the paper it's written on if they decide they want to seize it and if they decide to do so there's nothing we can do to stop them...
Yes but not until you've taught all of their citizens how to run the factory and maintain the gear.
I know folks who have had things built in China. They tell me that the production line runs 24 hours a day and 12 hours of that is for their parts. The other 12 hours is for the clones that go out the back door! Everything from USB sticks to engine headers. Send a design to China, even if it's just to get a quote for production, and you can kiss your IP goodbye...
First of all China is robbing the West blind intellectually. They are breaking into computer systems left and right, stealing anything not nailed down, and bringing all that IP back home. Popsci or Popmechanics had an excellent article about how the Chinese are doing this for anything ranging from helicopter engines to night vision chips. Secondly China is drawing as much big industry to their country as possible. They want us to setup factories, show them how to do the work, and in the end they know all of the ins and outs of how we became such a production powerhouse and they will have a trained workforce. They will have the facilities on their soil, they will have the workers, and that 75year lease is worth exactly jack shit if they decide one day they would politely like you to leave NOW. Third China is buying up our debt like crazy and it won't be long before they can begin to exert all sorts of "pressure" on our country - we're mortgaging our future in more ways than one! Fourth China is undercutting big industries like telecom and networking in order to get their eqioment sown all over the place - and often managed by their employees. Lets hope they never flip the switch! Last but not least China is taking the lead in manufacturing "green" power like solar and wind. This is in many ways the future and while it's true they need power badly by taking the lead in this and drawing companies to setup shop there on their soil they effectively OWN it all should they decide to take it. China is the last place I'd want to place any sort of advanced chip fab that's for sure!
Whether we realize it or not we're mortgaging our future. CEO are worried about the next quarter's profits and not worried about building a strong company for the long term. They see short term gains by moving their IP overseas and that bumps stock prices - and in turn their bonuses. Even if they totally screw up they have ensured golden parachutes that provide them with plenty of money - scre everyone else.
Yes, this sounds awful paranoid but I do not see the Chinese as benign by any stretch. They police their citizens with draconian laws, the censure their press and internet, and they have a history of taking the long view - something we sure as hell aren't doing right now! We're building a house of cards...
Good luck getting it into the public domain, even if you did no one would be able to make heads or tails out of most of it. the manufacturers put in HUNDREDS of hours on calibrating their ECUs and they gain efficiencies and drivability doing so - they aren't going to simply release this information.
The change described is a pretty simple one as these things go and every other manufacturer does it. I'm sure Toyota writes updates for their software all the time, I would take this one in a heartbeat and not think twice if it were my car.
FWIW, I've done some tuning of aftermarket ECUs to include beta testing of buggy firmware (heh) and I've seen what it takes to reprogram an OEM ECU...