Guild Media

I read just read this article Best Western and the worst kind of security mix-up. Over the past couple of days it has emerged that customer details, including name, address, phone and credit card numbers were stolen when Best Western were hacked by an Indian hacker with ties to the Russian Mafia.

What needs to be further highlighted is that as we commit more information to electronic storage and retrieval, it is more vulnerable. As we have see in the past year of data loses, vast amounts of information can be lost or exposed through very simple human error or negligence.

Tougher encryption and security is also a joke. In the programming world it is well know that if you can code it, you can hack it. Examples of so called unbreakable security are the DVD format and the security researchers cloning the new passport chips.

We are truly heading towards an information age where there are no secrets, regardless of the noise government makes. Big Brother is its own worst enemy. The traditional idea of security has to be radically rethought.

We are seeing this theme being played out currently in the world of software development, especially with web browsers and Operating Systems. We see the realm of Open Source where vulnerabilities are publicly acknowledged and addressed verses proprietary commercial software where the mantra is security through obscurity (Apple) and denial (Macintosh).

Last year on Google Maps you could go and look at satellite images of a top secret US Navy submarine in dry dock. The US military screamed to take down the images. D'uh hello? If a commercial satellite snapped pictures of this submarine with out looking for it, what about all of the spy satellites that are?

It all goes to show that our concept of security is no more than just that, a concept, or at worse a dangerous expensive joke.

Bookmark to:

Does anyone know somebody in deep
inside Google that could point me to the right people?
I want to point something out to Google.

Google Preference Screen Shot

Google has not taken into account that in this mobile age, people are
travelling the world with their laptops or other portable devices and
surfing the net. This means that people are often browsing the internet in a country where they are not a speaker of the native language. Then why does Google assume that people will want to view their website in that language?

Google Account Screen Shot

For example, I am frequently in Germany and using Google. I am constantly faced
with this very annoying feature of Google. Google assumes, that because I am in Germany, that I therefore want Google
in German, rather than looking at my browser language preferences,
which gives a list of preferred languages. For a company that prides themselves on delivering what the user wants,
how can they possibly get this so wrong? Even if I manually change the
language setting to what it should be (English), Google still serves up the wrong
language as shown in the accompanying image.

Hey, even I can program a bit of simple code to look a browser language
preferences and choose the right language that user wants. On the following website that I built, galerie10.at, the website detects the visitor's language preference from the browser. It then compares this against a list of languages available on the website. It will cycle through the list of the visitor's preferred languages until it finds a match. If it does not, then presents the visitor with the default.

Maybe Google can do what I did, and use their own search engine and research the following term "detect browser language preference".

Bookmark to:

eBay has lost its battle against the competition watchdog to institute a controversial payment policy.

eBay had planned to use Australia to trial the ban on all other forms of payment apart from cash on delivery and PayPal, an electronic service it owns.

There were few voices in support of eBay’s commercial freedom to tie use of its own payments mechanism to purchases (with the Wall Street Journal and The Sheet two of the few).

Sellers were furious about the policy because PayPal charges sellers 30¢ for each transaction plus between 1.1% and 2.4% of the payment as commission.

The ACCC received about 700 submissions, including from the Reserve Bank, Australian Bankers' Association and Google, criticising the move. On June 12, the ACCC released a draft notice revoking immunity from sections of the Trade Practices Act that would shield eBay from being sued for engaging in anti-competitive conduct.

One aspect of the company’s plan remains. eBay requires all sellers to offer PayPal as a payment choice on eBay.com.au along with other permitted payment methods of their choosing.

Bookmark to:

A very interesting article about how our technologies change our ways of thinking and attention span. Can you complete the article without clicking or looking off elsewhere?

What is the internet doing to our brains? by Nicholas Carr.

Bookmark to:

We are more frequently questioning how much information should
organizations, especially commercial ones keep on us, and what should
they be allowed to do with it. Adam Ostrow's recent posting "My Soul, and 10 Other Things that Google Owns" on Mashable.com shows just how far Google has you wrapped up in its tentacles.

• Feedburner
• Gmail
• Gchat
• Adsence
• Google Calendar
• Google Checkout
• You Tube and Google Video
• Blogger
• Google Maps
• Gooble Apps

With all of these, Google can cross reference your activities, contacts, purchases and interests. Do we know what Google does with all of this information? No. Can we be assured that our private information won't become exposed, through accident, court order or secret government spying? No.

The likes of Google are banks, banks for information. Just like financial banking institutions it's easy to deposit, harder still to withdraw or gain co-operation.

Bookmark to: