One user of the service complained that they were continually being told “just a few more minutes.” This is of course a standard mantra from networking people in any outage. It is right up there with “this time it will work” from programmers. The sequence of events reads like a comedy of errors but does show how these things can cascade like dominos. It also highlights why I prefer to leave networking stuff to the networking experts.
This latest incident highlights how fragile a network based solution can be. It can be like a stack of dominos where one problem causes another, and another and so on across the whole network. In this case some data was lost but just how much has not been disclosed. It reinforces the need to keep backups somewhere other than on the network if you are using cloud services for storing business data. Even person information can be important and if it is lost can be difficult to retrieve. Local backups are essential, even in the modern age of cloud computing.
It had to happen, Apple has announced their own iCloud. Ios5.0 and Mac OS X Lion will hook into their new service called iCloud. This will allow users to store and synchronize a wide range of data on Apple servers. Apple bought the domain iCloud from a Swedish company who moved their stuff over to to CloudMe.com. What you now do on MobileMe will move to the new service. Some expect that iCloud will mostly be for music but Apple have expanded the name to cover lots of different services. For those keeping score it all started out as ,Tools then .Mac, then MobileMe and now iCloud. It is also expected that the iTunes Store will eventually be folded under the same umbrella.
Last week I wrote about Apple being caught out sending location information back to head office. To be fair the rest of them do the same thing. Microsoft Windows Phone 7is yet another that quietly sends back the exact physical location to a central database, if you have GPS activated that is. So that’s Apple, Google’s Android and now Microsoft that does it. The privacy advocates are up in arms saying that everyone from the police to and abusive spouse could be tracking a person’s movements over a period of time.
Unlike Apple the Microsoft location services are an opt in service and they do not store any of the location information on the Windows Mobile unit. The iPhone 4 can and does store information on the unit for moths and even years in an easily accessible file. Android units keep track of cell towers and WiFi hotspots but limits the number of entries to the last 200 and 50 respectively. Apple and Google have publically said that their devices report their location when services are on but nether have admitted that they store the data on the handset.
On the subject of phones I plan to get myself a Samsung Galaxy S 2. This will replace my aging O2 Windows Mobile based unit. I was tempted by the HTC HD 2 a while back but since then I have decided that HTC is not a very smart company. At the time the HD 2 was a very advanced unit. It did all the cool things, had a great screen and a Windows Mobile OS. Since then people have managed to port just about every OS to the unit. I was watching my brother play with Android 2.2 on it recently with no issues.
The problem is that HTC took a great phone and never formally allowed for any OS upgrades of any kind. They closed down expansion on their flagship product almost as soon as it was released. This puts HTC squarely in the same camp as O2 as far as I am concerned. Yes their interface is a great one but to freeze their top line product from any expansion or upgrades is just plain stupid.
Samsung in Australia by comparison has announced that no single carrier will get the monopoly on their latest device and all indications are that as new versions of Android are released an upgrade path will be available. Even Apple beat HTC in this arena with upgrades provided for an allowed for their units. Too bad their store does not allow for older software to survive the upgrade path. Not being an early adopter I’ll wait for the prices to drop a little before I buy but the initial reviews of the S2 are very favourable.
Industry News
If your telephone bills were not high enough already Google has announced Android support for video chat via Google Talk. This means as an Adnroid phone owner you will be able to chat with others like you on your phone and to those on a PC. 3G, 4G and WiFi networks will be supported.
Brace yourself for a new round of 3G service bill-shock horror stories: Google has announced Android support for video chat and voice chat using Google Talk. The service will be part of Android 2.3.4 and others will get the update as the system rolls out. This brings Google up to date with the Apple functionality that came out last year. The Goole solution works with Gmail while the Apple solution only works on WiFi at the moment. The Google solution also supports in conversation text chats. Even smarter if you follow a link while in chat it maintains the audio until you return.
A cautionary tale in phone use comes from Tasmania, Australia. Australia is one of those countries that has opened ended charges for phone services use, in particular the Internet. The individual was given a SIMM extracted from an intelligent electricity meter. She then downloaded and called her way to nearly $200,000 worth of services in three months. It took the electricity company 3 months to notice the card usage. The real story is that someone could rack up such a large bill over three months and that there are no limits on what you can be charged in Australia.
So when did doing the right thing suddenly become bad? Ask the people at the German software company Magix AG. A security researcher found a vulnerability in the software product Music Maker 16. Acidgen, his tag name, found a stack buffer overflow. He sent the details along with some sample code of how it could be exploited and how they could fix the problem to Magix AG. He also told them he’d be releasing the details once they had patched the problem. Very nice of him all round right?
Not according to the Germans who sent him the following reply.
“MAGIX does not appreciate that you are intending to publicly release the Exploit and to cause irreparable harm,” a company attorney wrote. “As you maybe [sic] aware it is illegal to release software which is intended to commit computer sabotage (e.g. Sec. 202C I No. 2 German Criminal Law). In addition this announcement together with your offering to have the vulnerability fixed by your company may be considered as an attempted extortion.”
You can sum this up in a single word, “Germans.”
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