Karmona Pragmatic Blog

I have missed the latest Google Developer Day due to other obligations (we have uploaded a brand new people directory to the Delver site :) and although the Chrome session by Bill Hesse was very interesting (so I was told), I felt lucky when I saw the email the participants got after the event (a.k.a. “Unauthorized Network Activity at Google Developer Day”)

From: Developer Day <developerday.il@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Subject: PLEASE READ: Unauthorized network activity at Google Developer Day
To: ####@#####.com

Dear attendee,

First of all thanks for attending Google Developer Day yesterday, we hope you found it useful. Unfortunately, we need to let you know about an incident which took place during the conference which you may need to take precautionary action on.

We identified unauthorised activity on the public wired Ethernet network which was provided by the convention centre for conference attendees to access the Internet. This may have affected a limited number of  attendees accessing websites and online applications through the wired Ethernet connection. We have no evidence so far to suggest that the wireless network also provided at the event, and which was used by most attendees, was affected.

Due to the unauthorised activity, there is a chance that if you used the wired network, any user name and password entered to access a website may have been put at risk. When trying to access a secure website (a website using https), you may have received an alert indicating that the page had an invalid security certificate. In any case, we advise users as a precaution to change the passwords for any websites or services they accessed through the wired connection during the conference.

We’re really sorry that this has happened but we believe that the vast majority of attendees won’t have been affected by this incident. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing you at future events very soon.

The Google Developer Day Team

According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of 2008 is a Year of the Rat (Earth), which begins on February 7, 2008 and ends on January 25, 2009. First in the cycle of 12 Animal signs, Rat Year begins the sequence and recurs every twelfth year.

So… what did we have until now?

• Beijing Olympic Games a.k.a. 51 Chinese Gold Medalists

• Chinese in Space a.k.a The taikonauts, Zhai Zhigang emerged from the hatch of the Shenzhou-7 spacecraft for a 13-minute space-walk

• Yesterday we had the Skype privacy thingy a.k.a. Skype admitted that TOM-Skype, the Chinese version of the Skype service, had been scanning users’ text messages for sensitive keywords like. Falun Gong, Taiwan independence, Karmona Pragmatic Blog etc.

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Two insignificant Ratatouille facts:

• Sir Ian Holm, the voice of Skinner (3′ 6″ tall head, Napoleon looking chef at Gusteau’s), is two feet taller than Skinner and has played Napoleon Bonaparte three times in his illustrious career.

• Skinner’s name is a nod to behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, famous for his experiments with rats.

Update (6 Jan. 2008): This post is about anonymous surfing and not about ostriches but due to the emerging Google search traffic looking for ostrich images , I will end this post with few interesting ostrich facts and images… ;)

so…

How to use the kind help of the Google Translate services for Anonymous Surfing?

The Ostrich – IP Discovery Tool @ http://eview.co.il // Will reveal your “true” IP

+

Google translate service @ http://www.google.com/language_tools

=

The Blind Ostrich @ http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Feview.co.il&sl=iw&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

1+1=3 (!!!) // Notice different IP ;)

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Ten most interesting facts about ostriches:

1. Ostriches are a true dinosaur – Ostriches skeletons and fossils have been found which date back over 120 million years;
2. The ostrich has the largest eye of any land animal. Its eye measures almost five centimeters across.
3. The flightless ostrich is the world’s largest bird.
4. Though they cannot fly, ostriches are fleet, strong runners. They can sprint up to 70 kilometers an hour and run over distance at 50 kilometers an hour.
5. Ostrich kicks can kill a human
6. Contrary to popular belief, ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand. The old saw probably originates with one of the bird’s defensive behaviors. At the approach of trouble, ostriches will lie low and press their long necks to the ground in an attempt to become less visible. Their plumage blends well with sandy soil and, from a distance, gives the appearance that they have buried their heads in the sand.
7. An Ostrich will live to be 50 – 75 years old.
8. The Ostrich egg will weigh 1.6 kg and is equivalent to 2 dozen chicken eggs.
9. An Ostrich Hen can lay 40 -100 eggs per year, averaging about 60 eggs per year.
10. An Ostrich chick grows one foot taller each month until it is 7-8 months old.

“We are moving to a Google that knows more about you.”
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, February 9, 2005 (2.5 years ago…)

Did you know that Gmail have “No Deletion Policy” for your emails?

If not, you should read the GMail “privacy” notice
“… Similar to other web services, Google records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, ads, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer URL)… Google may send you information related to your Gmail account or other Google services… Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems.”

–> Your private emails will be retained safely on Google’s backup system even after you close your account…

Google do records everything they can (and I mean everything) and retains all data indefinitely (and I mean indefinitely)

Google insists that it uses individual data and collects information about users’ activity to improve the quality of search results and not to create a profile for each user. But history shows that information seldom remains limited to the purpose for which it was collected.

Your Googeled data (private emails & documents, browsing preferences, search history etc.) has become the most wanted honey-pot in the internet– It attracts hackers, crackers, identity thieves, and perhaps most worrisome of all, a governmental big brother intents…

Personally, I like Google and I will keep using GMail since it is the best online email service available today and I don’t trust the other web-mails ;-)

Update (15 December | 2008): Google has stepped off (ranked No. 10 last year) the top 20 list of the most trusted U.S. companies for privacy, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday.