Not long ago, I freely expressed my thoughts on the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize result here. Something I left without any further discussion was the unknown impacts of cultural differences on freedom of speech revolution. It is way too deep to discuss.
However, it is not way too theoretical to observe in reality. Germany, a country widely accepted by most "righteous" nations in the world, refuses the possibility of coexistence, a theory widely accepted by most "righteous" nations in the world.
This fact doesn't give us any theory or law, but it says it is absolutely wrong to think one ideal can work in all cultures, in all geographic locations, and in all people.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Android, a tradeoff between open and secure
Android has been developers' heaven due to its openness. It is so easy to use your imagination to develop something without worrying about whether somebody else has already built it on Android. An app with the most common features (notepads, I wonder why ;) can be published to the market as the developer wishes. Obviously, this also creates a problem, a malicious / offensive app can be available for download as well.
Not surprisingly, Google has prepared for that, and we have already heard about Google's ability to remove an app from your phone remotely, and all you have is a nice little notification to tell you it has happened. Google will also *try* to refund the money as well, not too shabby.
As I was reading about how Google does it, I came across two blog posts by Jon Oberheide. One investigates how Google removes it, and the other one describes how potentially unsafe it is.
If you really feel geeky today, you can find these two posts here and here
Essentially, if you dial *#*#8255#*#* from your Android phone, you will open GTalkService monitor. You phone keeps a connection with Google's GTalkService, and "heartbeats" are periodically sent to this service's server. In addition to many important information, you can check out the entree at the end of the monitor log. If you installed or removed apps from your phone in the past 12 hours, you can see INSTALL_ASSET / REMOVE_ASSET entries at the end. It shows how many apps are installed on / removed from your phone in the past 12 hours. These two types of messages correspond to some functions implemented in vending APK. Google can use the connection established by GTalkService to push down either INSTALL or REMOVE intent to *organize* your app collection.
Wait, if Google can do it, anybody who can forge an intent message also can do it. Apparently Google uses SSL to ensure the secure communication. However, we have long known SSL is not the foul-proof security solution (won't it be nice if it is?), and as it turns out, Google is not using their private key to digitally sign each intent message. Therefore, theoretically, if the SSL channel is compromised, all the Android phones can be unwillingly installed with malicious attackers' apps.
Granted, signing each intent message using the private key is costly, and Google probably has a very good way to keep its SSL channels safe and sound. Still, only benefits from SSL for its confidentiality not integrity is quite an irresponsible thing.
God Bless Google for the sake of every Android user out there.
Not surprisingly, Google has prepared for that, and we have already heard about Google's ability to remove an app from your phone remotely, and all you have is a nice little notification to tell you it has happened. Google will also *try* to refund the money as well, not too shabby.
As I was reading about how Google does it, I came across two blog posts by Jon Oberheide. One investigates how Google removes it, and the other one describes how potentially unsafe it is.
If you really feel geeky today, you can find these two posts here and here
Essentially, if you dial *#*#8255#*#* from your Android phone, you will open GTalkService monitor. You phone keeps a connection with Google's GTalkService, and "heartbeats" are periodically sent to this service's server. In addition to many important information, you can check out the entree at the end of the monitor log. If you installed or removed apps from your phone in the past 12 hours, you can see INSTALL_ASSET / REMOVE_ASSET entries at the end. It shows how many apps are installed on / removed from your phone in the past 12 hours. These two types of messages correspond to some functions implemented in vending APK. Google can use the connection established by GTalkService to push down either INSTALL or REMOVE intent to *organize* your app collection.
Wait, if Google can do it, anybody who can forge an intent message also can do it. Apparently Google uses SSL to ensure the secure communication. However, we have long known SSL is not the foul-proof security solution (won't it be nice if it is?), and as it turns out, Google is not using their private key to digitally sign each intent message. Therefore, theoretically, if the SSL channel is compromised, all the Android phones can be unwillingly installed with malicious attackers' apps.
Granted, signing each intent message using the private key is costly, and Google probably has a very good way to keep its SSL channels safe and sound. Still, only benefits from SSL for its confidentiality not integrity is quite an irresponsible thing.
God Bless Google for the sake of every Android user out there.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Thoughts after Nobel Peace Prize 2010
Well, well, well. I thought I would never come back to this topic again after arguing with my WASP friends in the first two years of college, but here I am, sharing my little thought on China' human right issue.
I am a pro-U.S., pro-freedom person myself, and that is why I am here working in the U.S. and going after the so-called "American Dream". I HATE the dictatorship taking place in my motherland, ranging from the government, companies, to virtually anywhere in between. It is absolutely not a place for innovation, not a place for hoping rewarded after working hard, and not a place to know the truth.
It is why the whole world, led by the U.S., urges the system to change. It is why a Chinese criminal won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. The inevitable consequences of the Nobel Peace Prize is to encourage more and more people to fight for human rights, and that is what this organization wants to achieve. Good intention, but radically, it is to encourage Chinese people to start revolution, either a peaceful one or violent one, to start things over again, because let's face it, the current ruling party in China is too stable and too powerful to be willing to give away that power.
What does this mean? This means at least a whole generation is sacrificed for something we don't know whether we want. People say we are brain washed and then stop listening to us right here, or have that pre-assumption in their mind and ignore us with a smile. Well, what if I say, hey, we need to stop driving cars, eating steak, wearing cotton clothes, cutting power cores for about 10 - 20 years, and start over with cleaner energy and less aggressive demand, so our kids or grandchildren will have a MUCH better life.
Would anyone listen to me? No. Why? People are happy with where they are, and although everyone consciously knows what is better, hardly anybody is going to sacrifice for the possible better outcome for the kids. Civil rights succeeded, because the way most under-privileged people live at that time was no better than dying for a better future. Even that, not many people stood up for their rights. It is always those countable few who we commemorate for. RIP, Dr. MLK Jr., and Ms. Rosa Parks. Even after all those changes, can anybody say the U.S. is a country with racial equality? Can anyone say they didn't see any side effects of these changes? Can anyone say no other innocent people's benefits are sacrificed as a result? We are already the generation, which is supposed to see only the benefits. We are not listening to the generation, which sacrificed their own well being for all these anymore.
Back to China, people are way more satisfied and happy with their lives than those under-privileged people before the Civil Rights Movement, regardless if they live in urban, suburban or rural regions. Would multi-party system bring less political games and more specific beneficial policies? Would more human rights make them financially better off and happy in 5 to 10 years? Would the path to human rights take less than 5 to 10 years? If the answer is "no" or "maybe" for ANY question, it is not good enough for people to change.
What people know is, currently the economy is booming, lives are getting better, hopes are full and goals are clear. Life is good, isn't it? Granted, without enough human rights, more specifically, freedom of speech, (let's face it, every Chinese still has the right to live, has the right to own private property and has the right to feel safe and sound, among others), people will become the victim of political trades unnoticed. For example, people will be forced out of their home to make way for new development, although they are usually financially compensated for the "inconvenience", and people may die in an illegal coal mine, and all these may not see the news. Bad guys may not be punished or blamed. Wait, Ponzi Scheme does the same thing to people, right? Sure, people like Madoff get life sentence, and become celebrities in prison. Do victims get back what they lost? No.Will there be no more Ponzi Schemes in the future? No.
Eventually, people become victims for various reasons (I am not judging anything here, sorry), but the difference is, some of them get sympathy because their stories see the news, and some don't. Bad things will keep happening, and people lives will keep being irreversibly destroyed. Possibly only 1% people will be victimized in a "free" country, while 5% people will be victimized in a not so free country (numbers are purely fictional). That means nothing to regular people. What would? Between 99.99% and 100%, or between 0% and 0.01%.
By the way, I haven't said anything about culture yet. European countries and the U.S. are using different systems, and even among European countries, the system is different. Nuf' said. It is too difficult to say which one is the most suitable for China, or something completely unheard of, or just staying the same. This is too big and deep a topic and I am not going to discuss it here.
So, no guarantee for less political game more beneficial / encouraging policies, no guarantee for more happiness / financial well-being, no guarantee for not being irreversibly victimized, no guarantee for the length of revolution, and only guarantee for chaos. How is that better than keeping the current situation, where lives are *usually* full of hope, clear goal and most importantly, satisfaction?
I am not trying to agree with self-claimed artists, hippies, and other who can look through practicality and consider spiritual / ideological victory more important than anything else. Are you?
Surely, I can't say any of these in China if the government doesn't want me to. However, I won't need to, because most people share a similar view, so I don't need to spend all these time on arguing with friends for our ideological differences, but rather, we can spend time together on pirating DVDs for an enormous profit.
Nobel Peace Prize? You are just trying to encourage people to subvert when they don't necessarily want to.
I am a pro-U.S., pro-freedom person myself, and that is why I am here working in the U.S. and going after the so-called "American Dream". I HATE the dictatorship taking place in my motherland, ranging from the government, companies, to virtually anywhere in between. It is absolutely not a place for innovation, not a place for hoping rewarded after working hard, and not a place to know the truth.
It is why the whole world, led by the U.S., urges the system to change. It is why a Chinese criminal won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. The inevitable consequences of the Nobel Peace Prize is to encourage more and more people to fight for human rights, and that is what this organization wants to achieve. Good intention, but radically, it is to encourage Chinese people to start revolution, either a peaceful one or violent one, to start things over again, because let's face it, the current ruling party in China is too stable and too powerful to be willing to give away that power.
What does this mean? This means at least a whole generation is sacrificed for something we don't know whether we want. People say we are brain washed and then stop listening to us right here, or have that pre-assumption in their mind and ignore us with a smile. Well, what if I say, hey, we need to stop driving cars, eating steak, wearing cotton clothes, cutting power cores for about 10 - 20 years, and start over with cleaner energy and less aggressive demand, so our kids or grandchildren will have a MUCH better life.
Would anyone listen to me? No. Why? People are happy with where they are, and although everyone consciously knows what is better, hardly anybody is going to sacrifice for the possible better outcome for the kids. Civil rights succeeded, because the way most under-privileged people live at that time was no better than dying for a better future. Even that, not many people stood up for their rights. It is always those countable few who we commemorate for. RIP, Dr. MLK Jr., and Ms. Rosa Parks. Even after all those changes, can anybody say the U.S. is a country with racial equality? Can anyone say they didn't see any side effects of these changes? Can anyone say no other innocent people's benefits are sacrificed as a result? We are already the generation, which is supposed to see only the benefits. We are not listening to the generation, which sacrificed their own well being for all these anymore.
Back to China, people are way more satisfied and happy with their lives than those under-privileged people before the Civil Rights Movement, regardless if they live in urban, suburban or rural regions. Would multi-party system bring less political games and more specific beneficial policies? Would more human rights make them financially better off and happy in 5 to 10 years? Would the path to human rights take less than 5 to 10 years? If the answer is "no" or "maybe" for ANY question, it is not good enough for people to change.
What people know is, currently the economy is booming, lives are getting better, hopes are full and goals are clear. Life is good, isn't it? Granted, without enough human rights, more specifically, freedom of speech, (let's face it, every Chinese still has the right to live, has the right to own private property and has the right to feel safe and sound, among others), people will become the victim of political trades unnoticed. For example, people will be forced out of their home to make way for new development, although they are usually financially compensated for the "inconvenience", and people may die in an illegal coal mine, and all these may not see the news. Bad guys may not be punished or blamed. Wait, Ponzi Scheme does the same thing to people, right? Sure, people like Madoff get life sentence, and become celebrities in prison. Do victims get back what they lost? No.Will there be no more Ponzi Schemes in the future? No.
Eventually, people become victims for various reasons (I am not judging anything here, sorry), but the difference is, some of them get sympathy because their stories see the news, and some don't. Bad things will keep happening, and people lives will keep being irreversibly destroyed. Possibly only 1% people will be victimized in a "free" country, while 5% people will be victimized in a not so free country (numbers are purely fictional). That means nothing to regular people. What would? Between 99.99% and 100%, or between 0% and 0.01%.
By the way, I haven't said anything about culture yet. European countries and the U.S. are using different systems, and even among European countries, the system is different. Nuf' said. It is too difficult to say which one is the most suitable for China, or something completely unheard of, or just staying the same. This is too big and deep a topic and I am not going to discuss it here.
So, no guarantee for less political game more beneficial / encouraging policies, no guarantee for more happiness / financial well-being, no guarantee for not being irreversibly victimized, no guarantee for the length of revolution, and only guarantee for chaos. How is that better than keeping the current situation, where lives are *usually* full of hope, clear goal and most importantly, satisfaction?
I am not trying to agree with self-claimed artists, hippies, and other who can look through practicality and consider spiritual / ideological victory more important than anything else. Are you?
Surely, I can't say any of these in China if the government doesn't want me to. However, I won't need to, because most people share a similar view, so I don't need to spend all these time on arguing with friends for our ideological differences, but rather, we can spend time together on pirating DVDs for an enormous profit.
Nobel Peace Prize? You are just trying to encourage people to subvert when they don't necessarily want to.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
More on luck
Successful people tell you it's luck, because they are 1) being polite and/or 2) trying to convince you your efforts will be a lost cause. Failures tell you it's luck, simply because of self-esteem. Try your best and be the best you can.
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