mr_a: If the companies I have worked for are typical, 95% of all the "data" we had stored consisted of outdated reports, erroneous specs, out-of-date documents and convoluted spreadsheets that the original author couldn't figure out. Hell, it was our data, and half the time it was easier to start over rather than dig through it to look for something.

Good luck to anyone finding the 5% that is actually useful.

If only China had the manpower to dig through all that data.

Outsourcing has consequences. You send your data for a quote, and they can tool your parts. If you make it there, and send engineers to get it started, they can make your parts. After your QC department has tuned their first few tries, they can make your parts well.

After a few decades of that, they can beat you at your own game - and you're out of business.

Steal? We gave away our manufacturing base for a "cost savings".

Let's all be honest. Who hasn't stolen photoshop?

Private_Citizen: Outsourcing has consequences. You send your data for a quote, and they can tool your parts. If you make it there, and send engineers to get it started, they can make your parts. After your QC department has tuned their first few tries, they can make your parts well.

You forgot the part where your Chinese partner's chum opens a competing factory with government money, building a cheaper version of your own patent, and sells it for half what you can until you fold up shop.

Private_Citizen: Outsourcing has consequences. You send your data for a quote, and they can tool your parts. If you make it there, and send engineers to get it started, they can make your parts. After your QC department has tuned their first few tries, they can make your parts well.

After a few decades of that, they can beat you at your own game - and you're out of business.

Steal? We gave away our manufacturing base for a "cost savings".

Link (new window)

But managers are all busy reading "Now, Discover Your Strengths!" (new window) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

/Nice concise analysis btw, mind if I steal it outsourcing it to me and letting me run it by your QC so I can use it without your help in the future?

But hey. Our corporate executives and share holders are making a quick buck by dealing with China.

And is that not what really matters?

But hey, every consumer in the USA has voted with their dollars and has saved quick bucks by buying Chinese made goods.

And is that not what really matters?

mr_a: If the companies I have worked for are typical, 95% of all the "data" we had stored consisted of outdated reports, erroneous specs, out-of-date documents and convoluted spreadsheets that the original author couldn't figure out. Hell, it was our data, and half the time it was easier to start over rather than dig through it to look for something.

Good luck to anyone finding the 5% that is actually useful.



Easy, just look for the file named "Garbage"

Bomb Head Mohammed: But hey, every consumer in the USA has voted with their dollars and has saved quick bucks by buying Chinese made goods.

And is that not what really matters?

You talk as if they have the option to buy something else for a reasonable price. But that does not fit into your little reality does it?

Bomb Head Mohammed: But hey, every consumer in the USA has voted with their dollars and has saved quick bucks by buying Chinese made goods.

And is that not what really matters?

I want to buy a new TV. What American made one should I get?

BeesNuts: Private_Citizen: Outsourcing has consequences. You send your data for a quote, and they can tool your parts. If you make it there, and send engineers to get it started, they can make your parts. After your QC department has tuned their first few tries, they can make your parts well.

After a few decades of that, they can beat you at your own game - and you're out of business.

Steal? We gave away our manufacturing base for a "cost savings".

Link (new window)

But managers are all busy reading "Now, Discover Your Strengths!" (new window) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

/Nice concise analysis btw, mind if I steal it outsourcing it to me and letting me run it by your QC so I can use it without your help in the future?

Consider it an export!

Truthfully, China's behavior is getting worse. Even the big corps are starting to notice, and the Chinese are after more and more advanced data. It used to be they were content to knock off golf clubs, handbags and shoes. Now they are stealing data for trains, planes and automobiles.

The kicker is, even if you avoid dealing with China, they are taking corporate espionage to a whole new level.

/China is extremely protectionist, they don't want to buy your product, they want to take your business.

MythDragon:

[sourbrains.org image 640x469]

Easy, just look for the file named "Garbage"

And don't forget your (not made in China because they will break) rollerblades because you will need them

Bomb Head Mohammed: But hey, every consumer in the USA has voted with their dollars and has saved quick bucks by buying Chinese made goods.

And is that not what really matters?


"Doc, all the best stuff is made in Japan China!"

jayphat: Let's all be honest. Who hasn't stolen photoshop?

Let's all be real. Who has actually paid for photoshop?

I stole photoshop. Must have been about 2001, I was at a club and this guy must have followed me back to my apartment.Before I realize what's happening he's stuffing his disk into my 2X TURBO CD ROM drive. Next thing I know I've got photoshop and really need a cigarette.

I see my company mentioned in this and I'm working on developing a secure system...scary.

tell me about the petabytes

Carth: Bomb Head Mohammed: But hey, every consumer in the USA has voted with their dollars and has saved quick bucks by buying Chinese made goods.

And is that not what really matters?

I want to buy a new TV. What American made one should I get?

What Chinese one should you get? I am not aware of any good TVs by chinese manufacturers. Saying that, I am also not aware of anything good made by china. Love the chinese people who run the restaurant by my house though, they make good food for such a rat infested place!

Jesus, that's like, eleventy-billion tofus or something...

At some point, the cost of maintaining restrictions on the use of intellectual property will outweigh the benefits from owning that intellectual property. At that point we would be better off to just open source everything.

jayphat: Let's all be honest. Who hasn't stolen photoshop?

/whistles and walks away

It's not like we can arrest every single Chinese.

[This post was censored by the US government under the SOPA Act]

It's so cute that people think the Chinese need to hack into things to steal data. Ask a pharma person where the primate phase of any recent drug study was done.
Between sending stuff to China to get around paying for a safe work environment and using cheap Chinese nationals as post-docs and research assistants (not using people who are Chinese, but using people who live in China, and are only here temporarily) there is no need to hack. We're pretty much going "here, have our data, we know you won't steal it."

One of my friends was actually being pressured by his government to acquire data, he was trying to go the citizenship route because he didn't like the strings on his student visa.

This article has little to do with the actions of the Chinese govt and more about inducing fear and an insistence that the Govt *do something*.

The key sentence in an overly rambling sensationalist piece:

""The situation we are in now is the consequence of three decades of hands-off approach by government in the development of the Internet," Falkenrath said. "

All the fear and revulsion and panic you're feeling by the time you get to the bottom then gets focused on this fallacy. Result? "Do something Uncle Sam! Save us!".

Ajanu: Carth: Bomb Head Mohammed: But hey, every consumer in the USA has voted with their dollars and has saved quick bucks by buying Chinese made goods.

And is that not what really matters?

I want to buy a new TV. What American made one should I get?

What Chinese one should you get? I am not aware of any good TVs by chinese manufacturers. Saying that, I am also not aware of anything good made by china. Love the chinese people who run the restaurant by my house though, they make good food for such a rat infested place!

I'm pretty sure Samsung, Panasonic and even sony (maybe it is Mexico for them?) do final production in China.

The first thing I think of now when I hear "petabyte" is China.

While we have already sold ourselves down the river regarding manufacturing tech that was outsourced previously, the digital theft issue is potentially more worrisome. Just like the recent industrial control haxxor scares (nothing serious yet but entirely possible), I think it is time to begin seriously reevaluating offline computing. Does is make you cry not be able to check facebook while you work? Yes. Would it suck to have to go over to another machine to receive email? Yes. Do you have to actually get up and communicate with people or do stuff? Yep. Is your precious corporation too big to not have a vast intranet, which *will* be compromised? Too bad. Maybe consider hiring specialists that distill info (the old fashioned way, paper) between departments instead of repeatedly dumping entire project iterations across multiple servers via unsecured thumb drives from fark knows where.

The internet is fine for day to day life but for anything serious the cords need to be cut and the people responsible need to be retrained in their behavior. Lifestyle convenience is the hottest product we sell to ourselves through all our digital baubles, and it is screwing us just like wanton overseas manufacturing has.

/call me paranoid if you will, but my 'working' machines have offline for about 5 years now. Not a single instance of data loss, virus or ... anything...

LabGrrl

It's so cute that people think the Chinese need to hack into things to steal data. Ask a pharma person where the primate phase of any recent drug study was done. Between sending stuff to China to get around paying for a safe work environment and using cheap Chinese nationals as post-docs and research assistants (not using people who are Chinese, but using people who live in China, and are only here temporarily) there is no need to hack. We're pretty much going "here, have our data, we know you won't steal it."

Maybe your company's lackluster security makes it unnecessary, but some companies don't, and they do hack companies constantly.

Koodz: jayphat: Let's all be honest. Who hasn't stolen photoshop?

Let's all be real. Who has actually paid for photoshop?

so like maybe photoshop 7 but that was almost 10 years ago. it has less features than what are included free on many websites; my favorite being pixlr.com (new window)

even if you get a copy of cs5.5, their anti-piracy required-registration procedures make it unusable after 30 days

WayToBlue: LabGrrl

It's so cute that people think the Chinese need to hack into things to steal data. Ask a pharma person where the primate phase of any recent drug study was done. Between sending stuff to China to get around paying for a safe work environment and using cheap Chinese nationals as post-docs and research assistants (not using people who are Chinese, but using people who live in China, and are only here temporarily) there is no need to hack. We're pretty much going "here, have our data, we know you won't steal it."

Maybe your company's lackluster security makes it unnecessary, but some companies don't, and they do hack companies constantly.

Regardless of your view, they don't need to hack. We're literally going "here, have this data." Whether it's manufacturing high-end things in China to get around EPA rules or letting drug studies be done on prisoners, we're just shipping the data to China en masse. Forget the hackers, worry about the janitor with a thumb drive.

Now More Than Ever: /call me paranoid if you will, but my 'working' machines have offline for about 5 years now. Not a single instance of data loss, virus or ... anything...

Trouble is that it doesn't work for some applications. If you do bioinformatics research, for example, a large number of your tools and the data that you work on is located on servers all over the world.

And a lot of companies that create software you might like to use ship buggy, poorly finished products with the understanding that they will patch them up later via the internet . . . important products, like operating systems.

Chinese hackers are stealing pedobears worth of data?!



*puts on glasses*

Oh wait, that's petabytes.

micah1701: even if you get a copy of cs5.5, their anti-piracy required-registration procedures make it unusable after 30 days

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

micah1701: Koodz: jayphat: Let's all be honest. Who hasn't stolen photoshop?

Let's all be real. Who has actually paid for photoshop?

so like maybe photoshop 7 but that was almost 10 years ago. it has less features than what are included free on many websites; my favorite being pixlr.com (new window)

even if you get a copy of cs5.5, their anti-piracy required-registration procedures make it unusable after 30 days

Photoshop 4.0, 1998 kids.
/now get off my lawn.

Chthonic Echoes: Now More Than Ever: /call me paranoid if you will, but my 'working' machines have offline for about 5 years now. Not a single instance of data loss, virus or ... anything...

Trouble is that it doesn't work for some applications. If you do bioinformatics research, for example, a large number of your tools and the data that you work on is located on servers all over the world.

And a lot of companies that create software you might like to use ship buggy, poorly finished products with the understanding that they will patch them up later via the internet . . . important products, like operating systems.

Point taken - I should consider myself lucky to not be in such an industry. As for updates, it *is* an enormous pain in the ass to transfer downloads from a connected system, but personally the ends justify the means for me. Companies that do not make discrete service packs available for independent updating simply don't get our business. As for living with the bugs - it can be troublesome, but at least we don't have to worry about ones related to security. I haven't had a work-slowing situation where a bit of research hasn't provided a suitable workaround until a patch.

I beileve Command & Conquer Generals already covered this:



"No system is safe...!"

Interestingly enough, I remember a report saying that the reason why Photoshop holds its place as one of the de facto software packages is because the people who can't afford it now (I.E Students and other people not yet employed in a profession that requires its use) are able to pirate it with fair ease, and when they go into the industry, purchase a legitimate copy because its the only thing they know how to use.

Sorta like How Windows doesn't lock you out if you don't have a legitimate copy, they just chide you and don't give you updates, but they still let you keep it. That way you're hooked.

mr_a: If the companies I have worked for are typical, 95% of all the "data" we had stored consisted of outdated reports, erroneous specs, out-of-date documents and convoluted spreadsheets that the original author couldn't figure out. Hell, it was our data, and half the time it was easier to start over rather than dig through it to look for something.

Good luck to anyone finding the 5% that is actually useful.

You worked somewhere where FIVE percent of the data was useful? If you stole everything on the network here, it would take every human being in China a century to determine which tiny fragment might possibly be useful, and it would take their finest minds another century to figure out why the hell we were doing it in the first place.

If they genuinely have this kind of manpower ready to be thrown at the problem, it would be better spent just opening 20 competing corporations with slightly different management and seeing which one produced similar results. It would probably be all of them. Corporations are like mushrooms-- if you put enough crap in one place, they'll grow regardless of what else you do.

As a malware analyst and security research guy, I for one fear the massive collapse of the global economy when the Chinese use all those stolen WoW credentials in their possession to mount massive raids, then empty our collective coffers of hard-earned gold and rare drops, and then sell it on auction sites, for real currency, for a fraction of its value.

Begin the panicking now.

Meh

micah1701: Koodz: jayphat: Let's all be honest. Who hasn't stolen photoshop?

Let's all be real. Who has actually paid for photoshop?

so like maybe photoshop 7 but that was almost 10 years ago. it has less features than what are included free on many websites; my favorite being pixlr.com (new window)

even if you get a copy of cs5.5, their anti-piracy required-registration procedures make it unusable after 30 days

Not so much.

Seeing how China takes such a hardline on radical viewpoints and revolutionary ideas here's my modest proposal:

Salt fileservers with documents about the oppression of Tibet and Falun Gong.

/will hilarity ensue?

I'm doubtful of any computer-related "intelligence report" that names McAfee as an Expert Witness.

Might have something to do with McAfee not being able to secure a bunker from a childrens' pretend tea party without causing several internal explosions in the process.

But I digress.

SkunkWerks: I'm doubtful of any computer-related "intelligence report" that names McAfee as an Expert Witness.

Might have something to do with McAfee not being able to secure a bunker from a childrens' pretend tea party without causing several internal explosions in the process.

But I digress.

SO. MUCH. THIS.

CSB. Every few months I have to go to my mothers house to fix something with the computer. Every. Farking. Time. It's McAfee. Blocking this. Interrupting that. I uninstall it. Farking weatherbug too. "Your brother did something to it". No mom he didn't.

Now I just built them a brand new PC. I told her to not install something I didn't approve.
"But what about McAfee?"
NO.
"But what if your brother goes someplace on the internet that gives me something?"
Stay off the farking porn websites. Happy mom?