Congratulations!

Judging from the comments below, your troll has been wildly successful :)

Hmm.. I think you just coined a new word.

"Oponion: an opinion so irritating it brings tears to your eyes." :)

(the WTF-observations seem valid btw, but I couldn't resist adding to the Devil's Dictionary :))

Not "your password" but "any password".

Using the correct answer to a security question, you can reset the password for the backup. After that, you can download it and then apply the password you just entered. So the security is as strong as the weakest link, in this case still most likely the security questions.

Yes, it's probably too much to ask for some security on your private files, nowadays. Options like "only sync photo's with permission" or "Do not sync" folders are way to complex to implement. So let's put the burden of dealing with failing technology on the consumer. After all, that worked really well for car vendors, right?

I foresee the day when Apple et al are going to pay HUGE settlements in class action suits if they keep up this rather cavalier attitude towards security.

In keeping with the theme of todays Q&A: Security questions are for people who don't use password managers. People who use password managers don't need them and can thus put random crap in them.

That one still works.

And just like with other attacks, they'll just... log them.

Back home?

Really? Not by choice? Weird. Where I live, we all get to choose our skincolor right up to our birthdate. After that it's set in stone, though. But thanks for clearing that up for me. Otherwise I'd have thought you'd volunteered or something.

Oh, and by the way? Get help. You obviously cought Trollitis from a tree that snuggled up close.

Okay. Well, actually I applaud that. The tax on groceries hits the people with the lowest wages the hardest (relatively), reducing their intake of vegetables even more. Locally, I think the VAT is reduced to one third of the standard percentage for essentials like food.

Being smart isn't the only reason for promotion. For instance, 10 years ago I was not promoted to a senior position where I worked at the time, and I was pretty upset about it. I mean, I was competing with former kindergarten teachers, in an IT position. Should have licked them without even trying, right?

Wrong. The next step up required all sorts of "soft" people skills that I only graduately received by training and experience. Looking back, my boss was right at the time from his POV. So while smart people get passed over for promotions all the time, it's usually because their intelligence has specialized in just one direction, where the next level up requires more diverse skills. I know several senior scientists that I'd never promote to head of anything. But they're extremely smart. However, they need "handlers" and those are the people that get promoted to a position of more authority.

In some companies this source of friction is reduced by giving people a technical promotion track - with the pay, but without the authority and need to manage other people. I think that would help a lot.

What, no Value Added Tax?

Unless you make sure *they* reach their goals and know that they did it because you helped them - unobtrusively, not rubbing their nose in it, coaching them as much as you can. As a freelancer/contractor (thus: non-threatening) this has helped me get a lot of repeat business because the clients *like* me. Even up to the CxO level. It's also a matter of knowing your weaknesses: I'm not going to encroach on any CxO area because that's not where my ambition lies.

I did see one very smart guy getting the boot from my own boss. He knew he was smart (and he was), but he was also a really annoying asshole who always tried to let other folks do all the work - and my boss knew. He went over the line one time too many and got fired. Now, he wasn't a threat, but he would be exactly the type to whine about how "dumb people fire smart people", instead of taking a good hard look at his own behaviour.

In my experience I've never seen people getting fired because they were smart. They've always been fired because they were trying to be a bit too clever for their own good and played fast and loose with the rules ("I don't need to test this change before it enters production - I *know* it's good!" - in a regulated environment) and with their colleagues and boss. And sometimes because they thought they were smart, but the rest of the world just disagreed.

In The Netherlands most banks that use SMS do this. It's not hard to implement when your IT is already reasonably capable.