The sad fact is that most companies aren't even implementing basic controls that everyone knew were important 10 years ago. If you look at a lot of the high profile breaches, they're due to fundamental stuff, not a lack of super high end ultra-expensive security appliances. Its something consumers reasonably expect companies to be doing, but they aren't doing.

I believe it is possible to have companies manage things and have good security. You could accomplish this by having individual consumers take more responsibility for their information, but its more likely and more effective that "we" would take more responsibility for our information through market pressure, standards, etc.

The most likely form for this to take right now is through standards and compliance. The improvements in the situation are being driven by this now. We're not there yet, but its improving.

The area where I do agree, though, is that it will be difficult to have effective security and privacy without legal support. The government is completely full of shit when it comes to information security, as they are full of shit when it comes to so many things. The NSA's efforts to compromise encryption and product security are a great example of this.

On the other hand there are laws like HIPAA. HIPAA is so vague, and yet it has been effective in driving change in the healthcare industry. Again we're not, "there" yet, but things are changing at a relatively rapid pace. HIPAA is actually a good example of where the government was not overly prescriptive, but does enforce substantive penalties for noncompliance with very general common sense requirements. On the other hand you have industry regs like PCI which are extremely prescriptive and have had a similar effect. Consequences are the only reason why PCI is having an effect as well...

Engineers think project managers and deadlines are a waste of time and a pain in the ass, while project managers think they are essential. Now that's what I call news! Whodathunkit!

This is business. Management wants to quantify everything to manage resources, manage spend, control cost, maximize profit, etc. It makes perfect sense at the same time that it doesn't really jive with how engineering works a lot of time. One thing for developers to keep in mind, though, is that *doing* something is never as important as *telling people* about how you did it. Metrics mean way more to the people who sign your paycheck than the code you write does and you should design your metrics accordingly.

The other component is PMs themselves. How many really good PMs have you worked with in your life? Grand total of 1 for me. Most PMs are people who don't really understand technology and have created a whole system of super-important metadata to "add value" to the process. When it's done properly a PM can help a lot, but mostly its just blustering and wasting everyone's time. These people want to protect their jobs, and their jobs are defined by timelines and metrics.

They always say this now, and their browser is always shit. Its more than safe to expect it to suck.

Can we get past the yellow, "folder" icon yet? It doesn't go with the rest of the interface at all, and its based on a wildly outdated concept. Even when I still use folders, they're never yellow. It's time to move on.

Maybe there's even a new way of visualizing "folders" altogether. Let's get creative.

Touche! :)

Your company should provide secure coding practices training. It's something that is becoming more and more common, but hasn't quite hit full adoption yet. It's being driven by regs and customers. Pretty soon it's unlikely you'll be coding anything before you take the training. It's the way the industry is moving.

However, there is another piece here. I am about to give you the keys to becoming a superstar developer. No BS, this is going to sound obvious but if you follow these steps you'll become the go to guy in no time and your career will advance...

1.) Make sure there is a business requirements document *before the project begins*
2.) Circulate that document to stakeholders, *including the information security group*

That's it. That's the whole secret. It's the key to every development and infrastructure project. It will seem like security is a pain in the ass and is raising the cost of the project but in the medium to long term they are *greatly* reducing the cost. You will also be loved by the infosec group, which means that you will be loved by the customers and the business as well. They just won't know it until you go to actually sell the product but once you do...you will be the savior.

I'm not kidding about this. Do this and you will be successful.

Almost everybody is extremely bad at their jobs. Especially in IT, but in general too. I would say a solid 85% of people working in IT today should not be in the field.

I work in Security and so my job is basically to know, at a high level, how other people should do their jobs. Of course there are compromises that have to be made for functionality and cost, but in reality most IT systems are developed and architected in a way that no one should architect anything for any reason. The amount of money that's wasted because of poor infrastructure is astonishing. Companies could have an architecture that's twice as secure and probably half the cost to maintain if they were willing to make a one time investment in doing it properly.

Developers are a weird animal too. I know I'm playing with fire saying this on Slashdot. :) In my experience developers have a deep understanding of how systems work and are designed (obviously), but their understanding is *extremely* narrow. This is by no means true of all developers, but it's true of a lot. They can write brilliant code, but they can't tell you how to go about FTP-ing a file, how to encrypt an email, or how a domain works. It's a specialized skill set.

At a previous company I had to call support because my computer didn't grok with the domain and wasn't getting group policy. The tech, with her domain admin access, comes over and is obviously floundering trying to fix the problem. I suggest running a DOS command I know...she googles it and pulls it up...she gets to the command prompt and starts typing, "command\optionfoobar-x7", etc. How can you possibly be in that field and not know the *most basic structure* of a DOS command? I don't care if you know the command and options, everyone googles that crap, but you don't know how to type it in properly? A backslash and no spaces? Really? Even when you're looking at a webpage which has it verbatim?

Its no wonder things are in the state they're in.

That's not out of line with other high end portables, especially with 128gb internally. Lots of other players in that space and price range.

It does need to be GOOD...VERY good....though. The guys on Head-Fi are pretty picky!

I need a large capacity high end player, but I'm not willing to spend quite that much. Geekwave looks promising.

I dunno man, have you ever seen Vin Diesel say anything in a different manner across every movie he's ever been in?

I wasn't talking about the technology at all. I mean, generally, its so far off TOS it just doesn't even make sense at all. I would give them leeway to make it look cool and facilitate some story elements, but they're just off in lala land. Its a completely different universe.

What I was talking about is more the character development, the message, etc.

There's too much in the canon and too many people who love it to just burn it. It's just stupid, you might as well just start a new canon if you want freedom.

The thing is, even if you're OK with them burning the canon so they can do whatever they want, what they did with that freedom is make shitty action movies with horrible dialogue and no plot. Someone else mentioned that none of the movies really lived up to the TV show, and that's probably true, but the new stuff is just shit. How they've handled Spock's character is just pathetic....his scenes are basically unwatchable.

The technology is all way off too. It doesn't jive with the original in any possible way. I realize this is a geeky thing to say but its fucking *Star Trek* if we can't be geeky about that, we can't be geeky about anything.

I agree about McCoy. He does a good job. If the writing weren't so patronizing I think he would pull off the character really well.

First Abrams' complete disregard for the history and the message of every previous Star Trek in favor of everything superficial and minor that has ever been in the series, and now they bring in this guy, of all people? They should just have Vin Diesel play Kirk and put the series out of its misery.

I actually wouldn't have minded the 2 newest Star Trek movies as mediocre sci-fi films, *if* they weren't labelled "Star Trek". The lens flare bullshit and the incompetent/inconsistent portrayal of Spock are things I could get past, but not as a Star Trek movie.

My shrink told me she doesn't do social media because all her patients tell her how horrible it is. .......I had just finished telling her how horrible social media was.

Um.

This sounds a lot like risk management.

Risk management is for COMMUNISTS.

Never do a risk assessment when you start a new project, it will just bring up uncomfortable information and make everyone feel sad. :(