Google site fools interwebs into China blockage scare
Google's China search is working just fine, despite breathless claims from countless news organizations that it's "fully blocked." On Thursday afternoon, everyone from The New York Times to Cnet reported that Google's search engine, online ad service, and mobile apps – as well as various other services – had been snuffed in …
I work at a University which recently outsourced it's student email service to Google Apps. We have a lot of Chinese students. Many of them can no longer access their email when they go back to China because it's blocked. Fortunately we have a VPN service which they can use to bypass the block. Still a pain in the arse though.
Android has a finegrained security model which requires apps to declare what things they need access to in a manifest. The problem for me is the installation dialog that shows this is confusing and there is no further chance of intervention possible. For example, how do I tell the difference between a good address book which only dials the numbers I ask, and a malicious address book that dials a premium number in Chad at 3am?
My feeling is that Android needs to get tough and implement something like UAC by default. If an app tries to dial a number (or read private data), the OS should intervene and show a popup requesting permission to proceed and any relevant info. Apps that are doing dodgy things will become immediately obvious because of all the popups. If a user really trusts an app the dialogs could be disabled per-app from the "manage applications" settings.
UAC got a lot of stick in Vista but it served its purpose, beating up apps that asked for things they did not necessarily need (e.g. read/write access to the local machine registry). By the time Windows 7 appeared most applications were good citizens. I imagine Android would go through a similar pain process but it would emerge from the other better for it.
