Rob Ford's Toronto

[anne]

They don't differ, at all. "Cloud" is an annoying industry term. iCloud is all hosted on Apple servers in Apple data centres, just like Amazon's Cloud services are, just like Microsoft Azure is, etc. It is just a way to describe using large-scale third-party computing infrastructure over the Internet, whether that be storage, compute, or what have you. The person you quoted was 100% incorrect, it is nothing like BitTorrent. Sorry.

Apple would have access to everything on his iCloud account, and has the tools to extract anything they want from his phone (unless he jailbroke it and used third-party software to encrypt it - HAH).

Forgive me, I'm still a bit mirky on the "cloud" term despite having looked at several web sources to try to get it defined once and for all. Your explanation is similar to, but not exactly like what some sources say. If you'll indulge me, I'm going to ask if you could simplify your explanation like you are talking to a five year old. lol

I'm not a Mac person, so I'm not really familiar with what Apple does for clients, but I understood cloud services as simply a marketing term for an all-in-one service that that runs online - like Zoho.com (which by the way does encrypt data but not across multiple networks). I figured the term could applied to the software service itself, or a storage service in which the client does not need to download or install any software; thus eliminating the issues of expensive multi-license software titles across multiple computers which generally becomes obsolete with every Windows upgrade. It may be incorrect to say it doesn't need software installed as sometimes there are companion apps for portability (eg. for smart phones) but generally they run using a web browser on desktop computers.

Is this definition correct?

I am beginning to believe the word means different things to different companies. The nuts and bolts of how they serve this software or storage space to their client base(s) has so far evaded a proper explanation. Is it a single server or a network of servers linked (which would certainly be construed as bittorrent-like where bits of data exist across several locations).

Back to my original question about Apple's Icloud. Do they have a virtual space where Lisi's info is stored or if that's all mixed up with other client data? I wondered if the tech's at apple would be able to search deleted files on an iCloud account for things that Lisi deleted or would such an action violate the privacy of other accounts? I am curious if this is similar to the robocall investigation where they walked into a company and took out hard drives and other equipment to restore deleted data.

 

[DonValleyRainbow]

What does it mean to go to the washroom to settle a dispute?

It means taking care of some shit.

 

[Honest Ed has a posse]

Thanks for this. He doesn't deserve one drop of sympathy after all the horrible things he's done. You can also add the grief he caused all his staffers who quit or were fired or who went on medical leave because of him. And how many people at The Star lost their jobs after people cancelled their subscriptions because they bought into his "the Star is out to get me" campaign? The assault on Dale, the death threats to Doolittle and Donovan and so many other things don't make me feel one bit sorry for him. I will celebrate the day he is arrested.

The Ford's play the pity card all too often too. Coupla pops...not perfect...attacked by the big money media...yadda fucking yadda

They exploit the benefit of the doubt like all grifters do and they see lack of character when anyone falls for it. Gotta step on their necks and not let up. It's the only way.

 

[Honest Ed has a posse]

I didn't mean that he's some harmlesss victim.
I just meant he's' a broken toy, like, you ask him, "What's your name?" And he says, "There's a snake in my boot!"
"Do you want to play?" "There's a snake in my boot!"

Clearly someone has drilled into him that he has to stay on message but he looks borderline insane when someone asks him whether his drug dealer was ordered to trade pot for a cell phone he lost while doing drugs with gang members and he goes, "I've saved a billion dollars! Come to my campaign launch!"
"Did you order him to beat people up to retrieve the crack video?" "I've saved a billion dollars! Come to my campaign launch!"

I don't know if he's clever enough to know the end is nigh but I suspect Doug, at least, does. It's pathetic that he's been pushed into all this by his family and stuck it out when he could have spared all of us the spectacle and is, while not worthy of forgiveness, quite a pathetic shell of a human being. So, that's all I meant.

I know you didn't mean that. I just felt it was a timely reminder. By no means was it personal.

He's definitely Mortimer Snerd to Doug's Edgar Bergen. Doug seems to be running out of script though, that leaves Robbie wishing he could shout out...LINE?. As far as knowing the end is nigh? I think Rob knows, Doug is the one in denial.

Yes it is pathetic that it has gone this far. You can't make a case for him hanging on rationally. There is no possible victory for the Ford's here except infamy.

 

[euler]

Is this definition correct?

I'm not sure what you really meant to say with however you defined it "Cloud" just refers to a type of Internet service. In the case of Apple's iCloud, the primary service is storage (for your audio, video, application settings etc) in the case of a device failure or loss. Microsoft's Azure, by contrast, is a cloud platform where they sell computing power in their data centres - for example you could write a program and have it run "in the cloud" i.e. on their servers. These are both "cloud" technologies but with very different goals in mind. How you interface with these services (your description of different Windows applications etc) will vary with the service. Apple's iCloud is 'baked in' to their operating systems on phones and computers. It is an optional service.

I am beginning to believe the word means different things to different companies. The nuts and bolts of how they serve this software or storage space to their client base(s) has so far evaded a proper explanation. Is it a single server or a network of servers linked (which would certainly be construed as bittorrent-like where bits of data exist across several locations).

Back to my original question about Apple's Icloud. Do they have a virtual space where Lisi's info is stored or if that's all mixed up with other client data? I wondered if the tech's at apple would be able to search deleted files on an iCloud account for things that Lisi deleted or would such an action violate the privacy of other accounts? I am curious if this is similar to the robocall investigation where they walked into a company and took out hard drives and other equipment to restore deleted data.

It is a self-contained network of servers, sometimes across multiple data centres. That makes it entirely unlike BitTorrent which is peer-to-peer (i.e. the clients make up the network). In this case the network is owned and operated by the service provider.

Apple would have absolutely no difficulty differentiating Lisi's files from other clients' files. After all - how would they provide the service to *you* if they couldn't do that?

 

[LowPolygon]

 

[basic]

In regards to the fishing trip, don't forget that the ITOs don't reveal everything that the police have.

MetroMan, he of inside sources who has been leaking things that the media knows but cannot publish, was quoted saying that TPS knew a crime was committed and were looking for evidence to place Ford in the midst of it. This was before we knew about the search warrants for phone records, and the iCloud business. His most recent update states that the police are now just dotting their i's and crossing their t's.

 

[penelope_sch]

By the way - were we expecting these documents to drop today? In the past, haven't we been given a heads up (like when media lawyers are in court). What was different today - these seem to have come out of the blue.

Also - to restate what I said earlier, the documents that came out today were a downer. Everything seems to point that they are still looking for evidence against Ford & haven't really got anything on him yet other than a hunch that linked to this extortion. Are there other ongoing investigations against him… or is this the best we've got?

Edited: I see that basic has addressed my second question while I was typing away...

 

[animatronic]

Forgive me, I'm still a bit mirky on the "cloud" term despite having looked at several web sources to try to get it defined once and for all. Your explanation is similar to, but not exactly like what some sources say. If you'll indulge me, I'm going to ask if you could simplify your explanation like you are talking to a five year old. lol

You are correct that cloud storage is a marketing term that gets interpreted differently by different people, but there are some fundamentals.

Think of your computer on your desk at work. You need to access data, which could be stored in a number of places - a CD-ROM, the computer's hard drive, on a hard drive somewhere else in the building, on a hard drive in your company's data centre in another city or on a leased server in someone else's data centre. In each case you (or at least your IT technician) need to know where the data is stored so you can connect to it directly. None of those options are "cloud" solutions.

In a cloud network you send the data over to a provider (generally a third party), and they store it somewhere in their data centres. There could be a single copy on a server somewhere or there could be a copy mirrored in every major city (think Netflix or Google or Akamai networks) around the world. The cloud provider then gives you a generic address to access that data. You as the user don't need to know where it is actually stored or how - once you get the generic address you can get to the underlying data. Think of your gmail account - all you know is your login information and gmail's server address, while in reality your mail is stored on dozens of computers around the world. Google's cloud looks after the heavy lifting. Companies will have their own fast pipes to get to the info or may even run their own private clouds, but the concept is still the same.

Cloud-based apps take advantage of this by assuming that they can access the data anywhere at any time over any type of connection. Encryption and other standards get layered on, but the basic concept is that you always assume that if you have internet access you can get to the data.

Back to my original question about Apple's Icloud. Do they have a virtual space where Lisi's info is stored or if that's all mixed up with other client data? I wondered if the tech's at apple would be able to search deleted files on an iCloud account for things that Lisi deleted or would such an action violate the privacy of other accounts? I am curious if this is similar to the robocall investigation where they walked into a company and took out hard drives and other equipment to restore deleted data.

The TPS investigators must know or suspect that Lisi had iCloud backup enabled on his phone. As others have noted, this means a whole whack of his private data is floating around in Apple's cloud servers, and that Apple will likely have backups of anything that Lisi deleted off his phone. The investigators won't go and physically pull hard drives for forensic analysis, since it could be on fifty different servers around the world - Apple will just run a search to grab the required files from their database and hand it over on a memory stick or DVD.

 

[anne]

I don't know if he's clever enough to know the end is nigh but I suspect Doug, at least, does. It's pathetic that he's been pushed into all this by his family and stuck it out when he could have spared all of us the spectacle and is, while not worthy of forgiveness, quite a pathetic shell of a human being. So, that's all I meant.

I'm not quite as resolute as Honest Ed has a posse and EagleEye in their condemnation of Ford the person. That doesn't mean that I, or anyone else who feels a smidge of sympathy for him is adopting a weak view of what Ford has become, but I do recognize that alcoholism is a terrible condition (I dislike the word "disease"). Ford is self-medicating big time and I have to ask myself why he does that? What pain is he trying to squash?

Feeling sympathy for someone as a broken person doesn't suggest that he should be treated lightly for all he does. For drinking and driving alone, he should be in prison. He's a danger to others. He makes horrible decisions and he deflects blame. These are not admirable qualities. But, I think he has spent a lifetime trying to measure up in a hyper-ambitious family. He's a normal dolt of a man with average intelligence (not to be confused with an "everyman") who, if he wasn't constantly trying to live up to the expectations of his over-achieving father and his hyper-competitive brothers; the closest of these being a belligerent bully, might have just lived out his life as a husband and father in suburbia without much fanfare. His passion is clearly football - not academics or politics but when he began to receive accolades from grateful constituents for helping them out, I believe it fired up his deep-rooted need to be accepted. Why does Ford think his job is to respond personally to public complaints? Anyone who aspires to be the top dog in a profession doesn't do it so they can handle the tasks which can be delegated to employees. They do it because they don't have to do those things. yet there he is, still calling constituents who complain about potholes and burned out street lights. He clearly craves adulation and he has convinced himself that people who stop him for selfies are friends, not foes. He hasn't enough self-awareness to know the difference. That too is very sad.

As for his dishonesty. I think that was years in the making. When someone you look up to does not approve of who you are, lying is the go-to response. Why tell the truth if it always met with scorn?

I don't think Ford is a big-time drug dealer. I think he's a customer who might deal a little to support his habit independent of his trust fund. The fact that he has gone to his office to drink alone is very telling. It's probable that his wife and children have had enough of his drunkenness and have told him not to drink at home. He becomes bold and agitated when the drinks and tends to act out the things he wishes were true about himself - propositioning women, pretending he's a tough guy, being the Mayor. He's living in the shadows which is a lonely place to be. The fact that he is a pudgy-pasty-white guy who knows jamaican slang is also indicative of someone who is trying to fit even if he has to pound a square peg in a round hole. Nobody finds that sad? He gets a receptive audience at city housing and at nightclubs that young people frequent so he shows up to these places as often as he can to maintain the fantasy. Again - very very sad.

Further I'm willing to bet that both Doug and Randy are the real criminals in that family. The Globe and mail story of Doug's hash dealing days and the multiple arrests for Randy and a family criminal lawyer on retainer certainly suggests a long history of trouble in that family. Sister Kathy seems to be most like Rob, both under-achievers, both drug addicts, attracted to and trusting of nefarious characters, but if his father is a traditional man of his generation, he did not expect much for the daughter beyond marriage and kids and instead concentrated his ambitions on his three sons. Kathy gets a pass, Rob must succeed.

Don't get me wrong. I think Ford is a pathetic human being who has not cared much about what he's done to others. I despise the fact that he does not learn the job he is paid to do. He's whiny, spoiled, dishonest, arrogant and entitled but I don't think he started out in life that way and I don't think he likes himself. Unlike Doug who seems quite proud of who he is, Rob carries a glint of shame in his eyes. There are still hints of his little Robbie Ford personality under that boorish surface and the people who like him are able to see it. They see a kinder man than the one his detractors do. They see a man who's loyal to his friends, not a rat. They recognise in him something that's familiar and they all say the same thing "I can't help it but I kind of like the guy". He's broken. He's near rock bottom. And he appeals to people who feel like life is one big struggle. People are more intuitive than we would like to believe and they see something good in Rob and will ignore the rest so long as they are convinced he is redeemable.

I would hate to be a fly on the wall in the Ford home when he was growing up. I'll betcha dollars to donuts he was one lonely, bullied and mistreated kid and most of his bravado today is nothing more than a protection mechanism. And despite the fact that I want this man and his goon squad out of office, I will feel a little sympathy when he loses the election. His reaction could be heartbreaking and I worry that it might be the end of him.

 

[Honest Ed has a posse]

Need a Sonny, got a Fredo

[video=youtube;1ytCEuuW2_A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ytCEuuW2_A[/video]

 

[ROFOMOFO]

. Ford is self-medicating big time and I have to ask myself why he does that? What pain is he trying to squash?

If I remember correctly some staffer mentioned driving him to his fathers grave where he sat and drank....might be one of the reasons he has hit the bottle, pipe and pills so hard.

 

[anne]

Apple would have absolutely no difficulty differentiating Lisi's files from other clients' files. After all - how would they provide the service to *you* if they couldn't do that?

I was thinking of the traditional server configuration where there is a room with racks of servers all containing 200-500 accounts each all with limited virtual space. The Unix Raq4 or Cpanel servers or similar which would have multiple accounts in virtual directories on one hard drive. If police asked for the hard drive from such a server, there would be a privacy issue with the other accounts not belonging to the defendant.

I'm not sure what police do when other accounts are present on the same machine. Cloud services boast that they are scalable which would suggest they are not limited to space on one server and do not have to move an account to a different server just to increase space.

 

[anne]

If I remember correctly some staffer mentioned driving him to his fathers grave where he sat and drank....might be one of the reasons he has hit the bottle, pipe and pills so hard.

The death of a parent can certainly launch anyone into a mid-life crisis.

 

[basic]

Great analysis, anne. As I have mentioned previously, the myriad psychological aspects of the family are so fascinating to me.