brownfoot

For the benefit of all readers, Terry Childs is the San Francisco, California’s FiberWAN Network Engineer/Administrator who is charged and accused of withholding administrative access to the city’s network and is now behind bars with a $5Million bail (too steep).

Based on the information I gathered online, Terry Childs has his own personal reasons why he did those security procedures.

“Mr. Childs had good reason to be protective of the password,” Crane said. “His co-workers and supervisors had in the past maliciously damaged the system themselves, hindered his ability to maintain it … and shown complete indifference to maintaining it themselves.”

from SFGate

It’s a good thing Childs cooperated by giving the codes/script/s only to the mayor (Gavin Newsom) himself when mayor Newsom visited him in jail.

“Even though the rest of the system’s administrators feared that Child’s actions might lead to very troublesome situation, the system seems to be working fine and there are just a few more glitches to fix in order for everything to return to normal.”

from efluxmedia.com

The case of Terry Childs just prove that Systems Administrators have a big responsibility and powerful on any system or network infrastructure, but can be controlled by implementing policies.

Top managements should also be aware of the existing system and network implementations and should assign to at least a minimum of two (2) technical personnels for all administrative accesses.

Documentations of access codes and regular drills can also minimize these kinds of problems.

So it is up for you to decide if Terry Childs is either good or bad.

Google is allocating $10 Million US Dollars for the Android Developer Challenge which is now on its second and final round. This is a big opportunity for software applications developers to show their talents and skills, and provide high-tech mobile apps which we hope will be freely available.

Back in my programming days, funding is really an issue when we develop certain applications. We normally end up in purchasing surplus/used computers and other technical equipments in order for us to operate and complete such projects. But with Google, you have the opportunity to be funded.

Android by the way, is an operating system/software platform for mobile handsets based on Linux which is an open platform. It was initially started by Android Inc. and was acquired by Google in 2005 with the Open Handset Alliance.