The European Tribune is a forum for thoughtful dialogue of European and international issues. You are invited to post comments and your own articles.
Please REGISTER to post.
Must Follow Standards freezes the Cybernetic Sector into existing functionality. In some cases, e.g., ASCII that's an undeniable good ... for a while. ASCII has a range of coding to support teleprinters. Who the heck uses teleprinters these days? But there they sit, hogging space that these days could be used for other, more important, purposes. It's possible to state ASCII is obsolete; it was designed for 8 bit systems in a 64 bit world.
In the late 70s 80 megabyte mass storage devices were the size of a small end table costing $80,000. Today I can purchase 180 terabytes for ~$7,500. For sheer raw computing power my desktop development system obliterates the IBM 360/70 I worked on 'back in the day.' The Raspberry Pi at $35 a pop, is more capable than any microcomputer available in, say, 1985.
The technological change over the past 40 years continues today. Much of it is not reaching the consumer market because of existing "standards," e.g., WinTel. And the fact 95% of the people on the software side know bugger-all about hardware, its design, architectural trade-offs between hardware and software, and hardware/software integration. Putting it simply, computer systems available in 2013 are squarely based on the limitations of 1975 hardware using paradigms and heuristics developed in 1956.
MicroSoft developed Windows 8 in an attempt to force a move to 2013 technology. BUT it was an "update" that didn't threaten their market dominance. Apple forced a change with the various "i" devices but only under the control of a narcissistic control freak: Steve Jobs, who was deeply interested in freeing people to consume anything ... he permitted. Want to do your own thing? Tough shit.
Like everything, Standards have a Good side, a Downside, and a range in between. They are 'an' answer to some things, 'the' answer to some things, 'meh' to some things, and a real hindrance to other things.
She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
Except governments have no interest in making our computer systems secure, however much they try and secure their own systems.
But as more and more of government is run on computers and the internet, reliability becomes a real issue. Not thinking so much of hackers as malfunctions.
Also thinking less about the deep state as the rest of it: taxation, emergency services, judicial system, the lot of the not gun-carrying parts of the state. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
There is no rocket science involved in securing banking transactions. And in general, it's pretty secure. Almost all money leaks in banking systems are not actual security breaches these days, but social engineering scams. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
Design carefully, encrypt everything, lots of firewalls, test a whole lot.
And fix problems quickly when they appear. Also if possible keep the problems out of the public eye. Which makes it look safer then it is. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
And most of your customers' fuckups too.
And, most importantly restrict access: A universal computer connected to the Internet is inherently unsafe, because the wetware can be tricked into overriding even the most stringent software controls.
There are two ways to make it safe: Either remove the wetware's ability to modify the programming in any material manner (unfortunately, this turns the device from a universal computer into a dumb console). Or disable the wetware's access to the Internet (unfortunately, this introduces the problem of who gets to censor your Internet traffic).
Smart corporate sysops will do both. But that is because most corporate machines don't need to be anything more fancy than dumb consoles, and almost no corporate machines actually need to have access to the Internet (as opposed to the child- and idiot-proofed playpen defined by your sysop's favorite censorware).
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
The hapless employee appeared before an industrial tribunal in the state of Hesse today to explain his actions. He told the tribunal that he had intended to transfer 62.40 from a retired employee's account but "momentarily fell asleep" and ended up transferring 222,222,222.22.
But if all this technology and economy were to slow down for a while, then there might be a chance for standartization, enforcement, some energy efficiency.
by Oui - Jun 25 38 comments
by IdiotSavant - Jun 24 2 comments
by IdiotSavant - Jun 16 12 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jun 15 12 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jun 10 15 comments
by Bernard - Jun 6 23 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jun 6 4 comments
by Oui - Jun 8 104 comments
by Oui - Jun 2538 comments
by IdiotSavant - Jun 242 comments
by Oui - Jun 232 comments
by Oui - Jun 23
by gmoke - Jun 22
by Oui - Jun 20
by Oui - Jun 1915 comments
by asdf - Jun 183 comments
by Oui - Jun 184 comments
by IdiotSavant - Jun 1612 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jun 1512 comments
by Oui - Jun 1310 comments
by Oui - Jun 1240 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jun 1015 comments
by Oui - Jun 95 comments
by Oui - Jun 8104 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Jun 64 comments
by Bernard - Jun 623 comments
by Oui - Jun 6
by Oui - Jun 524 comments