For a bunch of us, especially those who had followed security and the warrantless wiretapping cases, the revelations weren’t big surprises. We didn’t know the specifics, but people who keep an eye on software knew computer technology was sick and broken. We’ve known for years that those who want to take advantage of that fact tend to circle like buzzards. The NSA wasn’t, and isn’t, the great predator of the internet, it’s just the biggest scavenger around. It isn’t doing so well because they are all powerful math wizards of doom.
The NSA is doing so well because software is bullshit.
Everything is broken, because the world let Bill Gates have free reign, unchecked, to monopolize the world’s consumer computing base with crapware – the various and many and endlessly fallible and vulnerable Microsoft OS. Nobody said boo when they discovered they were spending hours trying to fix it, make it work, recover from it, recover lost data, lost proctivity, lost time lost personal life. Gates sold the world a huge bill of goods, and all people did was say “thank you, Bill, here’s a tube of vaseline, I’ll be back for more!”
There, I feel better…
It’s hard to explain to regular people how much technology barely works, how much the infrastructure of our lives is held together by the IT equivalent of baling wire.
Isn’t that the truth. I work for a company that is the backbone of an entire industry and it’s a MIRACLE that our software works. If it ever stops working it will affect a lot of businesses too! People really have no idea.
This is not news to anyone in the business and Skip is right that Microsoft is largely to blame. They pioneered the marketing-trumps-technology software development model that is widely imitated today. Once, software companies created products to fill a customer’s business need; today they create products to fill their own business needs. Microsoft is the Barack Obama of software — the dull business of creating good code, like the dull business of running a government, is subordinated to the perpetual marketing campaign, and with similar results in both industries.
I am running Windows 8.1… cheap junk with continuous updates. A class action lawsuit would send a message. Every new version obsoletes existing Programs, like Microsoft Office. (8.1 won’t load the spell check)… My AutoCAD-12 is ancient history (XP}
BTW:
The CBS program 60 minutes did a tour of a Missile Bunker, two weeks ago. The brain dead host made a point of the OLD computers in operation. I hope some fool doesn’t replace them, redundant reflex logic & “core” memory insures the delivery of the package to the target (Moscow).
A thought. Patent protection expires after 10 years. If a company were to issue an operating system that behaved like, say, Windows 95, and had the security leaks and memory maximi plugged, how would they do? A potential advertising slogan: “the way it used to be, back when it worked.” Linux doesn’t have the “easy to use” reputation, and most folks put up with the latest extra-fertilizer mandatory version of Windoze because they have no choice if they’re going get something with newer hardware. Every release after XP has given me worse performance.
In Biology, when something gets to be as big and dominant as Microsoft then that means it’s time for it to die. I wonder what the asteroid analogue will be (as a dinosaur allusion)?
Another reason Snowden is a hero.
BS. Microsoft is no more to blame than any other software department. I’ve worked for many and to a one, they are all lazy cowboys incapable of learning from the other sciences…hardware in particular.
It’s all about playing with the latest cool toy!
I disagree. It is amazing that it does all work. And it is all tested. Yes, Windows is not up to snuff for us professionals, but it has made computing power available to the whole of humanity.
If you are totally paranoid, or wish security, build your own Linux OS and you know exactly what is in it.
As to the NSA and others sniffing your e-mail? That is wrong and people should go to jail; it is the state that is paranoid, not you. It is also an immense waste of resources brought about, I suspect, by a little bureaucratic empire building.
It didn’t spot the Boston bombers, even when warned by the Russians.
As I say, a waste, but the higher ups know nothing and buy the BS.
Also, I lay much blame at the doorstep of programmers themselves. They all love “object oriented” programming because, supposedly, it is a more efficient way to produce SW; but I suspect it is because it allows multiple layers of complexity as a giant work creation project.
Horse hockey! Don’t blame Bill Gates for this mess. Blame human nature. Industry revolves around being the first, biggest and/or the best. Witness the long lines for new ipads or anything else these days. The stuff, software and hardware are so complex that to truly test and debug anything takes literally millions of people. They are called consumers. This phenomenon is not restricted to computers either. Ever have a recall on your car? Same supply and demand cycle.
Having written code back in the dim times and done countless upgrades in the commercial world, it always amazes me how someone can break things after you have tried to make it “idiot proof”. Beta testing doesn’t find nearly half the bugs and then there are the hackers, folks who try to break things on purpose.
In love with OO? Most developers couldn’t design a fundamental object to save their lives. It’s spaghetti all the way down. So much so that it looks remarkably like our laws and regulatory environment.
I always weep when these topics come up, because for every brief moment of clarity like Norton’s essay (or for insiders, Zed Shaw’s infamous “Rails is a ghetto” essay) there are a million people like Skip, Tom Paine, C_Miner and Slap shot whining “LOL Micro$haft Winbl0ws”.
You don’t get it. You really, really don’t get it, and people like you are the problem.
“Another reason Snowden is a hero.”
Snowden who?
I’m not kidding. He, like dear Julian in his Ecuadorean embassy bolthole, is already slipping off the radar of public awareness.
People get the software they deserve. As for the Snowden love, maybe people get the heroes they deserve too.
“Another reason Snowden is a hero.”
To the Russians and Chinese.
http://www.businessinsider.com/former-obama-official-snowden-is-a-spy-2014-5
well said:-))
told my computer wiz SIL about 20 years ago, “you don’t want others to know, don’t put it on a computer that is **on line**”. The stupid SOB (140 IQ)wouldn’t listen, so he learned the hard way:-)))
And it’s computer models that they rely on to demonstrate the alleged ill effects of “global warming”.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Two things.
1. Apple sucks less.
2. Do we actually care? If I am having a super, dooper, whooper secret meeting of the Gentleman’s Society for the Restoration of Stockings I use semaphore and secret lemon juice inks to keep the feminist as in the dark.
It’s worked so far.
Linux looks more attractive by the day…
You can pretty much find the flavour you want…with the appropriate learning curve if your not a full on geek.
http://distrowatch.com/
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
No. Seriously, no. Linux is not and never will be functional on the desktop. It’s barely functional on servers.
If you absolutely must abandon Windows out of some foolish belief that this will help, choose an OS X device. It’s not any more secure by design, but its lower install footprint means it’s not targeted as much and there’s at least a functional GUI.
Spare me the sanctimony. I’ve run, programmed, sold, installed, supported and cursed computers since the days of the IBM 1620. The fact that there is no suitable alternative to Microsoft OS is the problem, not the end user. I don’t want to calculate the hours of my life lost trying to debug Microsoft OS, not in a small part because no computer company will spend any money on decent end-user manuals, microsoft being one of the worst offenders. I don’t have hours to spend trying to debug my latest Win 8 box, just to get it to talk to my freakin’ lan. I run a 6 machine lan at home – 4 on XP, one, god help its sorry heart, on Vista, and one on Windows 8 (now 8.1, which is a mistake upgrading I am still regretting). The XP boxes run happily 24/7, The Vista box talks to the lan sometimes, the Win 8 box did a bit when I first installed it, now does not with 8.1. Pretty much nothing more than an expensive AV band-aid machine that was concocted primarily to data-mine and jump on the app driven marketing biz dominated by iOS and Android, Facebook and Google+ – nothing more than a patch on win 7 to make the Surface project fly.
Never met a programmer who would or could write end user support documentation for the software, especially OS, and the world flounders big time wasting tons of productivity time trying to make the crap work “as advertized”. Windows remains lipstick on a pig. Just because there is no alternative is not a justification for garbage.
Even the huge industrial lan I work from at work, with its windows 7 upgrade from XP, burps and farts and fails on a regular basis, and we have an IT staff bigger than most small countries.
If you can’t make a six-node Windows LAN work properly, that says a great deal more about you than Windows, dude.
Just for curiosity’s sake, Daniel, how many different Windows OSes are you currently running in a network? Windows 8 does not play well with others. That’s Skip’s experience, and mine too. One of my first jobs, before I transferred to the engineering side of the business, was being the IS department for a 60 PC network with duct-tape, manuals, and a get-it-done attitude. That is the source for my comments about how the earlier versions worked well together – my experiences. You will have other experiences, rather than insult could you give us some examples of how the newer OSes are easier for you to work with?
Must agree, C_Miner. I had XP on the network with a couple of Win7 boxes, they absolutely would not file share. Finally upgraded the Big Machine to Win7, no more problems.
Until a Win8 machine arrived. Now it will not file share. The Win7 boxes can’t see it. I’ve been doing networks since Novell running on DOS 3.1, this MS sh1t simply doesn’t work.
This is obviously a marketing scam to get me to “upgrade” everything again. I refuse. I’ll sneaker-net whatever I need sooner than that. USB sticks are cheap.
Also on this network are various iPads which are virtually blind and useless by design, an Apple TV, an SGI Octane running IRIX that only likes FTP, an iMac which also won’t share files, and a Blackberry Playbook which not only shares files like a boss with Samba, but can SEE all the other devices on the network. It even sees the Apple TV, which nothing else does.
Yay Blackberry. Too bad it can’t use Netflix. The reason that it can’t is Microsoft Silverlight, which RIM decided they didn’t want on their machines because its inherently insecure and it would p0wn their secure network.
There’s no security on my network despite me being more than a little paranoid with passwords and such because iPads are inherently insecure. You can’t even look at the f-ing file system without voiding the warranty.
The author of the article is of course correct. Everything IS broken. The fundamental reason is that personal computers were -all- air-gapped, stand alone units connected to nothing else until the late 1990’s. All PC hardware and software is still designed as if each computer is an air-gapped stand alone unit connected to nothing else, with some security band aids slapped on top. Even phones are designed with the false assumption that they only connect to the telephone company like a normal hard-wired phone.
This situation will change when there is money to be made selling a SECURE computer running a SECURE operating system that can withstand the 0Day exploits being used on all other computers and phones. That day will arrive shortly I believe, when all this security leakage starts causing regular people actual hardship in large numbers.
Like if robbers used the cell network to target people who just visited the bank. Get nailed a few times like that, you’ll pay money for a secure phone. A few bank runs cause by network holes will do likewise for the banks.
There’s nothing broken that can’t be fixed, its just that the security “famine” hasn’t killed enough people yet. Simple economics. Nobody does contour plowing until AFTER the Dust Bowl.
In my former life I was an IT/DB admin for a financial service company. Server environment ( 9 in total) was diverse – Novell, Windows, Unix & Pick. All played well together. Novell was dream to administer – granular user admin with nearly instant file recovery caused by user error.
And well written software doesn’t need a user manual – it’s intuitive by design.