Category: Information Risk Management

Museum of Software Mainstays of Yore ..?

The ‘terrible’ news (not) that Flash is about to be abandoned by one of its last if not the last pillar of support, reminds me of similar ‘developments’ of the past. Like, where did Dynamic HTML go ..? DEC, Sun (Sparc), Compaq, WordPerfect, Norton Utilities, 9-pin matrix printers, bulletin boards, portals. Etc.etc. Yes, yes, I know, some are still around, like OpenVMS is. And in software in particular, there may be many, many more of the lost ark items – where I’d like to see more focus on. Are they valued enough, for their staying power ..? Isn’t their staying a bit exasperated, in some dark corners of the usage landscape ..?
But more importantly (it is); is there some museum or so out there that preserves them for prosperity? I don’t mean just any ‘computer museum’ as they are (all?) of the scattershot type. I mean some museum that captures most of the essentials of the already many eras past, in IT. Like What the Dormouse Said is on paper, but then in software, running, and presenting systems as end users would experience them, a decade, two decades, -plus, ago. Without smartphones, without fastest Internet let alone actually working WiFi.

Edited to add, before scheduled posting: This, on a farewell to ‘screen savers’.

So, if you’d have some pointers, please..?

[Edited to add: A chunk of the above, here.]

Thanks in advance through:

[Once (??) was modern; Madrid]

Turning, not their pages

There was a moment of hesitance when I saw this self-post (selpie?) of s/o who had just graduated in this self-proclaimed (sic) glitz bizz Master program as if it were a sign of success achieved instead of a life of toil would be ahead before any ‘success’ (probably empty; your last clothes (at the pealy gate(s)) don’t have pockets) could be claimed if actual success would be claimable or self-defeating, from a university named after someone Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very, Very famous for pointing out the futility of such behaviour.

Which made me think: There are many great universities, with many Great founders or name-givers (posthumus of not) out there … how would those Original Giants of thought, reflect on today’s graduates’ moral and ethical content and virtues ..?

Yes you see where this is heading. No, not towards Goldielocks syndrome. I have two ‘alma maters’ – the second being a true one, the first every now and then desperately (…) presenting itself as such, showing to be desparate for a (the right) reason); failing on the general education side. And on the particular education side, wholesale. And on their uni administration capability, ditto.

No, this is about the general over the particular. Can one(s) somehow force unis to protect and further the moral and ethical heritage of their namesakes ..? Why not ..? Perversion of society, maybe ..?

Now I know I know not where this post is going … Plus:

[Went over the hill, is now anonymus; Toronto]

Quo ivisti Maker Movement …?

There once was this thing called ‘Maker Movement’ as a rebirth of the Arts&Crafts of our youth.
This was some two to three years ago, mostly. Where has the Movement, and its protagonists, and its followers, all gone ..? Flamed-out by the dunce mass takeover of everything-hipster thus destroying the core concept(s) of the latter hence of the former too ..?

Just wanted to know; if you have a clue. About what I’m talking about, and about the whither.
Because there was something beautiful blossoming, on the mainstreamish generic side of steampunkism, say. Because societal benefits were closer off many an initiative in the MM, than off regular ‘innovations’ that had to go through the motions of corporate mush mountains before being turned down because of too-small markets for the razorsharp-targeted less-privileged, mostly.

Yes you see it’s weekend. Cheers! And:

[ArtfulLille]

Indexing the socmed skew

Hi y’all (or variants), would any of you have some form of Hirschman-Herfindahl index for the concentration in users/followers profiles on various socmed platforms ..?
And/or, even better, some index that takes into account every profile its geo- and other spreads which may be much more limited than all living in one global community you know.

Have pointers, will blog. Plus:
[Medium-class IIb for no good reason; Rotterdam]

Too late for GDPR compliance ..? Click here to pay up

It seems like everyone’s finally waking up to the fact that ‘GDPR D-day’ is less than 283 days ahead.
Yes I checked. And I didn’t discount for weekends – minus 80 days, more of less –, holidays – either the normal kind, at some three weeks in this period, or the sanctified ‘bank holidays’ for those that say they don’t believe in holidays, or say they do but still are too awkward sheep to actually go on normal holidays, maybe a week in total – and the year-end curfew on all IT changes because business is doing things they have done for years, decades, and still haven’t mastered apparently.
So, we’re more in the area of 100-150 business days left.

Before what …!?

GDPR has power of law per … 20 days after its publication in the EU Official Journal, on 4 May 2016 … !!!

It’s just that officially, it’s not enforceable.
And would one be able to challenge organisations already today, e.g., with the letters from hell just not from the duds?
[To the latter: The Dutch DPA was sanctioned in court four times recently for not having acted sufficiently in spirit and to the letter of their tasks. Suggest to estimate what percentage this constitutes to the actual number of cases they didn’t act sufficiently where legally, they were and are forced to; refusal to obey instructions…]

No really: ‘Civil’ law is other than administrative law, right? Enforcement is postponed, but is the requirement to comply as well ..?

Will ask legal advice. And:
[The Classics, may stay even when at an angle; NY-NY]

Socmed spinning into its own abyss

Was considering writing up a post on how socmed (and other sites with ‘recommendations’) in the end undoes themselves. By suggesting, proposing, and timeline-injecting ever more precise in-profile You May Also Likes, people might get more and more annoyed, and will look themselves for content elsewhere [excepting the hoi polloi that are too dumb to see they’re taken for a ride] and leave the platform in the dust. Facebuck as case in point; the more specialised platforms there are out there, persistently though not growing but remaining viable as they are, the more Fb will remain for the unsorted, culturally completely ‘flat’ content and audiences, quod non. The noise. Proven by the focus on numbers, picked up everywhere but in the socmed-sophisticated world where the Others still have the selective-elite strongholds, and will expand. Just wait until the rets of the world raises their education as well.

Even more so when platforms keep their ‘SEO’-like formulas secret, or hard to guess by error seeding / differential cryptanalysis; users will generate ever more bland content, speeding up the narrowing /shallowisation (…) of the users’ minds but driving away all that aren’t so easily pressed into ever narrower filter bubbles/funnels…
But then, why would I care?
Oh well, one can dream, can’t one..? Plus:
[May R come to the rescue against Arrrrhhhh ..? Baltimore harbour drinking club …]

‘Code, you know

Recently, I was reminded again that keeping up with appearances of developments, in the IT field are difficult. And placement of commas is an art if you wondered. The culprit in this instance was this here among various articles about Low Code / No Code as a thing. The placement of intermissions is, too.

Well, I’d rather be a fan of Do Code… But I’m unsure whether that still flies, other than in classrooms around the world but not your local prep / grammar school that sorely falls behind in prepping children (‘kids’ is for their parents with diminished language competencies) for the nearest of futures.

Oh well. Just go out and yolo- / NoLoCode… Plus:
[What beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright just Jeruzalemkerk Amsterdam]

Long and fruitful lives

Again, the discussions re pension age turns up; whether those in ‘physically stressful’ occupations should be pensionable – even in this day and age, without any regard to subject’s want or not..! For 10 points, compare to slavery – at earlier ages. Use 100 words or less.
Where there never is any regard either for the starting age(s) of work. Most often, those in the ‘physically stressful’ categories will have started work early, right? And/or, have paid their dues, in terms of contributions to pension schemes anyway, or indeed hard work without much in the way of tax deduction cleverness. So yeah, when it comes to a ‘right’ to be pensioned early, that should be, should have been for a long time already you lazy … policymakers, in the schemes. And, for those who started later (like Yours Truly… much later but better prepped and experienced than my cohort, definitely), having to end later should come as not much of a surprise nor special burden. Nope, I didn’t mean pre-tired half-lives, plain late-r-etirement…

Whatever. Plus:
[When this is your work/-place, you’re not used up so early, are you? Granada]

Question: Aggregate discrimination?

Iwas a bit puzzled: In all the discussions about forcing diversity into organisations by ‘positive’ discrimination even if only by preferring one candidate over the other when they are otherwise equal hence the selection criterion is discrimination by definition (sic), where is the issue settled that issues at group level, do not reflect well on individual levels ..?
That’s a long one. Triggered by this memo of Googles exexec of course, which is a rational analysis followed by a point-proving response …
I’m not going into the detail of that discussion there. However, I will go into the thing that discrimination is defined as preference based on irrelevant distinctions. Which works out in hiring like:

  • In masculine organisational cultures [to take the by far most common starting position…], shock therapy will only be counter productive to all. Very-feminine women [same, qua LGBTQ inclusion] will be laughed away at their first outbreak of tears, either openly or covertly, and be let go for not being able to stand the heat. Men will be confirmed in their convictions that high testosteron is a requirement for the job, and have the ‘proof’ (quon non).
  • If any such lady would survive, it can not be but for two scenarios: Either the men park the lady in some inconspicuous, near-only flower arranging function where nothing changes except having a token female around to show off, or the lady adapts, or chips in, or was on the masculine side of the vast statistical spread already (however off-center). Oh third scenario, the most unlikely one: All (sic) adapt – but when there are many men already, the ‘average’ will remain close to the starting position which means the lady has to adapt most, and the many men only slightly. That helps a tiny bit, and may take a long while to help (devolved-)Kaizen-style.
  • How can I help that I’m a white male …? It’s not that I had a choice, and why should I be discriminated against when someone of equal capabilities for a job (IF properly assessed so, yes) happens to never had a choice but be female/…/… and also …/…/…? Such a scheme makes me an immediate victim of discrimination, the same discrimination situation there was before the hiring started… Reminds me of that old story at a Party conference: [Speaker shouting] “What is Capitalism!?” [Crowd shouting] “One man exploiting another!!” [Speaker shouting] “And what is communism!?” [Crowd again] “Exactly the opposite!!”
    And also: I want to win the WC 100m dash too but the others are faster than me (just); that’s discrimination!
  • Of course, there’s tons to be said about the assessment of capabilities for the job, both on the candidate side (only the best of the best of the best psychologists might be able to more often than not correctly assess someone’s capabilities correctly, all others will fail dismally the more so the less they are aware of their own assessment-incapabilities…), and on the job side (have you ever seen an appropriate, consistent and complete job description let alone an equal requirements description …!? That’s a lie). Fix these two, and I’d say you’re quite on your way to solving a major part of the problem. You will also no longer ‘discriminate’ against redheads, people with polka dot socks, etc. But this will be hard, especially in the area of properly describing job requirements, not to include the often very ‘diplomatically’ formulated requirements of being a chum, having friends at the department already, not rocking the boat, belonging to the right country club (or …), etc., or even worse not describing such subtlest of subtlest subcultural clues but applying them nevertheless.
  • It seems that apart from the assessment process atrocities, the root cause of all the above is in two elements:
    • Discrimination happens at two levels; individual and, by addition/statitics, at group level;
    • The solution/correction is sought to fix the group level but is applied at the individual level.

    That’s not going to work. Though there’s no avoiding belonging to groups (even when at the spread-out multi-affiliation levels and circles, bubbles and foams of Sloterdijk’s kind!), some group affiliations are irrelevant and/or hindering, unwanted, irritating to individuals that are ‘allocated’ to these groups by others without consent, want or need.

    Oh and then, there’s a third root cause: The stupidity of statistical generalisation, a.k.a. ‘the statistician drowned in a river of one foot average depth’. Meaning again that not all men are pigs. Like the Bell curves; a great many [F/M] have more of XYZ than quite a number of [M/F], and shoving all into the extreme corners as typification, is an insult to those that have no want for such undue generalisations.

  • Where are the companies where the work force is >50% female/…/…, that beat the heck out of male-majority companies ..? Not just some unicorns, but real, like, 5000+ FTE companies. Strange. The Frightful Five all rose in the past two decades. Equality-pushes have been much longer already – allowing more than ample time to have such role model counterexamples. What’s ‘wrong’ (not) ..?

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. Apart from the conclusion that ‘positive’ discrimination is not a solution.

Now go and re-read the exexec’s memo all the way to its conclusions. The commenters there, don’t seem to be able to think straight, by the way; just hecklers to be dismissed. And, not being allowed to even discuss ‘diversity’ or actual facts pertaining to that, is the most direct and in-your-face form of censorship thinkable. There’s hardly anything even equally unconstitutional than that; if the ‘values’ at Google call for such unconstitutional behaviour, the company should be disbanded and execs jailed for it.
[Edited to add before scheduled release: How easy can all comments be summarised on the polarisation scale from nuanced and content-focused, all the way past the preconceived-conclusion reiterators that are close to, the so PC bigoted that they can’t even see their own extremism. Sad. Very sad. In ten, twenty years’ time, people will look back and not understand the blind fanatism of the wrong side…]
[Edited to add before scheduled release again: This here piece by some professor. Seriously misinformed, misinforming, apparently, or just throwing oil on e fire for fun.

For what many seem to have missed, is … the tech industry needs to change, by turning normal. Meaning that it needs to get away from the tech-only jobs and have more balance in there. See above qua job requirements … It’s not about biasing the hiring, which is unduly biasing in itself!, but it’s about changing the work into ‘normal’ jobs; then, you’ll find that all those jobs that favour the excluded, will suddenly be there, and the evironment in which they [not They The Others, just as a group designator] thrive, will be there too as the required performance will be up their alley more that it will be up the techies’. To put it bluntly [big !!! here], if you want more white people to be able to compete in the 100m dash, it’s no use giving them a head start or so. ‘White people’ may shine in other thing [Chess? Unsure what would happen if playing that, were more ingrained in other cultures…!] – only if we loose the distinction and not discuss any, do we level the world’s playing field for fulfillment before we require all to be good, healthy, happy and helpful, and well-rounded co-workers in any industry, good, healty, happy and helpful, and well-rounded caregivers at home and to everyone in our environment however near or far, ditto loving spouses, etc.etc. – again, them everyone will be equal … uhm, not; not everyone has the same abilities, remember ..? The thing is not to care in which direction your abilities are, or how far they go. Everyone being equal, all are boring like heck!
So, the real thing is to realise the tech industry may be average-women-unfriendly on average and that may (!!!) have to change, just like nursing and breastfeeding are male-unfriendly on average and have to change. ‘Positive’ discrimination is not going to work, neither is unbiasing-workshops – that’s punishing (sic) people for not doing something particulalrly wrong like putting them in brainwash/indoctrination labour camps… Now re-read the memo again and see that it says that. ]

Okay, to prevent further outdatedness by delay, I’ll post now.
Oh, and:

[Right… Digging in will help… Not. Spain]

Forever young, immature infosec

Sometimes one feels like one’s in a partial Gourndhog Day or 2:22 …
When 7 december 2006, there was this meet about the maturity of infosec, as a field. Which was compared, by Yours Truly, to the then (and now!) equally immature IS audit world – which had a couple of decades more under its development belt but was is still quite immature still.

Then there’s the first paragraph of this. ’nuff said..?

And:
[This, still fresh which is a different thing …; Barça of course]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord