Innovation (technologicallly driven) – Page 64

Also gone

[Does one still do a walk in the park ..?]

And, yet another goner: Where’s the news about all new tablets, tablet sizes, and eBook readers …? Once there was a time when one would read about that every day.
Now, not so much. Isn’t there any movement in the market? Or is the focus too much on gear and other wearables crossing over into the IoT..?

Just wondering. Comment, please.

[2014 02 07 edited to add: some news.]

You’re a SCADIoT?

Strassbourg
[Just some side street of Straasbourg]
[Updated, ? added in title to make it less harsh]

A thought crossed my mind, as they do constantly: SCADA is over the hype hill already, qua setting information security as a requirement abstraction. Not yet onto enlightenment, implementation. But still, gefundenes Fressen. And methodologies are available, if one searches well and close enough.

For the Internet of Things (including domotics), not so much. Here, we see much more societal and philosophical discussions still going on, whilst the first traces of implementation, the earliest of early adoptions [that’s why they’re called ‘early adoptors‘, not ‘adaptors’ you fool; they’re actively adopting, not passively adapting like a micro-HDMI-to-VGA connector] are spreading. But security as in getting that implemented from the start, not so much.

Which would be OK if the first true piloting would await the results of the discussions, after which the implementations of the outcomes would still have to be done before roll-out. But no, the discussions are of no use now that Big Corp start pushing its ‘solutions’ quod non.

The more interesting thing is: Any wider-scale implementation will be a cross-over of SCADA and IoT, OR we give devices, robots, full control from the start; sorcerer’s apprentices when it comes to operating IRL.
In that space, we still stand very much empty-handed, don’t we, when it comes to methods to do methodologically sound work. Where (information/privacy/societal) security would be integral and important part of the ‘sound’.

Any thoughts, anyone ..?

[Edited to add: This link, with a discussion on the same (ex security)]

What the Dormouse Said

[At Navy Pier]

After Glass, some somewhat older invention came back into the news among technorati.

Will we now see the age-old battle between computer-centric networking, and network-centric computing, like in What the Dormouse Said, being played out all over again in the visual info delivery space (literally, and figuratively ;-)?

Hope so. Paradigm battles are interesting.

Oh, and WtDS, I might turn into another Books by Quote, some day. Will have to re-read it (recommended) to pick out the quotes…

Edited to add: Just found a link worth sharing, regarding the above…

Inf(n)ographic

[Ah, didn’t Rietveld design the dream next to your house (value plunge)? Who laughs last?]

It occured to me that somewhere over the last couple of months, some infographics fatigue has come to te fore.
Not that we don’t see too much less infographics – though they seem to have gone out of style, or out of the hype cycle – but they do seem to be, well, less infographic’sy. E.g., by just presenting a nice background to a couple of comparison tables and maybe still a pie chart or two.

But where’s the brille…!? The clever use of graphics seems to have devolved to something mundane, hardly helping the numbers to be understood (better).

Ah, the olden days, when the graphics augmented the clever though still objective selection of numbers in becoming really great information transfer …!

Or am I getting old, i.e., is all this ‘old’ by half a year already?

Wired / Tired / Expired, February 2014 edition

[Riga seems to be W class]

So, here’s the February edition of my Wired / Tired / Expired jargon watch overviews:

WIRED	TIRED	EXPIRED
Your own Jura	Babychino at Starbucks	Nespresso (and ~ shops) – or – Latte macchiato (tie)
(Since this blog is personal…)	Too wannabe hipster	George is getting really old, too

Mainstream	Hipster	Hip, New, or whatever
Since, you know, it’s the hipsters’ derogatory phrase for anything non-hipster that you can spread around anywhere like a cat spraying.	Is like (being) a lady: If you have to talk about it, you aren’t one.	You were young in some past millennium, maybe.

Fisker Karma	Tesla S	Prius
Just look at it! but I’m holding out for	The sheer exclusivity of it drops just a little too much	Mehhh. Also, see this infographic

Meanwhile…	Doge speak and starparodies	Rickrolling
… anywhere where some give no […] as here and here or even here.	Much nonsense. So annoy. Very copy.	Only if done really right.

Negging socmed	Competing socmed	Blue ocean (pretense) socmed
The way to go; invite to be bought out i.e. sell out.	Harharhar, just give it a try. The new what, you are?	Oh, and you think not everything has been invented yet?

Business suits (with or without tie; as long as the shirt is classy in itself not plain white no-iron (horror))	Too open shirts and thinny V-neck sweaters with no shirt under them	Business shirts with no undershirt
Classy will always be classy, will NOT go out of style	Petty pauvre posturing, with your breast hair not having recovered from the previous fad stupidity	Ewww!
Wearable tech (Glass, via Toq and Gear, to Google lenses)	Layar	Hey, I have this new phablet and I’m too stupid to understand I’m a dork for showing off!
They’re just hot, still.	It’s getting embedded, but the idea of ambient intelligence will certainly integrate with the Wired equipment. That it’ll be invisible, isn’t bad. Akamai is doing quite fine without anyone knowing…	Obnoxiousness sometimes is hard to ignore though we’ll try very hard
Gamification	Risk-based control / security	Totalitarian SOx control
So Wired it’s not figured out yet how this will change businesses throughout.	Mehhh, you cannot have progressed any further than the newspeak as no-one has, yet. And the idea is half-baked on many sides so may never work without much, (too) much compromise.	Only interesting for drones very below the ‘intelligent’ robot level. Stupid’s Delight. See Compliabullies and many posts before and after that.

OK, any suggestions for next month’s edition ..?

Little misspelling

[Much styles. Apology doge]

Erm, let’s hope they meant ‘on’, not ‘in’ their heads in this piece on Glass use in hair styling or it would get creepy…

From the digital front, no news (?)

[Warped, intentionally [,|so] beautiful]

Hey, has anyone noticed how silent it has been for the past couple of months (maybe six), on ‘cyber’warfare ..?

Was reminded when that phrase was so preciously avoided in this (Dutch) piece.
Apart from the caricature posturing as authority (quod non par excellence) and the depicted image of control (also, the extreme opposite of reality): Hasn’t the enormity (also, of detail as released) of Edward S.’s revelations fogged the bigger picture ..?

[Edited to add:]
This (only in Dutch, again; what small-mindedness – assuring the opponents laugh around the world and back all through NL?) ‘annual report‘ quod non seems impressive, until you realise what actual work has been done…

A maze-ing

[What a view]

I was unpleasantly surprised by Tim Harford’s note on mazes in the economy.

Because he’s so right: We’re all taken for a ride, not only in casinos but ever more often, IRL, with utilities (among which phone) subscriptions and many other things we need (not ‘want’, but need!). And we have no way to control it, not even collectively…

Inequality, trust and security

[Caen; secure?]

To start, just as a quote, then, from Bruce Schneier’s blog:

Income Inequality as a Security Issue
This is an interesting way to characterizing income inequality as a security issue:

…growing inequality menaces vigorous societies. It is a proxy for how effectively an elite has constructed institutions that extract value from the rest of society. Professor Sam Bowles, also part of the INET network, goes further. He argues that inequality pulls production away from value creation to protecting and securing the wealthy’s assets: one in five of the British workforce, for example, works as “guard labour” — in security, policing, law, surveillance and forms of IT that control and monitor. The higher inequality, the greater the proportion of a workforce deployed as guard workers, who generate little value and lower overall productivity.”

This is an expansion of my notion of security as a tax on the honest. From Liars and Outliers:

Francis Fukuyama wrote: “Widespread distrust in society…imposes a kind of tax on all forms of economic activity, a tax that high-trust societies do not have to pay.” It’s a tax on the honest. It’s a tax imposed on ourselves by ourselves, because, human nature being what it is, too many of us would otherwise become hawks and take advantage of the rest of us. And it’s an expensive tax.
The argument here is that the greater the inequality, the greater the tax. And because much of this security tax protects the wealthy from the poor, it’s a regressive tax.

Now throw in a bit of Jaron Lanier’s You Own the Future and we’re all set…

Sealing your site

[What a circus. In the background.]

ENISA recently announced it wants an upgrade of the ‘reliability’ of web seals.

Nice. BUT anything out there will be:

Copied and replayed at third party sites, differences being inobservable to the average hooman;
Placed without being warranted for the info presented, at / after some point in time. The ‘certification’ is there, so don’t bother keeping up to ever spiraling up security requirements;
Valid for some time only, with all sorts of re’certification’ / failed update issues.

All the ENISA talk about automated checking, etc., would be very welcome, but no-one would want the accountability when (not if!) the automated checks are subverted i.e. fail to check at semantic level as well as all the way down. The ‘net just cannot be trusted per se ..!

The principles are nice, and kudos to ENISA for calling out the need for improvement. But the principles will suffer badly when implementation time comes around, and in BAU – between dream and action, there’s laws and practical objections.

So let’s (have someones) pursue this. It’ll take time, and we’ll have to learn from mistakes… but still.