Innovation, economics, society at large – Page 53

The Internot Diploma

In an attempt to pre-empt all 2016 April fool’s jokes by a mile (in time and ridicule value) some Dutch Board on Cyber Security (notice the joke starts there, with ‘cyber’ since #ditchcyber) proposed to ensure all kids would get some ‘Safe Internet use diploma’.
When you know the kids regularly fail for (very, very!) basic math skill tests, can hardly write comprehensible sentences over … [fill in some number comfortably below ten] words let alone know anything about bits and bytes (but do know about birds and bees far ahead of practicing any of that — we hope) or even the most basic things about what programming is, hence are at levels of education about four or five years below their age, you can see the enormity of what’s proposed.

So, to be on such a Board, one shouldn’t know the very first thing about the subject one babbles about or one would be overqualified ..!? What an insult to all the professionals out there that try hardest.

This all stupidity tires me enormously. I’ll stop now. And:

[Continuous renewal — at least that’s something ..!]

Biased news

Demonstrating that … when it comes to InfoSec news … the general press may be biased… Otherwise, why wouldn’t this news have been spread much, much more ..? Since it may look unserious on the surface, but definitely is True.

Just sayin’. And just showin’:

[Similar to Ottawa, but qua size, compensated by the loudest barrels all around; DC]

Schrödinger’s accountant

After all the news about accountancy being a sector where all sorts of changes would have to be imminent or happening in order to save anything of the trade (sic, more than it would be a profession that it isn’t!) as in the main news if you noticed and also in yesterday’s post and before on this here blog, this sentence is generally considered to be too long.
So, whether change would Happen or not, I’d wanted to add just a little thingy:

Pretty sure that Schrödinger based his theory that a cat can be dead and alive at the same time on his own experience working in a cubicle. — the dead author (@thedeadauthor) October 26, 2015

Which triggered me to think how this relates to an (‘any unparticular’) accountant. Would the CPA be a cat, hypothetically capable to change (be alive) but when asked, immediately not ..? Would asking over and over again, just be kicking against …

Similar to, as posted before, a long long time ago in a faraway land:

NFChipknip

Long live innovation! Of the in some respects backward kind.
Yes we did have the chipknip, a stored-value debit card system that for small amounts (e.g., parking in Amsterdam though that hardly counts as ‘small’). And yes, of course it was abolished because nobody wanted it. For one, because the stored value had to be loaded onto the card, at ever (sic) less available separate ATM-like holes in the wall. For a second, because losing the card meant losing the stored value.

For a third, because given this functionality, people much preferred to stick to cash money that was more easy to get, much more widespread usable (think C2C payments…), quite similar if not same in risk, and anonymous obviously vis-a-vis anonymity promised by, hold it, banks, of all the crooks one could imagine. If you don’t see the latter, consider whom Jesus threw out of the temple as prime example of choice of all that was rotten in society back then already, and banks have ‘developed’ ever since.
This to the chagrin of banks that, as usual, packed their most devious of actions in the thinnest of transparent films of customer-servicing arguments and licked their, expensive is an understatement, wounds.

But now we have the triumphant return of the idea in the form of NFC payments off one’s debit card. Which comes with one improvement (not having to preload) but with all the other risks aggrevated:
The ‘preload’ is, relatively, limitless or to one’s credit (sic) limit. Compared to the user-controllable stored value of yesterday.
Skimming doesn’t even require the card to be physically put into a physical reader anymore. The still physical NFC reader devices are just as susceptible to plants of skimming devices as before. Maybe the customer can check the debitable amount but the displayed can be spoofed easily, obviously [or you are foolishly considering yourself competent when not seeing that risk]. But passers-by can skip just as easily (and ‘approve’ without any your notice).

Yes, even with small amounts payments, every now and then one will be required to enter one’s PIN as verification of holdership. But that hinders, and was a measure previously implementable easily so why not then already? And for larger amounts the PIN is required always, turning the actions into a simple debit card payment as we (in the developed world so maybe excluding North America) have grown accustomed to for decades already, but now need not enter the card into the chip reading slot anymore. Wow, the improvement! And all this while maintaining the latter debit card systems.

So, we have to trade security for convenience. While banks trade simplicity for … complexity. And savings, nowhere near. How to prevent some to consider banks to be full of i… ..?

Anyway…:

[The back side of subsequent developments may be pretty or not; Dunedin]

Oh, of course: DACcountantcy

Was reminded by this seer peer (no typos) in a casual remark that DAOs (DACs) may change quite a bit about the world as we know it. “DAOs are a game changing invention enabling a new model for human collaboration. #blockchain #C4ACC” (© him) — but apart from human collaboration (note the pejorative weight of the early ’40s this stil carries with it even today, in continental Europe), also the value of Trust in singular persons may shift.
DAOs then being of course, of course, the element I forgot to mention in my roboccountant post.

So, with this one linked in, now all the elements of that post make sense. In which the ensemble may have surpassed me. Or:

[Materially a circle, to any human accountant and dress codes displayed, are of the apparent relaxed Big4 dc’s of today; DC]

Na de accountant, de kolenboer

[In Dutch] Nou ja, over de volgorde valt te twisten. Over de beider in één mandje niet. Zoals uiteengezet in dit werk, is beroepsmatig alles eindig. Al zullen rechters (en helaas ook advocaten en vergelijkbare beroepen, en nog veel helazer politici) nog wel een tijdje meegaan, alles kent z’n tijd. Ook de tovenaarsleerlingen-die-eigenlijk-nooit-echt-van-de-grond-zijn-gekomen, de IT-auditors, zien hun einde al naderen — vooral vanwege dat niet van de grond (modder) losgekomen zijn. Ingehaald, voorbijgevlogen door ballast-lichteren (onder henzelf) die de fundamenten van het zwaarder-dan-lucht-vliegen begrijpen, doorvoelen en ernaar handelen zonder zich in bigger (heavier) is better te verliezen dus hard on principles, soft on rules spelen. Spelen, ja, op de Huizinga’se manier. Grappig, achter die linkref stond (31-10) nog: “Nog niet verschenen” — onze Westerse lineaire-tijdbijziendheid speelt op.

“De directeur leidde me destijds [2011] trots rond en zei: ‘Die mensen zijn mijn belangrijkste kapitaal.’ In 2015 zijn ze allemaal vervangen door robots.” … ” We houden het niet meer tegen en de wereld draait door.”

Nog afgezien van het afschuwelijke misbruik dat van die leugen over FTE’s werd en nog heel veel wordt gemaakt… Robots zullen we allen zijn … of niet zijn.

Nou ja, you’ve been warned … En:

[~~Make no little plans, my friend~~ make no little men …]

Privvezy Protrection

An off the cuff — where’s gentlemens’ style, these days? — remark hit a nerve. When an interesting company had some very interesting speakers and me. On IAM, data leakage and … well, what was it, data protection XOR privacy …?

Because the little collateral remarks was about Privacy being the ethical imperative, but being implementable straight away, would need translation to operational Data Protection.

Yes, where the core of legislation is about the latter, in an attempt to achieve the former… to the degree feasible, achievable, and wanted.
Demonstrating that all legalese, even of the EU kind, is just about white washing whatever you’d want to get away with.

A sore reminder that when one would want (hypothetically, for the sake of the argument that such would be theoretically possible) Privacy, one’s still on one’s own. Against all that is formally formed or not as Institutions, against the windmills that all want you to believe don’t exist or have power over you…

But hey, I’m a happy bunny so I’ll leave you with:

[When Penzance would be at Bergen On The Beach]

As Einstein said. Did NOT…!

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”

Or
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results”

But then, the original goes something like:
“Insanity is making the same mistakes and expecting different results” … (emphasis mine)

Which is obviously what all the misquoters do: Making the same mistaken attribution and expecting anyone to still laugh and/or understand but to the formers’ dismay this doesn’t happen.
And for good reason. #2 above is maybe the most worthwhile; in an ever faster changing world one hardly can expect the same result when all context has changed so pervasively. Through which #1 would be outright false: It wouldn’t be insanity, but the opposite…!
Oh how people are like colanders: the coarse stays, the fine stuff falls through and is discarded. False shortcuts for simpletons remain, e.g., the whole TLD thing. From a (relatively…) philosophical angle that might even make some sense, but the small-minded little eager beavers make something completely missing the point of it by zealous but unfortunate misinterpretations due to lack of sophisticated understanding.

But then, what is aimed for, is the actual quote: Not seeing the above.
Just sayin’. Now get over it.

[Reminds me of someone’s hair. Just can’t get my head (sic) ’round to recalling whose.]

Define ‘Risk’…

This should be an easy one, by pointing at ISO 31000 and its definition the effect of uncertainty on objectives. But that same easy def also raises more questions than it answers, e.g.,

How to define [ hence | and ] classify effects,
How to define [ hence | and ] classify uncertainty (a biggy …!),
How to define [ hence | and ] classify objectives,
How to establish measurement of effects,
How to establish measurement of uncertainty,
How to establish measurement of objectives

that all have an impact on, and are impacted by, the definition. Hopefully, I don’t have to elucidate define hence classify, define and classify or establish measurement regarding effects, uncertainties or objectives. I’ve been at the subject before (here and many posts since) so much that it hurts, me too. But still, many won’t listen and remain stuck in their proven (sic) mistaken belief that the World we’re dealing with, can be caught in models to ‘predict’ the future and/or at the same time remain stuck in, by now approaching hilarious, classifications like Basel II-IV’s… or the slowly but steadily outdating of the classical information security mantra of CIA — those three classes of objectives don’t cut it anymore.

For the more advanced reader (approx. 90% by now — hopefully), the question remains: How to define and classify uncertainty, effect(s!) and objectives ..? Standard classifications all had their stab at it, but failed for the fuzzy nature of those phenomena. Some leaned to the Uncertainty side, trying foremost to classify threats. Some, to the effects side with their vulnerabilities-first approach — via the Impacts classification. Some even had Objectives in mind when pondering the downside potentials of loss-of-upside potential, including scour-for-opportunities to any (0-100%) degree. And then, there’s the abovementioned surefire laugh over ‘Event’ driven analysis… yes consistency, completeness and orthagonality remain essential.
But above all, none captured the time-fluctuation confluence of causes, effects, impacts, … [what have we] that all have such unanalysable structure. Due to their continuous nature; contrasted to the discrete nature often but cannot-be-more-false’ly assumed. [If you don’t get the fundamental difference between discrete and continuous phenomena, go study core math in depth, length and breath. Which is helpful against so great many ills of mind…] And due to the enormously-over-three body problem of interactions [link is about grand business not the petty risk analysis kind but the link therein is valid for the above, too].
Modeling in order to understand may work, but only to understand the exaggeratedly dumbed-down model, the conclusions of which if normative are (in this case, there is such a thing as absolute) certain not to apply or work so why bother. Oh, maybe you may bother, to get a feel of your inadequacy. [Note: I don’t feign to be above that. But I don’t allow you to assume you are as that is both a theoretical and practical logical error.]

Yesy, yes, I know; there very probably is no One Classification Fits All, then. But we may dream, and strive for it, don’t we ..? And at least be very, very clear about it — it being the approach we do take, and what it might potentially (with the probability being above zero but certainly being far off 100%) achieve. Aren’t GUTs, like the Standard Model or the hyperdimensional string theories, the dreams that stuff are made of, too ..?
As always, your suggestions, please. And:

[Just wait till Etna Says Boom. Or don’t.]

T.L.D. Richelieu

A.J. du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac, a.k.a. ‘Big R’ in quotes-land, was ahead of time to say “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him”.

Surely, he meant to instate the ‘prove me’ idiocy that pervades the TLD prison found in so many organizations, where regular folks trying hardest to manage, aren’t allowed to because they first have to comply (completely, slave-style) with filing requirements that can only be read to deliver the above-mentioned six lines. If only it were the six lines! Books have to be filled with full proof of having followed each and every petty little rule, that like a spider web was only designed to catch the little bugs whereas the big ones just bumble through.
The joy really starts, for at least some — not the managers but the ‘auditors’ and other improductive on-lookers — when necessity (sic) calls for alternative execution and registration due to customer satisfaction requirements not aligning with the One-Size-fits-the-Universe design of ‘processes’. Where the accused has to deliver a guilty plea with perfect documentation, to a bigoted law. The latter qualification, because it runs counter to the ultimate and ulterior goal of the organization, proven by a deviation being necessary to serve the latter. In client requirement versus framework consistency, the former always should take precedence and the latter is a fallacy, also in view of the ever-faster changing external and internal world, but things are all too often the other way around.

So, “Here, we have followed to perfection a slight deviation from the once-planned process steps, in order to serve the customer better and hence raise profitability” is about all the six lines one needs…

I feel sorry for your loss of innocence (-disguise of evil spirit)… hence to sooth:

[Intensive human farming; squeeze till dry then dump]