Instead of fighting wind mills the industry should invent a new set up. I do not see how file exchange in one form or another can be forbidden. It's like trying to make people riding horses again instead of vehicles.
Monks, who were re-writing the bibles by hand and drawing nice pictures in them by hand, also were trying to stop the newly invented printing press. In some countries printing press was illegal for 200+ years.
I mean can this one be won? IPs, laptop check, looking for CDs in hand baggage? And what about flash drives with the size of a penny and a capacity of 100 GB? HD of 1TB? And it's only a modest beginning.
They did in a way already. Sergey Brin's Google or Sanja Byelkin' MySQL. They just will not be playing by the rules: OS, hardware, etc. MySQL and Google are OS, but not as we used to know it.
Browser differs from a dumb terminal, it is not dumb as main frame terminals were. Users use add-ons, especially on FF, sometimes creatively, enhancing the application.
I have been there. Installing desktop applications, written by developers in White Towers, over remote offices. They do not even think that a computer can get broken. And they do get broken.
Guess what? I had to reinstall the application on the new machine again, and again, and again,... Or sometimes the application just did stop working on a particular PC for no apparent reason. Developers in white hats told us: "This incompatibility is user's fault. He must not install other applications in work environment."
When it is server-client application, I just do not care. Just reapair your PC, or box, or MAC, fire a browser, and back to work.
I work in an environment where I have also deploy applications. At first I assumed that all users should have an IE browser. Why not, if all of them have got a Windows OS? But it was not the case, since some users claimed strongly that their IE6 browser does not work.
All I had to do is make application's pages compatible with Firefox, which they did have, with some JS code.
Big guys, who write applications in White Towers do not even think of such problems, but when one to make things work in a relatively small company or die, one sticks to what works: PHP, MySQL, JS, HTML.
I also noticed that users use browser features. For example Search on the page in Firefox, QuickNote add-on also in Firefox to store some info. Bookmarks.
Otherwise one would have to code such features into a desktop application.
If it is written with a logo on top with, say, smiling business people sitting around a table, then it will not be fast as this images take time to load. But if it is some data, like numbers, titles, etc. why it cannot be fast?
Internet connection in some places can be very reliable, as it should. Or one can have a back up connection. Say, dial up card for 30 hours. Just in case.
In my case installing executables on several computers in remote offices was an insane task, which I still recall with horror. At some places these were thin clients, not PCs. Once I was installing an EXE for 4 hours, because inexplicably it wanted in this case a DLL.
While browsers were readily sitting on all these computers.
Switching to server-client brought some sanity back into my life.
Certainly the network should be policed to make it secure. No helmet, no body armor, no steel door makes a security. It's just a part of it.
Server overload? 4 cores, 12 GM RAM, 2 TB hard disk are overloaded? Check your code and especially queries. Say, if in PHP you are to get an integer do only casting $a=(int)$_POST['a']; no further sanitizing is needed. Casting is non-function operation and requires little computing. Limit queries. Writing good queries and sticking to efficiency and security philosophy on a server may make an application work.
One more thing, vote for politicians who use Internet and pledge to protect it.
When I saw a Shuttle for the first time, I said - man, this is wrong. The fragile cabin for humans in the middle of the rocket. The rocket, which vibrates and shakes violently. The derbies would be falling on it.
You cannot imagine how weak the decision-makers can be in a state bureaucracy. They selected a design with a narrow solid rocket in a lower part of the vehicle. I am, as a trained engineer, have a feeling that it might tip over.
They are always suppressing dissenting voices. This is what communism all about. The communism, more correctly the totalitarianism, is the other side of the medal. It is a reaction, a defense, which people in poor countries are trying to mount against incoming "Trojan horse" of good ideas from more advanced parts with greed and violence inside.
The ideas of Christianity are love, humility, nonviolence, etc. Good ideas, no doubt.
But the self-appointed "distributors" of these ideas destroyed the original American civilizations if the name of these ideas, while in fact hunting for gold and land. Just using the ideas of Christianity as a disguise.
Nowadays the ideas of freedom, democracy, fair representation are these good ideas. And again there are self-appointed "distributors" of these ideas.
Why not give time to people in remote lands to evaluate and implement these ideas? Why bring them with a sword and fire?
These are the questions to ask yourself before making fun of communists in a poor land.
They just were not trained and instructed properly.
I can understand that a housewife did it. But a bit lower in the thread there is about the same story of an university professor, who sent millions to a Nigeria bank scam.
Obviously IT of this university were sitting in an ivory tower securing, limiting, blocking network features for everyone, even for those who know how to use them safely. But they did no work with the major security hole - weak employees.
As I said: one can put on fat untrained soldiers better and better body armor, helmets, bulletproofed glasses, celvar protective gloves, but since they are untrained they are the easy target even for a child with an air gun.
Relying only on technical solution without involving employee responsibility and training will fail. It's like, say, giving soldiers the a body armor, helmet, protection glasses, etc. but not providing them with training, explanation of a cause, of tactics, responsibilities, etc.
Security and access tools are just tools. Problems are not solved buy tools, problems are solved by motivated cooperative humans who are using tools willingly and correctly. Understanding what they are doing and why.
It's an easy way for an IT guy: limit this, limit that, and go on playing the last Call of Duty for the rest of the shift. Instead one should find a way to cooperate with colleagues, providing them with secure VPN tools and explaining them how to use them right.
If an employee's home computer is a virus/spyware ridden infestation, it means that he/she is not a part of right digital culture. Such an employee will find a way to do a harm to the company, not matter how hard you try to prevent.
Unfortunately it is a common situation. Look at how a computer specialist is shown in the popular show "Prison Break", an Asian guy with laptop. He is shown like a freak, a traitor, a clown. But real guys understand nothing in computer technology and proud of it. Or how McCain was proud of not using computers and Internet.
I even heard as the CEO of a large software company said in an interview that he asked his son: "Did you ever receive an important for your life meassage via e-mail?"
Unbelievable. In a world driven by computers?!?
I would say:
1) training and certification in basic computer security for any VPN user. A certification with about 30 - 40% of failure rate.
2) Compulsory usage of security cable for laptop. Correct usage should be included in training too.
3) In addition to OS password laptop must be protected by a BIOS password.
If we, say, release a monkey into an empty apartment it can do a damage no matter how we secure an apartment. The same way an untrained unaware employee will do damage in a complex network. The problem is that many leaders of industries are such untrained and unaware employees.
And when a boss shows a bad example others follow.
The change, the shift of culture is needed for such a cardinal step as introducing high speed VPNs and remote working places. The leader of a company should be the leader in computer technologies too. Showing a good example, organizing training. The time of retrograde "McCains" is over.
I remember how film makers were saying - the Internet is not a threat to our business model as it is for music, because our files are about 1 GB. It was about 5 years ago. And look what happens now.
I guess in 5 years one will be able to send hundred movies as attachments to an e-mail message or a MMS.
Perhaps in future a speed of an ISP connection will be limited by a law. Like some nuclear materials or encryption algorithms are limited already now.
Like, say, any connection faster that 10 GB/s and any hard disk larger than 100 TB will be illegal.
Otherwise how to fight downloading? Now downloading a movie is an act which takes some time, an hour or so. It's sort of tangible and provable. But what if it takes 1 second to download 10 movies? One could inadvertently click on a link and download illegally hundreds of movies and not even notice it.
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Instead of fighting wind mills the industry should invent a new set up. I do not see how file exchange in one form or another can be forbidden. It's like trying to make people riding horses again instead of vehicles.
I mean can this one be won? IPs, laptop check, looking for CDs in hand baggage? And what about flash drives with the size of a penny and a capacity of 100 GB? HD of 1TB? And it's only a modest beginning.
They did in a way already. Sergey Brin's Google or Sanja Byelkin' MySQL. They just will not be playing by the rules: OS, hardware, etc. MySQL and Google are OS, but not as we used to know it.
Browser differs from a dumb terminal, it is not dumb as main frame terminals were. Users use add-ons, especially on FF, sometimes creatively, enhancing the application.
Guess what? I had to reinstall the application on the new machine again, and again, and again,... Or sometimes the application just did stop working on a particular PC for no apparent reason. Developers in white hats told us: "This incompatibility is user's fault. He must not install other applications in work environment."
When it is server-client application, I just do not care. Just reapair your PC, or box, or MAC, fire a browser, and back to work.
All I had to do is make application's pages compatible with Firefox, which they did have, with some JS code.
Big guys, who write applications in White Towers do not even think of such problems, but when one to make things work in a relatively small company or die, one sticks to what works: PHP, MySQL, JS, HTML.
Otherwise one would have to code such features into a desktop application.
If it is written with a logo on top with, say, smiling business people sitting around a table, then it will not be fast as this images take time to load. But if it is some data, like numbers, titles, etc. why it cannot be fast?
But if there is not electricity nothing works.
While browsers were readily sitting on all these computers.
Switching to server-client brought some sanity back into my life.
Certainly the network should be policed to make it secure. No helmet, no body armor, no steel door makes a security. It's just a part of it.
Server overload? 4 cores, 12 GM RAM, 2 TB hard disk are overloaded? Check your code and especially queries. Say, if in PHP you are to get an integer do only casting $a=(int)$_POST['a']; no further sanitizing is needed. Casting is non-function operation and requires little computing. Limit queries. Writing good queries and sticking to efficiency and security philosophy on a server may make an application work.
One more thing, vote for politicians who use Internet and pledge to protect it.
A phone call may seem legitimate, but the real reason may be recording words in your original voice to reproduce them for a con later.
At least it's logical, sane and just works.
Sanja Byelkin http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/interviews/sanja.html and Sergey Brin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin did create Russian OS already.
Why would we want to attack your Windows? You buy our oil and natural gas. We want that your Windows works fine.
You cannot imagine how weak the decision-makers can be in a state bureaucracy. They selected a design with a narrow solid rocket in a lower part of the vehicle. I am, as a trained engineer, have a feeling that it might tip over.
Cabin bellow rockets (Shuttle) was wrong. The narrow lower part of these rocket is also wrong. Yes, it's cool-looking, but it would be unstable.
They are always suppressing dissenting voices. This is what communism all about. The communism, more correctly the totalitarianism, is the other side of the medal. It is a reaction, a defense, which people in poor countries are trying to mount against incoming "Trojan horse" of good ideas from more advanced parts with greed and violence inside.
The ideas of Christianity are love, humility, nonviolence, etc. Good ideas, no doubt.
But the self-appointed "distributors" of these ideas destroyed the original American civilizations if the name of these ideas, while in fact hunting for gold and land. Just using the ideas of Christianity as a disguise.
Nowadays the ideas of freedom, democracy, fair representation are these good ideas. And again there are self-appointed "distributors" of these ideas.
Why not give time to people in remote lands to evaluate and implement these ideas? Why bring them with a sword and fire?
These are the questions to ask yourself before making fun of communists in a poor land.
These guys http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/13/1659214 harmed their companies and households via safe&secure IT channels just by sending money to a Nigeria scams.
They just were not trained and instructed properly.
I can understand that a housewife did it. But a bit lower in the thread there is about the same story of an university professor, who sent millions to a Nigeria bank scam.
Obviously IT of this university were sitting in an ivory tower securing, limiting, blocking network features for everyone, even for those who know how to use them safely. But they did no work with the major security hole - weak employees.
As I said: one can put on fat untrained soldiers better and better body armor, helmets, bulletproofed glasses, celvar protective gloves, but since they are untrained they are the easy target even for a child with an air gun.
Any security is broken by an invested time. I can brake any safe with a saw and sledgehammer. It just takes time.
Relying only on technical solution without involving employee responsibility and training will fail. It's like, say, giving soldiers the a body armor, helmet, protection glasses, etc. but not providing them with training, explanation of a cause, of tactics, responsibilities, etc.
Security and access tools are just tools. Problems are not solved buy tools, problems are solved by motivated cooperative humans who are using tools willingly and correctly. Understanding what they are doing and why.
It's an easy way for an IT guy: limit this, limit that, and go on playing the last Call of Duty for the rest of the shift. Instead one should find a way to cooperate with colleagues, providing them with secure VPN tools and explaining them how to use them right.
If an employee's home computer is a virus/spyware ridden infestation, it means that he/she is not a part of right digital culture. Such an employee will find a way to do a harm to the company, not matter how hard you try to prevent.
Unfortunately it is a common situation. Look at how a computer specialist is shown in the popular show "Prison Break", an Asian guy with laptop. He is shown like a freak, a traitor, a clown. But real guys understand nothing in computer technology and proud of it. Or how McCain was proud of not using computers and Internet.
I even heard as the CEO of a large software company said in an interview that he asked his son: "Did you ever receive an important for your life meassage via e-mail?"
Unbelievable. In a world driven by computers?!?
I would say:
1) training and certification in basic computer security for any VPN user. A certification with about 30 - 40% of failure rate.
2) Compulsory usage of security cable for laptop. Correct usage should be included in training too.
3) In addition to OS password laptop must be protected by a BIOS password.
If we, say, release a monkey into an empty apartment it can do a damage no matter how we secure an apartment. The same way an untrained unaware employee will do damage in a complex network. The problem is that many leaders of industries are such untrained and unaware employees.
And when a boss shows a bad example others follow.
The change, the shift of culture is needed for such a cardinal step as introducing high speed VPNs and remote working places. The leader of a company should be the leader in computer technologies too. Showing a good example, organizing training. The time of retrograde "McCains" is over.
I guess in 5 years one will be able to send hundred movies as attachments to an e-mail message or a MMS.
Perhaps in future a speed of an ISP connection will be limited by a law. Like some nuclear materials or encryption algorithms are limited already now.
Like, say, any connection faster that 10 GB/s and any hard disk larger than 100 TB will be illegal.
Otherwise how to fight downloading? Now downloading a movie is an act which takes some time, an hour or so. It's sort of tangible and provable. But what if it takes 1 second to download 10 movies? One could inadvertently click on a link and download illegally hundreds of movies and not even notice it.
What this law be when an average ISP connection speed will be 100 GB/s? When an USB memory stick will be 1 TB and a HD - 1000 TB?
The law will not stay the same however good it is written now. Such change of a base will inevitably cause change in the fabric of a society.
I do not know what this change will be. I have no way to know. But I know for sure that serious changes in the base will cause changes in laws.
Copyright laws when the speed of connection is 3 MB/s will differ from laws when speed is 3 TB/s.
In Europe the national-socialism is also still alive. Especially in Western Europe. It was defeated in general but the idea is still alive.