Actually, this is "bad engineering", because good engineering also looks at how it behaves under non-standard conditions and then you get security as a characteristic that can be tested and verified. I see the same thing when doing security evaluations and IT security engineering. People stop thinking when "it works" (not that many developers think a lot in the first place). A consequence is that you find, for example, all the "Web Application Worst Practices" in (custom) enterprise software. Add to that that management often stops funding when "it works" and hence cleanup is not performed at all, and you have a disaster in the making. Not that security is the only thing were this is going on. Performance, reliability, recovery from problems, documentation, maintenance, etc. are all done pretty badly and often with minimal or no understanding of what is important and what is not.
A lot of that is due to "follow the ritual" (without understanding) mind-sets, were rituals are things like programming languages and paradigms, OSes, frameworks, interface technologies, etc. In the end, to an actual engineer, concrete technologies matter little (basically they can stand in your way more or less so and that may make them harder to use or even prevent reaching some goals, but that is it), what you do with them is all-important. Most developer these days seem to think that it is the opposite, i.e. just pray at the altar of the right tech and the result will be good. That is of course very far from the truth, and an approach that is is founded in belief, not observation of reality. It is religious in nature, not scientific. Until that changes fundamentally, the practice of creating software cannot be considered an engineering-discipline, although some people manage to use it as one even today. These people tend to not put up with bad working conditions, low salaries and incompetent bosses though.
Indeed. Google basically does not have anything exceptional these days, and even search pretty much sucks. Should they ever go out of business, better alternatives will become available soon after.
And that is how you do it. While I generally have an exceptionally low opinion of politicians ("those that can neither do nor teach, i.e. those that fail at everything"), somebody in Minnesota seems to at least be able to listen to experts. For a politician, that is a great achievement.
My guess is that the decision-makers did actually forgot this or thought it would not add value (both signs of incompetence). The Engineers will have contributed by failing to stress (or failing to understand) how much of a fail that is. A simple backup-to-USB option would not even have been expensive.
So no, I disagree with your statement. Caveat: I have seen endless stupidity in the IT industry, including mission-critical systems not getting a backup because it was "too expensive".
You are confusing BCM and DR management. Backups are DR and are all about keeping data safe. BCM is about retaining or recovering an operational system fast, possibly with limited data.
Indeed. There is no protection against a system administrator. A system administrator _needs_ the possibility to screw up everything in order to do his job, there is no way around that. Solution: Keep them happy, give golden parachute when firing them, etc. You know, the things that CEOs get for doing nothing nearly as valuable.
Just makes this attack a bit more difficult. Even if many people on the business side are putting their heads in the sand about this, it remains true that there is no protection against competent system administrators except keeping them happy.
I agree. I have been nearly run over by these morons as a _pedestrian_ several times now. People that are incapable to paying attention to direct threats (moving objects that may reasonably be expected to hit them) are not fit to run around on their own.
And it can get even worse: There was a case in Germany recently, where a railway worker that was distracted by some mobile game killed a lot of people by making two trains collide. This moron gave specially designed "go ahead" signals without making sure (these signals are only used in situations were there is no technological protection against two trains entering the same rail track head-on) and then managed to send a warning signal on the wrong channel when he finally noticed his mistake and there was around 30 seconds left to do something. The two trains then collided head-on at full speed in a curve. All this in a work-place where there is an absolute prohibition against any distractions because of the danger. He is in prison now, but that does not help the dead or the injured and a lot of traumatized rescuers.
Having backup is _the_ core approach to keeping data safe. I really do not understand why "designers" keep messing this up. Maybe these are people that never had a disk crash or are having all their own things in the cloud, but even then this is a very basic and very stupid mistake to make. It is also something any good IT systems engineering or IT security consultant would have asked after and pointed out, so I guess they thought they do not need any outside review in order to not miss things. That universally fails, because one thing any good engineer knows is that while you are in the heat of the design process, you miss things that outsiders will see.
The bottom line is that the people that designed this are mediocre and it is very likely that using good people instead would have hat huge economic benefits.
Forget it. That is not going to happen. Incidentally, the 5th GL project promised that around 30 years ago "within 10 years" and failed completely. So that nonsense prediction is not even new. What is going to happen is that easy coding tasks will become mostly done by tools and automation, but the ones where the money is are not easy at all.
I fully agree. I know quite a few women that did not quit and have STEM MAs and PhDs, including one PhD-level construction engineer (very rare here and no, she is not hard to look at at all). If they manage to stay on it, women will be just as good at STEM subjects as men. Not better, but not worse either. They need to fight through it though, just the same as the men, and that seems to be a problem for many. Incidentally, I asked most of them for gender discrimination and the answers ranged from "no" to "some specific professor, but he could be avoided", so that is not a valid reason why there are less female STEM graduates.
It is only torture if you do not have "it". If you do, it can be anything from a nicely relaxing to deeply satisfying intense thing, depending on the task. Anybody that does not like coding should stay away from it though, they will never be any good at it. My boss these days asks job applicants whether they code in their spare-time for fun. Pretty much any good engineer will make the job a real part of their live and coding is not different.
Funny how extremely you misread what is going on and how extremely you misunderstand proportions. But let's talk again in 5 years when things will have become rather obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, this is "bad engineering", because good engineering also looks at how it behaves under non-standard conditions and then you get security as a characteristic that can be tested and verified. I see the same thing when doing security evaluations and IT security engineering. People stop thinking when "it works" (not that many developers think a lot in the first place). A consequence is that you find, for example, all the "Web Application Worst Practices" in (custom) enterprise software. Add to that that management often stops funding when "it works" and hence cleanup is not performed at all, and you have a disaster in the making. Not that security is the only thing were this is going on. Performance, reliability, recovery from problems, documentation, maintenance, etc. are all done pretty badly and often with minimal or no understanding of what is important and what is not.
A lot of that is due to "follow the ritual" (without understanding) mind-sets, were rituals are things like programming languages and paradigms, OSes, frameworks, interface technologies, etc. In the end, to an actual engineer, concrete technologies matter little (basically they can stand in your way more or less so and that may make them harder to use or even prevent reaching some goals, but that is it), what you do with them is all-important. Most developer these days seem to think that it is the opposite, i.e. just pray at the altar of the right tech and the result will be good. That is of course very far from the truth, and an approach that is is founded in belief, not observation of reality. It is religious in nature, not scientific. Until that changes fundamentally, the practice of creating software cannot be considered an engineering-discipline, although some people manage to use it as one even today. These people tend to not put up with bad working conditions, low salaries and incompetent bosses though.
Indeed. Google basically does not have anything exceptional these days, and even search pretty much sucks. Should they ever go out of business, better alternatives will become available soon after.
Not so. But most B and C players like to use bogus explanations like yours.
Very much so. Unfortunately, A players are rare, but B and C players abound.
And that is how you do it. While I generally have an exceptionally low opinion of politicians ("those that can neither do nor teach, i.e. those that fail at everything"), somebody in Minnesota seems to at least be able to listen to experts. For a politician, that is a great achievement.
My guess is that the decision-makers did actually forgot this or thought it would not add value (both signs of incompetence). The Engineers will have contributed by failing to stress (or failing to understand) how much of a fail that is. A simple backup-to-USB option would not even have been expensive.
So no, I disagree with your statement. Caveat: I have seen endless stupidity in the IT industry, including mission-critical systems not getting a backup because it was "too expensive".
You are confusing BCM and DR management. Backups are DR and are all about keeping data safe. BCM is about retaining or recovering an operational system fast, possibly with limited data.
It is. People are still exceptionally stupid and this is one thing they understand even less (it that is possible).
Indeed. There is no protection against a system administrator. A system administrator _needs_ the possibility to screw up everything in order to do his job, there is no way around that. Solution: Keep them happy, give golden parachute when firing them, etc. You know, the things that CEOs get for doing nothing nearly as valuable.
CEOs and politicians are not accountable for their actions these days. Their crimes are "to big to be punished".
Does not matter. If he had not, he could have placed a dead-man-switch.
Just makes this attack a bit more difficult. Even if many people on the business side are putting their heads in the sand about this, it remains true that there is no protection against competent system administrators except keeping them happy.
I agree. I have been nearly run over by these morons as a _pedestrian_ several times now. People that are incapable to paying attention to direct threats (moving objects that may reasonably be expected to hit them) are not fit to run around on their own.
And it can get even worse: There was a case in Germany recently, where a railway worker that was distracted by some mobile game killed a lot of people by making two trains collide. This moron gave specially designed "go ahead" signals without making sure (these signals are only used in situations were there is no technological protection against two trains entering the same rail track head-on) and then managed to send a warning signal on the wrong channel when he finally noticed his mistake and there was around 30 seconds left to do something. The two trains then collided head-on at full speed in a curve. All this in a work-place where there is an absolute prohibition against any distractions because of the danger. He is in prison now, but that does not help the dead or the injured and a lot of traumatized rescuers.
Having backup is _the_ core approach to keeping data safe. I really do not understand why "designers" keep messing this up. Maybe these are people that never had a disk crash or are having all their own things in the cloud, but even then this is a very basic and very stupid mistake to make. It is also something any good IT systems engineering or IT security consultant would have asked after and pointed out, so I guess they thought they do not need any outside review in order to not miss things. That universally fails, because one thing any good engineer knows is that while you are in the heat of the design process, you miss things that outsiders will see.
The bottom line is that the people that designed this are mediocre and it is very likely that using good people instead would have hat huge economic benefits.
#What #are #you #talking #about?
It is like the Brits having started to move the unfit and stupid into politics to get rid of them. That is a really bad idea.
These days it is mostly "person we don't like and can get away with calling terrorist". Even violence seems to have become optional.
Well, given that the future looks pretty bad, you have a point about PHP. A screwed up language for a screwed up world.
Can 5 year olds typically read in the US? If not, that may complicate matters...
Forget it. That is not going to happen. Incidentally, the 5th GL project promised that around 30 years ago "within 10 years" and failed completely. So that nonsense prediction is not even new. What is going to happen is that easy coding tasks will become mostly done by tools and automation, but the ones where the money is are not easy at all.
I fully agree. I know quite a few women that did not quit and have STEM MAs and PhDs, including one PhD-level construction engineer (very rare here and no, she is not hard to look at at all). If they manage to stay on it, women will be just as good at STEM subjects as men. Not better, but not worse either. They need to fight through it though, just the same as the men, and that seems to be a problem for many. Incidentally, I asked most of them for gender discrimination and the answers ranged from "no" to "some specific professor, but he could be avoided", so that is not a valid reason why there are less female STEM graduates.
It is only torture if you do not have "it". If you do, it can be anything from a nicely relaxing to deeply satisfying intense thing, depending on the task. Anybody that does not like coding should stay away from it though, they will never be any good at it. My boss these days asks job applicants whether they code in their spare-time for fun. Pretty much any good engineer will make the job a real part of their live and coding is not different.
Like claiming "voice" is the spoken language of the future.... I think that says it pretty much all: She is utterly clueless.
But given that Scotland had 60% stay, how difficult do you think the EU would make it for them to re-join or basically stay?
Funny how extremely you misread what is going on and how extremely you misunderstand proportions. But let's talk again in 5 years when things will have become rather obvious.