Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.
It is sort of interesting that in our society this days we are very quick to apply the term ‘war’ to places where thare are no actual wars, and loath to apply the term ‘war’ when we are actually fighting wars.
Surveillance is the business model of the Internet.
This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community.
When my mother gets a prompt ‘Do you want to download this?’ she’s going to say yes. It’s disingenuous for Microsoft to give you all of these tools with which to hang yourself, and when you do, then say it’s your fault.
Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.
Something that looks like a protocol but does not accomplish a task is not a protocol – it’s a waste of time.
Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom.
It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.
People don’t understand computers. Computers are magical boxes that do things. People believe what computers tell them.
Given the credible estimate that we’ve spent $1 trillion on anti-terrorism security.
Buy American Doesn’t Sell Well Anymore Because It Means Give A Copy To The NSA.
Microsoft knows that reliable software is not cost effective. According to studies, 90% to 95% of all bugs are harmless. They’re never discovered by users, and they don’t affect performance. It’s much cheaper to release buggy software and fix the 5% to 10% of bugs people find and complain about.
It’s certainly easier to implement bad security and make it illegal for anyone to notice than it is to implement good security.
Beware the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers. Seems like you can scare any public into allowing the government to do anything with those four.
Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.
Societies without a reservoir of people who don’t follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime.
There’s an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.
It doesn’t matter how good the card is if the issuance process is flawed.
I tell people if it’s in the news don’t worry about it. Because by definition news is something that almost never happens.
Privacy is a fundamental human need.