Dennis Ritchie

I will quote this on the relative anonymity of Dennis Ritchie‘s death versus Steve Jobs‘ celebrity send off:

“If you do everything just right, it’ll look like you haven’t done anything at all.” ~ God, ‘Futurama‘

This guy, Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, did a lot of things right. Our task is to not screw it up too badly now.

Related articles:

  • Dennis Ritchie, Trailblazer in Digital Era, Dies at 70
  • Dennis Ritchie: the other man inside your iPhone
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Why do they write insecure code?

First of all, nobody teaches engineers to write secure code. When people study mechanical engineering, they spend an awful lot of time calculating the designs for reliability and safety. They learn that the bridges must be redundantly safe, that there is a plethora of things that may go wrong with an elevator and so on. Do they learn anything like that in computer classes? No, far from it. People learn the computer programming languages and sometimes about cryptographic protocols. But they never learn how to make the systems stable, safe and secure. They never learn what may happen to a computer system in real life. They do not practice taking preventive measures the way any other engineering specialists would.

Many programmers are then lured into the fake safe heavens of firewalls, safe languages that “take care of things for them” and the proclaimed security of frameworks. Guess what, none of that is true, no language is “safe”, no firewall helps and no framework is perfect. But people are inherently lazy and they prefer to blame someone else instead of taking the responsibility.

And on top of all that comes the cost. Software is a form of art. The good, really professional programmers cost a lot of money. The good designs and their implementations take a lot of resources, read money. Security features are costly, security measures are even more costly. And companies are not willing to pay, customers are not willing to pay, everybody just bitches about poor security and the world moves on, selecting the lowest bidder for security critical infrastructure implementation.

We’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has two hundred thousand moving parts built by the lowest bidder.
— “Rockhound” in the movie “Armageddon”

Do you really think anything will change to the better if none of the above changes?… -->

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Quote of the day

Deep understanding of politics from the author of The Chronicles of Narnia:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron‘s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.
— C. S. Lewis

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Alpha human is not?

I came across an interesting statement that runs contrary to the preaching of the society:

As I keep having to point out, there are no biological alpha males in humans no matter what Evo-Psycho prophet-wannabees preach under the false mantra of “Real science is not PC, let the chips fall where they may”. Gorillas have them. Baboons have them, with variances between subgroups. Our closest relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, don’t. What they have are shifting power alliances for both genders (differing in detail in each species). They also have maternally-based status because paternity is not defined and females choose their partners. Humans have so-called “alpha males” only culturally, and only since hoarding of surplus goods made pyramidal societies possible.

This is interesting and sounds logical. I want to investigate this question a bit further. I would appreciate any useful pointers to information.… -->

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Surveillance at large

It was only a matter of time before all those security cameras would supply the images to a central location and become a part of a large surveillance network. It was inevitable from the beginning. Now Wikileaks apparently revealed some documents that shed light on the USA surveillance network that is, indeed, using those surveillance cameras all over the country as this article in io9 reports. Inevitable.… -->

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Go! Go! Hypersonic!

Well, it is all military at the moment but the military technology has a history of seeping through to the civilian world. US military is developing hypersonic flight at Mach 6 and the decisive test for that particular project is today. Hey, I know it is all about bombs and rockets but I hope we will have the hypersonic intercontinental flights in my time because I missed out on the Concorde!… -->

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USA love TSA!

The Reg reports on a recent survey that conclusively shows that “the majority of Americans think the Transportation Security Administration, which handles security screening at US airports, is doing just fine…”

Overcoming the initial shock, my conclusion is that if the government keeps something up long enough, people will just swallow it in the end because they will no more know any better. Duh, the humanity.… -->

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Helpless police?

WSJ reports in an article “Police shoot, kill man near NYC Times Square” that a man was shot after a “slow speed pusuit” that lasted 7 blocks and lunging at a police officer with a knife.

What I personally find strange in this story is that the police could not take the knife away from a person allegedly smoking marijuana. He had the knife drawn from the beginning and was wildly swinging it around. Would it not be a part of the police training to know how to take a knife away from someone? Do they really have to shoot dead the guy? And there were many police officers there, mind you. What is next? Will they shoot people wielding sticks? I can tell you, a stick can be more dangerous than a gun if wielded properly.

Why is the police so helpless suddenly that they have to use firearms in a very basic situation? I do not feel comfortable with the police escalating the violence instead of using the techniques, training and their wits that they should have had about them.… -->

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An undeground sect. Literally.

The news report that in Kazan, Russia, an Islamist sect was found living underground for more than 10 years. The members were forbidden to leavean 8-storey (!) bunker they dug (probably themselves) under the basement of a building. Some children never saw daylight.

  • Islamist sect found living underground near Russian city for nearly 10 years (guardian.co.uk)
  • Russian police raid underground Islamist sect – Reuters (reuters.com)
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