Everything Is Broken

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And the required reading of the day is this article titled "Everything Is Broken."

It’s hard to explain to regular people how much technology barely works, how much the infrastructure of our lives is held together by the IT equivalent of baling wire. Computers, and computing, are broken.
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C is good for two things: being beautiful and creating catastrophic 0days in memory management.
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This author is good for one thing: oversimplifying things into short, silly sentences.
 
GuruX said:
Somehow I got that darn Lego song stuck in my head.... Grrrrrr!
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Wow, I totally missed that... and I hate you because now everything is playing in my head.

On a side note, this is one of the articles that I wish everyone on my facebook will actually read. I'll be shocked if out 2% actually read it.
 
But it's not just the computing. Almost everything barely works. If the great masses of the people (me included) somehow become aware of what's actually happening around us, we will certainly become nuts and start killing each other. Starting with our rules I think. The apocalypse.
 
The fact that anything works as well as it does is nothing short of amazing. As both an IT support rep and a software engineer, I am far too aware of just how bad most software is tested from a security standpoint.

Of course, the lack of clear direction, organization, or lines of responsibility certainly doesn't help matters.

Or, in other terms, if the Org Chart showing who you report to most closely resembles the Arrow of Chaos, this should be a big clue that you have a problem.
 
mdburkey said:
The fact that anything works as well as it does is nothing short of amazing. As both an IT support rep and a software engineer, I am far too aware of just how bad most software is tested from a security standpoint.

Of course, the lack of clear direction, organization, or lines of responsibility certainly doesn't help matters.

Or, in other terms, if the Org Chart showing who you report to most closely resembles the Arrow of Chaos, this should be a big clue that you have a problem.
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When we get new employees on our project, I point them to our custom-built test simulation platform, and tell them: BE AMAZED THAT IT WORKS :D

And the fact that it continues to work, even though the hardware is over a decade old now, is nothing short of amazing. The platform combines multiple different buses, x86 and PPC, and programs written in two languages, and still it works.

That said, we're lucky that it does not have to pass any sort of security checks. This is internal software, and I'm sure it would be full of holes if we ever put it up to as much scrutiny as our delivered software. I have no doubts that most of the code out there is just as messy as our test code, and that is scary.

Really, at this point, who can you trust? Once your computer is owned, you have no idea, because the exploit code is much better at hiding itself than it used to be.
 
What the author fails to realize is, everything works as well as it does, is because of the people. Human beings are highly adaptive and clever tool users. Often times a man can take a tool on the edge of crumbling to dust, and wield and manipulate it with the skill and deft of a surgeon. It is therefore not a mystery why a highly imperfect system of systems can be wield by the masses in seamless and perfect nature. We were made to use the tools available to us, not make perfect tools.
That is exactly why the system is as imperfect as it is. Not because people are intentionally making terrible products, but because the designers are adapting to the technology they are creating, while they are creating it. Its impossible for a human to make a perfect tool, when it becomes extremely easy for the creator to use before its even done.

The blame is unfairly being directed towards how terrible the system is. The blame belongs to how terrible some people are.
 
dgz said:
But it's not just the computing. Almost everything barely works. If the great masses of the people (me included) somehow become aware of what's actually happening around us, we will certainly become nuts and start killing each other. Starting with our rules I think. The apocalypse.
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Our brains repress things for our own mental stability as a defense mechanism, something along the lines of Stockholm syndrome. We're unreasonable enough people to unreasonably accept unreasonable things, simply because the alternative is worse.
 
Nice article for Users.

Just about any industry is scary if you look at the details.
 
Everything is awesome
Everything is cool when you're part of a team
Everything is awesome, when we're living our dream...
 
Attentionwhoring blog post by an attentionwhore with shitty web design skills.
 
And then you have "security experts" that parrot back whatever they heard at the last security conference they went to, while providing no actual helpful insight into how to secure the systems.

Take away this, lock down that, etc. Sure that's great but you still have a shared password to everything that hasn't changed in 10 years. Brilliant!
 
my computer works very well for me. If i detect any unknown or unfix-able malware or any unexplainable issues i know how to format. all in all this guy needs a shrink for his outrageous paranoia. jeepers
 
pxc said:
Everything is awesome
Everything is cool when you're part of a team
Everything is awesome, when we're living our dream...
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I hope you get a paper cut.

I'm gonna be humming that for a week, and that makes my rotten kids sing it.
 
techtechie said:
my computer works very well for me. If i detect any unknown or unfix-able malware or any unexplainable issues i know how to format. all in all this guy needs a shrink for his outrageous paranoia. jeepers
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Except that, unless you go to paranoid, controlling lengths to vet everything you do on your system, you have NO IDEA it's been owned.

Your (compromised) kernel has no idea, your (bypassed) virus scanner thinks the system is clean. If you don't suddenly feel like reinstalling your system, it could stay that way for years. So again I ask you: who do you TRUST?
 
Whats amazing is the atari 2600 128 bytes of ram and look what they accomplished on it. I remember on the original macs the whole operating system was built in assembly with 6.0.9 being the last version, with system 7 performance tanked, It seems like new software is not only much less efficient but the security is terrible also as companies just rush products out.
 
Everything is broken... my life is spiraling downward...

Seems like a good opener for the latest Emo hit.

Tech is advancing so fast, I can understand why maintenance and even Q/A are falling behind R&D. That said, a renewed focus on reliability instead of keeping up with moore's law sound's like a winner to me.
 
BigTroll said:
Whats amazing is the atari 2600 128 bytes of ram and look what they accomplished on it.
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Other than the Pitfall games, most Atari 2600 games pretty much look like they're using 128 bytes of RAM. :p (I think some cartridges included more RAM inside.)
 
Yeah, the old Atari ST computers, where the final 68040 capable OS fit in 256KB of rom, and the desktop was actually MORE capable than Windows 7 or 8 now. You could actually better customize your own desktop than anything Windows has ever allowed ... though some 3rd party mods do let windows catch up.

Pretty pathetic.
 
You know there's more to life than just computers. You can pick up the pieces and move on, even after a reformat. You can find happiness again.

I mean it's annoying, sure. But between getting hacked, or getting bludgeoned in the head by someone trying to steal my wallet, and leaving me half-retarded for the rest of my life.....mmm...yeah i'd rather get hacked.

Just sayin

or, my gmail account getting hacked vs. getting abducted by Boko Haram.....let's put some perspective on things.
 
I found the article amusing; the writer has an interesting breezy writing style. But for the most part, it was complete BS. For all the moaning and complaining about everything that is wrong with the world, they ignore all the things that are right. Sure computers and computer networks are perfect and sure there are evil people out there that will take advantage of that. But this is nothing new. This has been going on since the invention of the wheel, which is not perfect either. My message is: get over it! You can't control everything around you. There is no perfect safety. Do the best you can with what you have and be ready for some shit to land on your head.
 
pxc said:
Everything is awesome
Everything is cool when you're part of a team
Everything is awesome, when we're living our dream...
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Yup, you can tell the parents, as they're the ones that instantly thought of that song when they read the headline...
 
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