Posts from the ‘Moronic’ Category

Dec 28

It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.

This piece from Clay Shirky isn’t new, but it’s sure still absolutely relevant.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/LabqeJEOQyI?rel=0

Dec 27

Unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable

I think Chris Chant has hit the nail on the head with his recent Institute of Government piece.

“It is unacceptable at this point in time to not know the true cost of a service and the real exit costs from those services: the costs commercially, technically and from a business de-integration standpoint. So, how do we untangle our way out of a particular product or service. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the discussion that says, we need to get away from that, and we can’t because of the complexity of getting out from where we are, and of all the things that are hanging on to that particular service, that we can’t disentangle ourselves from.

I think it’s completely unacceptable at this point in time to enter into contracts for longer than 12 months. I can’t see how we can sit in a world of IT, and acknowledge the arrival of the iPad in the last two years, and yet somehow imagine that we can predict what we’re going to need to be doing in two or three or five or seven or ten years time. It’s complete nonsense.”

It fills me with hope that there are people out there working to highlight that the command-and-control approach to technology and systems no longer holds up. Can the few break out of the force field of the incumbent suppliers? I really hope so.

Full audio of Chris’s piece is available here.

May 22

Communicate

I spend a lot of time thinking about communication systems that have low control, and high expectations. As a result I’m rarely using e-mail these days. Instead, if you want to contact me please do it via Twitter: @duncanhart

May 22

Security utopia

The problem I’ve most often met in building secure systems is that this particular subject seems to bring out the utopian in people like no other.

This ‘should’ happen, that ‘should’ happen, its unfair or wrong or wicked that such and such is allowed to continue. Well, yes. But what are we actually going to do about it? So we need realistic problems solvers. That means a pragmatic approach, which can often offend a lot of purists. Peter Gutmann captures the essence beautifully - “I think a lot of purists would rather have PKI be useless to anyone in any practical terms than to have it made simple enough to use, but potentially “flawed”.”

Mar 25