Security Assured

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-wire-certified-defense-facilities.html

Reassuring to see that the Dept. of Homeland Security is working hard to assist in making the US more secure. I have a high regard for Kabba but it seems to me that people are believing electronics can do everything when palpably there are no lots of examples where old methods are more sensible.

Ford in the US are putting all their controls intoan electronic system - stuff like the air-con. A guy reports driving around in the winter with the air-con decidng it would not be turned off and the cabin temperature should be in the 40F's.

Wonderful. And imagine the benefits when you sell a whole replacement unit that only Ford can supply when it goes tit-up in 5 years time. We are in danger of paying seriously for "progress".

[Michael Emrys]

Wonderful. And imagine the benefits when you sell a whole replacement unit that only Ford can supply when it goes tit-up in 5 years time. We are in danger of paying seriously for "progress".

I've been saying that for 50 years. After studying the problem for a while, it occurred to me that automobiles could be designed such that most of the routine maintenance could be done with nothing more esoteric than a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, and even a lot of serious work not requiring a whole lot more. We are long past the days when most anything could be fixed by the neighborhood mechanic with a hammer and a bastard file.

Now some of that fell inevitable victim to the quest for greater efficiency and ease of use. But a whole lot is the result of poor design that gives short shrift to maintenance requirements. And that's not even bringing in the possibly paranoid thought that many things are deliberately designed to be difficult to maintain and repair so as to bring in more revenues for the services sector of the business.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

http://jalopnik.com/5828101/

Autonomous cars are legal in California and Nevada. Who takes the blame if they hit anything?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/saas/lightning-strike-zaps-ec2-ireland/1382?tag=nl.e539

A lightning strike last night knocked out servers at Amazon’s only European data center and the provider has warned some of those affected face delays of up to two days before they get back online. Amazon has told its EC2 customers in Europe some of them could face outages of as long as 24 to 48 hours as the cloud provider struggles to recover from a lightning strike that disrupted power supplies to its Dublin, Ireland data center. It took 3 hours to recover the first of the affected instances last evening European time (midday Pacific time) and after almost 12 hours a quarter still remained offline, with knock-on effects slowing their likely recovery time. From Amazon’s status page (12:08am PDT update):

Imagine having migrated to cloud computing for business .....

In the article it says that for legal reasons some companies are required to keep data in Europe so no backing uo to outside areas. Security wise of course the information is easily available to security services.

[Michael Emrys]

Imagine having migrated to cloud computing for business .....

I've thought about such things and it makes me a bit nervous. I suppose steps have been taken to try to ensure the security of online comms, and will continue to be. But I have also heard that China has devoted teams of crackers to break into those systems and at need to sabotage them. The world's (and especially the West's) reliance on advanced IT has also opened up new vulnerabilities in case of war. The worst news IMHO is that following the switch over to computerized methods, the older means have usually been completely dumped, so that there is no reliable low tech backup. I recall several years back that when my local library moved its catalogue onto computer, it threw away the card catalogue. The explanation was that it was so much harder to maintain the card catalogue. But my thought was, what do you do if the computer all the information is stored on dies?

IT is fine and dandy and I am all for it. But I am a firm believer in having something to fall back on if the power fails.

Michael

[gautrek]

I've been saying that for 50 years. After studying the problem for a while, it occurred to me that automobiles could be designed such that most of the routine maintenance could be done with nothing more esoteric than a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, and even a lot of serious work not requiring a whole lot more. We are long past the days when most anything could be fixed by the neighborhood mechanic with a hammer and a bastard file.

I too am worried about the reliance on electronic and electric devices.Simple things like why do i need an electric sun roof on a car when a bloody manual winder will do.In fact on one of my old cars the roof used warp if left in the sun and the sunroof would get stiff in one place.With a manual winder i could still open it.But would an electric one?

I have a intermittent setting for my wipers.But the bloody thing has 7 speeds. I either use fast or slow.What a waste of time and effort to design and fit.In fact the more elctrics and electronics you fit then the more power you need so the batteries get bigger and the alternator gets bigger to keep up so more power engine power is needed to turn it.

[dieseltaylor]

The lack of redundancy in new systems is a remarkable tribute to mans inability to plan ahead - or a misguided reliance on "government" to do the thinking.

And the built in obsolence factor ..... you would think the consumer organisations would be on the case.

Anyway more, and quite a serious security breach:

The digital trove of credit card numbers and emails stolen by the group known as Anonymous came from towns across rural America - places like Gassville, Ark. and Tishomingo County, Miss., where officers don't usually have to worry about international hackers. That may have made them an easy score.

The loosely-knit hacking collective said Saturday that it attacked 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the United States in retaliation for the arrests of its sympathizers. Some county sheriffs said they were told about the hacking, but others appeared to learn of the scope of what had happened only when contacted by The Associated Press.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-expert-rural-websites-easy-hackers.html

and just for those new hones!

AP) -- Hackers are out to stymie your smartphone. Last week, security researchers uncovered yet another strain of malicious software aimed at smartphones that run Google's popular Android operating system. The application not only logs details about incoming and outgoing phone calls, it also records those calls. That came a month after researchers discovered a security hole in Apple Inc.'s iPhones, which prompted the German government to warn Apple about the urgency of the threat. Security experts say attacks on smartphones are growing fast - and attackers are becoming smarter about developing new techniques.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-smartphone-frontier-hackers.html

[gunnergoz]

In the words of the Prophet: "To err is human, to really screw things up takes a computer."

[Ranger33]

All this thread needs now is that picture of Clint Eastwood saying "Get off my lawn!"

[dieseltaylor]

A FoxNews.com analysis of the recent NHTSA complaints indicates that a number of the owners may not be aware of a special feature found on V8-powered Mustangs that forces the transmission to shift directly from 1st to 4th gear under light throttle application. This is intended to increase fuel efficiency during the EPA fuel economy testing procedure and cannot be turned off, but is overridden during hard acceleration. The manual transmissions in the Chevrolet Corvette and Camaro SS, both built by a different supplier, function in a similar way.

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/08/08/nhtsa-investigating-complaints-about-chinese-made-ford-mustang-transmissions/

I betcha its not in the car manual!