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Ross Anderson in the Security Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory asks some questions about whether durable goods such as cars can be Internet-connected and yet provide sufficient privacy and safety. It's not a deep discussion but it does raise a few other pertainent questions.
Perhaps the biggest challenge will be durability. At present we have a hard time patching a phone that's three years old. Yet the average age of a UK car at scrappage is about 14 years, and rising all the time; cars used to last 100,000 miles in the 1980s but now keep going for nearer 200,000. As the embedded carbon cost of a car is about equal to that of the fuel it will burn over its lifetime, we just can't afford to scrap cars after five years, as do we laptops.
Meters and medical devices are two more examples of hardware that can cause great harm when control of the integrated software is taken over by malfeasants.
Source : Making security sustainable.
and Making Security Sustainable: Can there be an Internet of durable goods? (warning for PDF)
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 08 2018, @03:30PM (3 children)
That is an attitude that I learned almost forever ago. My first boss in construction, immediately after high school, put it into perspective for me. Words to the effect, "Every house I've ever built is still standing, and still looks good. If one of my houses falls down because you didn't do your job right, I'll have Jose kill you. If one of my houses starts looking crappy and deteriorated because you screwed up, I'll have Jose take your nutsack off. Don't fuck up my houses!" I took his warnings a little more than half seriously.
(Jose was a crazy bastard - big burly guy with no sense - and not even Hispanic, don't ask me why they called him Jose.)
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday March 09 2018, @05:23AM (1 child)
He was just carrying on an old tradition that goes back to at least Hammurabi [lexology.com] if not earlier.
Nothing about nutsacks though. That might have been a local variant.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 09 2018, @02:38PM
Good one - I had never read that.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday March 09 2018, @10:29AM
My first boss at Chevron - first job out of University - really instigated the value of craftsmanship and good workmanship into me and the other newhires.
I clearly remember my boss showing me the refinery when I first arrived. He told me this refinery was here before I was even born. It was. He told me it would be here long after I die. Well, I just went to get my Social Security retirement turned on today... and the Chevron Pascagoula refinery is still there, proud as ever.
Just like he said it would be.
When one takes all the trouble to make something in the first place, make it right. Otherwise all I make is expensive junk.
I only wish I had the knowledge then that I have now, as my inexperience at the time resulted in a lot of misjudgment on my part. I remember some of the refinery mechanics carefully picking up all the parts of some failed thing I had designed, and placing them on my desk so I would see what I had done wrong when I came to work the next morning.
I sure wish some of the other companies I worked for later in my career took that stance.
But then, those companies do not exist anymore either.
Chevron is still hanging in there.
What sickens me is the ones who made the el-cheapo decisions got paid, got bonuses, then got out, leaving the stockholders with an empty purse, the customers with junk, and the employees without a job.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]