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The Helsinki Times reports that Finland's Minister of Finance suggested during a recent foreign policy speech that Finland and the EU could pursue self-sufficiency in computing, in particular to avoid over dependence on just a handful of companies. She pointed out that this overreliance on said companies has become so severe that company policy has already started to override existing relevant legislation. The topic had earlier been brought up by President Sauli Niinistö. So far, though, not even Russia has made progress in that direction despite over a decade passing since announcing plans.
"Cyber self-sufficiency, in practical terms, could mean having a European operating system and web browser. The EU could also function as a provider of certificates," she envisioned in a foreign and security policy speech in Helsinki on Wednesday, 26 February.
Previously:
Moscow Bans Sale of Gadgets Without Russian-Made Software
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:38PM (10 children)
It will be best if all our Self-Sufficient™ systems can all talk to each other.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:42PM (4 children)
What if... we built our network... so there was some kind of "protocol" that everyone could use to communicate the same kinds of information without needing to use the same software? Then you could hook a billion computers with 10 thousand different operating systems and a million different applications together and they'd all somehow communicate effectively.
...Nah. That'd never work.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:47PM (3 children)
We need self-sufficiency in protocols too...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday February 27 2020, @07:51PM (2 children)
I mean, I get what you're saying. But it doesn't have to be turtles all the way down.
But standards bodies, good ones at least, don't do the equivalent of fucking shipping a patch that fundamentally changes how a program operates and autoupdates all your shit regardless of how you want things to be. Or predicate your security on accepting the patch.
There's an extent to which Microsoft, Google, and to a much lesser extent Mozzilla, get to dictate how the next versions of HTTP, HTML, and JS will work. But there's also a huge open public warfare about it that encourages at least some public participation and governments can throw their weight around if it really matters.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @02:31PM
Let the free market work it out, like they did with phone chargers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Friday February 28 2020, @04:59PM
Well. Not (good) standards bodies, but of course the end-user application and OS-vendors do it all the time.
Witness the raft of "deprecated" and "removed" and "obsoleted" features, system calls, and even CPU architectures, that are thrown under the bus by everyone from compiler- through OS-vendors. Some of this is very regular — and very little of it is reasonably justifiable outside of market manipulation for profit.
Comm protocols are constantly mutating as well, again under the aegis of entities like Google, who (for instance) have been running a campaign to pressure site owners into HTTPS, and then there's the Google-originated push for those AMP pages — mutation is the order of the day, and there's probably no way to stop the "new, shiny!" crowd from keeping at it.
There's an awful lot of "we know what's good for you" when in fact, they don't.
--
Dark humor is like medical care.
Not everyone gets it.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27 2020, @08:26PM
Nope, they will use trinary for bit inclusivity.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:59PM
<no-sarcasm>
It will be best if all our Self-Sufficient™ systems are Linux.
</no-sarcasm>
Every country would build their own. To avoid the monoculture of Windows.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 27 2020, @11:01PM (2 children)
The point of balkanization is to undo the benefits of the internet. It will happen after the internet has realized the potential for control.
This is why I was surprised when the internet really took off. Too good to be true. Too disrupting its potential if it could result in a transparent society where it is impossible to steal and the identity of any owner is known, and whether any owner contributes to or hinders society is apparent. Instead we had porn and a post-orwellian degree of control.
And they will take away porn too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @09:53PM
Time to go out and buy a printer. Oh wait, I guess you can download it too, but that's no fun. They probably even have DVD and Bluray in those dirty shops my mom said I wasn't old enough to go to. I said, mom, I don't want to wait in the car, I'm 36 and the kids in the other cars make fun of me.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday February 29 2020, @12:33AM
You said something about an inconceivable universe in your other reply. Would this be an example of such a thing?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..