Things I learned from Eliot

It was certainly a pleasant surprise to hear from Eliot in the last class period. To be honest, I didn't know exactly what to think of him at first: between his pedantic attire and him "giving us permission" to be creative, I really wasn't expecting much from him. Fortunately, things changed as he began to talk more and settle more into himself. I learned some valuable things from his story at PayPal: first, that I must think outside of our limits to overcome obstacles, and second, to plan ahead when I code. When Eliot described the shame the team had about having so many dependencies on the front-end to the back-end I knew exactly what he was talking about. In the story, there is a valuable lesson all programmers can learn: that we must aim to create versatile code to avoid having to rewrite large and critical sections of code. This in turn takes careful planning to avoid creating dependencies. I liked how both ideas link to each other when creativity was an essential part to finding a solution to the problem.

Here Comes Everyone!

Social media is transforming our society: this is the underlying message of the author in each of the stories he shares in "Here Comes Everybody". In the past, we had to rely on media organizations (such as FOX news) to gain access to information. These organizations have a hierarchy and have control of the information. We can also say that both employers and employees of these organizations are professionals in their respective fields. Nowadays, in addition to these organizations, we also have the social media: an organization that has almost no governance, that has virtually no filters and that is driven by the common people, amateurs and professionals alike.

As I thought about this, I saw the many great implications that came with this new way of doing things: gathering of information that was impossible in the past is now feasible, information is now being disseminated by people all around the world as events unfold, we do not have to wait to receive the news, we do not have to actively seek out the news (the news come to us), and, more importantly, I (or anyone) can start the dissemination of any piece of information from anywhere at any time.

I believe that these self-governed, self-healing organizations will continue to greatly change the way we do things in the future: the way we learn, the way we share, the way we communicate, the way we organize ourselves as communities, the way we organize as institutions, it is all going to be dominated by this new way of doing things, since nothing can match their versatility, portability and ease of access.

Nevertheless, as we have discussed in class, with new technology there is always a price to pay. In regards to social media, we can already see some of its consequences: cyber-bullying (who would've thought that some comments in the internet could cause people to lose their jobs, lose their families, or drive them to commit suicide), civil unrest (and whether this is detrimental that is completely subjective), piracy, just to name a few. As we continue to adopt this deeper into society, we will find more unforeseen consequences; we should be weary of those problems and evaluate whether the price is too big to pay.

Women in Computer Science, or any science

While it is true that sometimes women are treated the wrong way in work environments that are mostly dominated by men, I do not believe this is the only or the dominant reason as to why women "avoid" these careers. As a matter of fact, I believe there could be a dozen of other reasons as to why women decide to pursue other careers. One of these reasons might be that women are inherently less interested in those fields, and prefer other careers that suit their abilities and preferences better, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. At the end of the day, men and women are different. This is something we learn from the Gospel. Now, by this I do not mean that women should not pursue careers in science or engineering, or that none of them are suited for such careers; many of them are talented and more than qualified for them, sometimes even more than some men. My desire is that we, as men, can welcome them openly and without prejudice, and that we disallow any improper behavior towards them; what I do not wish is to try to artificially get women to pursue these careers out of what some people call "equality".

The Revolution OS

The Linux Operating System, or should I say the GNU/Linux Operating System, is truly a revolutionary OS. Nevertheless, as discussed in class, Linux has some problems when it comes to support in the business world. It might be argued that today there are companies that specialize in providing support for Linux, such as Red Hat Linux (which also develops its own Enterprise Red Hat Linux distribution), but such support comes at a price. So, really, it is matter of choosing who you want to pay: Red Hat or Microsoft. Apart from this, I strongly believe Linux has many great merits. If I was completely broke and couldn't afford to buy an operating system, I would definitely use Linux and it would satisfy all of my needs and satisfy some of my wants. Free Software, or Open Source software, definitely has a place in computing, but I feel that as businesses become larger and more complex, Linux might not be the best choice if the people that are in charge are not fully familiarized with the environment.

Big Data and the Goverment

An interesting discussion was had in class: to what extent is it okay for the government to gather data that for some might me considered private? In The Cuckoo's Egg this idea is also explored, and I have reached the conclusion that if we want some security, we need to allow the government agencies to have access to this data. Nevertheless, where do we draw a line? If it is to little, then it cannot be used for any good. If it is too much, then it can be damaging to people's privacy and to our trust of the government. I have often thought about the amount of power that we can give to government agencies if we let them have all of our data; visions of Big Brother dystopian societies come to me. I believe that we must be wary of this problem, and that we have to accept that some of this data must be shared. Nevertheless, we must not stand in silence and let it go by if at some point the government crosses the line where we as people do not have any more privacy.

Modern Day Cuckoo's Eggs?

It has become evident to me that the problem of cyber security will be a problem that we will continue to have for as long as computers exist, and for as long as we continue to be computer illiterate. As I read The Cuckoo's Egg, I just couldn't help but be dumbfounded at how careless the people in charge of computer security were, and at how they left critical parts of a system completely open for anyone to pry on; the most sobering part of it is that it could all have been easily avoided if they had just cared a little bit.

In the book, we read about how the hacker kept turning knobs in hope that some careless system manager would've left a door unprotected and wide open for them to come in, explore, change and steal. What I ask myself is, what where they thinking? Were they really this oblivious about the security holes? As I kept reading, and as Cliff Stoll continued to interact with the system managers, it became apparent to me that they were not clueless, that they had knowledge about the holes, but ultimately neglected them on the grounds that they didn't think any normal person could come in and cause any harm since they were not educated enough in computer systems to know about them. The problem is that all the people that came knocking were the people that knew of such exploits, and would not forgive once they found any open doors.

Many years have passed since then, and with it a wave of changes have come into society because of the Internet and of modern day computers. Computers have disseminated everywhere, and people use them everyday as a fundamental part of their lives, and hackers have not stopped to exists. I believe that now, more than ever, people need to be conscious about the risks and the problems that can arise in regards to computer security. Even though children are learning about computers and using them from a young age, they are not really learning much about them in terms of security, and problems within the corporate world continue to exist in the same way that they existed in the time of the events of the book. For example, just a couple years ago Sony had a huge hacking problem with their PlayStation Network. In it, millions of user's personal data was compromised, including credit card numbers, and mostly because of carelessness (the data was not encrypted). More recently, there has been a wave of celebrities' phones and their internet accounts being hacked, and their personal data and files disseminated to the internet, much to their dismay; again, because of carelessness.

So, there seem to be two fundamental problems: people not being educated in how to properly secure their data in the internet and personal computers (ie. choosing bad passwords or pins) and also negligence from the industry in regards to acceptable security standards (ie. leaving open holes or not encrypting sensitive data). It believe it is our utmost responsibility to take care of these issues, because computers are not going away, on the contrary, they continue to evolve and I'm sure that they will continue to be more ingrained within society. If that is the case, security has never been more important to us, and I believe that from a young age we should be educated about it seriously so that both users and developers can be better prepared to secure cyber information.

Shellshock

Worse than Heartbleed

"Many eyes" can't see straight

As I've read the story of Cliff Stoll, my mind has turned to the topic of computer security. Just last Wednesday, there was a huge bug discovered in the Bash Shell that virtually every computer running Linux is vulnerable to. The exploit has been categorized as being worse than the Heartbleed bug that received international attention earlier this year. As described in the article, Heartbleed allowed attackers to get sensitive information such as "encryption keys or passwords", but the Shellshock bug "allows an attacker much more power. They can use it to take complete control of a system even without having a username and password". As I thought about this, the first question that came to my mind was:  how is this possible? how can holes in security like this be overlooked? Being a free and open source project, many people believed the idea of "many eyes" would apply to this software, but as we have seen, this a bug that has survived for more than two decades since Bash's conception in 1989. Clearly, the way we test and prevent bugs is not perfect, and can greatly be improved upon, and after these two incidents this year I believe that it is something that we as programmers need to direct our attention towards.