One of the most dangerous aspects of our public discourse is that we don’t ask those who are immersed in Political Ideology, Public Union Leaders for example…..

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“Look at it this way — every time you get a security update (seems almost daily on my Linux box), whatever is getting updated has been broken, lying there vulnerable, for who-knows-how-long. Sometimes days, sometimes years. Nobody really advertises that part of updates.” People say “You should apply this, it’s a critical patch!” and leave off the “…because the developers f**ked up so badly your children’s identities are probably being sold to the Estonian Mafia by smack addicted script kiddies right now.”

Once upon a time, a friend of mine accidentally took over thousands of computers. He had found a vulnerability in a piece of software and started playing with it. In the process, he figured out how to get total administration access over a network. He put it in a script, and ran it to see what would happen, then went to bed for about four hours. Next morning on the way to work he checked on it, and discovered he was now lord and master of about 50,000 computers. After nearly vomiting in fear he killed the whole thing and deleted all the files associated with it. In the end he said he threw the hard drive into a bonfire. I can’t tell you who he is because he doesn’t want to go to Federal prison, which is what could have happened if he’d told anyone that could do anything about the bug he’d found. Did that bug get fixed? Probably eventually, but not by my friend. This story isn’t extraordinary at all. Spend much time in the hacker and security scene, you’ll hear stories like this and worse.

It’s hard to explain to regular people how much technology barely works, how much the infrastructure of our lives is held together by the IT equivalent of baling wire.

Computers, and computing, are broken.

….continue reading HERE

Labour Peace? Twenty seven years of BCTF walkouts, rotating strikes, suspension of extra-curricular activities, threats to graduation has been the norm, and the predictable byproduct of a quasi monopoly…..

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#1 Mark Wiseman Age 43, President & CEO, CPP Investment Board

Mark Wiseman manages a portfolio worth $183 billion. That’s more than the annual GDP of the Ukraine, the largest pot of investable money in Canada. His decisions affect the fate of 18 million Canadians, many of whom are counting on him for their retirement incomes. His organization runs one of the most visible and high-profile private equity funds in the world—industry observers put it in the same class as those run by legendary buyout giants Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts and Blackstone. (Don’t talk to Wiseman about stakes smaller than $75 million—they aren’t worth his time.)

…..read more on Mark Wiseman as well as 2-10 HERE