Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • February 16, 2022 2:02 AM

@ Hedo,

I’ve been wondering for many years now, why in the world does such a great nation as ours does not have, not yet, an autonomous, proprietary, closed source Operating Systems developed for the government only (specifically for our Military and IC)? Why use M$, Dell, Apple, Google, Amazon, etc???

Two reasons,

1, US politicians stopped the developments that were under way.

2, With the excuse the “free market” would do it better.

The reality as many know is that,

A, MIC developments were so over priced and so non transparant the “$600 Hammer” stories were the very least of it.

B, Consumer software was about “First to market owns the market” not usability, reliability, availability, security, and most certainly not about interoperability. The same model drives the Internet.

So all that happened was the burden to the tax payer increased, only it went into different pockets.

If you want that to change, you will need to first fix a way more fundemental problem than,

Oh, I know, the $$$$ always comes first, the lobbying, the ties/connections, the shareholders, the profits, the fat contracts – THE CORRUPTION. The greed. At the heart of everything is greed>corruption>MONEY.

Because it’s “NOT the Money” that is just a tool for those with other aberrant desires. Call it a “symptom of the disease” not the disease.

But what is the disease?

For some who are narcissistic it is “Status”

For others who are socio / psychopathic it is what you might call “Power”.

And for others who are sadistic it is being able to “hurt others”.

These groups respectively make up the politicians, their backers and the guard labour that protect them.

Compared to the majority such people are a small minority with significant mental aberrations.

However in the US it’s the “capitalist” system which positively encorages such people to rise up the hierarchy where they gain more and more of what they want.

So the reality is “The lunatics realy do run the asylum” that they have slowely created, and the majority “sleepwalked into”.

You want to fix it you first need to fix the problem of how to get the majority, not minority having control.

But as the minority realy do own the process of selecting representatives and legislators you have a real problem.

By the way it’s not just the US that has this “run by the lunatics” problem all countries have it one way or another, it’s just easier for every one to see in the US system because outside of dictatorships it is perhaps the most blatant.

But before you do try fixing the issue, ask yourself a question,

“Would majority control actually be any better for society?”

The answer you will probably find is not realy, because the reality is the majority do not want the responsability, so they will actually just let the lunatics get control again. If you doubt this just study a little history. You will find that all “glorious revoloutions” or “peoples uprisings” end up back in a different form of “tyranny by the minority”, it will just look a little different to the previous tyranny.

The biggest cause for change is infact due to moving from an agrarian to industrial society, as the latter requires a professional class between those who control and those they formally controled. This “middle class” take away resources in various forms –wealth– from those who formerly led and use it to control others via reward for labour. So creating a split hierarchy with a new dynamic.

Call it “The human Condition” but sociologists came up with the Hawk-Dove game to analyse basic conflict in what would have been an agrarian style society. But back in the mid 1970’s economists extended it and we got the Hawk-Dove-Bourgeois Game.

You might want to think of the “Bourgeois” as “Corporations” in our current state of society. In most runs of the Hawk-Dove-Bourgeois Game the Bourgeois come out on top… However when you go back to the original agrarian model though, you see that the “Bourgeois” came about through the “church” which gave us politicians under the King and Barrons court. So the model we need to move forward to would be a “Hawk-Dove-Bourgeois-Church Game” which from what I can see develops into a non stable in the short term but cyclic in the long term model.

Clive Robinson • February 16, 2022 3:58 AM

@ John,

It was in perfect condition.

Probably not, though you probably won’t have noticed unless you make jam.

Pectin content very definitely reduces fairly quickly even in apples when they are ripe. The net effect is to make the “juice” in the fruit more available and the fruit easier for small creatures to eat thus “spread the seed” more widely.

It’s why commercial fruit pickers pick when the fruit is “under ripe”.

Oh whilst the paper bag is good, the plastic bag is not as it holds certain gasses against the fruit[1]. Oh and the refrigeration should be slightly warmer than the average household fridge at about 4C or a fraction higher. Home fridges are designed for 1-2C as this maximizes “dairy product” and “raw meat” keeping times as it more significantlt slows bacterial growth.

[1] It’s also why you should never put bananas in with other fruit, as the gasses they emit make the fruit over ripen and start the decay process.