[LINK] SOH SEcurity [was: Freeview Launches In Australia]

[Michael Still]

Rick Welykochy wrote:

[snip]

> I agree with you, the war has been lost and the populist uneducated 
> luser and the web sites that hypnotise them into visiting HAVE WON.
> But who has really lost? Ironically, the luser has lost. Billions of
> dollars in Australia alone. Sigh.
> 
> I, the geek, have not lost anything. I know what I am doing on the
> net and take necessary precautions. Those who do not are the real
> losers in the complexity stakes.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree here. The purpose of 
technology is to enable users to do what they want more efficiently than 
they could before. I dispute that its only "lusers" who use streaming 
video for example (a large portion of Flash use) -- its hard to argue 
that streaming videos of the recent presidential election debates 
weren't valuable.

Now, I do agree that implementations are sometimes flawed, and the more 
complicated the implementation the higher the risk of failure. That's 
what risk and reliability engineering are for. For example -- almost all 
of the flaws you describe in a home router can be addressed with SSL and 
things like TOR.

The thing is though, most people just don't care about privacy as much 
as you do. Look at the sharing behaviours of Facebook users for example. 
That doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means you're in the minority, 
and should continue to expect to see services which do address the 
desires of the majority.

Mikal