Letters to Redmond
January 2012 Letters: Security Concerns
Your take on IT security and other issues.
This article is disturbing to say the least, not to mention, irresponsible [Windows Insider, "12 New Year's Resolutions for Windows IT Pros in 2012," January 2012]. Any one who refers to the very real and more-dangerous-than-ever security issues we face as "boogeyman" is someone with absolutely no idea about the current state of IT. Every single day brings us new stories of a network being breached. Add to that the fact that there's more financial, health, and othercritical and confidential information being stored in the cloud and on mobile systems, and you should know that now -- more than ever -- we need to lock down systems, tell users no and take drastic measures to secure systems. To say that users are "more knowledgeable than ever before" would be hysterical if it weren't such an ignorant (not to mention irresponsible) statement.
Posted Online by Todd from Ohio
The security boogeyman?!?! Apparently Shields has been living under a rock. From Operation Aurora to Stuxnet to the U.S. Defense Department being hacked, security threats are very real and very much a threat to every organization. Shields, you are a fool, get a helmet and stay down!
Posted Online by Tim from Massachusettes
Too Young to Remember
You did it again, hiring too young a staff to remember where it really all began ["The List Issue: Top 14 Products that Changed IT in the PC Era," January 2012]. The first real desktop PC that began the change was the PDP-8, brought to us by the late Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). It was the gift of a DEC PDP-1 that got the first generation going -- turning out things like the first word processor ("expensive typewriter" and video game ("Spacewars"). But the PDP-8 (1965) was the industry's Model T, the first computer to "Go Gold, then Platinum" in sales, when computers were generally one-off or two-off products.
It was the first computer students both legally and illegally had in their dorm rooms and homes, the first product cheap enough to put in high schools.
The 8, at 250 lbs, easily fit on the typical academic battleship grey desk of the era, along with the ASR-33 that provided the base 4K model with printer and long-term storage I/O on paper tape. And even when some professor owned it, at night, it was ours.
Posted Online by Anonymous
Hot Buttons
Re: No. 12 [Foley on Microsoft, "12 Microsoft Hot Buttons for 2012," January 2012] -- rumor is that Microsoft makes more money off of every Android device sold than it does off of the sale of Windows Phone 7-based devices. If true, then why would they want to impact Android sales?
Posted Online
Privacy Is Dead
You are not paranoid! The amount of personal information that we're making public knowledge both knowingly and unknowingly is staggering. Unfortunately, staying offline is the only real security. And even that just protects you from yourself. People that have never been online have their info passed back and forth as well.
Another aspect to privacy that's being infringed upon is video privacy. There are more and more cameras watching us all and no way to opt out of those, either.
Alan Lantz
City of Rogers, Ariz.
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