{"id":5003,"date":"2010-08-20T21:28:04","date_gmt":"2010-08-21T01:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=5003"},"modified":"2010-08-20T21:28:04","modified_gmt":"2010-08-21T01:28:04","slug":"c-will-not-only-let-you-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-it-will-hand-you-a-new-magazine-when-you-run-out-of-bullets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/08\/20\/c-will-not-only-let-you-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-it-will-hand-you-a-new-magazine-when-you-run-out-of-bullets\/","title":{"rendered":"“C will not only let you shoot yourself in the foot, it will hand you a new magazine when you run out of bullets”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Stross<\/a> enumerates some of the ways “we went wrong” in the rush to today’s computing world:<\/p>\n

\n

According to one estimate pushed by the FBI in 2006, computer crime costs US businesses $67 billion a year. And identity fraud in the US allegedly hit $52.6Bn in 2004.<\/p>\n

Even allowing for self-serving reporting (the FBI would obviously find it useful to inflate the threat of crime, if only to justify their budget requests), that’s a lot of money being pumped down a rat-hole. Extrapolate it worldwide and the figures are horrendous — probably nearer to $300Bn a year. To put it in perspective, it’s like the combined revenue (not profits; gross turnover) of Intel, Microsoft, Apple, and IBM — and probably a few left-overs like HP and Dell — being lost due to deliberate criminal activity.<\/p>\n

Where does this parasitic drag come from? Where did we go wrong?<\/p>\n

I’m compiling a little list, of architectural sins of the founders (between 1945 and 1990, more or less) that have bequeathed us the current mess. They’re fundamental design errors in our computing architectures; their emergent side-effects have permitted the current wave of computer crime to happen . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I make it a rule never to believe the order of magnitude claimed by a self-interested party about how much money is “lost” because of their current hobby-horse mopery and dopery. Even if the amount claimed by the FBI is off by an order of magnitude, that’s still serious money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Stross enumerates some of the ways “we went wrong” in the rush to today’s computing world: According to one estimate pushed by the FBI in 2006, computer crime costs US businesses $67 billion a year. And identity fraud in the US allegedly hit $52.6Bn in 2004. Even allowing for self-serving reporting (the FBI would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[109,58,92],"class_list":["post-5003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-technology","tag-computers","tag-internet","tag-software"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1iH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5003"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5005,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003\/revisions\/5005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}