Conversation
Notices
-
@pettter To be honest I haven't tracked which scenarios we have been discussing, possibly in parallell. The original post seemed to refer to infrastructure, which is my main context.
Some others have mentioned embedded systems and I have replied somewhat to that too. Using the terms machine and hardware have certainly confused things.
I'd like to stress that I refer to parts of a system which have external attack vectors. Embedded technology without networking (sneakernet USB sticks counts too) is a different issue when it comes to vulnerabilities/malfunction.
While I know of pacemakers with remote/wireless vulnerabilities I know there are variants that don't expose this. Same with intravenous controllers etc.
Oh and I'll happily retract the "instantly" and instead clarify that I mean "death caused directly by removal of the proprietary solution". It is a hard line to draw whether a death was directly caused by the lack of MRI/whatever or not though...
-
I've also heard that people can install this thing called Guhnoo Leenaks. Regardless of whom they are. And any infrastructure dependent on WinXP might as well just be scrapped, unless it's important enough to be saved and then it should be saved with government interaction and libre licenses.
-
@thebestsophist @pettter I'd be perfectly happy to shut down all the machines - maybe especially so in mission critical environments - that run insecure proprietary software in order to build it all up from scratch using !fs.
Given how neither of these systems we talk about have more than a couple of decades history - rebuilding them can be done within all of our lifetimes.
-
I'm perfectly willing to accept decomputerising parts of society, temporarily or not, despite its costs in "efficiency" or whatever people call it.
@thebestsophist I would like to counter your statement with the fact that all of us in the privileged western world effectively deny others resources by simply continuing our daily lives (modern slavery, corruption and of course resource depletion). Which is why I actively choose to decrease my footprint in as many areas as I can - albeit one at a time.
-
@pettter Looking at the situation in Sweden, afaik doctors can barely do their work due to the state of the software. But let's ignore the long term benefits because that's how the world works! Accept what is and don't argue for what should be!
-
Why are you saying these things? They are not my words. I think society should be prepared for these kinds of downtimes because of external factors anyway. Cost effectiveness is not always a good thing and having reliable, fixable systems with non-computerised fallbacks should be desirable.
Or should people start dying as a result of, say, medical systems being hacked? (which is probably already the case, or at least the vulnerabilities are there since long back according to empirical studies)
-
@tomas CT scans and MRI machines help diagnosis, sure. But I don't think people start dying like crazy if you take them offline. Besides, if the machines are getting old enough and the company responsible for the proprietary bits won't deliver new versions - then they'll stop working eventually anyway. So people face the same risks, just slightly posrponed. So let's do something while it's within our own control.
-
@pettter I referred to doctors having problems with the currently installed systems which cannot easily be fixed/changed (or vetted) due to their proprietary nature. On top of removal of secretaries so they have to learn how to use the systems, wasting time that could be used for actual doctor work.
-
@pettter It relates because changes can't be made due to proprietary handcuffs and I want to point out that just keeping what we have running isn't always as effective and super important as said in this thread (omg people will die and life quality plummet if we turn off this machine with WinXP on it!!!).
I'm assuming measures taken during extreme power outages are already planned and can be applied in a scenario where old machines are malfunctioning/hacked/disabled.
-
@pettter Maybe it would be better if we had a concrete example of a machine that would instantly kill people if turned off (malfunctioning, hacked or powered down by a floss fanatic) - and calculate the cost of replacing it with something libre.
Then we spread that cost out on all hospitals/governments in the world relying on that specific piece of technology. Maybe it'll just happen to be quick and cheap enough to do before people start dying due to the inevitable problems that arise with proprietary "solutions".
Don't you think it would be worth (morally as well as economically) doing something like that compared to sticking with proprietary stuff? I do.
-
@pettter Respirators etc. can probably be categorised along with pacemakers and such where embedded functionality without networking is much more comparable to machinery than computery
MMN-o ✅⃠
All bartle content and data are available under the