Analyst thumbs-up for DIDW 2006
A heartening and constructive report from Jon Oltsik over on his
Corporate Security blog. Mind you, with DIDW's history of informing, predicting and adding value, I would not have expected anything else!
Tellingly, Oltsik clearly started out sceptical but was won over by the
engagement and practicality he encountered at the event. Reading
between the lines, the exciting thing is this: that as organisations
get better at using IDM technology to address what Oltsik refers to as
"tactical IT ops challenges", so they generate both the opportunity to
turn the same investment towards more business-level issues (such as
regulatory compliance, identity-based resource management &c)...
and the capability to do something about it.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 11:13 AM GMT+00:00
The ceasefire in Lebanon... what next?
As you may have noticed, I have not removed the Amnesty International
gif from the right hand column of this page. That's because, although a
ceasefire has been in effect for a month now, I think it's important to
be reminded that neither the causes nor the effects of the war have
gone away - either as a result of the war, or as a result of the
ceasefire.
Today's Independent Online carries
this article
about the legacy of cluster-bombs with which the inhabitants of
Southern Lebanon will now have to live for the foreseeable future.
Like the random scattering of anti-personnel mines, the use of these
cluster bombs somehow manages to achieve an extra nuance of
loathsomeness - perhaps because of the utter disregard it shows for the
civilians who are bound to suffer the most from them.
Even in pragmatic terms, I cannot understand the rationale for their use. Let's just do a quick audit:
Net effect of the cluster bombs in reducing rocket attacks or recovering the captured Israeli soldiers: zero*.
Net effect on Hezbollah: presumably, a continuing source of recruitment propaganda.
Net effect on the civilian population: death, injury, loss of
livelihood, homes, agricultural land and crops, logistical and economic
burden of de-mining, of dealing with large-scale displacement of the
population, and of treating those wounded over the coming years.
Isn't it time that these devices were classified along with other
indiscriminate weapons such as biological and chemical agents, and
their use banned by an effective international treaty?
*According to an inhabitant quoted in the article, "The cluster bombs
all landed in the last days of the war". If you remember, reports at
the time suggested that the intensity of the rocket attacks actually
increased as the ceasefire date approached.
Links:
Mines Advisory Group - a Manchester-based charity currently engaged in de-mining in Southern Lebanon
Landmine Action - mines, cluster bombs, discarded ordnance and the law.
Handicap International - page on the Ottawa Treaty
Democracy Now! site - interview with Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch
Wikipedia article on land mines
Posted by racingsnake
@ 10:31 AM GMT+00:00
Getting there from here...
"Computing in 2050 will be dominated by two concerns,
ecology and ethics"
Greg Papadopoulos, Sun CTO and EVP of Research and Development.
The more inextricably human activity is bound up with online interaction, the greater the ethical dimension in computing.
Some aspects of this have already been recognised and (to some extent,
at least) acted on; for instance, chip manufacture used to involve
chemicals like cyanide. As far as I am aware, most manufacturers have
reworked their manufacturing processes to use non-toxic alternatives -
though the problem of toxic materials in now-obsolete hardware
certainly remains an issue.
Some aspects are starting to influence the market today, such as Sun's
'sustainable computing' drive towards lower energy consumption in
workstations.
In other areas, we don't even have metrics for the ethical and
ecological factors which will, over time, come to play the dominant
role Greg predicts.
This is, I think, particularly the case in the emerging area of online
'reputation'. There are already people and organisations for whom
'social interaction'
means
online interaction, either more than or simply instead of personal
interaction. Instead of having a reputation within a family or a
geographically-bounded community such as a street or town, these people
and organisations have a reputation in an online community. In this
context, there are factors which underpin an inter-personal reputation
for which the online analogues either do not exist or have not been
identified and/or realised.
I think that's something which is going to need sorting out way before 2050...
Posted by racingsnake
@ 09:27 AM GMT+00:00
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