Re: Extropians in the field

From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Apr 16 2001 - 10:40:42 MDT


ManuelOmar@aol.com wrote:
> And with all these viruses, and all the bugs with Windows, etc, etc... well, we've *seen* just how secure computers are.
>
> Now imagine the same level of buggyness in something <i>directly wired to your brain</i>.

Permit me, and most others who have given technical support, a moment
to imagine that happening to all the most clueless in the world who
wouldn't RTFM if their life depended on it... ^_^;;;

Anyway, it looks like one solution, at least at first, is not to try to
incorporate everything into one generic solution. Special-purpose
computers (for instance, control computers in vehicles) can be made
very reliable and secure by limiting the amount of stuff they can do;
a lot of Windows' bugs are from pieces of code from different
manufacturers (or even just different groups of Microsoft) disagreeing
on the interface between them, or not understanding the ramifications
of the interface. (The latter causes a lot of the security bugs: "You
mean it's a problem if just any user can get access to X?")



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