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Search Engines And Short Term Memory (or: the digital Alzheimer)

I was looking for the source of a satirical quote I’ve read years ago and, of course, I tried Google as first tool, but with no results. The only option would have been to go back in my garage, open the boxes where I stored the old newspapers, and try to find the line I need.

This lead me to an obvious but never considered conclusion: if something is “just” on paper, is going to be forgotten because “average joe” (including me) doesn’t make the effort to go over the “search” button push, looking for sources not available online.

True, Google did launch the digital library initiative, the Gutenberg Project is releasing the ebook version of the public domain literature classics and there are similar activities elsewhere, but there will always be an off-line knowledge that people don’t care to look for because it is offline.

The final word(s): our memory goes back in the past as deep as a search engine can.

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Child Pornography And Computer Crime Still a Criminal Offense in Italy

Several misinformed Italian blogs are currently claiming that the Renzi-led government just passed a draft-legislative decree making child pornography and computer crimes no more a criminal offense.

This is not true because what the government actually did was setting the principle that as soon as a crime is punished with a jail term up to five years AND the judge thinks that the crime is of “minimum damage” then either the prosecution or the trial must end. To put it different: only “serious crimes” are going to be tried in court.

One may argue over the ethic or legal acceptance of the notion of “petty-vs-serious” difference (as Cicero use to said, what matters – and deserves the maximum punishment – is the act of killing, not the fact that you killed one man or hundred people) but this legislative decree only turns into a law what already happens on a daily basis in the Italian courts: a confession of failure, in other words.

 

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The Rain, Matteo Renzi and His Honour Guard

The picture of the Italian Prime Minister running to avoid being soaked by the rain while the honour guard stood still under the storm is a lapsus showing his lack of self-control: instead of sharing the “fate” of his men, he just cares for himself.

Waiting for the next downpour, it might worth to read Hagakure’s “Lesson of the Storm”, 1 useful not just for handling a rainy day.

 

  1. Fear Not the Rain
    You must understand the “lesson of the storm”.
    If all of a sudden a man is caught by a storm he will run as fast as he can ? to find a place to rest not to get soaked.
    But if he does accept that when it rains one gets wet, he can stay in a calm state of mind even if soaked to the skin.
    This advice works for everything.     ↩
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Twenty Years Of Hacking In About 4 Minutes

Twenty years of hacking in about four minutes. This is a short documentary on the life of ? Metro Olografix, one of the oldest and most active digital NGO in Italy.

Proud to be there since the beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eoNBNaKfB4A

p.s. The video is full of trivia about people and technology. But unfortunately, Google can’t help. You have to rely upon memory, culture and experience. Brain, in other words 🙂

 

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Are All 27000-1 Certifications Created Equal?

Say you have to outsource the storage of your corporate data.

Say you have to assess the quality of a couple of (apparently) both “good looking” potential suppliers that give you both access housing/cloud services.

Say both of them are “ISO 27000-1 Certified”.

Which are you going to choose?

Answer: ask to see the “perimeter” that has been certified.

In other words: advertising on the corporate website or wherever else that a company is “ISO 27000-1 compliant” doesn’t always means that the WHOLE company actually is.

Maybe the certification has been obtained for the data-centre only, or just for a small part of the infrastructure, or – say – for the financial departement.

Thus, a fair use of the “label” would be a statement like this: “we are ISO 27000-1 certified for X,Y,Z” instead of a simpler (and deceptive) “we’ve got the ISO 27000-1”.

Next time, ask first.