Friday liberty blogging - I'm French and that's something

It might be an unknown fact to my non-French readers, the French government is currently flooding the media with questions about the French identity. What is it to be French?

They also use the fuss to cover up their shameless unprincipled immigration practices, but that won't be the subject of the present bill.

The subject is the French identity, I would like to elaborate about it, because I'm one of the lucky ones down here who have spare time and spare thoughts to ask such questions and try to answer them. When my friend Thierry Kakouridis wrote an article about the matter (FR), I thought I had to reply to it.

France is a melting-pot of people with various views and cultural heritage. It is not one. For instance, several values are deeply written in the culture of my natal region that are not always shared in other places in France:

• Anti-clericalism: People can believe whatever they want as long as it does not encroach upon my life and my political freedom. If it does, they, not I, have to withdraw.
  
• Ability to live on one's own: You will be well-considered if you don't require help. You'll still be welcome if you do require help, but you won't be thought of so highly.
  
• Giving one's word: Something said is just as good as something signed in black and white on paper.

And I did inherit these values from my living there for twenty years. Yet, as I said, these are not prominent values everywhere in France. So which should be the values of the French? First of all, I think there is the freedom of ideas. Foreigners are often surprised at the way the French take the liberty to interpret non-negotiable things. Whether it be the law, the religion or the management theories, the French often only take what they want from it. And if you ask them why, they always have a good (yeah, or bad) explanation for it.

This is one the basic freedoms that people from occidental democratic countries enjoy. And that's a freedom that can only be removed from you if you don't use it enough.

For this freedom to be within reach of a humble citizen, it requires:

• A culture that values culture above wealth,
• A culture that values thinking above believing,
• And the associated society that preserves and enriches this culture.

I think other freedoms are less important to the French. We cannot be French without allowing ourselves to think freely about things of interest.

We also use to have equality and fraternity in our national motto. This to me relates to two other main components of the French conscience:

• The hatred of ubris. Not all the French believe in a God up-there but all the French agree that there is no God down-here. The excess of pride that leads to think of oneself as a God and to behave as such is un-French. It is considered a disease that can affect both individuals and nations.
  For instance, the French renounced the death penalty. We mostly consider that a nation has no divine right to claim lives.
  This it, to my mind, the meaning of the equality word in out motto: none of us is a God.
  
• The meritocracy. While we enjoy the equality of people in rights and dignity, we clearly know that we are different and of different skills. And none of us can pretend to be good at everything. Yet, we believe in the need to live and work together. And this means that we have to know and reward the merits of each. And this goes, not through money but through respect and consideration from others.
  This is precisely why the French are outraged at the idea of a film maker being treated as a usual burglar, or at the idea of their previous president being thrown in prison.
  Sure, the law is equal for all, but in conjunction with the fact that all the French choose by themselves which laws to apply and which not, meritocracy is commonplace in France. You get "powers" from being known for your past achievements. In exchange for these powers, you have to continue to serve well the nation. We know that we are not working against each other, rather for each other.
  That is, to my mind, the meaning of the fraternity word in our motto.
  

To answer Thierry's underlying questions:

• Yes, one is first of all what he/she wants to be. And most of the French want to be French rather than regional or European or other. And that's precisely why there is such a fuss about national identity right now: the French do feel that their identity is at risk. (To my mind that's more because of the current government than because of the immigrants. And some people are thinking the wrong way, because of fear or ignorance. That part is indeed a French failure.)
• There could be some confusion about Theodore Roosevelt's words. It could be misinterpreted as a call for "cultural purity". It's not. It's a call for everyone to adhere fully to the identity. And as such, the American president's words match my feeling about the French integration style. You can be more than French, but you cannot be half-French.
  There is no room for hyphenated Frenchism, reduced Frenchism, but there is plenty of room for people to bring in additional cultures from whatever source nationality.
  

Why Windows 7 will not crush Linux

Sorry, just a rant against a nonsensical piece "Why Windows 7 will crush Linux" from Ron Barret who, surprisingly, usually has good technical articles and a few interesting non-technical articles.

This one piece shows, very clearly, a lack of knowledge of how things work outside the Microsoft world. Let me comment point by point, before I make more general statements further down. Quotes are in italic.

Okay it is no secret that Linux has not been able to crack the desktop, either at the home or at the workplace. Not to ignored either is that Windows lost some desktops last year (a little over 3%),but let’s not panic just yet, Windows still owns over 88% of all the desktops according to leading research.

Why does Ron Barret concentrate on "crushing" Linux when he could attack the main marketshare grabber: Apple? Does he really think of panicking or is that just an expression?

[...]Windows 7 installs easier, has simpler configuration of user settings, greater availability of software, support (you could argue that all support is awful, which is probably true) Windows support is easier to get when you need help. Gaming, MP3’s,… I could go on and on.

• Windows 7 installs easier, but by the installation you get only the OS, not the office suite, the usual programs, the good media players, the image manipulation programs, etc.
• Windows 7 has simpler configuration of user settings. But simplicity isn't the only question since you can get the MacOSX perverse effect : too many hidden options, which makes that anything a little more complicated than usual cannot get done from the interface, you have to go commandline. So my question is quantity of settings VS simplicity VS good explanation VS automation of whatever can be automated. And here, if whoever has any precise comparison list, I am listening carefully.
• Windows 7 has greater availability of software. Depends on what you want to do. When my WAMP solution claims that a WAMP is only for testing and that a production tool should be a LAMP, what should I do? I am also a firm believer in centralized depots, and I find that the way to install software under Linux (like Synaptic) is much more modern and efficient than Windows software install.
  

To real Linux die hards… terminals rule.

Yeah, conquering die hards is the crucial problem when you're getting after marketshares!?

So Powershell presents an interesting argument for Windows adoption by the Linux user.

The very idea that an experienced Linux user could switch from the Unix philosophy to the Windows philosophy "disguised" as a command line drains tears of laughter from my eyes. Words or icons are just means, but the Unix philosophy that transpires through bash, csh or perl is a cement stronger than any interface tool.

Some people want free software (even if support is limited or non-existent).

RedHat sales are going higher and higher, is that a coincidence or does support just exist?

Applications like Firefox, Open Office, MYSQL, GIMP… wait all these applications are now available for Windows.

OK but with the exception of Firefox, most of them still run better and integrate better under Linux than under Windows.

Moreover, they are easier to install in Windows then they are in Linux.

Complete idiocy: once you have installed Ubuntu, the applications like Firefox, OOo, GIMP... are already installed. Concerning MySQL, you just have to go to Synaptic, check the "mysql" checkbox and click "install". Far easier than under Windows.

Windows 7 has solved a long-standing thorn in Microsoft’s side, How to deliver a feature rich OS without killing resources?

Okay, so Ron Barrett just confesses that Windows has long lagged behind competitors in terms of resource usage. Fine. Thanks.

Linux users have no reason to hold back anymore. Windows 7 is well placed to crush and put an end to the penguin.

Except complete programming station, polyvalent kernel that puts it everywhere from DVD players to car computers to mainframe servers, freedom from unwanted "home calls", complete view on the software from the kernel to the application, ready and working middlewares such as Apache, very good support (with full source access) like those of RedHat, IBM, HP and others...

Now that I could calm down, seriously, why would anything change about Linux users? There are two major situations:

• Those who were fed up with Microsoft or wanted specific freedom and they will not change anything because of Windows 7.
• Those who use Linux because it's at work or because they have a specific technical reason and they will not change either. At best they will consider changing, but whether that will be worth the migration, I doubt.
  

Cloud Computing Too Costly in the Long Term?

I welcomed the IDC study of the elevated cost of cloud computing in the long run (article at linuxfoundation.org).
There are a lot of articles about cloud computing, its cost and its risks, however, I would like to underline a single point that makes a lot of difference to me between cloud and non-cloud: cloud computing is a backward step for fair competition in IT services delivery.

I think that most of the savings made in the last years by the IT services of companies have been possible because of web 2.0. Not only because of the fact it helped interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web (Wikipedia def) but essentially because it forced companies to use open*, not vendor-specific, technologies.

This helped create a true fair competition between software developers, between hosting providers and between system integrators. They all shared a single range of technologies and could not justify high prices or low quality services just because of the technology itself.

PHP comes to my mind as a brilliant example of this fair competition revolution. It's very interoperable. They even made it capable of running on MS IIS servers! It's simple and free to use. It's improvable upon and its developers were very careful to listen to requests for improvements. And now see what it has become:

The thing is: big companies like those making cloud services today do not live on perfect competition, they live on the one hand on monopolies and on the other hand on market niches. And that's their business and I am very fine with that.
They cannot survive in a true perfect competition system, yet they want to participate in the web market which has been the number one development and services source in the past years and still will remain, I guess. Cloud computing is their attempt to build monopolies on the web and they sell it with three kinds of arguments.

1. The economical argument. They promise good services, for cheap price, and you pay by your fidelity. Okay, as long as they do provide it.
2. The ecological argument. I am a very skeptical environmentalist. Not skeptical about ecology but rather about first-movers on the corporate side of ecology. Seems like a lot of green paint.
   
3. The technological argument. They sell the idea that all hosted applications are harmonized to a single technology and that this means it will all be cheaper. VERY TRUE.

Awfully true. It will be cheaper, for them. But as soon as you get dependent on them, since each of them has completely different technology from the other (think not only programming languages but also file formats, database formats and associated skills), they will be able to increase prices without any competitor. If you want to take the data back, you will be unable to feed it to the next cloud provider.

I think it's time "interoperability" gets into corporate policies alongside integrity, confidentiality and availability.

EDIT 10/26/2009: When I say open, I mean that corporate players cannot close the market by artifacts. This means, among other things: ASCII, not binary programs, opensource languages because the developers are so much more productive, free common libraries to build upon, a unique network to share data and software, etc.

EDIT 11/5/2009: Bob Sutor also speaks about cloud interoperability.

F!%#¤ cryptic logs! [Bruce Schneier fun]

I couldn't get an idea of what all that logfile meant. Not binary, but not readable... Until I backed out from the screen:

c:::c:ccoccccocooocCooCcocCooCCCCCCOOOCOOOCOO88COOC@888o8C:.:.          .....  .. ...   .  .    coo:@@8@8@8@888888888888
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cccoocccooOocOOoCCCoCCCCOcCO8O@c:. .    :c:cccoCCoCCCCOOOOOCOOOOOO8OOO8OOOOO888888888O88OOOOOOOOCOCCooooooooCo::.. C
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Made with soft by Håkon Nessjøen from http://lunatic.no/img2aschtml.php.

Is a CISO an expert generalist?

CISO = Chief Information Security Officer
The title "Responsible for the Security of the Information System" is prefered in Romance languages. The common abbreviation is RSSI.
Both titles relate to a quite new position in a company: the guy who cares about the security of the information system. Has to organize the work, set up objectives and, most of the time, provide technical knowledge to other IT teams. Has to know a lot about a lot of things to apprehend all situations in the information system. Kind of a generalist guy.

As this is a position I have much respect for (mine!), I was a little puzzled by Anton Chuvakin's post about the myth of an expert generalist, where it is argued that being someone who knows a little about everything is not a good career choice. Later on, Richard Bejtlich also questioned security careers and I came to ask me a fundamental question:

• Am I becoming an expert generalist?

However, I reassured myself quite soon. Yes, the CISO works in all fields of IT security + physical security + management... but there is indeed a speciality in all this. The CISO has to know the information system of the company well enough to be able to answer whether a security practice/project/product is worth it.

In a company, the whole thing security is about is exchanging costly uncertainties for cheaper certainties. And the transition from one to the other has a price. The CISO has his primary skill in examining the benefits and implementing such changes.

While this may seem related to risk management, I think there is a real difference: risk management focuses on producing scenarios and estimations of risks. That is: speculating on the unknown*. This has been largely criticized recently in security blogs.
I prefer to see security as decisions made on known facts: costs, lost hours of work, customers' satisfaction, etc.

So to the question "Am I becoming an expert generalist?" my answer is no. My role is more on management, choices and strategies. And I love it. And I can still technically specialize on whatever field I like better.


*What do you actually know about the probability of a hacker intruding your databases? What do you actually know about the probability of HR data being leaked by mistake? What do you know about the probability of a server hardware crash? Now how do you calculate risks and prioritize them?

EDIT 10/01/2009: See also Richard Bejtlich's article "Risk-Based Security is the Emperor's New Clothes".

When I don't have a DNS

It just happened to me that the DNS of my ISP was down. Under a Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) in a place where I damn needed the web.
In this case, you just have to ensure that you have a replacement DNS server, for instance, the public 4.2.2.4, which works very well so far. Edit the config file /etc/resolv.conf.auto and add the following lines:

nameserver my.usual.dns.ip
nameserver 4.2.2.4

After that, restart the networking service by:

# /etc/init.d/networking restart

and the web works again.

Yahoo! and Microsoft

Yesterday, Microsoft released GPL code, and we now know that there was nothing altruistic in that. Today, they ally with Yahoo! What now?

...

Search on the web is a wicked problem, so one typical methodology is to build multiple attempts of solution to the problem and let them evolve, compare... That was the case with multiple search engines.
Now we will have only two major ones: Google and Microsoft. I don't know if I should rejoice because the evolution has come to an end, or if I should cry because monopoly problems get in the way of solving the websearch problem.

...

Anyway, if Yahoo! ditch BSDs to favor Redmond technologies, they get onto my list of companies to avoid as much as possible.