Cyber Security...CyberWar Is At Our Door

We now know (actually already a year ago in 2017) that a 757 sitting on the tarmac can be weaponized through cyber attack. Trains can be weaponized. We have a problem that needs an answer... yesterday.

Boeing 757

This makes me sad. I was part of a cybersecurity group in the late 90s early 2000s dedicated to bringing business, police and government together on issues of cyber security. We did good work, we made advances.

We decreased the distrust between government and computer experts, "white hat" (good) hackers and law enforcement. Those efforts continue to this day. But I have retired and am onto other ventures and adventures. I did my time. I no longer have to live that frustration and yet today? I find I still am. Only now from a distance.

We tried to warn people on both sides going back twenty years and yet, we are still now in this situation when we had so long ago had warned so many! Our issue back then was in part that corporations paid too little or no attention to actual cyber security issues. Those were the days when it wasn't as big as some of us knew it would eventually be. Just as it is today.

Why didn't CEO's and government listen? Government has special issues that slow things down and for good reason for the most part. But business can and sometimes does move as they wish ,if they wish it, and yet... they mostly have not.

We argued in part back then that corporations weren't even spending 1% of their budget or even of their IT budgets, on cybersecurity issues. When it should have been closer to 10%. That may have been extreme, but in light of today, of reality, was it really? Invest and innovate, or pay later.

IF they had done that, back then? We would not be in the position today that we find ourselves in. And that, is a fact.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's motto of "Move fast and break things" and his explanation of that in 2013: "We want to build our culture and our infrastructures, that we just try to move, you know, one or two clicks faster than, than other companies. And, you know, sometimes we go to fast and we mess up a bunch of stuff and then we have to fix it. And that's cool."

Really Mr. Zuckerberg? Because that actually seems to exemplify a vast misunderstanding of how the internet works. That may be how it worked back in the 90s. Maybe. When security was low and "black hat" type bad actor hackers and criminals were still gearing up, learning how to abuse a good thing. But today you really have to KNOW exactly what you're doing online. Especially when you are responsible for literally billions of people on your platform.

An article came out this week from Axios Codebook about this related to our Congress:

"Only 6 House candidates spent $1,000 on cybersecurity"

"The defining moment in the 2016 election was Russia's breach of the Democratic National Committee. Two years later, McClatchy reports that candidates for Congress are knowingly underspending on cybersecurity — with only 6 spending more than $1,000."

As we've seen, there is also the potential for very bad things to happen IF you... 1) don't know what can happen because you haven't fully planned out the potential for good AND bad things to happen, and 2) you have to fully understand that business as usual as you have planned it out, in order to make money off that platform, off those people, can indeed damage not only those individuals using your platform, but also entire countires.

Because, there are bad actors out there, predators, whose lives are devoted to finding ways, people and platforms to abuse, with no moral or ethical concerns. When you have a platform that large, you also have an oversized responsibility to be not only fully aware of how your platform and your business model can positively AND negatively affect people, but you also have to be better possibly, than you even are capable of.

And that is a serious concern.

Rather than increase their cyber security efforts and budgets smoothly, easily, over the years to more than they thought they needed it (and their cyber people knew they needed but were ignored or given miniscule, fly by night amounts to work with), they could by now have organically prepared over those past years (if not decades) to have spent less money overall. Consider what it cost Sony in their North Korean hack for the film, The Interview.

Rather than the cost now a days as well as having their reputation dragged through the mud and in losing even more money because of their lack of attention and resources and due to such bad actors as China, North Korea and Russia, just to name a few of today's major players.

Why? Capitalism run rampant? Defective corporate thinking? Yes, to be sure. But also a business as usual desire, based in greed and funneling too much money to shareholders and other such types. Rather than putting money into hyper serious concerns that merely weren't a concern to those in power at the time. Not until it was too late.

Maintaining bottom lines where the risk was considered worth it and they could not see that not only was it not worth it, but that risk was far greater than they could be made to understand, or even imagine.

Because the threat wasn't just for that year, or the year after, but in future years. It was the difference between simply installing a piece of software protection, or a method, and having a mindset that evolved over the years to come, to orient the corporation or government department in a certain way.

To see the future, then. To have build a paradigm, a mindset that would endure and evolve over time to protect and defend and protect profits and the American citizen, way of life, and national health. Both economically and emotionally.

Too often companies were saved only through the dedicated and excessive workloads of their computer IT departments. Not because they were there but because they had to make themselves overworked.

Rather than those typically overburdened, over educated, overdedicated IT workers receiving the necessary funding (which seldom happened) as well as confidence from management. The corporate attitude from on high so typically was (and still is):

"We pay them, so do your job!" Rather than "We delved into it, then give them what they needed to DO their job. We compensated them "appropriately." And we have confidence in them as they have gratitude in us for going that extra mile, for them, for us, and for our stock holders, customers, or citizens."

But that isn't the case.

It would be disingenuous for typically lucky management to point and say, "But we didn't have a devastating hack!" While they may not have known what they barely avoided, perhaps too many times. All because of the dedicated overworked efforts of their security IT people and perhaps...just good luck,

Those far too many times, they did have a successful hack against them. All too often, even. It has in fact been the point of many companies, credit card companies that the way they protected their card holders was simply to forgive their having been hacked, and absorb the cost.

Having set aside annually so much loss for fraud and hacks and yet, they still made billions of dollars overall. Simply in part, because they did not put the money and resources into handling things correctly because it seemed to frequently to those who did not understand, at the top, that it was simply money thrown away to protect themselves properly. To research and develop proactively. To overburden their IT shops rather than hire enough people and expend the money necessary to truly protect themselves.

Ignorance. It is the mainstay of business and the political party of business in this country. In all countries.

LUCK is NOT how you win wars. Be it cyber or otherwise. Nor is ignorance. Something we see as a governing body today in our current conservative Republican Trump administration.

We are now beyond that point while Russians and others have already tested our systems and have a good idea what to do if and when they choose to do it. To truly attack, on a massive scale. But again we are still protected by MAD (nuclear weapon Mutually Assured Destruction). Because a massive attack would surely need to lead to a nuclear war. It would have to. And they (Russians, North Korea, etc.) now that.

And so they attack under the wire, under the trigger point, in hitting our social media, oru elections and other things. Some of which we seldom hear about in public due to "national security issues."

And so our primary perceived protection? MAD, still. Physical war when a cyberwar is perpetrated upon us. Does that make you feel all warm and fuzzy and secure? Because, it shouldn't. Look what Russia did and what our response was and has been to cyber attacks on our 2016 and soon (and still) 2018 elections. Pathetic.

To be sure, we are more protected now than we were during the 2016 election or the previous one before it. But that does not say we are safe enough yet, and we do have a lot of work left, costly work even, to get there.

It's time already, time passed twenty years ago when we were first warned.

Stop looking only at profit. It's destroying this country in a counter intuitive paradigm anathema to  the purposely ignorant conservative, corporate, capitalist mind.

Tough beans, people. This, is reality.

Our Internet Today... and Yesterday

Nuts. I'm not 100% loving Facebook, but it's nice nationally and internationally to have a platform from which to easily and at least somewhat usefully do so. To do what? All that Facebook kind of stuff. Obviously.

Graphic from ITPulse

I started on the internet back in the late 80s.

I was involved in it, took classes in it, worked in IT (Internet, intranet technologies and...information technologies) in a variety of ways, jobs, levels and orientations.

It's amazing to see how far we've come. For that matter, how far I've come, as I've retired from IT and now am a full time author and filmmaker with at least ons screenplay in hopefully the right hands in Hollywood.

I even wrote a short sci fi story about America, the internet and media titled, In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear. It is recently available as of June 2018 as an audiobook as well as ebook. It was my first fiction sold to a horror quarterly back in 1990 and is the first story in my book of my older sci fi and horror fiction, Anthology of Evil. I have a sequel coming out of my newer writings, many of which have been published in magazines or anthologies with other authors.

Graphic from Zcorum

This Internet today is simply not what we wanted, in what we're seeing today. Like the Internet of things. Though it has surpassed the imagination of what many of us has conceived. We had wanted an internet free for everyone, where information was free to all... and open.

Much has even disappeared from online, or has become a fee based access situation. Overall, the Internet has benefited us all, if only we can get back some of our original orientation, if only we could counter some of the for profit issues and get back to the betterment of humanity.

At first for us it was, "information is free!" It should be Free! "The Internet is for Humanity!" Not big money! Not big business. Certainly not for Russia to alter our national elections!

Back in the 80s, if someone tried to sell something in the newsgroups back then in the beginning, or the middle, the late 80s, where we had mostly text based newsgroups, FTP, Telnet, Gopher, whatever text based stuff, they were crushed. Ostracized.

When the graphical internet, the World Wide Web, WWW, what came to be known as the internet as the dark parts sunk into the dark web...money started creeping its way in. A few of us pushed to keep it out until (I for one) realized that it was far bigger than us and far too powerful (money's like that) and that it could serve a good purpose. But then would obviously take a darker course. Simply because...it's inevitable.

Eventually I got it, as did others, but it worried me\us.

 I learned, I got educated about it, I took many classes. I worked in IT. First as a technical writer, then deeper and deeper into the mechanics of it all. Which led as it has to, to security. Something I'd been into before at a more physical level.

Graphic from Latest Internet News

I had stumbled into something awesome. Something that led to Internet security people and police as well as intelligence people at all levels and the government. Something I was headed into before. The great Soviet had died but that education and those skills were all still relevant.

Now here we are. We need a place for everyone to use. Not fractured, but cohesively. Not to polarize, but to feel to feed ourselves intellectually and other ways. To share with like, but also unlike minds.

We need this. It protects us. It also attacks us. Sometimes from those we elect or pay to protect us. Openness, transparency. THAT protects us. That and being able to share and openly so.

I don't care if it's Facebook or not. Or as I proposed in my above mentioned story, In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear, where the United Nations builds its own "Facebook" social media platform. Using experts from around the world to build it, all the best minds. It replaces Facebook. Everyone the world over uses it.

Photo from Daily Maverick

So that when any dictator or government shuts its people off from it, the UN pays attention, and immediately sends in moderators, "blue hats", to protect the people and stop more abuse as we've seen so much through the end of the last century and the beginning of this new one.

It became what it could become, as with Facebook or Twitter in the Arab Spring, or other national travesties. I had done my best back in 2011 to support that movement in Egypt and some did use my blog back then for updates to information their government was trying hard to keep them from. It was a hopeful time, that devolved into mediocrity, much as America has with the election of Donald Trump as president.

Before Facebook it was MySpace, which has changed into a music platform. Before that, there were others. Before that there were the BBSs, the Bulletin Board Systems you used a modem to dial your phone and PC up to.

Before that...well, it's been around for a while. This ability to communicate world wide. In the late 1960s when I was in jr. high and had a radiotelegraph license and could run a ham radio. I talked to other countries and wrote it all down as is normal procedure for hamm operations.

Before that it was telephones and before that, the telegraph. Although that technology was by a select few of trained and paid individuals, a kind of subculture grew up around it and telegraph stations across the nation. There are even very interesting books on that culture.

But we don't do that anymore. Though, we kind of do. Don't we? Everything now is recorded and saved, somewhere. And, we need that. For history, for our protection. For our coming together. For humanity growing closer, rather than continuing to take advantage of those less knowledgeable, less powerful, less whatever. But we're seeing humanity growing more apart. Why? We need to work on that, and turn things around, to be sure.

In that way we can make those others and ourselves, more than. Not less. Because as we're seeing, too many are trying to make us all, less than we can be. I'd really prefer to be more, for us ALL to be more than we are. Even if I don't always win. Even if I don't become rich. Even if I can't, have everything.

Graphic from WordlessTech

Just enough really is enough. That alone, would make me happy. For us all to better ourselves and come together. To be more informed, more aware, more proactive. More caring for all others as well as ourselves.

Especially if those around me, are happy too.

Cyberspace - Revisiting One of My 1995 Computer Magazine Articles

In 1995 I wrote an article for a computer rag, a newspaper format computer "magazine". These had sprung up all over the country. Back then in the back of them they would have a list of all the local BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) you could dial up with your phone and modem and visit, and what their orientation was..

I sent this article to several and The I/O Port out of Denver, Colorado bit, publishing my article in one of their 1995 issues. There was a lot of concern back then by companies and management about Internet use by employees. A lot of unreasonable fear and loathing, really. But I'll let the article speak for itself.

Here it is in all its glory. In hindsight, it now has a rather humorous historical significance for us to enjoy. It also gives us today, especially those of us too young to have been alive or active online back then, to catch a glimpse of what it was like in those early, perhaps or perhaps not...halcyon days through the birth pains of... The Internet.

Cyberspace

by [and under an alias to] JZ Murdock

jzmurdock@cyberspace.com

Contract Technical Writer/Systems Consultant
WWW Home Page:

http//www.cyberspace.com:80/~jzmurdock/

Call it what you will: the “Internet” (with parental thanks to Mil-Net and universities around the world), the “I-Way” (thanks, Time magazine), the “Information Superhighway”, “Information Supermarket”; whatever you call it, “Cyberspace” (thank you William Gibson) is still the only way to experience the “Global Village” (finally, thank you, Marshall McLuhan).

Al Gore may not be far off when he claimed that the telecommunications industry will be the foremost export and the world's No. 1 business by the year 2000. Vice-President Gore's perception in Infrastructure for the Global Village (Scientific American, Sept. 1991), was:

"When millions of individuals process information simultaneously, the aggregate result is incredibly accurate and efficient decisions."

Imagine, the ability of millions of users to connect to the same 'Inter'-net (work) at the same time and actually work together. Need I say more? The Internet, Cyberspace, is here to stay. So now that it is here, what do we do with it?

As a Systems Consultant, companies have asked my opinion on giving their employees access to the Internet in the workplace. It would seem that they have heard rumors of how this access can be abused. They are therefore somewhat reticent to supply this access. My advice? If it is valuable to the company, give it to your employees. At least give it to the employees you know and trust well enough, who are the self-starters, the dedicated individuals, the trustworthy ones.

Still, if this does worry you, perhaps you should also see to it that these employees have Internet access from home. In my experience, it has been the individuals newest to the Internet (particularly the World Wide Web, or WWW), who are the most frequent abusers of corporate Cyberspace privileges. The [cyberpace] old hands, chiefly the ones linked up from home, tend to do any playing from there. Where it is after all much safer and the freedom of action, more pervasive.

Since anyone can read in any variety of traditional paper magazines, or the newer online electronic 'zines', all the things possible in Cyberspace, allow me to just cruise through exactly what it is that I do within it.

I work as a Contract Technical Communicator (AKA, a Tech Writer) for Telecommunications companies, as well as others. Essentially, a loaded pen (or keyboard), for hire. I constantly make use of the Internet. Both the open global one, that most people know of and hear about, and the closed, internal/corporate ones. Most of these corporate internets [lower case “i”], are maintained behind secure 'firewalls,' unavailable to the general public.

I use these networks both for information and product gathering (graphic files, utilities, etc.), and of course, sightseeing. Either way I am what you could call a CyberSurfer, as I do “surf” the Internet [capital “I”]. Both of which are terms now familiar to the computing public.

This dual behavior of exploration and research and product gathering are apparently a bane to corporations as it simultaneously serves both corporation and employee. That is, while one searches the Internet—on authorized Company Time, one tends also to find things interesting on personal level.

Uh, oh: "Danger! Will Robinson!" scream the corporate time watchers.

The personally interesting Internet sites I find while at work are the sites that I simply make note of. I save interesting web page locations (URLs) either to the Hotlist in Mosaic, the Bookmark in Netscape, or I simply jot it down, typically on (oh, no!) Post It notes for future reference, though only for home.

After all, I AM being paid far too much to be misusing company time. Besides, it's just not worth getting caught when I can do far more and get far more in-depth into, whatever I am currently pursuing, while relaxed at home.

Conversely and interestingly (and ironically) enough, while searching Cyberpace on my personal time I even more frequently run across various web sites, web pages, other resources and individuals that could be in valuable for WHILE I AM AT WORK!

The point there is that while one cannot make use of one's time at work for personal use, one does end up supplementing work with whatever is learned at home. A benefit I might add, that is at no extra cost to my employers. I have spent many hours at home, searching the Internet for work related information, merely out of habit, before I even realized what I was doing.

Needless to say, I don't bother trying to extract pay for this from my employers. However, don't lose heart. This habit CAN make your work (and you) look better in the end. Whatever you learn on the Internet, whatever resources you do happen to uncover, will inevitably turn out to be valuable to you at some point in the future.

You may now very well be asking, "Okay friend, what ARE some of these web sites, web pages, individuals and other resources that could be so invaluable?" Okay, I'm game. So here are a few of my favorites, both for work and play (and perhaps a little in between). I'll let you make up your mind as to which would be useful for which since, as I have already pointed out, the definitive line between is light gray, if not invisible:

1. HTML Documentation -Table of Contents -. http://www.utirc.utoronto.ca/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/htmlindex html [invaluable online help for writing web pages)
2. Digital Planet – http://www.dlgiplanet.com:80/DP/ [a company hired by film companies and others to display their products, great fun and some film clips and contests]
3. Visioneering Research Laboratory, Inc. http://www.vrl.com/ [check it out and you'll see the light]
4. The Smithsonian Institution HomePage – http://www.si.sgi,com/sglstart.htm [Everyone has to have been here at least once. Much like the Louvre in Paris, you at least have to be able to say you've been there]
5. The Emerald Web - http:// www.cyberspace.con/bobk/ [Interesting stuff in and around Seattle, and interesting Internet stuff']
6. Charles Deemer's Home Page - http:// www.teleport.com/-cdeemer/ [valuable writer's resource, wherein you can find links to the Internet Directory of Published Writers; the ScreenWriter's Resource Page and others]

7. The Equitation Station http://www,cyberspace.com-jzmurdock/cairn.htm [Horse related links, esp. for those interest­ed in Arabian Show horses, as well as any kind of horsemanship]
8. The Central Intelligence Agency http://www.odci.gov/ ['nuff said, and some handy world facts]
9. And finally, AWHP, my personal home page - http://www,cyberspace.com/ -jzmurdock/maingrph,html [With a rather eclectic collection of information and links ranging from movie magic, to weird relationships of writing such as fiction and hypertext novels, and links to an engine that serves up creative ways of complaining about someone].

All of this cruisin' and abusin' makes my work and my writing better in two ways.

Primarily, the Internet gives me access to a huge variety of discourse and to experts from whatever field I may require information. Typically, this is by way of the Usenet Newsgroups, or World Wide Web pages. One page can lead to another and you may find your answers (and yourself) at times in the of strangest of places.

There are many people who will be quite happy to be your personal expert-on-line. This is especially true on the newsgroups; web pages seem to be setup to some degree, to save the individual time from scouring the Internet themselves. Lets face it, it IS quite flattering to be someone's expert; especially, when it is as anonymous and responsibility free as the Internet can be. [both a good thing and as we eventually saw, a bad, if not very bad thing]

But please, all you future Cyber-Researchers, do consider validating any information you get off the Internet from at least one or (even better) two other sources just to be sure. This does not however make your initial expert any less valuable. Sometimes your expert will steer you into the right direction to begin with. And that in itself can be invaluable.

As an example, I was in an artists' newsgroup back in 1990. Someone asked a question about the composition of a specific artist's oil paint. I believe it was umbra tempura, and they mentioned a specific brand. The most interesting response was from a gentleman working at NASA. He wrote in-depth about its composition, down to the molecular level.

He also included a short discourse on the history of tempuras, their usage by the masters and spoke of the various ingredients used in these paints (as artists used to make their own oil paints by hand). He went onto explain the progress of tempura paints through history, including the typical usage of ground eggshells. In closing, this expert from NASA went on to refer to the practice by another master, of grinding down precious gems (as was done in the varnishes of Stradivarius).

The second thing the Internet allows me to do, is to enrich my view on life. One can learn and experience vast amounts of things (some you may want to know about, some maybe you won't), by simply hopping around the Internet universe (and who will be the first to suddenly realize that they have left the Internet and are now on some alien [extraterrestrial's] web surfer's home page?).

This hopping around was something I used to do in the mid and late 1980's at the Internet's original text based level. It is now something that I do using my preferred web browser, which happens to be Netscape's 32 bit version browser. Speaking of which, I am running a Pentium 60 machine with 16 megabytes of memory and a 32 bit OS,which is now my favored Microsoft Windows95 (due out to the public this mid to late-August).

On this note, I would suggest as fast a machine as possible, with as much memory as you can get and plenty of available disk space for optimal performance.

So where does this all lead one? Well, all of this eventually leads one to develop and maintain a web page of one's own. After all, once others have shared of their knowledge, isn't it only fair that in some small way, this effort is repaid? Besides, part of Cyberspace and the whole Global Village concept is sharing information, giving some of your time to others and thus finding yourself truly 'Networking': functionally, literally, and metaphorically.

Don't worry though. You simply begin sharing your knowledge without even realizing it Mostly because it it pleasurable. Besides, having a web page tends to keep you from spending so much time 'surfing,' not to mention and most importantly, because people will now begin coming to you.

Understand that this of course means you must learn HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language), the embedded formatting code that generates Web Pages, at least to some minor degree. Or have a friend that does, anyway. Once again, don't worry. Web page writing in HTML comes pretty easily. Just be prepared. Web pages allow you to put on-line: your views, your hobbies and interests, pictures of your favorite plant, plane or person, a resume, even a philosophy.

Web pages allow you to meet others of similar viewpoints, as well as the dissimilar ones. These thorns-in-your-side types, actually help you to sharpen your original views to crystal clarity. And all without leaving your own home web page. It is a way to enrich your views, your beliefs, your personality, and possibly your career—with little or no effort at all. And finally, it can just be fun.

Cyberspace is not just a conglomeration of points-in-space, rather it is the sum total of a vast melange of the human experiences that are available on-line; willing and waiting for anyone to experience. Something that is nearly a required experience for the informed global citizen in today's electronic world.

So, is the Internet something so new and unique that it should be spoken of in hushed tones of awe? Is it something we should be wary of, perhaps attempt to avoid, to protect ourselves from, possibly at all costs? Is it as some claim, total anarchy and therefore dangerous to our society? Is the Internet in its infancy still and therefore something to be avoided until it has “grown up'? Is it an infant holding an informational nuclear weapon? Is there some kind, any kind of a plan, a rhyme, or a reason to it? Can we trust it?

Sherman Woo, is a Researcher and Lecturer at U S West Communication's Technologies Division and a main inspiration of their own Global Village project. He is also a fellow ex team member from a now disbanded, ten person team of the thirteen state wide US West Technologies project I worked on. Recently, he published an article in a telecommunications trade journal which I was happy peripherally to assist him on.

Speaking in this article about the Internet, the Information Superhighway, and the Global Village, Mr. Woo said:

"Skeptics argue that there is no evidence of public demand and that there are very few, if any, information products to speak of, and that there isn't a real plan. But did you really expect it to be different, here—on the frontier?"

Well—

Fear it?

No.

Be amazed by it?

For now.

But avoid it?

Not on your life.

From Page 24 of Denver's The I/O Port - September 1995

Digital Dilettantes and Their Fundemental Misunderstanding

I was once one of those believers in “Information should be free." That was back at the beginning of the public internet in the 1980s before the web took hold in the 90s. But the issue really wasn’t not paying people for their efforts, their art, their genius. It was about what can be free being free. 

Information, should be free. Information that IS free, should be made free. Old information surely. Public information, absolutely, and so on. Government for one should be supplying citizens with all the information possible. 

An informed citizenry is far more productive for a nation, for the world, than an ignorant citizenry. 

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.

The current spate of dilettantes crying for “free information for all” have diluted the original meaning of the original intent of the phrase. To quote, as friend and fellow author Kurt Giambastiani put it in his blog recently, "Talent Just Wants to be Free: The Idiocy of Digital Dilettantes", there is a problem with thinking that all information should be free. Obviously, artists deserve to be rewarded for their talents and efforts.

Please feel free to go check out Kurt's blog that spawned my blog here as well as his comments there on this blog. Kurt always has something interesting on his blog. He offered this as an example of part of the problem with this information should be free issue: Income for US authors falls below federal poverty line – survey.

If information is made freely available to the general public, it will enhance the human experience overall. Certainly Public Domain works should be freely disseminated to the public, world wide. The downside is that some ignorant people will take in some of this information and yet remain ignorant as we have seen so much of lately. 

At that point those people are stumbling into the realm of stupidity in choosing to accept bad information merely to support bad information they already have. However, if we offer as much good and accurate information as possible, eventually the truth tends to win out. 

Supplying information leads into the same issues we see in the services industry. 

Why for instance does a mixed drink cost more at a bar than at home? Because you’re paying for more than the ingredients. You're also paying for the venue, the mixologist’s skills and knowledge, the server serving you so you don’t have to serve yourself, others of the public congregating in the venue, perhaps music or talent that is supplied, and so on.

So it is with supplying information to the public. 

Someone needs to package, store and disseminate it. The infrastructure leading to accessing that information needs to be monitored and maintenanced. Which is why I think the internet is no different than our roads and bridges and should be available to all to utilize them. If the government needs to pay (through us) to have and make information freely available online, then so be it.

Someone has to do it, and it needs to be done.

That is not to say that new information that has a cost. especially for individuals, musicians and artists, people who deserve to eat and live a good life while producing their works, should have their works devalued. Of course their works shouldn't be free and they should be appropriately compensated for the quality of their time and works.

The issue isn’t so much that these digital dilettantes are wrong, as they are misguided and perhaps being cheap bastards too. 

YES, information should be free and freely available to all. IF it’s free to begin with. At some point then down the long road of time it should become free. Free as in public domain. A concept I think we should retain after the death of the artist and perhaps that of their immediate family. As for the succeeding members of their family retaining rights, there are currently laws in place about that as well as their ability to retain those rights and so on.

We do need to push information out to all humans everywhere who want it and it does therefore need to be free. 

There are also other important considerations as has so kindly and eloquently (as always) pointed out by Kurt Giambastiani. 

Still, people need information to live, to eat, to survive. Artists and content producers do need to live and eat and survive. We just need to consider the context and not gloss over the issues like ignorant and greedy dilettantes.

Where's all the information on the internet?

I wonder.

I've been trying to research something that happened years ago back in 1974, in Tacoma, Washington, and I'm having a lot of trouble with it. Like, is someone locking down all the online info? Sure there is still a lot out there, but it seems to me like there was more out a while back. Maybe there even is more out there now, but I used to be able to access more types than I can now.

All this talk about security and hackers, who are indeed out there but, how much is it a selling point to lock things down so we can be charged for it, for security reasons, for access, for info, for knowledge, for power?

He who holds the information holds the power. Is this a trend? Should we be worried? Is it too late?

I've been involved in many levels of security and technology in my life. I've been in the military, had a secret clearance, worked in keeping systems secure, learning about it, networking, I've been in rooms with people, talked to them, asked them questions, people who most of you will only ever see on TV. I see this from a variety of perspectives. Information should be free to people to better humanity. We need secrecy in some cases for purposes of national security. These both are true.

There is an old saying in the IT (information technologies or internet technologies if you like) world that you can have complete business or you can have complete security, but you can't fully have both. It's a continuing balancing act that by necessity slides from one end to the other, hopefully never being too far to one side or the other that in the end, that is dangerous for both endeavors.

Back in the 80s I was on newsgroups (remember those, pre WWW? before the "graphical internet"). I was one of those screaming that information should be free, the internet should remain free and open, knowledge should be free for the masses around the world. Well, to some respect, I've come around. Artists should be paid, obviously. So should writers, musicians, programmers, even software companies and certainly retail businesses but that's a bit different and not at all what I'm talking about today. Though that's all gotten a bit out of hand in some ways, too.

They started charging in the beginning for access to the internet (AOL, Compuserve, etc.). The web started up and took over and then ecommerce started up, which we were very against.

"Free the Internet", we cried. "Keep the internet free." Or more correctly, make it free. No someone has to pay for it, obviously, but free to just sit and use. As free as our roads and highways. Paid by most, used by all.

The internet should be free, as it was at the universities where we originally were accessing it from.

Well, we finally lost that battle, but then we saw the cool things coming up from it. There's some good stuff out there, buying online, saving our infrastructure (roads, gas, working from home, etc.), though now they don't want to support our digital infrastructure and make access to the internet free, or fast, or even, consistent. Or safe, but that's another matter.

And what about this "singularity" that could spring up, a sentient AI (artificial intelligence) that could one day come into being? We would have no control whatsoever over it. And it could do a lot, to everyone. Culled from so much of the nasty out there, what if it found God? God help us.

Fantasy? Thirty years ago, the internet was fantasy.

Now I’m starting to think that after all, we may have been right to start with. "Keep the internet free, information should be free." Certainly public information should be free, but not only free, but free to access. And, it's not. Now a days the term "free" has come to be relative. "Free" as long as you pay for it.

My brother had this to say recently:

Searches are getting weird. Things I used to be able to do easily are now almost impossible. Google used to put forth thousands of responses now I'm often getting just one or two. And some of these are of known info. Also, it's suddenly gotten stupid when it comes to simple misspelled words. For instance, before if I put in the phrase "Sitiacum Puyalup Indian Tribe", it would easily pick up on what I was looking for by associating the words. I could get everything wrong and it would still figure it out. Now it's barely picking these up at all. Sometimes not at all. Hopefully this is some oversight that will be corrected soon. I can't believe that they will let their system slide backwards like this. It creeps me out that I'm thinking about having to talk to actual humans to get info. What is this the 1980's?!

That last part was obviously in jest, but he has a point. Lately, and with my current situation where I'm trying to research something and can't find any useful info unless I pay for it, pay for a service that may turn up nothing and yet, they will still charge me; it's really making me wonder if we weren't right after all.

Knowledge does need to be free, for whoever wants it. Maybe though, we do still need to mature a bit more, maybe. Maybe not.

I just keep remembering "1984" and "Brave New World", and others.

As concepts remain, history and technology progress. That is, as we have an ideal remaining constant ("information should be free"), the world changes around that, and what that originally meant may change with it, and so we need to keep up. Our government, our elected officials need to keep up. Not to ground us down under history, or grind us under status quo, blinding us with Zeitgeist, but to maintain our ideals by evolving our processes to keep us at a qualitative level and to advance that, to progress us to where we never thought we could go.

We  should be getting smarter, with more leisure time but we are getting dumber, with less time for ourselves and more time devoted to the God Corporation, or Money. We don't need money so much, as we need our resources, clean and well thought of. Barring that we do need our money so we can do for ourselves. But we've been cut off from both.

We need apparently now, to justify and indemnify those who should remain or be responsible to see, that what should be, should be. And will be.

Decide where you should be in life and wonder why you aren't there. And vote with your ballots, your mouths, words, thoughts and actions. Be good to one another but strive for better. Set an ideal and try to achieve it in any small or big way you deem fit.

"Of peace on earth, good will to men (and women)." - "I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day" lyrics
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 1867)

Remember too, good will to yourself.

Peace.