Pass me the tin foil.
I agree with Volker. Computers aren't to be trusted as far as you can
throw an IBM System 36 with two hard disks installed.
As long as it does what I would like it to do most of the time then I'm
fairly happy.
Personally I'd like to know more about computers but I don't want to
know enough that I could ever be asked to snoop on people like we
suspect the NSA could be snooping on us.
I've read my history, all be it the Fox TV version.
I'm afraid if I was Oppenheimer it would have been 'game over' for me.
Enjoy your weekend.
Cheers Don
Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
I guess the only way to be sure is to build the machine code from scratch..
That would be a prerequisite, but by itself, a waste of time. What
hardware is that machine code gonna run on? Do you know how much BIOS
software is in your box? Do you know it's stored on easily erasable
memory? What a temper temptation... you think the spammers and spyware
makers can resist? The NSA? Then move to the hardware itself. Any chance
of verifying the circuitry with which the CPU's instruction set is
implemented? With all the copyright mafia talking about "trusted
computing", meaning having a CPU which successfully hides the mafia's
secret software, the spooks must be rubbing their hands laughing all the
way. Far fetched? Can you verify the CPU executes instructions as the
manual says? Historically many cases exist where this isn't the case,
but that was accidental. How many million transistors on a chip now? So,
where do you start?
Volker
--
Don Gould
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