I actually have a solution that costs exactly $0.01, per employee. It also works on any platform.
What if that platform happens to be a steel grate and you drop the solution?
An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
31–40 of 99 posts
Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
#32The argument that will be made against something like this is "We can't use a product that would let the bad guys see how it works!" I know it sounds ridiculous, but in my limited experience, "Security through Obscurity" is a key feature required by everything related to the (ineffective) methods used to secure the airports in the US. I believe this fact was even alluded to in the original article related to the just…
Big business thinks the same way.
Someone took the time to explain FOSS to a Director at the telco I worked at, and he went on a month-long campaign to eliminate it from the entire company, ranting about security, etc. He didn't want me using Firefox on my desktop, because security.
Most of us tried as hard as we could not to laugh in his face, given the entire data center with 500+ VM's is sitting on Linux, and almost all the hundreds of millions of dollars of network elements run some flavor of linux.
Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
#33The argument that will be made against something like this is "We can't use a product that would let the bad guys see how it works!" I know it sounds ridiculous, but in my limited experience, "Security through Obscurity" is a key feature required by everything related to the (ineffective) methods used to secure the airports in the US. I believe this fact was even alluded to in the original article related to the just…
Security through Obscurity is just not a great way of going about it. NIST notes "System security should not depend on the secrecy of the implementation or its components."[1]
Kerckhoffs's principle is also a relevant read.
As professor Bellovin notes :
"It helps, I think, to go back to Kerckhoffs' second principle, translated as "The system must not require secrecy and can be stolen by the enemy without causing trouble," per http://petitcolas.net/fabien/kerckhoffs/). Kerckhoffs said neither "publish everything" nor "keep everything secret"; rather, he said that the system should still be secure even if the enemy has a copy."
[1] http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-123/SP800-123...
Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
#34I get that it's trying to be funny, but is it really no longer possible to create a website with a single arrow that doesn't have to pull down all this cruft ? window.jQuery || document.write(' ')
Of course it's possible - it's just that no one will take it or the resume of the person who wrote it seriously.
Web app engineers display complexity like peacocks displaying their plumage.
Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
#35I get that it's trying to be funny, but is it really no longer possible to create a website with a single arrow that doesn't have to pull down all this cruft ? window.jQuery || document.write(' ')
Make a thing responsive, people bitch about how many plugins you're using. Make a thing vanilla, people bitch about how it doesn't work on their phone.
Make 300k off a website and people make a competitor to mock the value you delivered. People are stupid and you can't win. They will always try to force everyone to race to the bottom, because if they can't have it why should you?
Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
#36I have a cheaper alternative. Get rid of TSA altogether. Travelling was a whole heck of a lot more fun in 1975. Since then it's been overreaction upon overreaction. Nobody is going to hijack a plane in this day and age because of the simple fact that the passengers will immediately revolt.
The pre-2001 airport security apparatus did a good job of keeping guns off planes, eliminating the most common hijacking scenario. Almost everything since then has been increased hassle for diminishing returns, with the most effective improvement being one of the least visible - hardening the cockpit doors.
Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such an app is widely viewed to be an extremely simple program to write. Writing the app, as anyone who has done any consulting work would know, is often the easiest, least time-intensive part of a project. Anyone saying to themselves, "$47K? I could do it in ten lines of code!" should stick to coding and let the contract procurement folks do their job. (I'm merely the messenger; hate-game disclaimers apply.)
Nail, meet head. That said, 47k still seems crazy high. I've never done Gov't consulting though. One hopes hardware was included in the contract?
I think the contract was just for software, probably in addition to installation, roll-out, training, and support.
Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
#38I have a cheaper alternative. Get rid of TSA altogether. Travelling was a whole heck of a lot more fun in 1975. Since then it's been overreaction upon overreaction. Nobody is going to hijack a plane in this day and age because of the simple fact that the passengers will immediately revolt.
It's been all of one week since a plane was hijacked. http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/29/europe/hijacked-egypt-air-jet/
..and yet airport security didn't stop this.
Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
#39I have a cheaper alternative. Get rid of TSA altogether. Travelling was a whole heck of a lot more fun in 1975. Since then it's been overreaction upon overreaction. Nobody is going to hijack a plane in this day and age because of the simple fact that the passengers will immediately revolt.
It's all security theatre. The TSA has stopped a dangerous person NEVER. I've lived around the world and airport security is bad everywhere. Australia's is terrible, German's is pretty bad, but the worst; the absolutely fucking worst is America's. I knew people who would pay more to fly through Canada to avoid American airports.
Re: An opensource alternative for the TSA’s $300k line assistant
#40This seems like nothing more than bait for HN's irrational nerd rage, so I flagged it.