Ralph Grabowski writes a great free e-newsletter on CAD which I subscribe to. His latest issue has an interesting observation on CAD companies and the green movement, which I have reproduced here. You can get his newsletter atr www.upfontezine.com
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Green is the marketing buzzword currently adopted by some CAD vendors. Earlier this month, one told me that they are also "going green." Why now? So that they wouldn't be seen as the last ones getting on the bandwagon. "Do you get a lot of feedback from your readers about green?" they asked me.
Zip.
The only reason some people might care about green, I explained, is to make money from it. Or to save money. Otherwise, it's a non-issue for most of the population.
(We got a new washing machine last week. It is energy efficient. Compared to the old one whose transmission broke down, the new one will pay for itself in less than 12 years through lower electrical, natural gas, and water bills. I'm excited.)
If green is unimportant to most people, then what is? To learn the answer, fly over your city, any city, late at night -- after doubling the cost of your airfare by paying carbon-offsets to someone to run an organization that might pay someone else to plant some trees that you can't be bothered planting yourself.
...all those streetlights illuminating sparsely-traveled roads. (When I see the thousands, millions of streetlight bulbs glowing orange, it makes me want to become a lightbulb manufacturer.) There is your answer: Security is more important than green.
Bruce Schneier writes: "The lack of a security mindset explains a lot of bad security out there: voting machines, electronic payment cards, medical devices, ID cards, internet protocols. The designers are so busy making these systems work that they don't stop to notice how they might fail or be made to fail, and then how those failures might be exploited."
The Autodesks, Dassaults, UGSs, and PTCs could consider adding security design assistants to their software. I wonder how hard that might be, because security involves thinking wrong in order to get it right.
Link: Inside the Twisted Mind of the Security Professional http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/03/securitymatters_0320
