back to article If the Internet of Things scares you now: Cisco's CEO is bent on hooking up robots, everything

On Monday, in his first major speech as new CEO of Cisco, Chuck Robbins was clear about one thing. He pretty much wants everything on Earth to be networked and connected together. Big shock, right? Network hardware and software giant wants to sell more network hardware and software. Cisco wants the Internet of Things to be …

  1. John Robson Silver badge

    Because rushing a project

    Always means that testing ans security get given as much time as they need... right...

    1. bottled leetsauce

      Re: Because rushing a project

      Indeed... he almost sounds like a madman... in his own words:

      "If someone says they need 30 days to complete a project, I'll say they've got three weeks. They say 18 months, I say 9. I dunno why – it just feels good. We have to move faster, we have to simplify things, and be clear about what we're doing. It’s hard being simple in this complex world."

      He himself admits he does not know why he is acting on these compulsions for speed and excessive simplicity. All that he will say is that he is doing it because it feels good. I believe in the 1980s and the 1990s this sort of thing went by the label "power trippin"?

      I am glad that he was so transparent during the interview about something as unrelated as project deadlines... as his replies may give us some insight into what is going on in his head when it comes to the Internet of Things.

      In the age of ISIS, to be in a hurry to expose power plants to even greater levels of remote monitoring and control... LOL... what justification is there for this?? Is it laziness? The current human operators are bored by their job?? Or is it because their robot replacements might have greater accuracy and speed? If it ain't broke, don't fix it!! :)

      Off to my right I see another Register headline which reads:

      "Search engine can find the VPN that NUCLEAR PLANT boss DIDN'T KNOW was there"

      This is so absolutely pathetic... I wager that even a child could make more sensible decisions

      sigh... well, all I can say is I hope cooler heads prevail. :)

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: Because rushing a project

        it just feels good

        "I'm a fucking psycho who gets high on doing meaningless aggravating shit. INCREASE MY SALARY, FA**OTS!"

  2. M7S

    "highly secure remote access and monitoring"

    Cisco got a particular mention in last night's Panorama interview with Mr. Snowden, and the above statement is true. Alas, however, not just for the intended users.

  3. KingStephen

    "If someone says they need 30 days to complete a project, I'll say they've got three weeks."

    "I dunno why – it just feels good". That would be the same good feeling experienced by the people responsible for our shitty routers, the babycams with hard-coded passwords and the iPhones that could be crashed with a text message.

    In a speech that tells us how security won't be a problem because of other amazing software capabilities.

    Yeah, right.

  4. ContentsMayVary

    Just need to hook up SkyNet and the job's a goodun.

    1. bottled leetsauce
  5. NanoMeter

    We will probably see a lot of horror stories on IoT in the future

    My apartment will not be in any of them.

  6. hatti

    Great!

    My toaster will finally be able to answer the phone while I'm busy watching 'Bake Off'

  7. Mark 85

    Living in an Ivory Tower?

    He's got his head in the clouds or maybe it's somewhere else. In reality, there's no such critter as "totally secure". This will not turn out well.

  8. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Gimp

    Gonna be a clusterfuck of ISIS dimensions in the technosphere

    "Everything we build will be programmable; everything in the data center is going to be converged. And we have to drive security to provide analytics of the network in motion, showing what's happening at a given moment in time. ... I'm going to be ruthless. I feel we have to move faster, faster, faster."

    Yeah... reminds me of Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades

    "What part of this don't you understand? If two blades is good, and three blades is better, obviously five blades would make us the best fucking razor that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the razor game by clinging to the two-blade industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, five blades is the biggest chance of all. Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to invent—I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick two more blades in there. I don't care how. Make the blades so thin they're invisible. Put some on the handle. I don't care if they have to cram the fifth blade in perpendicular to the other four, just do it!"

    Also:

    The slight paranoia that there's six people in a garage leveraging technology that's going to disrupt my business, and I don’t know who they are nor where they are.

    The solution being to take out a few meaningless patents and retain an "IP" laywer in Texas.

  9. AdamWill

    "It's machines learning the behavior of other machines [to ensure security]"

    Oh, good, nothing could possibly go wrong there, then. And it'll be really easy to audit.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Mushroom

      It's like WOPR running Joshua OS, only successfully

      1) Rare extra-important maintenance processes will be seen as "intrusion" and interdicted. Plants exploding because "ACCESS DENIED"? Yes we can!

      2) Disruptive maintenance to preclude catastrophic outcomes will be seen as "intrusion" and interdicted. ICBMs launched because "YOU CANNOT PULL THE PLUG NOW"? Yes we can!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Does anyone still read (or remember) The Mythical Man Month?

    Thirty days is not the same as three weeks. Maybe he's planning to fix it by throwing more people at the job? No, thought not.

    Overview:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

    Full download:

    https://archive.org/details/mythicalmanmonth00fred

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Does anyone still read (or remember) The Mythical Man Month?

      I think it's printed on toilet paper in MBA factories.

  11. ecofeco Silver badge

    Skynet

    Did none of these morons ever see Terminator?

  12. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Traffic analysis to spy errant behaviour?

    Yeah right. What if said traffic is hidden inside a VPN tunnel? By the time it takes to notify a meatsack about the errant traffic, it'll be too late to stop the nuclear reactor from SCRAMming by itself, or start a meltdown...

    Keep in mind traffic will be monitored by computer, but it'll take a human (or team of humans [meatsacks]) to respond to the threat notification and do something about it. Bonus points if attacks are done just after New Years' Eve when world+dog is drunk/passed out/is NAAFI, or at any other times when human reaction time will be very slow and uncoordinated.

    I still say IoT is a load of bollocks. Put the IoT behind a proper firewall with controlled external access to said IoT gadgetry, that way you can cut attacks down, and be notified by the firewall itself should there be an increase of SSH attacks (or the such).

    But in the end any damager worth his/her salt will just decree to have IoT talk directly to the 'net and hope for the best. And Skynet will be born.

    Great times.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Just Google Skynet - its there

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    everything must converge

    From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_That_Rises_Must_Converge

    "Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge."

    Oh, wait, sorry ... robots.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like