The European Computer Driving Licence

Recently, on channel 9 I viewed Dan Applemans Video on Security and one of his points stuck home and that was about education.

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=17363

(by the way more non-MS people is fine by me!)

'The more people we teach about computers and security the better it will be for us all'. As Eagle so rightly put it on the same thread, "... we are only as strong as our weekest link".

I had read on ZDNET.co.uk sometime ago about the European Union introducing a 'Driving Licence' which is an 'internationally recognised qualification which enables people to demonstrate their competence in computer skills'

http://www.ecdl.co.uk/ecdl.php?style=scn

So this led me to think, should individuals have to pass a computer driving test before they can use a computer unsupervised, in much the same fashion as we already do with cars?

I'm beginning to believe as computing does become more complex, this wouldn't be such a bad idea? or is it just overkill?

How would you feel as an IT professional that someday in the future you may have to get one of these licences to 'continue' to do your job? Would it come down to that?

Allot to debate, should be interesting to see your views ...

-Sabot

P.S. Keskos, ManicKernel, Karim, Manip, et al, lets  try and avoid turning this thread into mush please, many thanks.

Well my sister who has been using computers and the internet for over three years needed the concept of drag-drop explained to her earlier..

So I wouldn't be against this but it is frankly unenforceable. If you MADE people get qualified it would add to the cost of owning/using a computer and put it even further out of reach of the poorest group of society.

I think we come back to schooling and making such courses accessible to everyone.
 
In *MY* opinion everyone at school should get a qualification to say 'I know the basics about using a modern computer'. This should be something employers are looking for and even ISPs suggesting be achieved.

Maths + Science + English + Computing 101

Material 

The Internet
- Usage
- - Browsing
- - Shopping
- - E-Mail

- Keeping Safe
- - Common Scams
- - Personal Information

- Keeping Secure
- - Firewall
- - Patches
- - Anti-Virus

Word Processors
- Usage

SpreadSheets
- Usage

Sabot wrote:

Recently, on channel 9 I viewed Dan Applemans Video on Security and one of his points stuck home and that was about education.

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=17363

(by the way more non-MS people is fine by me!)

'The more people we teach about computers and security the better it will be for us all'. As Eagle so rightly put it on the same thread, "... we are only as strong as our weekest link".

I had read on ZDNET.co.uk sometime ago about the European Union introducing a 'Driving Licence' which is an 'internationally recognised qualification which enables people to demonstrate their competence in computer skills'

http://www.ecdl.co.uk/ecdl.php?style=scn

So this led me to think, should individuals have to pass a computer driving test before they can use a computer unsupervised, in much the same fashion as we already do with cars?

I'm beginning to believe as computing does become more complex, this wouldn't be such a bad idea? or is it just overkill?

How would you feel as an IT professional that someday in the future you may have to get one of these licences to 'continue' to do your job? Would it come down to that?

Allot to debate, should be interesting to see your views ...

-Sabot

P.S. Keskos, ManicKernel, Karim, Manip, et al, lets  try and avoid turning this thread into mush please, many thanks.

I see your point, but I think computer programmers also share some responsibility here. Computers are still not easy to use. Many people still struggle for using them, they don't understand many of the concepts.

For example, many of the viruses spread  through email, and the fundemental reason for that was the spoofed from email address. We should first blame people who designed the email protocol, not people who use them, beause naturally when you learn how to use email program, nobody tells you that from means nothing actually because it can be spoofed. They say from means the person who send you that message.

I don't think computers are overly complex to require a license, but security is something lacking on the internet. People still can scan ports for malicious reasons, they can DDoS sites, computers and so on. We don't have solutions to these problems, because initially nobody thought about security. So users bear some responsibility, but equally engineers and programmers bear the same responsibility.

Parents should be required to have a license before having a child.

 

Look at poor Alex here, early childhood traumas have left him with so many needs that will never be fulfilled.  Can anybody help him?

eagle wrote:

Parents should be required to have a license before having a child. 

Look at poor Alex here, early childhood traumas have left him with so many needs that will never be fulfilled.  Can anybody help him?

I'm sorry to tell you this eagle, but he has gone past the point of no return. [Loads Shotgun]

Sabot wrote:

P.S. Keskos, ManicKernel, Karim, Manip, et al, lets  try and avoid turning this thread into mush please, many thanks.

Sabot, please remove me from that list in the future Oh Add egle instead.

eagle wrote:

Parents should be required to have a license before having a child.   Look at poor Alex here, early childhood traumas have left him with so many needs that will never be fulfilled.  Can anybody help him?

Manip wrote:

eagle wrote:Parents should be required to have a license before having a child.  Look at poor Alex here, early childhood traumas have left him with so many needs that will never be fulfilled.  Can anybody help him?

I'm sorry to tell you this eagle, but he has gone past the point of no return. [Loads Shotgun]

You can judge better than me though.

Oops, there goes another thread – keskoosed!

KesKos, you can't really blame programmers or system designers for the ills of IT. I believe that no one was more surprised by the popularity of the Internet then those in IT. Lets be honest, the Internet was truly never design to handle the amount of users it currently has. Narrow sighted? Perhaps, but I believe that the Internet will be replaced by another Internet in our life time, and it will be a rapid evolution, more of a scramble!

Manip, I think that present tests are missing a fundamental and that is that technological advancement proceeds at a pace and therefore it is important that individuals keep themselves apprised of the changes that will affect their 'cyber' lives, for want of a better phrase. In Britain, I believe that informing us of changes that we should need to know of such as security patches and virus threats et al should be the task of an independent standards agency similar to OFCOM that has no affiliation with a profit making organisation, that’s has the power of law to promote and protect. Deep stuff …

 

A final thought, should this be an International body? Or still governed by nation states?

 

-Sabot

 

P.S Eagle … gggrrrrrrr, stop that ‘Keskossing’ right now or I’ll get all ‘East-End’ on ya! :o)

 

To get this thread back on-track, I’d like to add that computer competence will not be an issue in another ten years time when the young people who have grown-up with computers become the workforce.

Eagle good point and I would love to agree, but I'm afraid I can not, simply because there are so many in our world and society that are not so advantaged and to prevent the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' from widening governance and standardisation are required, this will present a clear path for the 'hand-up' that in so many cases is wanted.

So am I a lefty? Who could say, but you could argue that the greater the amount of educated people, the greater the competition, the more competition, the healthier the economy.

If you would like to read a paper by Pat Helland called 'Building Metropolis' I believe he puts the present state of affairs acutely into context but from a technological point of view rather than social but I think you can gleem enough of my point on the direction that we all must go.

-Sabot

eagle wrote:

To get this thread back on-track, I’d like to add that computer competence will not be an issue in another ten years time when the young people who have grown-up with computers become the workforce.

I don't agree. People that don't take A level I.T. are under-qualified for what I would like and that is, I'm sad to say, the majority.

Current education is running about five years behind, if we still lived in the Windows 95 / Clippy time it would be wonderful but we don't.

As far as the "younger generation" I find it interesting that colleges and universities have to deal with a major problem each fall as students return to campus networks with machines infected with whatever the current virus menu proffers. And these are the cream of our "younger generation". Don't know about licensing as such, but I do believe any corporate environment should implement some sort of filtering in their HR system to qualify applicants as far as computer expertise adequate for the job being sought. Unfortunately the one I am in does not, and it is a source of endless frustration.

Dónde quiere usted ir hoy?

 

I have witnessed very young Mexicans who live in tin shacks on the side of a mountain sit down at a computer in groups of four and IM a friend in el Norte.

I would suggest that this is the exception and not the rule Eagle. Granted that technology turns up in a mirad of unexpected places but a great many people do not have access to a phone, let alone a computer and a modem, I do however agree that this will not always be the case.

Sabot wrote:

KesKos, you can't really blame programmers or system designers for the ills of IT. I believe that no one was more surprised by the popularity of the Internet then those in IT. Lets be honest, the Internet was truly never design to handle the amount of users it currently has. Narrow sighted? Perhaps, but I believe that the Internet will be replaced by another Internet in our life time, and it will be a rapid evolution, more of a scramble!

Yeah, but when you design something destined to fail, you can't blame the users entirely either. When you write a network program, you can't just say you are going to omit all the errors. You have to figure out how to recover from those errors. If you write a program which doesn't recover from the errors properly, you can't say users should learn what error messages may mean and how to fix them. It is you, engineers who are supposed to figure that out.

Internet is not expected to scale to this number of users, but once it become obvious nobody did anything to change it either. We are yet to migrate to Ipv6 and the prediction is that we are not going to move yet.

Keskos wrote:

Internet is not expected to scale to this number of users, but once it become obvious nobody did anything to change it either. We are yet to migrate to Ipv6 and the prediction is that we are not going to move yet.

We might never move to IPv6, we might simply skip it and go for IPv9 from the get-go. Seems like a good idea to me too.. while we are rebuilding the internet, might have well rebuild it as best we can.

Keskos, I don't think it's a question of blame, more of a case of didn't quite predict. This is no-ones fault, it just happened. The raise of the Internet is a good thing; it caught visionaries such as Author C Clark by surprise.

keskos wrote:

Internet is not expected to scale to this number of users, but once it become obvious nobody did anything to change it either. We are yet to migrate to Ipv6 and the prediction is that we are not going to move yet.

Ok, maybe I am a dummie here, but how does migrating from the current 32 bit network ID's to IPV6 have anything to do with the subject here? I really do want to know.