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Engineers Hijack Libyan Phone Network For Rebels
An anonymous reader writes "A team led by a Libyan-American telecom executive has helped rebels hijack Col. Moammar Gadhafi's cellphone network and re-establish their own communications. The new network, first plotted on an airplane napkin and assembled with the help of oil-rich Arab nations, is giving more than two million Libyans their first connections to each other and the outside world after Col. Gadhafi cut off their telephone and Internet service about a month ago."
Can you hear me now?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It really shows how brittle and easily compromised the infrastructure is. That, in my mind (what's left of it), is a 'bad thing'.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Think of the poor CEOs who will have to stay without their gold plated toiletseats because of your egoism.
Its not like communications and the invention of the radio changed warfare and coordination forever.
To be fair, Huntsville has arguably the single largest concentration of engineering and technology talent between Atlanta and Houston (Alternately it could be argued that nearby Knoxville does, with ORNL right there). I should know, I live here. Among other things, the US rocketry program was born here (Werner Von Braun immigrated here, and is considered more or less the father of the modern city), NASA and MDA both have huge presences here, and we have the headquarters for much of the Army's weapons R&D. There's not many places like this in the South.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I live in Huntsville too. There are plenty of companies here that are/were innovative in computer hardware/networking/telecom separate from government business. I'd like to see more diversity in what the city does, but being in the south it carries such a stigma for the residents being stupid it is hard to attract other industries. Hence my sarcastic comment as GP to stir up discussion. BTW there is plenty of technical expertise around the South, Huntsville just shines so bright because of the government funding. Birmingham and Nashville both have strong but smaller technical businesses. TVA has scattered electrical and structural engineers all through the Tennessee Valley.
Can you fear me? How about now?
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Actually, I think it was somewhat disturbing that it took a month to get this communication system back online.
It wasn't a matter of "getting it back on line". Doing that would have routed all the calls through its hub which was in Gadhafi's hands.
What they were doing was reengineering the network, cutting off its original (physical!) connections and route to its original hub, obtaining and installing a replacement network operations infrastructure, cell phone database server, and links to out-of-country telecoms, hacking and installing a siezed database into the server, negotiating peering agreements, and bringing it all on line. All without any help from the (Chinese) manufacturer of the equipment, which stonewalled them.
This was NOT "plug the ethernet into a new hub".
Four weeks, of which one was sitting on their thumbs while the replacement equipment was hung up in customs? Sounds like they've got some FANTASTIC people doing the work.
I recognize them as "hackers" (in the old-school sense). They earned it big time. Hats off to 'em.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way