My guess is that this effort will be wildly unsuccessful, but will be picked up by the History Channel and turned into at least one 12-episode season of reality tv. It will chronicle their mostly futile efforts culminating in a season finale of grand failure.
Yes I am still bitter after I got sucked into an episode of "Oak Island." I knew better, I watched it anyway. I will never get that hour back.
Where is this land of the bike lane you speak of? I would totally use that if they had them around here. Just a lot of country roads and thankfully usually not a lot of traffic where I am. I ride alone and hug the side of the road as close as I'm able. What really irritates me is the people who seem to have a real issue with bikes. Full size pickup truck who misses your handlebar by about 3 inches as they pass you at 45-50 mph on a 30 mph street. No traffic coming, could easily move a half a foot to the left, but would rather see how close they can get without actually hitting you. This is a small percent of motorists - but it's definitely something you can expect to have happen at least once per ride around here.
Are they providing you a Gig Internet connection? If not, then it doesn't really matter so much if you have a Gigabit-capable wireless connection. On the other hand, if you need Gig wireless connectivity between devices/systems within your network - you might consider springing for a wireless infrastructure to support that kind of connectivity.
Storms. Yes - this. Definitely sees occasional storm surge tides and hurricanes. Support issues notwithstanding, Antarctica would seem to make more sense. Possibly deep underground in the middle of a large desert might make more sense too.
Plum Island is hardly isolated. It is located in Long Island Sound (more like a large lake than open ocean) between Long Island NY and the CT coastline. Plum Island is home for a lot of seabirds, which would be one easy vector to transport disease to the mainland. There are migratory seals in the area in the winter, though I'm not sure if they go to Plum Island specifically.
Scale. Presumably even drone-assisted hunters are operating within quota and bag limits set to maintain healthy population. Factory fishing operations basically round up every fish in their path. If they catch off-species they'll dump the by catch back over the side (regardless of whether it's still alive). Same as if they end up over the quota - over the side it goes. Fishery "management" of the US East Coast has been pretty poorly implemented if the goal was the long term viability of the fishery. Hopefully it's not quite so awful in other places.
It undoubtedly will be fixed with adoption of an enhancement to the existing protocol or an entirely new protocol. We saw that with the evolution from WEP to WPA to WPA2. The challenges are that this will take time for a fix and new standard to be determined and the processing capability of the currently deployed wireless infrastructure. There is a fair likelihood that today's access point will not have enough horsepower to efficiently process the next generation authentication and encryption protocol. This means that there is a period of time where a known exploitable vulnerability exists and there is no fix available (time to determine the short and longer term fix + time for everyone to move to the new infrastructure supporting the new standard.) This is how it has always been with wireless, and probably how it always will be. It is similar to anti biotics, eventually resistant bacteria become prevalent, diminishing effectiveness and spurring the need to find new drugs. If we are smart, we have already been working quietly on WPA v3 and this will be announced shortly and adopted quickly when we reach the point that WPA 2 is demonstrably capable of being compromised by a savvy motivated individual vs. a govt funded team. In the meantime VPN always has been and remains a viable option for wireless security.
Interesting argument. What does it cost to feed and maintain a horse? What is the maximum speed and range of a horse? Can a horse power air travel? The energy cost efficiency of internal combustion is pretty hard to beat with today's technology.
That undersea oil was there 100 years ago, but there was more readily available oil that was easier and cheaper to get to so we didn't have a motivation to go after the harder stuff. Technology also improved to enable us to go after the harder to retrieve resources.
We've been approaching peak oil for twenty years now. What is the forecast for hitting peak iron or peak nickel? Maybe that will be motivation to drive us after the asteroid resources or maybe it will be motivation to more aggressively recycle our local resources. If you look at the pyramids in Egypt and the coliseum in Rome - a lot of the stone work was recycled into building materials for nearby construction. Yes, they had stone quarries they could have gone to get material for the new construction, but it was cheaper and easier to re-use the easily scavenged stones from the previous generation's efforts. Similarly as we hit the back side of peak oil maybe it will push us back to horses - or maybe (hopefully) drive investment into wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear.
But there is also every element you can find on earth floating around in ridiculous abundance, and easier to access too
I appreciate a good sci fi yarn as much as the next guy, but do try to keep in mind the "fiction" aspect of it. In fact, the overwhelmingly defining characteristic of space would be the tremendous amount of emptiness that it is comprised of. The vast distances just within our own solar system immediately decry the abundance and easy access to useful resources. That will hold true at least until you solve the problem of cheap and efficient energy. I would argue that when you have solved that problem, you will still be able to fix the earth's issues at the same or lower cost than going out in to space. (Props to the termite infested house analogy posted earlier.)
Looking at this another way, if it was cheaper and easier to get iron, gold, or boron by mining asteroids I'm pretty sure someone would be doing it right now. The reason they aren't doing it is because it's cheaper not to. Something about skipping the roughly 180M mile round trip to the asteroid belt probably explains that.
You don't need to bribe people, just leave a compromised USB key in the parking lot. Or if you're more industrious, host an industry-specific "lunch and learn" for the target audience. Make sure everyone goes home with a trojan door-prize - iPad, smart phone, camera - something that can deliver your payload and will likely be hooked up to a computer for registration or activation.
Cost of 20 steaks + 20 iPads is pretty affordable, even for a malefactor of limited means.
Hmm, well that needs to extend one level past the "enemies" to include all of the countries/geographies/etc. that do connect with the "enemies." You don't launch your exploits from your cyberwar directly from your connection. First you compromise a bunch of systems in other countries and use those as the launch point. Possibly nesting this several layers deep. Yep - just like in the "hacker" movies. You are creating plausible deniability and muddying up the water for anyone trying to figure out who is really behind the attack.
This approach is also in pretty much direct opposition to the whole concept of the global economy. If you prevent Internet commerce and communications with large countries deemed to be the "cyber enemy" but who also happen to be a "major trading partner" it will certainly be disruptive to that trade. Go ahead and ask the obvious question as to why we are trading partners with our enemies - I can't figure it out either.
Really? I think the defining characteristic of space is the mind boggling emptiness of it all. Resources are not abundant, as there is a whole lot of nothing between us and anything else.
If outer space really is the land of milk and honey, we'd be mining already. The reason we don't is because it is more expensive to do it "out there" than it is to do it "down here."
Drive-by download exploit of browser or browser helper applications is prevalent. Firewalls won't help with these, and AV software can struggle with this vector as well.
Also, for the pattern-matching component of AV software, this technology is pretty reliable once a new variant is discovered and the AV vendors know about it. There is usually a window of time when a new variant is released and infecting systems *before* the pattern is added to the AV software. This means that there are some lucky winners who have been infected. These are new variants and not necessarily targetting 0-day vulnerabilities.
Maybe this is how it already works - but if it isn't here's an avenue I would investigate:
Shouldn't it be possible for Steam to build a hypervisor type environment? If they have a common hypervisor they port the game once to run in that environment. Then all they need to do is get their hypervisor running on Windows, *NIX, MAC, whatever.
There's definitely some additional processing overhead on this, but it seems that it would be a very efficient model once you have the hypervisor built. I would think you could probably push the specs/API/etc to the game publishers and have the game developer team adopt their game to the platform.
I don't know anything about how Steam works under the covers so maybe they're already doing this. I'm curious, but not enough to do the legwork.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains. The stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion
Or if you do have them fall into the wrong hands, you now have a credible threat that will justify legislation to force the civilian air fleet to install expensive countermeasures. At the same time you will also have justified research projects to develop the next generations of stealth and anti-air missile technology for the military. Finally since the technology will now be well understood by potential nation-state adversaries, you have also justified research projects for the next generation of anti-air portable missile systems.
Qui bono?
No, I don't really buy in to any of this as a motivator - but these reactions do seem to be plausible consequences of letting this type of technology out in to the wild.
How soon we forget: -War of 1812 -Mexican American War -First World Trade Center -Oklahoma City -More bombings, assassinations, and other acts of terrorism too numerous to list.
I know I'm not. They can't upgrade the infrastructure fast enough to keep up with the explosion in devices and bandwidth-hungry applications, so they rate-limit, restrict, and jack the rates on an increasingly over-subscribed (with corresponding decreases in performance) in the interest of keeping things just usable enough to not lose too many customers.
It's not like there are a lot of alternative providers out there who offer better service or more compelling pricing....
An electro magnetic event (man-made or natural) that is sufficiently powerful enough to corrupt magnetically stored data is also more than likely going to be sufficiently powerful to really mess with everything that relies on microprocessors to work.
There has been some proposals around requiring the electric industry to harden their infrastructure and systems to deal with this type of event. Assume the utilities do manage to somehow fund this type of hardening (which would be a massive undertaking in both time and expense). You still need to ask yourself what is going to be left to consume this power. The event is likely to leave many if not most things inoperable on a very wide scale. This means cell phones, computers, televisions, air conditioners, refrigerators, stoves. Any car made after around 1980 is probably also a non-starter. So there's power available, but not much left to consume it. Even if you have protected your data and your data center and have power, what percentage of companies have not?
This would be a hugely disruptive event that would take massive effort and years to recover from for any modern society. Maybe when the dust settles it might be nice to know what you have in your 401(k) and how much back taxes you owe; but then again it's equally possible that all this stuff will be irrelevant in the "new normal."
I agree that this is not an "extinction event" but it could very easily be sufficient to significantly change the political and societal landscape.
Thank you for the sudden and entirely unwelcome steampunk-esque vision of some battered guy covered in soot shoveling coal in to a raging furnace with arcane pipes running to filthy server racks.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess is that this effort will be wildly unsuccessful, but will be picked up by the History Channel and turned into at least one 12-episode season of reality tv. It will chronicle their mostly futile efforts culminating in a season finale of grand failure. Yes I am still bitter after I got sucked into an episode of "Oak Island." I knew better, I watched it anyway. I will never get that hour back.
Where is this land of the bike lane you speak of? I would totally use that if they had them around here. Just a lot of country roads and thankfully usually not a lot of traffic where I am. I ride alone and hug the side of the road as close as I'm able. What really irritates me is the people who seem to have a real issue with bikes. Full size pickup truck who misses your handlebar by about 3 inches as they pass you at 45-50 mph on a 30 mph street. No traffic coming, could easily move a half a foot to the left, but would rather see how close they can get without actually hitting you. This is a small percent of motorists - but it's definitely something you can expect to have happen at least once per ride around here.
Are they providing you a Gig Internet connection? If not, then it doesn't really matter so much if you have a Gigabit-capable wireless connection. On the other hand, if you need Gig wireless connectivity between devices/systems within your network - you might consider springing for a wireless infrastructure to support that kind of connectivity.
Storms. Yes - this. Definitely sees occasional storm surge tides and hurricanes. Support issues notwithstanding, Antarctica would seem to make more sense. Possibly deep underground in the middle of a large desert might make more sense too.
Plum Island is hardly isolated. It is located in Long Island Sound (more like a large lake than open ocean) between Long Island NY and the CT coastline. Plum Island is home for a lot of seabirds, which would be one easy vector to transport disease to the mainland. There are migratory seals in the area in the winter, though I'm not sure if they go to Plum Island specifically.
Scale. Presumably even drone-assisted hunters are operating within quota and bag limits set to maintain healthy population. Factory fishing operations basically round up every fish in their path. If they catch off-species they'll dump the by catch back over the side (regardless of whether it's still alive). Same as if they end up over the quota - over the side it goes. Fishery "management" of the US East Coast has been pretty poorly implemented if the goal was the long term viability of the fishery. Hopefully it's not quite so awful in other places.
It undoubtedly will be fixed with adoption of an enhancement to the existing protocol or an entirely new protocol. We saw that with the evolution from WEP to WPA to WPA2. The challenges are that this will take time for a fix and new standard to be determined and the processing capability of the currently deployed wireless infrastructure. There is a fair likelihood that today's access point will not have enough horsepower to efficiently process the next generation authentication and encryption protocol. This means that there is a period of time where a known exploitable vulnerability exists and there is no fix available (time to determine the short and longer term fix + time for everyone to move to the new infrastructure supporting the new standard.) This is how it has always been with wireless, and probably how it always will be. It is similar to anti biotics, eventually resistant bacteria become prevalent, diminishing effectiveness and spurring the need to find new drugs. If we are smart, we have already been working quietly on WPA v3 and this will be announced shortly and adopted quickly when we reach the point that WPA 2 is demonstrably capable of being compromised by a savvy motivated individual vs. a govt funded team. In the meantime VPN always has been and remains a viable option for wireless security.
Stuxnet prevents a nuclear exchange, Skynet initiates one.
To confirm - power-down reboot doesn't clear the lock on your phone? If that's accurate, that's cool. Can I ask which phone and OS you're running?
FTFY - Grammar police should endeavor to avoid use of the double negative.
Interesting argument. What does it cost to feed and maintain a horse? What is the maximum speed and range of a horse? Can a horse power air travel? The energy cost efficiency of internal combustion is pretty hard to beat with today's technology.
That undersea oil was there 100 years ago, but there was more readily available oil that was easier and cheaper to get to so we didn't have a motivation to go after the harder stuff. Technology also improved to enable us to go after the harder to retrieve resources.
We've been approaching peak oil for twenty years now. What is the forecast for hitting peak iron or peak nickel? Maybe that will be motivation to drive us after the asteroid resources or maybe it will be motivation to more aggressively recycle our local resources. If you look at the pyramids in Egypt and the coliseum in Rome - a lot of the stone work was recycled into building materials for nearby construction. Yes, they had stone quarries they could have gone to get material for the new construction, but it was cheaper and easier to re-use the easily scavenged stones from the previous generation's efforts. Similarly as we hit the back side of peak oil maybe it will push us back to horses - or maybe (hopefully) drive investment into wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear.
But there is also every element you can find on earth floating around in ridiculous abundance, and easier to access too
I appreciate a good sci fi yarn as much as the next guy, but do try to keep in mind the "fiction" aspect of it. In fact, the overwhelmingly defining characteristic of space would be the tremendous amount of emptiness that it is comprised of. The vast distances just within our own solar system immediately decry the abundance and easy access to useful resources. That will hold true at least until you solve the problem of cheap and efficient energy. I would argue that when you have solved that problem, you will still be able to fix the earth's issues at the same or lower cost than going out in to space. (Props to the termite infested house analogy posted earlier.)
Looking at this another way, if it was cheaper and easier to get iron, gold, or boron by mining asteroids I'm pretty sure someone would be doing it right now. The reason they aren't doing it is because it's cheaper not to. Something about skipping the roughly 180M mile round trip to the asteroid belt probably explains that.
You don't need to bribe people, just leave a compromised USB key in the parking lot. Or if you're more industrious, host an industry-specific "lunch and learn" for the target audience. Make sure everyone goes home with a trojan door-prize - iPad, smart phone, camera - something that can deliver your payload and will likely be hooked up to a computer for registration or activation.
Cost of 20 steaks + 20 iPads is pretty affordable, even for a malefactor of limited means.
Hmm, well that needs to extend one level past the "enemies" to include all of the countries/geographies/etc. that do connect with the "enemies." You don't launch your exploits from your cyberwar directly from your connection. First you compromise a bunch of systems in other countries and use those as the launch point. Possibly nesting this several layers deep. Yep - just like in the "hacker" movies. You are creating plausible deniability and muddying up the water for anyone trying to figure out who is really behind the attack. This approach is also in pretty much direct opposition to the whole concept of the global economy. If you prevent Internet commerce and communications with large countries deemed to be the "cyber enemy" but who also happen to be a "major trading partner" it will certainly be disruptive to that trade. Go ahead and ask the obvious question as to why we are trading partners with our enemies - I can't figure it out either.
Really? I think the defining characteristic of space is the mind boggling emptiness of it all. Resources are not abundant, as there is a whole lot of nothing between us and anything else.
If outer space really is the land of milk and honey, we'd be mining already. The reason we don't is because it is more expensive to do it "out there" than it is to do it "down here."
Drive-by download exploit of browser or browser helper applications is prevalent. Firewalls won't help with these, and AV software can struggle with this vector as well.
Also, for the pattern-matching component of AV software, this technology is pretty reliable once a new variant is discovered and the AV vendors know about it. There is usually a window of time when a new variant is released and infecting systems *before* the pattern is added to the AV software. This means that there are some lucky winners who have been infected. These are new variants and not necessarily targetting 0-day vulnerabilities.
*slaps head* Yep. Java should do it, but you're also dead on with respect to the slowness.
Maybe this is how it already works - but if it isn't here's an avenue I would investigate:
Shouldn't it be possible for Steam to build a hypervisor type environment? If they have a common hypervisor they port the game once to run in that environment. Then all they need to do is get their hypervisor running on Windows, *NIX, MAC, whatever.
There's definitely some additional processing overhead on this, but it seems that it would be a very efficient model once you have the hypervisor built. I would think you could probably push the specs/API/etc to the game publishers and have the game developer team adopt their game to the platform.
I don't know anything about how Steam works under the covers so maybe they're already doing this. I'm curious, but not enough to do the legwork.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains. The stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion
Or if you do have them fall into the wrong hands, you now have a credible threat that will justify legislation to force the civilian air fleet to install expensive countermeasures. At the same time you will also have justified research projects to develop the next generations of stealth and anti-air missile technology for the military. Finally since the technology will now be well understood by potential nation-state adversaries, you have also justified research projects for the next generation of anti-air portable missile systems.
Qui bono?
No, I don't really buy in to any of this as a motivator - but these reactions do seem to be plausible consequences of letting this type of technology out in to the wild.
Seriously, +1 Internets to the first person who can put a positive spin on this one. Wow. Just wow.
How soon we forget:
-War of 1812
-Mexican American War
-First World Trade Center
-Oklahoma City
-More bombings, assassinations, and other acts of terrorism too numerous to list.
I know I'm not. They can't upgrade the infrastructure fast enough to keep up with the explosion in devices and bandwidth-hungry applications, so they rate-limit, restrict, and jack the rates on an increasingly over-subscribed (with corresponding decreases in performance) in the interest of keeping things just usable enough to not lose too many customers.
It's not like there are a lot of alternative providers out there who offer better service or more compelling pricing....
An electro magnetic event (man-made or natural) that is sufficiently powerful enough to corrupt magnetically stored data is also more than likely going to be sufficiently powerful to really mess with everything that relies on microprocessors to work.
There has been some proposals around requiring the electric industry to harden their infrastructure and systems to deal with this type of event. Assume the utilities do manage to somehow fund this type of hardening (which would be a massive undertaking in both time and expense). You still need to ask yourself what is going to be left to consume this power. The event is likely to leave many if not most things inoperable on a very wide scale. This means cell phones, computers, televisions, air conditioners, refrigerators, stoves. Any car made after around 1980 is probably also a non-starter. So there's power available, but not much left to consume it. Even if you have protected your data and your data center and have power, what percentage of companies have not?
This would be a hugely disruptive event that would take massive effort and years to recover from for any modern society. Maybe when the dust settles it might be nice to know what you have in your 401(k) and how much back taxes you owe; but then again it's equally possible that all this stuff will be irrelevant in the "new normal."
I agree that this is not an "extinction event" but it could very easily be sufficient to significantly change the political and societal landscape.
Thank you for the sudden and entirely unwelcome steampunk-esque vision of some battered guy covered in soot shoveling coal in to a raging furnace with arcane pipes running to filthy server racks.