Perhaps an accessory system was involved, but rail signalling involves quite proprietary and LOW-SPEED networking (on the order of 30 baud) on TOTALLY private wires.
Rail signalling was gradually developped over the last 150 years, and the earliest remote-control and automatic operations were developped almost 100 years ago.
From the onset, reduntancy and feedback was employed (for example, whenever a switch is automated, a separate sensor arm is attached to the switch points, as to monitor the exact switch position, as opposed as the switch motor actuating arm position), and the technology is extremely conservative (gravity-actuated relays with extremely big coils to pick-up the heavy armatures, contacts made out of special alloys that are guaranteed not to stick in case of arcing - why would they, they are overwhelmingly oversized for the current they carry- and the whole thing is mounted on heavy coil-springs to insure immunity to vibrations).
For compatibility purposes, whenever solid-state components are used, they are absolutely electrically compatible (and opto-isolated) with the older electromechanical relays.
And finally, everything runs on #8 gauge wire and the nominal voltage is 10 volts.
Such an overdesigned system can withstand quite a lot of punishment. So the idea of a worm bringing down signalling is laughable at best.
But if the suits insist on using a paperwork system that is vulnerable to worms, then, such lunacy can explain the outages...
What kind of sick airline uses Windows servers to do check in and track flights/passengers. Is their IT department completely slow? They deserve what they get.
Many years ago, Air Canada absorbed Canadian (Pacific) Airlines, which had deliberately poison-pilled it's IT systems in order to make that merger painfuller. It so happenned that the Canadian (Pacific) Airline IT guys gained control of the Air-Canada IT department, and began kicking-out the flawlessly functionning OS/2 systems that were the rule, and introduced Winblows boxen. Ever since, Air-Canada has been going down, narrowly escaping bankrupcy a few weeks ago...
You're obviously not reading the right Slashdot.;-)
http://bbspot.com/toys/slashtitle/index.html
How fitting. Here is what it gave me:
Posted by brian on Wed August 20, 07:43 AM
from the have fun hitting reload page dept.
angel writes "No surprise here. Caldera has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy ever since eBay released a report saying that use of thier products might turn users into George W Bush. While nothing was ever substatianted Caldera was never able to fuly recovver. They've spent the last several years trying to revive interest in thier products, but have been unsuccessful." If thier CEO had concentrated on new markets instaed of helping children read then maybe they could've survived.
Boy! I am glad to go to the movies with a Philipino friend, who has mastered the
art of sneaking into a movie without a ticket. At least, when I see gems such
as Legally Blonde 2, Fast
& Furious 2, T-3, Bruce
Almighty or Looking for Nemo,
I have the thorough satisfaction of not having to part a hefty $12 to find out
they are trash (well, maybe not Looking for Nemo).
It's a good feeling to know that the fine proud and proper Brahmins in Delhi feel no sense of responsibility at all for the helping the hundreds of thousands of the poorest, most hopeless, most destitute people in the world begging on the streets of Calcutta.
What else can you expect from a country who keep cows as pets while millions of people die of starvation in the streets????
Or where temples have monks feeding milk to swarms of rats in the middle of cities where people drop like flies from disease merrily carried by the same rats?
Quebec goverment does not permit anyone to build powerlines to transmit Newfoundland's labador hydor power to the US across Quebec, instead they buy the power at cost and sell it to the US.
Quebec's goverment ripping of Newfoundland and having lots of natural resources is not the shinning example you think it is.
(First of all, Labrador - that's where the Churchill Falls power comes from - was RIPPED from Quebec by the privy council in London, a process whose ultimate legality is iffy at best, and will definitely be questionned more intently when Quebec becomes a sovereign country. But that's besides the point).
The newfies were too dumb to develop that hydro-power by themselves - I mean, how dumber can you get by wanting to go into Canada, and it took two referendum to do it!!! Had they gone to New-York to beg for money, they'd have themselves laughed-out faster than a cheap comic in Vegas. There was only one people who had the expertise (both technical AND financial) to develop that power, and that was Hydro-Quebec.
It's funny that the english insist that they keep all the profits they make on our back for themselves, but when the french want a return on their investment, it's not the same story. But, hey, that's Canada: the french are treated just like the blacks in the US.
40 years ago, Quebec nationalized all power-procuction and put it under Hydro-Quebec's umbrella. The State-owned corporation has never since failed to yield enormous profits (all going to the Quebec government - that's so much we won't have to pay in taxes), yet is providing the cheapest electricity in the world.
Private-entreprise zealots quickly lose steam whenever you point Hydro-Quebec at them as a shining example of profitable State ownership.
Watch the hilarity as little Johnyy is called to the principal's office to see a blown-up, enhanced photo of his face, taken by the webcam just before he put tape over the lens.
Back in the time when VCRs were a rarity, and being the IT department made you the custodian of the lone VCR in the (fortune 500) company head-office (there wasn't even a fax machine!!!), I was once asked to cart the contraption to the boardroom. Once I plugged it in, I wanted to test it, so the suit there reluctantly let me watch the tape he was showing the vice-president of something-or-other, under promise not to tell anyone*.
It was a security tape, shot from a "hidden"? camera cleverly hidden in the factory ceiling duct/conduit/wiring/plumbing mess.
After a few seconds of nothingless, you see a guy coming with a crow-bar, and dutifully lop-off a big padlock on a door.
The kicker was that this guy was not stealing anything at all, but just opening the door so he would have not to walk an extra 100m to go to the bathroom!!!
Well, it seems that when shown the incriminating tape, just prior to his firing, the guy only said "boy, do I walk funny"...
* Since this was more than 20 years ago, there is prescription (and the company doesn't exist anymore anyway).
? Since the VCR was a U-Matic 1 inch tape, you can guess how "small" the camera was, back then!!!
Just wear a (preferably leather) jacket studded with infrared LEDs. The glow from the diodes, while invisible to teacher, oughta overwhelm the camera's CCD...
Of course, if you get caught, you can always moan about that terrible pain in all the diodes in your left side...
Keep going at it. Eventually, people are going to be SO PISSED at their personal data being spewed forth all over the place, there will be a terrible backlash that will make the European Data-Protection and Privacy laws seem tame enough...
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps an accessory system was involved, but rail signalling involves quite proprietary and LOW-SPEED networking (on the order of 30 baud) on TOTALLY private wires.
Rail signalling was gradually developped over the last 150 years, and the earliest remote-control and automatic operations were developped almost 100 years ago.
From the onset, reduntancy and feedback was employed (for example, whenever a switch is automated, a separate sensor arm is attached to the switch points, as to monitor the exact switch position, as opposed as the switch motor actuating arm position), and the technology is extremely conservative (gravity-actuated relays with extremely big coils to pick-up the heavy armatures, contacts made out of special alloys that are guaranteed not to stick in case of arcing - why would they, they are overwhelmingly oversized for the current they carry- and the whole thing is mounted on heavy coil-springs to insure immunity to vibrations).
For compatibility purposes, whenever solid-state components are used, they are absolutely electrically compatible (and opto-isolated) with the older electromechanical relays.
And finally, everything runs on #8 gauge wire and the nominal voltage is 10 volts.
Such an overdesigned system can withstand quite a lot of punishment. So the idea of a worm bringing down signalling is laughable at best.
But if the suits insist on using a paperwork system that is vulnerable to worms, then, such lunacy can explain the outages...
When you pirate music or movies, you are battling against the jews.
Summer job at SCO, reviewing code?
Now imagine a beo... Nah. Wouln't be good, given the current slump in the airline industry...
Boy! I am glad to go to the movies with a Philipino friend, who has mastered the art of sneaking into a movie without a ticket. At least, when I see gems such as Legally Blonde 2, Fast & Furious 2, T-3, Bruce Almighty or Looking for Nemo, I have the thorough satisfaction of not having to part a hefty $12 to find out they are trash (well, maybe not Looking for Nemo).
Then, why don't we have (toll) highways owned and maintained by PRIVATE ENTREPRISE???? ...
That's what I thought.
Or where temples have monks feeding milk to swarms of rats in the middle of cities where people drop like flies from disease merrily carried by the same rats?
A country with it's head stuck so far into it's religious arse that whenever some people bust their arses differently to make an honest living, but they can't stand their indusriousness, they bully them into submissiveness in order to rape the product of their industry even better.
It's not for nothing that throughout Asia, indians are universally despised.
You really can't blame the Pakistani for not wanting to be associated with such people...
So? The outage was even worse in eastern Ontario, northern New-York and Vermont!
The newfies were too dumb to develop that hydro-power by themselves - I mean, how dumber can you get by wanting to go into Canada, and it took two referendum to do it!!! Had they gone to New-York to beg for money, they'd have themselves laughed-out faster than a cheap comic in Vegas. There was only one people who had the expertise (both technical AND financial) to develop that power, and that was Hydro-Quebec.
It's funny that the english insist that they keep all the profits they make on our back for themselves, but when the french want a return on their investment, it's not the same story. But, hey, that's Canada: the french are treated just like the blacks in the US.
Private-entreprise zealots quickly lose steam whenever you point Hydro-Quebec at them as a shining example of profitable State ownership.
With more than a billion strong, the chinese are ALREADY human-rabbit hybrids: they breed like rabbits!!!
The proper thing would be an ANT FARM , especially if you run Microsoft stuff on the box.
When you RTFA, you will see that De Beers is in the same position as the RIAA...
...diamonds are forever...
Some 15 years ago, I went to an ATM, and the only thing it displayed was "640K OK" in the upper-left corner of it's screen...
...real playing with virtual game???
It was a security tape, shot from a "hidden"? camera cleverly hidden in the factory ceiling duct/conduit/wiring/plumbing mess.
After a few seconds of nothingless, you see a guy coming with a crow-bar, and dutifully lop-off a big padlock on a door.
The kicker was that this guy was not stealing anything at all, but just opening the door so he would have not to walk an extra 100m to go to the bathroom!!!
Well, it seems that when shown the incriminating tape, just prior to his firing, the guy only said " boy, do I walk funny "...
* Since this was more than 20 years ago, there is prescription (and the company doesn't exist anymore anyway).
? Since the VCR was a U-Matic 1 inch tape, you can guess how "small" the camera was, back then!!!
Of course, if you get caught, you can always moan about that terrible pain in all the diodes in your left side...
In a place where everyone and their dogs don't vote, what difference will it make if the results are screwed with???
Keep going at it. Eventually, people are going to be SO PISSED at their personal data being spewed forth all over the place, there will be a terrible backlash that will make the European Data-Protection and Privacy laws seem tame enough...
Why does it takes an EVIL company to do the right thing????