And even once you've built your very short linac, you still have all the length of the undulators to make the thing lase. Making these machines shorter isn't just a matter of accelerating gradient.
I think he's suggesting that it's possible that there was no causal link (in either direction) between the two, and that it was mere coincidence.
Until more data is produced (and I didn't read TFA, so maybe there *is* more data), it's impossible to discredit the possibility that it was coincidence.
Seriously though -- in all the years SLAC, Cern, Fermilab, KEK, etc., have been online, how many computer security breaches have there been that have harmed the machine, hurt anyone, or resulted in any escape of radioactivity? I can't think of any, but perhaps you can?
The problem is that there's nothing I can really do to prove my assertion. I could provide a link to a list of my papers, but there's no way to be sure that those papers were written by the/. user with my username. Also, I'm not that keen on giving a troll my email address.
I could provide a link to the details of my office (phone number, location, etc.) in the lab I work at, but that's got the same security issues as giving out my email address.
I could demonstrate a knowledge of some technical jargon, but how would a non-expert know that I was right, and how would they know I hadn't just skimmed it from a few quick Google searches?
But, more to the point, can't my post be judged on its merits, rather than disregarding it due to the non-verifiable claim that I am an expert?
As I said in a previous post. You can believe me or not -- I don't care:)
PS: Was "alomst" my spelling mistake, or his? I can only find it in his post, but he seems to be referring to a mistake I made.
In this case copyright law serves the purpose of giving the holder an artificial monopoly on the work in order for them to make money.
This is a *good* thing, since it allows people to recoup the expenses they incurred developing the game, and, hopefully, to make a profit.
If it's all "information", and "information is free" (I wonder if you'd be so free with information if it was the government who was gathering your personal info -- after all, it's free. Right?) then why should games companies spend a fortune developing the latest and greatest games?
PS: I'm not a fan of DRM, and avoid it as much as possible. I just can't stand people who think they have the moral high ground when copying the work of others for free. I'm willing to bet most of those people would change their tune if it was their source of income being ripped off.
When I talk about the history software, I mean the software that makes a time record of the settings of all the machine hardware.
Typically it's used to investigate weird behaviour of the machine. If it's suspected that a magnet has changed value, then they'll try to roll it back using the history software. When that doesn't work (due to the work of the uber-hacker you described), it will be immediately obvious, since the physical problem will still be there.
They'll then look at the magnet current on the control system, and (cos the uber-hacker attacked that as well), it will report the old value -- a value that simply disagrees with the physics.
Eventually, after an hour or so, someone will drive out there with a voltmeter (which can't be hacked), and then it will all become clear.
Remember, Cern is a high profile target, but only for vandals, not for the financially motivated crackers you guys will see. There's no motivation, beyond simple vandalism, for anyone to put that much work into an attack.
Music is relatively cheap to produce when compared to games and movies, and I find it hard to believe that "busking" can generate the amounts of cash needed to continue game development.
As for your opinion that the producer shouldn't get to decide the price, or that all art "should" work in line with your busking model, well I just don't understand that. You make the statement as if there is some ethical law that states the immorality of producers naming a price, but I just don't see why they shouldn't.
They put the work into the product, they developed it, they hired the staff. It's their "art" -- they get to name the price, and you get to decide whether or not to pay it.
Pirate it if you want, but don't try to convince me you have the moral high ground.
So a company spends a ton of cash to develop a cutting edge game, and you think you have the right to access it for free just because you label it as "art" and declare that their "art" doesn't belong to them?!?
I'm no fan of DRM, but I just can't take this argument seriously. They developed it, they paid people to code it, shouldn't it be possible for them to reclaim their expenses (and then make a profit)?
If you want high quality, cutting edge games to continue to be produced, then there has to be a method for the producers to get paid for it. Why else would they do it?
If you remove the financial motivation to produce games, then games will not be produced. Is that what you mean by "good for society"?
Man, my karma's gonna suffer for this, I just know it...
Sure, this is bad, and it may be due to negligence or a rushed schedule as you suggest.
All I'm saying is that this is not the end-of-the-world catastrophe that everyone thinks it is.
As to the data being affected -- TFA says it was a detector control system that was breached, not the data acquisition system, so the physics (not that there is any yet) is safe.
Detector control system != Accelerator control system != Data acquisition
You're right to say that there are lots and lots of ways to fuck it up, but when I say that, I don't mean "destroy it".
There are millions of changes you could make that would be transparent to the operation of the machine, and even more that would negatively affect its performance. There are, of course, changes that can be made that would cause a lot of damage, but the LHC folk have ~60 years of experience over dozens of machines world wide, and will have built a strong reliable protection system.
There's always the risk that something bad could happen, but I'm more worried about a random fault killing it, rather than the 1 in a bazillion chance of Random J. Hacker doing it.
Yes, that can happen, and in that case small amounts of radioactivity will be released into the accelerator housing -- an area known to be horrendously radioactive during normal operations.
No radioactivity will be released beyond areas where it is already expected.
These things are internet connected in order to allow on-call technicians and facilities management to check/fix it remotely. All big machines work like this. Everyone claiming that it shouldn't be connected to the internet has never worked with a machine like this (PS: I have).
Seriously, we need to stop the hysteria over this. It's not like you're presented with a "destroy the world" button when you log in!
No, you'll land at a bash prompt. And then what? You won't know the commands necessary to get to the control system software, and, even if you did, you'd only be able to randomly tinker with magnets. This will either have no effect whatsoever, or will be prevented by the machine protection system.
The worst you can do is to interrupt operation for a while while they kick you out, and restore any changes you made (which would be easily done from automatic history software).
This is bad -- any crack like this is bad -- but it's not gonna cause black holes, it's not gonna release radioactivity, and it's not gonna break the machine.
All these machines have connections to the internet. This allows on-call technicians to ssh in to debug a problem remotely, and for facilities management to make checks on the performance of the machine.
It's not like connecting to the control software will present you with a big red button labelled "Black Hole Generator". You'll be presented with a bash prompt, and, if you can figure out the right command, possibly a control screen that you don't understand.
These machines are stunningly complex, and the most likely outcome of some random script kiddie fucking with things is that *nothing* will happen. Someone more knowledgable (or lucky) might be able to find something that will be prevented by the machine protection system, or cause the machine to shut down for a while. Bad, but not as scary as you suggest.
Seriously. Anyone who thinks that random "hackers" can do any real damage, or that these machines shouldn't be on the internet, doesn't know anything about them.
(PS: I'm an accelerator physicist who has worked with several of these machines.)
As noted above, I realised my mistake as soon as I hit submit, and have been corrected by multiple people in pedant-mode ever since.
Also, a potentiometer can also be a voltage measuring device with a very similar construction to a Wheatstone bridge, not just a variable resistor (which still makes me wrong, but the fact that it makes you a little bit wrong as well makes me feel a little better;) )
An e-meter isn't a voltmeter, it's a potentiometer (it measures resistance not voltage). It's based on a Wheatstone bridge design, and is a very sensitive way to measure the resistance between the probes. Since hydration levels, stress, sweat, etc., can all change the resistivity of human skin, an e-meter will measure these changes, which can then be (fraudulently) be interpreted as being of religious significance.
These are intermediate results, and should be treated as such. From TFA,
The team also is working to totally exonerate any possibility of the perchlorate readings being influenced by terrestrial sources which may have migrated from the spacecraft, either into samples or into the instrumentation.
Slashdot Mirror
Accelerator physicists (like me) use the word "light" to refer to any EM radiation coming off a beam, not just optical wavelengths.
Apologies. I meant the first hard x ray laser. I don't think there has been another one of those.
And there are a group out there working on NLS -- "New Light Source" -- which I think trumps NLC for worst acronym ever.
And even once you've built your very short linac, you still have all the length of the undulators to make the thing lase. Making these machines shorter isn't just a matter of accelerating gradient.
Hear hear.
Enough is enough. One story per year please. Thank you.
I think he's suggesting that it's possible that there was no causal link (in either direction) between the two, and that it was mere coincidence.
Until more data is produced (and I didn't read TFA, so maybe there *is* more data), it's impossible to discredit the possibility that it was coincidence.
Thanks for believing in me man :)
Seriously though -- in all the years SLAC, Cern, Fermilab, KEK, etc., have been online, how many computer security breaches have there been that have harmed the machine, hurt anyone, or resulted in any escape of radioactivity? I can't think of any, but perhaps you can?
The problem is that there's nothing I can really do to prove my assertion. I could provide a link to a list of my papers, but there's no way to be sure that those papers were written by the /. user with my username. Also, I'm not that keen on giving a troll my email address.
I could provide a link to the details of my office (phone number, location, etc.) in the lab I work at, but that's got the same security issues as giving out my email address.
I could demonstrate a knowledge of some technical jargon, but how would a non-expert know that I was right, and how would they know I hadn't just skimmed it from a few quick Google searches?
But, more to the point, can't my post be judged on its merits, rather than disregarding it due to the non-verifiable claim that I am an expert?
As I said in a previous post. You can believe me or not -- I don't care :)
PS: Was "alomst" my spelling mistake, or his? I can only find it in his post, but he seems to be referring to a mistake I made.
http://xkcd.com/438/ Chill out. :)
1/ Convince teh slashdot I'm an accelerator physicist ...
2/
3/ Profit!
I *am* an accelerator physicist. You can believe me or not. I don't care :)
In this case copyright law serves the purpose of giving the holder an artificial monopoly on the work in order for them to make money.
This is a *good* thing, since it allows people to recoup the expenses they incurred developing the game, and, hopefully, to make a profit.
If it's all "information", and "information is free" (I wonder if you'd be so free with information if it was the government who was gathering your personal info -- after all, it's free. Right?) then why should games companies spend a fortune developing the latest and greatest games?
PS: I'm not a fan of DRM, and avoid it as much as possible. I just can't stand people who think they have the moral high ground when copying the work of others for free. I'm willing to bet most of those people would change their tune if it was their source of income being ripped off.
I think you're thinking about this the wrong way.
When I talk about the history software, I mean the software that makes a time record of the settings of all the machine hardware.
Typically it's used to investigate weird behaviour of the machine. If it's suspected that a magnet has changed value, then they'll try to roll it back using the history software. When that doesn't work (due to the work of the uber-hacker you described), it will be immediately obvious, since the physical problem will still be there.
They'll then look at the magnet current on the control system, and (cos the uber-hacker attacked that as well), it will report the old value -- a value that simply disagrees with the physics.
Eventually, after an hour or so, someone will drive out there with a voltmeter (which can't be hacked), and then it will all become clear.
Remember, Cern is a high profile target, but only for vandals, not for the financially motivated crackers you guys will see. There's no motivation, beyond simple vandalism, for anyone to put that much work into an attack.
Music is relatively cheap to produce when compared to games and movies, and I find it hard to believe that "busking" can generate the amounts of cash needed to continue game development.
As for your opinion that the producer shouldn't get to decide the price, or that all art "should" work in line with your busking model, well I just don't understand that. You make the statement as if there is some ethical law that states the immorality of producers naming a price, but I just don't see why they shouldn't.
They put the work into the product, they developed it, they hired the staff. It's their "art" -- they get to name the price, and you get to decide whether or not to pay it.
Pirate it if you want, but don't try to convince me you have the moral high ground.
So a company spends a ton of cash to develop a cutting edge game, and you think you have the right to access it for free just because you label it as "art" and declare that their "art" doesn't belong to them?!?
I'm no fan of DRM, but I just can't take this argument seriously. They developed it, they paid people to code it, shouldn't it be possible for them to reclaim their expenses (and then make a profit)?
If you want high quality, cutting edge games to continue to be produced, then there has to be a method for the producers to get paid for it. Why else would they do it?
If you remove the financial motivation to produce games, then games will not be produced. Is that what you mean by "good for society"?
Man, my karma's gonna suffer for this, I just know it...
Sure, this is bad, and it may be due to negligence or a rushed schedule as you suggest.
All I'm saying is that this is not the end-of-the-world catastrophe that everyone thinks it is.
As to the data being affected -- TFA says it was a detector control system that was breached, not the data acquisition system, so the physics (not that there is any yet) is safe.
Detector control system != Accelerator control system != Data acquisition
You're right to say that there are lots and lots of ways to fuck it up, but when I say that, I don't mean "destroy it".
There are millions of changes you could make that would be transparent to the operation of the machine, and even more that would negatively affect its performance. There are, of course, changes that can be made that would cause a lot of damage, but the LHC folk have ~60 years of experience over dozens of machines world wide, and will have built a strong reliable protection system.
There's always the risk that something bad could happen, but I'm more worried about a random fault killing it, rather than the 1 in a bazillion chance of Random J. Hacker doing it.
Yes, that can happen, and in that case small amounts of radioactivity will be released into the accelerator housing -- an area known to be horrendously radioactive during normal operations.
No radioactivity will be released beyond areas where it is already expected.
Like it or not, it is the case at all of these machines.
SLAC, Cern, Fermilab, DESY, KEK. All have connections to the 'net.
But you and all the other pretend-experts should go ahead assuming you know better than all these labs.
These things are internet connected in order to allow on-call technicians and facilities management to check/fix it remotely. All big machines work like this. Everyone claiming that it shouldn't be connected to the internet has never worked with a machine like this (PS: I have).
Seriously, we need to stop the hysteria over this. It's not like you're presented with a "destroy the world" button when you log in!
No, you'll land at a bash prompt. And then what? You won't know the commands necessary to get to the control system software, and, even if you did, you'd only be able to randomly tinker with magnets. This will either have no effect whatsoever, or will be prevented by the machine protection system.
The worst you can do is to interrupt operation for a while while they kick you out, and restore any changes you made (which would be easily done from automatic history software).
This is bad -- any crack like this is bad -- but it's not gonna cause black holes, it's not gonna release radioactivity, and it's not gonna break the machine.
People need to calm down.
All these machines have connections to the internet. This allows on-call technicians to ssh in to debug a problem remotely, and for facilities management to make checks on the performance of the machine.
It's not like connecting to the control software will present you with a big red button labelled "Black Hole Generator". You'll be presented with a bash prompt, and, if you can figure out the right command, possibly a control screen that you don't understand.
These machines are stunningly complex, and the most likely outcome of some random script kiddie fucking with things is that *nothing* will happen. Someone more knowledgable (or lucky) might be able to find something that will be prevented by the machine protection system, or cause the machine to shut down for a while. Bad, but not as scary as you suggest.
Seriously. Anyone who thinks that random "hackers" can do any real damage, or that these machines shouldn't be on the internet, doesn't know anything about them.
(PS: I'm an accelerator physicist who has worked with several of these machines.)
Thanks. :)
As noted above, I realised my mistake as soon as I hit submit, and have been corrected by multiple people in pedant-mode ever since.
Also, a potentiometer can also be a voltage measuring device with a very similar construction to a Wheatstone bridge, not just a variable resistor (which still makes me wrong, but the fact that it makes you a little bit wrong as well makes me feel a little better;) )
Thank you. I noticed that as soon as I hit submit, and was wondering how long it would take for someone to point it out.
It is true, however, that the Wheatstone bridge is based on a design for a potentiometer, so I'm only mostly wrong... ;)
An e-meter isn't a voltmeter, it's a potentiometer (it measures resistance not voltage). It's based on a Wheatstone bridge design, and is a very sensitive way to measure the resistance between the probes. Since hydration levels, stress, sweat, etc., can all change the resistivity of human skin, an e-meter will measure these changes, which can then be (fraudulently) be interpreted as being of religious significance.
It's nothing more than a half-assed lie-detector.
As I was saying above, it's working fine for me on Fedora 9 x86_64.
I don't see the "enter key" problem the OP was referring to.
It's working fine for me on Fedora 9 x86_64.
These are intermediate results, and should be treated as such. From TFA,
The team also is working to totally exonerate any possibility of the perchlorate readings being influenced by terrestrial sources which may have migrated from the spacecraft, either into samples or into the instrumentation.