The year is 1650. We've already made a couple of voyages to the new colonies....Steve Bennett claims that he can get to America on a tiny single-mast vessel made out of cheap wood by himself...In all likelihood, he's going to end up drowning in the Pacific.
Either you meant to say "Atlantic", or you are predicting that Steve will reach mars.;-)
Yeah, just so you know, I read it in the latest Discover I got in the mail. I mean, the process could be, and they're taking Discover for a ride (haven't read the article yet), but I doubt it was posted in jest.
I hope you are correct (i.e. that this is true) but the fact that discover printed it doesn't necessarily make it true. They have perpetuated their own April fool's day hoaxes in the past. Remember how the April 1995 issue of Discover talked about the newly discovered hot-headed ice borers, a critter they later admitted they made up for the amusement of readers. The tip off that it was a hoax (other than the fact that real discoveries of this type are announced in the Journal of Mammalogy, not Discover) was the name of the biologist who discovered them - "Dr. Aprile Pazzo".
Amusing side note: I'm guessing that one of the readers had their own laugh at the expense of the editors. One of the letters about this "discovery" that got reprinted in the next issue purported to be from "Shigatsu Baka" of the San Francisco Small Mammal Zoo and Discovery Center
I've seen redundant stories posted here before, but this is the first time I've seen it happen so quickly that the first
posting was still up on the front page!
I didn't want to argue with the people who have nothing better to do than argue about the terms "cracker" and "hacker". I often use "*nix" as a generic phrase to refer to unix and unix-like operating systems. People familiar unix tend to understand the meaning. Likewise, I chose "*acker", because the majority of people here would understand.
bahamat wrote: Does MS really think that people are too stupid to remember what happened less than 2 months ago?
You don't need to look that far back. Try this week. It seems as though Microsoft has an ongoing program to nurture and feed the *acker types of the world.
"I'm looking for an entry level digital 4 or 8 track digital recorder to experiment with in the $500 range. Any product recommendations or warnings out there in the geek crowd?
If you already have a pretty beefy box to run it on, I'd go with software and a high-end sound card (e.g. this kind of stuff). We used to use an analog tascam fourtrack, and it was somewhere in the $300 range. Now we are using Cakewalk's Guitar Tracks Pro, which gives us 32 tracks for the same price range.
Something that uses mp2/mp3 natively a plus!"
Cakewalk uses a proprietary file format, but you can export your projects to mp3. I've never tried importing from mp3, but would not be surprised if they are capable of that, too.
Re:Carbon-carbon trouble-trouble?
on
Latest Columbia News
·
· Score: 3, Informative
joseph schmo asked, "anyone know what carbon-carbon is?" Nasa conveniently answered that question
here:
Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) is a light gray, all-carbon composite. RCC, along with inconel foil (metal) insulators and quartz blankets, protect the orbiter's nose, chin, and wing leading edges from the highest expected temperatures and aerodynamic forces. It also is used in the arrowhead area at the forward section of the orbiter where the external tank is attached. RCC is used there for shock protection during pyrotechnic separation of the external tank from the orbiter.
Fabrication of RCC begins with graphite cloth which is saturated with a special resin. Layers of the cloth are then laminated and cured, after which they are heat-treated to convert the resin into carbon.
After further processing, the material is treated with a mixture of alumina, silicon and silicon carbide to give it a grayish, oxidation-resistant coating, and then heated in a furnace. The orbiter's nose cap is fabricated as one piece while each of the wings has 22 seperate RCC panels and T- seals on the leading edge. Each panel is affixed to the orbiter's skin by mechanical attachments.
I view music, however crude, as an expression of human spirit and by extension, as art...I think that artistic quality coveys something of the artist ? that the work is indeed a labor of effort and honesty and contains originality; coveys a message and emotion....
(Now please don't pick the above apart,...)
No worries. I don't intend to. I think you actually have a good working definition. I certainly agree with it, anyway.
Despite the vague definition, I do know (albeit subjectively) quality music from crap and what I hear on the radio and from big labels is more the latter than the former.
As the examples I gave above (rondellus, mofro, Atom and his package, Kraig Kenning) clearly demonstrate, I have also been turning to indie music
. I guess the problem is that I've noticed that the mainstream music I think is trash - especially the bubblegum pop - must be touching *someone* emotionally. How else could they sustain the sales figures they have?
Snork Asaurus listed two of the reasons for buying indie music as "Quality" and "Choice and variety". 0x0d0a took exception with these reasons.
WRT quality, 0x0d0a said:
I'm dubious. You may not *like* best-sellers, but dismissing all of them as low-quality is, frankly, ludicrous. Yes, much of the music industry is influenced by pure marketing. However, quality of music is the dominant factor -- if people do not like your music, they will not buy it.
Hmmmm....Snork Asaurus chooses indie music because it has more "quality". 0x0d0a thinks that "quality of music is the dominant factor" in music sales (which, of course, implies that music on major labels is higher quality than indie music.)
You obviously can't both be right. I suspect that the difference in opinion is because you guys are defining "quality" differently.
"Quality" is such a loaded word; what exactly do you mean? I doubt that either of you meant recording quality; if that's the deciding factor, then noone would listen to MP3s, most of which sound no better than an analog tape. You clearly can not be talking about the technicality of the music; if that determined "quality", the top 40 would be covers of paganini, coltrane and lizt.
I suspect that marketability - not "quality" (whatever that may be)- is the dominant factor in
music sales. If the public likes it, and they are exposed to it, they will buy it. The things that the majority like are what will sell the most copies. Labels do extensive research into listener preference and try to release albums that will appeal to the most people possible. That's no surprise.
0x0d0a also expressed doubt as to the validity of Snork Asaurus's claim that indie music offered more "Choice and variety".
You deliberately avoided buying mainstream music to *increase* your choices available?
I definitely side with SA here; indie music has more choices. Anyone can do it, so by default there are more choices to wade through.
Don't even try to convince me that a major label would offer you the choice of Gregorian Chant covers of black sabbath songs.
The primary complaint that mainstream listeners have is that there are too many musicians to listen to and find the good ones from the bad ones. (the solution to this, of course, is to use word of mouth. If someone with the same tastes as you says it is good, you should give it a look.) There are plenty of indie artists who are great musicians.
Amazon listed MoFro's album
blackwater as one of the top 10 R&B albums of the year, and it is minor label. Atom and his package is one of the funniest synth-punk musicians out there. Kraig Kenningis an unsigned slide guitar player who can play circles around signed artists, as his song Sonic Blues clearly demonstrates.
srichman and evilpiper were discussing sound artifacts and errors that show up in pickups, cables, and amplifiers. I'm reproducing part of that exchange here to give the context for my comments below.
srichman said: >>>>Noise will always be introduced by pickups, >>>>and many consider it to be part of the >>>>"character" of the guitar/pickups.
Evilpiper responded: >>>That's very short-sighted. You could just >>>as well say that distortion will always be >>>introduced by amplification (ie. tub-amps), >>>and many consider it to be part of the >>>character.
srichman countered: >>Come on! Are you really trying to argue >>that people don't think the distortion >>introduced by tube amps is part of >>the "character" of their music!? The >>overdriven tube distortion sound has >>virtually defined rock music for decades!
evilpiper offered the opinion: >>I would never base anything on what people >>*think*. People think a lot of things, wether >>they are true or not...If you someone wants >>that tube sound, make it an effect that can be >>added if someone wants it.
There are plenty of companies selling effects pedals like this that are designed to simulate the sound of overdriven tubes. Guess what? The sound is close, but it is not the same. I've got a pedal to play through my newer amps, and it never comes out the same as my fender bassman with the 6L6s glowing in the back. The same is true of organs; I don't think you can buy an organ or keyboard that doesn't have a setting to simulate the sound of a hammond B-3 organ. The genuine B-3 will sound different in a recording, though.
I'm not sure why. Maybe the electronics to simulate the sound of the old equipment just aren't quite there yet. Maybe the electronics are, but musicians respond differently to simulations than they do to the genuine stuff, and that comes across in the recording. Regardless of the reason, though, there is a difference.
In the long run this becomes increasingly less important over time. As music changes, a sound will be nearly abandoned for a decade or more. When that sound becomes trendy again, a simulation may be good enough to satisfy most listeners. Older music fans will be able to hear the difference, but they will be in the minority of the people buying music.
I started out wanting to say that evilpiper is wrong, and that overdriven tubes sound better than mere effects. Now I have to admit that they simply sound different, and I prefer the sounds I'm accustomed to over simulations of those sounds. [sigh!] I'm feeling old.
Pii said, "Wow, great response..." thus giving me cause to smile.
I forgot to add that the courts have, in the past, interpreted the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act of 1984 in a very strict manner. For example, Ryan Breding was running a warez site at OU in 1997 and was prosecuted not only for the copyright violations, but also for violation of the OCCA because the popularity of his site
affected bandwidth at the school. Another words, under the 1984 OCCA, simply having a site that is more popular than your provider anticipated can be a crime in Oklahoma if that impacts the bandwidth of your provider.
How is that germane to the current topic? Well, I suspect - remember IANAL, and this is only opinion - that the same courts that decided slowing a school's connections is a violation of the law would also consider interrupting the function of a webserver by causing a reboot to be a similar violation. Further suppose that the target system is a) in Oklahoma, and b) running NT...
Pii said: There is a concept in law called "No Duty to Retreat," and I see no reason why it cannot be applied in much the same way to cases like this.
This concept relates to self-defense, and deadly force. [....] If, however, that person is in his home, his own property, that person may use deadly force as a means of self defense without having to exhaust every means of escape or avoidance.
On his own property, a person has No Duty to Retreat.
What you say is correct in many, but not all jurisdictions in the USA. For example, in
Florida, your statement would be correct, since they allow the use of deadly force to protect any of your property. In contrast,
Massachusetts residents may not use deadly force to protect their property, although they can use it in self defense. Specifically:
According to what I
just googled, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming don't even allow the use of deadly force to protect a dwelling. Surprisingly, it looks as though
Maryland actually allows more latitude in the use of deadly force to protect your business than it does to protect your home. (If someone in one of those jurisdictions has better info, feel free to correct me.)
Anyway, the short version here is that jurisdictions differ widely in a) what you are allowed to defend, and b) what means you are allowed to use in defense.
How is the scenario for Cyber-attack any different?
First off, this idea is a defense of property. It is not a matter of defending you or your family against death or bodily injury. All states allow the use of deadly force in to protect you and your family, but they differ widely in what *else* they let you protect with deadly force; i.e. you may not be allowed to use deadly force to protect your property.
Obviously, we're not talking about deadly force... We're simply talking about electronic countermeasures
You correctly noted that computer strikeback is not the same as the use of deadly force, but you failed to note that the states have similar disparities in computer laws. For example, the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act of 1984 makes it a felony to
What is legal in your jurisdiction may not be legal in your targets jurisdiction, or in the jurisdictions of the computers, switches and routers that your attack travels through enroute to the the target
It may not be effective in eliminating the problems your network is having from the target site - if you strike back against a machine and accidently harm it, you could find yourself in a protracted feud with the owner of that system (a la "hatfields vs. mccoys") which ends up being more of a bother to you
If you cause collateral damage, you could be liable for it - e.g. someone is flooding you with easily spoofable ICMP and UDP packets and you foolishly DoS the machine whose IP address appears in the header, thus shutting down a small business owner's website. There's a good chance you'll get sued if they know what happened.
it may not be cost effective to accurately trace and identify the machine that is attacking you.
Everyone on/. seems to be thinking about the potential for this to be used in DRM or religious wars about OS. Those are valid concerns. It is worth pointing out, though, that this BIOS has the potential to be used for less nefarious purposes; i.e. trusted hardware systems can be part of trusted platforms, which most security practitioners believe to be more secure. The idea of trusted hardware has been around at least as long as the Orange Book has existed. Specifically, it said:
>>Snowcrash's "metaverse" served as >>the inspiration for the development of VRML > >The idea was out there in one form or another >for a lot longer than Snow Crash has been around.
Thanks for the correction. You are of course, correct; other cyberpunk authors had similar stuff in mind for quite a while before snowcrash.
I'll try to partially redeem myself by pointing out that snowcrash's publication date was a half decade before the date that VRML became an ISO standard. I suppose I will have to settle for saying that Snow Crash was highly inspirational to the development of VRML.:)
It is ironic that slashdot would run this today. Just two nights ago I was discussing this book with a friend. We came to the conclusion that Stephenson has a particular talent for writing inside jokes and still making them funny for non-insiders. We decided that the key is that Stephanson sets up his jokes well enough that non-insider can sort of get them from context.
As an example, consider the description of a virtual sword fight[*] in the Black Sun. Before going into the actual fight, there's about a one page aside where Stephanson says that kendo is an attempt to take a chaotic and violent practice - sword combat - and give it rules and regulations. Stephanson then goes back to describing the fight. In this description Stephanson talks about how the opponent, a very formal Japanese businessman, faces faces off with Hiro and moves forward displaying perfect zanshin. He then explains that
Hiro didn't have any zanshin, but he knew that kendo people never have to block below the knee...
That's not an actual quote (i.e. it is from memory) but you get the jist. The description of the method of movement is just what a kendo person would do. The terminology explains to the swordplay nerd that the businessman has years of practice, so much so that he moves effortlessly without conscious thought. Saying he has "zanshin" gives the swordplay nerd the idea that this person could move through an entire fight without even thinking about what he was doing, that the businessman could simply watch Hiro's actions and let his body respond to them without any conscious effort.
All that implied level of skill is lost on the non-swordplay nerd because they don't know what zanshin is. However, they still laugh because of his description of a highly trained martial artist getting cut off below the knees because their sport doesn't teach them how to block down there.
Stephenson is a master at doing this; i.e. he can tell a good story containing inside jokes and still have 80% of the people who are outsiders laughing. That's far preferable to Mark Fabi's approach of telling a good story full of inside jokes and then stopping the story to explain the joke to the outsider, thus destroying both the inside-ness of the joke and the flow of the story.
[*] The character Hiro protagonist always carried a katana and shoto, both in real life and as an avatar in the metaverse.
The Metaverse was a VR experience described in the excellent cyberpunk comedy Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson, the same guy who wrote Cryptonomicon.
In the described virtual world, there was a virtual bar that was highly exclusive, and everyone wanted to hang out there. It was named the Black Sun.[*]
Just as 2001 served as an inspiration for developing communication satellites, Snowcrash's "metaverse" served as the inspiration for the development of VRML. The first company to try and make a VRML world into a commercial venture was, not surprisingly, named "Blaxxun Interactive" in honor of the bar in Stephanson's book.
[*] The protagonist of the story, Hiro Protagonist, was a pizza delivery guy/hacker who wrote the code for much of the metaverse, including the Black Sun bar.
Those of you who have been reading slashdot for a while may recall that back in 1999 a guy named David Schriner homebrewed a HERF gun that was capable of shutting down a PC at 20 feet. That's not much of a range, but it only cost him $400
to do it. If someone threw a little more time and money at the problem, they might be able to do something more impressive.
I wonder if these things will be hardened against EMP attacks. If not, it would not matter if they used a transponder ring or fingerprint recognition; either way a powerful radio signal is all a criminal would need to disable all the guns in a home before breaking in.
I'm especially interested in the transponder ring systems. I'm sure that hardware types will try cobbling together a universal ring...
Not forgotten
on
Starcraft
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
UFO-loon Denise M. Clark wrote about a UFO book that discusses
"the intelligence of our sea life, mainly as that intelligence relates to dolphins". Slashdot user
Swannie attempted to make a humorous startrek IV reference by adding
"Don't forget about killer whales". Others have pointed out that this was an inaccurate
Trek reference. I'd like to add that it was also silly because killer whales are in the family
delfinidae; i.e. they are dolphins, and as such were not "forgotten" by Ms. Clark's statement.
FWIW, I think it is safe to assume that either Ms. Clark or the author of the book she reviewed is fond of David Brin's Uplift Wars series, and in particular
the intelligent dolphins in his book
Startide Rising. They ought to expand their reading just a little and familiarize themselves with Brin's essay from
Otherness where he talks about the public's refusal to accept that language research has simply not shown dolphins to be as clever as we wish them to be.
For interested parties - This is a very cool book. It is an odd combination of short sci-fi stories grouped by topic along with intelligent non-fictional essays that discuss the same issues. Brin uses the above cetacean language example as a jumping off point to discuss Americans' obession with behaving as though other people's ideas, even ones that are not supported by the facts, ought to be treated like they equal merit.
Thank you, Ovidian. I'm glad someone brought this up first. I was going to mention it, but didn't want to seem like I was nit-picking. Since when does an FTP server make something "web enabled"?
Seriously, just because modern web browsers can issue a limited subset of the commands defined in the FTP protocol doesn't mean that FTP is part of "the web". I was using FTP long before there was ever a "Web". If you upload anything via FTP on a regular basis, the difference is readily apparent.
Poe - appropriately cynical/morbid for my tastes. Some was over cute (The Gold Bug), other stuff was right on. I especially liked The Cask of Amontidello(sp?). That is true horror, no supernatural creepies needed.
Steinbeck - Only read East of Eden. Best use of adjectives I've ever come across. His scenery descriptions are to die for. He also, FWIW, really captures that feeling of morbid depression that comes from being in love with someone who uses you and leaves you
Shakespeare - taming of the shrew is funny, Romeo and Juliet seems unlikely (they fell for each other way to quickly), skimmed some of the rest. I think there may be something to the theory that they are written by different people using a common pen name....the quality is too inconsistant to be one person.
Chaucer - bit of a perv, very funny once you get used to the language
Woodhouse - Glad you put him on the list. Martin Woodhouse is a name that never comes up in nerd circles, and that always puzzles me because his characters are great. Both the books about Giles Yeoman (e.g. Treefrog, BushBaby and BlueBone) and the "historical novels" about Leonardo Da Vinci are great. I just finished The Medici Guns and The Medici Hawks.
For the uninformed, the Giles Yeoman character is an aeronautical engineer who is constantly pressed into service - against his will - by secret branches of the British government. He's a cynic and a smart-a##. Think of these as Tom Clancy set in the 1960's, but with more focus on technology and less on guns.
The portrayal of Da Vinci in The Medici * naturally focuses on the artist's engineering feats. Like Yeoman, the da vinci character has a sense of humor and an "I'm smarter than them" attitude, but the cynicism is directed at the papacy's views on science, not at his employers. In case if anyone is interested, the events described in The Medici Guns appear to be based upon this
letter of introduction from Da Vinci to Ludovico Sforza, the regent of Milan.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 funny
That's the hardest I've laughed reading slashdot in a long time.
Either you meant to say "Atlantic", or you are predicting that Steve will reach mars.
Amusing side note: I'm guessing that one of the readers had their own laugh at the expense of the editors. One of the letters about this "discovery" that got reprinted in the next issue purported to be from "Shigatsu Baka" of the San Francisco Small Mammal Zoo and Discovery Center
I've seen redundant stories posted here before, but this is the first time I've seen it happen so quickly that the first posting was still up on the front page!
You, OTOH, must be new.
bahamat wrote: Does MS really think that people are too stupid to remember what happened less than 2 months ago?
You don't need to look that far back. Try this week. It seems as though Microsoft has an ongoing program to nurture and feed the *acker types of the world.
Check out http://www.drms.dla.mil/newsales/ for information on US Dept of Defense surplus sales.
;-)
I'm really glad that they have FSC 8810 - I always wanted to buy an army surplus cow!!!
Seriously, though, it is a really good site. I just wish I could save enough pennies to buy something in the FSC 1810 catagory.
(Now please don't pick the above apart,...)
No worries. I don't intend to. I think you actually have a good working definition. I certainly agree with it, anyway.
Despite the vague definition, I do know (albeit subjectively) quality music from crap and what I hear on the radio and from big labels is more the latter than the former.
As the examples I gave above (rondellus, mofro, Atom and his package, Kraig Kenning) clearly demonstrate, I have also been turning to indie music . I guess the problem is that I've noticed that the mainstream music I think is trash - especially the bubblegum pop - must be touching *someone* emotionally. How else could they sustain the sales figures they have?
"Quality" is such a loaded word; what exactly do you mean? I doubt that either of you meant recording quality; if that's the deciding factor, then noone would listen to MP3s, most of which sound no better than an analog tape. You clearly can not be talking about the technicality of the music; if that determined "quality", the top 40 would be covers of paganini, coltrane and lizt.
I suspect that marketability - not "quality" (whatever that may be)- is the dominant factor in music sales. If the public likes it, and they are exposed to it, they will buy it. The things that the majority like are what will sell the most copies. Labels do extensive research into listener preference and try to release albums that will appeal to the most people possible. That's no surprise. 0x0d0a also expressed doubt as to the validity of Snork Asaurus's claim that indie music offered more "Choice and variety".
I definitely side with SA here; indie music has more choices. Anyone can do it, so by default there are more choices to wade through. Don't even try to convince me that a major label would offer you the choice of Gregorian Chant covers of black sabbath songs. The primary complaint that mainstream listeners have is that there are too many musicians to listen to and find the good ones from the bad ones. (the solution to this, of course, is to use word of mouth. If someone with the same tastes as you says it is good, you should give it a look.) There are plenty of indie artists who are great musicians.Amazon listed MoFro's album blackwater as one of the top 10 R&B albums of the year, and it is minor label. Atom and his package is one of the funniest synth-punk musicians out there. Kraig Kenningis an unsigned slide guitar player who can play circles around signed artists, as his song Sonic Blues clearly demonstrates.
srichman and evilpiper were discussing sound artifacts and errors that show up in pickups, cables, and amplifiers. I'm reproducing part of that exchange here to give the context for my comments below.
srichman said:
>>>>Noise will always be introduced by pickups,
>>>>and many consider it to be part of the
>>>>"character" of the guitar/pickups.
Evilpiper responded:
>>>That's very short-sighted. You could just
>>>as well say that distortion will always be
>>>introduced by amplification (ie. tub-amps),
>>>and many consider it to be part of the
>>>character.
srichman countered:
>>Come on! Are you really trying to argue
>>that people don't think the distortion
>>introduced by tube amps is part of
>>the "character" of their music!? The
>>overdriven tube distortion sound has
>>virtually defined rock music for decades!
evilpiper offered the opinion:
>>I would never base anything on what people
>>*think*. People think a lot of things, wether
>>they are true or not...If you someone wants
>>that tube sound, make it an effect that can be
>>added if someone wants it.
There are plenty of companies selling effects pedals like this that are designed to simulate the sound of overdriven tubes. Guess what? The sound is close, but it is not the same. I've got a pedal to play through my newer amps, and it never comes out the same as my fender bassman with the 6L6s glowing in the back. The same is true of organs; I don't think you can buy an organ or keyboard that doesn't have a setting to simulate the sound of a hammond B-3 organ. The genuine B-3 will sound different in a recording, though.
I'm not sure why. Maybe the electronics to simulate the sound of the old equipment just aren't quite there yet. Maybe the electronics are, but musicians respond differently to simulations than they do to the genuine stuff, and that comes across in the recording. Regardless of the reason, though, there is a difference.
In the long run this becomes increasingly less important over time. As music changes, a sound will be nearly abandoned for a decade or more. When that sound becomes trendy again, a simulation may be good enough to satisfy most listeners. Older music fans will be able to hear the difference, but they will be in the minority of the people buying music.
I started out wanting to say that evilpiper is wrong, and that overdriven tubes sound better than mere effects. Now I have to admit that they simply sound different, and I prefer the sounds I'm accustomed to over simulations of those sounds. [sigh!] I'm feeling old.
Ashland Soy resin for body panels
Brilliant Technologies Headlight concepts
Dynatek Hydrogen fuel tanks
Goodyear Corn-based tires
Harman Becker Sound system
Makel Engineering Hydrogen sensors and controller
McLaren Hydrogen fuel rails and supercharger
Motorola Wireless technologies
Pi Technology Hands-free phone
Quantum Hydrogen fuel injectors
Roush Engine support and build
Sarnoff Collision avoidance systems
Sun Microsystems Vehicle electronics programming
SpeechWorks Conversational speech voice interface
TRW Four-point safety belts
USSC Soy-based foam for seats Visteon Exterior lighting
MIT Medialab Wireless switches
Univ. of Northern Iowa - ABIL Soy-based grease
....but I can't help wondering who's going to start the linux "CARdara" distribution. ;-)
Pii said, "Wow, great response..." thus giving me cause to smile.
I forgot to add that the courts have, in the past, interpreted the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act of 1984 in a very strict manner. For example, Ryan Breding was running a warez site at OU in 1997 and was prosecuted not only for the copyright violations, but also for violation of the OCCA because the popularity of his site affected bandwidth at the school. Another words, under the 1984 OCCA, simply having a site that is more popular than your provider anticipated can be a crime in Oklahoma if that impacts the bandwidth of your provider.
How is that germane to the current topic? Well, I suspect - remember IANAL, and this is only opinion - that the same courts that decided slowing a school's connections is a violation of the law would also consider interrupting the function of a webserver by causing a reboot to be a similar violation. Further suppose that the target system is a) in Oklahoma, and b) running NT...
There is a concept in law called "No Duty to Retreat," and I see no reason why it cannot be applied in much the same way to cases like this. This concept relates to self-defense, and deadly force. [....] If, however, that person is in his home, his own property, that person may use deadly force as a means of self defense without having to exhaust every means of escape or avoidance.
On his own property, a person has No Duty to Retreat.
What you say is correct in many, but not all jurisdictions in the USA. For example, in Florida, your statement would be correct, since they allow the use of deadly force to protect any of your property. In contrast, Massachusetts residents may not use deadly force to protect their property, although they can use it in self defense. Specifically: According to what I just googled, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming don't even allow the use of deadly force to protect a dwelling. Surprisingly, it looks as though Maryland actually allows more latitude in the use of deadly force to protect your business than it does to protect your home. (If someone in one of those jurisdictions has better info, feel free to correct me.)
Anyway, the short version here is that jurisdictions differ widely in a) what you are allowed to defend, and b) what means you are allowed to use in defense.
How is the scenario for Cyber-attack any different?
First off, this idea is a defense of property. It is not a matter of defending you or your family against death or bodily injury. All states allow the use of deadly force in to protect you and your family, but they differ widely in what *else* they let you protect with deadly force; i.e. you may not be allowed to use deadly force to protect your property.
Obviously, we're not talking about deadly force... We're simply talking about electronic countermeasures
You correctly noted that computer strikeback is not the same as the use of deadly force, but you failed to note that the states have similar disparities in computer laws. For example, the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act of 1984 makes it a felony to Why strikeback is a bad idea.
What is legal in your jurisdiction may not be legal in your targets jurisdiction, or in the jurisdictions of the computers, switches and routers that your attack travels through enroute to the the target
It may not be effective in eliminating the problems your network is having from the target site - if you strike back against a machine and accidently harm it, you could find yourself in a protracted feud with the owner of that system (a la "hatfields vs. mccoys") which ends up being more of a bother to you
If you cause collateral damage, you could be liable for it - e.g. someone is flooding you with easily spoofable ICMP and UDP packets and you foolishly DoS the machine whose IP address appears in the header, thus shutting down a small business owner's website. There's a good chance you'll get sued if they know what happened.
it may not be cost effective to accurately trace and identify the machine that is attacking you.
>>Snowcrash's "metaverse" served as
:)
>>the inspiration for the development of VRML
>
>The idea was out there in one form or another
>for a lot longer than Snow Crash has been around.
Thanks for the correction. You are of course, correct; other cyberpunk authors had similar stuff in mind for quite a while before snowcrash.
I'll try to partially redeem myself by pointing out that snowcrash's publication date was a half decade before the date that VRML became an ISO standard. I suppose I will have to settle for saying that Snow Crash was highly inspirational to the development of VRML.
As an example, consider the description of a virtual sword fight[*] in the Black Sun. Before going into the actual fight, there's about a one page aside where Stephanson says that kendo is an attempt to take a chaotic and violent practice - sword combat - and give it rules and regulations. Stephanson then goes back to describing the fight. In this description Stephanson talks about how the opponent, a very formal Japanese businessman, faces faces off with Hiro and moves forward
displaying perfect zanshin. He then explains that
That's not an actual quote (i.e. it is from memory) but you get the jist. The description of the method of movement is just what a kendo person would do. The terminology explains to the swordplay nerd that the businessman has years of practice, so much so that he moves effortlessly without conscious thought. Saying he has "zanshin" gives the swordplay nerd the idea that this person could move through an entire fight without even thinking about what he was doing, that the businessman could simply watch Hiro's actions and let his body respond to them without any conscious effort.
All that implied level of skill is lost on the non-swordplay nerd because they don't know what zanshin is. However, they still laugh because of his description of a highly trained martial artist getting cut off below the knees because their sport doesn't teach them how to block down there.
Stephenson is a master at doing this; i.e. he can tell a good story containing inside jokes and still have 80% of the people who are outsiders laughing. That's far preferable to Mark Fabi's approach of telling a good story full of inside jokes and then stopping the story to explain the joke to the outsider, thus destroying both the inside-ness of the joke and the flow of the story.
[*] The character Hiro protagonist always carried a katana and shoto, both in real life and as an avatar in the metaverse.
The Metaverse was a VR experience described in the excellent cyberpunk comedy
Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson, the same guy who wrote Cryptonomicon.
In the described virtual world, there was a virtual bar that was highly exclusive, and everyone wanted to hang out there. It was named the Black Sun.[*]
Just as 2001 served as an inspiration for developing communication satellites, Snowcrash's "metaverse" served as the inspiration for the development of VRML. The first company to try and make a VRML world into a commercial venture was, not surprisingly, named "Blaxxun Interactive" in honor of the bar in Stephanson's book.
[*] The protagonist of the story, Hiro Protagonist, was a pizza delivery guy/hacker who wrote the code for much of the metaverse, including the Black Sun bar.
Those of you who have been reading slashdot for a while may recall that back in 1999 a guy named David Schriner homebrewed a HERF gun that was capable of shutting down a PC at 20 feet. That's not much of a range, but it only cost him $400 to do it. If someone threw a little more time and money at the problem, they might be able to do something more impressive.
I wonder if these things will be hardened against EMP attacks. If not, it would not matter if they used a transponder ring or fingerprint recognition; either way a powerful radio signal is all a criminal would need to disable all the guns in a home before breaking in.
I'm especially interested in the transponder ring systems. I'm sure that hardware types will try cobbling together a universal ring...
UFO-loon Denise M. Clark wrote about a UFO book that discusses "the intelligence of our sea life, mainly as that intelligence relates to dolphins". Slashdot user Swannie attempted to make a humorous startrek IV reference by adding "Don't forget about killer whales". Others have pointed out that this was an inaccurate Trek reference. I'd like to add that it was also silly because killer whales are in the family delfinidae; i.e. they are dolphins, and as such were not "forgotten" by Ms. Clark's statement.
FWIW, I think it is safe to assume that either Ms. Clark or the author of the book she reviewed is fond of David Brin's Uplift Wars series, and in particular the intelligent dolphins in his book Startide Rising. They ought to expand their reading just a little and familiarize themselves with Brin's essay from Otherness where he talks about the public's refusal to accept that language research has simply not shown dolphins to be as clever as we wish them to be.
For interested parties - This is a very cool book. It is an odd combination of short sci-fi stories grouped by topic along with intelligent non-fictional essays that discuss the same issues. Brin uses the above cetacean language example as a jumping off point to discuss Americans' obession with behaving as though other people's ideas, even ones that are not supported by the facts, ought to be treated like they equal merit.
Thank you, Ovidian. I'm glad someone brought this up first. I was going to mention it, but didn't want to seem like I was nit-picking. Since when does an FTP server make something "web enabled"?
Seriously, just because modern web browsers can issue a limited subset of the commands defined in the FTP protocol doesn't mean that FTP is part of "the web". I was using FTP long before there was ever a "Web". If you upload anything via FTP on a regular basis, the difference is readily apparent.
I like The Bet...very fun to read around materialists and Ayn Rand fans. :)
Poe - appropriately cynical/morbid for my tastes. Some was over cute (The Gold Bug), other stuff was right on. I especially liked The Cask of Amontidello(sp?). That is true horror, no supernatural creepies needed.
Steinbeck - Only read East of Eden. Best use of adjectives I've ever come across. His scenery descriptions are to die for. He also, FWIW, really captures that feeling of morbid depression that comes from being in love with someone who uses you and leaves you
Shakespeare - taming of the shrew is funny, Romeo and Juliet seems unlikely (they fell for each other way to quickly), skimmed some of the rest. I think there may be something to the theory that they are written by different people using a common pen name....the quality is too inconsistant to be one person.
Chaucer - bit of a perv, very funny once you get used to the language
Woodhouse - Glad you put him on the list. Martin Woodhouse is a name that never comes up in nerd circles, and that always puzzles me because his characters are great. Both the books about Giles Yeoman (e.g. Treefrog, BushBaby and BlueBone) and the "historical novels" about Leonardo Da Vinci are great. I just finished The Medici Guns and The Medici Hawks.
For the uninformed, the Giles Yeoman character is an aeronautical engineer who is constantly pressed into service - against his will - by secret branches of the British government. He's a cynic and a smart-a##. Think of these as Tom Clancy set in the 1960's, but with more focus on technology and less on guns.
The portrayal of Da Vinci in The Medici * naturally focuses on the artist's engineering feats. Like Yeoman, the da vinci character has a sense of humor and an "I'm smarter than them" attitude, but the cynicism is directed at the papacy's views on science, not at his employers. In case if anyone is interested, the events described in The Medici Guns appear to be based upon this letter of introduction from Da Vinci to Ludovico Sforza, the regent of Milan.