"This past summer, Florida-based Marine Robotic Vessels International (MRVI) unveiled a USV that emphasizes reconnaissance over firepower. The 21-ft.-long Interceptor can travel at up to 55 mph, and is designed to be piloted both remotely and autonomously. "
Near-autonomous boats ARE a good idea though, in another example of very useful tech having to trickle down first from the military. There's really no compelling reason for shipping boats to be manned (and in fact a lot of compelling reasons not), other than the fact robots can't steer well enough yet.
Robot ships also wouldn't be much good against being boarded/hacked by pirates.
It's just a boat with a machine gun. There's not a fighting force on earth that couldn't already field a boat with a machine gun. The robotic aspect is just a labor-saver to cut costs. It doesn't add capability, in fact it's almost certainly less capable in most respects than a boat with a few armed guys onboard.
The only possible advantage is that it may have more range and more endurance than a manned boat. Since the weight saved by not having a crew can be used for ammunition and fuel. Though one of it's limitations is that it can only fire in one direction at once and only within several degrees of the bow. (As well as apparently only having a machine gun.) A crewed boat gunboat would typically have several guns attached to the hull and can additionally carry "man portable" weapons. A regular boat might be better able to protect itself against attack by helicopter than this.
The infrastructure and maintenance required for these kinds of toys only makes sense for countries with expensive labor and high political costs for casualties.
If it breaks down you need to send out a mechanic and/or tow. Possibly you first need to find it. Crewed boats tend to come with oars, battery powered radios, flares, etc.
Furthermore, I find the whole notion of armed robots cruising around freely in any kind of environment - war zone or not - extremely disturbing. How do we ensure they only kill what we want them to kill? Who is accountable when they do kill things? Does the extra layer of separation between commanding officer and 'target' make it more likely that decision makers will authorise killing?
There's also an issue of how easy it is to tell these apart from other boats (UAVs at least don't look too much like regular aircraft). Thus leading to the problem of someone may mistake a boat with people on (even that of a neutral party or a civilian) for one of these things. Hope they also know all relevent navigation rules...
I noticed they were talking some about possibly making them autonomous. That just seems like a really bad idea. What you would have is a weapon system disconnected from command. The enemy could set up a trap for these machines, capture them and then have some high-tech stuff at their disposal.
If they were just after the guns and the ammunition then they are probably not too concerned about "non destructive capture" techniques.
Unlike a UAV, it seems like it would be pretty easy to catch one of these surface machines using any number of methods even if they normally can protect themselves with weapon systems. If they can't protect themselves then it would be even easier to capture them.
Or destroy them. e.g. how well do these stand up to anti-tank weapons. An unintended consequence of this might be a return to the situation of pirate ships being as well armed as some warships.
For example - who is going to add gas, oil, maintenance etc. to a zombied boat?
Pirates (the real kind) apparently have little trouble getting hold of fuel and munitions. Even in the days of sailing ships gunpowder didn't grow on trees...
It's only a matter of time. They crank 1000 of these onto the ocean, the hackers go "oh, hey, wait a minute!" and bam, they've got 1000 gun mounted boats at their disposal, patched of course, so the same trick can't work twice.
Then all you need for global terrorism is some hackers together tha facilities to refuel and rearm these boats.You don't even need to control a thousand of them, about 20 ambusing a passenger ship will get you global coverage.
It's one thing to get the metal on metal thing going in your car and then be stranded alongside the road. But at least your life would be in no danger.
Actually your life could well be in danger, from idiots crashing into your broken down car...
It's quite another to get the metal on metal thing going and getting stranded in space. Tow trucks for space stations cost a considerable amount more.
Decided by question of fact, not question of law. Instead of "not liable in principle" it's "not liable because they couldn't prove it". Judge's favorite way of avoiding responsibility for a legal precedent for hundreds of years.
This is hardly a "technicality". It's a rather basic requirement for a plaintiff to prove their case.
But at least it shows you why choosing a judge in such cases is a much better option for the defendant than a trial by jury - technicalities count, precisely for the reason that judges have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, while juries prefer to take the big-bang approach.
If anything jury members are more "disinterested third parties" than judges. Thus might be more difficult to convince of a case...
"region coding" of any sort is not legitimate in a free market economy. The entire *point* of a free market is to benefit society by improving efficiency, efficiency improves since buyers will choose the best supplier for their need, and suppliers will have to make competitive offers, or else not sell anything.
Such region coding also adds to the cost by "fragmenting" what would otherwise be one product and requiring the administrative overhead of making sure that each version only goes to the right place.
Buying what you want, where you want, when you want at the lowest price you can find is for corporations. Why do users keep thinking globalization should benefit them. It's really silly.
It isn't even intended for all corporations. Look at the amount of abuse retail companies get (including lawsuits) if they do things like bypass distributers.
But active botnets are run by real criminals who react to threats and learn from their mistakes. Computer security experts need to adapt by learning from real-world law enforcement, who have been discovering ways to track and ensnare intelligent foes for millenia.
Rather real-world law enforcement needs to be involved, but to a large extent isn't.
You can send a forged tcp/udp/icmp packet over ip with forged source ip-address easily. But how in the hell is the receiver goig to send a packet back to you if only thing it knows is the forged source address?
The protocol may not require a reply to be sent. Or the information on where to respond to is elsewhere in the datagram. A fairly simplistic way to do things would be encrypt all the data, with the key being part of the (forged) source address. Or send a TCP or UDP datagram where what appears to be the UDP/TCP header is actually part of the data being sent.
Not true; if in excess of $5,000 of damage has been done to a company/individual via computer crime, the FBI will investigate. This is from an FBI security seminar I attended in 2002, though, so it may be dated information.
All to often such measures of damage are mostly fiction. Thus if they want to go after "them" it's trivial to inflate the numbers (as with the likes of copyright infringement, against big media). However if they don't want to do anything it's equally trivial to deflate the numbers.
They seem to be very interested when the crime is copyright infringement. I know that it's entirely from the pressure from big corporate lobby groups, but when the FBI can confiscate servers for torrent trackers, I don't see why they can't go after the major botnet controllers especially when they've been identified.
Probably because there isn't any powerful lobby interested in there being such enforcement actions. (In some cases there may well be a lobby against it.)
I'm no expert, but I would imagine that the amount of lead you'll absorb by handling a small toy covered in lead paint is going to be at least several orders of magnitude less than what you'd be inhaling from the emissions of every car, truck, and bus on the planet (and at 1970s emissions standards) every day.
Even 30 odd years ago I think you'd find that trucks and buses were typically powered by Diesel engines.
The actual additive was tetra-ethyl-lead. Which is itself rather toxic. The biggest problem with burning it in an internal combustion engine is that metallic lead is produced in the form of a very fine dust. Indeed the smaller the amount of fuel used per cycle the finer the dust is likely to be.
Of course, so has most of the rest of our legal system mutated. You know why our system has so mutated? Because our political system, which drives the legal system, is a classed, stratified scam.
An over representation of lawyers in the political system is probably also a big part of the problem.
Without the RIAA actively participating in the copyright infringement, to verify that the actual available file is a copyrighted work, rather than some 'known-song-name.mp3' on the server with a file size like that of an actual mp3, WHY would usenet have to comply with ANY order, unless they verified that said file was ACTUALLY copyrighted work?
In many cases the kind of "spiders" used by the RIAA/MPAA/etc don't even appear to look at the file size or even the whole filename. Thus they get all sorts of strange "false positives".
If I have a server with mp3's available for download that happen to have the same name and ID tag information as copyrighted works, but have an actual audio track of something of my own performance or garbage (no, they are not one in the same..), how would I be in violation of copyright infringement, or have to honor ANY DMCA takedown request?
If it was your own music they'd have a better case for claiming trademark infringement.
Keeping customer data reasonably safe is quite easy for small businesses.
In the main it isn't small businesses which are responsible for collecting lots of personal data and failing to secure it. Not only do they not have that much data about their customers they also tend not to want to risk alienating any of their customers.
You have your POS with outsourced security (read: You bought some POS system that handles CC purchases for you)
Which is actually less likely to be secure, but on the other hand any sensible written law will pass most of the obligations onto your sub contractor.
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The difference here being, of course, that Chihuahuas don't get bow-mounted guns.
Ships (even boats) with "pirates" or "terrorists" on may well be themselves armed. Even if not thier crews typically are.
No, these look like interdiction for speedboats and inflatables favored by "terrorist"
But possibly not too much use against a real MTB.
"This past summer, Florida-based Marine Robotic Vessels International (MRVI) unveiled a USV that emphasizes reconnaissance over firepower. The 21-ft.-long Interceptor can travel at up to 55 mph, and is designed to be piloted both remotely and autonomously. "
Who measures the speed of boats in mph?
Near-autonomous boats ARE a good idea though, in another example of very useful tech having to trickle down first from the military. There's really no compelling reason for shipping boats to be manned (and in fact a lot of compelling reasons not), other than the fact robots can't steer well enough yet.
Robot ships also wouldn't be much good against being boarded/hacked by pirates.
It's just a boat with a machine gun. There's not a fighting force on earth that couldn't already field a boat with a machine gun. The robotic aspect is just a labor-saver to cut costs. It doesn't add capability, in fact it's almost certainly less capable in most respects than a boat with a few armed guys onboard.
The only possible advantage is that it may have more range and more endurance than a manned boat. Since the weight saved by not having a crew can be used for ammunition and fuel. Though one of it's limitations is that it can only fire in one direction at once and only within several degrees of the bow. (As well as apparently only having a machine gun.) A crewed boat gunboat would typically have several guns attached to the hull and can additionally carry "man portable" weapons.
A regular boat might be better able to protect itself against attack by helicopter than this.
The infrastructure and maintenance required for these kinds of toys only makes sense for countries with expensive labor and high political costs for casualties.
If it breaks down you need to send out a mechanic and/or tow. Possibly you first need to find it. Crewed boats tend to come with oars, battery powered radios, flares, etc.
Furthermore, I find the whole notion of armed robots cruising around freely in any kind of environment - war zone or not - extremely disturbing. How do we ensure they only kill what we want them to kill? Who is accountable when they do kill things? Does the extra layer of separation between commanding officer and 'target' make it more likely that decision makers will authorise killing?
There's also an issue of how easy it is to tell these apart from other boats (UAVs at least don't look too much like regular aircraft). Thus leading to the problem of someone may mistake a boat with people on (even that of a neutral party or a civilian) for one of these things. Hope they also know all relevent navigation rules...
I noticed they were talking some about possibly making them autonomous. That just seems like a really bad idea. What you would have is a weapon system disconnected from command. The enemy could set up a trap for these machines, capture them and then have some high-tech stuff at their disposal.
If they were just after the guns and the ammunition then they are probably not too concerned about "non destructive capture" techniques.
Unlike a UAV, it seems like it would be pretty easy to catch one of these surface machines using any number of methods even if they normally can protect themselves with weapon systems. If they can't protect themselves then it would be even easier to capture them.
Or destroy them. e.g. how well do these stand up to anti-tank weapons. An unintended consequence of this might be a return to the situation of pirate ships being as well armed as some warships.
For example - who is going to add gas, oil, maintenance etc. to a zombied boat?
Pirates (the real kind) apparently have little trouble getting hold of fuel and munitions. Even in the days of sailing ships gunpowder didn't grow on trees...
It's only a matter of time. They crank 1000 of these onto the ocean, the hackers go "oh, hey, wait a minute!" and bam, they've got 1000 gun mounted boats at their disposal, patched of course, so the same trick can't work twice.
Then all you need for global terrorism is some hackers together tha facilities to refuel and rearm these boats.You don't even need to control a thousand of them, about 20 ambusing a passenger ship will get you global coverage.
It's one thing to get the metal on metal thing going in your car and then be stranded alongside the road. But at least your life would be in no danger.
Actually your life could well be in danger, from idiots crashing into your broken down car...
It's quite another to get the metal on metal thing going and getting stranded in space. Tow trucks for space stations cost a considerable amount more.
Together with having a long callout time...
Decided by question of fact, not question of law. Instead of "not liable in principle" it's "not liable because they couldn't prove it". Judge's favorite way of avoiding responsibility for a legal precedent for hundreds of years.
This is hardly a "technicality". It's a rather basic requirement for a plaintiff to prove their case.
But at least it shows you why choosing a judge in such cases is a much better option for the defendant than a trial by jury - technicalities count, precisely for the reason that judges have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, while juries prefer to take the big-bang approach.
If anything jury members are more "disinterested third parties" than judges. Thus might be more difficult to convince of a case...
Then why hasn't the market taken care of region encoding?
To an extent it has, by having "region free" players.
"region coding" of any sort is not legitimate in a free market economy. The entire *point* of a free market is to benefit society by improving efficiency, efficiency improves since buyers will choose the best supplier for their need, and suppliers will have to make competitive offers, or else not sell anything.
Such region coding also adds to the cost by "fragmenting" what would otherwise be one product and requiring the administrative overhead of making sure that each version only goes to the right place.
Buying what you want, where you want, when you want at the lowest price you can find is for corporations. Why do users keep thinking globalization should benefit them. It's really silly.
It isn't even intended for all corporations. Look at the amount of abuse retail companies get (including lawsuits) if they do things like bypass distributers.
But active botnets are run by real criminals who react to threats and learn from their mistakes. Computer security experts need to adapt by learning from real-world law enforcement, who have been discovering ways to track and ensnare intelligent foes for millenia.
Rather real-world law enforcement needs to be involved, but to a large extent isn't.
You can send a forged tcp/udp/icmp packet over ip with forged source ip-address easily. But how in the hell is the receiver goig to send a packet back to you if only thing it knows is the forged source address?
The protocol may not require a reply to be sent. Or the information on where to respond to is elsewhere in the datagram.
A fairly simplistic way to do things would be encrypt all the data, with the key being part of the (forged) source address. Or send a TCP or UDP datagram where what appears to be the UDP/TCP header is actually part of the data being sent.
Not true; if in excess of $5,000 of damage has been done to a company/individual via computer crime, the FBI will investigate. This is from an FBI security seminar I attended in 2002, though, so it may be dated information.
All to often such measures of damage are mostly fiction. Thus if they want to go after "them" it's trivial to inflate the numbers (as with the likes of copyright infringement, against big media). However if they don't want to do anything it's equally trivial to deflate the numbers.
They seem to be very interested when the crime is copyright infringement. I know that it's entirely from the pressure from big corporate lobby groups, but when the FBI can confiscate servers for torrent trackers, I don't see why they can't go after the major botnet controllers especially when they've been identified.
Probably because there isn't any powerful lobby interested in there being such enforcement actions. (In some cases there may well be a lobby against it.)
I'm no expert, but I would imagine that the amount of lead you'll absorb by handling a small toy covered in lead paint is going to be at least several orders of magnitude less than what you'd be inhaling from the emissions of every car, truck, and bus on the planet (and at 1970s emissions standards) every day.
Even 30 odd years ago I think you'd find that trucks and buses were typically powered by Diesel engines.
Lead was an antiknock additive.
The actual additive was tetra-ethyl-lead. Which is itself rather toxic. The biggest problem with burning it in an internal combustion engine is that metallic lead is produced in the form of a very fine dust. Indeed the smaller the amount of fuel used per cycle the finer the dust is likely to be.
Of course, so has most of the rest of our legal system mutated. You know why our system has so mutated? Because our political system, which drives the legal system, is a classed, stratified scam.
An over representation of lawyers in the political system is probably also a big part of the problem.
Indeed. After all a Patent on your idea is absolutely VITAL to maintaining your market....NOT!! See how Coca-Cola protected their formula.
Actually the most important thing here is the marketing. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to reverse engineer the drink itself.
Soooo do the roaches turn into lawyers or is it the other way around?
Will Adam and Jamie be allowed to irradiate lawyers? If so will the footage show up on an "outtakes" episode...
Without the RIAA actively participating in the copyright infringement, to verify that the actual available file is a copyrighted work, rather than some 'known-song-name.mp3' on the server with a file size like that of an actual mp3, WHY would usenet have to comply with ANY order, unless they verified that said file was ACTUALLY copyrighted work?
In many cases the kind of "spiders" used by the RIAA/MPAA/etc don't even appear to look at the file size or even the whole filename. Thus they get all sorts of strange "false positives".
If I have a server with mp3's available for download that happen to have the same name and ID tag information as copyrighted works, but have an actual audio track of something of my own performance or garbage (no, they are not one in the same..), how would I be in violation of copyright infringement, or have to honor ANY DMCA takedown request?
If it was your own music they'd have a better case for claiming trademark infringement.
Keeping customer data reasonably safe is quite easy for small businesses.
In the main it isn't small businesses which are responsible for collecting lots of personal data and failing to secure it. Not only do they not have that much data about their customers they also tend not to want to risk alienating any of their customers.
You have your POS with outsourced security (read: You bought some POS system that handles CC purchases for you)
Which is actually less likely to be secure, but on the other hand any sensible written law will pass most of the obligations onto your sub contractor.