The way I said it was right. DARPA had Army and other DoD sponsorship. I said the scientists involved designed it to be militarily redundant. The fact is that the military didn't use it that way.
Unfortunately, the main reference on the hospital is the ham coordinator, as quoted on ARRL's site:
"While I was meeting with hospital department heads, Bob Wolbert, K6XX, had started our ARES Resource Net on the W6WLS/W6MOW linked repeaters," Pennell told the ARRL. "During the briefing, the hospital determined to implement HICS/SEMS for this emergency. There hadn't been telephones or Internet anywhere since about 2:30 AM. The hospital's phone system did work, but only within the hospital. Their internal computer local area network wasn't working either, so they were instantly on a 'paper system.'"
The hospital isn't talking about the technical failure.
Well, attacks through cyberspace succeed in a meaningful way when things that should never have been connected to the Internet are attacked. Like SCADA systems or your fighter jet plans. So, I am not such a big believer in them. When someone takes down your entire communications infrastructure, that's something else.
I drove through Morgan Hill while this was happening, and got to Carmel by 9 AM, There seemed to be something blocking 156 near 101, I had to turn around and get back on 101 and come in via 68, but I have no indication that the problem was network-related. Business in Carmel seemed to be normal.
significant investment in software and systems quality ended with the Apollo program in the 1970s.
Do you travel on airplanes? Most of the newer ones are fly-by-wire now.
Surprisingly, there is a good deal of work on provable software systems.
Everybody gets as much software and systems quality as they are willing to pay for. The hospital in question either wasn't getting what it was paying for, or wasn't paying enough. You can't afford consumer software with a life-or-property level of quality, that's why you don't get it. So instead we have things like Open Source that let us each invest as much as we want in making it better.
As far as I am aware, there were four locations entered, and eight cables cut. Do you have the locations for all four? If so, don't put it on Slashdot:-)
IMO this is what a real "cyber" attack looks like. It's interesting that someone can do it remotely, but the fact that someone - maybe just one person - was able to be 100% effective in denying communications with not much more than a hacksaw, that's a real hack:-)
Redundancy of means, not just points. That means not just relying on the wired communications infrastructure or things that depend on it like cellular, for your emergency services.
Redundancy isn't always economically efficient, but we have to do it anyway, and what is worse we have to keep testing it so that it keeps working. This is hard to do if you are a private company with your stockholders baying at your feet for more efficiency.
I don't think it was terrorists. No terrorism occurred. I am just pointing out that the attack indicates that should someone really want to do something nasty, not just to Morgan Hill but to a larger city, and attack like the one in Morgan Hill is just too darned easy and disables the whole communications infrastructure.
Sure, inductance is a problem. But a shield doesn't only work by grounding out the signal. It's keeping the external electrostatic field from effecting the bundle by causing it to be distributed and thus cancel itself out. And to a lesser effect the external magnetic field, depending on the wavelength. Yes, it's not perfect and you can induce a current in the shield. Ferrite beads help with that.
One reason for shielding is to avoid induced currents in the signal pairs during a nearby lightning strike. And then DC ground on one side and float on the other would be correct. Of course fiber works well for runs that are long enough for fiber to make sense. But of course at the end you go to copper.
Although shielding is nice to have, it's not necessary for network cable because network cable is balanced twisted pair. Indeed, most high-performance network cables are not available with shielding, they can't maintain the spec with a shield in the jacket. It might be that your cable is older.
If you do have shielded cable, don't ground both ends!!! Bring all cables at one end to a common ground, and let the other end float. Otherwise, you will create a ground loop and actually make the noise worse.
Think about length. Short runs of Cat3 are probably fine for gigabit ethernet. It's when you are up to the specified maximum length that you are likely to run into trouble.
We're not seeing that much problem with briefly used CFLs here, as it doesn't get below 50F very often here, and the luminaires I'm using seem to get to a reasonable brightness right away. I have some CFL entry lamps, and a pair of CFL floods on a motion sensor, and they perform just fine. This may be a matter of what units I have.
Speaking of conscience, why is it that Slashdot is an oft-repeat offender in spreading anti-CFL nonsense? I've seen many pieces like this here.
If your utility has serious trouble with the power-factor of CFLs, they will tune the system with some additional inductance or capacitance. But they don't. Because this isn't a problem. It's the power factor for the sum of everything on the secondary of your local transformer that is a problem, and that probably ends up being close to 1.0 . Smart transformers, by the way, tune this automatically. I see them on more poles lately.
Second, the mercury issue. Which is 1/10 the mercury put out by burning hydrocarbons (especially coal) for powering incandescent lamps. Yes, the mercury from CFLs is mercury in your house, and the other kind of mercury from the generators powering incandescent lighting is just in the air you breathe in your house.
And then, they take some time to start. This is a problem for some outdoor use, and tolerable for indoor use unless your home is really cold. And some of them burned out too fast, like any cheap electronics. Learn which brands don't.
It's nice that practical LEDs are coming some day. I'm sure we'll hear lots of propaganda about the arsenic and other toxic things in them, even though it's close to impossible to actually get those chemicals out of the chip, out of the plastic around the chip, etc., and they're in such small amounts that it doesn't matter anyway.
I only have one incandescent lamp left in my home, and that one is going to leave someday soon too. We are a healthy, happy family, and we're spending less and hurting the environment less. That's the reality for CFL users.
Bruce
Re:Scala seems to be Java+/-
on
Twitter On Scala
·
· Score: 2, Informative
This is the same for Ruby. You can create a list, or you can create some object you wrote in hand-optimized C which just responds to the same operations as a list.
You're personally willing to make that sort of technological sacrifice just to keep Microsoft out?
What sacrifice? It's good for customers. It's no sweat for Linux distributions. And hardware manufacturers have shown that they can make sufficient margins to make sub-$300 systems profitable, or they wouldn't be making them at all.
Yes, if I work really hard at it I can get admitted to see the policy analysts for various politicians. It's not like they drop everything to talk to me. If I want to do this I'm going to have to start collecting donations (again) because it is otherwise a pretty fast path to being broke, with the days out of work for travel and meetings, paying for flights, etc.
Maintain competence in a technical topic undistorted by political agendas.
Be free of influence from deep-pockets technical companies to the disadvantage of smaller and disruptive players.
Be platform-indepependent in their requirements and certification process.
Segregate the power to turn off segments of the network to manage attacks vs. turning them off to manage other issues such as some mis-guided concept of "piracy", etc.
I side with Vinge in believing that segmentation of the network is a sure indicator of a government going feral.
We all know that the posting of really silly, unscientific stories on Slashdot increases the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere due to the tremendous amount of electricity exhausted in the transfer, dowmloading, and display of those stories, not to mention the CO2 output of the readers, who, at least most of them, exhale carbon dioxide! Something must be done!
Slashdot Mirror
The way I said it was right. DARPA had Army and other DoD sponsorship. I said the scientists involved designed it to be militarily redundant. The fact is that the military didn't use it that way.
Unfortunately, the main reference on the hospital is the ham coordinator, as quoted on ARRL's site:
The hospital isn't talking about the technical failure.
Well, attacks through cyberspace succeed in a meaningful way when things that should never have been connected to the Internet are attacked. Like SCADA systems or your fighter jet plans. So, I am not such a big believer in them. When someone takes down your entire communications infrastructure, that's something else.
I drove through Morgan Hill while this was happening, and got to Carmel by 9 AM, There seemed to be something blocking 156 near 101, I had to turn around and get back on 101 and come in via 68, but I have no indication that the problem was network-related. Business in Carmel seemed to be normal.
Be assured, air traffic controllers do have access to HF radio.
significant investment in software and systems quality ended with the Apollo program in the 1970s.
Do you travel on airplanes? Most of the newer ones are fly-by-wire now.
Surprisingly, there is a good deal of work on provable software systems. Everybody gets as much software and systems quality as they are willing to pay for. The hospital in question either wasn't getting what it was paying for, or wasn't paying enough. You can't afford consumer software with a life-or-property level of quality, that's why you don't get it. So instead we have things like Open Source that let us each invest as much as we want in making it better.
I changed the article to "cables serving the city of Morgan Hill" instead of "in" it.
You're just grousing because you couldn't pass the code test :-)
As far as I am aware, there were four locations entered, and eight cables cut. Do you have the locations for all four? If so, don't put it on Slashdot :-)
IMO this is what a real "cyber" attack looks like. It's interesting that someone can do it remotely, but the fact that someone - maybe just one person - was able to be 100% effective in denying communications with not much more than a hacksaw, that's a real hack :-)
Redundancy of means, not just points. That means not just relying on the wired communications infrastructure or things that depend on it like cellular, for your emergency services.
Redundancy isn't always economically efficient, but we have to do it anyway, and what is worse we have to keep testing it so that it keeps working. This is hard to do if you are a private company with your stockholders baying at your feet for more efficiency.
I don't think it was terrorists. No terrorism occurred. I am just pointing out that the attack indicates that should someone really want to do something nasty, not just to Morgan Hill but to a larger city, and attack like the one in Morgan Hill is just too darned easy and disables the whole communications infrastructure.
Sure, inductance is a problem. But a shield doesn't only work by grounding out the signal. It's keeping the external electrostatic field from effecting the bundle by causing it to be distributed and thus cancel itself out. And to a lesser effect the external magnetic field, depending on the wavelength. Yes, it's not perfect and you can induce a current in the shield. Ferrite beads help with that.
One reason for shielding is to avoid induced currents in the signal pairs during a nearby lightning strike. And then DC ground on one side and float on the other would be correct. Of course fiber works well for runs that are long enough for fiber to make sense. But of course at the end you go to copper.
Although shielding is nice to have, it's not necessary for network cable because network cable is balanced twisted pair. Indeed, most high-performance network cables are not available with shielding, they can't maintain the spec with a shield in the jacket. It might be that your cable is older.
If you do have shielded cable, don't ground both ends!!! Bring all cables at one end to a common ground, and let the other end float. Otherwise, you will create a ground loop and actually make the noise worse.
Think about length. Short runs of Cat3 are probably fine for gigabit ethernet. It's when you are up to the specified maximum length that you are likely to run into trouble.
Maybe that was from the time of the old-fashioned electromechanical starters and using the filaments in the ends of the bulbs.
We're not seeing that much problem with briefly used CFLs here, as it doesn't get below 50F very often here, and the luminaires I'm using seem to get to a reasonable brightness right away. I have some CFL entry lamps, and a pair of CFL floods on a motion sensor, and they perform just fine. This may be a matter of what units I have.
Speaking of conscience, why is it that Slashdot is an oft-repeat offender in spreading anti-CFL nonsense? I've seen many pieces like this here.
If your utility has serious trouble with the power-factor of CFLs, they will tune the system with some additional inductance or capacitance. But they don't. Because this isn't a problem. It's the power factor for the sum of everything on the secondary of your local transformer that is a problem, and that probably ends up being close to 1.0 . Smart transformers, by the way, tune this automatically. I see them on more poles lately.
Second, the mercury issue. Which is 1/10 the mercury put out by burning hydrocarbons (especially coal) for powering incandescent lamps. Yes, the mercury from CFLs is mercury in your house, and the other kind of mercury from the generators powering incandescent lighting is just in the air you breathe in your house. And then, they take some time to start. This is a problem for some outdoor use, and tolerable for indoor use unless your home is really cold. And some of them burned out too fast, like any cheap electronics. Learn which brands don't.
It's nice that practical LEDs are coming some day. I'm sure we'll hear lots of propaganda about the arsenic and other toxic things in them, even though it's close to impossible to actually get those chemicals out of the chip, out of the plastic around the chip, etc., and they're in such small amounts that it doesn't matter anyway.
I only have one incandescent lamp left in my home, and that one is going to leave someday soon too. We are a healthy, happy family, and we're spending less and hurting the environment less. That's the reality for CFL users.
Bruce
This is the same for Ruby. You can create a list, or you can create some object you wrote in hand-optimized C which just responds to the same operations as a list.
What sacrifice? It's good for customers. It's no sweat for Linux distributions. And hardware manufacturers have shown that they can make sufficient margins to make sub-$300 systems profitable, or they wouldn't be making them at all.
Bruce
I side with Vinge in believing that segmentation of the network is a sure indicator of a government going feral.
Bruce
We all know that the posting of really silly, unscientific stories on Slashdot increases the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere due to the tremendous amount of electricity exhausted in the transfer, dowmloading, and display of those stories, not to mention the CO2 output of the readers, who, at least most of them, exhale carbon dioxide! Something must be done!
OK, cue the violins! Now, all of you at once!
AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
Bruce
This is so cool! I get a hadron just thinking about it :-)