(Speaking as one of about 10 people who have checkuser on the English Wikipedia) Running checkuser on a shared IP like a TOR exit node usually results in a tsunami of results. It becomes difficult to tell sockpuppets from other users who happen to be sharing that IP.
After he came to, they asked the tech what the last thing he remembered was. He told them the last thing he remembered before blacking out was the saliva on his tongue boiling away (due to the extremely low pressure lowering the boiling point of the saliva)
(Obligatory IANAL) Now that AT&T are actively trying to filter content on their network, they have abandoned their common carrier status, with all of the legal protections that come with it. So, the next logical step is for the MPAA and RIAA to file suit against them for contributory copyright infringement, or something along those lines (they could basically recycle the same lawsuit they filed against Napster). And I hope exactly that happens, as a lesson to any other ISP stupid enough to consider doing this.
I would call it Cyber-warfare, not cyber-terrorism. Granted, terrorism is probably the hardest word in English to define. Wikipedia has an entire entry on the word's definition. Note, though, the entry says: 'Terrorism expert Walter Laqueur in 1999 also has counted over 100 definitions and concludes that the "only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence"' Attacking the computer infrastructure isn't an act of violence.
For an embarrassingly parallel, strictly integer application like this, I think the logical next step is to attack it with FPGAs. For such an application, it wouldn't surprise me if a large Alterera FPGA could give you at least the same computation power as a large cluster, for a fraction of the price (both for the hardware and the electricity to power the thing).
Suggested reading for everyone: The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. Chapter 11 (documenting the ID movement) is available online, but the site is not responding (quite possibly something to do with this story breaking).
Optical computing is this wonderfully elaborate field for which the critical component - an optical transistor - exists only in imagination. Simply put, matter and electromagnetism just don't interact strongly enough to make one of this things feasible. It's sort of like cold fusion - it's a technology that's perpetually one decade away.
(B) As someone who took the FE electrical engineering exam, I can tell you that I seriously doubt more than tiny fraction of computer science students could pass the electrical engineering section-specific exam.
The morning section (general engineering) is relatively easy, especially if you have a well-rounded engineering background (I knew enough about steel composition from quiz bowl to answer that mechanical engineering question in the morning section, for example. The EE-related morning questions were about reading a spreadsheet!)
The afternoon, section-specific EE exam is a nightmare. As a computer engineer, I probably took probably upwards of 60 EE credits and I don't know how I passed (so I guess that everyone did poorly.) A computer science student would be lost.
"Because he is not a professional engineer, there is nothing really keeping him from being a talking head in court. On the witness stand, he could be totally honest and forthcoming, or he could totally sell out the the RIAA and say whatever they wanted him to say." - If he outright lies, he could always be charged with perjury (and, I believe, depositions this one are given under penalty of perjury)
As far as licensing, one of the turning points happened when a school in Texas blew up as a result of faulty engineering. Public outcry caused them to pass the strictest engineering accountability standards in the nation. (IANAL - if you are are not an NSPE licensed engineer, but your business card calls you an engineer, and you happen to be passing through Texas, DO NOT put your business card in any of those put-your-business-card-in-here-to-win-something fishbowls. I've been told people have been prosecuted for this under the licensing laws)
I'm almost certain that the NSPE, the main (only?) engineering licensing body, does not offer licensure to software engineers. As a computer engineer, when I took the FE exam (the exam you have to pass before you can take the PE exam and become a professional engineer), I had to take it in electrical engineering, because they have no separate computer engineering exam. And having a software engineer take it would be throwing him to the wolves - the electrical-engineering specific section is REALLY FUCKING HARD. (I came away utterly convinced I failed, and yet somehow I passed. I can only conclude that everyone else did just as poorly or worse), and the computer engineer curriculum I took is a lot closer to electrical engineering than your typical software engineer takes.
I saw something in the transcript that I wanted to point out before anyone else here criticizes Jacobson on it:
Q. By what body are you certified as an engineer? A. By no professional society. Q. No professional society? Is there any organization that has certified you as an engineer? A. No. Q. Are you part of any peer regulatory body? A. I don't quite understand what you mean by -- Q. Are you part of any body the members of which are peer-regulated? A. Can you give me an example of what you are -- Q. A lawyer, an architect, an accountant. I thought an engineer had to be certified by a peer-regulated body. A. To be called a professional engineer they do. Q. So are you not a professional engineer? A. I do not have a PE license.
Based on his Jacobson's research page. It looks like Jacob's, a professor "on the faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering", is a computer engineer. Given that, the above statement is totally understandable As a computer engineer myself, I can say that it is *EXTREMELY* rare for a computer engineer to be a licensed PE. (Not a single computer engineering professor in my University is). PE's are common in engineering professions where somebody needs to sign off on the final product - civil engineering especially, and mechanical engineering to a lesser extent.
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(Speaking as one of about 10 people who have checkuser on the English Wikipedia) Running checkuser on a shared IP like a TOR exit node usually results in a tsunami of results. It becomes difficult to tell sockpuppets from other users who happen to be sharing that IP.
It's basically impossible to use TOR to edit Wikipedia. Almost every exit node is blocked. I blocked most of them myself.
After he came to, they asked the tech what the last thing he remembered was. He told them the last thing he remembered before blacking out was the saliva on his tongue boiling away (due to the extremely low pressure lowering the boiling point of the saliva)
Why is this story not tagged itsatrap?
Not 4 Gigabytes per second. The write up says 40.
This one (although, strictly speaking, that's a bus controller for interprocessor communication instead of processor-RAM communication).
RAM. Lots of it.
(Obligatory IANAL) Now that AT&T are actively trying to filter content on their network, they have abandoned their common carrier status, with all of the legal protections that come with it. So, the next logical step is for the MPAA and RIAA to file suit against them for contributory copyright infringement, or something along those lines (they could basically recycle the same lawsuit they filed against Napster). And I hope exactly that happens, as a lesson to any other ISP stupid enough to consider doing this.
I would call it Cyber-warfare, not cyber-terrorism. Granted, terrorism is probably the hardest word in English to define. Wikipedia has an entire entry on the word's definition. Note, though, the entry says: 'Terrorism expert Walter Laqueur in 1999 also has counted over 100 definitions and concludes that the "only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence"' Attacking the computer infrastructure isn't an act of violence.
For everyone interested in this topic, Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science is required reading.
For an embarrassingly parallel, strictly integer application like this, I think the logical next step is to attack it with FPGAs. For such an application, it wouldn't surprise me if a large Alterera FPGA could give you at least the same computation power as a large cluster, for a fraction of the price (both for the hardware and the electricity to power the thing).
In the US Constitution, it's Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
It'll be Eternal September all over again.
It would be funny... if they weren't actively trying to export their insanity.
Suggested reading for everyone: The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. Chapter 11 (documenting the ID movement) is available online, but the site is not responding (quite possibly something to do with this story breaking).
If I could mod you to +10 funny I would...
If this is being done without users' consent, then it strikes me as being dangerously close to wiretapping, which is illegal.
Optical computing is this wonderfully elaborate field for which the critical component - an optical transistor - exists only in imagination. Simply put, matter and electromagnetism just don't interact strongly enough to make one of this things feasible. It's sort of like cold fusion - it's a technology that's perpetually one decade away.
(A) Yes, they have chemical engineering.
(B) As someone who took the FE electrical engineering exam, I can tell you that I seriously doubt more than tiny fraction of computer science students could pass the electrical engineering section-specific exam.
The morning section (general engineering) is relatively easy, especially if you have a well-rounded engineering background (I knew enough about steel composition from quiz bowl to answer that mechanical engineering question in the morning section, for example. The EE-related morning questions were about reading a spreadsheet!)
The afternoon, section-specific EE exam is a nightmare. As a computer engineer, I probably took probably upwards of 60 EE credits and I don't know how I passed (so I guess that everyone did poorly.) A computer science student would be lost.
"Because he is not a professional engineer, there is nothing really keeping him from being a talking head in court. On the witness stand, he could be totally honest and forthcoming, or he could totally sell out the the RIAA and say whatever they wanted him to say." - If he outright lies, he could always be charged with perjury (and, I believe, depositions this one are given under penalty of perjury)
Ok, I admit it - that comment cracked me up :)
PS - about the school that blew, the Wikipedia article is here.
As far as licensing, one of the turning points happened when a school in Texas blew up as a result of faulty engineering. Public outcry caused them to pass the strictest engineering accountability standards in the nation. (IANAL - if you are are not an NSPE licensed engineer, but your business card calls you an engineer, and you happen to be passing through Texas, DO NOT put your business card in any of those put-your-business-card-in-here-to-win-something fishbowls. I've been told people have been prosecuted for this under the licensing laws)
I'm almost certain that the NSPE, the main (only?) engineering licensing body, does not offer licensure to software engineers. As a computer engineer, when I took the FE exam (the exam you have to pass before you can take the PE exam and become a professional engineer), I had to take it in electrical engineering, because they have no separate computer engineering exam. And having a software engineer take it would be throwing him to the wolves - the electrical-engineering specific section is REALLY FUCKING HARD. (I came away utterly convinced I failed, and yet somehow I passed. I can only conclude that everyone else did just as poorly or worse), and the computer engineer curriculum I took is a lot closer to electrical engineering than your typical software engineer takes.
I saw something in the transcript that I wanted to point out before anyone else here criticizes Jacobson on it:
Q. By what body are you certified as an engineer?
A. By no professional society.
Q. No professional society? Is there any organization that has certified you as an engineer?
A. No.
Q. Are you part of any peer regulatory body?
A. I don't quite understand what you mean by --
Q. Are you part of any body the members of which are peer-regulated?
A. Can you give me an example of what you are --
Q. A lawyer, an architect, an accountant. I thought an engineer had to be certified by a peer-regulated body.
A. To be called a professional engineer they do.
Q. So are you not a professional engineer?
A. I do not have a PE license.
Based on his Jacobson's research page. It looks like Jacob's, a professor "on the faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering", is a computer engineer. Given that, the above statement is totally understandable As a computer engineer myself, I can say that it is *EXTREMELY* rare for a computer engineer to be a licensed PE. (Not a single computer engineering professor in my University is). PE's are common in engineering professions where somebody needs to sign off on the final product - civil engineering especially, and mechanical engineering to a lesser extent.