Be sure not to confuse the suborbital tourism companies with the orbital launch companies.
Virgin Galactic, Armadillo, and others are working the tourism market, which is suborbital in nature. (Though Armadillo at least appears to have higher ambitions, the tourism market should pay the bills nicely.)
Commercial orbital launch has been going on for years. The unusual thing about SpaceX's Falcon is that it was developed with no government funding at all; NASA is just another customer buying a service rather than a guarantor of development. And for what it's worth, SpaceX's launch prices are substantially lower than the other commercial providers.
"I wouldn't be comparing them to a fully developed operation just yet."
Okay. But to be fair, NASA has -zero- active fully-developed orbital manned launch programs right now. Shuttle was killed as a program years ago by Bush, it's well beyond the point of returning to active status*. And NASA Ares 1 is not as close to operational readiness** as is SpaceX Falcon 9.
[*: The production facilities are closed and not easily restarted. Bringing the shuttle back for more launches beyond available parts would be nearly as expensive as a whole new rocket program.] [**: In fact it appears Ares 1 cannot meet the original operational parameters even if fully-funded. Check out the Augustine commission's report.]
While much of what TFA states is true, it deliberately avoids mention of a very important fact: NASA won't need to run its own launch program if it can buy flights from the private commercial sector. Which is, in fact, the plan.
SpaceX, Boeing, and others are developing rockets and vehicles for just this market. They're very likely going to get these birds in the air well before any new NASA rocket system, and they're surely going to do it cheaper.
NASA-designed rockets were necessary Back In The Day when launching was about national prestige more than anything else. There were no other options. But in today's world, a government-owned and -operated rocket program is a funding sink, a political football, and a jobs program. NASA is not better off sinking billions into rocket development, when it could be spending that development money for programs that will bring us new capabilities such as on-orbit refueling and assembly. (Which are absolutely necessary prerequisites to long-term missions beyond low Earth orbit.)
Don't pine for NASA to look back to past glory. Instead, be glad they're being compelled to offload the relatively easy stuff and look forward. Ad astra, baby.
Unfortunately malware authors will be updating their Fake AV attacks to emulate that banner in a matter of weeks, so it's only a temporary improvement.
"This year, Obama killed the program's future funding because of budget overruns and because it was behind schedule."
Two things:
1) The shuttle program was killed years ago by a previous President. It's been a long time winding down the program, but its fate was sealed well before the 2008 election.
2) The Ares 1, even if completed, would have had serious operational deficiencies. It may be worth paying a lot for a launcher that works well for the mission at hand, but it's been clear for a long time that Ares was never going to be that launcher.
The mere fact that it's speculative does not make it a terrible article.
Considering the nature of the malware, the apparent difficulty of extracting information from it, and the sensitivity of the information already disclosed, I'd say it's a pretty fine write-up. It tells you what they know and can disclose, tells you there's more they can't disclose, and that there's still mroe that they know they don't know.
I mean seriously, hooray for forthright honesty here. No one is pretending to certainty that they don't have, which puts it in the top 1% of journalistic articles right there.
What's in a name? that which we call an industrial chemical By any other name would taste as sweet; So HFCS would, were it not HFCS call'd, Retain that cloying mouthfeel which it owes Without that title. HFCS, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all my pancreas.
Many organizations outgrow their visionary founders. Perhaps it is time already for wikileaks to do this.
While the timing of the allegation is convenient enough to evoke suspicion, that alone does not mean it is necessarily baseless. And even if baseless, the allegations can still taint the organization. The wikileaks organization and mission are important enough that Assange should seriously consider the possibility that wikileaks might be better served by his standing aside, if only temporarily.
There's no need of an assumption of criminality to realize that some basic precautions are in order.
When a janitor separates from a company they don't get to keep their keys to all the doors, because there's no reason for them to have it any more and no authorized use to which they could put it. (If it was okay for anyone to enter at any time, you wouldn't have a lock at all.)
When an accountant separates, they don't get to keep the company checkbook. Again, there is no reason for them to keep it, and no authorized use to which they could put it. (If it was okay for anyone to access corporate funds at any time, there's be a big box of money laying about.)
When an IT administrator leaves a company, they do get to keep the passwords, or at least whatever is in their memory. What they don't get to keep is access. Again, there's no reason for them to have it an no authorized use case. In practice that means changing all the passwords and certificates, because there is no physical object to be verifiably* returned.
[*: Of course there is a bit of a flaw in this: the janitor may well have taken an impression of the master key and could make himself a new one; the accountant could have written down all the relevant banking information. But there exist other controls - such as alarm systems and bank audits - to mitigate those threats.] [: I typed in a WPA key for my previous employer's WiFi so often that now, fifteen months after they fired me, I believe I could still reconstruct it from memory. Which is irrelevant, as it turns out, because I had occasion to visit there a few months ago and my phone connected right up. They hadn't ever bothered to change the damn thing. Good thing I'm a nice guy, or I'd have some idea what *other* passwords they haven't changed. For instance, I'd say the chances are excellent they haven't changed root on their ESX hosts...]
I recall a demonstration of an RFID card-cloning device from several years ago, where as a proof-of-concept the builder of the clonig device covertly cloned an authorized RFID security card and opened a secured door with it. It was a controlled penetration test against an aware target, but it clearly worked. It was widely publicized. (I'm not sure if this is the same tester - I think so - but there are full build instructions for a cloner available here: http://cq.cx/proxmark3.pl )
It's very difficult to imagine that this attack has never been duplicated as part of a hostile act after so long. It's easy to imagine that such an attack would not be reported, however, because such an attack could actually be very difficult to detect without an independent system monitoring physical access (e.g. cameras) and without evidence of some security breach to spur an investigation into access and camera logs. A strictly information-gathering penetration could be accomplished with hardly a trace.
Just because an exploit hasn't been seen in the wild yet doesn't mean it's not out there.
With a new SSD, one can sometimes remove a substantial performance bottleneck in an otherwise adequate older machine. Dropping a few hundred bucks on a new SSD drive might delay the purchase of a whole new machine by a year or two. From there, it's pretty easy to see why people wil be willing to pay pretty stiff prices for SSDs and also why Intel would be extremely motivated to not miss out on that market.
Slashdot Mirror
That service was really nifty, especially inthe days of dumb phones. Oh, well. It'll be missed.
Hmm. My user account page is now broken. Was it the last comment?
Needless to say this is offtopic, please mod accordingly.
Be sure not to confuse the suborbital tourism companies with the orbital launch companies.
Virgin Galactic, Armadillo, and others are working the tourism market, which is suborbital in nature. (Though Armadillo at least appears to have higher ambitions, the tourism market should pay the bills nicely.)
Commercial orbital launch has been going on for years. The unusual thing about SpaceX's Falcon is that it was developed with no government funding at all; NASA is just another customer buying a service rather than a guarantor of development. And for what it's worth, SpaceX's launch prices are substantially lower than the other commercial providers.
"I wouldn't be comparing them to a fully developed operation just yet."
Okay. But to be fair, NASA has -zero- active fully-developed orbital manned launch programs right now. Shuttle was killed as a program years ago by Bush, it's well beyond the point of returning to active status*. And NASA Ares 1 is not as close to operational readiness** as is SpaceX Falcon 9.
[*: The production facilities are closed and not easily restarted. Bringing the shuttle back for more launches beyond available parts would be nearly as expensive as a whole new rocket program.]
[**: In fact it appears Ares 1 cannot meet the original operational parameters even if fully-funded. Check out the Augustine commission's report.]
While much of what TFA states is true, it deliberately avoids mention of a very important fact: NASA won't need to run its own launch program if it can buy flights from the private commercial sector. Which is, in fact, the plan.
SpaceX, Boeing, and others are developing rockets and vehicles for just this market. They're very likely going to get these birds in the air well before any new NASA rocket system, and they're surely going to do it cheaper.
NASA-designed rockets were necessary Back In The Day when launching was about national prestige more than anything else. There were no other options. But in today's world, a government-owned and -operated rocket program is a funding sink, a political football, and a jobs program. NASA is not better off sinking billions into rocket development, when it could be spending that development money for programs that will bring us new capabilities such as on-orbit refueling and assembly. (Which are absolutely necessary prerequisites to long-term missions beyond low Earth orbit.)
Don't pine for NASA to look back to past glory. Instead, be glad they're being compelled to offload the relatively easy stuff and look forward. Ad astra, baby.
Excellent move!
Unfortunately malware authors will be updating their Fake AV attacks to emulate that banner in a matter of weeks, so it's only a temporary improvement.
Is NASA supposed to be a jobs program or a space program?
If the latter, then killing the Shuttle and Ares was the right move.
"This year, Obama killed the program's future funding because of budget overruns and because it was behind schedule."
Two things:
1) The shuttle program was killed years ago by a previous President. It's been a long time winding down the program, but its fate was sealed well before the 2008 election.
2) The Ares 1, even if completed, would have had serious operational deficiencies. It may be worth paying a lot for a launcher that works well for the mission at hand, but it's been clear for a long time that Ares was never going to be that launcher.
... There's no such thing as too big to fail.
Now THIS is the right article for trying the robotic overlord RSS reader for the first time.
The mere fact that it's speculative does not make it a terrible article.
Considering the nature of the malware, the apparent difficulty of extracting information from it, and the sensitivity of the information already disclosed, I'd say it's a pretty fine write-up. It tells you what they know and can disclose, tells you there's more they can't disclose, and that there's still mroe that they know they don't know.
I mean seriously, hooray for forthright honesty here. No one is pretending to certainty that they don't have, which puts it in the top 1% of journalistic articles right there.
Unlike Juliet, I ain't givin' it up.
What's in a name? that which we call an industrial chemical
By any other name would taste as sweet;
So HFCS would, were it not HFCS call'd,
Retain that cloying mouthfeel which it owes
Without that title. HFCS, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all my pancreas.
That's what I use slashdot for.
Many organizations outgrow their visionary founders. Perhaps it is time already for wikileaks to do this.
While the timing of the allegation is convenient enough to evoke suspicion, that alone does not mean it is necessarily baseless. And even if baseless, the allegations can still taint the organization. The wikileaks organization and mission are important enough that Assange should seriously consider the possibility that wikileaks might be better served by his standing aside, if only temporarily.
I'm impressed that he shot the actual server instead of just the monitor, thereby avoiding a classic rookie mistake.
There's no need of an assumption of criminality to realize that some basic precautions are in order.
When a janitor separates from a company they don't get to keep their keys to all the doors, because there's no reason for them to have it any more and no authorized use to which they could put it. (If it was okay for anyone to enter at any time, you wouldn't have a lock at all.)
When an accountant separates, they don't get to keep the company checkbook. Again, there is no reason for them to keep it, and no authorized use to which they could put it. (If it was okay for anyone to access corporate funds at any time, there's be a big box of money laying about.)
When an IT administrator leaves a company, they do get to keep the passwords, or at least whatever is in their memory. What they don't get to keep is access. Again, there's no reason for them to have it an no authorized use case. In practice that means changing all the passwords and certificates, because there is no physical object to be verifiably* returned.
[*: Of course there is a bit of a flaw in this: the janitor may well have taken an impression of the master key and could make himself a new one; the accountant could have written down all the relevant banking information. But there exist other controls - such as alarm systems and bank audits - to mitigate those threats.]
[: I typed in a WPA key for my previous employer's WiFi so often that now, fifteen months after they fired me, I believe I could still reconstruct it from memory. Which is irrelevant, as it turns out, because I had occasion to visit there a few months ago and my phone connected right up. They hadn't ever bothered to change the damn thing. Good thing I'm a nice guy, or I'd have some idea what *other* passwords they haven't changed. For instance, I'd say the chances are excellent they haven't changed root on their ESX hosts...]
I recall a demonstration of an RFID card-cloning device from several years ago, where as a proof-of-concept the builder of the clonig device covertly cloned an authorized RFID security card and opened a secured door with it. It was a controlled penetration test against an aware target, but it clearly worked. It was widely publicized. (I'm not sure if this is the same tester - I think so - but there are full build instructions for a cloner available here: http://cq.cx/proxmark3.pl )
It's very difficult to imagine that this attack has never been duplicated as part of a hostile act after so long. It's easy to imagine that such an attack would not be reported, however, because such an attack could actually be very difficult to detect without an independent system monitoring physical access (e.g. cameras) and without evidence of some security breach to spur an investigation into access and camera logs. A strictly information-gathering penetration could be accomplished with hardly a trace.
Just because an exploit hasn't been seen in the wild yet doesn't mean it's not out there.
In some places yes, in other places no.
Next question?
Not really. (Different version.)
With a new SSD, one can sometimes remove a substantial performance bottleneck in an otherwise adequate older machine. Dropping a few hundred bucks on a new SSD drive might delay the purchase of a whole new machine by a year or two. From there, it's pretty easy to see why people wil be willing to pay pretty stiff prices for SSDs and also why Intel would be extremely motivated to not miss out on that market.
And noting else will drain the battery of a navigational aid with possible life-safety implications.
Might be a good application for a specialty appliance.
"Screw a dog..."
Umm. I think you want 4chan.
And a dog.
Who here clicked the link to www.social-engineer.org before thinking about the potential consequences?
Have you just been had? :-)
For what it's worth, I wasn't actually serious. :-)
(Especially given that - if I understand my relativity rightly - photons would still be traveling at C in the frame of reference of the vehicle.)