What do the japanese have to do with the chinese? your whole argument is pointless.
That point wasn't the point. The actual point which is seperate from your previous point was that wars are not always fought for good reason. If you look at history, some wars are fought out of ignorance or sheer pride and stupidity. For instance the American overthrow of the British (following Boston tea party), the British could have just decreased taxes on tea by 50% and sent some high level diplomats to America to show "The Crown is sensitive to these issues" but instead they sent soldiers and attacked America.
Instead of decreasing tax and sending a few Ambassadors they chose war, a stupid decision. End result: America had its independence
I know many people get confused between Japanese and Chinese, but I assure you I'm not one of those (many) people. The Japanese commander Yamamato knew that an attack on US might not be a good idea, *but he had to do it anyway*, intended result: Japan woud secure Malaysian/Singapore oil fields; actual result: Japan was nuked and beaten back to its homeland. So was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour a good idea? No, it caused their destruction. The British forces defending Malaysia and Singapore were weak, the British had no idea about how to wage a modern war, resulting in the sinking of the greatest British batteleship the HMS Hood, also due to a Titanic-psyche in the design stage of the battleship. If the Japanese didn't attack Pearl Harbour and went straight for Malaysia, the US would have just sat there looking at the $$ cost of war, like they did at the beginning of WW2. The Japanese attack would have been more of a success.
The real point is that people that know better are ordered to start wars, even though the war might turn out badly, because some politician or Emperor thinks it was a good idea at the time, or has misguided notions of supremacy. Same as the attack on the Chinese embassy in Serbia by the US. If the military can use old maps and old information, and they have billions of dollars to keep up to date with 3D terrain models, then what do the politicians use? Can they only really start wars when it's a good idea, do they really know what they're doing? Think of it this way, when Japanese Emperor said, "Attack Pearl Harbour so that we can take Malaysia, Singapore and China" would any of his Generals have the balls to turn to him and say, "My Emperor, dude, that's a stupid idea, you're a stupid asshole man. Forget Pearl Harbour". Does anyone have the balls to say this to Bush? The last person that said this to the President really caught his eye - she was an intern called Monica Lewinksy.
The really sad thing is that the bigger countries gain from instability, because they can justify wars. Like if Iraq does even the slightest thing, America can blow it up, and then say "Iran is next, Saudi Arabia is next" and maintain power over them like that and keep oil prices low. In the same way China can never say, "Yeah Taiwan do whatever you want, no problem" because it would lose an advantage, at the very least it can say, "if companies in Taiwan start firing Chinese workers we'll invade Taiwan" thus allowing China to hold power over the country. The US is very dependent on VIA and chipsets manufactured in Taiwan that if the Chinese were seriously going to invade, the US would detect the build-up and send in a couple of Aircraft Carriers on "permanent military excercises" or whatever. Until I see a couple of American aircraft carriers next to Taiwan, I'm not worried.
You're right, cyber attack is stupid now, not enough critical systems are Internet-enabled yet. Thing is that's changing, I'm starting to see realtime control systems for the military written in Ada having more and more interconnectivity, battlefield networking and the like. Combine this with a 10GigaWatt UWB pulse to disable Aegis and goalpost gun interceptors, and you're looking at a whole pile of trouble when you fry electronics. Then again what panic would be created if all TV was knocked off the air (terrorist strike) at broadcast point (nuke in Hollywood) and CNN.com was defaced, the headline reading, "Terrorists have used some sorta hallucingenic mind control technique to brainwash the National Guard, The President says please all civilians go to your National Guard base and kill everyone." I'm sure a few people would take this advice. This would be in line with The Art of War teachings by Sun Tzu defeating your enemy with the minimum effort.
I'm just saying China wouldn't have a chance in hell of invading the U.S. or even damaging it significantly in an all-out war.
That's trash. With the nuclear technology the Chinese stole from the Americans, they can easily attack mainland US with multi-warhead ICBMs within a few years. Why do you think the Americans are working on missile interceptor technology in the middle of a recession?
Then again if a threat comes slowly they can't justify this cost. If CIA says, "We believe the Chinese have some Multi-warehead ICBMs. Bummer" that would be far less effective than, "OH MY GOD! The Chinese have *stolen* the designs for advanced American nukes! They'll copy them within 2 years, same as they copied the Mig-29. We need $50 billion from Washington NOW for missile interceptor technology research".
Remember, many Chinese army conscripts have graduated from the kung-fu schools in Shaolin. If US goes to war with China, it'll make a really good movie, just throw in Welsey Snipes, Kubrick and Steven Spielberg;-)
But really, the Americans will tell Russia to tell China to shut up so I'm not worried about anything. Except maybe the Premiere of North Korea becoming promoted to joint Premiere of N. Korea AND China (because the Chinese Premiere has gone on holiday). When the Chinese Prmiere gets back from holiday, he might find his country is just a big radioactive crater.
As highly as the Chinese leaders think of thier little dictatorship, there is no way in hell they think they could win over the rest of the world to their cause just by spouting "Down with the Capatalists", but the reverse is very true. The free countries of the world could deal a very heavy blow simply by allowing their propaganda to flow freely in China
Wrong. Read more Chinese/. postings - many many people in China see paedophile sites blocked and think the Chinese Govt. is doing a good thing. They aren't aware of democratic sites being on that list as well. Even if they did they've been brainwashed by the Chinese non-liberal media elite to regard democracy websites = Klu Klux Klan websites, therefore it's good that they are blocked. Same as from Saudi Arabia "Sharia law is evil" websites.
Wars are always for reasons, China could easily destroy us with ground and air troops by numbers alone.
You act like countries start wars because its fun, there would have to be something to gain from it
Agreed. If countries acted in their own interests then a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is not feasible.
Unfortunately I have again and again looked at Hitler's objectives in WW2, and especially Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour. Even Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, in charge of such a powerful and indestructible fleet was afraid of this relatively small attack (by WW2 standards) on Pearl Harbour when he said, "I fear we have awaken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve" in this article. If he knew that the attack would wake a sleeping giant, why would he have done the attack? Why did he not perform Hara-kiri (ritual suicide) instead of attacking Pearl Harbour like any good Japanese soldier would do if victory is not possible (as Japanese culture dictates)? Well actually I over-react, it's possible that he simply thought it would be a difficult war when he said that. However when it became clear that America was kicking ass he should have commited Hare-kiri for starting the war that caused the dishonour of Japan.
Plus Iraqi invasion of Kuwait - why? Such a small country. Hopefully China will not be to Taiwan as Iraq is to Kuwait.
President Putin (of Russia) is wise - his cooperation with the Americans brings money, and also allows the US to massively squeeze China. As soon as American military bases are deployed in Russia in the name of good relations (same as they are in Saudi Arabia) you'll see the Chinese shut up, and stick with what they do best - quietly copying CDs, making stuff cheaply, etc.
Attacking us is not going to happen, they wouldnt gain anything out of it.
--
They might try to
1. World war - Take out the entire Internet infrastructure, same as binLaden tried to take out the world financial system.
2. Surgical strike - Take out parts of the Internet infrastructure. The Chinese already have heavy controls on their own Internet. If they're this paranoid, they'll want some control over the outside. How do I shut down cnn.com in an emergency if China does another WTC as a diversion to create panic? WTC2 is a diversion for the Chinese military strike force to invade Taiwan while the US licks it's wounds assisted by panic due to the Internet being down. Hit the edge routers, via a weakness in IOS or DoS giving the BGP tables corrupted updates at major ISPs (use an infiltrator if necessary), plus SNMP plaintext password etc.
3. How do I silence a Chinese whistleblower that just posted some Chinese secret to indeymedia.org? DDoS against inymedia.org webserver, edge routers, Kazaa login system (single point of failure), Gnutella, and Freenet networks. Harness extra CPU by hijacking SETI@home program auto-update's DNS entry (IP address) OR reverse-IPmasquerading to Chinese Govt. server with trojan SETI@home update (their routers already do fancy stuff). This trojan will gradually roll out to all Chinese SETI@home clients and perform DDoS against the above targets. While the website is down the nearest Chinese spy will kill whoever, like when the Russians assassinated Vladimir Kostov, a journalist that talked too much while he was walking down a London (England) street.
It just annoys me that everyone knows just how unreliable, insecure and expensive Microsoft software is, but they still go and hand over the cash for it. *sigh*
I disagree. Microsoft is doing a very good job of encouraging users to maintain proper backups, and to leave the old manual systems in place in case of BSoD. The attack on WTC would have been far more succesful if Microsoft was more reliable, in which case 1 on-site backup with a sprinkler system would have sufficed (as far as illiterate MBA CIO, CTO & managers understand).
a hack, on top of a kludge, wrapped in a riddle, inside of an enigma. thats intel's x86 instruction set. blech.
Yeah, these damn CPUs with all their instructions. If you optimise your program enough, you can run it from inside the BIOS. The master l33t hAxOrS can optimise a program so much that they can run it in their own head! No damn instruction set needed. If you're too l4me a programmer to do that then you r a luser with an MBA, take your bloated JVM and watch the l33t programmers flame your bloated trash.
I mean have you ever connected an oscilloscope to the bus? The RAM modules keep doing DDoS attacks against the CPU and L2 cache, locking up the CPU until the request is complete. My CPU started getting hot, but I yanked those RAM modules before it was too late. My CPU runs real cool now. No hard drive, no RAM, no heatsink, no cooling fan - no bloat. If your code doesn't fit into the L1 cache, then it's a God damn bloated piece of trash which is not gonna run on my machines. The secret: It's the RAM modules doing a DDoS on the CPU, must be a conspiracy by Intel to slow down CPUs. Even AMD is in on it, sellouts. In my office, I took all the DDR, Rambus and SDRAM modules out of everybody's computers, my users haven't noticed a thing.
But when the writer of the EULA can enforce the EULA, then it is perfectly legal and fine.
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!! !!!! They CANNOT DO THIS!
The first European that downloads this is gonna TAKE THEM DOWN, tampering negatively with software already installed IS A VIRUS! Under Safeharbour these people are breaching European law. If the damages exceed the cost of the software (FREE) then they cannot hide behind "WE HAVE NO LIABILITY FOR OUR SOFTWARE" clauses. Same as reformatting your hard disk or deleting your FAT or Inodes. "We don't like inodes, we're going to delete them". Come on. iMesh ceases to function if cydoor is disabled, surely this is enough. This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!!!
Karma is the LEAST of my worries after reading this news, if you mod me down after anyone's privacy being so flagrantly breached then this Karma comes with too high a price. The most important karma is after all, up there.
"I don't know and I don't want to know, but by the way, if we get hit with another virus outbreak, you're fired."
The only thing you can do apart from setting fire to his computer is to take a chair and site behind him for the entire day. Whenever he reaches to open an email say, "HEY! NOOOOOOO! That might have a virus!" Then check the raw mail on the server using your PDA If there are no attachments say "It's clear. I will now open it for you" He'll get the message, remember people can learn even if they don't want to.
Virii aren't the problem... Idiots opening every email attachment and installing software are the problem. This is why not one computer in my offices have a floppy drive or cdrom drive, and all scripting is removed on the windows machines and all office products
Yeah, people that install software are stupid. I hate these stupid hardware manufacturers that install hard drives. I mean why? It'll only store some buggy bloated OS like MIcro$oft, or a linux containing a VM with some hollywood-style action inspired by Linus featuring Rik van Riel versus AA like The Rock versus Hulk Hogan. The last user that came up to me and said, "Will Rik van Riel's rmap patch speed things up?" got a binary dump of the patch with an Intel ASM lookup reference
If you optimise your program enough, you can run it from inside the BIOS. If you're too l4me a programmer to do that then you r a luser with an MBA, take your JVM and watch the l33t programmers flame your bloated trash.
In my office, I took all the DDR, Rambus and SDRAM modules out of everybody's computers, my users haven't noticed a thing. I mean have you ever connected an oscilloscope to the bus? The RAM modules keep doing DDoS attacks against the CPU, hogging the Bus, especially the latest ones. From what I see on my oscilloscope the DDoS attack of all RAM banks simultaneously is directed at the L2 cache and the CPU pipeline. My CPU started getting hot, but I yanked those RAM modules before it was too late. My CPU runs real cool now. No hard drive, no RAM, no heatsink, no cooling fan - no bloat. If your code doesn't fit into the L1 cache, then it's a God damn bloated piece of trash which is not gonna run on my machines. The secret: It's the RAM modules doing a DDoS on the CPU, must be a conspiracy by Intel to slow down CPUs. Even AMD is in on it, sellouts.
GM would never be blamed for a family who died in a horrible accident after recieveing a recall notice, and ignoring it.
Yup, unlike the Ford Pinto couple of decades ago where the fuel tanks exploded on slight impacts. I remember that calculation, something like
50 people a year killed x $1mil compensation = $50mil compensation per year for not fixing it
Recall of >500,000 cars x $200 repair = $100mil for recall
Ford's Conclusion: Let people die and quietly pay the compensation in order to save $100mil
I remember the Judge really kicked their asses. Which starts me thinking - if Microsoft delays patches, can they be LEGALLY LIABLE for damages as a result? Same as Ford was when they acted on the findings of the above calculation?
Virus scanners don't do much, though, because most people never update them. Oh, they'll snag that virus that's been out for ten years now, but it's not going to get the new ones unless the user actively chooses to go download the updated files.
True. Embarrasingly reminds me of my first support call request to my ISP when I was 13, I started with software and electronics, didn't know much about telco hardware I said, "My computer won't connect to the Internet - no dialtone or anything, I've set DHCP, DNS, WINS to your settings. PPP is set, IPX/SPX and NetBEUI are disabled. 9600 bps carrier set." British Telecom ISP support guy said, "Is your modem conncted securely?" I replied, "Oh man, I don't need a modem do I? They're like 100 bucks" British Telecom ISP support guy said, "You... Need... One... Bwa ha haaaaaaa!" Telecom support guy hangs up. Honest to God this happened to me a few years ago, if you're reading/. now then Hey wassup? Oh man, this is too embarassing to post on/. so I'm gonna click on the Submit/Preview button below and then click "No".
This is why I couldn't update my McAffee DAT files, so I contracted win32.CIH. McAffee scanner engine got infected also (Mcaffee.exe) and then I instructed it to scan and log all infected files, it infected all files it scanned. So the infected file-log included C:\Program Files\McAffee\Vshield.exe and C:\Program Files\Scan.exe
McAffee: luser. If McAffee try to sue me, I still have the old log saved. One week later I bought a 30GB DI30 Onstream backup drive. Good thing because when I installed Redhat 5 and used linux fdisk, I lost 50MB of mp3s which were the last thing I downloaded on my Windows 98 FAT32 partition. Man, it truncated the data on the FAT32 partition. My first experience with linux was BAD! I had to turn off sanity checking on the boot manager so it just "shut up and overwrite the damn boot sector and partition table with what was there previously, don't check anything". All programs should have an option where you can switch off sanity checking temporarily - otherwise the slightest unexpected problem and you're just stuck.
Think of Y2K: a big deal, yes, and plenty of people were saying right up through January 1999 that something had to be done, and soon, because thousands if not millions of computers and software programs were affected. Eventually, they all got on it. The problem was licked, and virtually no major Y2K issues were still existing by the time the date actually arrived.
Damn right. I've had a job for the last 2 years 'cos someone didn't hear the Y2k warning. It all started with a phonecall, "Where the heck did my Invoices go?".....
People should be glad the vulnerabilities were not exploited to a greater extent and keep on working to keep things secure
Nope, explanation below
If people broke into my house one night and left after defacing my home, but didn't take or destroy anything - I'd still be pretty upset. And if it was because I'd left the front door open- I would really think about closing it and installing a lock
Bzzzzzt, correction, it's the company's office. The places where admins and developers are now treated like sh**. If someone breaks into the office, then the managers stop shouting, "There are 1000s of dot-com MBAs out of work queuing for your job, you will work from 8am to 11pm, no questions". For a change give you a little respect while you repair the virus damage and shout at them for stupidly opening an.exe attachment. You shore up the firewall rules to show that you're doing something, but then management starts bitchin' about how ICQ, AOL IM, MSN IM, Kazaa, etc. won't work right. So you change the firewall rules back. No change. If you *even suggest* that they stop using Microsoft Exchange they will fire you on the spot.
As far as "your own house" is concerned, it's your fault if people break in easily. Set up your ip chains, inetd.conf and tcp wrappers. Heck use OpenBSD if you're that paranoid, we have OS choice now people - it's just the free money that's gone.
gives its home workers a computer, but requires them to pay about $45 a month for two phone lines to handle calls and dial into the booking system. "It's a small price," says Smith, who makes reservations 25 hours a week in her slippers. (She makes about $9 an hour; starting pay is $7.75.) JetBlue doesn't fuss about a dress code, but insists that callers not be treated to the sounds of domestic bliss, like crying kids. Supervisors monitor calls occasionally to make sure that all a customer hears is a friendly voice and a clicking keyboard. JetBlue gave its reservation agents computers so they could work from home; Jill Smith puts in about 25 hours a week of work, often in slippers. The savings from running a home-based reservation center helped the airline report its first profit a mere six months after its first flight.
Now THIS is what the Internet was made for, exactly what the dot-com boom was targetted towards but got hijacked by confused people that didn't know that this is the way to do it. Plus of course Webshots.
The ionosphere is heavily charged, right? Is it like a big capacitor or just a big charged sphere?
Charged sphere layer, the ground being, well... ground. At a point charged capacitor is close enough
The cable would be a series of pairs of wires, heavily insulated
If a thundercloud passes next to the wire, the short distance between the locks is an ideal weak point for the lightning. It will prefer to cross here. The decreased resistance in the cloud would cause a massive quantity of high power lightning to cross your cable insulator via the cloud. Plus, atmospheric jet streams (that aeroplanes use to decrease travel time) would blow the cable, at speeds of > 200mph. On this wind it will carry mother of Pearl clouds, Cirrus clouds, these are clouds made up of ice, and at 200mph will gradually chip away at the cable like sandpaper chips away at wood. Winds can be in the opposite directions at high and low altitudes causing shearing and twisting forces on your cable.
Don't forget your cable will travel through the van Allen belts. This has I think a similar charge to the ionosphere and is exceptionally highly charged during solar flares. Solar flares can disrupt power on Earth (/. geeks with brownout and clean-line UPS are mmmmmkay). This would add (or subtract) to the voltage at the ionosphere, plus the cable will cut the van Allen belts and Earth's magnetic fields, like a long wire (winding) in a gigantic alternator (electric dynamo).
Add to this the magnetic effect. The Earth's magnetic field would be disrupted by a long metal cable as the field would prefer to travel through the cable than the atmosphere, causing a warping in the Earth's magnetic field, and thus a possible weakness for solar radiation penetration. The charge on the cable could ionise the O3 in the ozone layer, damaging it. Ozone is highly corrosive so your cable will degrade in the ozone layer.
If we implement the gradual insulators system you talk about then the cable is still in effect a long power line or a collection of them (scroll down to near lecture 2 on this link), vulnerable to reflections and resonances occuring on the wire, especially if it interacts with the Earth's magnetic field causing a sympathetic resonance. Plus since the ionosphere is a large shell, a resonance could be amplified if the frequency matches the resonant frequency of the charged sphere (the opposite side of the sphere would have an inverse resonant waveform). Introducing more insulators will only change the harmonic frequencies, the resonances may still occur.
Re:Doesn't the earth receive more?
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 1
We need a worldwide energy distribution net so that third world countries don't feel that to succedde they need to cut down all their trees for power plants and strip mine themselves to death
Deforestation is caused by American newspapers and furniture builders. No matter how much electricity you have, you've got to sit down somewhere, at some table, made of wood. In a nice warm house, made of wood.
. The generators would then convert the energy into harmless microwave beams, which would be aimed at collecting stations on Earth
Sounds about as harmless as powerful GSM signals pointed at your head...... Microwave transmitters are almost perfect. Side lobes are a real bumber. As you say in time, (micro)meteorite bombardment will shift the transmitter so it microwaves NY either by holes decreasing dish accuracy or a big meteor strike making the dish subside. It needs a self-destruct system... Oh but that can also be hit by meteorites or micrometeorites. Need a a satellite loaded with a nuke... <Krusty the Klown bad joke>Bwa ha, ha ha, ha, huhhhhhhhhh</Krusty the Klown bad joke>
The only way I see space based power being practicable is with some sort of geo-synchronous elevator (the ones that are connected to the planet by a metal cable in sci-fi).
Metal cable is a BAD idea. As soon as it hits the highly charged ionosphere (where inverse lightning discharges to) your cable will burn out because it would ground the ionosphere OR you will discharge the ionosphere (1, 2) with repercussions that would make the complete destruction of the ozone layer look like a cakewalk. Perhaps no more storms ever...?
The/. conspiracy:/. used to joke about "Will code C++ for food". Why is this not funny any more?
Probably because the Apache helicopters couldn't even get to the battlefield, they kept smashing into pylons! 95% survival rate of enemy tanks is a pathetic kill rate. Tomahawks should stick with airports, SAM sites, radars, command-control, power plants, etc. These new Predator unmanned drones with hellfires would probably have a pretty good chance, although I wonder how easy it'll be to jam it's comms to the base though.
The change in Serbian government was caused by popular revolution, it might have happened naturally, I don't think it helps for some dropout soldier Scwarzenegger-wannabe in black-ops to broadcast, "We are voice of America and we're gonna bomb your country back into the stone age". Clinton is better than Bush, he showed off his real colours in his 45 minute Dimbleby lectures (streaming video available here). Bush struck it lucky with 9/11 otherwise Americans would still be like, "I don't believe we elected this retard"
Interested? Now read the rest of the article, here [iacenter.org]
As you can see all those bombs were more or less ineffective. The powerful tomahawk guidance computer was supposed to increase accuracy to cause more damage. Although I'll admit throwing a Pentium 4 strapped to a jet engine at a building is bound to hurt, especially with a copper heatsink.
This is called lying. If anything people would have laughed their asses off, we have invented this little thing called the PC since vietnam and it can do wonderious things, like enable missiles to blow shit up with some level of accuracy, or predict the best way to f*ck someones day over without needing to strip an entire region clear of any landscape.
Sir, you call me a liar, you call the NY Times (reference 16, 21,22), London Times, MSNBC, Fas.org liars also. Quoting this article
During the 78-day war, NATO crews flew 33,000 combat missions over Yugoslavia, dropped more than 20,000 laser or satellite-guided weapons and concluded that 99.6% found their targets.1 Of the more than one thousand planes used in the operation, 725 were American. Four hundred and fifty precision Tomahawk and 90 air-launched Cruise missiles were used.2 All told, 79,000 tons of explosives were dropped, including 152 containers with 35,450 cluster bombs, thermo-visual and graphite bombs.3 Despite this tremendous firepower used against a country the size of Ohio and a military that heavily relied on 1960-70's Soviet technology, more and more reports are surfacing that the Yugoslav Army emerged from this war virtually unscathed.
Interested? Now read the rest of the article, here
The biggest threat right now is if Israel's govt. suddently decided world-opinion and the US money could go fuck themselves. Who would restrain them? Certainly not the Arabs
The Arabs have jet aircraft, tanks, etc. The Israelis invaded a province armed with light illegal AK-47. The resistance they faced is the same as if Missouri invaded Kentucky. Right now the Israeli's have had < 1% military losses. If Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran decide to defend their fellow kinsmen (same as the US decided to defend England in WW2) there's gonna be serious trouble. Isreal is such a small country that a low-flying jet could be over Bethlehem and Eilat 2 minutes after crossing the border. Israel will retailiate with nukes. Then we'll see what weapons Saddam *really* has... In this case tactically Iraqi advanced weapons should be pre-empted - ahhh, this explains why Bush wants to kick some Iraqi butt.
Maybe the CIA knew that this would be necessary in advance and engineered the invasion of Kuwait via the US Ambassador telling Saddam basically "We don't care if you invade." And so the big picture falls into place... And here us/.'ers are thinking we can spot conspiracy theories a mile off, our pathetic little CDBTTPACBTA is all we can comprehend.
They'd rather use the 'Net to support their deeply cherished myths, not to undermine them.
The Internet is probably the clearest picture of humanity that anyone could ever ask for. Humans at their angriest, their meanest, their most playful, their horniest. I really don't think that any society can survive that level of honesty.
True, I've noticed the same types of post get modded down. It just takes one -1 click to shut someone up.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of decreasing tax and sending a few Ambassadors they chose war, a stupid decision. End result: America had its independence
I know many people get confused between Japanese and Chinese, but I assure you I'm not one of those (many) people. The Japanese commander Yamamato knew that an attack on US might not be a good idea, *but he had to do it anyway*, intended result: Japan woud secure Malaysian/Singapore oil fields; actual result: Japan was nuked and beaten back to its homeland. So was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour a good idea? No, it caused their destruction. The British forces defending Malaysia and Singapore were weak, the British had no idea about how to wage a modern war, resulting in the sinking of the greatest British batteleship the HMS Hood, also due to a Titanic-psyche in the design stage of the battleship. If the Japanese didn't attack Pearl Harbour and went straight for Malaysia, the US would have just sat there looking at the $$ cost of war, like they did at the beginning of WW2. The Japanese attack would have been more of a success.
The real point is that people that know better are ordered to start wars, even though the war might turn out badly, because some politician or Emperor thinks it was a good idea at the time, or has misguided notions of supremacy. Same as the attack on the Chinese embassy in Serbia by the US. If the military can use old maps and old information, and they have billions of dollars to keep up to date with 3D terrain models, then what do the politicians use? Can they only really start wars when it's a good idea, do they really know what they're doing? Think of it this way, when Japanese Emperor said, "Attack Pearl Harbour so that we can take Malaysia, Singapore and China" would any of his Generals have the balls to turn to him and say, "My Emperor, dude, that's a stupid idea, you're a stupid asshole man. Forget Pearl Harbour". Does anyone have the balls to say this to Bush? The last person that said this to the President really caught his eye - she was an intern called Monica Lewinksy.
The really sad thing is that the bigger countries gain from instability, because they can justify wars. Like if Iraq does even the slightest thing, America can blow it up, and then say "Iran is next, Saudi Arabia is next" and maintain power over them like that and keep oil prices low. In the same way China can never say, "Yeah Taiwan do whatever you want, no problem" because it would lose an advantage, at the very least it can say, "if companies in Taiwan start firing Chinese workers we'll invade Taiwan" thus allowing China to hold power over the country. The US is very dependent on VIA and chipsets manufactured in Taiwan that if the Chinese were seriously going to invade, the US would detect the build-up and send in a couple of Aircraft Carriers on "permanent military excercises" or whatever. Until I see a couple of American aircraft carriers next to Taiwan, I'm not worried.
You're right, cyber attack is stupid now, not enough critical systems are Internet-enabled yet. Thing is that's changing, I'm starting to see realtime control systems for the military written in Ada having more and more interconnectivity, battlefield networking and the like. Combine this with a 10GigaWatt UWB pulse to disable Aegis and goalpost gun interceptors, and you're looking at a whole pile of trouble when you fry electronics. Then again what panic would be created if all TV was knocked off the air (terrorist strike) at broadcast point (nuke in Hollywood) and CNN.com was defaced, the headline reading, "Terrorists have used some sorta hallucingenic mind control technique to brainwash the National Guard, The President says please all civilians go to your National Guard base and kill everyone." I'm sure a few people would take this advice. This would be in line with The Art of War teachings by Sun Tzu defeating your enemy with the minimum effort.
Then again if a threat comes slowly they can't justify this cost. If CIA says, "We believe the Chinese have some Multi-warehead ICBMs. Bummer" that would be far less effective than, "OH MY GOD! The Chinese have *stolen* the designs for advanced American nukes! They'll copy them within 2 years, same as they copied the Mig-29. We need $50 billion from Washington NOW for missile interceptor technology research".
Remember, many Chinese army conscripts have graduated from the kung-fu schools in Shaolin. If US goes to war with China, it'll make a really good movie, just throw in Welsey Snipes, Kubrick and Steven Spielberg ;-)
But really, the Americans will tell Russia to tell China to shut up so I'm not worried about anything. Except maybe the Premiere of North Korea becoming promoted to joint Premiere of N. Korea AND China (because the Chinese Premiere has gone on holiday). When the Chinese Prmiere gets back from holiday, he might find his country is just a big radioactive crater.
Unfortunately I have again and again looked at Hitler's objectives in WW2, and especially Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour. Even Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, in charge of such a powerful and indestructible fleet was afraid of this relatively small attack (by WW2 standards) on Pearl Harbour when he said, "I fear we have awaken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve" in this article. If he knew that the attack would wake a sleeping giant, why would he have done the attack? Why did he not perform Hara-kiri (ritual suicide) instead of attacking Pearl Harbour like any good Japanese soldier would do if victory is not possible (as Japanese culture dictates)? Well actually I over-react, it's possible that he simply thought it would be a difficult war when he said that. However when it became clear that America was kicking ass he should have commited Hare-kiri for starting the war that caused the dishonour of Japan.
Plus Iraqi invasion of Kuwait - why? Such a small country. Hopefully China will not be to Taiwan as Iraq is to Kuwait.
President Putin (of Russia) is wise - his cooperation with the Americans brings money, and also allows the US to massively squeeze China. As soon as American military bases are deployed in Russia in the name of good relations (same as they are in Saudi Arabia) you'll see the Chinese shut up, and stick with what they do best - quietly copying CDs, making stuff cheaply, etc.
1. World war - Take out the entire Internet infrastructure, same as binLaden tried to take out the world financial system.
2. Surgical strike - Take out parts of the Internet infrastructure. The Chinese already have heavy controls on their own Internet. If they're this paranoid, they'll want some control over the outside. How do I shut down cnn.com in an emergency if China does another WTC as a diversion to create panic? WTC2 is a diversion for the Chinese military strike force to invade Taiwan while the US licks it's wounds assisted by panic due to the Internet being down. Hit the edge routers, via a weakness in IOS or DoS giving the BGP tables corrupted updates at major ISPs (use an infiltrator if necessary), plus SNMP plaintext password etc.
3. How do I silence a Chinese whistleblower that just posted some Chinese secret to indeymedia.org? DDoS against inymedia.org webserver, edge routers, Kazaa login system (single point of failure), Gnutella, and Freenet networks. Harness extra CPU by hijacking SETI@home program auto-update's DNS entry (IP address) OR reverse-IPmasquerading to Chinese Govt. server with trojan SETI@home update (their routers already do fancy stuff). This trojan will gradually roll out to all Chinese SETI@home clients and perform DDoS against the above targets. While the website is down the nearest Chinese spy will kill whoever, like when the Russians assassinated Vladimir Kostov, a journalist that talked too much while he was walking down a London (England) street.
I mean have you ever connected an oscilloscope to the bus? The RAM modules keep doing DDoS attacks against the CPU and L2 cache, locking up the CPU until the request is complete. My CPU started getting hot, but I yanked those RAM modules before it was too late. My CPU runs real cool now. No hard drive, no RAM, no heatsink, no cooling fan - no bloat. If your code doesn't fit into the L1 cache, then it's a God damn bloated piece of trash which is not gonna run on my machines. The secret: It's the RAM modules doing a DDoS on the CPU, must be a conspiracy by Intel to slow down CPUs. Even AMD is in on it, sellouts. In my office, I took all the DDR, Rambus and SDRAM modules out of everybody's computers, my users haven't noticed a thing.
The first European that downloads this is gonna TAKE THEM DOWN, tampering negatively with software already installed IS A VIRUS! Under Safeharbour these people are breaching European law. If the damages exceed the cost of the software (FREE) then they cannot hide behind "WE HAVE NO LIABILITY FOR OUR SOFTWARE" clauses. Same as reformatting your hard disk or deleting your FAT or Inodes. "We don't like inodes, we're going to delete them". Come on. iMesh ceases to function if cydoor is disabled, surely this is enough. This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!!!
Karma is the LEAST of my worries after reading this news, if you mod me down after anyone's privacy being so flagrantly breached then this Karma comes with too high a price. The most important karma is after all, up there.
If you optimise your program enough, you can run it from inside the BIOS. If you're too l4me a programmer to do that then you r a luser with an MBA, take your JVM and watch the l33t programmers flame your bloated trash.
In my office, I took all the DDR, Rambus and SDRAM modules out of everybody's computers, my users haven't noticed a thing. I mean have you ever connected an oscilloscope to the bus? The RAM modules keep doing DDoS attacks against the CPU, hogging the Bus, especially the latest ones. From what I see on my oscilloscope the DDoS attack of all RAM banks simultaneously is directed at the L2 cache and the CPU pipeline. My CPU started getting hot, but I yanked those RAM modules before it was too late. My CPU runs real cool now. No hard drive, no RAM, no heatsink, no cooling fan - no bloat. If your code doesn't fit into the L1 cache, then it's a God damn bloated piece of trash which is not gonna run on my machines. The secret: It's the RAM modules doing a DDoS on the CPU, must be a conspiracy by Intel to slow down CPUs. Even AMD is in on it, sellouts.
50 people a year killed x $1mil compensation = $50mil compensation per year for not fixing it
Recall of >500,000 cars x $200 repair = $100mil for recall
Ford's Conclusion: Let people die and quietly pay the compensation in order to save $100mil
I remember the Judge really kicked their asses. Which starts me thinking - if Microsoft delays patches, can they be LEGALLY LIABLE for damages as a result? Same as Ford was when they acted on the findings of the above calculation?
I said, "My computer won't connect to the Internet - no dialtone or anything, I've set DHCP, DNS, WINS to your settings. PPP is set, IPX/SPX and NetBEUI are disabled. 9600 bps carrier set."
British Telecom ISP support guy said, "Is your modem conncted securely?"
I replied, "Oh man, I don't need a modem do I? They're like 100 bucks"
British Telecom ISP support guy said, "You... Need... One... Bwa ha haaaaaaa!"
Telecom support guy hangs up. Honest to God this happened to me a few years ago, if you're reading
This is why I couldn't update my McAffee DAT files, so I contracted win32.CIH. McAffee scanner engine got infected also (Mcaffee.exe) and then I instructed it to scan and log all infected files, it infected all files it scanned. So the infected file-log included
C:\Program Files\McAffee\Vshield.exe and
C:\Program Files\Scan.exe
McAffee: luser. If McAffee try to sue me, I still have the old log saved. One week later I bought a 30GB DI30 Onstream backup drive. Good thing because when I installed Redhat 5 and used linux fdisk, I lost 50MB of mp3s which were the last thing I downloaded on my Windows 98 FAT32 partition. Man, it truncated the data on the FAT32 partition. My first experience with linux was BAD! I had to turn off sanity checking on the boot manager so it just "shut up and overwrite the damn boot sector and partition table with what was there previously, don't check anything". All programs should have an option where you can switch off sanity checking temporarily - otherwise the slightest unexpected problem and you're just stuck.
As far as "your own house" is concerned, it's your fault if people break in easily. Set up your ip chains, inetd.conf and tcp wrappers. Heck use OpenBSD if you're that paranoid, we have OS choice now people - it's just the free money that's gone.
root# rm -R *
Mmmmmmmkay
Don't forget your cable will travel through the van Allen belts. This has I think a similar charge to the ionosphere and is exceptionally highly charged during solar flares. Solar flares can disrupt power on Earth (/. geeks with brownout and clean-line UPS are mmmmmkay). This would add (or subtract) to the voltage at the ionosphere, plus the cable will cut the van Allen belts and Earth's magnetic fields, like a long wire (winding) in a gigantic alternator (electric dynamo).
Add to this the magnetic effect. The Earth's magnetic field would be disrupted by a long metal cable as the field would prefer to travel through the cable than the atmosphere, causing a warping in the Earth's magnetic field, and thus a possible weakness for solar radiation penetration. The charge on the cable could ionise the O3 in the ozone layer, damaging it. Ozone is highly corrosive so your cable will degrade in the ozone layer.
If we implement the gradual insulators system you talk about then the cable is still in effect a long power line or a collection of them (scroll down to near lecture 2 on this link), vulnerable to reflections and resonances occuring on the wire, especially if it interacts with the Earth's magnetic field causing a sympathetic resonance. Plus since the ionosphere is a large shell, a resonance could be amplified if the frequency matches the resonant frequency of the charged sphere (the opposite side of the sphere would have an inverse resonant waveform). Introducing more insulators will only change the harmonic frequencies, the resonances may still occur.
The /. conspiracy: /. used to joke about "Will code C++ for food". Why is this not funny any more?
The change in Serbian government was caused by popular revolution, it might have happened naturally, I don't think it helps for some dropout soldier Scwarzenegger-wannabe in black-ops to broadcast, "We are voice of America and we're gonna bomb your country back into the stone age". Clinton is better than Bush, he showed off his real colours in his 45 minute Dimbleby lectures (streaming video available here). Bush struck it lucky with 9/11 otherwise Americans would still be like, "I don't believe we elected this retard"
Maybe the CIA knew that this would be necessary in advance and engineered the invasion of Kuwait via the US Ambassador telling Saddam basically "We don't care if you invade." And so the big picture falls into place... And here us /.'ers are thinking we can spot conspiracy theories a mile off, our pathetic little CDBTTPACBTA is all we can comprehend.