"Which Operating Systems are most vulnerable to digital attacks?"
"Based on the information garnered through SIPS in August 2003 for twelve trailing months, Linux is the most breached operating system followed by Microsoft Windows."
"For the twelve trailing months as of September 2003, 59.2% of all overt digital attacks were on systems running Linux and 20.8% were on systems running Windows."
They define 'overt digital attacks' as active hacks conducted by a person or a group, as opposed to a virus spreading through a network...
Airline traffic. CNN reported on some research conducted by the University of Wisconsin while US air traffic was grounded.
Relevant quote:
"As a result, they (contrails) help reduce the daily range in daytime highs and nighttime lows. Contrails, by providing additional insulation, further reduce the variability."
This chicken may not be around anymore, but a little Googling will show other references.
And yes, I can admit to having lost a few games to her, too.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining...
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 1
I'd like to take a stab at answering your question.
Assume that my time is worth some non-zero value; it doesn't matter how high or low that value is set.
Each and every task I perform will therefore have an associated cost based on the amount of time I spend on that task.
Let's compare a few scenarios based on the above assumptions:
I spend five minutes watching a small part of a movie or sitcom on cable TV;
I spend the same five minutes reading valid e-mail on my computer;
Same five minutes - parsing through Spaminator and POPMail folders
In each case, I'm spending the same amount of time, and using an equivalent amount of other resources (electricity, etc.)
Based on the above I would argue that, all other considerations being equivalent, the amount of time I spend cleaning up after spam is a waste - I'd much rather use the same time, money and resources to so something more productive or enjoyable.
It seems that one of the major reasons spam is so objectionable to people is for the same reason: we didn't ask for it, and dealing with it uses time and resources that could be devoted to something else instead.
A little Googling turned up this article in December's Business 2.0 about counterfeiting and terrorism... interesting for the background into several counterfeiting technologies.
...is the reading room section of World Press Review Online. It collects news stories from papers and magazines worldwide, and categorizes each source (centrist, independent, government-owned, news agency, etc.)
From their masthead: "World Press Review is published as a nonprofit educational service to foster the international exchange of information. It contains material reprinted from the press outside the United States, as well as originally written material. Articles are subject to editing, translation, and excerpting. Illustration and photo selection, captions, and some headlines accompanying reprinted articles are by WPR's editors. Letters may be edited for length and clarity."
"Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor with a degree in electronics, science and mathematics, invented the paperclip in 1899. He received a patent for his design from Germany in 1899, since Norway had no patent laws at that time. Johan Vaaler was an employee at a local invention office when he invented the paperclip. He received an American patent in 1901 -- patent abstract "It consists of forming same of a spring material, such as a piece of wire, that is bent to a rectangular, triangular, or otherwise shaped hoop, the end parts of which wire piece form members or tongues lying side by side in contrary directions." Johan Vaaler was the first person to patent a paperclip design, although other unpatented designs might have existed first."
Over 100 years old and still going strong...
What an excellent article...
on
NARAS vs. the RIAA
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It's a shame we can't moderate Salon articles... the author seriously deserves a +1 Insightful...
What will make spam and spammers go away? Unfortunately, I don't think there's one 'silver-bullet' solution to the problem (no wisecracks about using the bullet on Ralsky, please;))
In part, spam is a technological arms race: spammers use more sophisticated ways of getting their messages out, and anti-spammers counter by developing more advanced ways of blocking them. Building a better mousetrap will only force the mice to get smarter. Hacking is not part of the solution, either: if we complain about legislation permitting corporate hacking, we should refrain from doing it ourselves (it's a moral high ground thing...)
Part of the spam problem is money: at least a few people have mastered the "1. Send spam 2. ??? 3. Profit!" formula. An article describing "How I got rich in three easy steps" will, unfortunately, inspire at least a few wannabes, which leads to the next part of the problem...
People. The famous quote that "there's a sucker born every minute" is absolutely true. People can be dumb. People can be greedy. People can be unscrupulous. In an age where someone can blanket the planet with a new get-rich-quick scheme, a pill or cream to enhance sexual prowess, a free vacation to wherever, it's almost guaranteed that their message will find someone who doesn't even hesitate to sign themselves up.
The final part of the problem is something I've never seen mentioned anywhere else: ego. From the article, it sounds like Ralsky knows exactly what he's doing, and he's reveling in the fact that he's notorious/infamous for being one of the best at doing it.
So, how to fix the problem? Use not just one, but every tool at our disposal:
1. Continue developing more sophisticated ways of keeping spam from ever reaching user mailboxes and/or desktops, and try to anticipate how spammers will react in response;
2. Use the existing laws every country has to deal with fraud. Urge local and/or national prosecutors to go after the big fish, making them examples for the smaller ones. Develop international working groups to attack the problem when spammers move their operations overseas. (okay, that last one's a little optimistic, but hey, at least it's an idea...) Nail the fraudsters, shut down their operations, penalize their profits away. The less profit there is, and the harder it is to keep it, the less people will be tempted to try it;
3. Educate, educate, educate: spread the word on how to deal with spam (don't click the opt-out link, don't reply to unsubscribe, learn how to keep your e-mail address from being harvested, etc.) On another level, urge the (possibly clueless) people who think it's a good marketing technique that spam just makes them look like every other get-rich-quick artist they hate getting e-mail from.
4. Marginalize the big fish: the more someone like Ralsky reads about himself in the press or on the Web, the more it feeds his ego. The more dog poop he scrapes off his front steps, the more it eggs him on to keep spamming. Shame and guilt can still be two pretty powerful social-engineering methods, but allowing him to portray himself as a 'victim' of those nasty-evil hackers will only serve to help him and his cause.
Some public information from Marvel's 10-Q SEC filing in this PDF:
"7. SPIDER-MAN: THE MOVIE
During 1999, the Company entered into a license agreement with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.,
("Sony") providing for the licensing of the Spider-Man characters in exchange for a gross participation in the marketing of the Spider-Man: The Movie (which was commercially released on May 3, 2002) and related releases on DVD/VHS and likely other revenue sources (e.g., syndication sales, etc.), and established an equally owned joint venture for the merchandise licensing of the Spider-Man: The Movie characters.
Earnings associated with the Company's participation in the gross proceeds of the movie have been recognized as non-refundable advance royalty payments as received, which amounted to $10 million in 1999, and $2.5 million in the second quarter of 2002. During the quarter ended September 30, 2002, Sony reported Marvel's participation through such date at approximately $2.0 million in excess of advances previously received - which amount was subsequently collected from Sony. Prospectively, additional movie royalties will be recognized as revenue - as reported by Sony.
Earnings associated with our merchandising joint venture (accounted for under the equity method of
accounting) amounted to approximately $1.8 million during the three month period ended September 30,
2002, and $7.1 million during the nine months ended September 30, 2002, and represent the Company's
share of merchandising royalties, net of expenses. The Company's share of the joint venture's earlier losses were $0.3 million in each of the years 2000 and 2001."
Yes, we still have some privacy, and I agree that we have less than we did before, but more importantly, we have an ever-increasing awareness in the general population that privacy is important, and that some people are pushing the pendulum too far to one side in the name of: 1. security; 2. increased profits; 3. (insert your reason here).
When people realize that there is a difference between privacy and anonymity, when people realize that they are giving away rights they took for granted, and when they (collectively) get concerned enough to complain in a loud, clear and compelling voice, then maybe we can push the pendulum back to the other side, or at least back to the middle, where it belongs.
Teaching classes like this is a great way to empower people outside of the tech/geek population.
Slap doesn't pop up a window on the other machine (which would be mildly satisfying), it just sends your message in a packet to the other machine's originating port...
Read the Slap message thread for more info... nice concept, but has some issues.
What I found most interesting in the article was this quote:
"No federal laws exist to protect us from genism, or from insurers and employers finding out our genetic secrets. 'Right now you're likely going to be more disadvantaged than empowered by genetic testing,' says Caplan."
Like any new scientific advance, it sounds like genetic testing can be used for good (early medical diagnosis, a way to trace your bloodline through history), or for bad (insurers would raise my premium for life insurance, businesses might find another way to target me, demographically, based on my DNA... imagine the spams!)
I'm not saying 'there oughtta be a law...' yet, but there probably needs to be a committee, at least, of ethicists, scientists and lawmakers who can start to create a framework of laws to make sure that potentially valuable information like this won't be used irresponsibly, especially since the field is so new, and there's so much more to learn...
The human genome is made up of DNA, which has four different chemical building blocks. These are called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G. In the human genome, about 3 billion bases are arranged along the chromosomes in a particular order for each unique individual. To get an idea of the size of the human genome present in each of our cells, consider the following analogy: If the DNA sequence of the human genome were compiled in books, the equivalent of 200 volumes the size of a Manhattan telephone book (at 1000 pages each) would be needed to hold it all.
It would take about 9.5 years to read out loud (without stopping) the 3 billion bases in a person's genome sequence. This is calculated on a reading rate of 10 bases per second, equaling 600 bases/minute, 36,000 bases/hour, 864,000 bases/day, 315,360,000 bases/year.
Storing all this information is a great challenge to computer experts known as bioinformatics specialists. One million bases (called a megabase and abbreviated Mb) of DNA sequence data is roughly equivalent to 1 megabyte of computer data storage space. Since the human genome is 3 billion base pairs long, 3 gigabytes of computer data storage space are needed to store the entire genome. This includes nucleotide sequence data only and does not include data annotations and other information that can be associated with sequence data.
As time goes on, more annotations will be entered as a result of laboratory findings, literature searches, data analyses, personal communications, automated data-analysis programs, and auto annotators. These annotations associated with the sequence data will likely dwarf the amount of storage space actually taken up by the initial 3 billion nucleotide sequence. Of course, that's not much of a surprise because the sequence is merely one starting point for much deeper biological understanding!
Contributions to this answer were made by Morey Parang and Richard Mural formerly of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Mark Adams formerly of The Institute of Genome Research. [01/01]
Actually, Toaplan owns the Moon... well, not the whole Moon, just the bases...
And as long as we're on the subject, don't forget that no one who goes to the Moon should in any way resemble any of these people, otherwise they're just looking for conspiracy-fodder...
...any statistics on how 'successful' spam is in getting people to click-through to a website, or actually buy a product, etc... but in this case, won't spammers who read the article simply start BCCing everyone, if they're not already? Not that it will matter: people are either learning how to recognize spam for its content, or using blockers to send it to the trash...
...down the road for accessing archived, digitized audio and video.
(Slashdot link about accessing today's data formats in 25 years here)
Example: Company X enforces a patent claim on their 'SD2KCF super-duper 2000 compression format' and the royalty fees are seen as exorbitant. Result? people shy away from using Company X's way of doing things: it costs too much.
A few years from now, files encoded in 'SD2KCF' format may well be unreadable because no one uses that scheme anymore.
Yes, technology improves over time... but this is an example of short-sighted thinking, at best.
1. fairly large Flash app (read: s-l-o-w
) drives the navigation 2. avoid the hi-resolution image of the device (in hardware, image gallery) as the link opens a 4577-by-3597 JPEG file
From the looks of it, an aerogel solution sounds promising for a few reasons:
1. Aerogel is incredibly light (99.8% air), which should make it fairly cheap to include in a shuttle payload;
2. It has fairly high insulating properties, which would help with heat issues;
3. It's already being used as a means of collecting very small objects.
4. Variations on aerogel can incorporate magnetic metallic oxides.
Here's an idea:
1. Create aerogel 'Nerf balls' of different sizes (golf ball, basketball, beach ball, for example) that are treated with a small amount of magnetic material, and put them into a dispersion container (think of a scaled-up version of a multibarrel Nerf gun);
2. Launch a shuttle;
3. At the proper orbit, launch the aerogels into the orbital path you want to clear. Yes it will probably take lots and lots of launches, but if you can release one batch with every ISS maintenance launch, it would be a start.
4. Let gravity and a little magnetism do the grunt work: as the aerogels orbit, they should pick up some of the smaller pieces of debris (paint flakes, nuts and bolts, etc.: the harder pieces to track are the ones that are probably the most dangerous anyway).
5. As the aerogels orbit and pick up debris, they'll slow down, and possibly come into contact with other orbiting aerogels. At close enough distances, their magnetic properties will attract them to each other, making easier-to-harvest 'clumps' that shuttle operators or the ISS can scoop up safely. In the case of a heavy-enough clump, it would start to de-orbit by itself, where atmospheric moisture would break it down , exposing its contents to friction.
But then again, I am not a rocket scientist: all that might do is make the planet look like it has an orbiting ring of Nerf balls around it...
Just a random thought... if companies start restricting 'deep-linking' to their content (whether by tehnical or legal means), will that have the effect of lowering their ranking in Google?
Slashdot Mirror
I came across this company, who claim in their FAQ:
"Which Operating Systems are most vulnerable to digital attacks?"
"Based on the information garnered through SIPS in August 2003 for twelve trailing months, Linux is the most breached operating system followed by Microsoft Windows."
"For the twelve trailing months as of September 2003, 59.2% of all overt digital attacks were on systems running Linux and 20.8% were on systems running Windows."
They define 'overt digital attacks' as active hacks conducted by a person or a group, as opposed to a virus spreading through a network...
So, is it a worldwide PR campaign, perhaps?
Relevant quote:
"As a result, they (contrails) help reduce the daily range in daytime highs and nighttime lows. Contrails, by providing additional insulation, further reduce the variability."
This chicken may not be around anymore, but a little Googling will show other references.
And yes, I can admit to having lost a few games to her, too.
I'd like to take a stab at answering your question.
Assume that my time is worth some non-zero value; it doesn't matter how high or low that value is set.
Each and every task I perform will therefore have an associated cost based on the amount of time I spend on that task.
Let's compare a few scenarios based on the above assumptions:
In each case, I'm spending the same amount of time, and using an equivalent amount of other resources (electricity, etc.)
Based on the above I would argue that, all other considerations being equivalent, the amount of time I spend cleaning up after spam is a waste - I'd much rather use the same time, money and resources to so something more productive or enjoyable.
It seems that one of the major reasons spam is so objectionable to people is for the same reason: we didn't ask for it, and dealing with it uses time and resources that could be devoted to something else instead.
A little Googling turned up this article in December's Business 2.0 about counterfeiting and terrorism... interesting for the background into several counterfeiting technologies.
...is the reading room section of World Press Review Online. It collects news stories from papers and magazines worldwide, and categorizes each source (centrist, independent, government-owned, news agency, etc.)
From their masthead: "World Press Review is published as a nonprofit educational service to foster the international exchange of information. It contains material reprinted from the press outside the United States, as well as originally written material. Articles are subject to editing, translation, and excerpting. Illustration and photo selection, captions, and some headlines accompanying reprinted articles are by WPR's editors. Letters may be edited for length and clarity."
The humble paperclip.
From a history of the paperclip on about.com:
"Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor with a degree in electronics, science and mathematics, invented the paperclip in 1899. He received a patent for his design from Germany in 1899, since Norway had no patent laws at that time. Johan Vaaler was an employee at a local invention office when he invented the paperclip. He received an American patent in 1901 -- patent abstract "It consists of forming same of a spring material, such as a piece of wire, that is bent to a rectangular, triangular, or otherwise shaped hoop, the end parts of which wire piece form members or tongues lying side by side in contrary directions." Johan Vaaler was the first person to patent a paperclip design, although other unpatented designs might have existed first."
Over 100 years old and still going strong...
It's a shame we can't moderate Salon articles... the author seriously deserves a +1 Insightful...
What will make spam and spammers go away? Unfortunately, I don't think there's one 'silver-bullet' solution to the problem (no wisecracks about using the bullet on Ralsky, please ;))
In part, spam is a technological arms race: spammers use more sophisticated ways of getting their messages out, and anti-spammers counter by developing more advanced ways of blocking them. Building a better mousetrap will only force the mice to get smarter. Hacking is not part of the solution, either: if we complain about legislation permitting corporate hacking, we should refrain from doing it ourselves (it's a moral high ground thing...)
Part of the spam problem is money: at least a few people have mastered the "1. Send spam 2. ??? 3. Profit!" formula. An article describing "How I got rich in three easy steps" will, unfortunately, inspire at least a few wannabes, which leads to the next part of the problem...
People. The famous quote that "there's a sucker born every minute" is absolutely true. People can be dumb. People can be greedy. People can be unscrupulous. In an age where someone can blanket the planet with a new get-rich-quick scheme, a pill or cream to enhance sexual prowess, a free vacation to wherever, it's almost guaranteed that their message will find someone who doesn't even hesitate to sign themselves up.
The final part of the problem is something I've never seen mentioned anywhere else: ego. From the article, it sounds like Ralsky knows exactly what he's doing, and he's reveling in the fact that he's notorious/infamous for being one of the best at doing it.
So, how to fix the problem? Use not just one, but every tool at our disposal:
1. Continue developing more sophisticated ways of keeping spam from ever reaching user mailboxes and/or desktops, and try to anticipate how spammers will react in response;
2. Use the existing laws every country has to deal with fraud. Urge local and/or national prosecutors to go after the big fish, making them examples for the smaller ones. Develop international working groups to attack the problem when spammers move their operations overseas. (okay, that last one's a little optimistic, but hey, at least it's an idea...) Nail the fraudsters, shut down their operations, penalize their profits away. The less profit there is, and the harder it is to keep it, the less people will be tempted to try it;
3. Educate, educate, educate: spread the word on how to deal with spam (don't click the opt-out link, don't reply to unsubscribe, learn how to keep your e-mail address from being harvested, etc.) On another level, urge the (possibly clueless) people who think it's a good marketing technique that spam just makes them look like every other get-rich-quick artist they hate getting e-mail from.
4. Marginalize the big fish: the more someone like Ralsky reads about himself in the press or on the Web, the more it feeds his ego. The more dog poop he scrapes off his front steps, the more it eggs him on to keep spamming. Shame and guilt can still be two pretty powerful social-engineering methods, but allowing him to portray himself as a 'victim' of those nasty-evil hackers will only serve to help him and his cause.
Some public information from Marvel's 10-Q SEC filing in this PDF:
"7. SPIDER-MAN: THE MOVIE
During 1999, the Company entered into a license agreement with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., ("Sony") providing for the licensing of the Spider-Man characters in exchange for a gross participation in the marketing of the Spider-Man: The Movie (which was commercially released on May 3, 2002) and related releases on DVD/VHS and likely other revenue sources (e.g., syndication sales, etc.), and established an equally owned joint venture for the merchandise licensing of the Spider-Man: The Movie characters.
Earnings associated with the Company's participation in the gross proceeds of the movie have been recognized as non-refundable advance royalty payments as received, which amounted to $10 million in 1999, and $2.5 million in the second quarter of 2002. During the quarter ended September 30, 2002, Sony reported Marvel's participation through such date at approximately $2.0 million in excess of advances previously received - which amount was subsequently collected from Sony. Prospectively, additional movie royalties will be recognized as revenue - as reported by Sony. Earnings associated with our merchandising joint venture (accounted for under the equity method of accounting) amounted to approximately $1.8 million during the three month period ended September 30, 2002, and $7.1 million during the nine months ended September 30, 2002, and represent the Company's share of merchandising royalties, net of expenses. The Company's share of the joint venture's earlier losses were $0.3 million in each of the years 2000 and 2001."
Millions in revenue, but no profits?
... and then we can give Slartibartfast the award for his lovely work on fjords.
*sighs because it feels like I'm feeding a troll*
Yes, we still have some privacy, and I agree that we have less than we did before, but more importantly, we have an ever-increasing awareness in the general population that privacy is important, and that some people are pushing the pendulum too far to one side in the name of: 1. security; 2. increased profits; 3. (insert your reason here).
When people realize that there is a difference between privacy and anonymity, when people realize that they are giving away rights they took for granted, and when they (collectively) get concerned enough to complain in a loud, clear and compelling voice, then maybe we can push the pendulum back to the other side, or at least back to the middle, where it belongs.
Teaching classes like this is a great way to empower people outside of the tech/geek population.
...until you can mount one of these on a shark's head... that would be frickin' cool!
And then you could sell it here...
Sounds like a nice concept, but...
Slap doesn't pop up a window on the other machine (which would be mildly satisfying), it just sends your message in a packet to the other machine's originating port...
Read the Slap message thread for more info... nice concept, but has some issues.
What I found most interesting in the article was this quote:
"No federal laws exist to protect us from genism, or from insurers and employers finding out our genetic secrets. 'Right now you're likely going to be more disadvantaged than empowered by genetic testing,' says Caplan."
Like any new scientific advance, it sounds like genetic testing can be used for good (early medical diagnosis, a way to trace your bloodline through history), or for bad (insurers would raise my premium for life insurance, businesses might find another way to target me, demographically, based on my DNA... imagine the spams!)
I'm not saying 'there oughtta be a law...' yet, but there probably needs to be a committee, at least, of ethicists, scientists and lawmakers who can start to create a framework of laws to make sure that potentially valuable information like this won't be used irresponsibly, especially since the field is so new, and there's so much more to learn...
From the Human Genome Project FAQ:
Q. How big is the human genome?
The human genome is made up of DNA, which has four different chemical building blocks. These are called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G. In the human genome, about 3 billion bases are arranged along the chromosomes in a particular order for each unique individual. To get an idea of the size of the human genome present in each of our cells, consider the following analogy: If the DNA sequence of the human genome were compiled in books, the equivalent of 200 volumes the size of a Manhattan telephone book (at 1000 pages each) would be needed to hold it all.
It would take about 9.5 years to read out loud (without stopping) the 3 billion bases in a person's genome sequence. This is calculated on a reading rate of 10 bases per second, equaling 600 bases/minute, 36,000 bases/hour, 864,000 bases/day, 315,360,000 bases/year.
Storing all this information is a great challenge to computer experts known as bioinformatics specialists. One million bases (called a megabase and abbreviated Mb) of DNA sequence data is roughly equivalent to 1 megabyte of computer data storage space. Since the human genome is 3 billion base pairs long, 3 gigabytes of computer data storage space are needed to store the entire genome. This includes nucleotide sequence data only and does not include data annotations and other information that can be associated with sequence data.
As time goes on, more annotations will be entered as a result of laboratory findings, literature searches, data analyses, personal communications, automated data-analysis programs, and auto annotators. These annotations associated with the sequence data will likely dwarf the amount of storage space actually taken up by the initial 3 billion nucleotide sequence. Of course, that's not much of a surprise because the sequence is merely one starting point for much deeper biological understanding!
Contributions to this answer were made by Morey Parang and Richard Mural formerly of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Mark Adams formerly of The Institute of Genome Research. [01/01]
As of 4:30 PM (EST), Worldcom is reporting that their network is stabilizing, and that they're continuing to monitor the situation.
The Internet Traffic Report for North America is still trending down, though...
Actually, Toaplan owns the Moon... well, not the whole Moon, just the bases... And as long as we're on the subject, don't forget that no one who goes to the Moon should in any way resemble any of these people, otherwise they're just looking for conspiracy-fodder...
A Slashdot haiku:
All your beowulf cluster
are belong to us.
According to my (somewhat abridged) Japanese - English dictionary, "Toho" means...
wait for it...
"all your zilla are belong to us"
...any statistics on how 'successful' spam is in getting people to click-through to a website, or actually buy a product, etc... but in this case, won't spammers who read the article simply start BCCing everyone, if they're not already? Not that it will matter: people are either learning how to recognize spam for its content, or using blockers to send it to the trash...
...down the road for accessing archived, digitized audio and video.
(Slashdot link about accessing today's data formats in 25 years here)
Example: Company X enforces a patent claim on their 'SD2KCF super-duper 2000 compression format' and the royalty fees are seen as exorbitant. Result? people shy away from using Company X's way of doing things: it costs too much.
A few years from now, files encoded in 'SD2KCF' format may well be unreadable because no one uses that scheme anymore.
Yes, technology improves over time... but this is an example of short-sighted thinking, at best.
1. fairly large Flash app (read: s-l-o-w ) drives the navigation
2. avoid the hi-resolution image of the device (in hardware, image gallery) as the link opens a 4577-by-3597 JPEG file
From the looks of it, an aerogel solution sounds promising for a few reasons:
1. Aerogel is incredibly light (99.8% air), which should make it fairly cheap to include in a shuttle payload;
2. It has fairly high insulating properties, which would help with heat issues;
3. It's already being used as a means of collecting very small objects.
4. Variations on aerogel can incorporate magnetic metallic oxides.
Here's an idea:
1. Create aerogel 'Nerf balls' of different sizes (golf ball, basketball, beach ball, for example) that are treated with a small amount of magnetic material, and put them into a dispersion container (think of a scaled-up version of a multibarrel Nerf gun);
2. Launch a shuttle;
3. At the proper orbit, launch the aerogels into the orbital path you want to clear. Yes it will probably take lots and lots of launches, but if you can release one batch with every ISS maintenance launch, it would be a start.
4. Let gravity and a little magnetism do the grunt work: as the aerogels orbit, they should pick up some of the smaller pieces of debris (paint flakes, nuts and bolts, etc.: the harder pieces to track are the ones that are probably the most dangerous anyway).
5. As the aerogels orbit and pick up debris, they'll slow down, and possibly come into contact with other orbiting aerogels. At close enough distances, their magnetic properties will attract them to each other, making easier-to-harvest 'clumps' that shuttle operators or the ISS can scoop up safely. In the case of a heavy-enough clump, it would start to de-orbit by itself, where atmospheric moisture would break it down , exposing its contents to friction.
But then again, I am not a rocket scientist: all that might do is make the planet look like it has an orbiting ring of Nerf balls around it...
Just a random thought... if companies start restricting 'deep-linking' to their content (whether by tehnical or legal means), will that have the effect of lowering their ranking in Google?