Simple - the primary mission objectives for Orbiters is remote imaging and a low altitude polar orbit is ideal for that because it gives almost total planetary coverage. It means that communications windows with landers are very short (8-12 minutes a day for Odyssey, MGS and Mars Express) but they can cover landers anywhere on the planet at high bandwidth for those communication windows.
This will be the case for the next Orbiter (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 2005) and any others prior to the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter which has a primary objetive of being a proper telecoms relay. MTO will provide at least 10x the current bandwidth, communication windows up to 8 hours in duration and will use optical as well as S-Band\X-Band radio links.
Speaking as an admin in a seriously large Windoze shop I'm astounded that an alert Linux admin can think it's a smart idea to actually do normal day to day things while running in a user context that has elevated privileges. Browse the web, read your mail and plugging into hostile networks are not things you should do while holding the credentials to the castle.
Strip all attachments. No one really needs them.
The platform as such won't stop stupidity. Dumb user Beth will still try to run the thing and enough Beth's, Bob's and Biff's will succeed, paricularly if almost everyone runs the same OS regardless of what it is. In any case if she can't HotDawg Admin will do it for her. See above.
That aside though there is a real need for discussion of your core points. This general type of dicussion is common where I work too but not common enough in "security circles". I'm surprised that we have never seen anything genuinely nasty and can only attribute that to a lack of a widespread understanding of large scale corporate\institutional systems or possibly the fact that none of the people doing this can see any money in that type of attack (yet). In any case the network share vector has been done but it's extremely effective - especially when a windoze virus infects files shared out from a Samba share, and in particular when Admins are careless about what they do when using a priviliged account. DOS'ing a target is one thing but a blind DOS based on something like Slammer's exponential UDP spread attack would be lethal within corporate networks as a secondary payload. Denial of Service attacks against accounts (particularly machine accounts in Windoze environments) culled from LDAP queries would be an awful mess to repair, particularly combined with the last item. Do you have account lockout policies? How many accounts won't lockout? Can your directory service handle massive lockout replication traffic?
Modifying content would need to be subtle to be really damaging in an enterprise environment - a generalised DOS intended to cripple homogeneous firewalled off zones would be a nightmare.
And despite all this - we still allow users to pretty much do as they please with "their" PC's. Oh well. I'm just waiting, wont be long now.
I see that Senator Issa's comments focussed more on not spending US Tax dollars on those pesky damn europeans rather than on the real benefits of CDMA over GSM (which I doubt would have sounded so good on the floor of the Senate.
Plugging Mobile 911 as a reason to impose CDMA on Iraq is really pushing it a bit (GSM location aware systems seem to work for me but what would I know, I only use the damn things). The Iraqi's will need a cheap universal solution that is as compatible with its neighbours, trading partners and countries where its people need to go to. They really don't need a mobile phone system that will only work in the US and which includes a US IP tax in the form of royalty payments to Qualcomm on every network and handset device sold.
And despite being a good old free market US company Qualcomm really don't want free markets. They exercise control and it is to your detriment. I can (and am) sending this over GPRS via a Bluetooth link to my phone because that combination of technology is available with GSM handsets, it isn't for CDMA because Qualcomm haven't wanted to let you have it yet. As far as I'm concerned that is worth far more than any "soft handover"/"hard handover" argument ever will.
Am I the only (one) that finds it hilarious that the technophile ubergeek culture that is Slashdot seems to be overwhelmingly afraid of a technology that has thrived by being accessible to the masses.
The idea that a cell phone is a status symbol is well and truly dead, at least in those parts of the world where people have been given the opportunity to avail of them and haven't been afraid to embrace change. In most of the developed world and much of the developing world they are a universal technology because they are cheap and manageable. They have grown the base market for telephony enormously by making phones truly personal devices that anyone can own.
The topic of the post was about the social change it has brought about in Japan but the same applies here in Western Europe too. Social groups can coordinate quickly and much more efficiently when you can simply and reliably get information into the group any time you want. With things like send to many SMS texts it is very easy for a social group to coordinate and decide to do things without running around in circles trying to get information to people who aren't near their usual land line phone. Individuals in the group can stay involved without having to put up with the intrusiveness if they choose, something that is difficult or impossible with a land line phone.
The arguments against mobiles all seem incredibly luddite, a bit like the engineers of the early 70's insisting that calculators were terrible things that couldn't compare with a good slide rule.
And anyone who still insists on raising the "safety" issues. Unproven and extremely unlikely to ever come close to the safety problems that plague our favourite technology of the last 100 years - the automobile. I'm happy to take my chances with both.
I like my phone - it fits in my pocket and no-one else has to see it or hear it. I no longer wear a watch because my phone has a good network sync'ed clock. I don't need a separate pda (not that I ever had one) because my phone is one. It goes over a week between charges. I can sort of browse the web with it if I'm stuck somewhere boring with nothing to do. And I can be contacted wherever I am if I need to be (and most importantly) if I want to be. The choice is mine - and I like that
Slashdot Mirror
This will be the case for the next Orbiter (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 2005) and any others prior to the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter which has a primary objetive of being a proper telecoms relay. MTO will provide at least 10x the current bandwidth, communication windows up to 8 hours in duration and will use optical as well as S-Band\X-Band radio links.
Speaking as an admin in a seriously large Windoze shop I'm astounded that an alert Linux admin can think it's a smart idea to actually do normal day to day things while running in a user context that has elevated privileges. Browse the web, read your mail and plugging into hostile networks are not things you should do while holding the credentials to the castle.
Strip all attachments. No one really needs them.
The platform as such won't stop stupidity. Dumb user Beth will still try to run the thing and enough Beth's, Bob's and Biff's will succeed, paricularly if almost everyone runs the same OS regardless of what it is. In any case if she can't HotDawg Admin will do it for her. See above.
That aside though there is a real need for discussion of your core points. This general type of dicussion is common where I work too but not common enough in "security circles". I'm surprised that we have never seen anything genuinely nasty and can only attribute that to a lack of a widespread understanding of large scale corporate\institutional systems or possibly the fact that none of the people doing this can see any money in that type of attack (yet). In any case the network share vector has been done but it's extremely effective - especially when a windoze virus infects files shared out from a Samba share, and in particular when Admins are careless about what they do when using a priviliged account. DOS'ing a target is one thing but a blind DOS based on something like Slammer's exponential UDP spread attack would be lethal within corporate networks as a secondary payload. Denial of Service attacks against accounts (particularly machine accounts in Windoze environments) culled from LDAP queries would be an awful mess to repair, particularly combined with the last item. Do you have account lockout policies? How many accounts won't lockout? Can your directory service handle massive lockout replication traffic?
Modifying content would need to be subtle to be really damaging in an enterprise environment - a generalised DOS intended to cripple homogeneous firewalled off zones would be a nightmare.
And despite all this - we still allow users to pretty much do as they please with "their" PC's. Oh well. I'm just waiting, wont be long now.
I see that Senator Issa's comments focussed more on not spending US Tax dollars on those pesky damn europeans rather than on the real benefits of CDMA over GSM (which I doubt would have sounded so good on the floor of the Senate.
Plugging Mobile 911 as a reason to impose CDMA on Iraq is really pushing it a bit (GSM location aware systems seem to work for me but what would I know, I only use the damn things). The Iraqi's will need a cheap universal solution that is as compatible with its neighbours, trading partners and countries where its people need to go to. They really don't need a mobile phone system that will only work in the US and which includes a US IP tax in the form of royalty payments to Qualcomm on every network and handset device sold.
And despite being a good old free market US company Qualcomm really don't want free markets. They exercise control and it is to your detriment. I can (and am) sending this over GPRS via a Bluetooth link to my phone because that combination of technology is available with GSM handsets, it isn't for CDMA because Qualcomm haven't wanted to let you have it yet. As far as I'm concerned that is worth far more than any "soft handover"/"hard handover" argument ever will.
The idea that a cell phone is a status symbol is well and truly dead, at least in those parts of the world where people have been given the opportunity to avail of them and haven't been afraid to embrace change. In most of the developed world and much of the developing world they are a universal technology because they are cheap and manageable. They have grown the base market for telephony enormously by making phones truly personal devices that anyone can own.
The topic of the post was about the social change it has brought about in Japan but the same applies here in Western Europe too. Social groups can coordinate quickly and much more efficiently when you can simply and reliably get information into the group any time you want. With things like send to many SMS texts it is very easy for a social group to coordinate and decide to do things without running around in circles trying to get information to people who aren't near their usual land line phone. Individuals in the group can stay involved without having to put up with the intrusiveness if they choose, something that is difficult or impossible with a land line phone.
The arguments against mobiles all seem incredibly luddite, a bit like the engineers of the early 70's insisting that calculators were terrible things that couldn't compare with a good slide rule.
And anyone who still insists on raising the "safety" issues. Unproven and extremely unlikely to ever come close to the safety problems that plague our favourite technology of the last 100 years - the automobile. I'm happy to take my chances with both.
I like my phone - it fits in my pocket and no-one else has to see it or hear it. I no longer wear a watch because my phone has a good network sync'ed clock. I don't need a separate pda (not that I ever had one) because my phone is one. It goes over a week between charges. I can sort of browse the web with it if I'm stuck somewhere boring with nothing to do. And I can be contacted wherever I am if I need to be (and most importantly) if I want to be. The choice is mine - and I like that