Yippie! Venture capital and futurists. Two great tastes that get nothing done together! Don't we ever learn. It is the year 2003 and yet no hover car in every garage, jet packs the realm of a few weirdos, and my computer's cooling system sounds like a malfunctioning jet engine. Why don't we finish the work of the futurists from 50 years ago first?
This is ridiculous. In a broad sense, this would outlaw an PPP connection that assigns an ISP customer a different IP address with every session. Not only that but the nature of such legislation would outlaw virtual domains using Apache and could be applied to the way the Internet has come to work in a limited IP space. I mean, in order to find out who is who on a shared IP web server, you would have to have access to the configuration files.
With so many domains sharing IP addresses or having IP addresses provided by big companies such as HE there is an amount of obfuscation built in to the DNS system to allow flexibility on the host side. Can't they get busy with spam legislation instead?
If you want an international perspective try the main page Big Brother Awards homepage. They have links to a couple more countries. This is an interesting award, but I am sure it doesn't really compare to the the much less public tactics that you would find here. The big brother awards thing is a little skewed towards the west. The lack of places such as North Korea and Turkmenistan may just attest to the efficiency of such countries' big brother tactics. Hard to compete with such things like the old East German Stassi room filled with jars of scents of know dissedents for use by tracking dogs. I think these awards are quaint compared to somebody beating you unconscious in a third-world basement.
Yes, but I think we all remember what happened last time the Japanes messed around with power plants. That's right: Godzilla. With Mothra defeated and major military forces otherwise occupied, the situation looks grim! Beware the denizens of the deep!
I have reason to believe they may have snagged Ron Jeremy instead! Don't believe me, do a side by side comparison of "Mohammed" and Ron Jeremy. Only one way to know for sure, though.
If they "had been tracking him for some time", I wonder why they waiting so long to do anything. I suspect that the human intelligence had more to do with it than the alleged use of Echelon. The last person I would believe is some anonymous, talking-head Echelon apologist. I think there is some FUD involved. Exactly how do you provide oversight over a project like Echelon? I think that the system is probably used more to spy on people whose whereabouts are known than to track down some people in some sort of Hollywood "Bourne Identity" drama. If Echelon was designed to be a lost-and-found device that actually found Mohammed, I think you would hear a lot more chest-thumping from the intelligence community. The rest of the article is the real story. The NSA/CIA/EIEIO paid off some guy who sold his boss down the river.
I have always been frustrated by the biggest technology issue facing the military or any large organization: deployment. The SIPRNET has been around for ages. However, in all the places I have been assigned, nobody at my level ever has access. This is ridiculous because I have always worked where the proverbial rubber meets the road. VPN, Fortezza cards, and all this is not new, nor revolutionary. The issue is plainly logistics, sustainment, and training. Logistics is an issue because you have to field the equipment. The government already runs scads of custom applications many requiring dedicated computers. If you are able to field the equipment, it will be very difficult to maintain and upgrade because the channels for doing so are often convoluted or repair facilities are hundreds of miles away. Sustainment is a pain because the military is not designed (for the most part) to be stationary. When a large deployment happens, you are lucky to have a telephone let alone Internet capability. Finally, training is always a big problem. Right now most users cannot even perform the most basic computer tasks. As it all revolves around dollars when it comes to manning and training, I find it hard to believe that enough is going to be vested in empowering the end user to have access or know-how. In the end, it will end up where all good ideas end up, only being used at levels above reality by people who already have access to all matter of secure everything. I don't see it getting to the end user any time in the near future. To me this is an operating system issue, if you don't ingrain this crap at the OS level, there is always going to be problems. From sensitive data left in the swap space, to unsecured file systems, and ineffective data destruction utilities, there are dozens of pitfalls for truly running a secure network. Throwing tons of third party applications on top of it is a huge mess. Secondly, the government has become over-reliant on using the Internet. At least for the military, occupations in fixed facilities should mirror operations in deployment situations. The only solution for the military is satellite or high frequency radio. Access to these solutions at the speeds necessary for Internet transactions is years away and very expensive. I won't believe a word of any of this until the Department of Defense stops using Telnet and other insecure software for their day to day business. Way too many personal transactions are conducted via Telnet un-tunneled and unsecured. I have seen this first hand many times and as recently as yesterday. I am tired of the good idea factory coming up with solutions from behind their $3000 dollar oak desks when at my level the IT and security is crap and my personal information is strewn all over who knows where.
In other news... Google announces a new patent: Wherein Google shows that they pioneered a technology using funny-sounding nonsense words as a company name, website, and a verb. Seriously, corporations can be pretty heavy-handed and seem to forget that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Unfortunately, in the technology world imitation is also the most likely to get you a threatening letter.
Unfortunately the Department of Justice's cybercrime outfit is busy busting the real criminals and putting a stop to warez and bong sites. Once they get done with those, I'm sure they will move on to those sites callously putting Britney Spears' virginal head on pr0n star bodies and other such travesties of justice. I'd be happy if they would just update their website which I suspect may have been put together as a junior high school computer class project.
I watched the whole animation hoping that in it I would find the hidden mysteries of getting multimedia to work on my multimedia neutered Redhat 8.0 box. Oh well.
In the software world we would call this vaporware. However when scientists get futuristic and show minimal results with some mice its visionary for some reason. This story should have been published 10 years from now with some viable results. This article is nothing more than an advertisement wrapped in an article probably set up by the R&D department of whoever is funding this mess. Give me a break. What's next a story about hover cars and teleportation? Enhancement studies have been consistently failing in the military for years. It always seems the same: (1) find out chemical X is depleted by activity Y. (2) Find a synthetic way of making chemical X. (3) Give loads and loads of X to person conducting activity Y. (4) Wonder why it gives them migranes, results in Air Force pilots dropping bombs on civilians, and causes permanent brain damage or cancer. A friend that worked at an aeromedical research lab had stories of permanent neurological damage caused through sleep retarding drugs and other performance enhancers. Such stories are all over the military enhancement research from failed LSD experiments to caffeine as performance enhancers. Vaporware says I.
Is that Hans Blix in the article's photo? I long have expected the UK to be in possession of a proscribed pancake making machine able of launching a pancake in excess of 150km. In other news, Rumsfeld demands accounting for 1.5 tons of missing pancake batter.
If my workplace is typical, the average Army line unit deals with almost two dozen different data systems. Most of these systems do not talk to each other and are probably all that is left of many military contract companies. The much lauded Aviation Mission Planning System (AMPS) used a "hardened" SCO Unix box to help pilots plan missions and dump their aircraft GPS. Now, while it briefed well, the issue quickly turns into the multitude of different platforms. While this box may have been EMP hardened, eventually most people stopped using AMPS and moved to a system named Falconview which they could run off their ordinary MS laptops. Nobody wants to lug around yet another dedicated laptop or desktop for another system. If you can't provide a holistic solution, it turns into a waste of money. I have helped turn in "good ideas" back to the supply system to be auctioned or scrapped. For this system to work, it would have to talk to already fielded military equipment and not cause an excess of redundant hardware. It is really annoying to manually add your battlefield icons to ten different automation systems. The current military automation machine in a patchwork Juggernaut. I also assume that the Army will do nothing to provide the manpower in the form of a specialized soldier to help units run these systems. Like always, it will be the additional job of some over-tasked computer savvy soldier. This reminds me of a briefing I saw on the Blackhawk helicopter modernization:
UH-60A
HH-60L
HH-60M
???? technological breakthroughs
Hover car
I can't remember what silly Army name they had given the hover car, but that was the extent of the brief. Believe me, it will be a mess. From parts to different commands in charge of different subcomponents, nothing is as simple as the power point makes it look. I also wouldn't hold my breath about getting the source code back.
Almost every single copy of any software that I have used while in the military has been pirated (Blackhawk pilot in the Army 5 years). Can't say that the intent to disregard rules is malicious, but often down where "the rubber meets the road" users will do whatever they need to get the job done. Often IT in the military is poorly funded and as a result information managers (some poor person chosen to do the job on top of their regular job) "acquire" software. As far as finding out if someone is using GPL code, I assume you would have to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request which now, more than ever, thanks to Aschroft is very easy to deny.
By the way, when you crash the Blackhawk simulator you get a red-screen-of-death. I'd love to see a tux screen saver while the simulator reboots.
This issue is tricky in respect to treating information as property and involvement of multi-national corporations. The arguments go beyond American constitutional law, specifically the expectation of privacy, into the sale and disclosure of information to third parties. With corporations and government agencies as intermediaries, it easily circumvents the issue of searches conducted without a warrant.
It gets muddy in that travel is not considered an inalienable right and therefore the information disclosure is a voluntary requisite for travel. I sometimes ask corporations for their privacy policies and it drives them insane when I ask them about how long my data will live in their database, if there is a procedure to request purging of such data, and how long my carbon copied forms are kept on record. A somewhat wishy-washy corporate stance regarding exchange of information can foil attempts at protecting database privacy. While it may be against the laws of one country (against the wishes of a corporation or second country) to disclose such information, given the fact that the database data may reside in multitude of countries where an agency is willing to disclose is either a benefit (for the government) or a problem for the privacy sensitive consumer. This problem extends to almost all things that live in a world of wide connectivity and needs to seriously be dealt with through international privacy law.
Slashdot Mirror
Dammit! I kept meaning to prove the Riemann hypothesis myself but keep putting it off for "just one more game" of UT2004.
Yippie! Venture capital and futurists. Two great tastes that get nothing done together! Don't we ever learn. It is the year 2003 and yet no hover car in every garage, jet packs the realm of a few weirdos, and my computer's cooling system sounds like a malfunctioning jet engine. Why don't we finish the work of the futurists from 50 years ago first?
This is ridiculous. In a broad sense, this would outlaw an PPP connection that assigns an ISP customer a different IP address with every session. Not only that but the nature of such legislation would outlaw virtual domains using Apache and could be applied to the way the Internet has come to work in a limited IP space. I mean, in order to find out who is who on a shared IP web server, you would have to have access to the configuration files.
With so many domains sharing IP addresses or having IP addresses provided by big companies such as HE there is an amount of obfuscation built in to the DNS system to allow flexibility on the host side. Can't they get busy with spam legislation instead?
If you want an international perspective try the main page Big Brother Awards homepage. They have links to a couple more countries. This is an interesting award, but I am sure it doesn't really compare to the the much less public tactics that you would find here. The big brother awards thing is a little skewed towards the west. The lack of places such as North Korea and Turkmenistan may just attest to the efficiency of such countries' big brother tactics. Hard to compete with such things like the old East German Stassi room filled with jars of scents of know dissedents for use by tracking dogs. I think these awards are quaint compared to somebody beating you unconscious in a third-world basement.
Yes, but I think we all remember what happened last time the Japanes messed around with power plants. That's right: Godzilla. With Mothra defeated and major military forces otherwise occupied, the situation looks grim! Beware the denizens of the deep!
I have reason to believe they may have snagged Ron Jeremy instead! Don't believe me, do a side by side comparison of "Mohammed" and Ron Jeremy. Only one way to know for sure, though.
If they "had been tracking him for some time", I wonder why they waiting so long to do anything. I suspect that the human intelligence had more to do with it than the alleged use of Echelon. The last person I would believe is some anonymous, talking-head Echelon apologist. I think there is some FUD involved. Exactly how do you provide oversight over a project like Echelon? I think that the system is probably used more to spy on people whose whereabouts are known than to track down some people in some sort of Hollywood "Bourne Identity" drama. If Echelon was designed to be a lost-and-found device that actually found Mohammed, I think you would hear a lot more chest-thumping from the intelligence community. The rest of the article is the real story. The NSA/CIA/EIEIO paid off some guy who sold his boss down the river.
I have always been frustrated by the biggest technology issue facing the military or any large organization: deployment. The SIPRNET has been around for ages. However, in all the places I have been assigned, nobody at my level ever has access. This is ridiculous because I have always worked where the proverbial rubber meets the road. VPN, Fortezza cards, and all this is not new, nor revolutionary. The issue is plainly logistics, sustainment, and training. Logistics is an issue because you have to field the equipment. The government already runs scads of custom applications many requiring dedicated computers. If you are able to field the equipment, it will be very difficult to maintain and upgrade because the channels for doing so are often convoluted or repair facilities are hundreds of miles away. Sustainment is a pain because the military is not designed (for the most part) to be stationary. When a large deployment happens, you are lucky to have a telephone let alone Internet capability. Finally, training is always a big problem. Right now most users cannot even perform the most basic computer tasks. As it all revolves around dollars when it comes to manning and training, I find it hard to believe that enough is going to be vested in empowering the end user to have access or know-how. In the end, it will end up where all good ideas end up, only being used at levels above reality by people who already have access to all matter of secure everything. I don't see it getting to the end user any time in the near future. To me this is an operating system issue, if you don't ingrain this crap at the OS level, there is always going to be problems. From sensitive data left in the swap space, to unsecured file systems, and ineffective data destruction utilities, there are dozens of pitfalls for truly running a secure network. Throwing tons of third party applications on top of it is a huge mess. Secondly, the government has become over-reliant on using the Internet. At least for the military, occupations in fixed facilities should mirror operations in deployment situations. The only solution for the military is satellite or high frequency radio. Access to these solutions at the speeds necessary for Internet transactions is years away and very expensive. I won't believe a word of any of this until the Department of Defense stops using Telnet and other insecure software for their day to day business. Way too many personal transactions are conducted via Telnet un-tunneled and unsecured. I have seen this first hand many times and as recently as yesterday. I am tired of the good idea factory coming up with solutions from behind their $3000 dollar oak desks when at my level the IT and security is crap and my personal information is strewn all over who knows where.
In other news... Google announces a new patent: Wherein Google shows that they pioneered a technology using funny-sounding nonsense words as a company name, website, and a verb. Seriously, corporations can be pretty heavy-handed and seem to forget that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Unfortunately, in the technology world imitation is also the most likely to get you a threatening letter.
Unfortunately the Department of Justice's cybercrime outfit is busy busting the real criminals and putting a stop to warez and bong sites. Once they get done with those, I'm sure they will move on to those sites callously putting Britney Spears' virginal head on pr0n star bodies and other such travesties of justice. I'd be happy if they would just update their website which I suspect may have been put together as a junior high school computer class project.
I watched the whole animation hoping that in it I would find the hidden mysteries of getting multimedia to work on my multimedia neutered Redhat 8.0 box. Oh well.
In the software world we would call this vaporware. However when scientists get futuristic and show minimal results with some mice its visionary for some reason. This story should have been published 10 years from now with some viable results. This article is nothing more than an advertisement wrapped in an article probably set up by the R&D department of whoever is funding this mess. Give me a break. What's next a story about hover cars and teleportation? Enhancement studies have been consistently failing in the military for years. It always seems the same: (1) find out chemical X is depleted by activity Y. (2) Find a synthetic way of making chemical X. (3) Give loads and loads of X to person conducting activity Y. (4) Wonder why it gives them migranes, results in Air Force pilots dropping bombs on civilians, and causes permanent brain damage or cancer. A friend that worked at an aeromedical research lab had stories of permanent neurological damage caused through sleep retarding drugs and other performance enhancers. Such stories are all over the military enhancement research from failed LSD experiments to caffeine as performance enhancers. Vaporware says I.
Is that Hans Blix in the article's photo? I long have expected the UK to be in possession of a proscribed pancake making machine able of launching a pancake in excess of 150km. In other news, Rumsfeld demands accounting for 1.5 tons of missing pancake batter.
I was disappointed. Knowing that some ex-h@x0rs work for DoJ, I was expecting to find the following at the isonews.com website:
m3ss w1f d@ b3st, d13 l1k3 th3 r3st! d0j 0wnz u!
sp3c1@l gr33ts t0 0ur l33t h@x0r fr13ndz:
g33 duby00
d3p@rtm3nt 0f d3f3nz3
s@dd@m, w3'r3 c0ming f0r u!
I can't remember what silly Army name they had given the hover car, but that was the extent of the brief. Believe me, it will be a mess. From parts to different commands in charge of different subcomponents, nothing is as simple as the power point makes it look. I also wouldn't hold my breath about getting the source code back.
Almost every single copy of any software that I have used while in the military has been pirated (Blackhawk pilot in the Army 5 years). Can't say that the intent to disregard rules is malicious, but often down where "the rubber meets the road" users will do whatever they need to get the job done. Often IT in the military is poorly funded and as a result information managers (some poor person chosen to do the job on top of their regular job) "acquire" software. As far as finding out if someone is using GPL code, I assume you would have to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request which now, more than ever, thanks to Aschroft is very easy to deny.
By the way, when you crash the Blackhawk simulator you get a red-screen-of-death. I'd love to see a tux screen saver while the simulator reboots.
Geeks already built a submarine, the dot com business model. Oh yeah, it wouldn't resurface.
This issue is tricky in respect to treating information as property and involvement of multi-national corporations. The arguments go beyond American constitutional law, specifically the expectation of privacy, into the sale and disclosure of information to third parties. With corporations and government agencies as intermediaries, it easily circumvents the issue of searches conducted without a warrant.
It gets muddy in that travel is not considered an inalienable right and therefore the information disclosure is a voluntary requisite for travel. I sometimes ask corporations for their privacy policies and it drives them insane when I ask them about how long my data will live in their database, if there is a procedure to request purging of such data, and how long my carbon copied forms are kept on record. A somewhat wishy-washy corporate stance regarding exchange of information can foil attempts at protecting database privacy. While it may be against the laws of one country (against the wishes of a corporation or second country) to disclose such information, given the fact that the database data may reside in multitude of countries where an agency is willing to disclose is either a benefit (for the government) or a problem for the privacy sensitive consumer. This problem extends to almost all things that live in a world of wide connectivity and needs to seriously be dealt with through international privacy law.