Journalists can't be experts on all the subject matters that they are expected to cover and it is not always easy to differentiate what it is "true" when presented by reasonably credible people (like the vi versus emacs argument). Also, history has shown us what has prevailed as "scientific fact" at a certain period in time has later been proven to be total BS, just like the idea of the earth being flat seemed reasonable to most people at one time. Most journalists are not going to spend an whole lot of time researching a subject that is a minor story, especially when it would require presenting a short science lesson just for the audience to understand the view points. So they simply present all the opinons they can find and let you sort it out for yourself.
I used to be in Army worked with several Air Defense Artillery missile systems. As early as 1990, I recall THAAD (Theater High Altitude Area Defense) objectives being a high priority which included the ability to hit targets outside of the earth's atmosphere including low orbiting satellites with full anti-satellite capability being a longer term goal.
more profit for me! Doh!
I meant more savings for the consumer!
Oops, I meant law enforcement needs more tax dollars.
Re:another alternative = encrypted class files
on
Decompiling Java
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I believe encryption is probably not worth the effort for most people, it's not much of a hurdle to overcome. Ultimately all custom class loader execution paths will lead to a ClassLoader.defineClass call which can either be intercepted by creating a modified system class loader or by creating a JVMPI agent which listens for JVMPI_EVENT_CLASS_LOAD_HOOK events. If you can prevent these methods from being employed then you're probably operating in a secure environment where encryption would be overkill.
Another issue is that NASAs recent failures have been more publicized than their successes... try to convince someone of the safety of a nuclear rocket when they can recently recall incidents due to parts being designed upside down, metric conversion errors, or the vivid memory of space shuttle debris raining across their state.
Virtually any piece of information could be of potential value to a terrorist. I seriously doubt that limiting access to information which is currently available to the general public has foiled any terrorist plans. Actually these measures may clue in terrorists on what targets are vulnerable. I got one... lets burn all written materials. BTW, we are also recruiting "firemen" now. Does anyone know where Montag is?
-Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get me.
That's what Microsoft is hoping for, it cannot grow it's business fast enough for shareholders, so litigation will be it's new growth vehicle and you will soon see signs like... Welcome to Liechtenstein a wholy owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation
Cool technology does not necessarily make a successful company, Microsoft hasn't been the most innovative company by technological standards in the eyes of many but, it is definitely one of the most successful companies ever. Netscape was once considered unstoppable and dominated web browsers and where are they now? Also since the internet is still relatively new there is not much assurance that some new innovation will dramatically alter concept of a search engine and make Google an obsolete idea. Also since most people think of Google as a search engine its stock price will be tied to that industry for a long time to come even though it's business model is evolving to include other ideas. IBMs stock price still fluctuates based on mainframe sales forecasts even though most of its revenue is from other sources. I'm not saying Google isn't a good buy, but I'd be cautious especially at that price. But hell IANASB and I thought ebay would never succeed because I didn't think they would be able to control fraud and confidence in ebay would eventually erode.
According to the article apparently they have addressed that issue...
Moreover, in searching for a radar-resistant material, the Swedes seem to have stumbled across a technology that could offer improved strength and rigidity, lower weight and better shock and
flame resistance than steel.
My concern would be repairing battle damage at sea. How do you patch carbon fiber? Bondo perhaps? I'd be more reassured with a material that I could weld a plate to.
There are US hospitals which send their MRI images electronically to Indian companies which have a 24/7 staff of radiologists to interpret the images and send back the results. It is supposedly cheaper and faster according to a television show I saw, can't recall the show, it may have been on Tech TV. I do believe medical regulatory boards consisting of US doctors are going to make decisions which benefit US doctors. If the outsourcing trend became a major threat, I believe US doctors would employ some type of regulatory action to justify halting the trend. Doctors have had positions of status and wealth in the US for a long time and I don't think they are going to allow that positions slip away without a hard fight.
Agreed. The USCF method of ranking players is known as the ELO rating system and was implemented by the USCF in 1960. In another example, which utilizes the internet, the Internet Chess Club has also been ranking chess players since the late 80s.
I first remember seeing this functionality in Sun's HotJava browser (the default browser in the later Solaris versions), if the security settings allowed it.
If a child truly cannot concentrate, then it may be of some benefit. IMHO, I really don't believe there are that many children in that situation. There are now many children who can devote their undivided attention while playing a game of Quake or watching cartoons but who fall asleep during history class. I say they attach the units to children at school and oust teachers who fail to keep children above the minimum brain activity level.
The Geneva Convention also covers what is ethical to use as weapons in a war, there have been some weapons developed which the U.S. does not use because they were not considered ethical by the Geneva Convention. If I remember correctly this is why the U.S. did not adopt flechette rounds (multiple small dart projectiles in a single cartridge) for the M-16A2. They were considered cruel because entry wounds were often very hard to see and they bent upon impact making them hard to remove without causing further damage, like trying to remove fishing hooks. I also recall an experimental weapon which looked for optical devices and shot a laser at them and could consequently blind people which was scrapped because it was believed that the weapon would never be deemed ethical. I think that if you can blow it up, you should be able to hack it. Computer viruses would probably fall into the unethical region since it would be hard to control who they infect.
I work on a Java applet which does real time streaming stock quotes and news. It all runs within a browser and is mostly cross platform. I would say that for the web in general, building a cross platform site, although sometimes annoying is not that difficult and certainly feasible. However, customers are expecting more from web apps it becomes harder to build a cross platform solution to problems. We tried to add a browser agnostic cross platform streaming video solution, couldn't do it, simply could not get it to work reliably across all of our supported platforms (Win 9X/NT, Solaris 2.X, Linux and Mac), we had to settle for a Windows only solution. Building a complicated web app in a cross browser/platform way requires serious work and most web developers are not willing to do it considering a good portion of their customers are Win/IE. I am often asked if I can we add gee-whiz cool feature X, and as long as I say it can be done under Win/IE it will most likely be added, the other browser/OS combinations are not eliminated from using our app but they don't get the same features. It often requires a lot of code to prevent our stuff from crashing on browser/OS combinations which can't do all the stuff we are trying to do and at some point I'm afraid I will be asked to forget about aything other than Win/IE.
There is a Java OS, it basically makes your box a NC. Java programs are downloaded and executed locally all other apps run xterm/winterm style. It was a little buggy when I tried it on a JavaStation but it ran Java very fast. I believe it was only released for microSPARC (JavaStations), StrongARM, and x86 chips. Who would spend $2K for an Ultra 5 and use it as a thin client?
Agreed. CyberTerrorism is closer in nature to electronic counter measures (ECM) than CBRN. Also the psychological effects are much greater for CBRN than for CT. Due to the dependance of most modern nations sure CT will cause some mayhem and maybe even several deaths, but that would cause people to rely less upon technology and continue on. However, CBRN attacks do not allow you to feel safe no matter where you are, that is not to say that CT would not be a very effective means of warfare.
Here is my 2 cents on the proposed questions:
Using CT it is very easy to bring down vital systems, you probably could not directly attack a military system very easily but the is always a weak link in the chain i.e. Army depends on vendor A for supplies/weapons and vendor A depends on parts from vendor B, etc. Somewhere with in that chain is a vulnerability due to the massive networks, technological dependance, and just-in-time ordering systems. Look at how strikes in one automotive plant have effectively shutdown large car makers. Now imagine that automotive plant being a government contractor (as most of them are) supplying vehicles and replacement parts during a war and a cracker planted a virus in their system. In a large scale conflict it would probably be even easier, at one point and time during the Vietnam war Mattel (makers of the Barbie doll) made M16s for the military because the military could not get them fast enough from Colt. Now imagine that same scenario happening today, a company being thrust in to the position of a military target. Could their IT infrastructure handle the sophisticated attacks that would soon follow? I don't think it would be too hard to wreak havoc upon the logistic systems of any military.
The people with these skills are not exactly common but I believe most good programmers could be taught these abilities and lot of programmers know of some bug in the systems they worked on that was not fixed due to some deadline or due to expense which could possibly be exploited.
There are some COTS security systems which due counter attacks to crackers that could possibly be modified to attack without provocation but there is a abundant source of free cracking tools on the net.
Anything on a network is attackable by someone.
If a system is backed up it always can be recovered but there could be some data lost especially in a real time 24/7 enviroment. But actually disabling a system would not probably be as effective as planting a virus. A disabled system is immediately noticed and all efforts would go in to recovering it and closing the hole that was used to get in. A virus could cause random interruptions in work flow that would be difficult to find and add up to more lost efficiency than a total shutdown which would be at best temporary. Also you could plant viruses which all acted at a certain time across multiple systems for maximum effect.
As long as there are networks there will be those who try to penetrate them and as these networks grow they will attract more people trying to attack them.
You can only prevent penetrations by getting skilled people to thwart these attacks.
I remember seeing a face recognition device on some TV show quite a while ago that said that it was able to differentiate between identical twins. It also said it could see attempts disguise your face. This was a commercial device that banks and credit card companies were looking at for verification purposes, but they said it was too expensive at the time. So if commercial entities have access to something that accurate, I'm sure the NSA has something way better. What I wonder is if you lost or gained a lot of weight in a short period of time would it still be able to recognize you as you considering how sensitive it is supposed to be. Or even worse you were involved in some type of accident and needed plastic surgery what process would you go through to regain your identity?
Well, you are at least partially wrong. Yes, I do know several people wo do refer to each other as nigger in the friendly context you are referring to. However, myself and several other black persons I know find the word offensive regardless of who uses it, I really am uncomfortable hearing any type of racial slurs. Yes, there is a double standard involved with the n-word, but I do know white people who have used the word in a joking context amongst black people and no one took offense, other than those who would normally find it offensive from another black person. It really just depends on how well you know the people you are talking too and the context. When George Carlin says it, I don't want to kick his ass, I think it's funny, but I'd still rather not hear the word from anyone regardless of race. I actually don't think the term African American is all that great either, but it is more tolerable to me. First of all it is a really crappy categorization, black people have come to America from places other than Africa and not all Africans are black. Also, if I am a citizen of the USA, I am simply an American no prefixes, suffixes or other adjectives needed. Should we call women citizens Americanettes? or whites European Americans?
This was a contrived example to showcase the Jini technology of Sun.
IR was irrelevant to the example. You could have Palm VIIs controlling the tanks over the web through a wireless connection w/ out much more code.
Also, the IR port on the Palm doesn't have a lot of range and is very directional, so you don't beam your app or business card to everyone with a Palm in the room, only the intended receiver.
In a real world app you would want a small/cheap client, like a Palm V as opposed to buying a bunch of workstations.
The idea of Jini is to put intelligence in smaller devices like a VCR, you would just plug it into a net and it would automatically be able to communicate with your camcorder, TV, satellite receiver, etc. Noble idea for the future but right now all I really just want is to be able to set one damn clock in my house and have them all sync.
I don't believe the charts for percentage of US households by race/origin are not a very useful indicator...
What is the distribution within the income brackets? Those salary ranges are pretty wide and if most minorities fall towards the lower end and most whites fall towards the upper end (which I believe to be the case) you have your answer.
How many people are in these households? If the minorities average a greater number of kids than the average white household then that's also a big factor.
I'm not sure if this is a large enough factor to skew the stats but how many of these people have home offices or are in a position which requires them to own a PC?
I don't doubt that whites are more likely to own a PC than blacks or hispanics in equivalent situations, but I don't think the stats tell the whole story.
Slashdot Mirror
a chess set that the Franklin Mint doesn't yet produce! Cool novelty, but most serious players I know use a Staunton style set.
would probably try to stop such an event from occurring, it would eventually erode a prime revenue source.
Journalists can't be experts on all the subject matters that they are expected to cover and it is not always easy to differentiate what it is "true" when presented by reasonably credible people (like the vi versus emacs argument). Also, history has shown us what has prevailed as "scientific fact" at a certain period in time has later been proven to be total BS, just like the idea of the earth being flat seemed reasonable to most people at one time. Most journalists are not going to spend an whole lot of time researching a subject that is a minor story, especially when it would require presenting a short science lesson just for the audience to understand the view points. So they simply present all the opinons they can find and let you sort it out for yourself.
I used to be in Army worked with several Air Defense Artillery missile systems. As early as 1990, I recall THAAD (Theater High Altitude Area Defense) objectives being a high priority which included the ability to hit targets outside of the earth's atmosphere including low orbiting satellites with full anti-satellite capability being a longer term goal.
more profit for me! Doh!
I meant more savings for the consumer!
Oops, I meant law enforcement needs more tax dollars.
I believe encryption is probably not worth the effort for most people, it's not much of a hurdle to overcome. Ultimately all custom class loader execution paths will lead to a ClassLoader.defineClass call which can either be intercepted by creating a modified system class loader or by creating a JVMPI agent which listens for JVMPI_EVENT_CLASS_LOAD_HOOK events. If you can prevent these methods from being employed then you're probably operating in a secure environment where encryption would be overkill.
is easily attributed to subtle variances in the curd temperature during the cheese formation process... oops wrong moon.
Another issue is that NASAs recent failures have been more publicized than their successes... try to convince someone of the safety of a nuclear rocket when they can recently recall incidents due to parts being designed upside down, metric conversion errors, or the vivid memory of space shuttle debris raining across their state.
Virtually any piece of information could be of potential value to a terrorist. I seriously doubt that limiting access to information which is currently available to the general public has foiled any terrorist plans. Actually these measures may clue in terrorists on what targets are vulnerable.
I got one... lets burn all written materials.
BTW, we are also recruiting "firemen" now.
Does anyone know where Montag is?
-Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get me.
That's what Microsoft is hoping for, it cannot grow it's business fast enough for shareholders, so litigation will be it's new growth vehicle and you will soon see signs like... Welcome to Liechtenstein a wholy owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation
I thought running Eclipse on my Sun workstation was just ironic.
Cool technology does not necessarily make a successful company, Microsoft hasn't been the most innovative company by technological standards in the eyes of many but, it is definitely one of the most successful companies ever. Netscape was once considered unstoppable and dominated web browsers and where are they now? Also since the internet is still relatively new there is not much assurance that some new innovation will dramatically alter concept of a search engine and make Google an obsolete idea. Also since most people think of Google as a search engine its stock price will be tied to that industry for a long time to come even though it's business model is evolving to include other ideas. IBMs stock price still fluctuates based on mainframe sales forecasts even though most of its revenue is from other sources. I'm not saying Google isn't a good buy, but I'd be cautious especially at that price. But hell IANASB and I thought ebay would never succeed because I didn't think they would be able to control fraud and confidence in ebay would eventually erode.
My concern would be repairing battle damage at sea. How do you patch carbon fiber? Bondo perhaps? I'd be more reassured with a material that I could weld a plate to.
There are US hospitals which send their MRI images electronically to Indian companies which have a 24/7 staff of radiologists to interpret the images and send back the results. It is supposedly cheaper and faster according to a television show I saw, can't recall the show, it may have been on Tech TV. I do believe medical regulatory boards consisting of US doctors are going to make decisions which benefit US doctors. If the outsourcing trend became a major threat, I believe US doctors would employ some type of regulatory action to justify halting the trend. Doctors have had positions of status and wealth in the US for a long time and I don't think they are going to allow that positions slip away without a hard fight.
Agreed. The USCF method of ranking players is known as the ELO rating system and was implemented by the USCF in 1960. In another example, which utilizes the internet, the Internet Chess Club has also been ranking chess players since the late 80s.
I first remember seeing this functionality in Sun's HotJava browser (the default browser in the later Solaris versions), if the security settings allowed it.
If a child truly cannot concentrate, then it may be of some benefit. IMHO, I really don't believe there are that many children in that situation. There are now many children who can devote their undivided attention while playing a game of Quake or watching cartoons but who fall asleep during history class. I say they attach the units to children at school and oust teachers who fail to keep children above the minimum brain activity level.
The Geneva Convention also covers what is ethical to use as weapons in a war, there have been some weapons developed which the U.S. does not use because they were not considered ethical by the Geneva Convention. If I remember correctly this is why the U.S. did not adopt flechette rounds (multiple small dart projectiles in a single cartridge) for the M-16A2. They were considered cruel because entry wounds were often very hard to see and they bent upon impact making them hard to remove without causing further damage, like trying to remove fishing hooks. I also recall an experimental weapon which looked for optical devices and shot a laser at them and could consequently blind people which was scrapped because it was believed that the weapon would never be deemed ethical. I think that if you can blow it up, you should be able to hack it. Computer viruses would probably fall into the unethical region since it would be hard to control who they infect.
I work on a Java applet which does real time streaming stock quotes and news. It all runs within a browser and is mostly cross platform. I would say that for the web in general, building a cross platform site, although sometimes annoying is not that difficult and certainly feasible. However, customers are expecting more from web apps it becomes harder to build a cross platform solution to problems. We tried to add a browser agnostic cross platform streaming video solution, couldn't do it, simply could not get it to work reliably across all of our supported platforms (Win 9X/NT, Solaris 2.X, Linux and Mac), we had to settle for a Windows only solution. Building a complicated web app in a cross browser/platform way requires serious work and most web developers are not willing to do it considering a good portion of their customers are Win/IE. I am often asked if I can we add gee-whiz cool feature X, and as long as I say it can be done under Win/IE it will most likely be added, the other browser/OS combinations are not eliminated from using our app but they don't get the same features. It often requires a lot of code to prevent our stuff from crashing on browser/OS combinations which can't do all the stuff we are trying to do and at some point I'm afraid I will be asked to forget about aything other than Win/IE.
There is a Java OS, it basically makes your box a NC. Java programs are downloaded and executed locally all other apps run xterm/winterm style. It was a little buggy when I tried it on a JavaStation but it ran Java very fast. I believe it was only released for microSPARC (JavaStations), StrongARM, and x86 chips. Who would spend $2K for an Ultra 5 and use it as a thin client?
Agreed. CyberTerrorism is closer in nature to electronic counter measures (ECM) than CBRN. Also the psychological effects are much greater for CBRN than for CT. Due to the dependance of most modern nations sure CT will cause some mayhem and maybe even several deaths, but that would cause people to rely less upon technology and continue on. However, CBRN attacks do not allow you to feel safe no matter where you are, that is not to say that CT would not be a very effective means of warfare.
Here is my 2 cents on the proposed questions:
Using CT it is very easy to bring down vital systems, you probably could not directly attack a military system very easily but the is always a weak link in the chain i.e. Army depends on vendor A for supplies/weapons and vendor A depends on parts from vendor B, etc. Somewhere with in that chain is a vulnerability due to the massive networks, technological dependance, and just-in-time ordering systems. Look at how strikes in one automotive plant have effectively shutdown large car makers. Now imagine that automotive plant being a government contractor (as most of them are) supplying vehicles and replacement parts during a war and a cracker planted a virus in their system. In a large scale conflict it would probably be even easier, at one point and time during the Vietnam war Mattel (makers of the Barbie doll) made M16s for the military because the military could not get them fast enough from Colt. Now imagine that same scenario happening today, a company being thrust in to the position of a military target. Could their IT infrastructure handle the sophisticated attacks that would soon follow? I don't think it would be too hard to wreak havoc upon the logistic systems of any military.
The people with these skills are not exactly common but I believe most good programmers could be taught these abilities and lot of programmers know of some bug in the systems they worked on that was not fixed due to some deadline or due to expense which could possibly be exploited.
There are some COTS security systems which due counter attacks to crackers that could possibly be modified to attack without provocation but there is a abundant source of free cracking tools on the net.
Anything on a network is attackable by someone.
If a system is backed up it always can be recovered but there could be some data lost especially in a real time 24/7 enviroment. But actually disabling a system would not probably be as effective as planting a virus. A disabled system is immediately noticed and all efforts would go in to recovering it and closing the hole that was used to get in. A virus could cause random interruptions in work flow that would be difficult to find and add up to more lost efficiency than a total shutdown which would be at best temporary. Also you could plant viruses which all acted at a certain time across multiple systems for maximum effect.
As long as there are networks there will be those who try to penetrate them and as these networks grow they will attract more people trying to attack them.
You can only prevent penetrations by getting skilled people to thwart these attacks.
I remember seeing a face recognition device on some TV show quite a while ago that said that it was able to differentiate between identical twins. It also said it could see attempts disguise your face. This was a commercial device that banks and credit card companies were looking at for verification purposes, but they said it was too expensive at the time. So if commercial entities have access to something that accurate, I'm sure the NSA has something way better. What I wonder is if you lost or gained a lot of weight in a short period of time would it still be able to recognize you as you considering how sensitive it is supposed to be. Or even worse you were involved in some type of accident and needed plastic surgery what process would you go through to regain your identity?
Well, you are at least partially wrong. Yes, I do know several people wo do refer to each other as nigger in the friendly context you are referring to. However, myself and several other black persons I know find the word offensive regardless of who uses it, I really am uncomfortable hearing any type of racial slurs. Yes, there is a double standard involved with the n-word, but I do know white people who have used the word in a joking context amongst black people and no one took offense, other than those who would normally find it offensive from another black person. It really just depends on how well you know the people you are talking too and the context. When George Carlin says it, I don't want to kick his ass, I think it's funny, but I'd still rather not hear the word from anyone regardless of race. I actually don't think the term African American is all that great either, but it is more tolerable to me. First of all it is a really crappy categorization, black people have come to America from places other than Africa and not all Africans are black. Also, if I am a citizen of the USA, I am simply an American no prefixes, suffixes or other adjectives needed. Should we call women citizens Americanettes? or whites European Americans?
This was a contrived example to showcase the Jini technology of Sun.
IR was irrelevant to the example. You could have Palm VIIs controlling the tanks over the web through a wireless connection w/ out much more code.
Also, the IR port on the Palm doesn't have a lot of range and is very directional, so you don't beam your app or business card to everyone with a Palm in the room, only the intended receiver.
In a real world app you would want a small/cheap client, like a Palm V as opposed to buying a bunch of workstations.
The idea of Jini is to put intelligence in smaller devices like a VCR, you would just plug it into a net and it would automatically be able to communicate with your camcorder, TV, satellite receiver, etc. Noble idea for the future but right now all I really just want is to be able to set one damn clock in my house and have them all sync.
I don't believe the charts for percentage of US households by race/origin are not a very useful indicator...
What is the distribution within the income brackets? Those salary ranges are pretty wide and if most minorities fall towards the lower end and most whites fall towards the upper end (which I believe to be the case) you have your answer.
How many people are in these households? If the minorities average a greater number of kids than the average white household then that's also a big factor.
I'm not sure if this is a large enough factor to skew the stats but how many of these people have home offices or are in a position which requires them to own a PC?
I don't doubt that whites are more likely to own a PC than blacks or hispanics in equivalent situations, but I don't think the stats tell the whole story.