Is the transformer on top of the pole outside your house connected to the Internet? Nahhh, waste of good bandwidth.
Are they even connected to a closed network? Likely in areas where smart metering is installed. Does that present a clear and present danger of intrusion? Not a all. Is it a very remote possibility. Of course but remember that a smart meter is a one way device. It sends data to a database and even so much as a malformed entry in a field of the table(s) will cause a transaction failure. That would seem to be the fear behind a DDoS attack but it would take quite a bit to accomplish that and a complete idiot (i.e. a MSCE) to have set up such weak security.
Substations, generating stations, dams, coal, nuclear and other generation facilities would be making two way transactions but again very simple and well known security measures would reduce the chances of that kind of attack to nearly zero.
The same with system hubs which run parallel with but separate from the monitoring and data collection systems just as monitoring systems run parallel to but apart from collection systems.
As has been pointed out a bomb, in the end, would work better but for disruption capabilities still be light years behind what nature can and does do.
"Is my car connected to the Internet now too, just because the Internet now exists. Does my car need protecting all of a sudden?"
Hmmmm...does your car have a GPS on board? Do you plug your smart phone into the fancy control centres appearing in new vehicles? If the answer to either or both is correct then you are connected to the Internet.
Your car would only need protection if those systems are not separate from the monitoring and diagnostic computers that modern cars are full of and even if they weren't the device would need to know the pass phrases and passwords to get in.
Not out of the realm of the possible that at some point a vehicle would need third party protection though I'd be lining up to sign onto the first class action with any car maker that hadn't already taken those steps.
And then further suggest you educate yourself about things like data and voice transmission and the physics of how they work?
Topology and analysis based on that prove diddly. Yet that's what it seems you prefer to believe. Incidentally, that's a computer based model too.
Just googling Kerchoffs Law and Ohms Law doesn't make you much on an expert either. It does, however illustrate YOUR ignorance.
If the topological analysis were correct then grids would go down en masse as a result of each and every major storm that hit, tornado, hurricane, gale, earthquake and so on. Who needs terrorists when we have nature which is far more efficiently disruptive than a collection of terrorists. Doesn't happen often though.
Localized outages, yes, they happen. Just about every day of the week they happen. The North East Corridor doesn't go down on a daily basis though there are localized outages all the time.
Please go back to your comic book and see the back ads about courses in whatever by correspondence.
Some real life experience with these things might just help too.
What they're saying is that the system is actually built to handle numerous small failures each and every day. Otherwise the entire grid would crash with alarming regularity.
As they point out a terrorist can bring the system down hitting a major generating station or transformer installation IF they can figure out which one will bring on the domino effect that will bring it all down.
The model is based on the physics of the network and not it topology which is a far more accurate predictor of the effects of taking out one or two small stations or transformer sites.
Now, maybe, just maybe, a terrorist group can hit enough of these simultaneously to cause a major disruption but it's very very unlikely for a number of reasons.
As the grid expert pointed out it's unlikely in the extreme that an attack on a small feeder station would cause a major outage.
Climbing a pole or transmission tower wouldn't get the terrorist very far even if they do manage to avoid getting vapourized by touching the wrong thing up there.
Anyway, if you're gonna climb up there why not just cut the wires so you can sell the copper to recoup the cost of the attack? :)
As you say the point of security and intelligence agencies is to create FUD around the issue of so called cyber-terrorism simply to increase their budgets.
At the same time I doubt the heads of these agencies have any more in depth technical knowledge than the legislators they're trying to scare. As long as their advisors say something is remotely possible they can go to committee meetings and such and spread the bull fertilizer around until the politicians believe it.
In the real world the danger to the North American grid isn't terrorism it's the age of the darned thing but that costs more to fix and doesn't fill the need of security and policing agencies to control everything. Or have the illusion of control.
And yeah, we'll sign our rights and liberties away to get this false sense of security. Not for the first time in history, either.
Then again God doesn't need to believe in himself as he trims his beard while looking in the mirror wondering if he should stop believing in Dark Helmets :)
As there do exist ways to protect a site from the worst effects of DDoS attacks themselves and are frequently very inexpensive to implement I'm wondering if his tongueness is as cheap as he is loud.
Don't you think, Mr would be lawyer, that it's at least partly the responsibility of a site owner to protect themselves? Particularly is your name is Gene Simmons?
And yes, it's a criminal offense but doesn't the FBI have better things to do like track down kidnapped and missing children and a host of other things than to stroke Simmons overblown loudmouthed ego?
Now if the attack had compromised things like public health and safety, national security or something ACTUALLY important I'd say FBI have at 'er.
As for Mike he's smart enough to have taken precautions, I'm sure.
The reality of all of this is that, regardless of where one stands on the insult match between the rationalist atheist crowd and those few folks of religion that even bother to engage them anyone, every time a new technology is introduced there are those who are bound to say something like this about it.
Cast your minds back to the printing press which was such a threat that monarchs all over Europe sought to control it. In the end they couldn't. That certainly didn't stop the attempt.
Fast forward to things like the telephone and telegraph both of which alarmed some in authority. People could plan things like stealing someone else's azaleas on the phone!
Movies could take pictures of naked people doing things naked adult humans often do, say sex, and that wouldn't be good for anyone so we got censorship. Not official censorship mind you but some MPAA version to avoid legal prescriptions. Que steam train flying into tunnel.
Go back far enough and the post was, no doubt, considered dangerous. People in remote areas could drift off into some sort of virtual reality and become anti-social while exchanging letters!
Radio, television! It doesn't even take a change in technology just how it's used. For example comic books! Oh the horror! Rock'n'Roll! Terrible! Rap and hip hop worse!
Now comes the Internet and the Web. Oh my!
We're social creatures. We'll use any excuse to talk with one another, write to one another, make pictures for each other and on and on and on. So if a new technology comes along that makes talking to each other easier humans will jump on it.
Another group of humans will jump right back on it to declare how terrible it all is and how it needs to be controlled or how careful we need to be in how we use it.
It can be a religious leader, psychologist, philosopher, cabinet minister, talk radio host, or just someone looking to fill 10 minutes of a newscast on the latest danger to us all.
Then again, because I'm here, I'm obviously an anti-social guy stuck in a virtual world because I can't handle the real one and fantasy is so much more comforting (boring as all hell after a while, mind you).
Yeah, Benedict is an easy target. Too easy, in fact. That doesn't make Mike's point any the less valid. As I pointed out there are many, many others doing and saying exactly the same things.
So carry on arguing about religion and the current holder of the Papacy, if it makes you happy.
Mike's point is still the same so why are you engaging in a mere sidebar rather than the story itself which is not Benedict but that he's only saying what so many others are who have as much, if not more, influence on our lives?
1. He's rich
2. He hasn't met a reporter, microphone, camera, news show etc that he doesn't just love to blather his nonsense into.
3. He's colourful. (see point 2)
4. He gets people to write letters to the editors and a ton of blog responses.
5. He's an ignorant idiot when it comes to the legislative and legal processes.
6. Return to points 1 and 2.
Re: This strategy will work for a while. See Halloween Documents
Sorry, Microsoft, even the bail out is a non starter. Critical systems used by the US Military, NASA and many others run on Linux servers hand rolled by the department in question.
Can you honestly imagine the Mars rovers running Windows and needing a reboot for every trivial update just to force the OS to reread it's damned registry? :-)
Before the digital age you could make an exterior of Hogwarts in papier-mache for a religious festival anywhere, much less India, and no one would have batted an eye.
No one would have batted an eye if the neighbourhood talented modeler, child or adult, has made a model of the USS Enterprise and many did.
Most of this was done for the sheer fun and challenge of it not for any profit or to infringe on anyone's rights.
It was done then, as now, to honour the creator not take something from them. These are cultural touchstones and people will copy them for almost any reason than to damage a franchise.
In neither case does it appear that this has been done for commercial reasons.
So, does Viacom send copyright "cops" to sci-fi and Star Trek cons to bust anyone dressed in a character from the show instead of buying it from an approved costumer maker?
Sometimes the chasing of infringers, such as Rowling's suit, verges on the ridiculous. Wouldn't it have been much better to tell the model makers how honoured she was and to suggest they ask permission next time rather than take the fastest route to the courts?
Let's see if Viacom take the creation, in the game, of Enterprise D in the spirit that it was done. To celebrate a cultural touchstone not to take from it.
Grandstanding is so much easier than actually doing something and less likely to cost re-election as imposing the HST is likely to do. (This goes for the liars that are in government in BC, as well.)
Prostitution isn't and hasn't been illegal in Canada. The judge in the case in question struck down the "living off the avails of prostitution", "keeping a common bawdy house" and "communication for the purposes of prostitution" laws as unconstitutional.
So, with that in mind, Craigslist is doing nothing wrong. Neither are the classified sections of every large urban newspaper in the country when they run page after page of "escort service" and "body rub" parlor ads. Nor are the Yellow Pages which have page upon page of both.
Apparently there's an election in the offing in Ontario and the government appears to be afraid it might lose so now this starts up.
Can we legislate against living off the avails of politicstusion or some such thing? We'd be far better off.
Mike also said that there will be time when he will link to the NYT story if there isn't a valid or viable choice. As in an exclusive or in depth story not available elsewhere which is the NYT's stock in trade.
I can see what they're trying to do in an age of declining advertising revenue with little or no prospect of it getting any better but in the end, to me, it's a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Will the pay wall replace the revenue lost? I doubt it.
Will it prevent copyright infringement or its distant cousin the fear of copyright infringement which seems to be the motivation behind other paywalls? I doubt it.
Will grabbing at this straw save the sinking ship? No.
I do see your point, Eriq, and in some respects agree with it. But saying it's paternalistic is going a little overboard.
What Mike's trying to do is avoid the hassle of sending readers to a site, any site, that has a first click policy in place to try to get people to buck up for the paywall and annoying his readers. That's his choice and he's clearly said what he'll do.
As a reader I get to make my own judgment of this policy and when it works and doesn't.
It's his choice and he's explained it to us and why he's going to do it. I can then judge accordingly.
If it gets in the way I'll let Mike know. I doubt it will though.
If it's paternalism that offends you try Facebook, Bing or many other sites that are far more advanced in their paternalism. Or any other site that makes choices similar to this and either denies them or eventually says "its for the user's own good" or some other silly thing.
"Many inventions from ancient times were completely lost when civilizations perished because they were kept secret."
Not much of a historian, are you? I'll add that to the list which includes not must of an anthropologist, archaeologist, and various others who delved into the past with some small expertise.
In Western Europe ancient techniques and invention were lost because the western Roman Empire collapsed and with it that knowledge.
It never disappeared in the eastern Empire (Byzantium) and was gleefully incorporated into the knowledge and lore of the growing Islamic regions where it was developed further and, much to the shock of western Europeans, "rediscovered" when places like the Alhambra library fell to the barbarian "hordes" of the growing Spanish kingdom.
You know, Ronald, things like the concept of the number "zero" as a mathematical tool. Unknown by the Romans and Greeks and those who came before but developed and built on by those the pre-Renaissance Europeans called Arabs. Why our numbering system is still called Arabian, by the way.
You really need to get yourself an open mouth (talk radio) show to display your woeful ignorance on. What the hell, Glen Beck makes millions doing just that or does he have a patent on it?
On the post: Cyberwar Hype Leaps To The UK, While Electric Grid Expert Calls Claims Of Attacks 'Hooey'
Re:
Are they even connected to a closed network? Likely in areas where smart metering is installed. Does that present a clear and present danger of intrusion? Not a all. Is it a very remote possibility. Of course but remember that a smart meter is a one way device. It sends data to a database and even so much as a malformed entry in a field of the table(s) will cause a transaction failure. That would seem to be the fear behind a DDoS attack but it would take quite a bit to accomplish that and a complete idiot (i.e. a MSCE) to have set up such weak security.
Substations, generating stations, dams, coal, nuclear and other generation facilities would be making two way transactions but again very simple and well known security measures would reduce the chances of that kind of attack to nearly zero.
The same with system hubs which run parallel with but separate from the monitoring and data collection systems just as monitoring systems run parallel to but apart from collection systems.
As has been pointed out a bomb, in the end, would work better but for disruption capabilities still be light years behind what nature can and does do.
"Is my car connected to the Internet now too, just because the Internet now exists. Does my car need protecting all of a sudden?"
Hmmmm...does your car have a GPS on board? Do you plug your smart phone into the fancy control centres appearing in new vehicles? If the answer to either or both is correct then you are connected to the Internet.
Your car would only need protection if those systems are not separate from the monitoring and diagnostic computers that modern cars are full of and even if they weren't the device would need to know the pass phrases and passwords to get in.
Not out of the realm of the possible that at some point a vehicle would need third party protection though I'd be lining up to sign onto the first class action with any car maker that hadn't already taken those steps.
On the post: Cyberwar Hype Leaps To The UK, While Electric Grid Expert Calls Claims Of Attacks 'Hooey'
Re: energy grid expert
And then further suggest you educate yourself about things like data and voice transmission and the physics of how they work?
Topology and analysis based on that prove diddly. Yet that's what it seems you prefer to believe. Incidentally, that's a computer based model too.
Just googling Kerchoffs Law and Ohms Law doesn't make you much on an expert either. It does, however illustrate YOUR ignorance.
If the topological analysis were correct then grids would go down en masse as a result of each and every major storm that hit, tornado, hurricane, gale, earthquake and so on. Who needs terrorists when we have nature which is far more efficiently disruptive than a collection of terrorists. Doesn't happen often though.
Localized outages, yes, they happen. Just about every day of the week they happen. The North East Corridor doesn't go down on a daily basis though there are localized outages all the time.
Please go back to your comic book and see the back ads about courses in whatever by correspondence.
Some real life experience with these things might just help too.
On the post: Cyberwar Hype Leaps To The UK, While Electric Grid Expert Calls Claims Of Attacks 'Hooey'
Re:
What they're saying is that the system is actually built to handle numerous small failures each and every day. Otherwise the entire grid would crash with alarming regularity.
As they point out a terrorist can bring the system down hitting a major generating station or transformer installation IF they can figure out which one will bring on the domino effect that will bring it all down.
The model is based on the physics of the network and not it topology which is a far more accurate predictor of the effects of taking out one or two small stations or transformer sites.
Now, maybe, just maybe, a terrorist group can hit enough of these simultaneously to cause a major disruption but it's very very unlikely for a number of reasons.
On the post: Cyberwar Hype Leaps To The UK, While Electric Grid Expert Calls Claims Of Attacks 'Hooey'
Re: Re:
After all, if Google can figure it out very quickly why can't these agencies?
Oh, I forgot, Google's not sitting in front of budget makers wanting more money. Me bad.
On the post: Cyberwar Hype Leaps To The UK, While Electric Grid Expert Calls Claims Of Attacks 'Hooey'
Re: Re: Regulation and control
Climbing a pole or transmission tower wouldn't get the terrorist very far even if they do manage to avoid getting vapourized by touching the wrong thing up there.
Anyway, if you're gonna climb up there why not just cut the wires so you can sell the copper to recoup the cost of the attack? :)
As you say the point of security and intelligence agencies is to create FUD around the issue of so called cyber-terrorism simply to increase their budgets.
At the same time I doubt the heads of these agencies have any more in depth technical knowledge than the legislators they're trying to scare. As long as their advisors say something is remotely possible they can go to committee meetings and such and spread the bull fertilizer around until the politicians believe it.
In the real world the danger to the North American grid isn't terrorism it's the age of the darned thing but that costs more to fix and doesn't fill the need of security and policing agencies to control everything. Or have the illusion of control.
And yeah, we'll sign our rights and liberties away to get this false sense of security. Not for the first time in history, either.
On the post: Months Later, Defense Secretary Gates Reveals Wikileaks Document Leak Didn't Actually Reveal Intelligence Sources
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I guess that's okay then.
Then again God doesn't need to believe in himself as he trims his beard while looking in the mirror wondering if he should stop believing in Dark Helmets :)
On the post: Gene Simmons Now Wants To Throw 'Anonymous' In Jail
Re:
Don't you think, Mr would be lawyer, that it's at least partly the responsibility of a site owner to protect themselves? Particularly is your name is Gene Simmons?
And yes, it's a criminal offense but doesn't the FBI have better things to do like track down kidnapped and missing children and a host of other things than to stroke Simmons overblown loudmouthed ego?
Now if the attack had compromised things like public health and safety, national security or something ACTUALLY important I'd say FBI have at 'er.
As for Mike he's smart enough to have taken precautions, I'm sure.
On the post: New Pope Confuses Technology Reality And Fiction
To get back to the point
Cast your minds back to the printing press which was such a threat that monarchs all over Europe sought to control it. In the end they couldn't. That certainly didn't stop the attempt.
Fast forward to things like the telephone and telegraph both of which alarmed some in authority. People could plan things like stealing someone else's azaleas on the phone!
Movies could take pictures of naked people doing things naked adult humans often do, say sex, and that wouldn't be good for anyone so we got censorship. Not official censorship mind you but some MPAA version to avoid legal prescriptions. Que steam train flying into tunnel.
Go back far enough and the post was, no doubt, considered dangerous. People in remote areas could drift off into some sort of virtual reality and become anti-social while exchanging letters!
Radio, television! It doesn't even take a change in technology just how it's used. For example comic books! Oh the horror! Rock'n'Roll! Terrible! Rap and hip hop worse!
Now comes the Internet and the Web. Oh my!
We're social creatures. We'll use any excuse to talk with one another, write to one another, make pictures for each other and on and on and on. So if a new technology comes along that makes talking to each other easier humans will jump on it.
Another group of humans will jump right back on it to declare how terrible it all is and how it needs to be controlled or how careful we need to be in how we use it.
It can be a religious leader, psychologist, philosopher, cabinet minister, talk radio host, or just someone looking to fill 10 minutes of a newscast on the latest danger to us all.
Then again, because I'm here, I'm obviously an anti-social guy stuck in a virtual world because I can't handle the real one and fantasy is so much more comforting (boring as all hell after a while, mind you).
Yeah, Benedict is an easy target. Too easy, in fact. That doesn't make Mike's point any the less valid. As I pointed out there are many, many others doing and saying exactly the same things.
So carry on arguing about religion and the current holder of the Papacy, if it makes you happy.
Mike's point is still the same so why are you engaging in a mere sidebar rather than the story itself which is not Benedict but that he's only saying what so many others are who have as much, if not more, influence on our lives?
On the post: Paul McGuinness Thinks Recognizing Due Process Is Bad For Ireland's Reputation?
They take him seriously because...
2. He hasn't met a reporter, microphone, camera, news show etc that he doesn't just love to blather his nonsense into.
3. He's colourful. (see point 2)
4. He gets people to write letters to the editors and a ton of blog responses.
5. He's an ignorant idiot when it comes to the legislative and legal processes.
6. Return to points 1 and 2.
On the post: Isn't It Unfortunate That We Need A Special Mark To Indicate Works That Are Already In The Public Domain?
Re: Marks & marks
Lord, save us all!
As for the PD mark, all Mike's saying is that it's sad that this needed to come in today's litigious world.
On the post: Isn't It Unfortunate That We Need A Special Mark To Indicate Works That Are Already In The Public Domain?
Re:
Most of these little things are so it's not beyond the realm of possibility.
The only reason I can see to apply a trade mark to it or some similar protection is to prevent someone else from doing so and misusing it.
On the post: Microsoft's Patent On GPU-Accelerated Video Encoding
Re: This strategy will work for a while. See Halloween Documents
Can you honestly imagine the Mars rovers running Windows and needing a reboot for every trivial update just to force the OS to reread it's damned registry? :-)
On the post: Entrepreneur Magazine Claiming It Owns The Word Entrepreneur?
Re: Re: Owns what...
And, I've applied to the USPTO for a patent on it as well!
So there!
On the post: Could The Enterprise D Replica In Minecraft Be A Copyright Minefield?
Re: It's a risk you run when *copying*.
No one would have batted an eye if the neighbourhood talented modeler, child or adult, has made a model of the USS Enterprise and many did.
Most of this was done for the sheer fun and challenge of it not for any profit or to infringe on anyone's rights.
It was done then, as now, to honour the creator not take something from them. These are cultural touchstones and people will copy them for almost any reason than to damage a franchise.
In neither case does it appear that this has been done for commercial reasons.
So, does Viacom send copyright "cops" to sci-fi and Star Trek cons to bust anyone dressed in a character from the show instead of buying it from an approved costumer maker?
Sometimes the chasing of infringers, such as Rowling's suit, verges on the ridiculous. Wouldn't it have been much better to tell the model makers how honoured she was and to suggest they ask permission next time rather than take the fastest route to the courts?
Let's see if Viacom take the creation, in the game, of Enterprise D in the spirit that it was done. To celebrate a cultural touchstone not to take from it.
To quote Charlie Brown: "Good grief!"
On the post: Canadian Politicians Jump On The 'Censor Craigslist' Bandwagon
Grandstanding is so much easier than actually doing something and less likely to cost re-election as imposing the HST is likely to do. (This goes for the liars that are in government in BC, as well.)
On the post: Canadian Politicians Jump On The 'Censor Craigslist' Bandwagon
Re: Re: It should be noted
Prostitution isn't and hasn't been illegal in Canada. The judge in the case in question struck down the "living off the avails of prostitution", "keeping a common bawdy house" and "communication for the purposes of prostitution" laws as unconstitutional.
So, with that in mind, Craigslist is doing nothing wrong. Neither are the classified sections of every large urban newspaper in the country when they run page after page of "escort service" and "body rub" parlor ads. Nor are the Yellow Pages which have page upon page of both.
Apparently there's an election in the offing in Ontario and the government appears to be afraid it might lose so now this starts up.
Can we legislate against living off the avails of politicstusion or some such thing? We'd be far better off.
On the post: New York Times Insists It Can Stay Part Of The Conversation With 'First Click Free'
Re:
I can see what they're trying to do in an age of declining advertising revenue with little or no prospect of it getting any better but in the end, to me, it's a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Will the pay wall replace the revenue lost? I doubt it.
Will it prevent copyright infringement or its distant cousin the fear of copyright infringement which seems to be the motivation behind other paywalls? I doubt it.
Will grabbing at this straw save the sinking ship? No.
I do see your point, Eriq, and in some respects agree with it. But saying it's paternalistic is going a little overboard.
What Mike's trying to do is avoid the hassle of sending readers to a site, any site, that has a first click policy in place to try to get people to buck up for the paywall and annoying his readers. That's his choice and he's clearly said what he'll do.
As a reader I get to make my own judgment of this policy and when it works and doesn't.
It's his choice and he's explained it to us and why he's going to do it. I can then judge accordingly.
If it gets in the way I'll let Mike know. I doubt it will though.
If it's paternalism that offends you try Facebook, Bing or many other sites that are far more advanced in their paternalism. Or any other site that makes choices similar to this and either denies them or eventually says "its for the user's own good" or some other silly thing.
On the post: Why Imitation Gets A Bad Rap... And Why Companies Need To Be More Serious About Copying
Re: Re: Re: Re: exclude others
"I spent much of my career working as an engineer and what made me good at it was that I have a multidisciplinary background.
"
Just what university did you get your engineering degree from and in what year? Just want to know.
And check.
On the post: Why Imitation Gets A Bad Rap... And Why Companies Need To Be More Serious About Copying
Re: Re: exclude others
Not much of a historian, are you? I'll add that to the list which includes not must of an anthropologist, archaeologist, and various others who delved into the past with some small expertise.
In Western Europe ancient techniques and invention were lost because the western Roman Empire collapsed and with it that knowledge.
It never disappeared in the eastern Empire (Byzantium) and was gleefully incorporated into the knowledge and lore of the growing Islamic regions where it was developed further and, much to the shock of western Europeans, "rediscovered" when places like the Alhambra library fell to the barbarian "hordes" of the growing Spanish kingdom.
You know, Ronald, things like the concept of the number "zero" as a mathematical tool. Unknown by the Romans and Greeks and those who came before but developed and built on by those the pre-Renaissance Europeans called Arabs. Why our numbering system is still called Arabian, by the way.
You really need to get yourself an open mouth (talk radio) show to display your woeful ignorance on. What the hell, Glen Beck makes millions doing just that or does he have a patent on it?
On the post: Why Imitation Gets A Bad Rap... And Why Companies Need To Be More Serious About Copying
Re: Re: Re: Re: The System Works
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