"The future masters of technology will have to be lighthearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb." -- Marshall McLuhan, 1969
Operation Summercon 2k8 in Da House
Topic: Cyber-Culture
3:33 pm EDT, May 28, 2008
We're in the final week before Summercon 2008! Come out Friday night @ 7PM and meet at the Wyndham Hotel bar, a.k.a. "The Mojito Lounge". Don't be shy, just look for someone wearing a Summercon t-shirt and introduce yourself. They won't bite or fight... probably. We'll plan on hanging out at the hotel for a bit and then herd everyone to another fine drinking establishment. Friday night is an ice-breaker, so come out and get to know your friendly neighborhood hacker. Don't sleep in much past noon on Saturday, presentations start at 12:30PM.
Phoenix Mars Mission - Mars Orbiter Snaps Phoenix During Landing
Topic: Space
8:04 am EDT, May 27, 2008
A telescopic camera in orbit around Mars caught a view of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suspended from its parachute during the lander's successful arrival at Mars Sunday evening, May 25.
The image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter marks the first time ever one spacecraft has photographed another one in the act of landing on Mars.
HiRISE usually points downward. For this image, the pointing was at 62 degrees, nearly two-thirds of the way from straight down to horizontal. To tilt the camera, the whole orbiter must tilt. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was already pointed toward the expected descent path of Phoenix to record radio transmissions from Phoenix.
McEwen said, "We've never taken an image at such an oblique angle before.
There was an article recommended recently about how finding evidence of life on mars would greatly lessen our chances of becoming a space faring species. It was an argument based on the great filter theory and variable change.. I can't find the URL or magic keywords for it now...
Peter Thiel Makes Down Payment on Libertarian Ocean Colonies
Topic: Society
10:23 am EDT, May 19, 2008
With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The Seasteading Institute, an organization dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities "with diverse social, political, and legal systems."
"Decades from now, those looking back at the start of the century will understand that Seasteading was an obvious step towards encouraging the development of more efficient, practical public-sector models around the world," Thiel said in a statement.
But if the idea turns out to be just crazy enough that it works, Friedman, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, envisions transforming the way that government functions.
"Government is an industry with a really high barrier to entry," he said. "You basically need to win an election or a revolution to try a new one. That's a ridiculous barrier to entry. And it's got enormous customer lock-in. People complain about their cellphone plans that are like two years, but think of the effort that it takes to change your citizenship."
SASC Criticizes Secrecy of National Cyber Security Initiative
Topic: Military Technology
4:51 pm EDT, May 18, 2008
The committee applauds the administration for developing a serious, major initiative to begin to close the vulnerabilities in the government's information networks and the nation's critical infrastructure. The committee believes that the administration's actions provide a foundation on which the next president can build.
However, the committee has multiple, significant issues with the administration's specific proposals and with the overall approach to gaining congressional support for the initiative.
A chief concern is that virtually everything about the initiative is highly classified, and most of the information that is not classified is categorized as `For Official Use Only.' These restrictions preclude public education, awareness, and debate about the policy and legal issues, real or imagined, that the initiative poses in the areas of privacy and civil liberties. Without such debate and awareness in such important and sensitive areas, it is likely that the initiative will make slow or modest progress. The committee strongly urges the administration to reconsider the necessity and wisdom of the blanket, indiscriminate classification levels established for the initiative.
The administration itself is starting a serious effort as part of the initiative to develop an information warfare deterrence strategy and declaratory doctrine, much as the superpowers did during the Cold War for nuclear conflict. It is difficult to conceive how the United States could promulgate a meaningful deterrence doctrine if every aspect of our capabilities and operational concepts is classified. In the era of superpower nuclear competition, while neither side disclosed weapons designs, everyone understood the effects of nuclear weapons, how they would be delivered, and the circumstances under which they would be used. Indeed, deterrence was not possible without letting friends and adversaries alike know what capabilities we possessed and the price that adversaries would pay in a real conflict. Some analogous level of disclosure is necessary in the cyber domain.
The committee also shares the view of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that major elements of the cyber initiative request should be scaled back because policy and legal reviews are not complete, and because the technology is not mature. Indeed, the administration is asking for substantial funds under the cyber initiative for fielding capabilities based on ongoing programs that remain in the prototype, or concept development, phase of the acquisition process. These elements of the cyber initiative, in other words, could not gain approval within the executive branch if held to standards enforced on normal acquisition programs. The committee's view is that disciplined acquisition processes and practices must be applied to the government-wide cyber initiative as much as to the ongoing development programs upon which the initiative... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]
In the Valley's coffee community, Bill McCauley was regarded as a pleasant, popular fellow.
As well as in the Silicon Valley tech community. Several people here at MemeStreams worked for Bill back in 2000-2001.
According to Tempe authorities, on the morning of May 5, McCauley backed his car into the storage area of Red Rock Foods, 626 S. Smith Road, and deliberately set a gasoline-fueled fire.
The explosion also killed his pet dachshund Millikin, named for its owner's alma mater in Illinois.
No note was found, leaving those left behind only speculation about why McCauley would kill himself in such a public and painful manner.
I'm truly in shock here.. Bill burned himself to death. It's not like he ran his car inside a garage with the door down... He lit himself and his car on fire! The article uses the word "explosion"! I can't imagine what the hell could have been going on in his mind.
I maintained contact with Bill over the years. He was someone I'd talk to via IM regularly, sometimes going back and forth for hours while working on things. We wound up speaking once a year via phone for some reason or another.
He was a friend. He was someone I admired.
We was a complex guy, who you always knew you were only scratch the surface of... It was always peculiar that there were a large number of pretty damn signifigant achievements that he always kept largely to himself.
I had worked with him and then known him for a few years before I knew things like he had a PhD in physics. Or a masters in nuclear engineering.. Hell, he had a stack of degrees. He was the director of testing at one of the Livermore laser labs, and at another point one of the super computing facilities. He built the NOC at Globalcenter back during the early days of the Internet boom, and was literally right there for a number of milestones in the early history of the Internet in a number of different contexts. We built some of the most advanced data-centers in Asia under his direction.
He had a hell of a history, a ton of stories, and seemed to know someone everywhere. Back at IAWK, people regarded his rolodex like a weapon of mass destruction. He was always good for advice.
I imagine that there are many people who knew him recently who only know a fraction of his background...
Walt Finley, landlord of the industrial complex where Red Rock is a tenant, said that about a month ago, McCauley complained to him about "terrible stomach trouble."
And, Finley recalled following the suicide, the manager of Daily Buzz told him that McCauley recently was treated in a hospital emergency room.
But on Arizona-Coffee.com's thread devoted to McCauley's death, business associate Ron Cortez relayed the news that "Red Rock was going through serious financial struggles and Bill was getting behind in payments with many of his suppliers."
This is really troubling to me. It doesn't fit my image of Bill. I really want to think that bad health and financial troubles wouldn't be enough to even put a dent into the man's fortitude..
I think Bill was more lonely then he ever let on.. He always lived alone. Maybe the coffee house was a way for him to defeat being lonely. It's strange how someone can be so outgoing and generally good spirited, but be harboring something that would make them set themselves on fire.
It's a truly uncomfortable thing to try to reason through why someone would do something like this after they are gone. No notes. No emails. No myspace posts. No twitters. No clues present in any of Bill's usual places.. No sense to any of it..
This has really taken me for a loop.. I'm going to really miss Bill. I was planning to find a way to visit him and see the coffee house in the next year...
Air Force Colonel Wants to Build a Military Botnet | Threat Level
Topic: Computer Security
3:26 pm EDT, May 12, 2008
Rob Kaufman, of the Air Force Information Operations Center, suggests mounting botnet code on the Air Force’s high-speed intrusion-detection systems. Defensively, that allows a quick response by directly linking our counterattack to the system that detects an incoming attack. The systems also have enough processing speed and communication capacity to handle large amounts of traffic.
Next, in what is truly the most inventive part of this concept, Lt. Chris Tollinger of the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency envisions continually capturing the thousands of computers the Air Force would normally discard every year for technology refresh, removing the power-hungry and heat-inducing hard drives, replacing them with low-power flash drives, then installing them in any available space every Air Force base can find. Even though those computers may no longer be sufficiently powerful to work for our people, individual machines need not be cutting-edge because the network as a whole can create massive power.
After that, the Air Force could add botnet code to all its desktop computers attached to the Nonsecret Internet Protocol Network (NIPRNet). Once the system reaches a level of maturity, it can add other .mil computers, then .gov machines.
