Edited by author 04-06-2006 04:08 PM
Hello,
 
In response to your comment [As the cover blurb went on to explain, "70% of network attacks originate within the enterprise ..."]:
 
I wrote the book Extrusion Detection. Nowhere in the book do I say anything like what you posted. That figure (and the more often-quoted "80%" figure) are myths derived from an over 20-year-old FBI study. I debunk that figure in my first book, The Tao of Network Security Monitoring.
 
Thank you,
 
Richard Bejtlich
 
References:
 
http://www.taosecurity.com/books.html

As ZDnet points out, and one can see today by clicking on the Google logo:

Google lands on Mars Posted by Garett Rogers @ 8:35 pm

"Tonight I noticed that mars.google.com now has a CNAME record that points to www.google.com. This usually means that something is about to happen with that subdomain — with the exception of calendar.google.com of course. So I started digging and you will never guess what I found — a Google Maps type application that lets you view Mars. This service is called 'Google Mars.'"

First I thought of David Brin's novel "Earth" -- for which he claims over a dozen correct predictions. Then I remembered (proving yatima2975 correct):

"There is something new: A globe about the size of a grapefruit, a perfectly detailed rendition of Planet Earth, hanging in space at arm's length in front of his eyes. Hiro has heard about this but never seen it. It is a piece of CIC software called, simply, Earth. It is the user interface that CIC uses to keep track of every bit of spatial information that it owns - all the maps, weather data, architectural plans, and satellite surveillance stuff."

"Hiro has been thinking that in a few years, if he does really well in the intel biz, maybe he will make enough money to subscribe to Earth and get this thing in his office. Now it is suddenly here, free of charge...."
 
[Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, Bantam, 1992]

It is kvetching for me to comment that, years before Neal S., I'd submitted a novel manuscript (The Leisure of the Theory Class) whose central character was named "J. Random Protagonist." The central plot conceit was incomprehensible to SF editors then (1980s), but obvious now.

Intergalactic superconducting aliens download AI worm through radio telescope, which takes over Astrophysics department computer, gets astrophysics grad students to put susbtance in town water supply that makes one hypnotically susceptible to anything a computer tells you. Grad student rock group "The Shoes" (stagenames: Sneaker, Bootie, Loafer, and Pump) play audio jamming (think "Mars Attacks")which saves the world. I've retarted writing the sequel: "Cold War Cosmos."

I nearly fell off my chair this evening when I was taking Google Earth for its first spin. Neal S.'s 'Earth' is happening earlier than I expected. The one thing he got wrong was the merger between the Library of Congress and the CIA, but then there's this Dutch saying about two dogs fighting over a bone and the third dog running away with it...

About that burning straw goat in Sweden... it's been that way for I-don't-know-how-many years. Every Xmas is the same. The city erects the straw goat. The punks burn it down. Maybe it's a pagan ritual (i.e. the goat is SUPPOSED to be burned each winter) and nobody wants to admit it???
:-S

Americans have Burning Man, the Brits have Guy Fawkes... the Swedes have Giant Burning Straw Goat. Paganism is alive and well. The Paleolithic savages are lurking among us still. Re-read the opening chapter of HEART OF DARKNESS.

-A.R.Yngve
http://yngve.bravehost.com

Hard SF folks may see other connotations in the phrase "full spectrum dominance" as cited in the video-taped Nobel acceptance speech of Harold Pinter.

"... I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources...."

Better dead than infrared?

Edited by author 12-08-2005 07:09 AM
"Red Crystal society" is not a new Lawrence Watt-Evans novel :
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3181333,00.html

On slashdot today (where is Philip K. Dick when we need him?):

"CNet is reporting that a new IM worm chats with users to get them to down load a file containing a virus. The virus replicates its self and sends its self out to user's buddy lists. The virus will reply 'lol no this is not a virus.' The virus hides users from seeing the messages sent out to members of their buddy list. Viruses are evolving; now they will even talk to you."

I tend to read science articles with an SF slant, predicting the next chapter if it were fiction. For example:

Case Researchers Discover Methods To Find 'Needles In Haystack' In Data

"A Case Western Reserve University research team from physics and statistics has recently created innovative statistical techniques that improve the chances of detecting a signal in large data sets. The new techniques can not only search for the "needle in the haystack" in particle physics, but also have applications in discovering a new galaxy, monitoring transactions for fraud and security risk, identifying the carrier of a virulent disease among millions of people or detecting cancerous tissues in a mammogram."

Case faculty members Ramani Pilla and Catherine Loader from statistics and Cyrus Taylor from physics report their findings in the article, 'A New Technique for Finding Needles in Haystacks: A Geometric Approach to Distinguishing between a New Source and Random Fluctuations,' December 2, in the journal, Physical Review Letters...."

The protagonist stumbles on what he first thinks is the signature of a hacker in the database of a particle accelerator, and the algorithm then suggests to him that a signal is actually being broadcast from an alternate reality in the multiverse...

Re future shock, I've been a SF reader for over 40 years, it's been interesting what has "panned out" and what hasn't (e.g., the totally lousy computing on Star Trek). Every now and then there's things that make the hair on the back of my neck rise -- say, when when they created Bose-Einstein condensate -- or the possibility of micro (nano?) black holes from the next generation particle colliders. I had an odd one today: "Nissan announces self-healing paint". Grey goo, grey goo!!!

"Today's most devastating security attacks are launched from within the company, by intruders who have compromised your users' Web browsers, e-mail and chat clients, and other Internet-connected software."

From reading the blurb, it looks like it's a handbook for securing client software against viruses or other attacks that will then let an intruder create a hole in the network defenses, rather than stopping wily hackers inside the company.

Yes, internal threats have always been a big problem -- but I think this is symptomatic of the scale of the threat, that dealing with it is now seen as a separate problem and a big enough one to be fodder for the shelves in J. Random Highstreet Bookshop.

(Datacrime, for all its excellence, wasn't exactly a sysadmin's detection toolkit, was it?)

Hugo Cornwall's excellent Datacrime (the grown up and long trousers version of The Hackers Handbook)estimated that over 90% of all intrustions were internal.

I'm suprised that the number's gone down so much in the last 20 years or so...

Internal threats have always been the biggest computer security threat, it's just that 13 year old twits get better press.

My 16-year-old son does the software for a webcomic, which suggests what is funny in the the world to his generation, brought up on MMORPGs and the like:

Not Thought Through

He and his fellow intercollegiate debaters have a jaundiced view of the politics of Baby Boomers. From his point of view, we gave extremism (on Left and Right and elsewhere) a bad name. His generation, he asserts, is not apathetic. Rather, they are quietly seeking a new post-Cold War paradigm for political transformation.

Bryant,

If you read carefully, I admitted to its political irrelevance. But I thought that it "may be fascinating for a view of our society" -- especially to those who live elsewhere. I also thought its significance to singularity-issues might fascinate some.

My guess is that you've seen it once too often, posted by geographically-impaired champaign-drinking gun nuts who just don't "get it". I'm sorry that you weren't fascinated.

Randy, if fifty-one people live in fifty square miles and forty-eight people live in ten square miles, the ten people don't massively outnumber the hundred people just cause they take up more space.

Dave,

I think I see what you mean but part of the problem is that American liberals show those same signs of cultural isolationism. It's just that their isolation is within a different group. This is why the reaction to the Swift vets' charges had taken them by surprise when they should have seen it coming. And they've got morals too; it's just a different set.

One interesting tidbit is that the gay marriage issue wasn't started by the Republicans. While it may have been part of the Bush campaign's strategy, it only came up after being pushed by Massachussetts Democrats (the gift that keeps on giving). It was carried along on the campaign like a side dish for those who were concerned about it. Bush never had a chance of getting an amendment passed nationally, and I doubt that he'll pursue it now. Several states had this on their ballots, and that drove voter turnout for Republicans, but you should really blame Massachusetts Democrats.

I've speculated elsewhere that one possible reason we've had close elections may be due to the improved use of computers to model groups of voters. The gay marriage issue is a perfect example of that but I'm sure it was applied by both sides to every factor in the race to modulate their entire campaigns.

Edited by author 11-03-2004 07:39 PM
The thing that gets me is that 22% of people polled said they voted the way they did for moral\value related reasons. This is the largest group of voters, and they voted overwhelmingly for Bush.

Don't they realize as a politician that morals and values are those things you espouse only when you're unable to truly and effectively deal with the real world?

What happened to the general image of a polititican being a crooked, immoral, bastard? I'll tell you what happened: evangelical christians. After too many years of Pat Robertson and the Reverend Ivan T Yermuny, I believe their brains have atrophied. I like to call that: "faith".

Randy, I know rural England isn't the same as rural America, but I see some of the same apparent difference between rural and urban culture. I look back over my own life, and I know how little I knew of ethnic minorities and such things as gay culture.

Part of it's simply changine times, and a part is seeing the world, not just the pre-packaged tourist world. Paertly though SF fandom, partly through the Internet, I was able to escape the cultural wilderness.

America sent a mass Army out into the world in the forties of the last century, and now those soldiers are fading away. They're the people who saw Paree, and who couldn't be kept down on the farm. And they're fading away.

But it's that Army (and Navy) which came home and made America what it was.

Free beers at my place tonight for anyone who's crying at the crazyness of the world.

I always find the exploding whale video a great comfort:

http://perp.com/whale/

(redneck park rangers use TNT to dispose of a rotting whale with hilarious consequences)

My condolences to those of you who wanted the opportunist gigalo to win.

Here's a map that's sort-of irrelevent politically, but may be fascinating for a view of our society:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselect...e2004/countymap.htm

They have a tab to see the 2000 election too.

As evenly divided as we are, you can see that Bush counties have a lot more land area, and that was true in 2000 as well. The difference is staggering.

There are singularity-related implications in this but you can mull them over after you've cried in your beer or laughed in your champaign.

I want to move here.

http://spontoon.rootoon.com/SPwHome1.html

I was thinking that maybe we should start our own party. These guys have the right idea, but I was thinking perhaps we could go a little more left than the 'man' himself...

http://www.cthulhu.org/

The general tone of the news that it appears that Bush the Younger has won combined with general computery stuff to lead to this:

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/28/cthulhoid_casemod.html

which seemed somewhat appropriate.

Of course if the majority of the provisional votes are counted and they tend to Kerry, then sanity may still prevail.

Edited by author 11-03-2004 03:04 AM
Have to agree that Bush appears to have won.

There is some good news tho, as it means that the leader of the Sucker boom will have to suffer its consequences.

Downside is that the next 4 years are going to be very interesting times to live in.

My projection: Bush has won.

The US, it seems, is either masochistic, or retarded.

Probably both.

In the words of a great great fictional man:
"I hate it here."

Seasonal sysadmin tales?

shwi also provided The Once And Future Prime Minister

On the plus side, it looks like tending towards celebratory beer at the moment. But we shall see.

Edited by author 11-02-2004 07:08 PM
Some webcomics that might be a suitable distraction, all available from the beginning:

Something Positive
Partially Clips
Sluggy Freelance

Wow, this site is unforgiving of a typo! Do not mistype a single quote for a double quote when inserting HTML!

Edited by author 01-03-2003 03:05 PM
Looks to me like a poisonous snake too - the sort that normally finds a nice warm place under some corrugated iron in sunny Queensland (the website is University of Qld). My mother lives in North Queensland and when her printer died, she was told that it was due to Gecko poo. Crunchy bits from bugs fell into the paper tray often enough that the works got jammed.

I always wondered what a binary adder looked like...