Posts by Chris Miller 3550 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Apr 2007
OBL: Allah, I have died a martyr's death - where are my 72 virgins?
Allah: I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that, due to the increase in suicide bombings and a worldwide shortage of virgins, I'm afraid we're out of stock.
OBL: And the good news?
Allah: Here are your 72 vegans.
You're absolutely right that there's always a balance to be struck between security, usability and cost - but I think you may have gone a bit OTT in your comparison. No-one's suggesting that security procedures appropriate to GCHQ should be applied to your local GP's surgery. But the argument should have gone something like this:
1. Do we allow people to use portable devices (or printed records, for that matter) and take data off site. If you're the NSA, the answer is 'No' - if you're the NHS, then probably it's 'Yes'.
2. Is there a risk that some of these portable devices may be lost or stolen - clearly 'Yes'.
3. How do we mitigate this risk? One obvious (but not cost-free) method is by encrypting the data on the portable device (and not taping the password to the underside). Thin client and VPN could be another solution - this might even reduce costs.
It's the lack of a security culture or any form of management system that is the problem here.
Those Top 500 figures are the power consumption of the hardware, with no allowance for the inevitable cooling requirements. And they're only the ones people are prepared to go public with - I don't see any existing NSA kit in that list.
On top of which, you spec the max power of your data centre to handle the largest load you expect to see over its lifetime. You don't want to buy your fancy new ubercomputer, only to be told: sorry that exceeds our power capacity.
On a country lane in the UK. But OTOH, it's not straightforward to learn the MAC address of a remote device, unless it's broadcasting a Wi-Fi signal and you're in range (in which case it must be, by definition, nearby - and if you have a directional antenna it wouldn't be difficult to locate it).
Spooky coincidence or what? Infoworld today has a blog arguing that resistance to cloud computing by IT 'luddites' may be career limiting. The sad thing is, he's probably right. And if you understand why that is, you'll understand a lot about what is wrong with business management in general and IT management in particular.
As one of the comments says: "This Kool-Aid sure tastes funny".
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/its-cloud-resistance-starting-annoy-businesses-383
It's obvious that your phone service provider has to know where you are (at least, in the sense of which cell you are communicating through) in order to route calls to you. The ETSI standards define mechanisms for this information to be recorded and made available to law enforcement subject to appropriate legal provisions. If you're concerned about this tracking, it can be circumvented (at least in normal circumstances) by simply turning off your cell connection.
But this is very different from the phone manufacturer using built-in GPS to record your phone's movements throughout its lifetime (and sharing that information with 'appropriate' third parties). Apparently the right to do so is buried on page 94 of the 20,000 word legal document that you agreed to by breaking the seal on your new phone.
Lawyers: start your engines!
The Iranian systems weren't (apparently) on the Internet - Stuxnet was introduced via USB sticks (allegedly). So not only should SCADA systems not be on publicly accessible networks, they need to have any CD/DVD, USB and other non-essential ports disabled* - epoxy glue is quite effective for this purpose, if your software isn't up to the job.
* As Bradley Manning recently demonstrated.
Of course, you can't easily identify the original format, but its must be about 1,000:1 on that they were MS-Word. What has often happened in the past is that black 'highlighting' is applied in Word (apparently masking the redacted parts) and the document converted to PDF format, leaving the underlying text intact. I think references to PhotoShop are just a blunder by the Torygraph.
The correct, secure redaction method is to print the documents (either electronically redacted as above or by use of a black marker pen) and then scan the result. This appears to be how the revised PDFs were produced, but someone should tell the MoDbods that best practice is not to follow the 'ragged right' outline of redacted paragraphs, which can still reveal (admittedly tiny amounts of) information about word and sentence length - or you can achieve the same effect by inserting a random number of Xs before and after the section to be redacted, which (comparing the before and after results) hasn't been done in this case..
that you don't condone torture. Yet you state that one can live happily in a society that not only condones it, but insists upon it if family 'honour' is to be maintained.
I'm fully aware that some of the things that make me happy aren't the same as those of my next-door neighbour, let alone a San bushman. But it's perfectly possible to see this as true and yet to believe in some fundamentals that *are* universally applicable; such as life, liberty and security of person.
Ethics & morals can get quite complex, especially as applied to other people. Some folks think it's immoral to eat meat. I don't agree, but I'm happy not to interfere with their vegetarianism as long as they don't try to interfere with my carnivorous lifestyle.
But I treat with disdain the ludicrous post-modernist view that 'de gustibus non disputandum est' and that all ethical systems are equal - they ain't. Certainly anyone who thinks that it's moral to kill or mutilate people who don't want to comply with their arbitrary and personal moral code is going to get an argument from me. As I said, I don't want to argue that this trivially justifies going in with all guns blazing, but sometimes it may - and several centuries of moral philosophers have agreed with this view.
You are utterly and unspeakably wrong - racism would be to assume that it's OK to mutilate women if they are of a different race. Perhaps you should read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, paying particular attention to articles 2 and 5.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
For sufficiently small values of 'happy'. If you're happy to live in a society where young women get their noses chopped off for fraternising with the opposite sex and warring families carry on blood feuds for endless generations.
Note that I'm not suggesting that this of itself justifies Western intervention, merely that portraying pre-19th century Afghanistan as some kind of Garden of Eden is a little misleading.
Government & Quango* deals should never be allowed to hide behind 'Commercial in Confidence'. It's one thing for two private businesses to agree to keep their contracts secret, but when it's public money we have a right to know how it's being wasted. If Atos and other bidders don't like this approach, they don't have to take part.
* OK, Notwork Rail isn't technically a Quango, having been set up as a not-for-profit** organisation wholly owned by the tax payer, in one of Gordon Brown's more memorable brain farts. It's still our money, though.
** Meaning that all the profits get paid out to the cabal that run it, in order to fund (inter alia) the purchase of a large Scottish island. I am not making this up, search on 'Iainland' or see -
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2010/07/11/controversial-rail-chief-splashes-out-on-1m-laird-s-mansion-86908-22405116/
Someone posts an article/comment with which I disagree. I am unable to find a rational argument against it, but clearly the author must be in the pocket of Microsoft/Apple/Google/'the nuclear industry' (delete whichever is inapplicable).
Oddly enough, I haven't seen many responses to anti-nuclear postings claiming that the author is clearly in the pay of the oil and gas industries.
1 & 4. The toxicity of Arsenic is well known. 1g is about (dependent on body weight) enough to kill someone - it will definitely make them seriously ill. So, would I be prepared to ingest a milligram of Arsenic? Well, if there were sufficient benefit (someone wanted to pay me enough or a doctor prescribed it to treat some ailment) - yes. What about a nanogram? Well, I probably ingest that much every day, coal power stations chuck fairly significant amounts into the atmosphere.
Plutonium's chemical toxicity is similar to Arsenic or Lead - it's a heavy metal - but of course it's radioactive too. In theory a single alpha particle from a single Pu atom could (if you were extremely unlucky) give you cancer and kill you. But so could 10 seconds of sunlight or a day-trip to Cornwall or an airline flight or a chest X-ray. We normally undertake such activities without a care, because we perceive them as delivering sufficient benefits. But nuclear power has benefits too. It allows us to turn on the lights and post nonsense on elReg. This is particularly true for countries like Japan that have limited access to fossil fuels.
If you can supply it, I'd be very happy to eat Welsh lamb - the limits that make its sale illegal were set for political not medical reasons.
2. The 70m boom of the concrete pump is going to be used to deliver water more accurately and safely onto the spent fuel pools. If the Japanese merely wanted to entomb the reactor, I'm sure they have plenty of concrete pumps of their own.
The inevitable fate of anyone who relies on Fox News* as a source.
* Quoting an anonymous parent of one of the workers, who has been understandably terrified by the loony reporting of mass media, a charge being led by Fox News.
Off to wash my hands, I feel dirty having visited the Fox News site.
If you allow me four free parameters I can build a mathematical model that describes exactly everything that an elephant can do. If you allow me a fifth free parameter, the model I build will forecast that the elephant will fly. - John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957)
With a few honourable exceptions, news media seem to find it perfectly OK to have science/technology stories covered by reporters who clearly have no knowledge whatever of the subject. This does seem to happen (at least, not very often) in other subjects. Sports reporters are expected to understand the difference between soccer and cricket; music reporters are expected to be able to differentiate between a guitar and a drumkit. No motoring column would ever appear containing a statement such as: "the Whizzo SuperFast has a top speed of 200mph - for comparison, that's twice the distance between London and Birmingham".
Yet the Times recently lifted a story from the Asahi Shimbun that said: "radiation levels of 500mSv/hr, which is twice the permitted dose of 250mSv", without realising what a howler they had perpetrated. Surely there must be at least one subeditor who passed A-level physics?
Look L1ma, we're all very sorry about your aunt, but I'd like to reassure our foreign readers that the northwest of England hasn't been subject to a mass outbreak of radiation poisoning. (I was five at the time of the Windscale fire and lived less than 80 miles SW of the site.. I've had 14 days off work in the last 38 years, so clearly exposure to radiation at an early age is good for you.</irony>)
To be sure, exposure to massive levels of radiation (several Sv) can cause immediate illness and levels 1/10 of that *may* increase the risk of cancer by a few percent - but no-one who wasn't working at the plant got within several orders of magnitude of those doses as a result of the Sellafield/Windscale fire.
The Curies exposed themselves to massive radiation doses in (completely understandable) ignorance of the health consequences. One of Mme Curie's notebooks is on display in Paris - it has to be kept behind lead glass, because it's too radioactive to meet modern safety standards for public exposure. It's true that: "only one cell in a body has to mutate to cause a Tumour", but you do realise that millions of such mutations are occurring in your body every day? The body has very effective methods for catching almost all of them, and preventing them from developing into cancer.
While I agree that the operators and firefighters show great moral fortitude, I seriously doubt that "it's essentially certain that many of them will suffer serious consequences". In an emergency, regulations permit exposure levels of up to 100mSv, in life-threatening circumstances this can be increased to 250mSv. A small number of those at the plant have received doses greater than 100mSv and been taken to hospital as a precaution, but there have been no reports of anyone exceeding 250mSv.
You would need doses 10x these levels to cause serious illness, although there is (on plausible assumptions) an increased lifetime risk of contracting cancer of 1-2%. For comparison, a commercial airline pilot will receive an additional 2,500mSv over an entire career.
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