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Here is a new hack that has been making the rounds of the computer security community. It seems bluetooth lays many very common mobile phones wide open to one or more attacks. On at least one Nokia (the very one I have in fact), someone walking past you on the street can lift your entire address book and calendar even if your Bluetooth setting is HIDDEN. There are other sorts of possible abuse as well: read the article.
No, I did not get caught out. I spend too much time in bad company to trust any system which hasn’t been source-code audited by people I trust. Since mobile phones are all based on proprietary code, I have always taken the precaution of only enabling such features (on mobiles or other systems) during time of use.
For those of you who religiously follow slashdot, this is probably not news. Most of our readers are not engineers so this may be news to them.
If you have bluetooth, turn the bloody thing OFF!!!!
Michael Barone has an excellent antidote to the unending stream of nattering negativity on the Iraqi reconstruction.
What is remarkable about our occupation of Iraq is not that it has gone badly but that it has gone so well. Last week, crude oil production was above target level, the central bank signed up for the payment system used by central banks internationally, and 140,000 Iraqi police and law enforcement officers were on duty. A new Iraqi currency is circulating, and schools are open. Wages are rising, interest rates are falling, businesses are opening and hiring. Millions of Iraqis are buying cellphones, TVs, and satellite dishes. Attacks on Americans have greatly diminished, and attacks on Iraqis are likely to turn them against terrorists rather than against us.
Just so. The opponents of American intervention of Iraq have consistently played the expectations card. Rather than measure results of the war and reconstruction against any realistic yardsticks, they instead set impossibly high standards, and then carp when they aren’t met, or move the goalposts whenever the good guys achieve the nearly impossible.
The war itself was a stunning victory, unparalleled in the history of the world in the speed and precision of the coalition campaign, but throughout the fighting the Save Saddam types which populate the Democrat Party in the US, the BBC, and most establishment media, would have had us believe the coalition was on the brink of disaster and quagmire.
The reconstruction is following a similar pattern. Miracles are being accomplished on the ground in Iraq, but you won’t see any of it acknowledged by the anti-Americans in the establishment media or political opposition.
My advice? Study history. Don’t fall into the expectations game. Think about what needs to be done, and you will marvel at the speed and effectiveness with which it is being done.
Sure, the reconstruction hasn’t been perfect, but nothing in this world ever is. What is certain is that the Iraqis are much better off today because Bush and his coalition have forged ahead. Just remember, if the opponents of the Bush policy had their way, Saddam would still be ruling Iraq, Iraqis would still be subject to rape, murder, and torture, and Iraqi oil money would still be flowing to terrorists and their sympathizers. That, not some paradisical utopia, is the true benchmark for evaluating the Iraqi situation.
Spanish voters reacted to the election eve bombings by doing exactly what the bombers undoubtedly wanted: elect a Socialist who will take a soft line in the war on terror. Electing a Socialist is bad at any time, of course, and the invisible hand will undoubtedly spank the Spanish in due time as the inevitably increased taxes, regulation, and rent-seeking drag down their economy.
However, this particular election rewards the terrorists by demonstrating to them that European voters can be bullied into doing what the terrorists want. As ever in human affairs, you get more of what you reward, and so the Europeans can expect to see more election eve bombings as time goes on. For this, they can thank the Spanish.
I don’t buy the line that voters punished Aznar for inept post-bomb spinning. Aznar jumped to the conclusion that it was Basque killers, when it was most likely an Islamist or Islamist/Basque joint op. Spanish voters mad at Aznar for not going after the Islamist connection early enough would not vote for the Socialist, who ran on a platform of Spanish disengagement from one of the main fronts in the war on Islamist terror.
No, the Spanish public has, by all accounts, never wanted to pull its weight in the war on terror. They were big backers of the Save Saddam strategy last year, and Aznar showed considerable courage by joining the coalition. Voting for the Socialist is of a piece with the overall appeasement apparently favored by many Spanish, so the bombings represent a timely push by the terrorists in the direction the electorate wanted to go anyway. The bombings made the war the top shelf issue again, and thus paved the way for Aznar’s defeat.
In the US, I have no doubt that election eve bombings like this would guarantee a Bush landslide, as the American public’s instictive reaction to being attacked is to elect the guy most likely to kick the shit out of our enemies. In Spain, apparently, the instinctive reaction of the majority to being attacked is something else.
Sad, really. And sure to be a sterling exhibit for the Law of Unintended Consequences. By electing a Socialist who promised to pull Spain back from the war on terror, the Spanish, by rewarding the terrorists, have guaranteed more bombings and other terrorist activity. After all, the Spanish election represents the first victory for the Islamists since 9/11. It will undoubtedly be taken as a model for many future operations.
The naming of planets is a difficult matter. Sedna may have strong references for the Inuit, but it means nothing at all to most of us. You could argue that Sedna is more thrilling than the planetoid’s original designation, 2003 VB12, but it doesn’t conjure up a fitting title for inclusion in Holst’s The Planets.
However, the sinister appearance of a red planet (and possible moon) reminds me of Dr. Who’s deadly enemies, cursed to wonder the frigid spaceways, enshrined in their tombs. Is this not the tenth planet, home of the Cybermen? And surely there can be no more fitting name than Mondas.
Prepare for child-like logic, silver suits and a puzzling vulnerability to gold.
Computerworld has an opinion article by Jay Cline about the privacy scare surrounding RFID technology who explains that the RFID hype has outpaced reality. Manufacturers and retailers have yet to agree on a universal electronic product code. RFID scanning is also far from error-free. But more important, RFID signals are so weak that they’re easily blocked by metals and dense liquids. It’s infeasible today for someone driving a vehicle down your street to intercept signals from RFID-tagged goods inside your home.
He also argues that the economics of RFID chips also limit how they’re used. Until the price of RFID chips comes down to about a penny apiece, they’ll mostly be used at the case and pallet level, clear of any personally identifiable activity. So we have several years to identify the privacy controls we want to see in RFID systems. Some companies are already creating these privacy controls. Chip makers and users are discussing how the principles of data privacy could be built into the RFID process. A top priority is notifying customers that certain items are tagged with these transmitters – which could be done by placing a common RFID logo on product packages. To give customers the ability to turn off the transmitters, some companies plan to make them peel-offs. RSA Security Inc. is also developing a chip that could be worn on watches or bags to block nearby RFIDs from transmitting certain information. So the RFID privacy ball is rolling.
Glad to hear that. Nevertheless, I will still be watching the RFID development with interest…
The first year of the DARPA Challenge race was held a few days ago and as expected, except by journalists, no one completed the 142 mile course. The prize of $1 Million will go to the first team to make it to the finish line. What makes this special is the vehicle must drive itself, off road, for 142 miles… with no human intervention. This is so far beyond the current state of the art it hardly bears discussion. The prize, while large, will not even cover the costs of one contestant for one year. They are out for the Challenge of doing something which ‘cannot be done’. The possibility of recognition gives them the excuse to do it… and helps win sponsorships.
Now, as to the home team… Regular readers doubtless know I am a Carnegie-Mellon engineer and that I spent a good chunk of my life in and around the place for one reason or another. In particular, I was a staff member of the Robotics Institute for awhile, so I must admit to a desire to cheer when I discovered the computerized Humvee of the Red Team of Dr Red Whitaker travelled the furthest (7 miles) of all but one of this years contestants. Only SciAutonics II managed the same distance.
If you look more closely at the times you will notice rather less equality in the performances. Red Team travelled the seven miles in about 40 minutes or so while SciAutonics II required two hours more. Seven miles in 40 minutes may be a bit slow, but seven miles in in two hours and forty minutes is positively glacial.
The race will be held again in one year and I predict we will see spectacular technical advances in autonomous robotics and a winner before the end of the contest in 2007.
CMU will win the prize of course.
Things have been awfully quiet (officially at least) over at XCOR. They are busy working on their suborbital spaceship design, Xerus is still in early days and remains a paper spaceship. However, unlike many other designs which exist only in POVRAY renderings, the engine technology is real and the team has already proven itself by building and flying and reflying and display flying a rocket plane.
Watch that space.
PS: They are also your fellow Samizdata readers, our ‘home team’ in the X-Prize contest as it were.
Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne has been repaired. As you may remember, the portside gear lock failed and the strut collapsed on landing after the historic first private rocket-powered supersonic flight on December 17th 2003. The recent March 11th test was an unpowered drop test. Beside the reported objectives it is likely they wanted at least one unpowered test to be certain of the gear and airframe repairs. As my flying instructor used to say, the most dangerous time to fly an aeroplane is the day you get it out of the shop at the local FBO.
Objectives: The twelfth flight of SpaceShipOne. Objectives included: pilot proficiency, reaction control system functionality check and stability and control and performance of the vehicle with the airframe thermal protection system installed. This was an unpowered glide test.
Results: Launch conditions were 48,500 feet and 125 knots. All systems performed as expected and the vehicle landed successfully while demonstrating the maximum cross wind landing capability.
According to a ‘knowedgeable aerospace source’, there is still a lot of envelope to test before they get to a ‘hot’ re-entry.
Rutan holds the distance record (non-stop around the world) and will soon hold the alititude record. A speed run would net him the third leg of the triple crown. This makes one wonder if the ablative they are using could handle the severe heat loads of ultra high-speed flight for long enough to allow such a record attempt.
It is perhaps something for Rutan to think about after he wins the X-Prize… and before he sends SpaceShipOne to join Voyager in the National Air and Space Museum.
Given my extremely low expectations, it takes a lot for a British government to actually amaze me.
Well they have managed to do exactly that. The people who rule us are not misguided, they are actually evil.
It takes a lot to amaze me, but Blunkett has done just that.
WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?
An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in British prisons.
On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn’t have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.
This is insane. The state locks someone up unjustly and then demands payment for room and board? This is the true face of the people who have power over us. It is actually evil.
If this astonishing development does not cause the mother of all political storms both in Westminster and society at large, then Britain as a society has clearly become so inured to authoritarianism and arrogance by its rulers that we must be past the point of no return. Blunkett must go. Now!
A mercifully uneventful journey for me on the London Underground this morning. Nonetheless, I reached my destination feeling ever-so-slightly disturbed.
No, I did not see anyone holding a Koran and muttering incantations while trying to wire two batteries together. Worse still, what I noticed was quite a few teenagers (who boarded and alighted separately so unlikley to be a group) dressed entirely in full-on, recreation 60’s hippy gear. Yes, I do mean the Indian scarfs, the bell-bottom jeans, flowers-in-hair, tie-dye T-shirts and white lipstick. And the girls were dressed exactly the same.
I was shocked, I tell you, shocked. Is this the latest trend? Is this what is ‘hot and happening’ among the ‘yoof’? Has anybody else observed this elsewhere? In America? Europe? Australia? Israel? Japan? Anywhere? Or is just the UK? Or perhaps just London?
I assure you this was not a mirage. These youngsters were genuine retro-hippies but what I want to know is whether this is the burgeoning new fashion or merely some isolated cases of severe mental disturbance that happened, by pure coincidence, to be travelling on the same train as me?
If it is a case of the former then I have a message for any impressionable teenagers who might be reading this and feeling the temptation to abandon themselves to a re-heated Age of Aquarius: for chrissakes, get a grip!!
I realise that you are too young to have been psychologically scarred by the 60’s first time round but, for heaven’s sake, do you realise just how nauseatingly sanctimonious all this flower-power mummery can be? What the world needs now is not love, sweet love but a swift and well-aimed kick up the jacksy. The last thing we need is for heaps of you to start mooning around looking for your Shakra. Or growing organic lentils on a commune in Wales.
So just stop it. Now
Of course, today’s teenagers can hardly be blamed for the cultural stony-desert in which we presently dwell but since they are forced to go trawling through the archives of late 20th Century youth sub-cultures for inspiration then I sincerely hope that they have the good sense and common decency to revive the snarling, anarchic (and far better dressed) age of Punk Rock.
Following last week’s atrocity in Madrid, the media are reporting London Underground’s plans to increase security. These plans include more plain clothes police patrolling the network and encouraging passengers to be vigilant.
There’s another aspect to the plans not mentioned in most reports. According to the BBC:
British Transport Police have also said more people using the Tube will be randomly stopped and searched
Increased security is definitely welcome, however random stop and search is worrying. It is vital that any such moves be clearly seen as a limited response to a specific threat and not allowed to become standard operating procedure.
Do we really want to live in a country where being randomly stopped and searched is considered an acceptable part of everyday life?
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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