Recently, an hacker organization called Antisec/Anonymous broke into the STRATFOR computer system and downloaded the consulting company’s client emails and their credit card numbers. When STRATFOR came back online and proprietor George Friedman declared that he knew who his attackers were, it was suggested the hackers would have their revenge: they would destroy STRATFOR completely. “In indirect response, Barret Brown, the Anonymous movement’s de facto biographer, announced that any chance of redaction of the Stratfor emails has now vanished, and that the entire cache will be published.”
But it’s not just small consulting companies that are beleaguered. The general in charge of defending US military networks says that system is so patchwork that it cannot be feasibly defended. “The Defense Department’s networks, as currently configured, are “not defensible,” according to the general in charge of protecting those networks. And if there’s a major electronic attack on this country, there may not be much he and his men can legally do to stop it in advance.”
Gen. Keith Alexander, head of both the secretive National Security Agency and the military’s new U.S. Cyber Command, has tens of thousands of hackers, cryptologists, and system administrators serving under him. But at the moment, their ability to protect the Defense Department’s information infrastructure — let alone the broader civilian internet — is limited. The Pentagon’s patchwork quilt of 15,000 different networks is too haphazard to safeguard.
General Alexander probably wants more authority — who doesn’t? — to go after his tormentors. Of course, he may really need it. Today nobody is really safe from some form of cyber attack. Whether your email identity is stolen and used to front for spam or your computer gets taken over by a process that uses it for a denial of service attacks, the dangers are simply too numerous to dismiss. There are even people who fall for oldest scams in the book, according to the results of a recent study.
“As dumb as it is, a lot of people have responded (to an e-mail scam),” he said. “The biggest thing is how likely someone is to see through it.”
The study required a lot of self-reporting by victims on their own behavior, so its results should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, Greenspan said many of its findings were consistent with other research he’s seen.
The survey found that scams involving a free prize or free antivirus software were the most successful with Americans, while online charity scams were only about half as likely to find victims …
The number of survey takers who admitted they might fall for scams was surprisingly high across the board, Ponemon said. Despite constant media attention to the problem, 53 percent of Americans thought they might click and download booby-trapped antivirus software. Nearly 50 percent said they’d surrender personal information to download a free movie, and 55 percent said they’d give a potential scammer their cell phone number for a chance at a prize.
But if the system is vulnerable at so many points then why isn’t the sky falling?
For one thing many targets are vulnerable simply because they’ve been attacked. Many other countries have far weaker data infrastructures than the United States and are simply attacked less because nobody has bothered with them yet. A recent study showed that Britain, Germany, the United States and Canada had the greatest capability to withstand cyberattacks. “According to the index, Brazil ranked 10th overall, Russia was 14th, India was 17th and China ranked 13th of the 20 G-20 countries studied. Saudi Arabia came at the bottom of the list.”
Just as the banks were are “where the money is”, the top information generating countries are where the data is. But countries like Russia, China and Saudi Arabia are not inherently more secure than the top countries. Antisec/Anonymous, were it compelled to defend itself, would find that things are harder when the shoe is on the other foot. And it has long been known that US intelligence has exploited the ramshackle nature of jihadi computer networks to lure them into the equivalent of roach motels.
The real danger posed by the new information age according to David Weinberger, who recently wrote “To Know, but Not Understand” in the Atlantic, is that the growth in our fact bases has outgrown our capacity to understand them. The more complex our systems become, the less fine grained control we have of them.
Like General Alexander at NSA, stupefied by the sight of 15,000 disparate systems, many of us have lost the ability to understand what we have. We’ve forgotten where things are. And even if we had a list of them, it would be too long to make sense of. In Weinberger’s phrase, we have buried ourselves under a mountainous pile of bricks. And we’re adding to the pile with each passing day.
In 1963, Bernard K. Forscher of the Mayo Clinic complained in a now famous letter printed in the prestigious journal Science that scientists were generating too many facts. Titled Chaos in the Brickyard, the letter warned that the new generation of scientists was too busy churning out bricks — facts — without regard to how they go together. Brickmaking, Forscher feared, had become an end in itself. “And so it happened that the land became flooded with bricks. … It became difficult to find the proper bricks for a task because one had to hunt among so many. … It became difficult to complete a useful edifice because, as soon as the foundations were discernible, they were buried under an avalanche of random bricks. …
The brickyard has grown to galactic size, but the news gets even worse for Dr. Forscher. It’s not simply that there are too many brickfacts and not enough edifice-theories. Rather, the creation of data galaxies has led us to science that sometimes is too rich and complex for reduction into theories. As science has gotten too big to know, we’ve adopted different ideas about what it means to know at all.
For example, the biological system of an organism is complex beyond imagining. Even the simplest element of life, a cell, is itself a system. A new science called systems biology studies the ways in which external stimuli send signals across the cell membrane. Some stimuli provoke relatively simple responses, but others cause cascades of reactions. These signals cannot be understood in isolation from one another. The overall picture of interactions even of a single cell is more than a human being made out of those cells can understand. In 2002, when Hiroaki Kitano wrote a cover story on systems biology for Science magazine — a formal recognition of the growing importance of this young field — he said: “The major reason it is gaining renewed interest today is that progress in molecular biology … enables us to collect comprehensive datasets on system performance and gain information on the underlying molecules.” Of course, the only reason we’re able to collect comprehensive datasets is that computers have gotten so big and powerful. Systems biology simply was not possible in the Age of Books.
The result of having access to all this data is a new science that is able to study not just “the characteristics of isolated parts of a cell or organism” (to quote Kitano) but properties that don’t show up at the parts level. For example, one of the most remarkable characteristics of living organisms is that we’re robust — our bodies bounce back time and time again, until, of course, they don’t. Robustness is a property of a system, not of its individual elements, some of which may be nonrobust and, like ants protecting their queen, may “sacrifice themselves” so that the system overall can survive. In fact, life itself is a property of a system.
The problem — or at least the change — is that we humans cannot understand systems even as complex as that of a simple cell. It’s not that were awaiting some elegant theory that will snap all the details into place.
There is the danger of self-overload even at much lower levels of complexity. Some readers may be surprised to learn that software development teams can program themselves into a knot; create complexity that results in whole stretches of code becoming opaque to the rest of the team and even from the person who wrote it. At some point people get lost in their own woods and then have to send someone to climb a tree to figure out which way is out.
At an even simpler level, I realized that by helping friends and relatives with their tech problems I had unwittingly caused them to adopt systems they could not maintain on their own steam. And now I am responsible for a whole bunch of things simply because no one else can keep them going. Overload is everywhere. Which of us has not had that moment at which Skype was beeping, the cellphone was ringing and the landline was going all at the same time? Welcome to the brickyard.
Complexity is what commonly differentiates the hacker from the target. The hacker exploits complexity by singlemindedly finding and using weaknesses. But the better the hacker gets the more vulnerable they inevitably become. If attacked they would fare no better than their targets.
The reason that cyberwarfare seems so easy is that complex targets provide an almost indefensible space. They are by their sheer size going to be leaky boats. The only way such targets can defend is by going on the attack. But their real contents are unransackable. Any sufficiently powerful attempt to exploit the information stores of a complex target would become as complex as the system it stole if from.
Take the credit card and email theft. To use that information for criminal purposes, you have to create or crowdsource a system of exploitation. It was this act which doomed Wikileaks. The rivalries that came from exploiting the product crashed Assange.
And this in the end may partly protect Stratfor. Who can spend the time to read through and analyze even a fraction of the emails that will be published unredacted? Who can use the credit card addresses for fraud before their owners change the numbers? There’s just too much for an overloaded criminal or conspiracist to exploit.
But as to the pile of bricks themselves? What will be made of them?
Weinberger argues that what information systems have done is give humanity a telescope into complexity space. Just as Galileo was dumbfounded by the sight of celestial objects, so too are humans boggling at patterns within ever-larger complexities revealed by the mathematical analysis of the data about data. We never saw them before, but they were always there.
David Weinberger suggests that perhaps the first entity to see God will be a computer. “The world’s complexity may simply outrun our brains capacity to understand it. … We have a new form of knowing. This new knowledge requires not just giant computers but a network to connect them, to feed them, and to make their work accessible. It exists at the network level, not in the heads of individual human beings.”
But perhaps the same computer will find this raises an interesting philosophical point. For whom is this knowledge then, which is only accessible to networks? And why does it exist? How do such patterns simply lie around through billions of years, waiting for something smart enough to discover them? Sherlock Holmes briefly consider the problem in the Adventure of the Naval Treaty.
“All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
Barret Brown and Anonymous need to be taken down. They’re nothing but a pack of thugs and vandals.
Eventually those fools will hack a covert entity that is not bound by law or such an entity will decide to make a premtive strike. I do not doubt that they will meet with a most unfortunate accident or simply disappear. Laws and civil society protect these people and they are weakening the bonds on which they depend to survive. I have found that in the dark of night the uniformed police officer walking hs beat is a VERY comforting sight, and these people will drive him away.
“It became difficult to complete a useful edifice because, as soon as the foundations were discernible, they were buried under an avalanche of random bricks. …”
Where have I heard something like this before . . .
Genesis 11:1–8 (ESV)1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
I find it fascinating that we humans are still making bricks and trying to make a name for ourselves.
In the unlikely event that a computer gets close to being able to see the face of God, God himself will come down and confuse the code.
Truth being paradoxical must be found in the interface between both halves of a paradox. For a simple example see the photon, 100% particle, 100% wave. The fact it is particle, the fact it is wave, both true, require seeing what you are not seeing in order to understand.
Our current political trouble, where the left sees the problem as powerful corporations, and the right the problem as powerful government, requires seeing what you are not seeing in order to understand. The problem is that both are 100% true. I have learned that my best arguments with my wife are when we are both right. How to we listen to those we know are wrong?
It may not be a problem with too much information. It is more likely that all your information blinds you to the truth you cannot see, since you downloaded all this mountain of information that “proves” your truth. That is why echo chambers are dangerous, and why we welcome “trolls” willing to share “truth”. Not the troll who does the drive-by “you are stupid”, but one willing to ask & answer dangerous questions, that help us see what we cannot see.
When you are a target of one, if your information is taken it is likely to be used against you. When you are one of 24 million, it takes much longer to get to you in the long tail. That is why the herd is the place to be.
Yes, The U.S. Department of Defense has many vulnerable computer networks. The really important ones that are used day to day, minute to minute, and second to second for combat operations are nearly all encrypted, Video feed from some of our UAVs is a blatant exception!
The really cool kids are playing on embedded, separated, private Internets that operate at the SECRET, TOP SECRET, TS/SCI level, and so on for various special activities and what used to be called CODE WORD or Special Categories (SPECAT). Google: JWICS & NSA-Net. Each of these separate networks uses different type 1 hardware based encryption distributed by NSA in order to secure network access. If your packets aren’t encrypted with the correct algorithm and key you cannot play on the network, at all! As you can imagine, the keys are changed frequently, daily in most cases, or even more frequently depending upon the application.
The real threat to this type of protected information isn’t outside hacking, but trusted and cleared traitors willing to reveal the un-encrypted information or worse cryptographic keying material (KEYMAT) codes for a price or for ideological reasons.
Hackers could take down over 50% of DoD servers and have basically zero effect on combat operations until logistical shortages and spares caused things to grind to a stop.
For DoD, hacking is and should remain a relative non-issue. Counter-Intelligence on the other hand is in desperate need of a massive paradigm shifting upgrade. As wiki-leaks and the massacre of our troops at Ft. Hood demonstrated, we seem to be way behind the curve with CI.
The real threat with hacking is public utilities and industry. Since I’m not an expert on either of those, I’ll sign off and let someone else comment about those threats.
Armageddon Rex
Minor point – but ‘overload’ of discrete items (skype, cellphone, landline) is not complexity. It’s just a mechanical build-up of ‘discrete units’.
A complex system (CAS, complex adaptive system) is actually highly robust and functional – and that’s why everything on this planet from atoms, molecules, cells..to economic systems..operate as CAS.
A CAS operates, always, within triadic ‘sets’ that network with other ‘triadic sets’. It actually operates as a function where f(x)=y or input mediated by normalizing rules generates output. Within the set, is that important mediating property, f, the normalizing rules. These reduce differences and diversions to a common denominator; this actually reduces that chaotic mechanical overload and enables the system to operate within a set of rules..rather than chaos.
What is interesting is that in more complex systems, such as societies and economic systems, the normalizing rules evolve, so the system can adapt to greater ‘energy input’ (higher populations, more goods/services needed).
I don’t think that there really is such a thing as information overload in complex systems; noise is rejected, dissent is networked to the periphery. And there ARE increasingly complex systems…a human being is more complex than an amoeba..but, my own feeling is that the CAS is capable of enormous adaptation to increased energy processing.
FUD!
Bureaucrats want more power, so they claim we are in danger and if only we make them a tyrant, they will protect us from our faceless, invisible assailants. Now is the time to ask who will protect us from our new tyrants?
Is the cure worse then the disease?
I have a simple, cost free solution to being hacked. After I hit the Submitt button and turn off the computer to go get something to eat, I will unplug it. No power means no malware, no ‘boting.
Wretchard said:
“There is the danger of self-overload even at much lower levels of complexity. Some readers may be surprised to learn that software development teams can program themselves into a knot; create complexity that results in whole stretches of code becoming opaque to the rest of the team and even from the person who wrote it. At some point people get lost in their own woods and then have to send someone to climb a tree to figure out which way is out.”
This is actually an indication of poor programming technique. I have found with big programs that having software that merely works correctly is not good enough. I have to go back and reorganize the program such that it is comprehensible and maintainable (this violates the principle of “If it ain’t broken don’t fix it”). I always try to construct the program’s data structure and logic such that it is intrinsic with the physical process that it is modeling. For example, with a spacecraft reentry code, all of the data associated with the atmosphere should be contained within a data structure that is exclusive towards the atmospheric model and nothing else. Any bit a logic within the code that is repeated must be converted into a unique subroutine and made as reusable as possible with data structures specific to the physical processes. In essence, nature has a natural order to it and successful software needs to piggyback on nature’s intrinsic order as much as possible. The payback to this approach is extreme. I have found that after I get a software into a form of mimicking nature’s order, I don’t need to be creative anymore, i.e. the software starts writing itself and I’m merely going along for the ride.
Related to this, the problem of complexity with network software is past the point of absurdity. I’m very paranoid about security and have never been hacked. However I have wasted countless hours working through other people network security software. I’m well past the point where it would be more cost effective to use simpler security software and get hacked once in a while.
IMHO, the best protection against hacking is to use Linux and keep sensitive computers off the Internet. If one is doing national security work or has sensitive proprietary information, the best approach is to have two computer networks. Have one network that is in-house with no connection to the outside world. Run that system wide open to the folks in-house with minimal password protection. If potential bad guys have physical access to a machine then no amount of password protection can fully secure it. Consequently, one should accept this truth, require that no bad guys have physical access to your machines and operate on that assumption of trust to maximize utility of your working computers. Have a second network that is physically separate from your secure machines for doing network browsing and e-mail. Linux is best for all serious applications but for network browsing, Linux with Firefox is very effective. Configure the network machines with multiple hard disks having multiple copies of Linux that can be independently booted. If one partition gets hacked, then boot from another partition and wipe the hacked partition clean using a clean partition as the reference copy. An added advantage of this approach is robustness against hardware failure, i.e. if a hard drive craps out then I just boot from another hard drive. The weakness with this approach from a hardware security standpoint is power supply failure, i.e. a bad power supply can toast everything within the computer chassis. Ultimately extreme paranoia with backups is always the best solution. Never trust a system administrator to do your backups. Always backup to multiple separate machines. A live backup that you know works is much better than an image on a DVD that might be corrupt.
stoicheion @ 7 said:
“I have a simple, cost free solution to being hacked. After I hit the Submitt button and turn off the computer to go get something to eat, I will unplug it. No power means no malware, no ‘boting.”
At the end of the day, my computers are either turned off and unplugged or disconnected from the web. If there is no physical access then malware and boting from my machine is impossible. Of course, a bad guy can hack someone else’s machine, get my e-mail address and bot from a third party’s machine (that’s a nuisance and there’s no defense against it).
Perhaps one tiny little bit of evidence that the world she is a changin’ is the realization by at least some scientists that complexity at the macro and the micro may be far greater than the ability of humans to understand it.
There is no theory, and perhaps not even any worthwhile ideas, on how chemicals could possibly generate the massive amount of information necessary to coax a single cell into dividing.
Of course science writers and secular philosophers (Dawkins anyone?) tell us that the discovery of everything is just around the corner. I am enjoying the irony that the most logical explanation for this complexity is a Creator while hearing at the same time that the most “rational” approach is to have blind faith in facts that so far at least prove themselves beyond even imagining.
53 percent of Americans thought they might click and download booby-trapped antivirus software
53%?
Isn’t that roughly the same number of people who voted for Obama? And didn’t they perform an analogous function by putting him in office?
octa bright:
I also hope the bad guys stumble into a rival group of hackers. First they took down Stratfor. Who will they target next?
I always prefer to go through legal and constitutional channels. Yet, if we are facing a tiny fraction of 1% of the population who can break laws and invade privacy at will using means that 99% of the population doesn’t even know about, we are facing a vicious band of elitist bandits who hide behind a banner of “social justice”. If our government cannot defeat the bad guys, somebody else must.
“God created man; Samuel Colt made them equal.” In contrast, the techniques used by the bad guys are an electronic version of a samurai sword – expensive weaponry that requires superior training. It would be nice if there were some technological version of guns to allow ordinary people to defend themselves against the bad guys.
Guy Fawkes was not only a terrorist; he was a loser, a loser with a huge amount of cultural baggage. Guy Fawkes wannabes should watch out for their pet cats; opposition against Guy Fawkes has historically been associated with ritualistic cat sacrifice.
Peter Boston @ 9 said:
“There is no theory, and perhaps not even any worthwhile ideas, on how chemicals could possibly generate the massive amount of information necessary to coax a single cell into dividing.”
I’m an aeronautical engineer and not a biochemist. However it is my understanding the logic behind DNA is recursive, i.e. the same strand of DNA/RNA can be used to produce multiple different proteins by reading the DNA/RNA from different locations and using the so called “junk DNA” to resynchronize the transcription. I’ve written recursive assembly language. Your typical computer virus is typically based upon recursive assembly language. Recursive assembly language is incredibly difficult to program and almost impossible to debug. Refer to the following for an amazing example of recursive C source code:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1301856
I claim the linked source code uses the same logical principles as DNA/RNA to protein transcription.
Kirk @ 13, thank you, I fixed the problem by linking to a clean source. Note that the original source code is 821 bytes while the output is 2359 bytes. The guy who wrote this thing was a programming genius with way too much free time on his hands.
eggplant (12),
Sorry, you need to repost that after replacing < > & with < > & respectively.
[OR...] changing it to the link was effective, too. Very interesting!
“David Weinberger suggests that perhaps the first entity to see God will be a computer.”
Oh good grief. That’s just plain stupid, and for several reasons. I don’t know who David Weinberger is. An intellectual, perhaps? Only an intellectual could say something that stupid (and, probably, assume that he is being clever and/or wise).
I am not going to worry about the issues presented here–which are, really, hardy perennials for the doom-and-gloomers to torture themselves with.
Kirk,
What I have below is probably screwed up but I attempted to reverse engineer the original obfuscated C source code into something readable. This code works on my machine but the HTML will barf when it tries to parse this:
#include <stdio.h>
/* Encrypted Text of “Twelve Days of Christmas” */
static char Text[] =
“@n’+,#’/*{}w+/w#cdnr/+,{}r/*de}+,/*{*+,/w{%+,/w#q#n+,/#{l+,/n{n+,/+#n+,/#
;#q#n+,/+k#;*+,/’r :’d*’3,}{w+K w’K:’+}e#’;dq#’l
q#’+d’K#!/+k#;q#’r}eKK#}w’r}eKK{nl]’/#;#q#n’){)#}w’){){nl]’/+#n’;d}rw’ i;#
){nl]!/n{n#’; r{#w’r nc{nl]’/#{l,+’K {rw’ iK{;[{nl]‘/w#q#n’wk nw’
iwk{KK{nl]!/w{%’l##w#’ i; :{nl]’/*{q#’ld;r’}{nlwb!/*de}’c
;;{nl’-{}rw]’/+,}##’*}#nc,’,#nw]’/+kd’+e}+;#’rdq#w! nr’/ ‘) }+}{rl#’{n’ ‘)#
}’+}##(!!/” ;
/* Decryption Key */
static char Key[] =
“!ek;dc i@bK’(q)-[w]*%n+r3#l,{}:nuwloca-O;m .vpbks,fxntdCeghiry” ;
int main(int Pnt, int Chr, char *Str)
/*********************************/
/* Beginning of the Main Program */
/*********************************/
{
int Ret ;
char *new_Str ;
/* 0, 4, 7, 11, 15, 21, 27, 33, 39, 45, 51, 57, 63, 77 */
if (1 < Pnt) {
/* 5 */
if (Pnt < 3) {
/* 6 */
new_Str = Str + main(-86, 0, Str + 1) ;
new_Str = Str + main(-87, 1-Chr, new_Str);
main(-79, -13, new_Str) ;
}
if (Pnt < Chr) main(Pnt + 1, Chr, Str) ;
Ret = main(-94, Pnt – 27, Str) ;
if (Ret && (Pnt == 2)) {
if (Chr < 13) {
Ret = main(2, Chr + 1, " ") ;
}
else {
Ret = 9 ;
}
}
else Ret = 16 ;
}
else {
/* 1, 8, 12, 16, 22, 28, 34, 40, 46, 52, 58, 64, 78 */
if (Pnt < 0) {
/* 9, 17, 23, 29, 35, 41, 47, 53, 59, 65 */
if (Pnt < -72) {
/* 10 */
Ret = main(Chr, Pnt, Text) ;
}
else {
/* 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 54, 60, 66 */
if (Pnt < -50) {
/* 19, 25, 31, 37, 43, 49, 55, 61, 67 */
if (Chr == *Str) Ret = putchar(*(Str + 31)) ;
else {
/* 20, 26, 32, 38, 44, 50, 56, 62 */
Ret = main(-65, Chr, Str + 1) ;
}
}
else {
if (*Str == '/') {
Ret = main(Pnt + 1, Chr, Str + 1) ;
}
else {
Ret = main(Pnt, Chr, Str + 1) ;
}
}
}
}
else {
/* 2, 13, 79 */
if (0 < Pnt) {
/* 3 */
Ret = main(2, 2, " ") ;
}
else {
/* 14, 80, … */
Ret = (*Str == '/') || main(-61, *Str, Key) ;
Ret = (*Str == '/') || main(0, Ret, Str + 1) ;
}
}
}
/* 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76 */
return(Ret) ;
} /* — end of the "Main" routine — */
Note the recursive use of the “main” routine. I did not know that C could do this until I ran across this screwy thing.
We need a czar who will ensure all email traffic is non-spam. Every spec of information can pass through a single point and the czar will apply his power of attorney to it. They will be paid a trillion dollars a year plus benefits but it is so important to protect the children we must pass it now before we know how it will work.
“David Weinberger suggests that perhaps the first entity to see God will be a computer.”
We can teach a computer to understand that the 4th dimension is merely perpendicular to dimensions 1-3, but it is unlikely that we will ever teach it to appreciate a sunset or a flower.
Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years. The first flower probably did not survive for long, and flowers must have remained rare and isolated phenomena, since conditions were most likely not yet favorable for a widespread flowering to occur. One day, however, a critical threshold was reached, and suddenly there would have been an explosion of color and scent all over the planet—if a perceiving consciousness had been there to witness it.
Much later, those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species. Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them. As the consciousness of human beings developed, flowers were most likely the first thing they came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not linked in some way to survival. They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics. Jesus tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from them how to live. The Buddha is said to have given a “silent sermon” once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it
Eckhart Tolle
the brave sir robins of anonymous made a big noise about going after the zettas in mexico, but quickly backed off (i wonder why). just kill a few of them each day until they give back the data and stop being pests.
Eggplant – All good reasons to use systems engineering approaches and to apply software requirements analysis. Programming yourself into knots reeks of poor planning and system architecture design. The better way to protect your self is to use a virtual machine running in RAM. You can actually analyze code virus vectors and do before and after comparisons withy the registers. The viruses’ go away after turning your system off.
I’ve been doing a bit of research recently into (not in!) the Library of Babel, this being a library of every possible book 250 pages long, which is approximately 10^10^10 books, dramatically more than the number of protons in the universe.
Of course, personally, I’m lucky if I can find my W-2 slips in time to get my taxes filed, or for that matter find two matching socks. Yet professionally I deal with terabytes of important financial information. Hoo-rah.
Actually, my research project is very much in trying to understand how we *do* manage to get anywhere at all, given all the information in the universe, much less on our disk drives, Internet, or storage lockers. The secret, I think, is simply modesty. The triumph is to get anything, to build anything, to put a brick on a brick. We’re not GOING to understand it all, and yet we’ve gotten pretty good at putting bricks on bricks, and there’s plenty of improvement possible. If anything, the problem is when bosses and leaders lack that modesty, and who ever said modesty is a criterion for how people get to be bosses or leaders?
Regarding the Library of Babel – if you have just the one copy of the library, you must have a scheme for organizing the books. For example, on the first shelf would the first books be (aa+, ab+) or (aa+, ba+), etc. So, say that perhaps one copy of the library with one arrangement scheme is not enough for you, but you want to consider all possible arrangements of the Library, that number would be factorial (10^10^10)!. This, my friends, is a large number indeed, with about 33 million digits according to the calculations by Block, but for the record, please note that it is FINITE and not infinite! And if anyone ever asks me for “an inconvenient truth”, I think this has to be it.
ps – this particular linked picture of the library, while attractive, is apparently not exactly in keeping with Borges’ text, not that the text is unambiguous or needs to be followed exactly in any case.
–
pb @ 9: There is no theory, and perhaps not even any worthwhile ideas, on how chemicals could possibly generate the massive amount of information necessary to coax a single cell into dividing.
Oh, the situation is much worse than that, we are so clueless that we could have the answer right in front of our noses and still would not know it! In fact, that seems to be the *actual* situation!
In an ocean of data I think understanding comes just as much if not more from knowing what input to ignore. Grand schemes involving theories of everything are pipe dreams, the ambition of a small snake scheming to swallow an elephant.
Learning comes from solving actual and gritty problems. I doubt there is some pure, straight, and simple shortcut to understanding any aspect of the universe, and to the extent we seem to do so it is like attaining the speed of light–we may get arbitrarily close but we never, ever will get there.
I would submit, just like the last thread, that the problem really is too many people in guvmint dont’s give a crap about protecting and defending this country. If they did, this problem would have been solved long ago.
It is a technical issue. While I am not a techie by any means, the issue does not seem insurmountable.
The problem, as with almost all this country’s problems, is one of will, not of means.
The Orwellians and the complexity buffs are the victims of their own efforts. They have produced huge many-headed monsters who are beyond control and whose output is becoming incomprehensible or deficient. This is a good or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.
“Those whom the Gods would destroy they first make lovers of complex computer systems.”
After falling in love with complexity, the smitten build giant database systems that become ever more complex with every additional development, enhancement and upgrade. Pretty soon the many heads of the monster can’t speak to each other and the system keeps crashing. As a bonus, each monstrous head provides an inviting orifice into which some malevolent hacker may insert a destructive package.
Call it evolution; call it feedback in complex systems; call it being too clever by half; call it playing silly buggers. One lesson is that Orwellians and other controller wannabees will probably defeat themselves simply by being complicated. Perhaps, perhaps we should study, admire and seek to understand the wonders and meaning of those complex systems, in nature, that actually work and resist the crazy urge to imitate them with computer code.
We don’t seem too good at building grandiose complex computer systems. At least I’ve never seen one. I have seen many a fake Taj Mahal built from tortured computer code that didn’t do half of what it was supposed to, yet did twice as many dopey things as anyone could have imagined. Mind you, there is significant money in the complexity industry.
I believe anonymous could be likened to a bridge player who presumes that he can keep pulling useful cards from his cuff while his opponent, complain though he may, plays the hand dealt and won’t even go to trump when the opportunity offers.
I think that’s a bad long-term bet.
Annoy Mouse @ 18 said:
“The better way to protect your self is to use a virtual machine running in RAM. You can actually analyze code virus vectors and do before and after comparisons with the registers. The viruses’ go away after turning your system off.”
It’s my understanding the computer security gurus use the ram based virtual machine approach when they setup a honey pot. They trick the hacker into leaving his virus or worm in the honey pot and then the guru analyzes it with perfect safety. A million years ago, I reverse engineered a DOS virus that was written in assembly language. I disconnected its payload and turned it into a toy that I could play with. It was weird and mildly unpleasant trying to think like a criminal. It would be moderately entertaining to take apart the Stuxnet virus and see how a computer genius would write a virus with the full power of a state intelligence agency behind him. Supposedly there were some entertaining Easter eggs inside the Stuxnet virus that were written to irritate the Iranian IT experts analyzing it.
Vulnerable though they may be, I am not sure how much real damage anyone can do to the DoD networks. A real paranoia has set in and they do not put much out there on the Web. A couple of years ago I tried to get ahold of a USAF organization where I used to work and visited their website. As far as finding office symbols, contact points, and phone numbers, I might as well have been sending Morse code to Mars.
It’s like that quote from Col Flagg on MASH, “The only way you can be sure of not revealing anything of value to the enemy is to go around totally confused yourself.”
But the first thing we can do is simply get tough with the enablers of cyberattacks and scams. For example, AOL and Yahoo basically seem to have given up trying to police their own networks. And it would not hurt if a Russian, Romanian or Chinese server just sort of blew up mysteriously once in a while.
Alexis #11: What’s wrong with using real guns? A Smith and Wesson beats a full house.
And as for the data glut, aside from trying to make sense of it all, there are people who will cherry pick from the “brickyard” and use it for their own ends. Aside from the well known AGW debacle, some years ago people trying to prove that Ozone depletion over the Antarctic was upping UV levels at the surface took the raw data, threw away 85% of it, and said it proved their hypothesis. When the real owner of the data pointed out they were wrong, that the real data showed, if anything, the exact opposite, they arranged for his funding to be cut.
It is said that selective quoting of the Bible can be used to prove that any course of action is moral. The data glut is that, a billion times worse.
“In indirect response, Barret Brown, the Anonymous movement’s de facto biographer, announced that any chance of redaction of the Stratfor emails has now vanished”
So Barret Brown just told hundreds of Stratfor’s paramilitary and gun smuggling clients around the world that their private information will be published? So long Barret… we hardly new you.
ss @ 22: We don’t seem too good at building grandiose complex computer systems. At least I’ve never seen one. I have seen many a fake Taj Mahal built from tortured computer code that didn’t do half of what it was supposed to, yet did twice as many dopey things as anyone could have imagined.
You have just described my observations in three gigs at Megabank over the last three years, and when they melt down this June it will be exactly because of these kinds of phenomena at Megabank, Treasury, and all over Wall Street.
Rather less theoretically, apparently cyberwar has now broken out on a small scale between the Arabs and Israel:
Israeli hackers bring down Arab monetary sites
Regarding Internet security generally, my understanding is that it is going to take a wholesale rebuilding of the whole enchilada to bring any real increase in security. Meanwhile, yet another observation I had at Megabank was the total incomprehension of the staff I worked with, including about the bottom six levels of management (out of a total of probably twenty, talk about your complexity!) of what security was all about, more I cannot say. Certainly the official organization standards on the matter were solid, and they dragged us through online certification on the matter at least twice a year, and no doubt they erred on the side of too MUCH security probably more often than too little, but you only need to lose once, wherein of course lies the real problem.
Annoy Mouse @ 16 quoted:
“David Weinberger suggests that perhaps the first entity to see God will be a computer.”
My gut feeling is that when one gets within the level of quarks in understanding fundamental physical processes, instead of using string theory one would use Boolean algebra and operators on some 4 dimensional variation to Conway’s Game of Life. The resultant logic would be so convoluted that one could understand it only with the aid of a computer (certainly true when trying to make sense out of Conway’s Game of Life). Perhaps the Creator of our universe used the local equivalent of a computer to setup our universe?
I don’t accept it but one could argue that what we call “reality” is really a simulation produced by some incredibly powerful computer. In essence, start with a Halo first person shooter game, up its time and spacial resolution by about three orders of magnitude and output the simulation directly into someone’s brain. It’s a nasty possibility that I really hope is not true (oblivion would be preferable). I’ll “know” one way or another a few seconds after I’ve died.
Josh@19 – “…or for that matter find two matching socks.”
Solved that problem back in my twenties; my sock drawer contains only identical socks. Of course, I have to shop for a new pair on special occasions, but since they’re intended for a single use, I don’t have to launder them.
The deadline draws near.
Complex systems suck us in.
Don’t forget to breathe.
emrys,
Normally I don’t have to think consciously about breathing–I have a complex system that takes care of that for me.
If it keeps on complex’, system’s goin’ to break,
If it keeps on complex’, system’s goin’ to break,
When the system breaks I’ll have no place to stay.
Mean old complexity taught me to weep and moan,
Mean old complexity taught me to weep and moan,
Got what it takes to make a programmer leave his home,
Oh, well, oh, well, oh, well.
Don’t it make you feel bad
When you’re tryin’ to find your way home,
You don’t know which way to go?
If you’re goin’ down Complex
Too much work to do,
If you don’t know about Lorenz Attractors.
/Indium Phosphide Zeppelin 2012 just before the crash
The problem isn’t that the system is too complex, it’s just too complex for Gen. Keith Alexander to understand. He needs to go. With 300 million plus Americans, there has to be at least a dozen that won’t find it too complex to understand.
General Alexander is no systems guy. He is a ring knocking strap hanger who “earns” his promotions at cocktail parties. As a square peg in a round hole, he of course wants the hole squared off.
Why not find a round peg instead?
Eggy, I switched to Ubuntu 10.4 LTS about 14 months ago. I’m pleased all in all. The goobermint needs to write it’s own OS. Like Unix, it needs to be designed with the primary goal as security. Most people don’t know that NSA had serious input to the Internet via Dr. Brown. That worked out well. Why not the same type DARPA project for a “official” US OS. Call it that. USOS. Usoss.
If Gen. Keith Alexander had the brains to pour water out of a boot, he would already be on this.
IIRC a few years back, a US Air Force officer said that a 500 pound bomb at the right place would solve a lot of hacking problems.
I think about ten years ago their was a TV series about a guy with un-natural luck. A hacker started messing with him, getting his power turned off, his name into criminal data bases and etc. The guy found an old School detective who transitioned in to the world of the net. He found the hacker and transferred a huge sum of money into the hackers bank account from an organized crime laundry account. The episode ends with the hacker getting garroted in front of his computer.
“A letter of marque and reprisal shall be issued against computer criminals”
Maybe a computer will be the first to get a glimpse of God but will it recognize him/her/it? Doubtful.
Its much more useful when looking at American history to look at the decades before the civil war for analogies to today. The reason for this is that American commentators frequently noted that the effect of the frontier was to improve the character of the people. Something about this side of the line is Civilization and that side of the boundary is WILD gave men a glimpse of God even if all they understood was the fear of God.
Much the same thing will happen going forward as cyberspace meets outerspace. There will be a lot of fire there that will burn out bad code.
Part of the reason that we are cut off from so many parts of the past is the very accelerating speed of events.
Thomas Jefferson was asked how long it would take to settle the west. He said 6000 years and 200 generations. How did he come by that number. Monticello is only 100 miles from the eastern seabord. It was almost 200 years since the first colonists landed in Jamestown. So Jefferson multiplied 200 years * 30 (where 3000 miles is the distance across the USA divided by 100).
The time it took to settle the west instead was 100 years and 5 generations.
Why was Jefferson so far off.
There were two major industrial revolutions in the 1800′s.
The first was in the 1830′s. The second began in the 1880′s.
These technologies like the railroad and the telegraph accelerated events.
Computers today are doing the same thing.
There are enormous distances in outer space. They are deep and and sometimes terrifying. The acceleration of computer networks is slowly slowly shrinking these distances…though granted we cannot see right now how this shrinkage occurs.
MSO@29: “Solved that problem back in my twenties; my sock drawer contains only identical socks. Of course, I have to shop for a new pair on special occasions, but since they’re intended for a single use, I don’t have to launder them.”
It comforts me greatly to know that I am not the only one in the universe that has solved this particular problem in this particular way. I only own white (with grey heels and toes) low-rise athletic socks of one particular variety. Every so many years I am forced to buy a whole new drawer-full because they discontinue my particular SKU.
I have a new conundrum though…in a little less than a month I will be taking a new job that requires formal business dress…which means my usual socks won’t do for work. And yet, geek though I am, I do retain enough fashion consciousness to not want to wear black socks with sweats or shorts. Sigh. Looks like now I’ll have to buy a taller nightstand with an extra drawer so I can maintain two sock bases. Such is the price of moving up in the world.
There are multiple ways to deal with behavioral/threat problems. For example you can either catch all double parkers and fine each of them $25 or catch one in a million and execute him. The result in changed behavior would be the same. Another way to look at the problem is the old offense vs defense debate. Do you expend resources in hardening your systems, defensively ticketing the double parkers and building wider streets or do you act offensively by towing their cars away and crushing them and then sending them a bill? Think of the Chinese who execute you and then send your family a bill for the bullet. That could change behavior. In the case of “Anonymous” playing Defense is a mug’s game. If Barret Brown and his closest companions were sent to rot away for terms as long as Bernie Madoff’s, with the stipulation that they could never have any access to any electronic or communications device other than a pencil and a sheet of paper, then the criminal era of hacking would fade into folklore.
As for phishers and spam-bunco operators, hostis humani generis.
Cap Huff #3: I am not feeling well. Does Doc Means make house calls?
That’s a good problem to have, Agoraphobic Plumber. Congratz!
All,
Looks like the Israel is keeping all it’s options on the table….
Israel vows to retaliate after credit cards are hacked
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16456100
…’Such cyber-attacks are “a breach of sovereignty comparable to a terrorist operation, and must be treated as such”, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has said.
“Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action,” he added, without giving further details.’…
37. Agoraphobic Plumber
I always wear white socks. They are cleaner then colored socks. What I did for those occasions when white socks were a fashion no-no was wear my dress socks OVER my white socks.
When I was in the car business, I wore White cotton socks under support hose. Selling cars requires walking the lot when you are not on the phone. Lots of milage on the feet.
Back nearly ten years ago a guy named Shawn Carpenter fell into a hobby of sorts. He tracked cyber attacks coming from China. This was something he did on his own time. His day job was at Sandia National Labs. I can’t remember the details exactly but he reported his findings to, I think, the FBI and maybe the DoD. When his bosses at Sandia found out about his activities he was fired. Turns out that what he was doing was illegal, somehow. He sued for wrongful termination and won a big settlement. I thought it sounded weird at the time.
Oh and yeah, a drawer of white socks does make for an easier life.
Dave @39 “Does Doc Means make house calls?”
No, but he might be willing to Fedex his asafoetida bag to you.
stoicheion @ 33 said:
“I switched to Ubuntu 10.4 LTS about 14 months ago. I’m pleased all in all. The goobermint needs to write it’s own OS. Like Unix, it needs to be designed with the primary goal as security. Most people don’t know that NSA had serious input to the Internet via Dr. Brown.”
The NSA has made some contributions to the Linux kernel (google “nsa linux”). For scientific computations, both NASA and the bomb labs use Linux on their big computer cluster number crunchers. I suspect the NSA also uses Linux for code busting. The goobermint doesn’t need to write a new OS. It already has one and it’s called “Linux”.
More irritating than anything hackers can do, tonight Wikipedia has hijacked itself. The “community” of Wikipedia has self-imposed a blackout. When you surf there, a political statement pops up requesting your zip code so they can direct you to your local Congresspuke, and yada yada yada. This might be a first, a self-targeted denial-of-service attack. They poke a stick in their own eye in order to take it to the Man! Would that broad alternatives to Wikipedia emerged, and fast.
The early days of the Internet, meaning the early to mid 1990′s, were a fascinating time. The Internet was a godsend. The common household had but a few options. You had your local bulletin boards, Sears/IBM’s Prodigy network, or CompuServ. That’s presented in order of expense. Bulletin boards came with the price of a telephone account and a computer and a modem. Prodigy assumed all that and added a base service that gave you a bigger sandbox from which you strayed at the cost of charges by the minute. CompuServ charged by the minute, and by the byte downloaded. I drove myself into poverty “surfing” those networks on credit cards I maxxed out on pure electro dollars.
If I wasn’t maxxing them out buying compilers and development software. I spent a decade paying off the charges I ran up in a year.
The government did have a coherent computing model at that time. The backbone was established as standard called POSIX, and all critical software was to be written in a computer language called Ada. It was all to be orderly, controlled, regulated. Microsoft initially aimed for POSIX compliance but never got there. To this day they tout themselves as POSIX compliant. I don’t think they’ve spent a dime towards POSIX compliance since 1992. It didn’t matter to them. They used POSIX to get themselves accepted into governmental computing and once lodged in there they “innovated” their way out of the sandbox. POSIX is all a wrecked and deprecated landscape that was always a sick cousin in the Win32 development environment.
Linus Torvalds took it seriously, though, with his Linux operating system. Linux, and the commercial UNIX flavors that Linux strove to copy, were POSIX systems. I was blown away back in the 90′s when I got my hands on my first copy of Linux and got it installed. Here I had a development environment that was superior to all that crap I maxxed out all those credit cards trying to buy. And it was all free. All of it.
I knew instantly things had gone seriously bad. I had expensive proprietary models, wild and free open source models, and governmentally sanctioned standards, and they were all at odds. It was a strange brew. I bet on the open source model, I drank that kool-aid. In hindsight it was a bad mistake.
These days very little recommends Linux besides the price. On the other hand, very little recommends Windoze or anything else, either. Nothing about computing has lived up to its potential, that bright potential that stood before us in 1989, if you ask me. Computing has been an oversold path of pain, unless you could finagle a job selling a cult, a la Steve Jobs.
ENIAC did more interesting work than your cellphone, with orders of magnitude less computing power. We have astonishing supercompters as our desktops, idling through a gazillon cycles all day, serving as Facebook or WoW engines.
Nobody’s serious about using computers for their computational power outside the realm of a very few, whose slight population would astonish you. Very few even realize what they have in their own computers.
Cowboy, you sound like a former Priest of the Hollerith deck;
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery9.html
When I tell people that all those flashing lights on the wall in old Sci-fi movies was code running they think I’m pulling their leg. I don’t even get into watching Fortran run by watching those same lights. They think I’m going senile on them.
As long as we are on the subject of using fear to manipulate people, isn’t the anniversary of “Europe will collapse tomorrow” coming up? Or has it already passed? If the sky doesn’t fall, normal people figure out that Chicken Little is barking up the wrong tree. How long do we have to listen to those stupid Mo-Fo’s before it’s ok to laugh at them?
Most excellent essay and thread, Wretchard. I love delving into these types of topics. Seems like we might be starting to get the slightest, fleeting glimpse of the Face of God and it’s driving us a bit mad.
28 @Eggplant
There was a book written to this hypothesis, A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram. I haven’t read it yet (just don’t have the time to tackle 1000+ page theoretical books like I used to), but I have read the summary and it sounds quite interesting. I understand it has received quite a bit of backlash, which makes it all the more tempting for me purchase. It would be quite interesting if we turned out to have a discrete, “digital” universe.
46 @Cowboy
I kind of have a vague feeling of the same idea that you do; that we are wasting ungodly computing resources. Although, I am a bit heartened by the open distributed computing projects which have popped up on the internet, such as the protein folding endeavor. I’m curious, do you have any specific problem sets in mind that you would tackle?
Cowboy (46), how can you leave out Bix?
Complexity, databricks:
I think we have to take into consideration systems that take information conditional upon layers of meta information.
Two systems that come to mind are Pubmed and Reddit. Pubmed is a clearinghouse for scholarly scientific information. In my work, I regularly perform directed searches, filtering the information I see by specific criteria (e.g. time period published, author, keywords, etc. My own grasp of the complexity of my project determines what and how I filter the vast expanse of information available. Also, the information available via Pubmed is self-referencing, meaning the articles I read or skim all reference other articles in the system. As an individual, I must view my project as a system of modules, each of which requires it’s own searches. It just so happens that Pubmed has provided an accretion point for exactly the kind of information I’m looking for and that information is highly indexed. What comes across my eyes is generally exactly what I am interested in.
Reddit on the other hand is an accretion point for any idea or piece of information that one can think of and it is organized roughly into areas of interest, but more interestingly, the information that crosses my eyes is what has been deemed “interesting” (or “uninteresting if I choose”) in general by all the viewers and contributors to that site. Youtube, incidentally, pioneered this way of sorting video data through it’s primary meta information model of “number of views”. Reddit has extended and expanded the model by including any type of information and by allowing users to “upvote” or “downvote” any post or comment with the result being an automatic “interest” index. So I can now specify as my search criteria any or all of: general topic (anyone can add a new topic to the site under which posts and comments may appear), and (others) interest level.
There seems to be an effective “crowd sourced” selection process for successful (useful) aggregators/organizers of databricks. I can’t think of a reason increasingly refined and useful models won’t naturally emerge.
Toadold #34:
I wonder why no legal firm has not thought of the following idea.
When a virus or worm or phishing or spam attack hits, the legal firm announces it is signing up people for a class action lawsuit against those reponsible. They have you send in $5 or $10.
Then Microsoft and the Fed and all kind of people work to figure out who did it. Once they do, the legal firm sues those responsible in as many ways and in as many courts as possible.
Now, the chance of the litigants getting any money out of the deal essentially is zero, even if they find out that Warren Buffett is the one responsible. But would you not be willing to spend $5 or $10 or more just to make sure that those responsible are harassed legally for the rest of their lives? The law firm makes money, those attacked get revenge, and the ones responsible have the at least the possibility of not having two nickels to rub together for the rest of their lives. If they are in a foreign country we may even be able to get Congress to withhold funds from foreign aid and seize the country’s USA assets to compensate the victims. If that nets the hacker three rounds in the back of the head – well, payback’s a bitch.
It’s always interesting to read comments here about difficult subjects by people who know what they are talking about – its all way, way beyond me and I can make the barest conclusions from it all (like quantum physics – all I get from that is do the math and don’t let anybody named Schrodinger take care of your critters). Computers and computer programming is the same way – the conclusion I take from the discussion is if something is really really important then don’t put it into a network. But, and this is an old problem, what good is information (NSA was mentioned) when you can’t let anybody see it? Or they can’t see it in any form or timing that is useful? And watch out for the Bradley Mannings of the world.
As regards the Sherlock Holmes observation, Loren Eiseley wrote an essay touching on the subject: “How Flowers Changed the World”. Interesting take on evolution and the metaphysical.
http://www.global-mindshift.com/discover/Memebase/HowFlowersChanged.pdf
The entire monetary system is vulnerable to hackers, but also count on the government to continue false flag attacks as they prepare to hijack the internet in order to get more complete control over the sheeple.
But one must also look at the systemic risk hacking represents. A collapse or shutdown of ecommerce could lead to your savings simply vanishing. Just look at MF Global and how they still haven’t “found” the $1.6 billion of funds in customer accounts. Or just look at the Fed actively counterfeiting debt based money to the tune of over $1t per year.
So why would we want to elect as president someone who actively promotes gold ownership and who would as his highest priority make gold and silver legal tender? Who would want debt free money in their physical possession that is outside of the internet, outside of the virtual banking system, outside of the control of the Fed, outside of the control of the politicians? Certainly not the majority of BC members who think entering into another never ending war with a country on the other side of the planet is far more important than the government allowing the sheeple to possess unambiguous physical money that is beyond the reach of the IRS (legal tender).
Surely the press will collectively scour the emails in the hope of finding something good for ratings and/or damaging to those they don’t like. Especially for those on the left whose …er… sophisticated thinking goes intelligence = military = right wing = bad, Stratfor will prove a tempting target. After all, it’s not like Anonymous will target George Soros.
The key to effective prayer is contained in this story
Daniel 3
New International Version (NIV)
The Image of Gold and the Blazing Furnace
1 King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, sixty cubits high and six cubits wide,[a] and set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. 2 He then summoned the satraps, prefects, governors, advisers, treasurers, judges, magistrates and all the other provincial officials to come to the dedication of the image he had set up. 3 So the satraps, prefects, governors, advisers, treasurers, judges, magistrates and all the other provincial officials assembled for the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up, and they stood before it.
4 Then the herald loudly proclaimed, “Nations and peoples of every language, this is what you are commanded to do: 5 As soon as you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, you must fall down and worship the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. 6 Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a blazing furnace.”
7 Therefore, as soon as they heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp and all kinds of music, all the nations and peoples of every language fell down and worshiped the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
8 At this time some astrologers[b] came forward and denounced the Jews. 9 They said to King Nebuchadnezzar, “May the king live forever! 10 Your Majesty has issued a decree that everyone who hears the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music must fall down and worship the image of gold, 11 and that whoever does not fall down and worship will be thrown into a blazing furnace. 12 But there are some Jews whom you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon—Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—who pay no attention to you, Your Majesty. They neither serve your gods nor worship the image of gold you have set up.”
13 Furious with rage, Nebuchadnezzar summoned Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So these men were brought before the king, 14 and Nebuchadnezzar said to them, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the image of gold I have set up? 15 Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipe and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?”
16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, “King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us[c] from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel+3&version=NIV
Regarding unused computing cycles: It suits me to leave my PC on all night so that it can do all the boring stuff such as virus scanning and updating itself while I’m not using it. That being so, it also makes sense to set up the BOINC engine on it. There are various projects using that engine; I’ve selected SETI@home and climateprediction.net. The former is a long shot with huge payoff, the latter is the nearest we are going to get to experimenting with the climate to test AGW models.
artifact
Complexity:
It seems that increased complexity necessarily precedes the augmented organization required to harness the potential of that new complexity. What will emerge, we can’t predict. We can only try to be better and faster than our enemies in harnessing it’s potential.
Hmmmm, using excess computing power to find hackers and generate counter attacks automatically….what could go wrong??
presbypoet @ 4 – What is a “particle”? This assertion that it is this or that or both is flawed. Seems like nature is once again trying to tell us that our models of wave and particle are inadequate to describe the phemomena under consideration. Time for a new theory, but is our mathematical approach adequate to the task? Maybe we have reached a level of knowledge where our models are totally incompetent.
Well, it’s obvious that to deal with hackers, nationally sponsored Internet attacks, and this vast amount of information we are accumulating, we need new a system and a new approach.
Skynet
@ 60 – Needed “photon” as an antecedent for the pronoun in second sentence above.
Agoraphobic Plumber@37 – “Such is the price of moving up in the world”
Congratulations on your increased complexity. The trick now is to find another way to simplify your affairs. There is the old shibboleth that insists that all men are constrained to have no more than three vices and no more than three bad habits. If addition is to be contemplated, then one of the existing most go.
soticheion@42 – “They are cleaner then colored socks”
Yep; wash in hot water, bleach the devil out of them, buy replacements in bulk at one of JC Penny’s annual sales and reuse the old for washing your car. Simplification in the little things is a good thing.
Cowboy@46 – “These days very little recommends Linux besides the price. On the other hand, very little recommends Windoze or anything else, either”
IBM and OS/2 offered tremendous opportunities for simplification. I made a large contribution to a nationwide department store gift registry system that utilized OS/2 machines in the stores communicating with mainframes in the national headquarters.
It was possible to develop and debug the majority of software for both the in-store OS/2 machines and the mainframes on OS/2 machines. C++, DB2, APPC, CICS were, for all practicable purposes, portable between the OS/2 machines and the mainframes.
Most of OS/2 guys didn’t know much about mainframes and the mainframe guys didn’t know much about OS/2 machines; the IBM tools eliminated the knowledge barrier. It was an incredible experience to handoff the OS/2 code to the mainframe folks who re-compiled and ran it on the mainframes.
IBM was seriously promoting OS/2 in those days. They sponsored a group of us OS/2 guys (OS/2 Advisors) on CompuServe, totally free and unlimited access in exchange for expert advice on the OS/2 forums.
Alexis(11)
The thing about software is, that it encapsulates skill and knowledge. A few people can write new cracking tools, many more can use them.
RWE(51)
Well, unless you’re going to target Microsoft for bad code architecture, the responsible parties for most virii are outside the US and have shallow pockets. And, nowadays, are increasingly organized crime.
Dworkin Barimen @ 48 said:
“There was a book written to this hypothesis, A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram. I haven’t read it yet (just don’t have the time to tackle 1000+ page theoretical books like I used to), but I have read the summary and it sounds quite interesting. I understand it has received quite a bit of backlash, which makes it all the more tempting for me purchase.”
I’m aware of Wolfram’s book. I’m reminded that I need to buy a copy and attempt to understand it. Years ago, Stephen Wolfram gave a lecture at where I work. It was clear that Wolfram has an intellect in the same league as Carl Friedrich Gauss and his views about fundamental physics were probably correct. Unfortunately I’m only just smart enough to recognize that Wolfram is correct but incapable of fully following his mathematical arguments (his IQ is probably double mine).
Wolfram is interesting. He’s one of these extreme geniuses who appear about once or twice a century. Had Wolfram been born in the early 20th century, he probably would have already exceeded the scientific output of Poincare, Einstein, Dirac, etc. Had Wolfram been born in the mid 19th century, we would probably be talking about Wolfram with the hushed reverence that normally goes towards Gauss and Euler. It was Wolfram’s misfortune to be born in an era where the problems facing physics and mathematics were so formidable that even an extreme genius could not crack them. Also, I strongly suspect that physics has gone down a wrong fork in the road and run into a dead end. This happens from time to time. The classic examples are the Ptolemaic view of the Solar System and Newtonian physics prior to Planck’s discovery of the quantum. It’s very difficult to synthesize new concepts in science but incredibly difficult to unlearn incorrect concepts that accidentally produce useful answers. The fact that we are in a dead end is evident if you look at physical complexity. For example, the human brain is incredibly complex but an individual neuron from the brain is much less complex. This observation continues as you go down in scale. The neuron’s DNA is less complex than the neuron. The nucleic acids making up the DNA are less complex than the DNA. The atoms making up the nucleic acid are less complex. The protons, electrons and neutrons are less complex than the atom. Then you get down to the supposed strings making up subatomic particles and there is this explosion in complexity. By induction, I know this is wrong. Wolfram has also figured this out. The processes at the subatomic level must be super simple and almost certainly can be modeled with Boolean algebra. That’s were it stops for me. I know this is true but not intelligent enough to go forward. Unfortunately, Wolfram is also not smart enough to go forward which says something but at least I feel less stupid.
By the way, Wolfram has an incredibly cool mathematics website, refer to:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CubicFormula.html
Also his Mathematica algebra manipulation software is simply brilliant.
MSO @ 63 said:
“Most of OS/2 guys didn’t know much about mainframes and the mainframe guys didn’t know much about OS/2 machines; the IBM tools eliminated the knowledge barrier. It was an incredible experience to handoff the OS/2 code to the mainframe folks who re-compiled and ran it on the mainframes.”
I’ve loved Linux from its very beginnings. However before Linux there was OS/2. OS/2 was such a wonderful operating system. I firmly believe that Microsoft has setback computer science by at least a decade and maybe even two decades. I consider it unethical to buy Microsoft products (I do it anyway for computer games if my children plead and moan hard enough). If anyone challenges the opinion that Microsoft is evil, all I have to say is “OS/2″. Microsoft has repeatedly tried to kill Linux through various dirty tricks just as they killed OS/2. Fortunately Linux is unkillable because no one owns Linux and no single entity is maintaining Linux. Microsoft has put itself in the position of Heracles trying to kill the Hydra where he would cut off one of the Hydra’s heads but two new heads would immediately grow back to replace them. I look forward to the day that Microsoft goes Chapter 11.
Eggplant,
I sure do miss OS/2!
That being said, in regard to MS’s “evil”, I do have to admit that IBM shot themselves in their own foot w/r/t MS and OS/2.
Eggplant,
OS/2 killed OS/2.
egg @ 65: Wolfram is just another brilliant crank.
Read the review on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/review/RUGSCP3XBNBUV/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1579550088&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=
I would be much more harsh, frankly.
All that fractal, CA stuff was highly fashionable for about three years back when, that book is ten years old now and has had no impact at all.
Actually, I agree with some of the *intuition* behind it, but I don’t see that Wolfram has done anything with it but beat the drum.
Josh @ 68.
We will have to agree to disagree. You provided your link to an Amazon reviewer. Here’s my link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AOUPSNSAAC8DM/ref=cm_pdp_rev_more?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview#R3BKMWOENGE704
The cellular automaton (CA) problems are hard to do correctly. For years, I’ve played with the 2-D versions like Conways Game of Life. They’re interesting but really only toys. I suspect that cellular automatons become more interesting if they are functioning at a higher number of dimensions. I have a pet idea of growing a 4-D crystal lattice inside a computer’s memory using some sort of simple replication algorithm for the cells. Start with a single cell and allow it to grow inside the computer’s memory as an expanding hypersphere. The surface of the growing hypersphere (which would be three dimensional) would have rules governing the interaction of the cells that were analogous to Conways Game of Life. Cells within the hypersphere would be frozen and incapable of further interaction (causation only happens on the surface). I suspect if I select the rules of cellular interaction carefully, I would observe analogues to physical processes, e.g. maybe the Standard Model for subatomic particles might pop out? There’s no way that one could predict a priori how this sort of computational experiment would play out.
The Gosper Glider Gun is a solid clue that this is the right line of inquiry towards understanding fundamental physics, refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_%28cellular_automaton%29
Again, the trick is to setup a Gosper Glider Gun on the surface of a growing hypersphere. The radial outward growth of the hypersphere would be an analogue for time and provides an asynchronous mechanism for causation.
Josh also said:
“Actually, I agree with some of the *intuition* behind it, but I don’t see that Wolfram has done anything with it but beat the drum.”
A sign post never reaches the destination that it points to.
(violating 4-post limit on dead thread and mostly OT anyway)
egg @ 69:
from your link:
The fundamental basis for this book, and the science that it tries to build, is the idea that experimental methods are the only way to discover and understand the computational mechanisms that exist in our universe, and indeed to understand the nature of computation itself.
–
That’s where I agree, that computation is not yet understood! But my take on how to understand it is the polar opposite of Wolfram’s, apparently. The idea that experimental methods are the way to go is only the basis if the Enlightenment and the British Empiricists as well as scientists, about three hundred years ago. Most of Wolfram’s ideas seem to be tropes on old ideas, most already explored. I seem to have that opinion of the works of other child geniuses, it seems a trap that is set for them. Conway’s game is cute and I’ve spent my time on it too, but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Turing’s is the big insight, IMHO, and the trick is to build solidly on that. Exploring enumerated TMs as Wolfram suggests? Nope. Shows a very basic misunderstanding of what’s going on.
Eggplant @ 28 wrote:
On my headstone, or maybe my webpage, will be written “Now I know”
Chuck
I’ve also completely blown the 4-post limit but as Josh said, this is a dead thread and mostly OT.
Read Stephen Wolfram’s biography at Wikipedia, refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram
Wolfram started out as a professor (age 20) at the California Institute of Technology doing particle physics. Produced a few fundamental papers and won a couple awards. He then moved to the Institute for Advanced Study (same outfit that Einstein worked for) and began work on cellular automata. My reading of this is that at CalTech, Wolfram was investigating physics along accepted paths and realized they were dead ends. He probably also realized that his funding sources were channeling him into specific directions of inquiry and he needed to relocate to get free of that. It’s interesting that at the Institute for Advanced Study, Wolfram was collaborating with Richard Feynman (another CalTech professor) on the problem of cellular automata. Richard Feynman was an example of an iconoclast physicist who struck gold (his Feynman diagrams) and won a Nobel Prize. Wolfram’s collaboration with Feynman was short lived because of Feynman’s death due to cancer. Wolfram then bailed out of the Institute for Advanced Study and founded his own company (Wolfram Research) that markets his algebra software Mathematica. My reading here is that Wolfram understood the Golden Rule, i.e. He who has the gold makes the rules. As long as Wolfram was a straight academic hustling for government grants, his work would have always been channeled into specific directions (he’d always be a trained seal balancing a ball on his nose for tidbits). Truly breakthrough work would not be possible unless he was self-funded. It’s interesting that “A New Kind of Science” did not appear until after Wolfram had made his pile with Mathematica. This is where the story falls flat because “A New Kind of Science’ was not well received. Wolfram had effectively thumbed his nose at the whole peer review process and produced a Magnum opus that no one understood (pissed everyone off with no real scientific payoff to show for it). What got Wolfram in trouble was he realized that cellular automata was “The Answer” but he was not smart enough to prove it. The situation was a bit like Deep Thought knowing that the answer to “Life, the Universe and Everything” was 42.
This story is not unique. Fluid mechanics as a science has been trapped in a dead end since the 19th century. People have made fluid mechanics somewhat useful through advanced numerical techniques, e.g. CFD. However in my humble opinion, using purely numerical solutions to understand fluid mechanics is a bit like stirring manure (Do your results really represent physical reality or are they merely numerical artifacts?). There is one class of flow that could unlock fluid mechanics and turn it into an interesting science. This is the vortex ring. For almost a century, people have realized that the vortex ring could do for the Navier Stokes equation and fluid mechanics what the hydrogen atom did for the Schroedinger wave equation and quantum theory. The vortex ring cries out that it has a closed form solution to the unsteady Navier Stokes equation. Maybe Stephen Wolfram could crack the vortex ring but countless others have fought with the vortex ring and failed.
This reminds me of the quintic equation. Renaissance Italians discovered closed form solutions of the cubic (third order) and quartic (fourth order) polynomials. People simply assumed there was a solution to the quintic equation (5th order). Countless mathematicians fought with the quintic equation in a futile attempt to solve it. Then Niels Henrik Abel came along and proved that the quintic equation had no general algebraic solution in radicals. That simply flabbergasts me. Abel proved a negative.
Another fascinating read as usual.
What struck me about the post was the similarity to the complexity Hayek found in economic systems. From what I understand, he concluded that the mechanics were so complex as to be incomprehensible to mortal men, and certainly impervious to their machinations unless economic ruin was the desired outcome.
Is it possible that information security could be achieved partially by shrouding or disguising the true amid the massive noise and deliberate disinformation? Would the response to the next Wikileaks be a computer which purposefully churns out millions of garbage emails and other data, drowning any potential spies or thieves in a morass which is both too thick to wade through, and has poison pills left within it?
Another thought: is this evidence for the existence of God? That the more we learn, the more we have to realize we are simply unable to grasp the entirety of it, no matter what advances in knowledge are made. In fact, the more we learn, the more it becomes obvious embracing the “system” entirely is, and always will be, beyond us, and is left for what is appropriately labeled a Supreme Being?