Ruminati

Slashdot mentions GENI To Replace Internet, Gets $12M Funding

A lot of people dribble on about how the net is designed. This betrays profound ignorance. 

Individual aspects of the net were designed. The protocols making up the TCP-IP suite were designed. The topological strategy of redundant interconnection was designed - it was the defining characteristic of ARPANET, the thing that made the net nuke-proof, and routing as we know it was invented to make such a topology practical. It's a real pity telcos violate this fundamental tenet in favour of unofficial taxation. 

The net as a whole, however, was not designed. It doesn't even exist as a thing that can be owned or regulated, because it is an emergent system arising from the interconnection of LANs. So long as people use compatible protocols and choose to route each others' traffic, there is an internet.

If some academics cook up some more protocols that do new and useful things, and people use them, they will become part of the net. If they do the same things a lot better, and they can be made compatible with legacy systems they will be widely used and become entrenched. If they do new things, they will be used by those people who find them useful. If that is a large number of people they may become entrenched. But the rest of the net will continue to exist until nobody wants it to.

The current price of a litre of fuel (~$1.50) is

57c + taxes

After you get serious and set up a domain at home, suddenly the option to synch with internet time vanishes from all your computers. They're expecting to synch with the domain controller. Great, but how do you synch the domain controller with a time-server? Like this (at a command prompt, obviously)

net time /setsntp:0.au.pool.ntp.org
net stop w32time
net start w32time

You have to roll the service to make it pick up the change.

This server is for Queensland, Australia. Use Google to find a time-server for your locale.

Before anyone decides I'm a security risk I'd like to point out that anyone with a highschool chem text and more than half a brain is a risk, and I am (a) not religious and (b) far too selfish to allow my own health and happiness to be threatened. After I finish bashing airport security I will make a constructive suggestion that, while grossly politically incorrect, is far more likely to succeed than the current nonsense. 

With the most politically correct of intentions, all that draconian airport regulations have achieved is passenger inconvenience.

To prevent this discussion from going around in circles, let's define some KPIs. Do the current regulations make it impossible to get a weapon onto an aeroplane?

The answer is no, they don't. For starters, they only control CA (commercial aviation). GA (general aviation ie everything else with wings) is wide open. You can get anything you like onto a private plane because you don't have to deal with commercial airport security. But even if you do go through commercial security procedures, it's still easy to do. There are two basic chemistries for cellphone batteries. Both have very high energy densities, and both can be made to run-away (get very hot, emit flammables and depending on the container, explode) using nothing more than a paperclip.

I'm not going to spell out how to weaponise this - apart from anything else, if you're stupid enough to threaten your own life then I'm not going to help you threaten mine - but it should be quite obvious that it can be done without much fuss.

The point here is that for all the fuss, a quick application of intelligence can defeat all the onerous security protocols, rendering them pointless. They are sham, a political box-tick, no more. And they are a jolly nuisance. I miss the days when I could visit the cockpit and talk to the pilots. Having to turn up an hour earlier just so that I can be treated like a criminal is not something I'm thrilled with.

OK, now for the politically incorrect suggestion: instead of disarming all the honest people, how about arming them? Over 18, no convictions? One taser each, take one from the bin, this is not a toy, there's a big fine for frivolous use. Wannabe terrorists would be absolutely crapping themselves - people have had quite enough. It's just as well tasers have a maximum duration built into them; a lot of people might not want to stop.

It's simple, it's cheap and it's likely to work. But it would require governments to stop treating us like irresponsible idiots, so the chances are slim.

*** It has been suggested to me that planes-into-buildings was a trick that would only work once. The person who said this pointed out that when the people in the third plane found out what was happening, they counted their lives already spent and chose to play bugger-up with the terrorists' plans.

It's a reasonable point of view, supported by the fact that the pilots now lock the cockpit door.

So why this airport bullshit?

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