Quotulatiousness

August 6, 2009

Twitter under DOS attack

Filed under: Americas, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:58

Twitter users have been unable to access the site for most of Thursday morning, due to a Denial-of-Service (DOS) attack:

The extended silence in a normally noisy Twitterworld began around 9 a.m. Twitter later posted a note to its status update page saying the site had been slowed to a standstill by an attack.

In a denial-of-service attack, hackers typically direct a “botnet,” often made up of thousands of malware-infected home PCs, toward a target site in an effort to flood it with junk traffic. With the site overwhelmed, legitimate visitors cannot access the service.

“On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial-of-service attack. Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users,” co-founder Biz Stone said in a blog post. “We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate.”

Update: Service is back, intermittantly. More background on the attack here.

More threats to Royal Navy’s carrier plans

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

An interesting report in The Register discussing the possibility of abandoning the planned STOVL variant of the F-35 and switching to the more traditional catapult-launch and tailhook-landing variant being developed for the US Navy:

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is set to make a major change to the design of the new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, according to a newspaper report. It’s suggested that the ships will now be equipped with catapults and arrester wires, allowing them to operate normal carrier aircraft rather than the complex, expensive jump-jets which had been planned.

According to the Daily Telegraph today “the MoD has indicated that it will drop the jump-jet… The Daily Telegraph has learnt from senior defence officials that an announcement is due this autumn.”

There would definitely be advantages to going with a more traditional aircraft: less mechanical complexity, greater weapons-carrying capability, and (probably most important in the MoD) lower per-aircraft costs. It’s not a slam-dunk decision, however:

Catapults and arrester gear aren’t a significant expense in themselves, but current catapults are powered by steam from the ship’s engines. The planned new Royal Navy ships will be propelled by gas turbines, however, and so have no steam (US and French carriers use nuclear propulsion, which can easily furnish steam from their associated turbines).

Adding powerful auxiliary steam boilers for catapults or upgrading the ships to nuclear propulsion would significantly increase their cost. There is an alternative option, the use of electrically-powered catapults, but these don’t yet exist. They are being developed in the States for the next US carrier, but as a new technology there is naturally some risk that they won’t pan out, or may be subject to delays and cost increases.

Of course, there’s always the risk that the MoD, under pressure from the government of the day would cancel the ships altogether, as a cost-saving measure (see this post from last year for further grim speculation on that topic).

China soon to be capable of settling the “Taiwan question”?

Filed under: China, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:37

According to a recent report from RAND Corporation, unlike the last time they ran the simulation (in 2000), their current projections have the Chinese able to win an air battle over Taiwan:

In 2000, the influential think thank RAND Corporation crunched some numbers regarding a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and concluded that “any near-term Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan would likely be a very bloody affair with a significant probability of failure” — especially if the U.S. raced to the island nation’s defense. But nine years later, a new, much-updated edition of the RAND study found that China’s improved air and missile forces “represent clear and impending dangers to the defense of Taiwan,” whether or not the U.S. is involved.

“A credible case can be made that the air war for Taiwan could essentially be over before much of the Blue [American and allied] air force has even fired a shot,” the monograph notes.

I’m not sure if this comment was intended to forestall the cancellation of the last part of the F-22 order, or if it’s a marker for a future “We told you so” debate:

It’s a potentially controversial assertion — and one that might have fueled the (now-resolved) debate over whether the U.S. Air Force should buy more F-22s. RAND found that F-22s flying from the relative safety of Guam could be surprisingly effective in blunting a Chinese air assault.

Remember that the air battle would only be part of the military equation . . . fighters and bombers still can’t overcome ground forces by themselves. A seaborne invasion would still be necessary, and the PLAN does not (yet) have sufficient lift tonnage to ensure a chance of success. Amphibious attacks are the hardest to accomplish (despite the Allied string of successes from 1942 to 1951), and always depend on both command of the air and command of the sea. China could, according to RAND’s latest study, win the air battle but still does not have the necessary preponderance of force to win control of the sea.

But the century is yet young . . .

H/T to Jon for the link.

“In his final act of betrayal . . .”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:13

I suspected that the recent labour deal between the city of Toronto and their striking municipal workers would not be a particularly fair deal. Fair to the city and the taxpayers, that is. Apparently, from what Howard Levitt writes, I’m not pessimistic enough:

In his final act of betrayal, not only has Toronto Mayor David Miller agreed to the city’s inside and outside unionized workers retaining their sick leave benefits, he has prevented any future mayor from removing them. In doing so, Toronto’s mayor has provided the city’s taxpayers with a poisoned chalice.

What he has negotiated cannot be changed until the city’s next round of bargaining, more than a year after any new election. His new collective agreement, unlike the old, provides union members with the right to cash out their sick-leave provisions immediately rather than waiting until they retire.

The little-understood impact of that is that if, in the next election, any mayoralty candidate runs on the promise to remove that benefit and wins, union members will simply threaten to cash it out immediately, plunging Toronto into a profound financial crisis until that demand is withdrawn.

Now that was a slick move . . . from the point of view of the union. From the taxpayer’s viewpoint, not so much.

But it was still not the whole of the love showered on the union by the Mayor . . .

Almost as egregious as this sleight of hand is Miller’s amnesty for criminals. What I always do in strikes is warn the union that lawbreakers will be criminally prosecuted instantly and that there will be no ultimate amnesty. That warning usually curtails violence. Miller did not do that.

Instead, Miller’s agreement, which ended a 39-day strike last week, provides a message to all city workers that they can misbehave with impunity in any future strike. And what does he claim to have received in return? A promise by the union that no havoc will be wreaked against those employees that continued to work. In short, a benefit in return for the union agreeing not to indulge in illegal hooliganism.

Stepping into a minefield in Buckhorn

Filed under: Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:35

Michael Pinkus found some unexpectedly vocal critics after he criticized the organizers of Fiesta Buckhorn over their wine and beer selections:

For once I wasn’t trying to stir up controversy, honest . . . but somehow it found me. A little over two weeks ago I wrote about Fiesta Buckhorn in my On the Road with the Grape Guy blog; amongst the wine picks and new winery news was a paragraph entitled, “Shame on Buckhorn” where I chastised them for, once again, allowing Cellared in Canada wines to be poured at an “All Ontario” wine event. There was also an aside, 2-lines within that heading, about a Mexican beer being there amongst all the Ontario craft breweries — but my main focus was the wine, the beer issue had just been pointed out to me in passing during a discussion with another attendee; I hate to say it but I hadn’t noticed them. Well, let me tell you, the mess really hit the fan, so to speak; I received letters from past organizers, current organizers, wine writers and others, weighing in on the controversy.

[. . .]

Two comments made to me (one by past the other by present organizers) concerned me, and encapsulated what is truly wrong with the Ontario wine market and consumer: “. . . quite frankly, there isn’t anyone on the committee knowledgeable enough who can identify non-Ontario wine to us.” In my opinion, this should be rectified immediately and should have been identified as a problem years ago. But it is the next comment that shows a total lack of understanding with regards to the sensitivity of this issue these days when there are websites and petitions against Cellared wines: “How were we to know that this was the case with [the wine in question]? How are we to know what any content of any wine is? Are we to conduct a privately funded research program to do so? We are a NOT FOR PROFIT ORGANIZATION raising funds for a community center.” My comment to that was quite simply: “LEARN” (capitalization begets capitalization), after all, there are plenty of sources out there, use the resources available to you. Crying ignorance is no defense.

The problem stems from the belief that I was accusing Fiesta organizers of willfully deceiving the public, which I am not. Let me state again: I am not accusing Fiesta Buckhorn organizers of deception; I have and will continue to accuse the winemakers of “cellared” wine (who shall go un-named here because this article is not about their product — this time) of deceiving the public, until such time as labeling practices change. What I am saying is that Buckhorn was merely an accomplice or, more to the point, the facilitator. “We intend to offer wine lovers a chance to taste wines from Ontario Vintors [sic]. We do not intend to deceive anyone. We also don’t hire the RCMP to forensically verify every wine served.” I was angrily informed. “And yet,” I retorted, “you offend the Vintners who pour 100% Ontario product by allowing one company to bring in the fake stuff.” And saying nothing.

It’s absolutely inexcusable for the organizers of a Canadian wine event to be unaware of the differences between VQA and “Cellared in Canada” wines . . . in simple terms, VQA is guaranteed to be Canadian wine, CiC is guaranteed to be up to 70% foreign. The wineries that do their level best to disguise foreign wine as domestic deserve to have their deceitful practices exposed and shamed. One particular no-longer-Canadian-owned wine conglomerate is quite noteworthy for this kind of deceptive marketing.

QotD: Depression

Filed under: Health, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:01

I will meet October with a great weight off my chest. I will meet December with the novel mostly done. In between now and then I just want to be happy and content and useful. The last two weeks have been a bit unfortunate, with the Black Dog prowling and growling in the bushes outside the reach of the campfire light; I just lost enthusiasm for my enthusiasms. I think it’s lifted. The worst thing about Depression isn’t the sense that you’re ac-centuating the negative, it’s that you’re seeing things the way they really are, stripped of the illusions you use every day to divert yourself from the Yawning Maw of Futility. It’s the wind that blows off the snow and reveals the stone.

James Lileks, Bleat, 2009-08-04

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