Quotulatiousness

November 2, 2016

Norv Turner resigns as Vikings offensive co-ordinator

Filed under: Football — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:30

As I mentioned in the game wrap-up post the other day, rising fan dissatisfaction with the Vikings’ predictable play-calling was putting some pressure on offensive co-ordinator Norv Turner. In the news this morning, Turner has offered his resignation to the team and will be replaced on an interim basis by tight ends coach Pat Shurmur. Jim Souhan reacts:

Norv Turner’s resignation is surprising in terms of its timing. It is also a logical development.

Turner took over from the oft-criticized Bill Musgrave and could not match Musgrave’s offense either in terms of running efficiency or pass protection.

He could not match Musgrave’s creativity in using Cordarrelle Patterson.

He couldn’t protect either Teddy Bridgewater or Sam Bradford.

And his willingness to allow failing offensive tackles to lose two games without helping them was likely to lead to Norv’s departure, whether by his choice or coach Mike Zimmer’s.

Pat Shurmur will take over as the Vikings’ offensive coordinator with the knowledge that he needs to improve offensive line play, protect the quarterback and improve both running and short-passing efficiency so the offensive line and Bradford don’t have to run so many plays in obvious passing situations.

If nothing else, Turner’s departure should mean we’ll see fewer seven-step drops for Sam Bradford … behind this offensive line, he was literally taking his life in his hands every time he dropped back. A lot more quick release pass plays will help Bradford stay on his feet.

Naval Tactics in the Age of Sail (1650-1815)

Filed under: Europe, History, Military — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:29

Published on 9 Sep 2016

» SCRIPT & REFERENCES «

http://militaryhistoryvisualized.com/

» SOURCES & LINKS «
Hughes, Wayne: Fleet Tactics. Theory and Practice

Tracy, Nicholas: “Naval Tactics in the Age of Sail”, in: Stilwell, Alexander: The Trafalgar Companion.

Slantchev ,Branislav L.: Warfare at Sea: The Evolution of Naval Power

Konstam, Angus: British Napoleonic Ship-of-the-Line

Tritten, James: Doctrine and Fleet Tactics in the Royal Navy

Online security theatre: “We sell biometric authentication systems to people who need a good password manager”

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

Joey DeVilla linked to this discussion of the Mirai botnet and the distressing failures of online security … not for the brilliance and sophistication of the attack (it was neither), but the failure to address simple common-sense security issues:

I’ve written about 1988’s Morris worm, and I wanted to dig into the source of the Mirai botnet (helpfully published by the author) to see how far we’ve come along in the past 28 years.

Can you guess how Mirai spreads?

Was there new zeroday in the devices? Hey, maybe there was an old, unpatched vulnerability hanging — who has time to apply software updates to their toaster? Maybe it was HeartBleed 👻?

Nope.

Mirai does one, and only one thing in order to break into new devices: it cycles through a bunch of default username/password combinations over telnet, like “admin/admin” and “root/realtek”. For a laugh, “mother/fucker” is in there too.

Default credentials. Over telnet. That’s how you get hundreds of thousands of devices. The Morris worm from 1988 tried a dictionary password attack too, but only after its buffer overflow and sendmail backdoor exploits failed.

Oh, and Morris’ password dictionary was larger, too.

QotD: Pournelle versus Bujold

Filed under: Books, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[In Jerry Pournelle’s books,] Falkenberg’s men are paragons compared to the soldiers in David Drake’s military fiction. In the Hammer’s Slammers books and elsewhere we get violence with no politico-ethical nuances attached to it all. “Carnography” is the word for this stuff, pure-quill violence porn that goes straight for the thalamus. There’s boatloads of it out there, too; the Starfist sequence by Sherman and Cragg is a recent example. Jim Baen sells a lot of it (and, thankfully, uses the profits to subsidize reprinting the Golden Age midlist).

The best-written military SF, on the other hand, tends to be more like Heinlein’s — the fact that it addresses ethical questions about organized violence (and tries to come up with answers one might actually be more willing to live with than Pournelle’s quasi-fascism or Drake’s brutal anomie) is part of its appeal. Often (as in Heinlein’s Space Cadet or the early volumes in Lois Bujold’s superb Miles Vorkosigan novels) such stories include elements of bildungsroman.

[…] Bujold winds up making the same point in a subtler way; the temptations of power and arrogance are a constant, soul-draining strain on Miles’s father Aral, and Miles eventually destroys his own career through one of those temptations

Heinlein, a U.S naval officer who loved the military and seems to have always remembered his time at Annapolis as the best years of his life, fully understood that the highest duty of a soldier may be not merely to give his life but to reject all the claims of military culture and loyalty. His elegiac “The Long Watch” makes this point very clear. You’ll seek an equivalent in vain anywhere in Pournelle or Drake or their many imitators — but consider Bujold’s The Vor Game, in which Miles’s resistance to General Metzov’s orders for a massacre is the pivotal moment at which he becomes a man.

Bujold’s point is stronger because, unlike Ezra Dahlquist in “The Long Watch” or the citizen-soldiers in Starship Troopers, Miles is not a civilian serving a hitch. He is the Emperor’s cousin, a member of a military caste; his place in Barrayaran society is defined by the expectations of military service. What gives his moment of decision its power is that in refusing to commit an atrocity, he is not merely risking his life but giving up his dreams.

Falkenberg and Admiral Lermontov have a dream, too. The difference is that where Ezra Dahlquist and Miles Vorkosigan sacrifice themselves for what they believe, Pournelle’s “heroes” sacrifice others. Miles’s and Dahlquist’s futures are defined by refusal of an order to do evil, Falkenberg’s by the slaughter of untermenschen.

This is a difference that makes a difference.

Eric S. Raymond, “The Charms and Terrors of Military SF”, Armed and Dangerous, 2002-11-13.

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