Time Immortal

David Warren is back from his annual vacation, and is in fine form. I’ve been meaning to comment on the recent discovery of memristors (the “fourth” fundamental circuit element, after resistors, inductors, and capacitors) for a while now, but I rather prefer Mr. Warren’s approach to it:

…the empirical outlook of science needs balancing against the philosophical outlook, which demands context, and seeks breadth. It is incidentally also why the greater advances in scientific understanding are often made by rank amateurs — people like Einstein working in places like Swiss patent offices, who can see the forest in spite of all the trees.

It is also why such a disproportionate number of the greatest theoretical advances have been made by religious “nutjobs” (in the current parlance) — from the evangelical Newton, to the Catholic fundamentalist Galileo, to monks such as Copernicus, Mendel, and Lemaître — people chilled out by disposition, with a grand view of nature and her infinitely distant, but transubstantially present, God. Without such vision, we all tend to become easily panicked data crunchers.

I was struck this week by another science story, also in Nature magazine. The techies at Hewlett-Packard have successfully fabricated “memristors,” a fourth building block for electronic circuits (after capacitors, resistors, and inductors). The achievement promises significant advances in computer memory and processing.

The possibility of memristors was first established by Leon Chua, a professor at Berkeley, in 1971. He said this week, “I’m thrilled because it’s almost like vindication. Something I did is not just in my imagination, it’s fundamental.”

I love the implicit faith and humility in that statement. The man is thrilled because he didn’t really invent anything after all, merely discovered (”dis-covered”) something already there, in nature or “the mind of God.”

And THAT is where authority comes from. Not from “scientists.”

The thought of scientific discovery is thrilling, but so often it seems the frame of mind that is put in to the necessary research is…lacking in a certain internal humility. Leon Chua knew, from mathematical circuit models, that something more was yet to be discovered; resistors, inductors, and capacitors, though important, did not tell the whole story. But he didn’t create memristors — he understood from looking at the math that the fundamental laws that governed the Universe required that something like memristance exist, even if no technology corporation had yet constructed a memristor.

And indeed, all congratulations to both Leon Chua and the researchers at HP — this discovery is a significant advance in computing technology.

But even in saying that sentence, what is the most important reflection one can make? David Warren points to it — the term “discovery.” For indeed, this is not something new that has emerged suddenly, but instead is something very old which has now been found.

God is rather wont to array things in just such a way that this sort of thing transpires from time to time.

This:

Last month, an investigator with the [Canadian Human Rights Commission] told a hearing into a hate complaint that he made postings on websites under the password-protected pseudonym “Jadewarr.”

In response to a subpoena, Bell Canada linked “Jadewarr” to [Nelly Hechme]’s personal internet account, and provided her address and telephone number at the public hearing.

…

Hechme disputed an initial media report that her wireless Internet access was unsecured and therefore easily hacked. In fact, she said, it required an encryption key that could not have been guessed or casually cracked.

When she forgot the key, even she couldn’t access the connection, she said.

“It was so secure to the point I couldn’t get into it (so) I’m not sure how they got into it. It’s very bizarre.”

Reminds me of this:

Ars Technica has an excellent article up on some basic practices one can follow to secure one’s computer, whether said computer is running Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X.

I think I might format this one for printing and hand it out to everyone who asks me for computer-related assistance from now on; in this digital age, if you don’t know at least these “ground rule” basics about securing your computer, you really don’t deserve to be using one in the first place.

It’s been said before, and is worth saying again: yes, computer viruses and worms can be highly destructive things. That they are not more destructive, however, is a testament only to the fact that as brilliant as hackers and virus programmers might be, there are substantially more brilliant people working for the “good guys.”

And here’s one more example of that principle in action.

The research team reverse-infiltrated Storm by deliberately allowing the botnet to infect a series of honeypots. Once infected, the honeypots become launch points for the researcher’s own payload. Along the way, the team was able to estimate the number of infected systems by actively tracking P2P activity rather than passively observing the total amount of spam flowing out of a single botnet.

The research team’s paper (PDF) goes into considerable detail and gives specific information on how the team analyzed, monitored, and penetrated Storm’s structure. Their own counter-attack, however, is elegant in its simplicity. By publishing their own set of false commands at the appropriate time, the group was able to prevent the “legitimate” commands from being received.

Being able to prevent the Storm botnet from actually carrying out its own updates is impressive, but the real strength of this research lies in its proof that botnets have weaknesses of their own that security firms can potentially exploit.

Hey…if it works in medical research, why not see if the digital analog is possible?

Update: Welcome, WebElf readers!

Just wanted to say that Microsoft Virtual PC, running on my 1 GHz Powerbook G4, actually makes for a not unpleasant Windows XP experience. It’s not as fast as my work PC, to be sure, but it’s hardly unbearable, even with the overhead inherent in virtualization, and even given that my laptop dates back to 2003.

Don’t ask me why I’m experimenting with this now.

That’s in the U.S., mind you…but really, can it be any more secure in Canada? The level of access gained was sufficiently high as to enable, should the attack have been by malicious persons rather than security consultants, a power distribution shutdown.

You know, at the end of the day, the IT business comes down to this: yes, there are brilliant and malicious people out there trying to cause all manner of harm and chaos. That they do not is a testament only to the fact that on this side, there are people who are slightly more brilliant.

One of the more amusing — and yet tragic — revelations of Marc Lemire’s cross-examination of Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) staffer Dean Steacy (among other people) in regard to the exact identities of the authors of certain racially-charged statements at the white supremacist forum that Mr. Lemire oversees has to be the tactics employed by Dean Steacy. Essentially, Mr. Steacy (and former HRC employee and current serial plaintiff thereof Richard Warman) engaged in tactics that would be called “entrapment” had bona-fide police officers committed them — dissatisfied with the quantity (or lack thereof) or specifically racist material to be found on Mr. Lemire’s forums, they created aliases for themselves, logged in to the forums, and posted their own racist statements. Those statements then were used to form the basis of Mr. Warman’s human rights complaint against Mr. Lemire.

This is all old news by now; I reiterate it here for the benefit of those readers who may have forgotten some of the finer points since last it came up for discussion on this blog.

What is new — and both comic and tragic — is exactly how Mr. Steacy went about “covering his tracks” when posting the aforementioned racist content.

When Mr. Steacy began posting messages on hate sites as “jadewarr,” he was sufficiently internet savvy not to leave any ISP information that could be traced back to the CHRC. He didn’t want Marc Lemire looking at his server logs and noticing any unusual interest from anything ending in “gc.ca.” So Mr. Steacy disconnected himself from the office Internet, and looked around for alternative wireless connections. He found one belonging to a young lady whose apartment is a block away from CHRC headquarters in Ottawa. Without obtaining a warrant, he connected to her server, and in effect used her as his cover for his “jadewarr” postings. Last week, a representative from Bell Canada named the lady in open court, since when her name has been reported in the newspapers. Let’s say in 10 years’ time, this woman applies for a job in, oh, Sarnia or Moose Jaw or Des Moines, and her prospective employer decides to Google her name, and what comes up is all very complicated and hard to follow but she seems to have something to do with some white supremacist investigation back in 2008.

Dean Steacy is on record as dismissing the right to freedom of speech as “an American concept” that he doesn’t put much stock in. Evidently, his attitude toward the right to private property is similar. And yes, I know that the lady whose wireless internet access he made use of should have done more to protect herself against his invasion of her privacy and usurpation of her identity. Wireless routers should be secured, preferably using the WPA security scheme, and any person intenting to use a wireless router in his or her home should both be made aware of this fact and, if necessary, taught how to do it.

But even though her wireless was unsecured, Mr. Steacy’s use of it to pursue — by way of entrapment-like tactics — the CHRC’s case against Mr. Lemire is unconscionable, and may have tarnished this lady’s reputation for years to come. Not that one expects the human rights kommisars to demonstrate the least bit of care toward the well-being of Canadian citizens, not while more pressing concerns — like the pursuit of the fictional Canadian Nazi Party, or the defence of a Newfoundlander’s right to act in a manner that lines up with ‘Newfie’ stereotypes, thus resulting in the termination of his employment for being a lazy slacker — are out there to be found.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Apparently, it looks for variations in how light hits objects in given scene. Not that one needs complex software to spot some of the fauxtography that’s been found in the MSM of late.