North Korea, The Internet, Our Vulnerability

[homerfobe]

So they believe that North Korea is responsible for the cyber attacks on the world's fragile computer systems? This gives rise to some scary possibilities, like why in hell would N.Korea go to the expense of building and testing weapons of mass destruction when they already have the weapons they need at their fingertips? They or any other enemy could defeat any world power without firing a single shot or missile.

Think about this crap. With computer hacking, they could easily:

* Shut down main power grids of any country. In the U.S. we've already seen the results of the mass panic and confusion a few years ago when practically the entire Northeast was shut down by a power failure in ONE massive grid.

* Hacking could shut down virtually any system that controls land based missile launches, or those from subs, destroyers, aircraft, and so forth. Computer controlled guidance systems from military or commercial aircraft can be crippled

* Land based communications can be crippled by hacking satellites. Newer vehicles can be stopped in their tracks or made to run out of control.

* The Internet has virtually destroyed or weakened businesses all over the world, leaving people without jobs, or hopes of recouping what they've lost.

There's some scary shit out there that can do as much or more damage as any missile, nuclear or conventional. All it takes is the learned knowledge and a keyboard.

[rstrong]

Think about this crap. With computer hacking, they could easily:

* Shut down main power grids of any country. In the U.S. we've already seen the results of the mass panic and confusion a few years ago when practically the entire Northeast was shut down by a power failure in ONE massive grid.

Which is why the computers that connect the power grids are kept disconnected from the internet. Sure, someone will mess up eventually. But the far greater danger is still - like the outage you mention - the grid being so overloaded that power lines heat up, sag, and make contact with a tree branch at the worst possible time.

* Hacking could shut down virtually any system that controls land based missile launches, or those from subs, destroyers, aircraft, and so forth. Computer controlled guidance systems from military or commercial aircraft can be crippled

Again, these are kept separate from the internet. It helps that America's ICBM force is controlled using pre-internet technology.

* Land based communications can be crippled by hacking satellites. Newer vehicles can be stopped in their tracks or made to run out of control.

Satellite control systems are kept separate from the internet. And there's a lot of redundancy in communications - largely because satellites and land lines often go down for reasons having nothing to do with hacking.

The car thing was stupid. But the vulnerability (via the car's entertainment system) had already been patched before it was demonstrated (on a deliberately unpatched vehicle). Car manufacturers have taken notice; they're securing all those new features they've added. Firewalling the entertainment systems off from the automotive control systems.

The far greater danger is still a bad automatic software update taking out thousands of cars at once. (This has already happened. Just like anti-virus updates occasionally, simultaneously, take down computers by the thousands.)

* The Internet has virtually destroyed or weakened businesses all over the world, leaving people without jobs, or hopes of recouping what they've lost.

It's created a great many jobs. But yes, there will be a net loss. Just like the manufacturing automation: America has lost a great many manufacturing jobs while it's manufacturing output has steadily increased. Just like office automation: America has lost a lot of office, accounting and clerical jobs while worker productivity has only increased. Just like farm machinery: Farming jobs are a small fraction of what they used to be, despite far greater output.

That will only get worse. A lot of driving jobs will likely disappear in the 2020s for example. But productivity will continue increase, making corporations richer while continuing to lower their workforce. Between that and the permanent tax holidays for the wealthy and corporations, there's a massive transfer of wealth going on. The middle class is disappearing.

Even then, like America's healthcare, the strategy will be to target those products and services only at the rich and write off the rest. But that will only work so much. Eventually unemployment will be so great that too few can afford to buy those products and services.

Which is why "basic income" is now being seriously looked at by those who would have written it off as commie Marxist socialism not long ago.

[Vrede too]

* Hacking could shut down virtually any system that controls land based missile launches, or those from subs, destroyers, aircraft, and so forth. Computer controlled guidance systems from military or commercial aircraft can be crippled

Again, these are kept separate from the internet. It helps that America's ICBM force is controlled using pre-internet technology.

Not proof, but further evidence that homerfobe was never in the Navy and certainly isn't a rear admiral.

[homerfobe]

Which is why the computers that connect...

Thanks. Good info. However, I have seen and encountered computer issues in guidance systems and encrypted communications. I never really gave it much thought about those not being internet connected, but they are computerized and receive commands from another computer connected to a command center. Therefore if a man programmed it, a man can screw with it.

Not proof, but further evidence that homerfobe was never in the Navy and certainly isn't a rear admiral.

Hey chucklehead, if you have no proof, you have no evidence. If you can't provide proof or any kind of evidence of who or what, STFU. Moron.

[billy.pilgrim]

Which is why the computers that connect...

Thanks. Good info. However, I have seen and encountered computer issues in guidance systems and encrypted communications. I never really gave it much thought about those not being internet connected, but they are computerized and receive commands from another computer connected to a command center. Therefore if a man programmed it, a man can screw with it.

Not proof, but further evidence that homerfobe was never in the Navy and certainly isn't a rear admiral.

Hey chucklehead, if you have no proof, you have no evidence. If you can't provide proof or any kind of evidence of who or what, STFU. Moron.

You are too easily identified as a "nothing".

[homerfobe]

You are too easily identified as a "nothing".

Whereas you too are easily identified as a "nothing". Nothing but a dumbass piece of shit that sucks on Vrede's tit.

[Vrede too]

Wow, even simple and universally understood concepts like relevant but inconclusive evidence befuddle the moron, poor thing.

[homerfobe]

Wow, even simple and universally understood concepts like relevant but inconclusive evidence befuddle the moron, poor thing.

That's why I called him a a dumbass piece of shit. I see you've got his number too.

[Vrede too]

... I never really gave it much thought ...

More revealing than you know, but no surprise to us. Must be your chronic obsession with gay male sex, nttawwt.

[homerfobe]

... I never really gave it much thought ...

More revealing than you know, but no surprise to us. Must be your chronic obsession with gay male sex, nttawwt.

Not obsession with, Hatred and revulsion for. The act and the participants. nttawwt.
Just as a dog loves to roll on a rotting maggot infested corpse, so is your love and glorifying for queerness. It shows.

[Vrede too]

[billy.pilgrim]

... I never really gave it much thought ...

More revealing than you know, but no surprise to us. Must be your chronic obsession with gay male sex, nttawwt.

Not obsession with, Hatred and revulsion for. The act and the participants. nttawwt.
Just as a dog loves to roll on a rotting maggot infested corpse, so is your love and glorifying for queerness. It shows.

You sure are obsessed. Reckon that date line thing stayed with you. Did you get to do the initiations when you were admiral?

[Vrede too]

"glorifying for" - ESL much?

Wow, even simple and universally understood concepts like obsession, hatred and revulsion not being mutually exclusive and in fact being far more often synonymous befuddle the moron, poor thing. All we've learned is that "rear admiral" homerfobe is too wussy to admit his obsession with gay male sex, and that he associates sex with dogs and corpses - more kinky than even I would have guessed.

Aside: I never crossed the international date line at sea, but we had a similar (?) humiliating ritual for first time crossing the Equator. I lied and said that I'd suffered the initiation on a previous tour.

[homerfobe]

Reckon that date line thing stayed with you. Did you get to do the initiations when you were admiral?
(it's not the date line, it's the equator, dumbass)

I never crossed the international date line at sea, but we had a similar (?) humiliating ritual for first time crossing the Equator. I lied and said that I'd suffered the initiation on a previous tour.
Liar. Had you done so, it would have been put in your record; the date and exact GMT and you would have received a certificate.
However, if you did, we know who was the cause of it.

[billy.pilgrim]

Reckon that date line thing stayed with you. Did you get to do the initiations when you were admiral?
(it's not the date line, it's the equator, dumbass)

I never crossed the international date line at sea, but we had a similar (?) humiliating ritual for first time crossing the Equator. I lied and said that I'd suffered the initiation on a previous tour.
Liar. Had you done so, it would have been put in your record; the date and exact GMT and you would have received a certificate.
However, if you did, we know who was the cause of it.

Thanks for the info.
Your familiarity is noted. Does this have anything to do with your obsession

[Vrede too]

I wasn't in the Navy, dipshit. No one kept those kind of records over as meaningless a thing as when each crew member crossed some invented line. The main office knew where I'd been, but it wasn't so obscenely wasteful as to expend resources tracking utter silliness like the Navy does. "certificate" - Sheesh! Folks could have easily checked with my past crewmates, but no one bothered. The tricky part was helping to inflict it on others without ever having seen it before. I guess I'm a pretty good liar when motivated. You've screwed up yet again, homerfobe.

[O Really]

The ritual of turning pollywogs into shellbacks isn't limited to the Navy, and has been performed upon crossing various significant "lines" including the Equator, the international date line, the Arctic Circle, and even entry to the Bermuda Triangle. Some are combined, as in a "Golden Shellback" who has crossed the Equator at the date line. Generally good fun for most, except that the Navy seems to take their cross-dressing and belly-kissing more seriously than non-military sailors.

[Vrede too]

We had cross-dressing, compost showers and other tame humiliation, don't remember any belly-kissing but I wasn't Neptune.

[Boatrocker]

My brief foray in the Pacific never went further north than Vancouver or further south than Baha, and only a few hundred mile off of California. In the Atlantic, our patrol area was always a nowhere patch of Mid-Atlantic, 6 knots to nowhere in bigass circles. Never crossed any lines that triggered such unbridled heathenism. So, I hold no certificates. We did once, in 1979, have a eventful patrol in the Bermuda Triangle, but we had to order I SURVIVED PATROL 44 t-shirts on our own dime.

[O Really]

I don't think I would have been very good in the Navy. I tend to agree with the comment that "the only difference in being on a ship at sea and being in jail is the added danger of drowning."