That is why it has to be the ISPs looking at the packets. We are talking about denial of service type attacks, mostly, so there are going to be plenty of packets to do a proper trace. They can trace the IP spoofed packets routing within their networks and they can see what outside network they are actually coming from. And if the end result is going to be disconnecting from that outside network if the partner ISP doesn't effectively deal with the problem computers then that should be sufficient incentive for that other network operator to trace the packets back to their real origination. If you have cooperation between the ISPs then you shouldn't have a problem locating problem computers. And if you don't have at least this basic level of cooperation then you shouldn't be connecting to their network in the first place. Spoofing should be a simple matter of egress filtering anyway. If you ensure that all outbound packets are actually coming from IP addresses on your network, then that should stop these kinds of attacks originating from your network.

Treat it like cancer. If you can identify a single IP address, then the affected ISP should notify the ISP that owns the IP address to disable the connection of whatever computer was using it at the time. If the ISP refuses to comply in a timely manner then cut off all routing to and from that ISP network. Basically like what has been done to and from North Korea. And keep that network unreachable until a human negotiated settlement is reached. ISPs have the knowledge, resources and power to deal with botnets, that they would choose not to manage the problem effectively is a business decision and not a technical one.

For robotic cars to succeed they will have to work on existing infrastructure and share roads with human drivers. Everyone knows that except for the original author. Robotic cars aren't about designing a better transportation network, it is about designing a better driver. Every bit of the premise of this thread is faulty:

For robotic cars to be successful they will have to be just as effective with one robotic car on the road as with a dozen or a million. For robotic cars to be successful they will have to have navigational control local to the car following a simple set of driving rules with minimal or no reliance on outside systems. For robotic cars to be successful they will have to work on dirt roads as well as they do on highways and city streets. For robotic cars to be successful they will have to sometimes go above the speed limit in certain circumstances. For robotic cars to be successful laws will have to recognize that the passenger is not in control of the vehicle and therefore is not legally responsible or liable for the operation or the results. For robotic cars to be successful they will need to be allowed by government regulations and not enabled by them. We need government to treat robotic drivers like they do human drivers... if they can pass a driving test then they should be allowed on the road. So autonomous driving systems will need to be certified by government regulators, certainly, but they shouldn't face a slew of requirements that human drivers don't have.

Robotic cars are not about creating a new transportation system, it is about fixing a design flaw in the current system that causes tens of thousands of deaths each year: the human driver.

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Yes, people go on these tree planting binges for arbor day or whatever and we end up with tens of thousands of sometimes genetically identical clones of the same damn tree being planted over and over again. What we need is more sustainable biodiversity not just more trees.

The reporting so far is that access to gmail accounts has been blocked, but specifically blocking emails from gmail.com users to other email accounts has not been reported as far as I know. But I was agreeing that they could technically do so.

That isn't how the Internet is meant to work. But yes, they could theoretically block emails from whichever domains or IP addresses they want to, but this is beyond what they have been reported to have done so far.

To me the question is how does this impact trade and WTO rules and what if any retaliatory steps the US government is going to take against Chinese companies doing business in or trading with the US. Both sides have an interest in promoting free trade, but that requires an equitable two-way relationship.

And on this side of the Bigger Pond, it seems very very hypocritical for Google to have withdrawn from China because of extra legal hacking by Chinese Military when the NSA has now been accused/revealed to have been doing the same damn thing to Google. Specifically I am talking about the extra-legal hacking of the communications between Google's data centers that was reportedly done by the NSA. If Google were being consistent it should just move its operations outside the US also... That isn't to excuse bad actors in China, maybe the hacking in China was more disruptive to Google operations and made the situation untenable, but the consistency of the reasoning seems a bit more suspect than it did at the time.

Yes. Unless there is some manifest criminal/terrorist intent.

And if someone accidentally forgets to check in their weapons then they can be politely reminded that they need to do so and have their bags sent to check-in instead of having their property confiscated.

So basically no different than all the ships coming from China carrying all the stuff you buy... and by "let us deal with it" you mean deal with it the same way we are dealing with it now... which is to say not dealing with it and just letting it wash up on beaches and sit in the middle of the ocean until it finally sinks.

I don't believe people are attacking climate science primarily based on their own preconceived beliefs. At this point most of the "debate" is about politics, economics and self interest. And very few people on either side seem truly motivated by what will happen 200, 100 or even 50 years from now.

If carbon emissions are an overriding concern, then we could relatively easily replace most of our carbon emissions with a large concerted nuclear power build-out in the next twenty years. One which would give us hundreds of years of power supply without carbon emissions just based on Uranium alone. We know nuclear power is relatively safe and a workable solution compared with the more speculative technologies or draconian economic and population contractions that have been talked about.

Or we could just wait and see what comes down the pipeline in terms of new more efficient and more workable energy production technologies, which seems to be really what we are doing de facto.

Either way spinning our wheels in this "debate" seems like a deliberate distraction that all sides are using to distract from the fact that we don't seem close to an agreeable solution to the problem.

Yes. But this time, all it would take for good to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

Yes, but I think you mean until US laws EXPIRE on June 1, 2015. The most egregious parts of the Patriot Act are still set to expire on June 1, 2015. After that it appears that demanding ALL the records from a business or institution (or person?).... including phone records, email logs, text message logs, web site visitor logs, library records etc etc... will again require an actual constitutionally valid warrant naming the cause, the person and the things to be seized.

Most people live where their car is registered. And most commonly it is household members that might be driving that car. So address is a pretty solid way to associate the data. No not 100%., but that wasn't the point. It was merely a convenience for police to be able to bring up the record of someone more quickly based on the car registration.

Name or Name and address should be more than sufficient 99% of the time to bring up the records for an in-state driver.

As for out of state drivers... states have to determine reciprocity for a variety of licensing, so that isn't a new problem.

On the first issue. Having a database association between a car registration and known or even likely drivers is a relatively trivial exercise in associating different databases... namely car registrations and licenses. Shared address would be the simplest way to associate cars and possible drivers. But that would clearly not be 100% reliable, so it would be merely a convenience for the police so they don't have to manually enter information for writing up a ticket or checking for outstanding warrants. Actually, it could be of added benefit because it could end up bringing up information on other household members who may very well be in the car at the time.

The only concern about making up a name that would be valid is if the courts saw making up a name or withholding your name as a valid exercise of your first or 5th amendment rights. Otherwise you could simply make it a requirement for drivers to give their real legal name to police and it would be practically no different than presenting a fake ID or refusing to give your ID to the police. And the benefit is that such a system would eliminate the possibility of people getting cited for driving without a license just for forgetting their license at home. It is a real shame that in most states the system has made forgetfulness a misdemeanor. I know that I have left my wallet at home probably half a dozen or maybe a dozen times over many years and driven my car, thankfully never got caught.

As for the ID being a convenient way to get started for looking up someone's data. I don't dispute that. Especially, for all those scenarios where someone has a hard to spell name or like you mention a hard to facially recognize face. Having a card with a name, picture and bar code on it makes some sense. And there are many many somewhat artificial reasons that having a physical ID makes sense. Like access to Federal facilities requiring a REAL ID compliant state issued picture ID. So I wouldn't argue for a wholesale overnight change. But I do have a concern that most states have laws on the books that make a simple and reasonable act of forgetfullness a misdemeanor crime.

I think what I would suggest as way to make the law less unnecessarily onerous would simply be to allow people to avoid an additional citation for driving without a license if the police can verify your identity via other means and can verify that you do have a license to drive. So simply eliminate the misdemeanor for those who have merely forgotten their licenses as long as the police system is working.

That is a bit different than what was described in the news story and what I was describing.... What the Department of Transportation was supposedly doing was actually using the cell phone pings to the towers in order to identify, triangulate and track vehicles. So there was no "opt-out" like you can do if you are using an android phone and don't want to provide location data to Google. The only opt out was to power off your phone.