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Comment Re: How about basic security? (Score 5, Informative) 390

IPSec is perfectly usable.

Telebit demonstrated transparent routing (ie: total invisibility of internal networks without loss of connectivity) in 1996.

IPv6 has a vastly simpler header, which means a vastly simpler stack. This means fewer defects, greater robustness and easier testing. It also means a much smaller stack, lower latency and fewer corner cases.

IPv6 is secure by design. IPv4 isn't secure and there is nothing you can design to make it so.

Comment Re: Waiting for the killer app ... (Score 3, Informative) 390

IPv6 would help both enormously. Lower latency on routing means faster responses.

IP Mobility means users can move between ISPs without posts breaking, losing responses to queries, losing hangout or other chat service connections, or having to continually re-authenticate.

Autoconfiguration means both can add servers just by switching the new machines on.

Because IPv4 has no native security, it's vulnerable to a much wider range of attacks and there's nothing the vendors can do about them.

Comment Re: DNS without DHCP (Score 4, Informative) 390

Anycast tells you what services are on what IP. There are other service discovery protocols, but anycast was designed specifically for IPv6 bootstrapping. It's very simple. Multicast out a request for who runs a service, the machine with the service unicasts back that it does.

Dynamic DNS lets you tell the DNS server who lives at what IP.

IPv6 used to have other features - being able to move from one network to another without dropping a connection (and sometimes without dropping a packet), for example. Extended headers were actually used to add features to the protocol on-the-fly. Packet fragmentation was eliminated by having per-connection MTUs. All routing was hierarchical, requiring routers to examine at most three bytes. Encryption was mandated, ad-hoc unless otherwise specified. Between the ISPs, the NAT-is-all-you-need lobbyists and the NSA, most of the neat stuff got ripped out.

IPv6 still does far, far more than just add addresses and simplify routing (reducing latency and reducing the memory requirements of routers), but it has been watered down repeatedly by people with an active interest in everyone else being able to do less than them.

I say roll back the protocol definition to where the neat stuff existed and let the security agencies stew.

ISS

ISS Could Be Fitted With Lasers To Shoot Down Space Junk 167

An anonymous reader writes Japan's Riken research institute has suggested a new idea for dealing with space junk. They say a fiber optic laser mounted onto the International Space Station could blast debris out of the sky. From the article: "To combat the increasingly dense layer of dead satellites and miscellaneous space debris that are enshrouding our planet, no idea — nets, lassos, even ballistic gas clouds — seems too far-fetched to avoid. Now, an international team of researchers led by Japan's Riken research institute has put forward what may be the most ambitious plan to date. They propose blasting an estimated 3,000 tons of space junk out of orbit with a fiber optic laser mounted on the International Space Station."

Comment Re:You are now part of the 1% (Score 4, Informative) 81

No I think your maths is broken.

Current world population 7 billion. 1% of 7 billion is 70 million.

Credit Suisse estimates world wealth at over $250 Trillion - https://publications.credit-su...

According to Oxfam (biased towards putting the wealth into the 1% category) 48% of the worlds wealth is held by the top 1% - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.... 48% of $250 Trillion is $120 Trillion.

$120 Trillion / 70 million is $1,714,285. Which shows if you want to get into the top 1% you need nearly 5 times as much money as you suggest.

Comment Re:What's bad about Uber drivers? (Score 1) 48

Taxis in the Netherlands are generally great (though expensive), with the notable exception of Amsterdam. There they refuse you service if the trip is not long enough to their liking. They are typically rude, and oftentimes armed. It's fun to go to the taxi-stand at Amsterdam central station and notice the permanent presence of at least two police cars there. They're not there to protect taxi drivers from the population, that's for sure.

I've taken UberPop in Amsterdam and it's great. Unfortunately, the Uber drivers need to ask you to sit in front, to reduce the risk of being attacked by vigilante taxi drivers. It's a breath of fresh air in a thoroughly unpleasant market, and I hope legislation gets passed soon to make it legal.

Comment What is wrong with SCTP and DCCP? (Score 4, Interesting) 84

These are well-established, well-tested, well-designed protocols with no suspect commercial interests involved. QUIC solves nothing that hasn't already been solved.

If pseudo-open proprietary standards are de-rigour, then adopt the Scheduled Transfer Protocol and Delay Tolerant Protocol. Hell, bring back TUBA, SKIP and any other obscure protocol nobody is likely to use. It's not like anyone cares any more.

Comment Re: Must hackers be such dicks about this? (Score 1) 270

He claimed he could hack the plane. This was bad and the FBI had every right to determine his motives, his actual capabilities and his actions.

The FBI fraudulently claimed they had evidence a crime had already taken place. We know it's fraudulent because if they did have evidence, the guy would be being questioned whilst swinging upside down over a snake pit. Hey, the CIA and Chicago have Black Sites, the FBI is unlikely to want to miss out. Anyways, they took his laptop, not him, which means they lied and attempted to pervert the course of justice. That's bad, unprofessional and far, far more dangerous. The researcher could have killed himself and everyone else on his plane. The FBI, by using corrupt practices, endanger every aircraft.

Comment Re: Must hackers be such dicks about this? (Score 1) 270

Did the FBI have the evidence that he had actually hacked a previous leg of the flight, or did they not?

If they did not, if they knowingly programmed a suspect with false information, they are guilty of attempted witness tampering through false memory syndrome. Lots of work on this, you can program anyone to believe they've done anything even if the evidence is right in front of them that nothing was done at all. Strong minds make no difference, in fact they're apparently easier to break.

Falsifying the record is self-evidently failure of restraint.

I have little sympathy for the researcher, this kind of response has been commonplace since 2001, slow-learners have no business doing science or engineering. They weren't exactly infrequent before then.

Nor have I any sympathy for the airlines. It isn't hard to build a secure network where the security augments function rather than simply taking up overhead. The same is true of insecure car networks. The manufacturers of computerized vehicles should be given a sensible deadline (say, next week Tuesday) to have fully tested and certified patches installed on all vulnerable vehicles.

Failure should result in fines of ((10 x vehicle worth) + (average number of occupants x average fine for unlawful death)) x number of vehicles in service. At 15% annual rate of interest for every year the manufacturer delays.

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