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Comment: Re:With "smart grid" or "smart cities" coming (Score 1) 66

by shbazjinkens (#43542349) Attached to: Thousands of SCADA, ICS Devices Exposed Through Serial Ports

1. Use a second physically completely separate Internet for infrastructure only?

It's called a WAN Link, They have been around for quite some time and are a lot cheaper than internet circuits in the same tier class for corporate/industrial.

T1s are cheap (usually under $600/month) and can be deployed anywhere (%90) there is copper phone service. (not as cheap as 'consumer' internet, but you wouldn't be using that anyway for something like this now would you??...) And other connections are usually available in most urban/industrial areas (DS3, Metro-Ethernet over copper/fiber, dark fiber leasing, etc...) and are usually covered with SLAs,

And all the major telcos already have all of the above on a "separate" internet infrastructure and even separate them out by customer so they can't even talk to each other (unless they installed a link between and only when they request it) You can even get WAN links between providers that are P2P (T1 from ATT in one location and a T1 from VZ in another and they will be a direct link as far as your router on each end is concerned.)

This is the proper way to link internal systems that you can not link yourself. And if your really paranoid you can even do VPN encryption over that just in case someone actually takes the time to dig up copper/fiber and splice into after some how knowing which in 1,000 pairs of copper/fiber is actually yours in the middle of a street.

Respectfully, $600/month is way, way too expensive for most industrial applications. I work in energy, and we use a tunnel to our VPN provided by cellular companies to link our hosting services to customer sites. It's closer to the realm of $40/month depending on the bandwidth of the connection. All of these options, and encryption, are plausible ways to sufficiently separate ones self from the public internet. I won't comment too much on my experiences with unsecured connections except to say that it is much worse than the summary says it is. These are the discovered devices only..

Comment: Active web user, still read periodicals (Score 4, Insightful) 363

by shbazjinkens (#43477227) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Magazines Do You Still Read?
There's really no substitute on the web (for free) that replaces quality scientific periodicals. If I want to know about some uncommon subject, often the only way to get that information is by paying a credible source to deliver it regularly. The news-media and blogosphere aren't particularly interested in detailing the latest way to detect carbon nanotubes of a particular chirality, or the latest low-energy method of measuring gas flow. That's why I'm still an IEEE member, among other organizations.

Comment: Re:Lawsuit Coming? (Score 1) 82

by shbazjinkens (#42592053) Attached to: Inside the Tech of SpaceX's Homegrown Rocket Engine

"Merlin" is an engine brand of Rolls-Royce, a V12 piston engine from the 30's onwards used in a wide variety of aircraft. I can imagine raised eyebrows in their offices, but would they actually sue? I hope not, that would show these lawsuit-happy Yanks what British class really is.

It's a different market segment, so the trademark can't be enforced in that way in the USA.

Comment: Re:Yeah, but we're very productive (Score 1) 1063

by shbazjinkens (#42558971) Attached to: US Near Bottom In Life Expectancy In Developed World

I notice some US employers require their staff to take vacation on public holidays like Christmas or New Years when they couldn't work even if they wanted to.

A public holiday doesn't count against vacation time in the USA. If you added those days to discriminatory vacation days most people would have 3.5 weeks/year. Is it different in Europe?

Comment: Re:Air resistance. (Score 2) 1184

by shbazjinkens (#41154565) Attached to: White House Finalizes 54.5 MPG Fuel Efficiency Standard

The solution is to not test the vehicles at 80 MPH and, instead, test them at 55/65 MPH, which is the speed limit. If you choose to go over the speed limit, your gas mileage will suffer.

Where do you live that Interstate speed limits are as low as 55/65? Where I live, speed limits on Interstates are 70. And there are places where the limits are higher.

Many states don't have those high speed limits. I live in Oklahoma, and travel all over the states for work. At home speed limits are mostly 65 mph on highways outside of the city. 70 on interstates. 75 on turnpikes in certain parts of the state. In TX, I commonly see 70/75 mph speed limits in the South and West parts of the state. In Louisiana, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Mississippi.. sometimes just 45, most often not more than 55 mph speed limits. It depends on what the terrain allows. So I would expect lots of people in the NE and select other parts of the country wouldn't know any better, since they haven't been to flyover country where we live. :)

Comment: Re:mistake #1 (Score 1) 227

by shbazjinkens (#39586623) Attached to: Toronto Police Use Facebook Picture in Online Lineup
You must not be aware of this, but I was informed when I took first aid training & CPR that because I was a certified first responder, many states require me to ask if the person would like assistance, and comply if they respond affirmatively. If they respond negatively, or cannot respond, then almost every state absolves you of liability. "Good Samaritan" laws typically protect you from legal repercussions if you help and screw up. It's a civil suit, case law issue though - not usually enforced by statute.

Comment: Re:Fracking Storage (Score 1) 202

by shbazjinkens (#37970544) Attached to: Oklahoma Hit By Its Strongest-Ever Recorded Quake

You mean like this? The location is from the USGS Earthquake Page showing the locations of the recent Oklahoma earthquakes. Is that a gas well right next to the quake location (that "bright square pad")? And could those be fault lines in the background?

It's hard to tell exactly what's on it, but I see a pad with what looks to be four tanks just north of there. It looks like it has a few horizontal and vertical separators too. Major hydrofracturing activity in Oklahoma is centered around other places though.. McAlester, El Reno and Elk City.

The kinds of wells that are known to be quake-causing, according to my geophysicist friend, are water disposal wells. These will have lots of tanks, often 10-20 tanks, for storage buffering. It will also conspicuously have electricity leading to the site to power the injection pumps.

The XY location of the quakes has an uncertainty of 8 miles. The depth was something a little less than a mile uncertainty. So you don't need to look *right* by the given epicenter. I don't think that particular facility could be responsible for releasing several high-magnitude quakes, when compared to what has been causing problems in Arkansas and Texas.

Those ridges may or may not be fault lines.. there is another phenomena that formed those here, the dust bowl. They're all over the place, so I can't say for sure, you'd have to consult the USGS maps. I think there is a fault line through Lincoln County.

Probably Google maps are too outdated to show a recent problem well, in hindsight. I'm curious what kind of operations are in the area, because I've never been there for work, but I have been nearly everywhere in the state where there are major operations going on. Based on the Prague homepage, it looks to be a depleted field, and I wouldn't expect any major hydrofracturing or disposal activity there.

Comment: Re:Hello? Did someone order a fresh batch of scien (Score 2) 202

by shbazjinkens (#37967956) Attached to: Oklahoma Hit By Its Strongest-Ever Recorded Quake

Come now, nerds. All this talk and no science. How about something from the Oklahoma Geological Survey? They set out to disprove an earlier quake this year was the result of fracking. Instead, they found correlation: http://www.eenews.net/assets/2011/11/02/document_pm_01.pdf

Here is some commentary on the report: http://www.eenews.net/public/eenewspm/2011/11/02/1

I'm glad you posted this.. but did you read it?

With his arm twisted, Holland would still not definitively tie the microquakes to fracturing at the well. It is fiendishly difficult to attribute earthquakes, given existing scientific uncertainties about why and when quakes are triggered. What is clear is that the quakes are not common: As Holland noted, firms have drilled 100,000 fracturing wells in Oklahoma, with three minor seismic events reported.

The fracturing continued at the Picket well after the earthquakes, and the survey detected no additional seismic activity during that time, Holland said. The well was located in a geologically complex region riven by thrust rocks, he added, and a quake would likely have occurred at some point with or without the drilling -- the rocks were primed for it.

For all of those talking about hydrofracking / drilling / wastewater disposal wells in the same sentence, as if they are the same thing.. they are three completely different processes. First you drill a well. Then the drill rig leaves, and there is a well casing going to the formation. Hydrofracturing equipment moves in and swarms over the wellsite.. but this does not involve a tall drilling rig, as there is no drilling going on. High pressure water and sand are pumped downhole until the well is sufficiently fractured. Then the fracturing equipment leaves. The well makes oil, gas and water. Not always oil.. but usually. The water is useless, so it's trucked off. If there is a whole lot of water, then trucking is expensive, so they drill a wastewater disposal well which pumps the water into a different formation. Sometimes this is on a fault line, and sometimes it lubricates the fault so that earthquakes start happening.

But notice.. the wastewater disposal well is both not on the same site nor in the same formation as the hydrofractured well. If hydrofracturing has any effect at all, it must be due to fracturing on a fault line where there isn't already a lot of fluid accumulated.

Comment: Re:Fracking Storage (Score 1) 202

by shbazjinkens (#37965764) Attached to: Oklahoma Hit By Its Strongest-Ever Recorded Quake
FUD. According to a geophysicist buddy, salt-water injection wells have been known to cause earthquakes due to lubrication of fault lines. He doesn't seem to think there's a link to hydrofracturing. I work in the oilfield, I don't think there's a lot of that kind of activity in that area. If you check the satellite maps you can verify that, wells stand out as bright square pads. We would be much more likely to have that happen in the area West of Oklahoma City, where there is LOTS of horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing going on right now, rather than over by Prague, if hydrofracturing actually caused quakes.

Comment: Re:God smiting the bible belt (Score 1) 202

by shbazjinkens (#37965558) Attached to: Oklahoma Hit By Its Strongest-Ever Recorded Quake

Earth quakes, tornados, floods, etc. It's just God smiting the them for mean spirited politics and wacko religious views. Not that God hates those people mind you. He just doesn't approve of their "lifestyle".

It's interesting to me how easy it is to start with the "us and them" attitudes when you never leave one given region.

Comment: Re:Perhaps a "key escrow" feature? (Score 3, Insightful) 284

by shbazjinkens (#33229322) Attached to: Can Twitter and Facebook Deal With Their Dead?

Confirmation of the death isn't a problem, there are all sorts of efficient ways to do that. There are other reasons that people aren't being reported as deceased.

One of my very close friends died recently and the reason none of his Facebook friends have filed is because Facebook will delete all of his status updates. Maybe it is painful to see his name or face pop up every once in a while on my Facebook page, but it's much more painful to see all of our conversations on his wall get deleted because of Facebook policy.

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