There have been a lot of reports in the last few years about China and its push to use computer and technological attacks. This was an interesting article about the topic:

China’s ability to wage cyber warfare is now “so sophisticated that the US may be unable to counteract or even detect the efforts”, the report warns. Given the dependence on the internet of key sectors of US public life, from the federal government and military to water treatment, social security and the electricity grid, “a successful attack on these internet-connected networks could paralyse the US”. [...]

[...] According to the report, Beijing is investing huge resources in cyber and space missions because it sees America’s computer networks and space assets as its “soft ribs and strategic weaknesses”. The extent of its activities gives it the potential to beat the US in military conflict. Technologically, China has improved its range of satellites, so it can now accurately locate US aircraft carrier battle groups quickly, and from a great distance. Such information could be used to guide Chinese missiles to their targets. [...]

[...] In addition to cyber warfare, the panel warns that Beijing is taking an increasingly aggressive stance in its rapidly developing space programme. The panel believes China has concluded that space will in future be an essential arena of warfare.

It notes that China tested an anti-satellite weapon last year, giving it the ability to destroy US satellites, in addition to its existing capability to “blind” them by using lasers. So far this year, 15 rockets and 17 satellites have been put into space.

These are scary developments for the US, and the world at large. And also interesting…

China is smart in realizing that they conventional forces of the US are its strong point, and a force to be reckoned with. Yet the underbelly of our forces are weak, and very important none the less. Take down the GPS system with anti-satellite technology, ouch… Take down the Internet structure, which is not only used for military operations but public information dissemination…. ouch. Not to mention what valuable secrets exist that are vulnerable to cracking.

The US capabilities on counter computer espionage are unknown to me, and perhaps most. (Read NSA, CIA, etc). Yet I have little faith in these, as it has been fairly easy in the past for private hackers and groups to infiltrate these systems. So pit a financed, professional, and motivated group against these same systems and the results seem inevitable.

This is also interesting for a few reasons regarding repercussions. When a private citizen hacks a US site, they can be caught and jailed. What about a Chinese hacking group? If they can be detected, what then? Catching and detecting alone is not enough in these cases. Rather, prevention is the name of the game.

Furthermore, do these attacks represent acts of war? I have seen some articles on this that are less than clear, and seems to world powers to be are less than sure themselves.

I am pessimistically hopeful that the US gets its act together on this front, as we all have a lot to lose. Yet when you have the Cyber Division of the US Air Force with an uncertain future, or slow startup… I do not hold much faith. NSA, I hope you are doing your job. :)

Seeing as how I rarely get comments on my low traffic blog, I tend to notice immediately when things are out of the ordinary. Starting yesterday, I have been getting spammed by “random” posters, who only leave a incoherent string of alpha numeric characters. I suspect that this bot will go away soon, at least in this form. So I am not looking that deep into whats happening, yet here is some more reading.

http://www.linkbuildr.com/comment-spam-from-9410260150-9410260153/
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/217088
http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/wordpress-comment-spam-from-amsterdam/
http://newyorktraveler.net/getting-spammed-like-crazy-today/
http://bohemianphilosophy.com/2008/11/13/if-your-mother-knows-what-you-are-doing/

One of my Windows machines needs to open EPS files, and I do not want to install Photoshop or a vector program on the computer. In trying to use GIMP to open EPS files, you may run into an issue.

I got the following error:

Error starting Ghostscript. Make sure that Ghostscript is installed and – if necessary – use the environment variable GS_PROG to tell GIMP about its location.
(Failed to execute child process (No such file or directory))

Could not interpret ‘x.eps’

GIMP requires Ghostscript to import the EPS. Even with Ghostscript installed, GIMP may not know where to look. After installing Ghostscript, and GIMP, do the following:
Vista

• Right click on My Computer
• Go to Properties
• Advanced System Settings (left side)
• Advanced Tab
• Environment Variables (near bottom)
• Under System Variables, click New.
• Variable Name is GS_PROG
• Variable Value is the path to Ghostscript. Example (C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.63\bin\gswin32.exe)
• Click OK. Restart GIMP.

XP

• Right click on My Computer
• Click on Properties
• go to Advanced tab
• Environment Variables (near bottom)
• Under System Variables, click New.
• Variable Name is GS_PROG
• Variable Value is the path to Ghostscript. Example (C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.63\bin\gswin32.exe)
• Click OK. Restart GIMP.

Via the official Gmail blog:

That’s why today we’re launching voice and video chat — right inside Gmail. We’ve tried to make this an easy-to-use, seamless experience, with high-quality audio and video — all for free. All you have to do is download and install the voice and video plugin and we take care of the rest. And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat.

I assume this is only for chat within Gmail, rather than with the separate GTalk application. I use both, and would like to see it within both. Yet either way, cool stuff. I am eager to try this out, yet will have to get someone to install the addon first. That being the only hurdle to using the video chat feature, you must install something to have it work.

On that note, isnt it irratating when you have more than a healthy amount of tabs open and you need to reload your browser?

A historic moment, and my personal hope that the future is looking up.