Congress warned: China winning cyber war

China is aggressively developing its power to wage cyber warfare and is now in a position to delay or disrupt the deployment of America's military forces around the world, potentially giving it the upper hand in any conflict, a panel of the US Congress has warned.

The panel's report discloses an alarming increase in incidents of Chinese computer attacks on the US government, defence companies and businesses. It notes that China now has both the intent and capability to launch cyber attacks "anywhere in the world at any time".

The conclusions reached in this year's US-China Economic and Security Review are far more dramatic than before. In 2007, it says, about 5m computers in the US were the targets of 43,880 incidents of malicious activity — a rise of almost a third on the previous year.

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".

The review's six Democrat and six Republican commissioners travelled to China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, and heard testimony from US intelligence agencies for their 393-page report.

There has been concern about Chinese computer espionage since 2002, when a large-scale series of cyber intrusions was launched on US military and government computer systems. In that attack, codenamed Titan Rain by the US, the Chinese downloaded up to 20 terabytes of data — twice the amount stored in the entire print collection of the Library of Congress.

Much of the activity is likely to emanate from groups of hackers, but the lines between private espionage and government-sponsored operations are blurred. Some 250 hacker groups are tolerated, and may even be encouraged, by Beijing to invade computer networks. Individual hackers are also being trained in cyber operations at Chinese military bases.

"China is stealing vast amounts of sensitive information from US computer networks, said Larry Wortzel, the commission's chairman.

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.

The Chinese government has given no response to the accusations, but in the past has complained of cyber attacks coming in the opposite direction.

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.

China became the third country to explore space in 2003, after the Soviet Union and the US. Until 2002 Beijing opposed the militarisation of space, but it has quietly dropped its opposition since.

China's growing military power, running parallel to its increasing economic might, is likely to present challenges to the incoming administration of Barack Obama. The president-elect has said that "China is rising and it's not going away", although he prefers to characterise the US-Chinese relationship as one between "competitors" rather than enemies.

// http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/20/china-us-military-hacking

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter - TIME's Best Inventions of 2008

TIME publish Best Inventions of 2008: From a genetic testing service to an invisibility cloak to an ingenious public bike system to the world's first moving skyscraper — here are TIME's picks for the top innovations of 2008.

It may have been a long time since the U.S. built the world's best cars, but nobody can touch us when it comes to spacecraft. nasa is about to prove that again with the planned launch in February 2009 of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (lro). Our first unmanned moonship in 11 years, the lro will study the things lunar orbiters always study — gravity, temperature — but it will also look for signs of water ice, a vital resource for any future lunar base, and compile detailed 3-D lunar maps, including all six Apollo landing sites. Wingnuts, be warned: yes, we really went there.

Borland History: Why the name "Delphi?"

"Delphi" started out as a beta codename for a closely guarded skunkworks project at Borland: a next-generation visual development environment for Windows based on Borland's Object Pascal programming language. The codename hatched in mid 1993, after the development team had been through about 6 months of deep research, proof-of-concept exercises, and market analysis. Members of the then Pascal development team were hanging around R&D Manager Gary Whizin's office brainstorming clever codenames to use for the new product. It was not a large office, but it was not a large team either - about 10 people between R&D, QA, Pubs, and Marketing. It would have been odd not to see Anders Heilsberg, Chuck Jazdzewski, Allen Bauer, Zack Urlocker, Richard Nelson, myself, and several other regulars jawing away on some topic or another in Gary's office. For the codename jam sessions, there may have been some overflow into the hallway.

Borland has a long history of "unusual" codenames, some with catchy slogans or backgrounds that tie the odd name to the market or product focus. A codename should have no obvious connection to the product, so that if an eavesdropper overhears the name in conversation it won't be too obvious what product is being discussed. The difference between an everyday disposable codename a great codename is the pithy passphrase behind it. The most memorable for me was the codename for Quattro Pro 4.0: "Budda". Why? It was to assume the Lotus position!

So we were sitting in Gary's office, kicking around weird and wacky codename possibilities. The strategic decision to make database tools and connectivity a central part of the new Pascal product had been made only a few days before, so Gary was keen on having a codename that played up the new database focus of the proposed product, and of its development team. The database shift was no small matter - I remember having grave reservations about "polluting" the Pascal tools with database arcana that took me almost a year to shake off. It was a big gamble for Borland, but it was very carefully measured, planned, and implemented. In hindsight, making Delphi a database product was exactly what was needed to break Borland's Pascal tools out of the Visual Basic - C++ market squeeze play and set Delphi head and shoulders above traditional Windows development tools.

Gary kept coming back to the codename "Oracle", referring to SQL connectivity to Oracle servers. "Oracle" didn't fly with the group, though. Aside from the obvious confusion with the same-name company and server product, the name itself implied server stuff, whereas the product we were building was (at that time) a client building tool, a way to talk to Oracle and other servers.

How do you talk to an oracle? "The Oracle at Delphi" was the word association that popped into my head. So I offered up "Delphi": If you want to talk to [the] Oracle, go to Delphi.

The suggestion wasn't an instant hit. It's an old name, an old place, a pagan temple in the ruins of a dead civilization. Not exactly an inspiring association for a new product! As some press articles later noted, the Delphic Oracle was particularly infamous for giving out cryptic or double-edged answers - not a great association for a data management tool. Asking a question of the oracle was free to all, but having the oracle's answer interpreted and explained (compiled?) cost a pretty drachma. (The marketing guys liked that part)

Overall, though, the "Delphi" codename had a classier ring to it than the sea of spent puns that littered the room. Pascal is a classic programming language, so it just felt fitting somehow to associate a Pascal-based development tool with a classical Greek image. And as Greek mythologies go, the temple at Delphi is one of the least incestuous, murderous, or tragic ancient Greek icons you'll find.

We went through a lot of codenames during the development of that 1.0 product, coining a different codename for each press or corporate briefing of the beta product. This was an effort to limit rumors and allow us to track the source of leaks. The last thing we wanted was for you-know-who to get wind of what we were up to. Through all these disposable codenames, the Delphi codename stuck. Towards the end of the development cycle, marketing started using the Delphi codename across all prepress and corporate briefings, and as the codename for the final beta releases. That got the rumor mills talking to each other, and the tools industry was abuzz with talk about this secret project at Borland codenamed "Delphi". J.D. Hildebrand wrote a whole editorial in Windows Tech Journal about the "Delphi buzz" months before the product was launched. (paraphrased: "I can't tell you what it is, but I can tell you this: Delphi is going to change our lives.")

When it came time to pick a retail product name, the nominations were less than inspiring.. The "functional" name, a name that describes what the product actually does and is therefore much easier to market and sell, would have been AppBuilder. This name actually still appears in some IDE internal class names, such as the class name of the IDE main window. (R&D caved in to the functional name pressures and set about implementing it early) But AppBuilder didn't light up people's imagination. It didn't work well internationally - functional names are only functional in their language of origin.

Thankfully, a few months before Delphi was scheduled for release Novell shipped their own product called Visual AppBuilder. There was much rejoicing in the Borland halls, for at last the "AppBuilder" debate was laid to rest. With the functional name taken out of the running, suggestions started coming from all quarters to use the Delphi codename as the product name.

Delphi wasn't home-free yet. The lead marketing person had legitimate concerns about the extra effort that would be required to build name recognition in the marketplace for an "iconic" (opposite of functional) product name, so he requested a vote of the development team. There was only one vote against (guess who?). Much to our chagrin, someone came to the conclusion that the development team's views were not an accurate representation of the marketplace ("sample error" was the phrase I heard), and pressed for a survey of the beta testers. When that poll didn't produce the result he wanted, the survey was broadened again to include Borland's international subsidiaries, press, market analysts, stock analysts, corporate accounts, software retailers, and probably a few K-Mart shoppers. It became a bit of a comedy: the harder people tried to dismiss "Delphi" for the product name, the more it gained support.

"Delphi" has a classical ring to it. It has a consistent meaning/word association worldwide in all languages. It has no embarassing vulgar slang meanings in other languages (that I'm aware of). Most of all, the marketing guys had done a marvelous job of building up market anticipation and buzz around the "Delphi" name. The market was primed and ravenous for this thing called "Delphi".

And that, boys and girls, is how the Delphi product got its name.

Danny Thorpe Senior Engineer, Delphi R&D Inprise Corp

Copyright (c) 1999 by Danny Thorpe

http://dn.codegear.com/article/20396

Goce gravity flight slips to 2009

Europe's gravity mission has been bumped to next year because of ongoing technical problems with its launcher.

The arrow-shaped Goce satellite will map tiny variations in the pull of gravity experienced across the world. The information will give scientists a clearer insight into how the oceans move, and provide a universal reference to measure height anywhere on Earth.But concerns about the reliability of its Russian rocket mean a lift-off is now unlikely before February.

On picture: Goce has fins to keep it stable as it flies through whisps of air.

It is a frustrating delay for the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce). The satellite was already two years behind schedule when it was sent to the launch pad because engineers had to work through immense technical difficulties in building it. The super-sleek spacecraft was due to go into orbit on a modified intercontinental ballistic missile, known at the Rockot, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in north-west Russia in the spring. It was held on the ground while an investigation was undertaken into the performance of a different, failed rocket system that shared key components.

By Jonathan Amos http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7592689.stm

Ural Electronics in DVD deal with Indian firm

Ural Electronic Factory based in Ekaterinburg (Russia) is negotiating terms of DVD-R disc distribution with India's Moser Bayer.
Currently Ural Electronic Factory is equipped with three disc production lines from Germany's Steag Hamatech AG and three lines using Holland's VDL. Production output is 4.5 million units a month.

Getting to grips with Linux

Gary Parkinson had a torrid time when he converted to Linux. Here he shares his experiences with one of the alternatives to Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system.

It's Saturday afternoon and I should be lying on the sofa sipping sweet tea and watching Football Focus.

Instead, I'm stamping loudly round the living room swearing like a sailor, looking for a cat to kick and cursing a Finnish computer programmer whose name meant nothing to me only days before.

The source of all this disquiet sits on the coffee table looking defiant yet lovely.

It's £370 worth of brand spanking new laptop, sleek glossy black, 10 inches wide, give or take, and weighs about the same as a chunky hardback novel.

Hippy ideals

It's not the machine itself that's driving me to violence, but the operating system that controls its programs and hardware: Linux.

Linux is an alternative to operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Mac's OS X and has been around since the early 1990s.

It's creator Linus Torvalds - then a 21-year-old University of Helsinki student - made the heart of his operating system absolutely free and open source, which means anyone can still download the code and tweak it as they see fit.

This kind of hippy philosophy behind Linux - that free access to software inspires development driven by need, not the need for cash - was the main attraction to me of choosing a Linux-fuelled machine over the Windows or Mac OS.

It's a muscular system too. The likes of Amazon and Google, and plenty of other household-name companies, are increasingly turning to Linux to run important parts of their businesses.

Look and feel

My requirements are more modest. It needs to let me surf the web, word process and manage the music that I listen to on an iPod.

First impressions of Linux were positive. The new machine, an Asus Eee, came pre-installed with a distribution, or flavour, of Linux called Xandros.

Because Linux is open source, different programmers have taken its kernel, or core, and written variations on the theme. They may use the same base code, but the desktops look and feel very different.

Some will seem much more familiar to those used to Windows or OS X than others.

There's half a dozen or so popular "distros", including the likes of Fedora, Mandriva and the one I prefer, Ubuntu.

Xandros worked right out of the box. Like most distros it includes Open Office, an open source copycat of Microsoft Office. Word processing, spreadsheets and presentations are no problem.

Linux-based computers won't run the software that you may be used to on Windows or a Mac - but there are free, Linux-compatible versions of pretty much any program you may want that can be downloaded from the internet.

Xandros connected to the net through my home wireless network at the first time of asking. And surfing was fast and easy.

Freedom to fiddle

There were a couple of things about Xandros which I didn't like.

The music management program - its "iTunes", if you like - let me listen to music and podcasts on my new laptop but wouldn't sync anything I loaded on to my iPod. Big problem for a music and podcast junkie.

Plus the desktop - the way the screen looks, the icons it uses to open programs - looks like it's been designed by a four-year-old with a fat crayon. It's may be down to personal taste, but I just don't like the way Xandros looks.

One of the (many) great things about Linux is that if you don't like a particular distro you can just change it for one you do by downloading it from the internet and installing it on the machine.

If you don't like that one either, just keep trying distros until you find one to your taste.

A quick trip to the local newsagent yielded a Linux magazine that included instructions on how to change distros and free CD with Mandriva and Ubuntu on it.

CD into disk drive, hit the escape key right after power up, boot up from the disk not the hard drive as usual, follow the simple instructions to install and 10 minutes later my computer screen looks completely different and much more like what I'm used to. A doddle.

Except now the internet wireless connection doesn't work and the music management software still won't let me sync with my iPod. Mmmmmm......

Like most journalists, I've the attention span and patience of a gnat. The air turns blue and I inform my wife loudly that Linus Torvalds has much to answer for (I paraphrase slightly).

Another great thing about Linux is the plethora of internet forums that you can sign up to where users can share tips and experience. My new machine may not be connected but luckily my wife's computer is. Couple of quick registrations later and I'm picking through the discussion boards for answers.

Text-based

Trouble is, the people populating these forums seem much cleverer than I am. On another planet, in fact. I may not be a good bet to be one to discover the cure for cancer, but I pride myself that not a (complete) fool either.

But I'm completely stumped by the instructions posted on these sites. The level of assumed knowledge is way above my head. I follow a couple of suggestions, try to connect to my router using an ethernet cable, download code that promises to set things right. And fail.

Ubuntu's own website isn't much help either. It suggests that with this particular machine it can sometimes help to whip out the battery, give it a couple of minutes, whack it back in, plug in an ethernet cable and get on line first that way. Nada.

Perhaps I am a complete fool after all.

It's probably worth mentioning one other important point about Linux here. It's a text-based operating system, which means that a fair few of the things you may want to tell your computer to do - installing certain new software, for example - requires you to open up a "terminal window" and actually type text into the little window.

It's a bit like the way all hackers in Hollywood movies furiously crash out lines of incomprehensible text on their laptops when they're trying to bust into the Pentagon's defence network.

As someone used solely to double-clicking on pretty pictures to do most anything on a computer this is pretty hairy stuff.

Tech support

True to form when I'm too stupid to figure out how to do something in five minutes, I phone an expert.

Geek Squad, a tech support service partnered with the Carphone Warehouse, is more used to dealing with problems with broadband and e-mail but later that night, Agent Jamie Pedder walks me through it over the phone.

Download a couple of bits of code from one of the Linux help sites on to a memory stick. Whack the memory stick into the offending laptop.

Bang a couple of lines of code into the terminal window to tell the machine to install what we've downloaded. Bingo, we're cooking on gas.

Ubuntu's running my wireless network and I'm back on-line. Easy when you know how.

The fly in the ointment remains the music management software. I still can't sync an iPod and Agent Pedder reckons that I probably won't be able to - for now at least.

While Linux is founded on the philosophy of free and easy access to its code for anyone who's interested, Apple is not. That means no iTunes for Linux, and nor is Apple likely to release such a version.

The iPod out of action is a major irritation, but I've not given up hope. There's software out there - free for Linux users as always - that promises to do what I want. I just haven't got round to downloading and playing with it yet.

For the time being, it's back to the trusty CD player. All this talk of hippy ideals has put me right in the mood for a bit of Sgt Pepper's.
from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7594249.stm

Large Hadron Collider

Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang.

The most powerful physics experiment ever built, the Large Hadron Collider will re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science and the universe itself.

Find out more about the LHC with this BBC News guide, starting at the top of the page with an introduction from Science Correspondent David Shukman. You can then explore key elements of the experiment using the links above.

They have now fired two beams of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash protons together with cataclysmic force.

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

The first - clockwise - beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel at just before 0930 BST. The second - anti-clockwise - beam successfully circled the ring after 1400 BST.

So far, all the beams have been stopped, or "dumped", after just a few circuits.

On Thursday, engineers hoped to inject clockwise and anti-clockwise protons again, but this time they plan to "close the orbit", letting the beams run continuously for a few seconds each.

The BBC understands that low-energy collisions could happen in the next few days. This will allow engineers to calibrate instruments, but will not produce data of scientific interest.

"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap. There were cheers in the control room when engineers heard of the successful test.

from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7604293.stm