Subject: Review of "Terminal Logic", Jefferson Scott

From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Jul 2000 11:20:07 -0400

Terminal Logic, Jefferson Scott
	Review Copyright 2000 Rob Slade

This book takes as its theme the dangers of agent software programs known,
somewhat loosely, as bots.  The bots of the book start out as characters
in the games of an online entertainment system, but get loose in the wider
net world and, of course, have no idea of the distinction between the real
and game worlds.  In the beginning, Scott does a pretty good job of
defining what agent software and bots are for or like.  There is even a
nod to the venerable ELIZA artificial intelligence program, with a
realistic, albeit somewhat simplified, sample session.  After that,
however, the realism falls off drastically.

The bots do a lot of damage by taking over vehicles and appliances.  The
possibility of program corruption is well known, so vehicles or appliances
that can have potentially dangerous capabilities would either have
read-only memory, or, more likely, a more sophisticated system that would
check for changes and "correct" them on the fly.  If you did have
robotically controlled transports, it would be unlikely that you'd put
truckers in them, since the idea would be to reduce personnel costs in the
first place.

The household appliances described in the book are not those likely to be
first seen on the market.  Software "intelligence" in appliances costs
relatively little, but the devices depicted seem to have robotic arms and
other hardware that, while undoubtedly useful, would be expensive to
develop and include.  A laser fly swatter, on the other hand, sounds like
a really bad idea, and as for a laser disk drive, do you mean a CD-ROM?
On the whole, though, 2006 seems to be a lot more advanced than 2005 was
in "Virtually Eliminated."  It's also a lot faster than anything we have
now: it only takes twelve minutes to get from the White House to the
Caribbean.

For a book based on network concepts and operations. the author's grasp of
network communications seems to be as tenuous as ever.  The intrusion
detection system employed in the book is very poorly designed.  Spoofing
is mentioned as going on, but nobody gets spoofed.  The bots in the book
seem to go completely unnoticed by all the net powers that be.  In
reality, bots would consume disk space, memory, CPU cycles, bandwidth, and
other resources, and would definitely get attention.  As usual, Scott
seems to get email addresses and IP, or system, addresses confused.  And
if the original system is isolated from the net, then how is it that the
original "goals.txt" file continues to be accessed?  A number of times,
the book suggests that certain systems do not "exist" from a net
perspective: in other words, are unfindable.  This would rather eliminate
the whole point of being connected to the net.  If a device is on the net,
it has to have an address, otherwise it simply can't do anything (other
than generate spurious noise).  There is a mention of the file
"robots.txt" in the book, but in such a way as to demonstrate that the
author is not familiar with the robot exclusion protocol that is supposed
to keep a Web site from being overrun by spider bots and other HTTP
(HyperText Transfer Protocol) search software.  In any case, it's a
voluntary standard.

There are more simple hardware problems: software is somehow able to throw
protective covers off lawn mowers, make light bulbs explode, and disable
hardware overrides specifically designed to break out of software
problems.

Once again, the battle scenes have nothing to do with the reality of
system security, security penetration, or protection.  In addition,
putting military personnel with no computer experience in charge of a data
security "attack" is unlikely to succeed: military strategists need to
know, very well, the capabilities of what they have available.

GPS (Global Positioning System) works on a broadcast basis from
satellites, and does not have any relation to, or requirements for,
networks like the Internet.  GPS information and weather updates are data,
not programs, so they could not present a likely method for security
penetration.  Again, a buffer overrun is possible with systems like these,
but would be system specific and not subject to immediate use.  Oh, and
geosynchronous, or geostationary, orbit is *not* 700 miles high.  You
don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that.

Regina is kind of cute, though.

%A   Jefferson Scott [email-masked]
%C   P. O. Box 1720, Sisters, OR   97759
%D   1997
%G   1-57673-038-7
%I   Questar Publishers/Multnomah
%O   Fax: 541-549-0260 [email-masked]
%P   358 p.
%T   Terminal Logic

======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
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It is interesting to note that before the advent of Microsoft
Windows, `GPF' was better known for its usage in plumbing:
Gallons Per Flush.
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