From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Aug 1 13:40:00 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!newsfeed.direct.ca!look.ca!hammer.uoregon.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@poison-ivy.media.mit.edu From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review of "Terminal Logic", Jefferson Scott Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 31 Jul 2000 11:20:07 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Lines: 92 NNTP-Posting-Host: poison-ivy.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 965056808 9443 18.85.23.103 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2768 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 jgerke@multnomahpubl.com %C P. O. Box 1720, Sisters, OR 97759 %D 1997 %G 1-57673-038-7 %I Questar Publishers/Multnomah %O Fax: 541-549-0260 information@multnomahpubl.com %P 358 p. %T Terminal Logic ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com It is interesting to note that before the advent of Microsoft Windows, `GPF' was better known for its usage in plumbing: Gallons Per Flush. http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 7 16:58:20 2000 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail Sender: wex@deepspace.media.mit.edu From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: "Fatal Defect", Jefferson Scott Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca Priority: normal Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 06 Aug 2000 17:16:47 -0400 Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Lines: 81 NNTP-Posting-Host: deepspace.media.mit.edu X-Trace: dreaderd 965596608 9434 18.85.23.65 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2780 Fatal Defect by Jefferson Scott Review Copyright 2000 Robert M. Slade The jacket of Scott's second book tells us that he has a science degree. Since we surmise from his previous books it can't be in computing, math, engineering, or physics, something seemed to indicate it had to be biology. That now appears fairly certain. As long as this current book sticks to biology it seems to work. The terminology is correct, and barring a little jumping the gun on cloning and recombinant DNA, the technology seems real or, at least possible. He even has a pretty good take on the genetic basis of character. Of course, any biologist who thinks shark skin is smooth needs to spend a little more time down in marine zoology, but we'll let that go. I'm not so sure about his transposon toxin: it seems you'd have to wait for it to invade cells, wait for it to start swapping genes, wait for them to start producing proteins, and even then you wouldn't be sure whether you'd come up with something really toxic, or just a bad allergic reaction. But Scott is still relying on computer technology for most of the action in the book. Some of the technology might possibly develop in a few years, but isn't terribly likely. EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) weapons still seem to be limited to a range of about a yard, with no great signs of any increase in the near future. TEMPEST works at a longer range, but nothing remotely like the distance to even low earth orbit. Trying it while you're beaming microwaves at someone is a pretty good way to guarantee that you'll fail, given the radiation confusion. By the way, sport parachutists regularly drop from 10,000 feet. I was all set to dump on "TCP/GP," until I realized what it was. However, even if GlobeNet uses IPv6, you are just not going to get the techies to change the name of a protocol. I have, in the past noted that using weather downlink data as an infiltration channel is fraught with peril. Not for the defender, but for the attacker. The opportunity to break into a system that way is just too slim, since you'd have no way of knowing what is on the receiving end. On the other hand, kilobyte sized chunks of data are just fine for email, and pretty much anything else; Ethernet sends a maximum of 1500 bytes per packet. The entire first message and a bit more could have been sent in one piece: twenty five chunks is definitely overkill. The mad scramble to chase down an address is a bit much. You can't encrypt a network address or even flip one bit and expect it to get to its destination. It'd be sort of like encrypting the address on a letter: nobody, including the post office, would be able to figure out who it's for. In any case, the strenuous effort would not be needed. The evil hackers are out on a leaf node of the net. A single link connects them to the rest of the world. Once that has been determined, it is a simple matter to collect all the traffic, in *and* out. The messages may be encrypted, and they'd never be broken in that short a time, but the addressing would be clearly visible. Okay, maybe the bad guys could bounce traffic off a few hijacked sites: with a single link to look at, those sites could be identified and cleaned up in short order. Scott is starting to do a better job of integrating Christianity into thrillers. Not good, just better. At least people are starting to remember a few Bible verses, and not just send off the odd prayer when all else fails. On the other hand, the fact that none of the characters are facing any crises of obedience is making the plot even less realistic than was the first book. The author has yet to subject Christianity to any real opposition: aside from some snide comments and a rather insufferable assumption of superiority, faith is still disjoint from the action in the story. %A Jefferson Scott jgerke@multnomahpubl.com %C P. O. Box 1720, Sisters, OR 97759 %D 1998 %G 1-57673-452-8 %I Questar Publishers/Multnomah %O U$10.99 Fax: 541-549-0260 information@multnomahpubl.com %P 339 p. %T "Fatal Defect" ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@sprint.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca p1@canada.com Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is. - Gershon Legman (b. 1917) American writer http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade