News/release from Cluster

I released new version of ClIRC - IRC client for Nintendo DS.

Main features:
* A clipboard in all dialog boxes. You can even copy from upper screen, holding "L" button.
* Using up to three servers at the same time.
* DCC chat support and file transfer by DCC in both directions (I really don't know what for, but in fact :))
* Storing of logs directly to flash.
* Identification of server answers by numbers. I.e. not an interface only but the great deal of server answers is in English (for non-english servers).
* An alternative mode of nicklist request. Now you can see user's "away" status plus a complete list of his modes on server.
* Flexible settings of colors, highlights, etc.
* The prototype of scripts for advanced users. You can set commands, which will be executed after opening or closing of DS (turn away automatically, for example). You can previously make a list of commands for channels, privates and nick list, where the appropriate variables will be substituted as well. I.e. mIRC popups' analog :)
* All settings can be changed during a program work - it's no need to bother with ini files.
* Something like multitasking. At the same time you can download several files by DCC, get a list of channels and chat. Practically all tasks are working simultaneously, except the moment of connection.
* Nick autocomplete on "tab".
* Special mode for left handed people.
* Input history.
* Ignore.
* Russian in/out and interface (only for Russian version).

Homepage: http://clusterrr.com

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments
Attached Files ClIRC-0.05-beta.zip (1.18 MB)

That floor looks mighty familiar, huh? That's because it is. Just days after Mr. Dave Zatz treated us to an unboxing of the 2Wire-built MediaPoint Blockbuster movie set-top-box, here comes yet another gift from the same den. The recently announced Neuros LINK was said to practically be a full-on computer, with the whole kit weighing some 15-pounds. Initial reports are that Hulu content played back beautifully in full screen, so yeah, that's a thumbs-up. We know why you're really here, though, so give the read link a visit for the gallery of photographs.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Neuros LINK web / media viewer gets unboxed originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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div align="center"a href="http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2008-12/neuros-link-unboxed-setup/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadgethd.com/media/2008/12/12-4-08-neuros-link-unbox.jpg" alt="" //abr //div That floor looks mighty familiar, huh? That's because it is. Just days after Mr. Dave Zatz treated us to a href="http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/12/01/mediapoint-blockbuster-movie-set-top-box-gets-unboxed/"an unboxing/a of the 2Wire-built MediaPoint Blockbuster movie set-top-box, here comes yet another gift from the same den. The recently announced a href="http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/11/19/neuros-intros-web-video-playing-neuros-link/"Neuros LINK/a was said to practically be a full-on computer, with the whole kit weighing some 15-pounds. Initial reports are that a href="http://www.engadgethd.com/tag/Hulu/"Hulu/a content played back beautifully in full screen, so yeah, that's a thumbs-up. We know why you're really here, though, so give the read link a visit for the gallery of photographs.pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/homeentertainment/" rel="tag"Home Entertainment/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/04/neuros-link-web-media-viewer-gets-unboxed/"Neuros LINK web / media viewer gets unboxed/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:43:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2008-12/neuros-link-unboxed-setup/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/04/neuros-link-web-media-viewer-gets-unboxed/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1391036/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/04/neuros-link-web-media-viewer-gets-unboxed/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/nzsOYKpd6VrNpo2Lft2-T_A0_yk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/nzsOYKpd6VrNpo2Lft2-T_A0_yk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=kK9IX7nm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=kK9IX7nm" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=gJlOiU1U"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=gJlOiU1U" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/pwdKYwOaxtc" height="1" width="1"/

centerimg id="image1642" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2130/polite-umbrella-2small.gif" alt="polite-umbrella-2small.gif" //centerbr / centerimg id="image1643" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2130/politeumbrella1small.gif" alt="politeumbrella1small.gif" //centerbr / centeriImage: JooYoun Paek, Polite Umbrella/i/centerbr / ipa href="http://www.jooyounpaek.com/"JooYoun Paek/a builds small, object-based responses to urban life, transforming the aches and pains we customarily suffer, at the hands of the metropolis, into novel sites of reflection, social courtesy, and rest. The artist's humorous, insightful approach bespeaks her familiarity with her subject; she was raised in Seoul, Korea, and moved to New York in 2005 to attend NYU's a href="http://itp.nyu.edu/itp/"Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)/a. Fresh from her recent participation in "a href="http://eyebeam.org/engage/engage.php?page=exhibitionsid=190"Untethered/a," at a href="http://eyebeam.org/"Eyebeam/a, and "a href="http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=5632"Design and the Elastic Mind/a," at a href="http://www.moma.org/"MoMA/a, JooYoun caught up with me at her a href="http://www.lmcc.net/"LMCC/a Workspace Residency studio, on the twenty-ninth floor of the Equitable Building in Manhattan's Financial District. - Tyler Coburn /p/i pbWhat's the difference between wearable technology and what you make?/b/p pThe difference? Well, I never define what I make as wearable technology. I think I'm just doing conceptual work that's wearable. Wearable technology is more about focusing on using new technology and making it fashionable, but also highly functional. I don't think my work was ever designed for utilitarian purposes. But oftentimes the methodologies of what I'm doing and wearable technology overlap, and that's why people think, on the surface, that my work is similar./p bpThat really comes across in a piece like a href="http://www.jooyounpaek.com/politeumbrella.html"iPolite Umbrella/i/a./p/b pYes. I made iPolite Umbrella/i after I came to New York for ITP. ITP isn't really a fine art school. It focuses more on collaborative and innovative practices. We had an assignment of observing daily life and behavior, and I began to observe umbrella usage. Quite interestingly, it was the fall of 2005, which was one of the rainiest times in New York City. October was a record-breaking month. It rained almost every day. This was my first time living in New York, so I thought this was usual. Previously, I had framed myself as an artist working with sculpture and sometimes in performance and photography and video, but after going to ITP, I began to explore design. This didn't bother me that much, because the observation of life was already a part of my creative process, which either came out as very utilitarian or very expressive objects. It always started from the observation of mundane moments./p pbOne of the things that I find interesting about this piece is that I can imagine an umbrella that just condenses uniformly, but your model responds to specific scenarios, such as a particular angle of passing. One or all sides of it can compress. So it's not just something that has a function that’s designed to meet a generic social scenario; it's something you can control on a case-by-case basis. I think that specificity is what pushes it beyond just being a quirky object./b/p pIt's not only helpful to you. It also gives a gesture to other people. I definitely involved the cultural reference of people bowing to one another in this piece./p pbSo you see the compression of the side of the umbrella as a gesture of social politeness?/b/p pYes. It has a morphing gesture, but conceptually it gives other people more space./p pbI can see a similar interest in modifying and improving everyday city life in a href="http://www.jooyounpaek.com/ssc.html"iSelf-Sustainable Chair/i/a, which is also controlled by the user, yet is far more absurdist in conceit./b/p pWith this piece, I was also inspired by New York and walking in the city. I was getting sick and tired of walking the same commute route from my station stop to my home every day while carrying a heavy backpack. I wanted to make something that could make every walk I take more meaningful. The idea was very abstract, so I began to add up the days and minutes of my commute time. My walk ended up being almost fifteen full days per year. That time should be more exciting, so I made this chair. I thought that each step could generate some energy, which can then transform into something else./p centerimg id="image1644" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2130/selfsustainablechairsmall.gif" alt="selfsustainablechairsmall.gif" //centerbr / centeriImage: JooYoun Paek, Self-Sustainable Chair/i/centerbr / bpIt punctuates the commutes. No two walks are the same anymore, depending on when you choose to stop or pause or contemplate. I like the way that once the chair becomes full, it not only gives you the option to rest but sort of forces you to. It makes you stop for a minute. It seems like a lot of your work is about using fast-paced technologies to slow down, or as palliatives. The origami project, a href="http://www.jooyounpaek.com/foldloud.html"iFold Loud/i/a, comes to mind. You actually stitched circuits onto sheets of folded paper, such that a given user's manner of folding would close the circuits and release specific human vocal harmonies. The possible combinations aren't just beautiful to the ear; they're soothing./p/b pThere is that kind of notion./p !--more-- pbBut not, as you were saying, in a practical fashion. More in a fanciful fashion. Like iSelf-Sustainable Chair/i, this object presents a far-fetched way of relaxing, which more interestingly offsets our pace of living than an object we could buy from a store for stress relief./b/p pSome people ask about iPolite Umbrella/i, "So when will we see it on the market?" And I groan, "Oh, I don't really think it would work that well on the market."/p bpI think the fact that you're not distributing them as such also lends to how they function conceptually as art-objects – to their being singular ideas manifest./p/b pYeah. I think it's about the statement. You mentioned the origami work. It reflects some of my personality, but this foldout doesn't really tie into my past work./p pbHow do you mean?/b/p pIt's a very design-oriented work. The object isn't really tied into any context./p pbWell, it's tied into a historical context./b/p pYes, it is tied into a historical context, but not necessarily into the daily mundane experiences that a lot of my other work ties into. So I'm having a hard time connecting it to the other work. iFold Loud/i was more about exploring technology with my personality, in my way. I made it as my ITP thesis project. I could have gone more in the direction of fine art, but I wanted to take the chance to use technology and see where it ended up./p bpBut there's also an everyday reference. I grew up in the States and we didn't make origami, but we would play games with folding paper, like predicting our futures. Even origami is something that is made in Japan as a way to pass the time. So while it's definitely more of a niche reference than those in your other works, I think that there's still a connotation of the everyday. But I agree with you. It is more to the side. I don't think this means that it's more of a design object, though. I think it actually very much engages with contemporary conceptual art strategies by taking a method of folding, an idea of sound production, and the idea of origami as hardware, and drawing an axis between these points. This seems like a very contemporary approach. I couldn't speak to how much it engages with the design world, but I think it's very relevant to contemporary art./p/b pYes, thank you./p centerimg id="image1645" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2130/foldoudsmall.gif" alt="foldoudsmall.gif" //centerbr / centeriImage: JooYoun Paek, Fold Loud/i/centerbr / bpIn the text on your website, you describe the work as having a "meta-technological aesthetic." What do you mean by that?/p/b pThe technology isn't hidden. It forms the exposed circuits, so you can actually see how it's working. The technology is bubbling up. It has a different sensibility than most devices, where things are hidden behind a button and you don't know how you trigger the events on the screen./p bpSo given that iFold Loud/i marks something of a departure form previous work, has the stuff you've been making since been more in line with it?/p/b pWhat's interesting is that I'm still working in the way I used to, and Fold Loud is developing as a side-project. For the Eyebeam Fall show, "Untethered," I had two pieces. One was called a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyebeam/2831757646/in/set-72157607128132407/"iNot-Bicycle Cover/i/a, which is a bicycle cover that camouflages your bike. It's a small cover that looks like a pile of garbage bags that you can unfold, pump up, and inflate. The other project was called a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyebeam/2899668716/in/set-72157607128132407/"iNothing In It/i/a. It's a little bag, and when you open it, it releases the sound of objects. When you close it, they disappear. And when you open it again, you hear different sounds. But when you look into the bag, you see that there's nothing in it./p bpAre all the sounds from public, urban space?/p/b pThere are a lot of these sounds. There is also the sound of a ticking clock./p pbWhat informed the sounds that you used?/b/p pI was thinking a lot about this. Should I have the sound of someone telling a story? Should I have the sound of someone singing? I actually tried to minimize that effect and use the sounds of random objects to not convey too much of a specific story. With a story you have to listen from the beginning to the end, but these sounds should make sense anytime you open the bag./p bpAll the sounds are also things that might be heard as the bag is carried around, so it seems appropriate to collapse them into a mobile, personal belonging. It makes it seem like the sounds you hear have actually been collected by the bag./p/b pInteresting./p bpSo I have to ask: how was it practically made, given that you can't see anything inside?/p/b pI ideally wanted everything to be self-contained within the bag, but for this show I had to make it quickly, so the audio system is beneath the pedestal and the bag is made with a zipper sensor. The concept of the piece relates to the idea that what's in the world is only there because of your belief, and if you start to believe in different ways, things will change. So it was about making you recognize the notion of what you’re believing in - that your belief is really creating the world. Nothing else. /pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rhizome-fp/~4/473940998" height="1" width="1"/

Here’s the latest Storytelling Engine from John Seavey. Click here to read John’s description of what a Storytelling Engine IS, anyways. Check out more of them at his blog, Fraggmented.

Storytelling Engines: George Romero’s “Dead” Films

Normally, when I talk about a series’ storytelling engine, what I’m really doing is trying to take a look at a long-running (or occasionally short-running) series from a different perspective. Instead of just seeing the elements of the series as part of the story the writer is telling, I’m looking at them as story-generating components–the supporting cast fulfills this function, the setting adds this potential, the protagonist moves the plot this way, and so on. But it’s very rare that I think that writers consciously consider their status quo as a machine that generates plots.

In the case of George Romero’s seminal zombie movie series (”Night of the Living Dead”, “Dawn of the Dead”, “Day of the Dead”, “Land of the Dead”, “Diary of the Dead”), though, that’s pretty much exactly what they are. Romero starts with a set of postulates that function as his “engine”, and then takes other stories and runs them through the engine to see what the result will be. It’s a storytelling engine that takes the world as it is, applies a major change, and observes the logical result.

The change is, of course, the dead coming back to life. Romero postulates an event (never explicated, but hinted as some sort of radiation wave released by a returning satellite) that causes every recently-deceased corpse in the world to re-animate and seek out living humans with an instinct to consume their flesh. (Their bite is invariably lethal, although Romero never makes it clear whether this is an effect of their status as zombies, or just due to the normal infections that would result from being bitten by a septic, rotting corpse.) They retain traces of their former personality, but generally have limited intelligence and diminished physical capacity (they’re slower, but stronger.) Being dead, they’re pretty much immune to pain, and the only way of permanently killing them is with damage to the head. But more importantly, the event affected living humans as well, even if it doesn’t show. Anyone who dies in the series re-animates within minutes of their death as a zombie, unless that death is due to head trauma.

Romero’s movies (and the various comic and novel spin-offs) focus on the consequences of this event for different groups. He never returns to the same set of protagonists (which allows him a lot of freedom when it comes to killing off characters), but the world is always the same. Humans find ways to survive the zombie apocalypse, some of which are co-operative (as in the small community of survivors in “Land”) and some of which are competitive and counter-productive (as with the nihilistic end to “Dawn”.) Different people cope with the psychological stress of the event in different ways (most of which aren’t good–if Romero’s movies have a common theme, it’s that people tend to come unglued in crisis situations.) And the zombie horde always gets larger–in fact, with the span of time separating the movies, the size of the zombie horde provides the only definitive timeline for the series. “Diary” might look like 2005 and “Night” might look like 1968, but the two both occur early on in the zombie plague.

Romero’s “zombie rules” provide a very interesting storytelling engine, precisely because they’re the only real element of an engine with very loose continuity from installment to installment. This faithfulness to the rules has meant that the entire zombie sub-genre of horror has found itself defined by Romero’s rules and the ground-breaking films that provided them, to the point where many zombie movies are essentially Romero movies in all but name. Some of them are loving homages, like “Shaun of the Dead”, others are rip-offs, like “The Dead Next Door”, and still others are deliberate reactions against or alterations of the Romero rules, like “Return of the Living Dead” or “28 Days Later” (or, for that matter, the James Gunn/Zack Snyder remake of “Dawn of the Dead”.) But the Romero rules now provide a practically inescapable framework for everyone following in Romero’s footsteps, a storytelling engine that has escaped its creator and run wild throughout the genre. Its simplicity is also its strength, something that is constantly proved with each new zombie movie, comic, or book that comes out.

pimg alt="dopplr_logo.png" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/dopplr_logo.png" width="150" height="29" /With the relative freedom provided by laptops, mobile devices, and more affordable transportation, people have become more migratory and, yet, better at remaining connected - or at the very least, accessible. Nowhere is this more evident than in the tech sector, where individuals are jetting back and forth to attend events or meet up with coworkers halfway across the world. /p pAnd when it comes to keeping track of the techie crowd and their travels, a href="http://dopplr.com"Dopplr/a is one of the best resources around. Now, they're giving users a view into some of those travel patterns with a href="http://blog.dopplr.com/2008/11/27/new-city-pages/"Dopplr city pages/a./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12796amp;cb=12796' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12796amp;n=12796' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pDopplr has been testing the pages internally for some time. Now, they're exposing them to the Dopplr users. As the name implies, these new pages provide a visualization of annual visitor activity for practically any city on Dopplr. There are metrics, as well, including information on fellow travelers in town, the number of trips to the city overall, the number of trips for the given day, local time, and interesting facts - like from which cities people are generally visiting./p centerimg alt="Dopplr Austin" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/imgDOPPLR_%20Austin.jpg" width="600" height="549" //center pLooking at even a few pages reveals some interesting trends. Austin, Texas, USA, for example, gets a heavy influx of Dopplr users in March. Why? The annual hermitage to the a href="http://sxsw.com/interactive/"SXSW interactive festival/a. Portland, OR, USA, by contrast, shows a definite uptick during the summer months. London, Paris, and Tokyo have steady traffic throughout the year. (Obviously, I could spend hours just thumbing through these cities.)/p pBut there's something else interesting happening here - which a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/obama_puts_changegov_under_cre.php"Marshall Kirkpatrick mentioned recently/a. To make the reports a little more aesthetically appealing, the city pages pull in images of the respective cities from a href="http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10898"Creative Commons licensed content held on Flickr/a. Not only does it provide more context for the city, it offers yet another venue for Flickr users to showcase their work. All thanks to Creative Commons./p pUnfortunately, while the image concept is laudable - and often beautiful - many of the randomly selected photos tend to obscure the graphs of the travel data. So, if you're looking for beautiful images, you're in luck. But if you want to read the data, sometimes you're going to have to strain to see it./p pNonetheless, Dopplr city pages are well worth a visit. It's great to see Dopplr exposing some of the interesting data points that the company has been accumulating about its user base. And I'm a firm believer that any time this sort of data is made accessible, it's always wise to take a cursory look, for my own edification./p pTo see city pages in action, register or log in to a href="http://dopplr.com"Dopplr/a and search for the cities that interest you - or try clicking through some of the cities from your trips./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dopplr_city_pages_techie_travel.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iIdzRdUXVtz0CQFCYbEMNxpSOWo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iIdzRdUXVtz0CQFCYbEMNxpSOWo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=SM7t41T9"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=tiz8husj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=ewW6NZWW"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=ewW6NZWW" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=HWpEeLBv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=HWpEeLBv" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=fUOzcduN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=fUOzcduN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=NysPQWXe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=pz7mnjH3"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/gFQk933kIJg" height="1" width="1"/

This guest post is written by Matt Rutherford, Web Strategist and technology producer for Charlie Rose. Matt focuses on the macro themes affecting the internet and the wider world. You can read Matt’s previous guest post, Larry Lessig Defends Copyright, Loves Charlie Rose Remixes, here.

Who protects the internet? In part, it’s this man – General Kevin Chilton, US STRATCOM commander and the head of all military cyber warfare. We’re broadcasting an interview tonight with General Chilton, in which he discusses the threat of cyber warfare, along with his other remits of space warfare and the US nuclear deterrent. Chilton is fascinating, and amongst other things has been a NASA space shuttle pilot, logging over 700 hours in space. You can watch the full interview here (and it is embedded below).

The discussion with General Chilton brings to light a crucial question, however. Is the internet actually protected? The military remit is to defend the .mil networks, prevent online espionage, and develop offensive strike capabilities. But who’s protecting the rest? Given its integration with every aspect of our lives and economy, it’s surprising just how little we know about who defends our electronic nervous system.

The Threat

There’s copious discussion about exactly how vulnerable the US is to online attack. The alleged Russian DoS attacks on Estonia in 2007, and on Georgia this summer, highlighted the potential damage of state sponsored attacks. China has also been developing cyber warfare capabilities for some time, mounting online intelligence operations against Taiwan, and almost certainly against the US. The Chinese military has openly stated that it plans to be able to win an “informationized war” by the middle of this century. Russia, Israel and Romania are also alleged to have high-level cyber warfare capabilities.

This developing threat from state actors led Sami Saydjari, CEO of Cyber Defense LLC, to testify (pdf) to the US House Committee of Homeland Security in 2007, saying: “The US is vulnerable to a strategically crippling cyber attack from nation-state-class adversaries.” Such an attack has the potential to turn the US “from being a superpower to a third-world nation practically overnight.”

I should point out that many have disputed the apocalyptic nature of Saydjari’s statement. Kevin Mitnick, the reformed hacker, noted in a recent phone call:

“Could we face a mass DOS attack, as in Georgia and Estonia? I don’t think so. I think it would be more of a surveillance operation to get intelligence. Technically you could have a mass attack against the thirteen root nameservers around the world. But as for cyber war, I don’t think we’re at that point yet, I think it’s over-stated.”

Regardless of the impact of an offensive cyber attack, everyone appears to agree on the insidious danger from online intelligence gathering. Former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke eloquently summarized this in Foreign Policy recently:

“People tend to think about attacks that change things—turn off power grids, or whatever. And while that’s possible, what is happening every day is quite devastating, even though it doesn’t have a kinetic impact and there are no body bags. What’s happening every day is that all of our information is being stolen. So, we pay billions of dollars for research and development, both in the government and the private sector, for engineering, for pharmaceuticals, for bioengineering, genetic stuff... and all that information gets stolen for one one-thousandth of the cost that it took to develop it.”

Who protects us?

The problem is that it isn’t clear who has the remit for comprehensive defense of the internet. The US military and intelligence agencies defend government networks and track targets online, both domestically and abroad. A new Bush-ordained funding boost in January this year will help them become more coordinated. However, as Richard Clarke goes on to note, “the problem is that much of what we need to protect is not in the U.S. government; it’s in our private companies and our private networks”.

The Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division operates various public-private initiatives, such as the rather prosaic National Cyber Security Awareness Month. But beyond this, the general response appears highly fragmented with little grand oversight or public-private coordination. I emailed Jonathan Zittrain to ask his opinion on ‘who protects the internet’. He replied:

“Basically no one. At most, a number of loose confederations of computer scientists and engineers who seek to devise better protocols and practices — unincorporated groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the North American Network Operators Group. But the fact remains that no one really owns security online, which leads to gated communities with firewalls — a highly unreliable and wasteful way to try to assure security.”

Hackers to the rescue?

When Obama appoints a white house CTO, there will at least be an official figurehead in charge of this matter. Proposed candidates for the role currently include Eric Schmidt, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos and Julius Genachowski from IAC.

However, perhaps the future of internet security really lies in the hands of the community. Indeed, Jonathan Zittrain talked about ‘good hackers’ on our show in May, and he argues the importance of community policing in The Future of the Internet. The last few years of the internet have been about empowering the masses, and removing intermediary apparatus – so why not leverage the community to defend its cyber territory? Indeed, this is already happening, to a certain extent. Just look at Dan Kaminsky, a computer consultant who discovered a fundamental flaw in DNS, allowing him control over any website online. This flaw was astounding in what it gave access to – yet Dan Kaminsky didn’t turn to a government agency or organization, or abuse the hack himself. Instead he made a phone call to Paul Vixie, one of the creators of the BIND9 DNS routing software, and they assembled a team of civilians and private companies to resolve this apocalyptic vulnerability.

It will be interesting to see what happens from here. And whilst it’s certainly entertaining to envision vigilante hackers and rag-tag groups of high school kids overcoming nation states, I think there’s more serious matters at stake. The way that the internet community reacts and operates with state apparatus in defending against cyber threats will be a crucial indicator of our future society. How reliant are we on the nation-state to protect us? Will it ever be possible for internet communities to erode the relevance of the nation state? Or will the internet turn out to be just as Hobbesian as the real world has been?

Charlie Rose’s discussions with General Kevin Chilton and Jonathan Zittrain are available at our website, charlierose.com. Matt Rutherford can be reached at matt@charlierose.com.

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