Indoor Cloud. Courtesy ‘Where Cool Things Happen.’ com
Before We Called it “The Cloud” … We Still Had “Software as a Service.” We just didn’t know what Marketing wanted to call it.
Back in 1990 – ’91, before we called it “The Cloud,” before most of us used the Internet, when we were young and idealistic, I worked on three systems that offered what we would now call SaaS – Software as a Service.
Bob Garfield began the segment, Assessing the True Threat of Cyberwar, on the WNYC radio show On the Media, on Friday, August 10, 2012,
Last year when a water pump in Springfield, Illinois burned out, a water district employee noticed that the system had been accessed remotely from somewhere inside Russia. Two days later, a memo leaked from the Illinois Intelligence Fusion Center, made up of state police, members of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, blamed the pump failure on Russian hackers. It looked to be the first example on American soil of the worst case scenario in cyber warfare, that a hacker could wreak havoc in the physical world.
From Mylar balloon causes Valentine’s Day outage in San Francisco – San Jose Mercury News:
PG&E had warned residents earlier this week to be careful with metallic balloons purchased for Valentine’s Day, as hundreds of outages each year in Northern California are caused by balloons drifting into power lines.
This would seem to be a power grid weakness we should examine.
Ben Franklin is reputed to have said “we shall hang together, or we shall hang separately.” Long-time readers know that it is our firmly-held conviction that social networks matter more than any single type of preparation or cached equipment. Here is an excerpt from The Key To Disaster Survival? Pals, Neighbors broadcast on the July 4, 2011 edition of All Things Considered:
A researcher’s data suggest that ambulances, firetrucks and government aid aren’t the principal ways most people survive during and recover after a disaster. Instead, it’s the personal ties between members of a community that really matter.
If you want an easy template for doing this in your community, check out the 3 Steps Program.
From MIT Study: US Can Meet Power Grid Challenges of Future, by Gino Troiani,
According to a recent two-year study commissioned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s Energy Initiative, if certain measures are taken, the answer is yes.
The study was composed of 13 MIT faculty members, 1 Harvard faculty member, 10 graduate students and an advisory panel of 19 leaders from academia, industry and the government.
“The grid will face a number of serious challenges over the next two decades, while new technologies also present valuable opportunities for meeting these challenges,” the study says.
The report concluded the grid is adequate to meet today’s demands. However, it also said the measures the U.S. takes now will dramatically affect the grid throughout the next 20 years.
Some of the study’s key findings and recommendations include:
- The diversity of ownership and regulatory structures within the U.S. grid complicates policy-making.
- To combat cyber security threats, a single federal agency should be given the responsibility across the entire power sector, while increasing bulk and power and distribution systems.
- Utilities should generate “fixed” network costs via customer charges that do not vary with the amount of electricity they use, but rather at set fees.
- The electric and power industry should invest more revenue in the research and development of computational tools for bulk power system operations, methods for wide-area transmission planning, and procedures for response and recovery from cyberattacks.
- Increased data and research on the grid should be compiled and made more easily accessible to help improve the decision making process in the areas of developing and improving the grid.
Via ExecutiveGov.com.
This is from Valdis Krebs’ Visual Complexity. This is an example of Edward Tufte’s proposition that evidence, clearly and honestly arranged, ends up being beautiful. 
This image was created by Valdis Krebs of Orgnet– via Visual Complexity
See also HealthMap.
Tweet Maria Scarvalone’s coverage illustrates how rapidly and intensely opposition to “fracking” has spread in communities in Upstate New York. Her coverage suggest that the fracking question
“It’s like playing Russian roulette with your water supply.”
has energized voters – against the “fracking” scheme. Scarvalone’s piece makes the probability of “fracking” coming to pass seem unlikely. Add to that other constituencies who are likely to oppose fracking: banks, property owners, title insurance companies, attorneys and real estate professionals will influence the ongoing debate over “Fracking.” Continue reading
This is part of a series dedicated to what we regard as “First Principles.” No set of principles, in our view, is more important than the notion that distributed networks are more robust than centralized networks, and that this applies to a military command-and-control network no more or less than it applies to a suburban neighborhood, rural community, or a city – any social network. Thanks to the RAND Corporation, much of the most important early work in network theory, written by the late Paul Baran, is readily available online for free. Math-averse readers should have no worries, Baran (and the uncredited authors at RAND) won’t require you to have any arithmetic, much less mathematical, background. Before you read the following excerpt introducing the RAND series, we’d like readers to think of themselves, their neighbors, and family and friends both near and far as members of, or “nodes” on, a social network.
In 1962, a nuclear confrontation seemed imminent. The United States (US) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were embroiled in the Cuban missile crisis. Both the US and the USSR were in the process of building hair-trigger nuclear ballistic missile systems. Each country pondered post-nuclear attack scenarios.
US authorities considered ways to communicate in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. How could any sort of “command and control network” survive? Paul Baran, a researcher at RAND, offered a solution: design a more robust communications network using “redundancy” and “digital” technology.
At the time, naysayers dismissed Baran’s idea as unfeasible. But working with colleagues at RAND, Baran persisted. This effort would eventually become the foundation for the World Wide Web.
centralized switching facilities
centralized
distributed switching facilities
distributed
Baran was born in Poland in 1926. In 1928, his family moved to the US. He attended Drexel University where he earned a degree in electrical engineering. Afterward, Baran married and moved to Los Angeles where he worked for the Hughes Aircraft Company. Taking night classes at UCLA, he earned an engineering master’s degree in 1959–the same year he joined RAND.
At that time, RAND focused mostly on Cold War-related military issues. A looming concern was that neither the long-distance telephone plant, nor the basic military command and control network would survive a nuclear attack. Although most of the links would be undamaged, the centralized switching facilities would be destroyed by enemy weapons. Consequently, Baran conceived a system that had no centralized switches and could operate even if many of its links and switching nodes had been destroyed.
Baran envisioned a network of unmanned nodes that would act as switches, routing information from one node to another to their final destinations. The nodes would use a scheme Baran called “hot-potato routing” or distributed communications.
Baran also developed the concept of dividing information into “message blocks” before sending them out across the network. Each block would be sent separately and rejoined into a whole when they were received at their destination. A British man named Donald Davies independently devised a very similar system, but he called the message blocks “packets,” a term that was eventually adopted instead of Baran’s message blocks.
This method of “packet switching” is a rapid store-and-forward design. When a node receives a packet it stores it, determines the best route to its destination, and sends it to the next node on that path. If there was a problem with a node (or if it had been destroyed) packets would simply be routed around it.
In a recent interview with Wired magazine, Baran discussed his vision of how the new technology might be used. “Around December 1966, I presented a paper at the American Marketing Association called ‘Marketing in the Year 2000.’ I described push-and-pull communications and how we’re going to do our shopping via a television set and a virtual department store. If you want to buy a drill, you click on Hardware and that shows Tools and you click on that and go deeper.”
In 1969, this “distributed” concept was given its first large-scale test, with the first node installed at UCLA and the seventh node at RAND in Santa Monica. Funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency and called ARPANET, it was intended for scientists and researchers who wanted to share one another’s computers remotely. Within two years, however, the network’s users had turned it into something unforeseen: a high-speed, electronic post office for exchanging everything from technical to personal information.
In 1983, the rapidly expanding network broke off from its military part, which became MILNET. The remainder became what was called ARPANET. In 1989, the ARPANET moniker was retired in favor the “Internet,” which had also been described as the “information superhighway.” These days, the Internet continues to expand, stringing together the World Wide Web, an all-encompassing, affordable, universal multimedia communications network (see related RAND Review article).
Today, RAND continues to conduct research in this area. CEO and President of RAND Jim Thomson recently recalled Baran’s contributions. “Our world is a better place for the technologies Paul Baran has invented and developed, and also because of his consistent concern with appropriate public policies for their use.”
“POTS” is phone-geek and industry slang for “Plain Old Telephone Service.” A P.O.T.S. pone is a telephone, rotary (that’s a “dial,” a big wheel on the front of the phone, for our younger readers) or touch-tone, which doesn’t have a whole bunch of extra features requiring, usually, direct current (DC), which in the United States, usually means an unwieldy black “power brick,” which is plugged into a wall socket or extension cord, converts the alternating current to direct current, powers the extra features (speakers, lights, answering machine) but not the voice connection itself – which is powered by the telephone system at the nearest phone company facility, usually referred to as the “central office,” although, unlike regular offices, they’re often unattended. One can’t walk in and pay a bill, or request service; in that sense, it’s not an office at all. Think of it as network hub. Better-run telephone companies, certainly including the company we now refer to as “Verizon,” but which others of us grew up thinking of as “New York Telephone,” have their own emergency generators.
So – when the power grid fails, assuming the copper wires which connect you to your central office haven’t been cut (more likely in suburban or rural areas where the cost of laying underground cable for a relatively sparse population is prohibited your “POTS” phone will still work in a power outage. You can still call 911, for instance.
However, if you have a “POTS” phone but no one you care about does – not so good.
So – what we at Popular Logistics would like you to do is this: buy yourself a POTS phone, better yet, buy several of them, and then use your powers of persuasion to make sure that the people you care about and who care about you have them, too.
If you’re only going to have one, we suggest a touch-tone phone, because there are systems which will want you to enter data via the keypad.
Reasons for ignoring this advice, and why they don’t stand up to scrutiny
“They don’t make them anymore.” That’s not true, and we’re going to show you here to get them.
“They must be really expensive.” Also not true – we’ve found reliable reconditioned touch-tone desk telephones for as low as $10 with shipping, and if you buy a few at once, the shipping costs get lower. And if we can get enough readers to do this, we might be able to work out a bulk purchase.
“They’re ugly.” We don’t think so. Neither do the Museum of Modern Art, which has telephone by the industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss in its Design Collection, as does the Cooper-Hewitt design museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution.
“I’ve already got a mobile phone, and ‘regular’ service is an extra expense.” (1) If the power goes out your smart phone i s going to be hard to recharge; (2) depending on your plan, using a landline for outbound calls from home can actually reduce your mobile bill.
One last point – of the many elegant features of telephone design, it’s worth noting two which make them exceptionally “green” devices. First, the older (and recent, but better-made) telephones use so little power that they can be powered from the central office. They use much more power, in fact, to ring the bell than to carry two-way voice conversations. Second, telephones designed in the 1950’s with a planned lifespan of 25 years are still in service. How many electrical or electronic devices do you own that have worked for that long and not ended up in a landfill? And when they do break, telephone enthusiasts both amateur and professional often scavenge the parts or fix broken parts, further extending their life. I have on my desk a green model 2500 ITT desk telephone which is nearly as old as I am, much older than my children both recently graduated from college with all sorts of honors, thank you very much – not that either has a POTS line. But if the test of good advice were whether one’s own children took it, we’d be living in an entirely different society.
So – in the hopes that we’ve persuaded you that this small purchase will reduce the risk of your being incommunicado in an emergency, and might also save you some money and reduce your carbon footprint – we will, in sort order, tell you about some individual phones and source.
My green desk phone, BTW, came from the excellent Jonathan Finder of OldPhones.com
Tweet
Long-time readers know that it is our firmly-held conviction that social networks matter more than any single type of preparation or cached equipment. Here is an excerpt from The Key To Disaster Survival? Pals, Neighbors broadcast on the July 4, 2011 edition of All Things Considered:
A researcher’s data suggest that ambulances, firetrucks and government aid aren’t the principal ways most people survive during and recover after a disaster. Instead, it’s the personal ties between members of a community that really matter.
If you want an easy template for doing this in your community, check out the 3 Steps Program.
Via the Telegraph, their correspondent James Kirkup reports that Liam Fox, the UK’s Secretary of Defence (Defense, if you prefer), has sais that “The Ministry of Defence is facing “cyberwar” attacks on a daily basis.”
Warning that Britain is now in continuous combat with an “invisible enemy” in cyberspace, the Defence Secretary said that the MoD last year detected and blocked more than 1,000 “potentially serious” attempts to infiltrate or disrupt its computer systems.
Speaking to the London Chambers of Commerce defence industry dinner, Dr Fox said electronic attacks on Britain doubled from 2009 to 2010. “There is a continuous battle being waged against us, day in, day out,” he said. Dr Fox’s remarks are the latest Government warning about the scale and severity of electronic attacks on sensitive State computer networks. George Osborne, the Chancellor, last month said that Government computers are receiving more than 20,000 malicious email attacks every month. .
The MoD and its highly sensitive electronic networks are a prime target for people trying to steal secrets or damage critical systems.
“Our systems are targeted by criminals, foreign intelligence services and other malicious actors seeking to exploit our people, corrupt our systems and steal information,” Dr Fox said. “The risks to defence are real, and I take them very seriously.”
A “Cantenna”: improvised antenna, reused materials, can extend transmission and reception of a variety of radio devices – a paint or other metal can, plus copper wire or brass rod, brass tubing – can extend the range of radios, cell phones, wireless networks. Here’s one example from Wikipedia’s entry Cantenna:
Radiation Symbol via NMSU.edu
It’s becoming increasingly clear that, as the dispersal of radiation becomes the most pressing question, distributed and redundant radiation detection (as well as wind-speed and wind direction) is what’s called for. Perhaps radiation detectors with IP addresses, or which can be connected to smart phones.
And Sahana – the free and open source software which is becoming the international standard for managing disaster response. seems an ideal platform for posting and sharing this type of information at many intervals, from many nodes, all geo-tagged.
Here’s Eric Mack’s From Tokyo to California, radiation tracking gets crowdsourced, published on CNet News.
The intensifying nuclear crisis in Japan is raising anxieties on both sides of the Pacific over the potential impacts of radiation exposure, and a relative dearth of official information on radiation levels is leading some to turn to crowdsourced options.
Japanese officials warned residents living near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to stay indoors after a third explosion at the plant in four days, followed by elevated radiation levels around the plant, which the officials said were high enough to harm human health. Panic was reported in Tokyo, as radiation levels rose to as much as 23 times the normal level, according to some reports.
With official estimations of the threat from radiation across Japan changing rapidly and sometimes inconsistent, a number of real-time amateur radiation monitors have popped up online. A live geiger counter at altTokyo.com updates a graph with data every 60 seconds, and a uStream channel broadcasting the digital display of another Tokyo geiger counter was drawing more than 14,000 viewers earlier today.
A few thousand miles across the Pacific to the east, state and federal officials in Hawaii and West Coast states said they did not anticipate any threats to public health from radiation drifting in from Japan. Despite such reassurances, Arizona-based GeigerCounters.com is seeing a run on radiation monitoring equipment. The site was down for a while following the announcement of the Fukushima leak, and came back online this morning with this message:
Due to the disaster in Japan, orders for Geiger Counters have outstripped supply. Initial orders were filled immediately from stock on the shelves at our location and the warehouses of our suppliers. But at this point, there are simply not enough detectors available to meet the overwhelming demand. At least one of our suppliers has adopted a “triage” method of doling out the limited supply of detectors remaining until more can come off the factory line.
Via Wikipedia Entry 2011 Faisalabad Bombing:
The 2011 Faisalabad bombing occurred on 8 March 2011. ((Masood, Salman (8 March 2011). “Car Bomb Kills at Least 24 Near Spy Agency in Pakistan”. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/world/asia/09pakistan-blast.html. Retrieved 8 March 2011)). At least 25 people were killed and over 127 wounded when a car bomb
blast occurred in a compressed natural gas
This underscores the target value of energy storage to terrorist attacks, which has two aspects:
Which is to say the distributed network matters as much as the renewable sources. From Generate Electricity Everywhere:
Problem Establishing local-scale power near end users ranks high on everyone’s spec list for Grid 2.0. That’s one reason Obama’s stimulus plan contains a grant that will reimburse property owners for 30 percent of the cost of a solar energy system. But utilities—former monopolies, after all—are reluctant to give up control over their antique, accident-prone grid. And people with enough rooftop real estate to squeeze out serious juice balk at the hassle.Solution Create a new class of energy service providers that act as middlemen between power companies and large commercial facilities with big rooftops. For instance, SunEdison builds and maintains solar plants on the rooftops of operations like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, and Kohl’s in eight states. It’s a win-win arrangement: Electric companies get a trusted partner in power generation, and businesses get green energy at a fixed, competitive rate—without additional investment. The secret sauce isn’t photovoltaic panels; it’s the networking gear, sensors, and software that let a SunEdison control room in California manage hundreds of solar sites cost-effectively. And that means it’s suited for scaling up. Says Mark Culpepper, a veteran of Cisco Systems who is now CTO of SunEdison: “Generating power anywhere you can fit a panel totally changes the dynamic of the energy market.”
