HackingTheUniverse

You are browsing the archives of 2010 January.

A new paper that discussed Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) has been released by Mandiant and has sparked new interest in the topic. excerpt from the original post on APT APT or Advanced Persistent Threat describes cyber attacks mounted by organizational teams that have deep resources, advanced penetration skills, specific target profiles and are remarkably persisent [...]

Martine Rothblatt explores the question of what qualifies as artificial intelligence and along the way, suggests a new name for it – Vitology. Then, in another article, she describes how fast it is arriving. Will Uploaded Minds in Machines be Alive? – [ieet.org] The differences between organic and cybernetic life are less important that their [...]

Max Planck was born in 1858 in Kiel, Germany and was the physicist responsible for creating the beginnings of quantum theory. Planck was working on a description of electromagnetic radiation when he discovered that energy is only radiated in discrete bundles, or quanta. A constant derived from the equation he produced is now known as [...]

Effective argument can be considered as communication to persuade others through reasoned judgement. A discussion of the pros and cons of various options and an attempt to negotiate consensus as an outcome can be part of the process. Critical evaluation of the underlying logic and of the level of relevance of each component to the [...]

Nmap, the free, open source utility that has become a basic tool for many network security professionals, has released a new version. Nmap 5.20 Released – [nmap.org] Happy new year, everyone. I’m happy to announce Nmap 5.20–our first stable Nmap release since 5.00 last July! It offers more than 150 significant improvements, including: o 30+ [...]

It is possible (but not yet confirmed) that astronomers have observed a collision in the asteroid belt for the first time. Mystery Object Behaves Both Like a Comet and Asteroid – [discovery.com] Something awfully curious is happening 250 million miles away in the asteroid belt. Astronomers think they may be witnessing a never-before-seen collision between [...]

Louis de Broglie was born in Dieppe, France in 1892 and was a physicist. He was known primarily for creating the “de Broglie hypothesis”, which associates wavelength characteristics with any moving particle or object. At the time, electrons were being defined mostly as particles, although there had been some evidence developed of both particle and [...]

Trying to set a criteria for defining the rights we allow to non-human entities provides an interesting debate. The word, “intelligence” is usually used, but that is not simple to define and may not be adequate. Intelligence is often measured by ability to perform analytic reasoning. But just performing calculations or retrieving knowledge may not [...]

Eric Drexler created the term, “exploratory engineering” to describe a process of extrapolation in engineering. Drexler maintains that logical boundaries of scope can be defined based on performance from physically possible classes of devices. Using physical laws to draw the boundaries makes it possible to create hypothetical scenarios and accomplish modeling that have higher probabilities [...]

Erwin Schrodinger was born in Vienna, Austria in 1887 and was a physicist who made major contributions to quantum mechanics. The Schrodinger wave equation describes the state of an atom, including the electrons as mathematical waves. It was later demonstrated that Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics and the wave function were describing the same thing. PRECURSOR: 1777 [...]