Category: history

Books Worth Reading: Q2 2019 (Apollo Edition)

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  • A Man on the Moon, Andrew Chaikin is probably the best of the general histories of the moon landings.
  • Failure is not an Option, by Gene Kranz, who didn’t actually say that during Apollo 13.
  • Marketing The Moon by David Scott and Richard Jurek. I was surprised what a good history this was, and how much it brought in the overall history of the program and put it in context.
  • Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo, as mentioned previously.
  • Full Moon. Gorgeous photography, printed from very high quality scans; the author convinced NASA to provide access to first generation negatives. You may need to search on Amazon to find a reasonably priced copy.

Also worthwhile: From the Earth to The Moon (DVD, Blue Ray), and the Museum of Flight Apollo exhibit, in Seattle through September 2nd.

The Queen of the Skies and Innovation

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The Seattle Times has a story today about how “50 years ago today, the first 747 took off and changed aviation.” It’s true. The 747 was a marvel of engineering and luxury. The book by Joe Sutter is a great story of engineering leadership. For an upcoming flight, I paid extra to reserve an upper deck seat before the last of the passenger-carrying Queens of the Skies retires.

And in a way, the 747 represents a pinnacle of aviation engineering advancements. It was fast, it was long range, it was comfortable. There is no arguing that today’s planes are lighter, quieter, have better air, in seat power and entertainment, but I’m still happy to be flying on one, and there are still a few left to be delivered as cargo airplanes until 2022. (You can get lost in the Wikipedia article.)

And I want to talk a little not about the amazing aircraft, but about the regulatory tradeoffs made for aircraft and for computers.

As mentioned, the 50 year old design, with a great many improvements, remains in production. Also pictured is what’s probably a 1960s era Bell Systems 500 (note the integrated handset cord). Now, if 747s crashed at the rate of computers running Windows, there wouldn’t be any left. Regulation has made aviation safe, but the rate of innovation is low. (Brad Templeton has some thoughts on this in “Tons of new ideas in aviation. Will regulation stop them?.”)

In contrast, innovation in phones, computers and networks have transformed roughly every aspect of life over the last 25 years. The iPhone has transformed phones from phones into computers full of apps.

This has security costs. It is nearly impossible to function in society without a mobile phone. Your location is tracked constantly. A vulnerability in your phone leads to compromise of astounding amounts of personal data. These security costs scale when someone finds a vulnerability. Bruce Schneier has written recently about how this all comes together and leads him to say that even bad regulation is probably better than no regulation.

iphone replaces lots of things

In some ways, we’re already accepting these controls: see “15 Controversial Apps That Were Banned From Apple’s App Store,” or “Google has ‘banned’ these 14 apps from Play Store.” Controls imposed by one of the two companies wealthy enough to compete in mobile phone operating systems are importantly different from government controls, except of course, when those companies remove apps at the behest of governments.

I don’t know how to write regulation that allows for permission-less innovation at the pace we’re used to, and balances that with security and privacy. Something’s likely to give, and we need to think about how to make the societal tradeoffs well. Does anyone?

(Lastly, speaking of that upper-deck reservation, I want to give a shout-out to TProphet’s Award Cat, who drew my attention to the aircraft type and opportunity.)

Security Engineering: Computers versus Bridges

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Joseph Lorenzo Hall has a post at the Center for Democracy and Technology, “Taking the Pulse of Security Research.” One part of the post is an expert statement on security research, and I’m one of the experts who has signed on.

I fully support what CDT chose to include in the statement, and I want to go deeper. The back and forth of design and critique is not only a critical part of how an individual design gets better, but fields in which such criticism is the norm advance faster.

A quick search in Petroski’s Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America brings us the following. (The Roeblings built the Brooklyn Bridge, Lindenthal had proposed a concept for the crossing, which lost to Roebling’s, and he built many others.)

In Lindenthal’s case, he was so committed to the suspension concept for bridging the Hudson River that he turned the argument naturally and not unfairly to his use. Lindenthal admitted, for example, that it was “a popular assumption that suspension bridges cannot be well used for railroad purposes,” and further conceded that throughout the world there was only one suspension bridge then carrying railroad tracks, Roebling’s Niagara Gorge Bridge, completed in 1854, over which trains had to move slowly. However, rather than seeing this as scant evidence for his case, Lindenthal held up as a model the “greater moral courage and more abiding faith in the truth of constructive principles” that Roebling needed to build his bridge in the face of contemporary criticism by the “most eminent bridge engineers then living.” In Lindenthal’s time, three decades later, it was not merely a question of moral courage; “nowadays bridges are not built on faith,” and there was “not another field of applied mechanics where results can be predicted with so much precision as in bridges of iron and steel.” (“Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America,” Henry Petroski)

Importantly for the case which CDT is making, over the span of thirty years, we went from a single suspension bridge to “much precision” in their construction. That progress happened because criticisms and questions are standard while a bridge is proposed, and if it fails, there are inquests and inquiries as to why.

In his The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, David McCullough describes the prolonged public discussion of the engineering merits:

It had been said repeatedly by critics of the plan that a single span of such length was impossible, that the bridge trains would shake the structure to pieces and, more frequently, that no amount of calculations on paper could guarantee how it might hold up in heavy winds, but the odds were that the great river span would thrash and twist until it snapped in two and fell, the way the Wheeling Bridge had done (a spectacle some of his critics hoped to be on hand for, to judge by the tone of their attacks).

The process of debating plans for a bridge strengthen, not weaken, the resulting structure. Both books are worth reading as you think about how to advance the field of cybersecurity.

Image credit: Cleveland Electric, on their page about a fiber optic structural monitoring system which they retro-fitted onto the bridge in question.

John Harrison’s Struggle Continues

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Today is John Harrison’s 352nd birthday, and Google has a doodle to celebrate. Harrison was rescued from historical obscurity by Dava Sobel’s excellent book Longitude, which documented Harrison’s struggle to first build and then demonstrate the superiority of his clocks to the mathematical and astronomical solutions heralded by leading scientists of the day. Their methods were complex, tedious and hard to execute from the deck of a ship.

To celebrate, I’d like to share this photo I took at the Royal Museums Greenwich in 2017:

Harrison Worksheet framed

(A Full size version is on Flickr.)

As the placard says, “First produced in 1768, this worksheet gave navigators an easy process for calculating their longitude using new instruments and the Nautical Almanac. Each naval ship’s master was required to train with qualified teachers in London or Portsmouth in order to gain a certificate of navigational competence.” (Emphasis added.)

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There’s a fundraising campaign to “Keep the Bombe on the Bletchley Park Estate.”

The Bombe was a massive intellectual and engineering achievement at the British codebreaking center at Bletchley Park during the second world war. The Bombes were all disassembled after the war, and the plans destroyed, making the reconstruction of the Bombe at Bletchley a second impressive achievement.

My photo is from the exhibit on the reconstruction.

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a fresh look at a 3700-year-old clay tablet suggests that Babylonian mathematicians not only developed the first trig table, beating the Greeks to the punch by more than 1000 years, but that they also figured out an entirely new way to look at the subject. However, other experts on the clay tablet, known as Plimpton 322 (P322), say the new work is speculative at best. (“This ancient Babylonian tablet may contain the first evidence of trigonometry.”)

The paper, “Plimpton 322 is Babylonian exact sexagesimal trigonometry” is short and open access, and also contains this gem:

If this interpretation is correct, then P322 replaces Hipparchus’ ‘table of chords’ as the world’s oldest trigonometric table — but it is additionally unique because of its exact nature, which would make it the world’s only completely accurate trigonometric table. These insights expose an entirely new level of sophistication for OB mathematics.

The Unanimous Declaration of The 13 United States

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declaration-of-independence.jpg

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows:

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts

John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York

William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland

Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia

George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina

William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia

Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Image: Washington’s copy of the Declaration of Independence, from the Library of Congress.

Calls for an NTSB?

Data Analysis history Reports and Data research papers Uncategorized 4 Comments

In September, Steve Bellovin and I asked “Why Don’t We Have an Incident Repository?.”

I’m continuing to do research on the topic, and I’m interested in putting together a list of such things. I’d like to ask you for two favors.

First, if you remember such things, can you tell me about it? I recall “Computers at Risk,” the National Cyber Leap Year report, and the Bellovin & Neumann editorial in IEEE S&P. Oh, and “The New School of Information Security.” But I’m sure there have been others.

In particular, what I’m looking for are calls like this one in Computers at Risk (National Academies Press, 1991):

3a. Build a repository of incident data. The committee recommends that a repository of incident information be established for use in research, to increase public awareness of successful penetrations and existing vulnerabilities, and to assist security practitioners, who often have difficulty persuading managers to invest in security. This database should categorize, report, and track pertinent instances of system security-related threats, risks, and failures. […] One possible model for data collection is the incident reporting system administered by the National Transportation Safety Board… (chapter 3)

Second, I am trying to do searches such as “cites “Computers at Risk” and contains ‘NTSB’.” I have tried without luck to do this on Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic and Semantic Scholar. Only Google seems to be reliably identifying that report. Is there a good way to perform such a search?

The Web We Have to Save

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Hossein Derakhshan was recently released from jail in Iran. He’s written a long and thoughtful article “The Web We Have to Save.” It’s worth reading in full, but here’s an excerpt:

Some of it is visual. Yes, it is true that all my posts on Twitter and Facebook look something similar to a personal blog: They are collected in reverse-chronological order, on a specific webpage, with direct web addresses to each post. But I have very little control over how it looks like; I can’t personalize it much. My page must follow a uniform look which the designers of the social network decide for me.

The centralization of information also worries me because it makes it easier for things to disappear. After my arrest, my hosting service closed my account, because I wasn’t able to pay its monthly fee. But at least I had a backup of all my posts in a database on my own web server. (Most blogging platforms used to enable you to transfer your posts and archives to your own web space, whereas now most platforms don’t let you so.) Even if I didn’t, the Internet archive might keep a copy. But what if my account on Facebook or Twitter is shut down for any reason? Those services themselves may not die any time soon, but it would be not too difficult to imagine a day many American services shut down accounts of anyone who is from Iran, as a result of the current regime of sanctions. If that happened, I might be able to download my posts in some of them, and let’s assume the backup can be easily imported into another platform. But what about the unique web address for my social network profile? Would I be able to claim it back later, after somebody else has possessed it? Domain names switch hands, too, but managing the process is easier and more clear— especially since there is a financial relationship between you and the seller which makes it less prone to sudden and untransparent decisions.

But the scariest outcome of the centralization of information in the age of social networks is something else: It is making us all much less powerful in relation to governments and corporations.

Ironically, I tweeted a link, but I think I’m going to try to go back to more blogging, even if the content might fit somewhere else. Hossein’s right. There’s a web here, and we should work to save it.

(Previous mentions of Hossein: Hoder’s Denial“, “Free Hossein Derakhshan.”)

Theme: Ephemeris.

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