will_marx

Hello all,

I graduated last night and gave some information about myself and my email. Should I have received a confirmation email or something by now? Just wondering, trying to make sure I'm not any trouble. Thanks for any info.

Give Personnel some time to reply. Although if you haven't heard from them in a couple of weeks, give one of us a ping, and we'll see what's going on.

Kaltxi everyone,

 

Soora here. I hope to join in on the sims pretty soon. Been RPBF for a long time now. Look forward to real-time ^^

I'm relatively new to the ST universe-thing, so forgive me if I am somewhat undereducated on alien species, planets and such. I learn quickly and find it all fascian ting so I learn it all that much faster. I seem to be having troubles with this text editor, so forgive my previous spelling of fascinating. lol ^^

 

As a brief description, Kaara is a part-Vulcan who doesn't think too fondly of her Vulcan great-grandfather, and thus tries not to think like a Vulcan, which is amusing because she often does it anyway. She even talks politely and very straightforward. Sometimes. She covers up her one Vulcan ear with her hair and uses the strength to her advantage.

 

Look forward to simming with you all! :D

 

Soora

::clears throat::

Welcome!

Three things to remember: 1) Any Academy hosted by STSF N'Dak is a guaranteed suicide mission [And that's a direct quote from his signature]. 2) Never compare the GMs to Captains Bligh or Queeg if you want to get graduate sometime before the turn of the century. 3) Any Academy hosted by me is bound to be...unique.

That being said, I'd recommend reading: How to sim, as well as: Tips from the Moose

For all your technobabble needs, visit Memory Alpha or Ex Astris Scientia.

Academy times are listed Eastern Time, so adjust as appropriate for your timezone. Academies are mandatory, and everyone is human. Save your character development for your Advanced Ship. Minimum graduation time is 3 Academies, but don't expect to graduate that quickly; the host teams prefer to see how you are over a longer span of time. And once you are posted to your first Advanced Sim, it's strongly recommended that any ideas that go outside Trek canon be approved by your host team.

As for the forum issues, if you're using Firefox 3.6.x, the forum software doesn't really like it. Other browsers don't cause that problem, and thankfully it doesn't exist in the chatroom.

Hmm...Time to ferret around JAG's computers.

;)

Chief Chaos Officer <CO> -- Will Marx

Counselor for Mental Health Purposes <CNS> -- STSF Spyder

Mission Executive Officer <MXO> -- Caden Finlay

Chief Science Officer <CSCI> --Sonak

Chief Security Officer <CSEC> -- Capt Calestrom

Asst Security Officer <ASEC> -- Chirakis

While cruising deep space, USS Royal Oak (post-Voy Sovereign-class) had arrived at an inhabited Class-M planet and in the finest tradition of Kirk & Co. has dispatched a small landing party (XO, SEC, SCI). The AT has just finished beaming down

Any Questions?

Real Life™ happens, TPike. Worry not about it.

FIFA Having the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is like the NHL playing their annual winter classic to Trinidad and Tobago. Or the NFL holding the Superbowl in Papua New Guinea.

 

There. . .I've said my peace.

Or Jamaica entering a bobsled team in the Winter Olympics?

Happy Birthday!

Now...when will it become economically feasible for power generation? Think about it...essentially warp cores plugged into a smart power grid, providing us limitless clean energy.

On a further note, MSG Nicholas Oresco (sp?), US Army, who received his Medal of Honor in Europe for actions during the Winter Offensive, 1944-45, happens to now live in my old hometown. As the Grand Marshal for the Memorial Day Parade last year, he gave a few words. Basically saying that it shouldn't be the media darlings who should be recognized as heroes, because they're not. Its the trooper who sacrifices his life for his buddies, the soldier who comes home bearing the scars, physical, mental and emotional, of his time under fire; these are the men and women who deserve our respect and admiration.

I know its a few days past Veteran's/Remembrance Day, but the words still hold true no matter when.

Lest We Forget/Never Forget

There can be only one.

(Just because. :( )

Happy Birthday guys.

Just because I can...

Arcadia, Reaent, Challenger, and Excalibur.

A meeting of the minds? Or are they plotting something more...sinister?

(ST: Bridge Commander screenshot, with USS Enterprise-E, Excelsior, Ambassador mods, stock Akira-class)

And that's a bad thing?

For those of us who desire to know more about the Kelvin and her class, save the brewery plumbing in the engineering section

 

There's a Haynes Manual out for the USS Enterprise! Now I'll know what to do the next time the dilithium crystal chamber breaks. :P

But no reference to the JJ-Prise.

I recall a discussion, oh about 20 years ago now, for the Academic Decathalon topic of space exploration. One of the leading cosmologists of the time (who's name eludes me) dared us to consider the universe like an expanding soap bubble, with subspace the air trapped below the surface layer.

As for what the criteria for discovering subspace? I think the development of superluminal communications is that criteria, allowing us to discover exactly the nature of subspace. Right now, RF (3 kHz to 300 GHz) is just the low end of the Electromagnetic spectrum, and already travels at the speed of light. Once we can take that energy and push it faster, then we'll have figured it out.

I would like to thank everyone who made this possible. :P

 

So it's my turn ...

 

Its the location of Jimmy Hoffa.

You can also use Paint.net. Or double check your resolution settings on the camera. A higher quality picture usually results in a larger file. Or to get around the 3.0MB file size, sign up for an account with Photobucket or Imageshack (Personal choice here) and link them in, instead of having the site host them.

I am sad and relieved ... sad because my son was stung by a hornet, but relieved that he isn't intensely alergic.

That's a good thing.

Happy 42 (101010) Day!

While I'll always have a job as an EMT- Stupid Human Tricks equal job security

An Earth-size planet has been spotted orbiting a nearby star at a distance that would makes it not too hot and not too cold — comfortable enough for life to exist, researchers announced Wednesday, Sept. 29.

 

If confirmed, the exoplanet, named Gliese 581g, would be the first Earth-like world found residing in a star's habitable zone — a region where a planet's temperature could sustain liquid water on its surface.

 

And the planet's discoverers are optimistic about the prospects for finding life there.

 

"Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today. "I have almost no doubt about it."

 

His colleague, Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Washington, D.C., wasn't willing to put a number on the odds of life, though he admitted he's optimistic.

 

"It's both an incremental and monumental discovery," Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told SPACE.com. Incremental because the method used to find Gliese 581g already has found several planets most of the known planets, both super-Earths, more massive than our own world outside their stars' habitable zone, along with non-Earth-like planets within the habitable zone.

 

"It really is monumental if you accept this as the first Earth-like planet ever found in the star's habitable zone," said Seager, who was not directly involved in the discovery.

 

Vogt, Butler and their colleagues will detail the planet finding in the Astrophysical Journal.

 

The newfound planet joins more than 400 other alien worlds known to date. Most are huge gas giants, though several are just a few times the mass of Earth.

 

Stellar tugs

 

Gliese 581g is one of two new worlds the team discovered orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581, bumping that nearby star's family of planets to six. The other newfound planet, Gliese 581f, is outside the habitable zone, researchers said.

 

The star is located 20 light-years from Earth in the constellation Libra. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).

 

Red dwarf stars are about 50 times dimmer than our sun. Since these stars are so much cooler, their planets can orbit much closer to them and still remain in the habitable zone.

 

Estimates suggest Gliese 581g is 0.15 astronomical units from its star, close enough to its star to be able to complete an orbit in just under 37 days. One astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and sun, which is approximately 93 million miles (150 million km).

 

The Gliese 581 planet system now vaguely resembles our own, with six worlds orbiting their star in nearly circular paths.

 

With support from the National Science Foundation and NASA, the scientists — members of the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey — collected 11 years of radial velocity data on the star. This method looks at a star's tiny movements due to the gravitational tug from orbiting bodies.

 

The subtle tugs let researchers estimate the planet's mass and orbital period, how long it takes to circle its star.

 

Gliese 581g has a mass three to four times Earth's, the researchers estimated. From the mass and estimated size, they said the world is probably a rocky planet with enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere.

 

Just as Mercury is locked facing the sun, the planet is tidally locked to its star, so that one side basks in perpetual daylight, while the other side remains in darkness. This locked configuration helps to stabilize the planet's surface climate, Vogt said.

 

"Any emerging life forms would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude," Vogt said, suggesting that life forms that like it hot would just scoot toward the light side of that line while forms with polar-bear-like preferences would move toward the dark side.

 

Between blazing heat on the star-facing side and freezing cold on the dark side, the average surface temperature may range from 24 degrees below zero to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 to minus 12 degrees Celsius), the researchers said.

 

Are you sure?

 

Supposedly habitable worlds have been found and later discredited, so what makes this one such a breakthrough?

 

There's still a chance that further observations will dismiss this planet, also. But over the years, the radial velocity method has become more precise, the researchers point out in their journal article.

 

In addition, the researchers didn't make some of the unrealistic assumptions made in the past, Seager said.

 

For instance, another planet orbiting Gliese 581 (the planet Gliese 581c) also had been considered to have temperatures suitable for life, but in making those calculations, the researchers had come up with an "unrealistic" estimate for the amount of energy the planet reflected, Seager pointed out. That type of estimate wasn't made for this discovery.

 

 

"We're looking at this one as basically the tip of the iceberg, and we're expecting more to be found," Seager said.

 

One way to make this a reality, according to study researchers, would be "to build dedicated 6- to 8-meter-class Automated Planet Finder telescopes, one in each hemisphere," they wrote.

 

The telescopes — or "light buckets" as Seager referred to them — would be dedicated to spying on the nearby stars thought to potentially host Earth-like planets in their habitable zones. The result would be inexpensive and probably would reveal many other nearby potentially habitable planets, the researchers wrote.

 

Beyond the roughly 100 nearest stars to Earth, there are billions upon billions of stars in the Milky Way, and with that in mind, the researchers suggest tens of billions of potentially habitable planets may exist, waiting to be found.

 

Planets like Gliese 581g that are tidally locked and orbit the habitable zone of red dwarfs have a high probability of harboring life, the researchers suggest.

 

Earth once supported harsh conditions, the researchers point out. And since red dwarfs are relatively "immortal" living hundreds of billions of years (many times the current age of the universe), combined with the fact that conditions stay so stable on a tidally locked planet, there's a good chance that if life were to get a toe-hold it would be able to adapt to those conditions and possibly take off, Butler said.

Christian Science Monitor, via Yahoo! News:

Cyber security experts say they have identified the world's first known cyber super weapon designed specifically to destroy a real-world target – a factory, a refinery, or just maybe a nuclear power plant.

 

The cyber worm, called Stuxnet, has been the object of intense study since its detection in June. As more has become known about it, alarm about its capabilities and purpose have grown. Some top cyber security experts now say Stuxnet's arrival heralds something blindingly new: a cyber weapon created to cross from the digital realm to the physical world – to destroy something.

 

At least one expert who has extensively studied the malicious software, or malware, suggests Stuxnet may have already attacked its target – and that it may have been Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, which much of the world condemns as a nuclear weapons threat.

 

The appearance of Stuxnet created a ripple of amazement among computer security experts. Too large, too encrypted, too complex to be immediately understood, it employed amazing new tricks, like taking control of a computer system without the user taking any action or clicking any button other than inserting an infected memory stick. Experts say it took a massive expenditure of time, money, and software engineering talent to identify and exploit such vulnerabilities in industrial control software systems.

 

Unlike most malware, Stuxnet is not intended to help someone make money or steal proprietary data. Industrial control systems experts now have concluded, after nearly four months spent reverse engineering Stuxnet, that the world faces a new breed of malware that could become a template for attackers wishing to launch digital strikes at physical targets worldwide. Internet link not required.

 

"Until a few days ago, people did not believe a directed attack like this was possible," Ralph Langner, a German cyber-security researcher, told the Monitor in an interview. He was slated to present his findings at a conference of industrial control system security experts Tuesday in Rockville, Md. "What Stuxnet represents is a future in which people with the funds will be able to buy an attack like this on the black market. This is now a valid concern."

 

A gradual dawning of Stuxnet's purpose

 

It is a realization that has emerged only gradually.

 

Stuxnet surfaced in June and, by July, was identified as a hypersophisticated piece of malware probably created by a team working for a nation state, say cyber security experts. Its name is derived from some of the filenames in the malware. It is the first malware known to target and infiltrate industrial supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software used to run chemical plants and factories as well as electric power plants and transmission systems worldwide. That much the experts discovered right away.

 

But what was the motive of the people who created it? Was Stuxnet intended to steal industrial secrets – pressure, temperature, valve, or other settings –and communicate that proprietary data over the Internet to cyber thieves?

 

By August, researchers had found something more disturbing: Stuxnet appeared to be able to take control of the automated factory control systems it had infected – and do whatever it was programmed to do with them. That was mischievous and dangerous.

 

But it gets worse. Since reverse engineering chunks of Stuxnet's massive code, senior US cyber security experts confirm what Mr. Langner, the German researcher, told the Monitor: Stuxnet is essentially a precision, military-grade cyber missile deployed early last year to seek out and destroy one real-world target of high importance – a target still unknown.

 

"Stuxnet is a 100-percent-directed cyber attack aimed at destroying an industrial process in the physical world," says Langner, who last week became the first to publicly detail Stuxnet's destructive purpose and its authors' malicious intent. "This is not about espionage, as some have said. This is a 100 percent sabotage attack."

 

A guided cyber missile

 

On his website, Langner lays out the Stuxnet code he has dissected. He shows step by step how Stuxnet operates as a guided cyber missile. Three top US industrial control system security experts, each of whom has also independently reverse-engineered portions of Stuxnet, confirmed his findings to the Monitor.

 

"His technical analysis is good," says a senior US researcher who has analyzed Stuxnet, who asked for anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the press. "We're also tearing [stuxnet] apart and are seeing some of the same things."

 

Other experts who have not themselves reverse-engineered Stuxnet but are familiar with the findings of those who have concur with Langner's analysis.

 

"What we're seeing with Stuxnet is the first view of something new that doesn't need outside guidance by a human – but can still take control of your infrastructure," says Michael Assante, former chief of industrial control systems cyber security research at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory. "This is the first direct example of weaponized software, highly customized and designed to find a particular target."

"I'd agree with the classification of this as a weapon," Jonathan Pollet, CEO of Red Tiger Security and an industrial control system security expert, says in an e-mail.

 

One researcher's findingsLangner's research, outlined on his website Monday, reveals a key step in the Stuxnet attack that other researchers agree illustrates its destructive purpose. That step, which Langner calls "fingerprinting," qualifies Stuxnet as a targeted weapon, he says.

Langner zeroes in on Stuxnet's ability to "fingerprint" the computer system it infiltrates to determine whether it is the precise machine the attack-ware is looking to destroy. If not, it leaves the industrial computer alone. It is this digital fingerprinting of the control systems that shows Stuxnet to be not spyware, but rather attackware meant to destroy, Langner says.

 

Stuxnet's ability to autonomously and without human assistance discriminate among industrial computer systems is telling. It means, says Langner, that it is looking for one specific place and time to attack one specific factory or power plant in the entire world.

 

"Stuxnet is the key for a very specific lock – in fact, there is only one lock in the world that it will open," Langner says in an interview. "The whole attack is not at all about stealing data but about manipulation of a specific industrial process at a specific moment in time. This is not generic. It is about destroying that process."

 

So far, Stuxnet has infected at least 45,000 industrial control systems around the world, without blowing them up – although some victims in North America have experienced some serious computer problems, Eric Byres, a Canadian expert, told the Monitor. Most of the victim computers, however, are in Iran, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia. Some systems have been hit in Germany, Canada, and the US, too. Once a system is infected, Stuxnet simply sits and waits – checking every five seconds to see if its exact parameters are met on the system. When they are, Stuxnet is programmed to activate a sequence that will cause the industrial process to self-destruct, Langner says.

 

Langner's analysis also shows, step by step, what happens after Stuxnet finds its target. Once Stuxnet identifies the critical function running on a programmable logic controller, or PLC, made by Siemens, the giant industrial controls company, the malware takes control. One of the last codes Stuxnet sends is an enigmatic “DEADF007.” Then the fireworks begin, although the precise function being overridden is not known, Langner says. It may be that the maximum safety setting for RPMs on a turbine is overridden, or that lubrication is shut off, or some other vital function shut down. Whatever it is, Stuxnet overrides it, Langner’s analysis shows.

 

"After the original code [on the PLC] is no longer executed, we can expect that something will blow up soon," Langner writes in his analysis. "Something big."

 

For those worried about a future cyber attack that takes control of critical computerized infrastructure – in a nuclear power plant, for instance – Stuxnet is a big, loud warning shot across the bow, especially for the utility industry and government overseers of the US power grid.

 

"The implications of Stuxnet are very large, a lot larger than some thought at first," says Mr. Assante, who until recently was security chief for the North American Electric Reliability Corp. "Stuxnet is a directed attack. It's the type of threat we've been worried about for a long time. It means we have to move more quickly with our defenses – much more quickly."

 

Has Stuxnet already hit its target?It might be too late for Stuxnet's target, Langner says. He suggests it has already been hit – and destroyed or heavily damaged. But Stuxnet reveals no overt clues within its code to what it is after.

 

A geographical distribution of computers hit by Stuxnet, which Microsoft produced in July, found Iran to be the apparent epicenter of the Stuxnet infections. That suggests that any enemy of Iran with advanced cyber war capability might be involved, Langner says. The US is acknowledged to have that ability, and Israel is also reported to have a formidable offensive cyber-war-fighting capability.

 

Could Stuxnet's target be Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, a facility much of the world condemns as a nuclear weapons threat?

 

Langner is quick to note that his views on Stuxnet's target is speculation based on suggestive threads he has seen in the media. Still, he suspects that the Bushehr plant may already have been wrecked by Stuxnet. Bushehr's expected startup in late August has been delayed, he notes, for unknown reasons. (One Iranian official blamed the delay on hot weather.)

 

But if Stuxnet is so targeted, why did it spread to all those countries? Stuxnet might have been spread by the USB memory sticks used by a Russian contractor while building the Bushehr nuclear plant, Langner offers. The same contractor has jobs in several countries where the attackware has been uncovered.

 

"This will all eventually come out and Stuxnet's target will be known," Langner says. "If Bushehr wasn't the target and it starts up in a few months, well, I was wrong. But somewhere out there, Stuxnet has found its target. We can be fairly certain of that."

Happy Birthday Jami!

What fathers imagine themselves doing on their daughter's first date.

Russian Rednecks