Somehow I missed this article from a few weeks ago. It’s quite fascinating.

Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe

In the coming months, commentators around the world would look back at this moment and debate its significance. But for Aaviksoo, the meaning was clear. This was not the first botnet strike ever, nor was it the largest. But never before had an entire country been targeted on almost every digital front all at once, and never before had a government itself fought back. "The attacks were aimed at the essential electronic infrastructure of the Republic of Estonia," Aaviksoo tells me later. "All major commercial banks, telcos, media outlets, and name servers — the phone books of the Internet — felt the impact, and this affected the majority of the Estonian population. This was the first time that a botnet threatened the national security of an entire nation."

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Very cool custom face plates …

SpaceGhost2K’s "In Your Face Plates" *Updated Aug. 25th with new pics!!* – Xbox 360 & Xbox Forums

Very cool custom face plates …

SpaceGhost2K’s "In Your Face Plates" *Updated Aug. 25th with new pics!!* – Xbox 360 & Xbox Forums

Our Far-flung Correspondents: The Dark Side: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

In Galileo’s time, nighttime skies all over the world would have merited the darkest Bortle ranking, Class 1. Today, the sky above New York City is Class 9, at the other extreme of the scale, and American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. The very darkest places in the continental United States today are almost never darker than Class 2, and are increasingly threatened. For someone standing on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on a moonless night, the brightest feature of the sky is not the Milky Way but the glow of Las Vegas, a hundred and seventy-five miles away. To see skies truly comparable to those which Galileo knew, you would have to travel to such places as the Australian outback and the mountains of Peru. And civilization’s assault on the stars has consequences far beyond its impact on astronomers. Excessive, poorly designed outdoor lighting wastes electricity, imperils human health and safety, disturbs natural habitats, and, increasingly, deprives many of us of a direct relationship with the nighttime sky, which throughout human history has been a powerful source of reflection, inspiration, discovery, and plain old jaw-dropping wonder.

Stolen From: Slashdot | Making War On Light Pollution