New efforts!

[darkgob]

Question: did anyone ever take super jump along with super speed to compensate for certain hurdling problems that SS had?

A lot of people did either this, or they just took Combat Jumping and (before it became inherent) Hurdle.

[LaughingAlex]

The reason why I'm asking is because you said this left easy to detect after effects and was impractical to accomplish.  However, if we're talking about the same cable alterations both of those are false.  You're not going to see the after effects of this unless you happen to look right at the spot on the cable this was done, and sight-inspecting miles of fiber optic cable ain't happening.  Second, this is not only practical to do, it is trivial to do.  I can strip and replace the insulation on fiber optic cable in a way you would never detect unless you were specifically looking for tampering.  Usually fiber cable is wrapped in thick monocolored plastic jacketing that isn't easy to see if it has been tampered with.

I assumed you meant splicing the cable and inserting a visible tap, which would create a detectable break (momentarily) and leave behind a potentially detectable splice point even after the fact.  That at least is consistent with your descriptions.  In context, that is the more reasonable interpretation of what you were saying.

It's easier to detect a tap, yes.  But say a directed laser?  Not so much, it wouldn't be much harder than making a tap for say, a credit card reader.

Ivanhedgehog, again, think about how many people can feasably use satellites.  Do you know what a bottleneck is?  It's an issue in which your data isn't transmittable fast enough at a single point, self explainatory.  When you look at how massive the internet is, to think you could use satellites for a network backbone, that only works if you only have to transmit a limited amount of data.  For home use?  It's not even remotely ready for that, people watch TV and stream at ever increasing resolutions, inevitably there is indeed a reason we ARE going for fiber optical backbones.  Now before you say "But lasers have infinite data transmission speeds!" I'll just bring up that on a satellite you can still only put so much hardware to process everything fast enough.  Lets not forget that if your looking at wide scale use via satellite, you can only transmit so much at a time.

Usually, satellite tv see they actually for the longest time relied on frequencies, but television programming is not the same as an interactive environment, likewise.  But the reason they charge an arm and a leg, besides greed, is the cost of that equipment and just how extreme it gets.

http://www.globalcomsatphone.com/hughesnet/satellite/costs.html

So direct laser tech, I wouldn't be surprised gets even more costly than that.  Let alone the bandwidth for large scale use, this makes me extremely skeptical of satellite's use as a backbone for civilian application(which by the way is what counts to me).  For simple communication needs such as say, targetting from satellite, thats again, not going to be a problem on bandwidth.  It's when your trying to support millions or billions of people rather than merely a few thousand devices that you have to think "Wait a second, just how many of these satellites am i going to need" along with "Ok just how much CPU and RAM am i going to need in all the routers/switches/servers on my satellite to handle the load of five hundred million computers streaming all at once?".

I keep re-iterating that and no one ever for once even see's that I mention that sure, in testing it sounds good but in mass use, not so much.

Things change once you start getting out of the controlled environment.  Don't be surprised if the tech your reading about takes a few decades longer before it's even close to ready for civilian use.  And even then, don't be surprised if it ends up far more difficult than anticipated with the ever increasing needs of a single civilian, let alone half a million+.

The thing is, they are testing in a controlled environment.  Think about the applications I'm focused on for a few seconds.  Is it capable of prime time wide spread use?  No?  Then it's impractical and actually quite useless to 99% at the moment.  It may even fall flat on it's back for the rare moments it could be used.  Then it may even be discovered it has a use afterall elsewhere, such as say, planet to planet communication within a star system.  But for modern use?

[LaughingAlex]

If I used super speed, I did not use any jumping travels.  I never allowed for one travel in my builds.  Instead, I learned the maps.  And I found I could get around quicker just from knowing the maps.  It's an ancient Chinese secret old shooter players learned that mmorpg players don't seem to pick up on :P.  Or at the very least, modern shooter players.

[Arcana]

A lot of people did either this, or they just took Combat Jumping and (before it became inherent) Hurdle.

Another option for players that wanted to acquire it was ninja run, which was not as fast as SS or had the same leaping ability as SJ, but operated as a reasonable hybrid of both.

[LateNights]

If I used super speed, I did not use any jumping travels.  I never allowed for one travel in my builds.  Instead, I learned the maps.  And I found I could get around quicker just from knowing the maps.  It's an ancient Chinese secret old shooter players learned that mmorpg players don't seem to pick up on :P.  Or at the very least, modern shooter players.

Sure, but my MA / SR scrapper with no travel powers that used elude to get around was no better a toon than any of my others that did have multiple travel powers...

In fact, mostly he was just more annoying to play for any great length of time.

That said, I for sure took combat jump on every toon I made ever, often with super speed and even flight on top of that, so I'm biased.

[Arcana]

It's easier to detect a tap, yes.  But say a directed laser?  Not so much, it wouldn't be much harder than making a tap for say, a credit card reader.

By all means please share your method for doing that.  I know how to tap fiber optic cable.  I know how to make a skimmer.  I don't know how to tap a point to point laser operating in open air in any practical way.  As a professional in the field, I would like to fill in that gap in my understanding of the state of the art.

[Fanta]

A lot of people did either this, or they just took Combat Jumping and (before it became inherent) Hurdle.

I almost always went SS + Celerity: Stealth for the invis once it was possible. Throw Combat jumping for defense with 2 LotG for 10% regen, and the recharge proc (nice mule), plus the bonus of resist immob.

[ivanhedgehog]

It's easier to detect a tap, yes.  But say a directed laser?  Not so much, it wouldn't be much harder than making a tap for say, a credit card reader.

Ivanhedgehog, again, think about how many people can feasably use satellites.  Do you know what a bottleneck is?  It's an issue in which your data isn't transmittable fast enough at a single point, self explainatory.  When you look at how massive the internet is, to think you could use satellites for a network backbone, that only works if you only have to transmit a limited amount of data.  For home use?  It's not even remotely ready for that, people watch TV and stream at ever increasing resolutions, inevitably there is indeed a reason we ARE going for fiber optical backbones.  Now before you say "But lasers have infinite data transmission speeds!" I'll just bring up that on a satellite you can still only put so much hardware to process everything fast enough.  Lets not forget that if your looking at wide scale use via satellite, you can only transmit so much at a time.

Usually, satellite tv see they actually for the longest time relied on frequencies, but television programming is not the same as an interactive environment, likewise.  But the reason they charge an arm and a leg, besides greed, is the cost of that equipment and just how extreme it gets.

http://www.globalcomsatphone.com/hughesnet/satellite/costs.html

So direct laser tech, I wouldn't be surprised gets even more costly than that.  Let alone the bandwidth for large scale use, this makes me extremely skeptical of satellite's use as a backbone for civilian application(which by the way is what counts to me).  For simple communication needs such as say, targetting from satellite, thats again, not going to be a problem on bandwidth.  It's when your trying to support millions or billions of people rather than merely a few thousand devices that you have to think "Wait a second, just how many of these satellites am i going to need" along with "Ok just how much CPU and RAM am i going to need in all the routers/switches/servers on my satellite to handle the load of five hundred million computers streaming all at once?".

I keep re-iterating that and no one ever for once even see's that I mention that sure, in testing it sounds good but in mass use, not so much.

Things change once you start getting out of the controlled environment.  Don't be surprised if the tech your reading about takes a few decades longer before it's even close to ready for civilian use.  And even then, don't be surprised if it ends up far more difficult than anticipated with the ever increasing needs of a single civilian, let alone half a million+.

The thing is, they are testing in a controlled environment.  Think about the applications I'm focused on for a few seconds.  Is it capable of prime time wide spread use?  No?  Then it's impractical and actually quite useless to 99% at the moment.  It may even fall flat on it's back for the rare moments it could be used.  Then it may even be discovered it has a use afterall elsewhere, such as say, planet to planet communication within a star system.  But for modern use?

MILITARY..the navy doesnt have that many nuclear subs. how many people can use a single wireless AP? if the concept is possible, problems can be worked  out. how many people can access a cell tower at 1 time. I have seen all the local towers overloaded at 1 time. does that stop us from using cell phones?

If you can tap a laser link between a nuke sub in the atlantic and a satellite, patent it. If you can do it without anyone noticing you will be getting a nobel prize. or a visit from seal team 6. one or the other. there are some amazing communications systems that most people know nothing about. I worked on ultra long wave radio back in the late 80's. It was for B1b bombers to communicate in an EMP environment. such as returning from a nuclear strike.

[Arcana]

It's easier to detect a tap, yes.  But say a directed laser?  Not so much, it wouldn't be much harder than making a tap for say, a credit card reader.

I changed my mind, I'm going to let you off the hook.

If you're going to tap what is essentially a laser beam, you need to figure out a way to intercept and read the beam, but also make sure the beam still gets to its destination so you don't kill the connection, which of course would be noticed.  You can use an optical splitter, where you cut the fiber optic cable and place an optical splitter box in-line with the fiber.  Any optical signal that passes through gets split, possibly also amplified, and one beam continues down the fiber and the other essentially copy of the beam gets sent to a separate output port which you can then read.  The problem here is two-fold.  First, this is detectable.  If you think you're being tapped, you temporarily bring the link down by rerouting to standby fiber, connect one end to your handy dandy fluke tester, and "shoot" the cable.  Anyone who does anything with fiber optic cable has test equipment that is designed to detect breaks.  The equipment works by firing a special test signal down the fiber and measuring the reflection of the signal as it travels back down the cable from the cable end point.  This can be used to pretty accurately measure the cable.  If your fiber breaks somewhere, you want to know exactly where so you can send your repair team to the right place, assuming the cable is even repairable.  But this can also be used to determine if someone has spliced your cable.  You're bound to get a return signal on a splice, and if you know how long your cable is supposed to be, the splice will alter that length.  Even after you leave and take your tap with you, it is often still possible to detect the resplice point.

The second obvious problem is that splicing the cable means bringing down the network for an extended period of time, which is also detectable.  It can take some time for even an experienced fiber jockey to do a good fuse and terminate the cables, hook them up to the tap, and restore connectivity.  There is no way to do this in an undetectable fashion, period.

But the properties of optical cable offer a magical way to tap the signal if you do it right.  Fiber optic cable is actually composed of a special core material that the laser beam travels through, surrounded by another material that has different optical properties.  The result is that when the laser passes through the core, it "reflects" efficiently off of the interface between the core and the wrapper.  This reduces signal losses.  It depends on the fiber cable being relatively straight: if the cable bends, the beam will reflect less efficiently: some of the signal will reflect back into the core and some will refract out of the core and through the outer jacket.  For this reason, and because fiber cable is usually glass which is brittle, there's a limit to how much bend you can ordinarily put in the cable.  An optical tap deliberately bends the cable to a very sharp curve, just within the limits of the glass.  This causes some of the laser signal to leak out of the cable, and the tap picks this up, possibly with amplification, and sends it out the tap output.  In effect, we use the fiber cable itself as an impromptu beam splitter.  All of this can happen with no alterations to the fiber: there's never a break, never any downtime, minimal chance for detection, and when you leave you take your tap with you leaving no detectable lingering alteration to the cable that test equipment might be able to detect.  The only detectable effect is some signal loss, which most people do not monitor: as long as the signal is strong enough, the small loss from the tap won't affect connectivity.

It is actually the presence of the fiber material itself that provides the opportunity to do this.  But when the beam is traveling in thin air, there is no such opportunity.  Being a physical material, fiber cable has to be itself supported by conduit, support structures, or the ground itself.  There is always a place to put a tap.  When the beam is traveling in air, the beam itself has no need for any support structure.  There's nothing and nowhere to put your tap equipment.  There's also no easy way to intercept the beam in a way that doesn't break the connection. Even point to point microwave has some spillage of radio signal you can measure and thus tap.  The laser uses a small enough spot that over medium ranges you can't intercept the beam without interrupting the beam.  So on top of the fact that there's nowhere to put the tap, the tap itself would have to be more sophisticated, intercepting a pencil-thin beam with a beam splitter designed to return the beam to its original path.  That's not technologically impossible, but it is impractical in the extreme.  It is never, and I mean *never* actually done.  It would be easier to attack the transceiver stations themselves rather than the laser beam in flight.  It is precisely this impracticality of intercept that makes point to point laser communications interesting for certain applications.

It actually should be, but isn't well know in the IT community at-large that fiber optic cable can be tapped so easily, and it is the cable itself that is the critical vulnerability.  But it is common knowledge in the security community: anyone who isn't aware of this stuff should really turn in their CISSP t-shirt.

[LaughingAlex]

MILITARY..the navy doesnt have that many nuclear subs. how many people can use a single wireless AP? if the concept is possible, problems can be worked  out. how many people can access a cell tower at 1 time. I have seen all the local towers overloaded at 1 time. does that stop us from using cell phones?

If you can tap a laser link between a nuke sub in the atlantic and a satellite, patent it. If you can do it without anyone noticing you will be getting a nobel prize. or a visit from seal team 6. one or the other. there are some amazing communications systems that most people know nothing about. I worked on ultra long wave radio back in the late 80's. It was for B1b bombers to communicate in an EMP environment. such as returning from a nuclear strike.

You kind of missed the point somewhat and now your pulling a roman senate on me.  I'll spell out what I am talking about.

MILITARY APPLICATION IS NOT THE SAME THING AS CIVILIAN APPLICATION!!

Now that I mentioned that.  Thing is i'm talking about once again for the fifth time here, is that once you start going into civilian application, the difficulties of security rise exponentially.  How hard would it be for say a crook to say, rig 10+ homes under the cover of night with say a signal interceptor over a receiving point?  The story changes significantly when it's wide spread, common, and within reach.

[LaughingAlex]

It is actually the presence of the fiber material itself that provides the opportunity to do this.  But when the beam is traveling in thin air, there is no such opportunity.  Being a physical material, fiber cable has to be itself supported by conduit, support structures, or the ground itself.  There is always a place to put a tap.  When the beam is traveling in air, the beam itself has no need for any support structure.  There's nothing and nowhere to put your tap equipment.  There's also no easy way to intercept the beam in a way that doesn't break the connection. Even point to point microwave has some spillage of radio signal you can measure and thus tap.  The laser uses a small enough spot that over medium ranges you can't intercept the beam without interrupting the beam.  So on top of the fact that there's nowhere to put the tap, the tap itself would have to be more sophisticated, intercepting a pencil-thin beam with a beam splitter designed to return the beam to its original path.  That's not technologically impossible, but it is impractical in the extreme.  It is never, and I mean *never* actually done.  It would be easier to attack the transceiver stations themselves rather than the laser beam in flight.  It is precisely this impracticality of intercept that makes point to point laser communications interesting for certain applications.

It actually should be, but isn't well know in the IT community at-large that fiber optic cable can be tapped so easily, and it is the cable itself that is the critical vulnerability.  But it is common knowledge in the security community: anyone who isn't aware of this stuff should really turn in their CISSP t-shirt.

With lasers, actually your missing a key point.  The very two points of which your sending and recieving the lasers.  Now in the case of a well secured building, or a satellite, that may not be an issue.  But in the case of say a home or a very small building lower on the ground, the possability rises exponentially that some one could physically access the point of which the laser is sent.  Now, a signal may get disrupted for say, a quarter second or something, but then if a person was to do that outside of business hours or during the night shift, in the right circumstances, it'd be far easier to do so.  This is also true if it's say two low buildings sending between one another.  By low I'm talking say only 1-2 stories.  Your intercepting the laser not halfway through the air, but at the point of send/receive.  Kind of like a credit card reader tap.  One could even make the tap look like the signal sender, or just such that it's merely part of it.

In theory.

But again, I am talking about cases of where it was civilian use for a direct laser.

[Arcana]

With lasers, actually your missing a key point.  The very two points of which your sending and recieving the lasers.

Actually, I said that in the very part of my post you quoted:

It would be easier to attack the transceiver stations themselves rather than the laser beam in flight.

Except for the part about you claiming it would be easy to intercept the beam, of course.

Now in the case of a well secured building, or a satellite, that may not be an issue.  But in the case of say a home or a very small building lower on the ground, the possability rises exponentially that some one could physically access the point of which the laser is sent.  Now, a signal may get disrupted for say, a quarter second or something, but then if a person was to do that outside of business hours or during the night shift, in the right circumstances, it'd be far easier to do so.

A quarter of a second?

This is also true if it's say two low buildings sending between one another.  By low I'm talking say only 1-2 stories.  Your intercepting the laser not halfway through the air, but at the point of send/receive.  Kind of like a credit card reader tap.  One could even make the tap look like the signal sender, or just such that it's merely part of it.

The technology you're referring to is called a "skimmer."  Basically, you put a credit card reader on top of the real credit card reader and it is designed such that the card readers are aligned: when you put your credit card into the skimmer it extends into the real reader: both the real reader and the skimmer read the card, and the skimmer records the credit card data.  Most common at non-bank branch ATMs and gas stations.  Nobody "taps" credit card readers.

What you're talking about is building a pass-through device that you could attach to a laser transceiver and it would receive the laser signal and retransmit it to the final destination, and the reverse (technically, laser transmitters are one-way: there would be two single-duplex transmitter/receiver pairs).  The thing is there's no practical way to trivially auto-aim those.  Even a point-to-point microwave system has to be carefully aimed.  Someone trying to do what you're describing would have to place their device in front of the transmitter/receiver pair at one location, and then carefully aim it at the destination.  That's not going to happen in "a quarter of a second."  Nor can you rely on the system's own aiming mechanism because you're guaranteed to introduce skew that would require manual calibration.

Fiber networks are typically built in loops, not hub and spoke.  So to tap your fiber traffic, I just have to find some out of the way place near the metro loop and access the cable, which will contain your traffic and all the other traffic in the area.  To tap my point to point laser communications transceiver, you have to climb up my roof and tamper with my equipment either in broad daylight or at night while I'm actually there.

And you described all of this as relatively easy, and either on par with fiber cable tapping or even easier than fiber cable tapping.  That's simply not true.  Not in theory, not in practice, not in military settings, not in any hypothetical civilian settings.  This might all seem plausible to you, but it really isn't.

[Arcana]

You kind of missed the point somewhat and now your pulling a roman senate on me.  I'll spell out what I am talking about.

MILITARY APPLICATION IS NOT THE SAME THING AS CIVILIAN APPLICATION!!

Now that I mentioned that.  Thing is i'm talking about once again for the fifth time here, is that once you start going into civilian application, the difficulties of security rise exponentially.  How hard would it be for say a crook to say, rig 10+ homes under the cover of night with say a signal interceptor over a receiving point?  The story changes significantly when it's wide spread, common, and within reach.

In my expert opinion, hard enough to make the attack extremely unlikely to occur in the lifetime of anyone with the technology, even if the technology was somehow made absolutely ubiquitous.  The net possible benefits of attacking a dozen random households is not worth the exposure of having to physically attack the individual premises and risk detection and identification.  Hacking attacks are done mostly at long range and as anonymously as possible, to eliminate the risk of being caught.  A couple years back a hacking group made a coordinated attack against ATMs and made off with millions of dollars.  They hired thousands of idiot mules to fetch the money and forward them a fraction of the catch, because all evidence would only point to those morons, not the actual perpetrators.  Attackers tend not to be the smartest bulbs in the bunch, but they do know how to manage risk.  They tend to go after high value targets, and won't accept high risks for low value.  Credit card skimmers tend to be worth the risk because they are consistently intercepting (relatively) high value information.  They are a nexus point for hundreds if not thousands of people making credit card transactions.  One exposure, thousands of pieces of valuable data.

Ten households?  Not enough guarantee to make it worth climbing on people's roofs.  Even credit card data isn't worth as much as you might think.  Depending on a number of different factors, you might average anything from tens to hundreds of dollars for a pack of a hundred credit card numbers and associated personal data.  Unless you had some personal interest in targeting those specific people for some reason (making you a prime suspect in any detected illegal activity) you can't make anything off the personal data of ten people.  Certainly not enough to risk being detected by a nosy neighbor.  My personal information is not even worth the cost of the equipment you would have to use to steal it.  An invasive malware might steal my information, because a couple thousand dollars of investment could net hundreds of thousands of targets.  But a laser intercepting relay for one person?  Nope, that would never happen.

[LaughingAlex]

I'm just going to say, Arcana, that I'm not of the 1%(in other words, consistently broke in life) so making a skimmer for a wireless tap would be out of the question.

It's called money.

You also post such a ludicrous wall of text that I begin to not care or give a crap at this point :/.  So I tend to pass over things when you post, well, anything anymore.  Your not like Neil De'Grasse, you may have the know how but communicating that, it's like trying to read through an essay that you either lost interest in halfway through or simply have other things to do.  Every post you make puts even my longer posts to shame at times.

It also makes it harder to convince me when I begin to, well, not care :/.

Sorry if I have to bang your head with reality but ultra lengthy posts, well people tend to miss things in my long posts to :/.

Edit: As a last snippet, people do anything to bot a computer these days, forget something like personal info for a second know?

Another Note: And on another note, when I see other people even in this thread saying or hinting they also don't care, it shows me somethings wrong here.

[Arcana]

You also post such a ludicrous wall of text that I begin to not care or give a crap at this point :/.  So I tend to pass over things when you post, well, anything anymore.

This seems to be just one of those weeks when Mistress Irony is just swinging for the fences.

[Felderburg]

Question: did anyone ever take super jump along with super speed to compensate for certain hurdling problems that SS had?

I never used super speed. It was too hard for me to navigate. I wonder if it was my computer, or me? I did take Ninja Run on a natural character; I internally viewed it as "super parkour" for that character.

[Brigadine]

So, on a side note. Did anyone see the issues NCsoft is having with wildstar? Canceling the Chinese version because others aren't doing well. Lets hope this forces their hand closer to selling CoH...

[Arcana]

So, on a side note. Did anyone see the issues NCsoft is having with wildstar? Canceling the Chinese version because others aren't doing well. Lets hope this forces their hand closer to selling CoH...

Yeah, I heard about that yesterday.  I don't think this will have any major impact on any negotiations regarding the City of Heroes property. 

It is interesting to me that they decided to downsize Carbine so soon after Wildstar went F2P.  City of Heroes managed to last a full year after its transition, and whatever the complex reasons for the shutdown NCSoft did seem to give the game about a year after transition to make its decision.  Wildstar has only been F2P for about six months, which is a very short time to decide things weren't working out.  Either NCSoft has less patience than before, or it is also possible the F2P model really wasn't working for Wildstar to a large enough extent that the writing appeared on the wall pretty fast.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I'm just going to say, Arcana, that I'm not of the 1%(in other words, consistently broke in life) so making a skimmer for a wireless tap would be out of the question.

It's called money.

You also post such a ludicrous wall of text that I begin to not care or give a crap at this point :/.  So I tend to pass over things when you post, well, anything anymore.  Your not like Neil De'Grasse, you may have the know how but communicating that, it's like trying to read through an essay that you either lost interest in halfway through or simply have other things to do.  Every post you make puts even my longer posts to shame at times.

It also makes it harder to convince me when I begin to, well, not care :/.

Sorry if I have to bang your head with reality but ultra lengthy posts, well people tend to miss things in my long posts to :/.

Edit: As a last snippet, people do anything to bot a computer these days, forget something like personal info for a second know?

Another Note: And on another note, when I see other people even in this thread saying or hinting they also don't care, it shows me somethings wrong here.

Well.  Clearly you do care.  You can request to stop an argument.  You don't have to target something unrelated to it such as post length.

[darkgob]

Well.  Clearly you do care.  You can request to stop an argument.  You don't have to target something unrelated to it such as post length.

They don't even need to request it, all they have to do is stop replying.