Like we need another Manhattan Project

They're coming for our internets! 

The federal government has launched a cyber security "Manhattan Project," U.S. homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday, because online attacks can be a form of "devastating warfare", and equivalent in damage to "physical destruction of the worst kind."

"Imagine, if you will, a sophisticated attack on our financial systems that caused them to be paralyzed," Chertoff said. "It would shake the foundation of trust on which our financial system works."

That digital mushroom cloud scenario means the government's role in computer security must extend beyond federal networks, and reach to shared responsibility for financial, telecommunication and transportation infrastructure, Chertoff said. "The failure of any single system has cascading effects across our country," Chertoff said.

I've heard there's no way the American government can completely regulate and monitor the internet. Funny enough the agency that assigns IP addresses and domain names is called ICANN. I think the government is trying to mock us. I wonder if 'The Network' has anything to do with this.

That network, in effect a parallel internet, is now built, using fibre optic cables that run from Cern to 11 centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East, Europe and around the world.

Ian Bird, project leader for Cern’s high-speed computing project, said grid technology could make the internet so fast that people would stop using desktop computers to store information and entrust it all to the internet.

These things have to go hand in hand somehow. Well, the day that the network is going up is the same day that the Large Hadron Collider is being used for the first time, which is cool, but critics say that it could  destroy the earth  by creating a black hole. So everybody mark your calenders for 'mid-August'!