Cyber War
Georgia and Russia are at war. I know very little about why or which side I should be on, and that's ok with me. Hopefully it ends soon and people can start repairing their lives.
A recent article in Slate talks about the cyber war that is raging between the two countries. Denial of Service attacks basically mean flooding a web server with so many requests that the server can't handle them all and it crashes. There are complex ways to shield yourself from these attacks, but they are still very effective and can take down large websites.
The author of this article decided to try to join the cyberwar and fight on Russia's side against Georgia. Reading through his "attack", it's extremely simplistic and realistically had a very small effect. But then again, how much effect does a single soldier have on the battlefield? Success is determined by the coordination and number of individuals. In theory, this could be very effective.
If you're a techie, you'll probably be a bit disappointed by the article, but it still makes you think about how easy it is to be mercenary in a cyber war. It reminds me a lot of militias which formed in the early history of the United States. Anybody could pick up a weapon and join the fight.
http://www.slate.com/id/2197514/pagenum/all/#page_start