Comment Re:Papers Please! (Score 1) 619
Remember when we use to say how bad the Soviet Union was because you needed papers to travel.
Google To Pay $500 For Bugs Found In Chromium 175
Trailrunner7 writes to mention that a new program from Google could pay security researchers $500 for every security bug found in Chromium. Of course if you find a particularly clever bug you could be eligible for a $1337 reward. "Today, we are introducing an experimental new incentive for external researchers to participate. We will be rewarding select interesting and original vulnerabilities reported to us by the security research community. For existing contributors to Chromium security — who would likely continue to contribute regardless — this may be seen as a token of our appreciation. In addition, we are hoping that the introduction of this program will encourage new individuals to participate in Chromium security. The more people involved in scrutinizing Chromium's code and behavior, the more secure our millions of users will be. Such a concept is not new; we'd like to give serious kudos to the folks at Mozilla for their long-running and successful vulnerability reward program."
Old Stems Cells Young Again — Via Vampirism 109
pdragon04 writes to tell us that in recent tests a Howard Hughes Medical Institute team has found that through exposure to "young" blood cells, bone marrow stem cells start to act young again as well. "The researchers have not yet isolated the blood-borne factors that can switch old stem cells back to a more youthful state, but their results are consistent with other recent studies that show stem-cell aging may be reversible. Together those results suggest that it might one day be possible to boost the practical lifespan of stem cells, and thereby increase the body’s resistance to disease and age-related degeneration."
Stargate Props Going Up For Auction 131
will_die writes "After all the recent auctions for Propworx's Battlestar Galactica props, they are now selling off 15 years of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis props. Over the next couple of months minor items will be sold on eBay, and the major items will be sold in two live auctions. eBay auctions will consist of smaller props, most costumes, drawings and even parts of Stargates. The live auctions will contain items such as the Thor puppet, The Ark of Truth, and the only fully working Stargate. (Multiple Stargates needed for travel)." My wife will be bidding on Daniel Jackson. I wouldn't mind a Zat gun, but at $3K–$4K, it's a bit rich for my blood... although if the neighbor's dog keeps getting out of his electric fence I might have no choice...
Astrium Hopes To Test Grabbing Solar Energy From Orbit 144
goldaryn writes "Word from the BBC today is that Europe's biggest space company is seeking partners to help get a satellite-based solar power trial into orbit:
'EADS Astrium says the satellite system would collect the Sun's energy and transmit it to Earth via an infrared laser, to provide electricity. Space solar power has been talked about for more than 30 years as an attractive concept because it would be 'clean, inexhaustible, and available 24 hours a day.' However, there have always been question marks over its cost, efficiency and safety. But Astrium believes the technology is close to proving its maturity.'"
Comment Re:Mail Server on both ends (Score 1) 268
Its obvious, I want my gold to take up less room
Comment Re:Not simply webmail? (Score 1, Flamebait) 268
But NASA doesn't not have to break SMTP to enable filtering. This is some insane system thought up by some no talent microsoft consultant.
There is no reason for the solution that is currently in place, the only explanation is that the person who came up with it did not understand email at all.
Comment Mail Server on both ends (Score 5, Interesting) 268
mail server on the ground, mail server on the shuttle.
The mail queues up and you open up the connection between them certain times of day. Queue empties.
GZIP the link and your gold.
Using Outlook From Orbit 268
Pigskin-Referee writes with this excerpt from Office Watch: "On the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station they use Microsoft Outlook 2003, but not quite in the same way that us earthbound Earthlings do. The space shuttle Atlantis is orbiting the earth right now and the crew exchange emails with the ground a few times each day. Bandwidth is a constraint and you don't want the busy crewmembers bothered with spam or unnecessary messages so NASA has a special system in place. The crew use fairly standard laptops running Microsoft Outlook (currently Outlook 2003) with Exchange Server as the email host, but they don't link to the server using any of the standard methods."
White House Holding Piracy Summit 268
DesScorp writes in to let us know about a White House piracy summit, which is going on this afternoon. Judging by the press accounts, the sort of intellectual property criminals they are interested in are large-scale DVD bootleggers, not individual downloaders. "Hollywood once again demonstrates its close ties to Washington DC, regardless of who is in power, with a White House summit on piracy to be attended by the top executives in Hollywood, as well as the music industry. Vice President Joe Biden will be leading the summit to discuss organized cooperation between the federal government and the entertainment industry on all matters of piracy. Also at the summit will be the Obama Administration's new Copyright Czar, Victoria Espinal. The summit comes after Congress has earmarked $30 million dollars of taxpayer funds for anti-piracy efforts." According to one attendee's tweet, the press was kicked out of the meeting around 20:45 GMT.
Swiss Geologist On Trial For Causing Earthquakes 258
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that Markus Haering's company had been working with the authorities in Basel, Switzerland to try to convert the heat in deep-seated rocks into electricity, but the project was suspended in 2006 when drilling triggered earthquakes, one of them with a magnitude of 3.4, leading Haering's company to pay out $9M in damages. Haering's team planned to drill a series of holes penetrating up to 3 miles (4.8 km) underground with water being pumped onto rocks with a temperature of more than 195C. Basel's location on top of a fault line – the upper Rhine trench – had been deliberately chosen because the heat was closer to the Earth's surface. A risk assessment has since shown that the prospect of further quakes is too high to continue drilling in the city. Haering faces up to five years in prison if the judge finds he intentionally damaged property. Haering has admitted the 3.4 magnitude earthquake was stronger than he had expected and that his team 'had very little knowledge of seismicity' before starting to drill, but called the quakes 'a learning process for everyone involved.' Despite Haering's trial, the Swiss appetite for geothermal projects has not diminished. Engineers are beginning preliminary drilling in Zurich to see whether that area was suitable for a similar scheme, and St. Gallen, in eastern Switzerland, plans to start work on its own geothermal project next year. Drilling efforts are being closely watched in the US, where the energy department is sponsoring more than 120 geothermal energy projects in several states."
Comment Re:The old-fashioned way? (Score 1) 421
I use multiple OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD machines daily. One cannot sync all home directory files, as all the config stuff differs between Gentoo, Debian, FreeBSD, Tiger, and Leopard. So it's mostly down to documents, graphics, and a few audio and video files. For the larger ones, I use a usb stick, the smaller ones I email to myself so they're always available via IMAP servers. But most of all I have a bootable, customized version of systemrescuecd installed on a 16GB usb stick, which at any given moment has all the currently important stuff I need. It works well enough for me.
I use the same tcsh config on all my OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, Solairs, whatever servers.
Now i do admit i have large if statements for OS dependant information. But no matter what OS i use it has the same feel.
I also store a master copy of this
