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Submission + - Antartic melting faster then anticipated.

Submitted by boylinux
boylinux writes: "The melting of snow cover in regions in January 2005 was the most significant Antarctic melting seen since satellites began observing the continent three decades ago, NASA said Tuesday."

""Antarctica has shown little to no warming in the recent past, with the exception of the Antarctic Peninsula, but now large regions are showing the first signs of the impacts of warming as interpreted by this satellite analysis," said Steffen in a statement."

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/05/16/scie nce-antarctic-melt.html
Republicans

Submission + - Robo-calls piss off voters

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Pissing off voters is the last thing you want to do if you are trying to get elected. But potentially thousands of voters were just that in Kentucky this week as they were repeatedly blitzed by out of control automated call distribution (ACD) software asking them to vote for Republican candidate for Governor Anne Northup. But the glitch and its fallout are likely to further heat up an already hot national topic: should politicians be able to use ACD or robo-calls without any controls. The answer in many cases ha been no. Nebraska's legislature this week gave final approval to a bill that would restrict to two the number of automated calls each campaign could make each day to a resident. Also, the calls could only be made between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1524 9"
Security

Submission + - How to securely share passwords

Submitted by
vginders
vginders writes: "Whilst the idea of "securely sharing passwords" doesn't seem very secure by itself, the reality of system administration makes you do such a thing.
The idea of just giving everyone a personal password is just not realistic, when talkin of a support shop with many clients. Having all (e.g.) ten colleagues maintaining a personal password for all of your (e.g.) hundred and twenty clients is a nightmare.
Face it, every IT Support shop has a bunch of customers and a bunch of coworkers, all needing access at one time of another to the administrator password, some root accounts, some router enable passwords or other firewall credentials. It obviously is'nt always as easy as using certificate logins with SSH.
Through serving in different support shops myself, I have seen different approaches, from using a pass like "[customer_name_tag][postalcode]" over noting passwords in a Visio network scheme till storing them in a high encrypted distributed database (which was protected with one unique password).
I've been thinking a lot about a pretty safe way of managing passwords, but couldn't find something good enough, especially when accepting solutions which aren't 100% secure to keep the solution a bit usable as most clients aren't big banks or nuclear power plants, but mostly small businesses.
So my by now obvious question to the IT Support guys within the /. community, is what you think is a decent, say good-enough solution?"
Software

Submission + - Determining Density from 2D Digital Photos?

Submitted by
RockoTDF
RockoTDF writes: "I work in a lab at a university where we study the behavior of fish, specifically the Betta. One thing we would like to examine further is the density of the bubble nests they create. We have several tanks with cameras mounted above them taking photos (10 Megapixel) at specific intervals. Is there any way we can determine density from this? What software is available? We thought that perhaps we could do a white pixel count in the areas of the bubbles and figure out an algorithm by which to calculate the density, but of course software (preferably FOSS) that does this for us would be ideal."
Security

Submission + - Indianapolis public school security failure

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "An Indianapolis Star reporter using Google found information on at least 7,500 students and some staff members, including phone numbers, birth dates, medical information and Social Security numbers."

"Internet security experts said the inadvertent release of information resulted from a network setup that was sloppy"
Portables

Submission + - Hitachi Ships World's Speediest Notebook Hard Driv

Submitted by mrneutron2004
mrneutron2004 writes: Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) is today announcing volume shipment of the industry's highest-capacity, highest-performing notebook hard drive with new optional data encryption technology. With double the capacity and a 22-percent1 performance improvement over its predecessor, the 200-gigabyte (GB), 7200 RPM TravelstarTM 7K200 reigns supreme as the leader in this elite notebook hard drive segment. http://www.fastsilicon.com/press-releases/hitachi- ships-worlds-speediest-notebook-hard-drive.html?It emid=60
Businesses

Submission + - Can you punish your users?

Submitted by beerdini
beerdini writes: Every company that I have worked for has an employee technology agreement that everyone that uses a computer needs to sign off on. The agreement usually says that failure to follow the rules will result in the termination of technology privileges. Has anyone ever worked at a place that actually has removed someone's technology privileges for a violation? In my opinion, doing this would be more a punishment for the person's co-workers since they would have to make up for that person's lost privileges, and management is usually unwilling to enforce the guidelines that they've spent countless hours discussing and printing on those documents that they make everyone sign. Are there any realistic forms of "punishment" that IT staff can enforce to teach their users to stop doing the things that are a violation of the workplace policy? Techniques that after getting proper authorization from supervisors that would punish the violating user but still allow them to perform the duties of their job?
Space

Submission + - Suborbital Cremated Remains Go Misssing

Submitted by
SeaDour
SeaDour writes: "Earlier it was reported that the cremated remains of Jimmy Doohan (aka "Scotty") and Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper were successfully launched along with the remains of 198 other individuals on a suborbital rocket from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The rocket was tracked by the nearby White Sands Missile Range, but it seems that they have been unable to find it since it landed in the nearby mountains. "...the general location of the rocket hardware is known within some 1,300 feet (400 meters) or so. But given the dense vegetation on the side of the mountain being searched, along with equipment available to the search team, pinpointing the exact locale has proven a tough assignment.""
Java

Submission + - Opera Mini is Top Java Download on Mobile Phones

Submitted by
Alternative Browser Alliance
Alternative Browser Alliance writes: "Opera Watch is reporting that the Opera Mini web browser is now the most popular downloadable Java application for mobile phones, with more than 15 million downloads. Sun's Jean Elliot cites Opera's success as "a great proof point of the ongoing vitality of the Java technology development community." Opera Mini is a Java-based client that runs on virtually any Java-capable phone, and uses a proxy to pre-process web pages for small screens and low bandwidth. It's distinct from Opera Mobile, a full browser that uses the same engine as the desktop version. In related news, the company is opening up a beta program for the next release of Opera Mini."
Patents

Submission + - Vonage may have way around Patent disputes

Submitted by
nevillethedevil
nevillethedevil writes: "Bloomberg is reporting on that Vonage may have found a way around the current patent issues they have been facing with Verizon and others. From the article:
"Vonage's new technology can be installed through software downloads and shouldn't be costly to deploy, Citron said. The company will continue to appeal the court decision that requires it to pay Verizon damages for infringing patents on technology that translates Internet-based calls to standard lines.""
NASA

Submission + - "Digging Moon Dirt" for $250,000-Want a Jo

Submitted by
nlhouser
nlhouser writes: "How would it feel to be paid a huge pile of money to move a huge pile of simulated moon soil by using an autonomously operating system? Teams from Rancho Palos Verdes, California; Livermore, California; Berkeley, California; Fulks Run, Virginia; Rolla, MO; Berkley, Michigan, Milwaukee; Vancouver and British Columbia, have all registered to find out."
Security

Submission + - Are cell phones zapping 911 emergency services?

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "A number of stories from across the country coupled with new research on the subject indicates that cell phones are increasingly bedeviling emergency first-responders and the country's 911 system is suffering. For example The Journal News in New York tells of a 911 glitch that almost cost a 71-year-old woman sinking in a creek near the Hudson River her life. That's because an emergency cell phone call went got bounced around to a number of cell towers before some one local could respond to the situation... And to top it all off a new study on 911 and cell phone effectiveness gives the technology a failing grade. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1495 5"

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