Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
NASA

Submission + - NASA picks 13 to help build next big space rocket (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA today said it will spread $7.5 million across 13 companies to research the systems needed for it next heavy launch space rocket. NASA said it will use the recommendations from these companies to evaluate heavy-lift launch vehicle concepts and propulsion technologies that will help lay the groundwork for the rocket that could launch humans to asteroids, Lagrange points, the moon and Mars.
Idle

Submission + - Selling incandescent light bulbs as heating device (heatball.de) 1

Submitted by Csiko
Csiko writes: The European union has banned by law trading of incandescent light bulbs due to their bad efficiency/ecology reasons (most of the energy is transformed into heat). A company is now trying to bypass this by offering their incandescent light bulb products as a heating device instead of a light device. Still, their "heat balls" give light as well as heating. So — every law can be bypassed if you have some creativity!
Politics

Submission + - Obama Presses China on Currency (nytimes.com)

Submitted by cscreated
cscreated writes: Obama discusses pressuring China to adjust their currency, as it currently artificially adjusted twenty percent. The Chinese explanation is that lower wages create more competitive wages and more factory workers employed, while we bear the weight of competitve production. By adjusting their currency the U.S. would be able to compete more efficiently in a world economy while keeping our values and wages in tact. The possibilitity of higher tariffs and trade barriers still remains. Is this a political ploy with upcoming elections? Further in the article Iran is brought up on their nuclear policies. Maybe that's why President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remarks the U.S. was behind 9/11 — http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/world/24nations.html
Programming

Submission + - Must Coders Reprogram For Wall Street? (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: As high-performance computing (HPC) becomes more important in helping financial services companies deal with a rising tsunami of data, there's growing angst on Wall Street about a dearth of skilled programmers who can write for multicore chip architectures and parallel computing systems. Jeffrey Birnbaum, chief technology architect at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch notes 'a sea change that's coming — parallel computing, multicore processers,' which makes 'the skill of the programmer [matter] more.' As many as 98% of programmers still rely on serial coding methods, he says. The main issue is this: Programming for parallel architectures is complicated. 'The underlying machinery is changing, and if you don't relearn how to take advantage of it, you're going to be the person they write about in the New York Times about the people in their 60s who can't find a job because their skills are outdated,' Birnbaum said.
NASA

Submission + - NASA telescope spots space ghosts hiding stars (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA said astronomers have spotted a new, cosmic phenomenon they call "coreshine," which could help scientists determine the age and make up of distant stars and planets.Using observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to measure infrared light deflecting off cold, dark cocoons, known as cores, where young stars and planets are forming, astronomers found starlight from nearby stars reflecting off of these cores. The reflection or “coreshine” reveals information about the star and planet age and consistency.
Education

Submission + - Texas to rid schools of 'pro-Islam' books (bbc.co.uk) 3

Submitted by gollum123
gollum123 writes: The Texas school board is set to vote on a resolution urging publishers to keep "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian" language out of textbooks in the state. Among other complaints, the non-binding decree says some textbooks devote more lines to Islam than to Christianity and print "whitewashes" of Islamic culture. Critics say it relies on a flawed reading of books that are out of use. Supporters say the resolution is needed to warn textbook publishers not to print "anti-Christian" books if they want to sell them to Texas schools. The measure, on which the Texas Board of Education will vote on Friday in the state capital of Austin, is drafted by Randy Rives, a businessman and former school official in the Texas city of Odessa. "We're teaching double the beliefs and specifics about another religion than we are about Christianity, which is the foundation of our country."
Linux

Submission + - UK snoops prefer Linux (thinq.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Th'Inquisitor
Th'Inquisitor writes: The largest installation of Linux desktops in any British Government site is at GCHQ, the high-tech spy-station in Cheltenham, according to industry sources.

Whispers in the courtly corridors around Westminster, the seat of British government, have it that British intelligence uses Linux because it is secure, good at number crunching, and doesn't cost much to deploy.

It is hard otherwise to find any British site where Linux has been rolled out in numbers greater than hundreds of desktops, say the whisperers.

This is a touchy subject, as the site is, of course, Top Secret. IT contractors at GCHQ, the listening-post for the UK's MI6 intelligence service, have to sign the Official Secrets Act. They can be sent to prison for so much as saying whether Q likes milk in his tea.

But the GCHQ revelation gives insight into the way Linux has tiptoed onto Britain's computing scene. It has only really caught on in those seedy domains where the techies are the users.

Submission + - Would You Eat Genetically Modified Salmon? (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: The FDA is currently considering approval of the first mass-market, genetically modified animal, a super salmon. The engineered fish grows to full size in half the time, making it cheaper to raise and lessening it's environmental impact. But critics argue that the testing that has been done on the fish so far amounts to junk science, and there are unknown consequences if the fish escapes into the wild. Would you eat a hormone-enhanced fish?
Security

Submission + - Malicious Twitter code spreads itself on MouseOver (newsvine.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Malicious JavaScript code, which is executed on mouseOver, is being spread throughout the Twitter service. One user reports hundreds of affected feeds, evidenced by Twitter's automatic notation that the malicious updates have been "Retweeted by yourself and 100+ others..." CNN reports that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs tweeted "My Twitter went haywire — absolutely no clue why it sent that message or even what it is...paging the tech guys..." In some cases the code "grays out" your Twitter page, so the malicious tweets cannot be "untweeted." In addition, it can hijack clicks to offsite location. (PC Magazine reports one affected user was the wife of a former British Prime Minister, whose Tweets point users to a Japanese porn site.) Note: The unpatched vulnerability is spread by accessing a Twitter account through the Twitter.com site, but reportedly does not affect users accessing the site with third-party Twitter clients.
IT

Submission + - The A-Team of IT -- and How to Assemble One (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan offers insights into building a crack special ops team ready to tackle the toughest IT assignments. From Air Support (think: the guy who shares a cigarette break with the CFO), to Infrastructure Sherpas, to Über Hackers (Mohawk optional), each of the seven essential members of your IT A-Team must bring his or her special blend of expertise, connections, and temperament to ensure the success of mission-critical assignments. 'Remember, there is no Plan B.'"
NASA

Submission + - NASA looking to patent troll (spaceref.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 mandates NASA to seek the widest dissemination possible of its intellectual property for commercial application and other public benefit. NASA has long addressed this mission by freely releasing scientific and technical information into the public domain. In a dramatic change from previous policy, NASA recently issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking information from "IP management services" (patent trolls) that are interested in aggressively asserting NASA's patents against U.S. companies. Revenue resulting from these assertions would be shared between NASA and the "IP management services." The RFI includes an exhaustive list of the patent trolling services NASA is looking to utilize. Perhaps patent trolling is easier than a manned Mars mission?
Security

Submission + - Was Stuxnet built to attack Iran nuclear program? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: A highly sophisticated computer worm that has spread through Iran, Indonesia and India was built to destroy operations at one target: possibly Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor.

That's the emerging consensus of security experts who have examined the Stuxnet worm. In recent weeks, they've broken the cryptographic code behind the software and taken a look at how the worm operates in test environments. Researchers studying the worm all agree that Stuxnet was built by a very sophisticated and capable attacker — possibly a nation state — and it was designed to destroy something big.

Though it was first developed more than a year ago, Stuxnet was discovered in July 2010, when a Belarus-based security company discovered the worm on computers belonging to an Iranian client. Since then it has been the subject of ongoing study by security researchers who say they've never seen anything like it before. Now, after months of private speculation, some of the researchers who know Stuxnet best say that it may have been built to sabotage Iran's nukes.

Last week Ralph Langner, a well-respected expert on industrial systems security, published an analysis of the worm, http://www.langner.com/en/index.htm which targets Siemens software systems, and suggested that it may have been used to sabotage Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor. A Siemens expert, Langner simulated a Siemens industrial network and then analyzed the worm's attack.
Space

Submission + - Astronauts' Fingernails Falling Off in Space Glove (nationalgeographic.com)

Submitted by Csiko
Csiko writes: Space glove design is a difficult thing, current designs allow an austronaut to manipulate things with his/her hands, but but a lot of friction and pressure on certain parts of the hands. The result is blister and, not unfrequently, nailbed infjuries or even detached nails.
The Military

Submission + - DARPA Wants To Control Soldiers' Brains (popsci.com)

Submitted by Anarki2004
Anarki2004 writes: DARPA Wants to Install Transcranial Ultrasonic Mind Control Devices in Soldiers' Helmets.

From the article: "my laboratory has engineered a novel technology which implements transcranial pulsed ultrasound to remotely and directly stimulate brain circuits without requiring surgery. Further, we have shown this ultrasonic neuromodulation approach confers a spatial resolution approximately five times greater than TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) and can exert its effects upon subcortical brain circuits deep within the brain"

Slashdot Top Deals

The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra

Close