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NASA

NASA Satellites to Predict Disease Outbreaks 67

Posted by samzenpus from the doctor-eye-in-the-sky dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA and its Applied Sciences Program will be using 14 satellites to watch the Earth's environment and help predict and prevent infectious disease outbreaks around the world. Through orbiting satellites, data is collected daily to monitor environmental changes. That information is then passed on to agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense who then apply the data to predict and track disease outbreaks and assist in making public health policy decisions. The use of remote sensing technology helps scientists predict the outbreak of some of the most common and deadly infectious diseases such as Ebola, West Nile virus and Rift Valley Fever."
Media

MLB Fans Who Bought DRM Videos Get Hosed 299

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the digital-restrictions-management dept.
Billosaur writes "Major League Baseball has just strengthened the case against DRM. If you downloaded videos of baseball games from MLB.com before 2006, apparently they no longer work and you are out of luck. MLB.com, sometime during 2006, changed their DRM system. Result: game videos purchased before that time will now no longer work, as the previous DRM system is no longer supported. When the video is played, apparently the MLB.com servers are contacted and a license obtained to verify the authenticity of the video; this is done by a web link. That link no longer exists, and so now the videos will no longer play, even though the MLB FAQ says that a license is only obtained once and will not need to be re-obtained. The blogger who is reporting this contacted MLB technical support, only to be told there are no refunds due to this problem."
NASA

Whose Laws Apply On the ISS? 344

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-mine-do-of-course dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Whose laws apply if astronauts from different countries get into a fight, make a patentable discovery, or damage equipment belonging to another country while on the International Space Station? According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, ratified by 98 nations, states have legal jurisdiction within spacecraft registered to them. When the space station was assembled from modules supplied by the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency (ESA), partners rejected an initial proposal that US law should prevail throughout the space station. "It was agreed that each state registers its own separate elements, which means that you now have a piece of the US annexed to a piece of Europe annexed to a piece of Japan in outer space, legally speaking," said Dr Frans von der Dunk of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at the University of Leiden. So what happens if a crime is committed in space? "If somebody performs an activity which may be considered criminal, it is in the first instance his own country which is able to exercise jurisdiction," Dr. von der Dunk added."

DirectX 10 Hardware Is Now Obsolete 373

Posted by Zonk from the shouldn't-have-blinked dept.
ela_gervaise writes "SIGGRAPH 2007 was the stage where Microsoft dropped the bomb, informing gamers that the currently available DirectX 10 hardware will not support the upcoming DirectX 10.1 in Vista SP1. In essence, all current DX10 hardware is now obsolete. But don't get too upset just yet: 'Gamers shouldn't fret too much - 10.1 adds virtually nothing that they will care about and, more to the point, adds almost nothing that developers are likely to care about. The spec revision basically makes a number of things that are optional in DX10 compulsory under the new standard - such as 32-bit floating point filtering, as opposed to the 16-bit current. 4xAA is a compulsory standard to support in 10.1, whereas graphics vendors can pick and choose their anti-aliasing support currently. We suspect that the spec is likely to be ill-received. Not only does it require brand new hardware, immediately creating a minuscule sub-set of DX10 owners, but it also requires Vista SP1, and also requires developer implementation.'"

Space Hotel to Open in 2012 137

Posted by Zonk from the l5-or-l4 dept.
blackdefiance writes "The New York Times is reporting that firm plans for the first hotel in space are now in the works. Slated for a 2012 opening, 'Galactic Suite' will cost about $4 million for a three-day stay. 'They may have solved the issue of how to take a shower in weightlessness -- the guests will enter a spa room in which bubbles of water will float around. When guests are not admiring the view from their portholes they will take part in scientific experiments on space travel. Galactic Suite began as a hobby for former aerospace engineer Claramunt, until a space enthusiast decided to make the science fiction fantasy a reality by fronting most of the $3 billion needed to build the hotel. An American company intent on colonizing Mars, which sees Galaxy Suite as a first step, has since come on board, and private investors from Japan, the United States and the United Arab Emirates are in talks.'"
Space

Submission + - Why we need to expand into space

Submitted by Zentropa
Zentropa writes: Why do humans need to explore and colonise space? To save the planet and our species, argues an opinion piece in Cosmos, an Aussie science magazine, by its editor. Makes some good points, and come at it from an angle I hadn't condidered before — like that the universe DESERVES us. If you're a space fan as I am, and sick of those boring "why spend all that money in space when there ar so many problems here on earth", this gives some ammo.
United States

Submission + - Back to the Future in a 98-Year-Old Electric Car

Submitted by
stalebread
stalebread writes: "NYTimes has an interesting article about the popularity of electric cars 100 years ago. The article focuses on Jay Leno's 1909 Baker Electric Coupe. From the article, "In an era in which gasoline-powered automobiles were noisy, smelly, greasy and problematic to start, [with] electric cars, ... [women] could simply drive to lunch, to shop, or to visit friends without fear of soiling their gloves, mussing their hair or setting their highly combustible crinoline dresses on fire. It'll go for about four or five hours on a single charge, at about 20 to 25 miles an hour. Its range is about 110 miles, just about what most electric cars made these days will do. So we really haven't come very far in a hundred years.""
Enlightenment

Submission + - Going Green with Your Cleaning Products (associatedcontent.com)

Submitted by
sunsational
sunsational writes: "http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/337886/go ing_green_with_your_cleaning_products.html Thanks to Al Gore, going green is the hot trendy topic. Everyone from Celebrates to companies like Disney, who announced they started going green with the newest revamped ride " Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage" So it is time that we start to go green as well, a good way to start is with your cleaning supplies. Instead of going out and buying products, with manufactured fumes, items you have right there in your cupboards work just as well"
Caldera

SCO Loses 643

Posted by Zonk from the finish-him dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The one summary judgement that puts a stick into SCO's spokes has just come down. The judge in the epic SCO case has ruled that SCO doesn't own the Unix copyrights. With that one decision, a whole bunch of other decisions will fall like dominoes. As PJ says, 'That's Aaaaall, Folks! ... All right, all you Doubting Thomases. I double dog dare you to complain about the US court system now. I told you if you would just be patient, I had confidence in the system's ability to sort this out in the end. But we must say thank you to Novell and especially to its legal team for the incredible work they have done. I know it's not technically over and there will be more to slog through, but they won what matters most, and it's been a plum pleasin' pleasure watching you work. The entire FOSS community thanks you for your skill and all the hard work and thanks go to Novell for being willing to see this through."
Security

Submission + - Defensive Action Over Radiological Attacks (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Anon Techie
Anon Techie writes: A group of scientists warned yesterday that terrorists could learn from last year's murder of Alexander Litvinenko to carry out radiological attacks on cities far more devastating than a dirty bomb. While a dirty bomb — using explosives to disperse radioactive material — would be unlikely to kill more than a hundred people, the scientists argue, several hundred could be killed if they swallowed or inhaled the material, like Mr Litvinenko, who drank tea laced with a lethal isotope, polonium-210, in London last November.
Space

Submission + - Could alien life exist as DNA-shaped dust?

Submitted by
David Shiga
David Shiga writes: "Could alien life exist in the form of dancing specks of dust? A computer simulation by Gregor Morfill of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and colleagues shows electrically charged dust can organize itself into DNA-like double helixes that behave in many ways like living organisms, reproducing and passing on information to one another, New Scientist reports. Whether it could be considered alive or not, there are many places in space where conditions might be favorable to self-organizing dust, such as the rings of Saturn."
Power

Submission + - How to Reach 200 MPH on Hydrogen Fuel Cells (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by the_manatee
the_manatee writes: Ford's 999 hydrogen-powered speedster is making waves for its upcoming speed record attempt in the Bonneville Salt Flats, but details on what's actually going on under the hood have been scarce. As it turns out, there are NASCAR-style brakes, steering, and suspension components, along with 16 Ballard Mk902 fuel cells that produce 350 kW of electricity. All that juice spins up a 770-hp motor and the rest is (hopefully) history. One final ingredient: 400 lbs of ice for cooling, which will melt in seconds once the car gets up to speed.
Space

Submission + - Ten-year climate model unveiled (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "Scientists say they have developed a model to predict how ocean currents, as well as human activities, will affect temperatures over the next decade ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6939347. stm ) . By including short-term natural events, such as El Nino, a UK team says it is able to offer 10-year projections. Writing in Science, Met Office researchers project that at least half of the years between 2009 and 2014 are likely to exceed existing records. But over the decade as a whole, they project the global average temperature in 2014 to be 0.3C warmer than 2004."
Security

Submission + - Two Attacks on Bitlocker (usenix.org)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: A paper at USENIX security describes two attacks which makes Microsoft's Bitlocker vulnerable if it relies only on a TPM for protecting the encryption key. The TPM attack allows to reset the TPM by hardware means und thus allows to replay any platform configuration later. Some guys from Darthmouth have confirmed the attack: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~pkilab/sparks/ The BIOS attack allows to subvert the BIOS not to send any hashes to the TPM anymore. These both attacks allows an attacker with physical access to a machine to fool the TPM about the booting software. Thus the TPM protected encryption key of Bitlocker can be easily extracted under any other OS for example by a theft. The paper is also available here: http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/papers_ps/kauer07-oslo .pdf

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