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Rogue Brown Dwarf Lurks In Our Cosmic Neighborhood 188

Posted by Soulskill from the brown-dwarf-rogue-lurks-in-ironforge dept.
astroengine writes "The UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii has discovered a lone, cool brown dwarf called UGPSJ0722-05. As far as sub-stellar objects go, this is a strange one. For starters, it's the coolest brown dwarf ever discovered (and astronomers using the UKIRT should know; they are making a habit of finding cool brown dwarfs). Secondly, it's close. In fact, it's the closest brown dwarf to Earth, at a distance of only 10 light years. And thirdly, it has an odd spectroscopic signature, leading astronomers to think that this might be the discovery of a whole new class of brown dwarf."
Image

How To Find Bad Programmers 359

Posted by samzenpus from the how-little-work-can-you-do-in-a-day dept.
AmberShah writes "The job post is your potential programmer's first impression of your company, so make it count with these offputting features. There are plenty of articles about recruiting great developers, but what if you are only interested in the crappy ones?" I think much of the industry is already following these guidelines.

Comment Re:Possibly another reason (Score 1, Redundant) 306

by OpieTaylor (#31375126) Attached to: Vivek Kundra On US Government Inefficiency

phantomfive wrote: "we have Republicans who say, 'government is too big, we need to either cut it or cut its budget'"

You didn't put enough emphasis on the word SAY. Republicans **say** government is too big, but what they mean is: give some of that money to our interest groups (defense, fossil fuel, financial, health insurance, etc. companies). I'm not defending Democratic spending--I'm just saying at least they don't lie about it.

Look it up: spending under Republican presidents Reagan, Bush1, and Bush2 all went way up.
Reagan - 80% increase
Bush1 - 30% increase
Bush2 - 67% increase

source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/hist.pdf

Comment Re:Platforms (Score 1) 145

by OpieTaylor (#31335210) Attached to: Over Half of Software Fails First Security Tests

tjarrett wrote: "We acknowledge the inherent selection bias (the applications in the report come from our customers) in the methodology section."

It's good of him to point that out, but that's not the only flaw in the study I'm sure. First of all it was done by someone with a stake in the outcome, which is always problematic, even with the purest of intentions.

Second, the article says "[t]he vulnerability with the highest total count was cross-site scripting (XSS), and was the third most prevalent flaw."

In my experience that's usually an artifact of the application server and the test tool--not the code. Out of the box most app servers error pages echo back arguments like parameter=evil_script. The tool says that's XSS. The vendors like BEA, Sun, Oracle don't seem to agree, although they'll send you a patch if you beg.

I wonder whether Veracode actually validated that the "vulnerabilities" were actually exploitable.
The Military

Laser Weapon Shoots Down Airplanes In Test 627

Posted by Soulskill from the phasers-on-stun-good-luck-kirk-out dept.
airshowfan writes "Boeing's directed-energy weapons (a.k.a. frickin' laser beams) have been getting some attention lately. The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) is a C-130 that famously burned a hole through a car's hood, and the YAL-1 AirBorne Laser is a 747 that shoots a laser from its nose that is powerful enough to bring down an ICBM. But even cooler is the Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments (MATRIX), a laser that is mounted on a truck (which probably costs less than a 747, but who knows) and that can shoot down small aircraft, as shown in the picture on this article. (The Laser Avenger supposedly also has this capability). We live in the future!"
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Bomb-Proof Wallpaper Developed 388

Posted by samzenpus from the radiation-shielding-curtains dept.
MikeChino writes "Working in partnership with the US Army Corp of Engineers, Berry Plastics has rolled out a new breed of bomb-proof wallpaper. Dubbed the X-Flex Blast Protection System, the wallpaper is so effective that a single layer can keep a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall, and a double layer can stop blunt objects (i.e. a flying 2×4) from knocking down drywall. According to its designers, covering an entire room takes less than an hour."

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