Comment How about beer for Pastafarians? (Score 1) 8
Will Pastafarians get beer for their Friday night religious observances?
Submission + - US passenger jets testing anti-missile systems (usatoday.com) 2
anthrax writes: The Department of Homeland Security is paying $29 million to test anti-missile systems on passenger jets that fly domestic routes. Similar systems are used on US military aircraft and cargo aircraft. DHS and BAE Systems (the system maker) want to eventually install the system on almost all domestic airliners. This will help cut down on the high number of attacks on passenger jets by heat seeking missiles in the US. The maintenance costs and who will pay for the systems still has not been determined for wide spread use of the systems. Burt Keirstead, Director of Commercial Aircraft Protection at BAE Systems said of the system "It's the ultimate consumer use of the equipment." I know that I will feel much safer once these additional very useful and cost effective systems are in place and reflected in the increased cost on my plane ticket.
Submission + - Atheists not allowed to adopt children (time.com) 4
gollum123 writes: "From Time, After six years of childless marriage, John and Cynthia Burke of Newark decided to adopt a baby boy through a state agency ( http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877155,00.html ) . John Burke, an atheist, and his wife, a pantheist, left the line for religious affiliation blank on the forms. Superior Court Judge William Camarata raised the religious issue. Inestimable Privilege. In an extraordinary decision, Judge Camarata denied the Burkes' right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being. Despite the Burkes' "high moral and ethical standards," he said, the New Jersey state constitution declares that "no person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience." Despite Eleanor Katherine's tender years, he continued, "the child should have the freedom to worship as she sees fit, and not be influenced by prospective parents who do not believe in a Supreme Being." Two weeks ago, aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Burkes appealed directly to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. If they fail in their appeal, Eleanor Katherine may have to leave the only family she has ever known and await adoption by another couple whose religious convictions satisfy the State of New Jersey."
Submission + - FCC Relaxed Media Ownership, ignores public (nytimes.com)
anthrax writes: "Completely ignoring Congress and public comments, the FCC voted to relax ownership rules which prevented broadcasters from owning newspapers in the nation's 20 largest media markets. After holding several public hearings that overwhelmingly opposed the relaxation or the rules, and Congressional hearing where Democratic and Republican (even Ted "The Internet is Tubes" Stevens) voiced opposition to the move, the FCC voted 3 to 2 to change the rules. Not hard guessing the political affiliation of the votes."
Feed Science Daily: Explosives On A Chip: Unique Structure Enables New Generation Of Military Micro- (sciencedaily.com)
Tiny copper structures with pores at both the nanometer and micron size scales could play a key role in the next generation of detonators used to improve the reliability, reduce the size and lower the cost of certain military munitions.
Submission + - SquirrelMail Repository Poisoned (beskerming.com)
SkiifGeek writes: "Late last week the SquirrelMail team posted information on their site about a compromise to the main download repository for SquirrelMail that resulted in a critical flaw being introduced into two versions of the webmail application (1.4.11 and 1.4.12).
After gaining access to the repository through a release maintainer's compromised account (it is believed), the attackers made a slight modification to the release packages, modifying how a PHP global variable was handled. As a result, it introduced a remote file inclusion bug — leading to an arbitrary code execution risk on systems running the vulnerable versions of SquirrelMail.
The poisoning was identified after it was reported to the SquirrelMail team that there was a difference in MD5 signatures for version 1.4.12.
Version 1.4.13 is now available."
After gaining access to the repository through a release maintainer's compromised account (it is believed), the attackers made a slight modification to the release packages, modifying how a PHP global variable was handled. As a result, it introduced a remote file inclusion bug — leading to an arbitrary code execution risk on systems running the vulnerable versions of SquirrelMail.
The poisoning was identified after it was reported to the SquirrelMail team that there was a difference in MD5 signatures for version 1.4.12.
Version 1.4.13 is now available."
Submission + - F/OSS databases may gain on proprietary databases (sun.com)
walterbyrd writes: "Blog post from Allan Packer (author of Configuring and Tuning Databases on the Solaris Platform) discuses the likelihood of MySQL, PostgreSQL et al challenging Oracle, IBM and Microsoft."
Submission + - Tech giants form chip group (bbc.co.uk)
BosstonesOwn writes: Seven of the world's leading chip makers are collaborating on chips which contain transistors with features just 32 billionths of a metre wide.
IBM, Toshiba, AMD, Samsung, Chartered, Infineon and Freescale have formed the alliance to cut development costs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7149704.stm
Looks Like AMD found a way to retool to get back into the processor race with Intel.
IBM, Toshiba, AMD, Samsung, Chartered, Infineon and Freescale have formed the alliance to cut development costs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7149704.stm
Looks Like AMD found a way to retool to get back into the processor race with Intel.
Feed The Register: MS to bundle 'broken' random number tool in Vista SP1 (theregister.com)
Developers urged to avoid built-in backdoor
Microsoft plans to bundle a cryptographically flawed pseudo random number generator in its upcoming service pack for Windows Vista.
