kryten - Slashdot User

Submission + - NASA Put Combo Locks On Shuttle Hatches

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24, 2007 @07:13PM

An anonymous reader writes: According to the SpaceRef story "The Curious Use of Combination Locks By NASA During Space Shuttle Missions" NASA put special combination locks on the Space Shuttle's main hatch during at least two missons becuase it was afraid that some of the scientist payload specialists might open the hatch by mistake. If these science types were that inept, why fly them in the first place? Did Lisa Nowak's shuttle have an extra lock on the hatch?

Submission + - University professor chastised for using Tor

Submitted by

Irongeek_ADC

on Thursday February 08, 2007 @02:15PM

Irongeek_ADC writes: "As reported in the The Chronicle of Higher Education, University IT "professionals" came knocking on Professor Censarini's door asking about why he was using the Tor network. While there they also asked that he not teach his students about it, and said it was likely against university policy. An interesting read that goes to show even Universities are turning big brother."

Submission + - Coming in March: Month of PHP Bugs

Submitted by 1wn report on Thursday February 08, 2007 @01:09PM

1wn report writes: Just a few months after resigning from the PHP security response team, Stefan Esser is now planning a Month of PHP Bugs (MoPHPB?) project to expose security holes within the code shipped with the default distribution of PHP. In this SecurityFocus interview, Esser explains the motivation for his frustrations with the PHP Group.

Submission + - IT career advice: Personality trumps tech smarts

Submitted by

PetManimal

on Thursday February 08, 2007 @10:52AM

PetManimal writes: "Computerworld's Rob Mitchell has interviewed four IT career coaches who talk about what it takes to advance your technology career. Unfortunately for a lot of low-level IT worker bees, personality and communication skills trump tech brilliance:

... When you're designing and developing, it's fun, it's creative, it's low key. Then all of a sudden, because you're so good at it, you get promoted, and it pulls you out of what you enjoy and into an administrative role, managing other people and doing paperwork. You're forced into left-brain mode. That becomes stressful.
Mitchell also reveals in his blog that advice from IT career coaches is not cheap: a single meeting can cost $500/hour."

Submission + - Harvard Physicists Bring Light to a Complete Halt

Submitted by

tetrikphimvin

on Thursday February 08, 2007 @02:31AM

tetrikphimvin writes: "In a quantum mechanical sleight of hand, Harvard physicists have shown that they can not only bring a pulse of light, the fleetest of nature's particles, to a complete halt, but also resuscitate the light at a different location and let it continue on its way.
"It's been a wonderful problem to try to wrap your brain around," said Lene Vestergaard Hau, a professor of physics at Harvard and senior author of a paper describing the experiment that appears today in the journal Nature. "There are so many doors that open up." This is also noted in Harvard's Gazette here, which includes video links."

One Laptop Per Child Security Spec Released 253

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @06:41PM from the no-school-like-the-old-school dept.

juwiley writes "The One Laptop Per Child project has released information about its advanced security platform called Bitfrost. Could children with a $100 laptop end up with a better security infrastructure than executives using $5000 laptops powered by Vista? 'What's deeply troubling — almost unbelievable — about [Unix style permissions] is that they've remained virtually the only real control mechanism that a user has over her personal documents today...In 1971, this might have been acceptable...We have set out to create a system that is both drastically more secure and provides drastically more usable security than any mainstream system currently on the market.'"

Submission + - Former RIAA defendant wins countersuit

Submitted by

KingSkippus

on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @04:00PM

KingSkippus writes: "Debbie Foster, who was accused by the RIAA of sharing music on a peer-to-peer network and fought for a year and a half to have her case dismissed, has won a countersuit seeking $55,000 for attorney's fees. Ars Technica reports, "The industry cartel will have to tread carefully with any secondary infringement claims now that there is case law that owning an Internet account used for infringement does not automatically make the owner liable for said infringement. Attorney Ray Beckerman told Ars that he believes there are huge implications from this opinion. 'It sends a message to the RIAA... that there are consequences to this 'driftnet' litigation strategy.'""

Submission + - Clouds Revealed on Titan

Submitted by

sporkme

on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @04:54AM

sporkme writes: "New images from Titan may reveal insight to the role of methane on Saturn's largest moon. From the article:

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the image of the 1,490-mile-diameter (2,400-kilometer-diameter) cloud on December 29, 2006. The cloud's presence fits predictions that Titan has a "methane cycle" similar to Earth's water cycle, with bodies of liquid methane evaporating and forming clouds that rain material back down on the surface.
Titan is the only moon that is known to have an atmosphere of significant composition, which in this case is almost entirely nitrogen. The cloud is about half the size of the United States, and the images are astounding."

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