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How Much of ISON Survived Its Closest Approach To the Sun? 84

Posted by samzenpus from the a-thousand-little-pieces dept.
A reader writes "This Ars Technica article examines what may be left of ISON and contains a detailed animated GIF from the NASA STEREO Ahead spacecraft. 'It looks like comet ISON, or most of it, did not survive its encounter with the Sun yesterday, when it made a close approach at just 1.2 million kms from that fiery surface. This distance may seem large, but it is close enough to have subjected the comet to temperatures of around 2,700C. To survive such a close shave with the Sun may sound unlikely, but a few other sungrazing comets have managed the feat during even closer passes. So some people hoped ISON would perform a death-defying stunt and emerge intact. ISON did not leave us without a final serving of mystery though. Soon after reaching its nearest point to the Sun (known as perihelion), there was no sign of it emerging afterwards. Twitter and news agencies were alight, lamenting its loss and assuming it disintegrated—RIP ISON. But then, moments later, new images emerged showing a hint of something appearing on the other side of the Sun. Was this still a diminished comet ISON or a ghostly version of its former self? Well, even comet experts are not sure.'"
United States

Dial 00000000 To Blow Up the World 306

Posted by timothy from the your-public-servants dept.
Charliemopps writes "For 20 years the password for the U.S. nuclear arsenal was '00000000.' Kennedy instituted a security system on all nuclear warheads to prevent them from being armed by someone unauthorized. It was called PAL, and promised to secure the entire US arsenal around the world. Unfortunately for Kennedy (and I guess, the whole world) U.S. military leadership was more concerned about delaying a launch than securing Armageddon. They technically obeyed the order but then set the password to 8 Zeros, or '00000000'."

Comment The modem (Score 1) 319

by KevMar (#45110669) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Mitigating DoS Attacks On Home Network?

If I had to guess, the modem is holding onto the same IP address regardless of what you do with your router. Take a weekend trip and unplug your modem in hopes that it will pull a new address when you return. You could go upstream to your ISP with the issue and suggest the tech release your IP and assign you a new one.

If the attack continues, then you have something inside your network leaking information to the attacker. And you will have to clean that up before you can resolve the problem.

Comment Input validation (Score 5, Insightful) 598

by KevMar (#45066619) Attached to: What Are the Genuinely Useful Ideas In Programming?

I think he was missing input validation from his list. The idea that you can never trust user input and you must validate it. The idea that you should white list what you want instead of black list the things you don't want. Ideas that consider the security of the system and not just the working condition of it.

Comment Less adds but feels like more? (Score 1) 1191

by KevMar (#45009889) Attached to: Come Try Out Slashdot's New Design (In Beta)

The ads stand out way too much on the beta site. I tried it out and my first impression was that it was a site that I would not trust for the news. I thought it was all the ads on the site.

BUT then I went back to the main site and discovered that it was showing me more ads than the beta site. The main top ad was smaller on the beta site. I am not sure what to think. I don't like it because it feels like it is a ad driven site. Before it felt like it was about the content (it just so happened to have ads). Leaves a different impression.

Comment Another Idea (Score 2) 740

by KevMar (#44953463) Attached to: Somebody Stole 7 Milliseconds From the Federal Reserve

If someone was expecting one of two outcomes, they could have done the math on both of them. If I make this trade what can I win. They placed the trade not knowing the outcome. But they had a cancel order (or reverse order) ready to go. If the news was not what they expected, they could have canceled it with minimal losses. Buying a lot of gold and the market doing nothing on the FED's news would mean that they could sell it back without much market shift.

I know this is what happened because I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Android

UDOO Looks To Combine Best of Raspberry Pi, Arduino 59

Posted by timothy from the now-they're-just-negotiating-a-price dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Kickstarter campaign for the UDOO board is 7 days out from closing and they currently sit just under $4,000 short of their stretch goal of $500,000. The UDOO is an attempt to produce a single board which would combine the best parts of both Raspberry Pi and Arduino. UDOO will have a 1GHz ARM i.MX6 CPU in either a Dual Core or Quad Core flavor, 1 GB DDR3 RAM, HDMI and LVDS + Touch, and both an RJ45 port and an on board Wifi Module. Along with those specs, it will be compatible with Arduino DUE R3. The UDOO will utilize Micro SD as a boot device and run both Linux and Android. Currently on Kickstarter, the Dual Core starts at a pledge of $109."
Graphics

High End Graphics Cards Tested At 4K Resolutions 201

Posted by Soulskill from the scale-it-until-they-catch-fire dept.
Vigile writes "One of the drawbacks to high end graphics has been the lack of low cost and massively-available displays with a resolution higher than 1920x1080. Yes, 25x16/25x14 panels are coming down in price, but it might be the influx of 4K monitors that makes a splash. PC Perspective purchased a 4K TV for under $1500 recently and set to benchmarking high end graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA at 3840x2160. For under $500, the Radeon HD 7970 provided the best experience, though the GTX Titan was the most powerful single GPU option. At the $1000 price point the GeForce GTX 690 appears to be the card to beat with AMD's continuing problems on CrossFire scaling. PC Perspective has also included YouTube and downloadable 4K video files (~100 mbps) as well as screenshots, in addition to a full suite of benchmarks."
Power

Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes 599

Posted by Soulskill from the also-conducive-for-uninformed-panic dept.
MTorrice writes "NASA researchers have compared nuclear power to fossil fuel energy sources in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution-related deaths. Using nuclear power in place of coal and gas power has prevented some 1.8 million deaths globally over the past four decades and could save millions of more lives in coming decades, concludes their study. The pair also found that nuclear energy prevents emissions of huge quantities of greenhouse gases. These estimates help make the case that policymakers should continue to rely on and expand nuclear power in place of fossil fuels to mitigate climate change, the authors say."
The Military

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

Posted by samzenpus from the nice-day-for-a-flight dept.
skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."

Comment Re:Good for Google (Score 4, Insightful) 165

by KevMar (#42975983) Attached to: RIAA: Google Failing To Demote Pirate Websites

If people are looking for pirating sites, I would expect them to show up at the top of the rankings. Because if I was searching for [artist] [track] download, I am not looking for amazon.com.

What Google has done is reduced when these sites would show up when you were looking for legitimate sites. Just like they reduced the adult content you see unless you are looking for adult content. It's not Google's job to police what people search for, just to make sure they find what they are looking for.

Comment great opprotunity (Score 1) 402

by KevMar (#39093359) Attached to: Should Microsoft Put Office On the iPad?

While I don't see MS porting full office to apple/android, I do see them building a very slick VDI client. Office on a tablet will end up as a vdi session to a private cloud server. It may sound crazy, but its the smart thing to do. It allows Microsoft to leverage all the existing tablets that everyone already has entering the corporate environment. They can support more devices quicker and extend the life of older tablets. The tablets 3 years from now will blow away today's tablets, but if its a VDI client then that wont matter.

Tablets are too personalized and a nightmare for IT security. But what if you could connect to a work desktop and get all your work apps in a way that makes IT feels good about it. Yet, allow the individual to keep personalized apps. I think this is why Windows 8 has such a tablet feel to it. Windows 7 already does a good job under VDI, and I expect Win8 to do so much better.

This would definitely be a corporate IT strategy that is in sync with the MS push of VDI and Private cloud that we see MS timing with the Win8 release. Home users are another story.

Comment Re:Security without security? (Score 1) 138

by KevMar (#39089693) Attached to: Stealing Laptops For Class Credit

I would find that is a perfect opportunity for security to practice protocol. Do everything except report it to the authorities. Even do the data loss analysis.

In the case where the doors were locked, hunt everyone down that had a key and question them. Track each breach down.

I would love to attempt stuff like this at work.

Comment Re:Security without security? (Score 4, Insightful) 138

by KevMar (#39081589) Attached to: Stealing Laptops For Class Credit

I think its just the opposite. They didn't tell them to let the students steal the laptops, they let them know in advance that if they catch someone taking the laptop that it may be legit. Just by mentioning this would have made it harder because laptop theft would be on the security teams mind making it easier to spot.

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