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Feed Screaming Coronal Mass Ejections Warn Of Radiation Storms (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Some coronal mass ejections (CMEs) produce violent radiation storms, and some do not. The trick is to identify the ones that can produce dangerous radiation, so that astronauts and satellite operators can be warned ahead of time. Now researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center may have found a way to do just that.
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Airline offer free access to StarOffice suite

Submitted by feranick
feranick writes: Singapore Airlines is offering access to Sun's StarOffice 8 office productivity suite free of charge to passengers on its new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. StarOffice, Sun's proprietary version of OpenOffice.org, runs on the aircraft's Linux server and is accessed via a seat-back terminal at each passenger's seat, according to Sun.
More at Desktoplinux.com
Operating Systems

Submission + - Nicholas Carr is wrong on Open Source

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recently, Nicholas Carr, an acclaimed writer and ex-editor of Harvard Business Review, wrote an article titled The Ignorance of the Crowds in the Strategy+Business Magazine. In the article, he tries to portray open source as a hybrid Bazaar-Cathedral model and warns the businesses against any reliance on the open source process to drive innovation. Krishwords has this article in which a rebuttal is published to Carr\'s article and it has been argued that open source process is a perfectly legitimate democratic bazaar style model. Complete Story
Google

Submission + - AdSense Disabling Arbitrage Accounts by June 1st

Submitted by
shird
shird writes: "Reports of google trying to clean up its search results by cracking down on dubious Web sites that contain little content but lots of ads, sometimes known as "Made for AdSense" (MFA) sites, have been reaching the media. The Jensense blog reports "Numerous AdSense publishers have been receiving emails from Google the past couple of days stating that their use of their AdSense account is an unsuitable business model and that accounts would be disabled as of June 1st, giving publishers about two weeks notice to prepare for the loss of the AdSense accounts." Google regularly bans and rejects AdSense accounts in violation of the TOS, however this change appears to be affecting a much larger quantity of MFA sites profiting from the imbalance of AdWords costs vs AdSense profits. Currently being discussed over at WebMasterWorld."
Editorial

Submission + - New Zealand's first land mammal discovered

Submitted by
Bob Beale
Bob Beale writes: "Small but remarkable fossils found in New Zealand will prompt a major rewrite of prehistory textbooks, showing for the first time that the so-called "land of birds" was once home to mammals as well.
The tiny fossilised bones — part of a jaw and hip — belonged to a unique, mouse-sized land animal unlike any other mammal known and were unearthed from the rich St Bathans fossil bed, in the Otago region of South Island.
But the real shock to scientists was that it was there at all: until now, decades of searching had shown no hint that the furry, warm-blooded animals that thrived and prospered so widely in other lands had ever trodden on New Zealand soil.
The fact that even one land mammal had lived there, at least 16 million years ago, has put paid to the theory that New Zealand's rich bird fauna had evolved there because they had no competition from land mammals.

http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/2006/nzmammal. html"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Soy is "turning our kids into homosexuals"

Submitted by
The Bourgeoisie
The Bourgeoisie writes: "This just has to be read to be believed. It's a commentary op-ed written by James Rutz, leader of a megachurch called Megashift Ministries. In it he is quite seriously promoting the idea that soy is responsible for "today's rise in homosexuality". Another comedic moment by a Jesus-freak."
The Internet

Cutting Through the Ajax Hype 77

Posted by kdawson from the easy-rinse-formula dept.
An anonymous reader writes "If you're thinking about building an Ajax application of your own, this article would be a good place to start. It's an introductory-level guide about when and how to implement Ajax. It provides a balanced discussion about where exactly using Ajax makes sense, and where it does not."
Security

Submission + - Microsoft's December Patches

Submitted by
SkiifGeek
SkiifGeek writes: "Coming as somewhat of a surprise, Microsoft released seven patches with their December Security Patch Update. Even though most patches were only rated as Important, almost all patches do have an arbitrary code execution component for at least some end users. This will raise the criticality of some patches to Critical for those specific users. The unexpected patch was for the Windows Media Format, though there is some outstanding dispute over the actual criticality of the affected components and the extent / availability of public exploit code.

Proof of concept code has been made available for at least one of the recent arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities associated with Microsoft Word (there are at least two), and the ISC has identified that Microsoft Office (Mac) was updated quietly today as well, including at least one security fix in the update.

Detailed vulnerability reports and exploit code are starting to surface for the patched vulnerabilities, as well as what appears to be opportunistic attacks by unrelated attackers (according to the ISC there is a massive spike in attacks exploiting an historic Symantec Antivirus vulnerability)."
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista's TCP/IP Promises and Perils

Submitted by
boyko.at.netqos
boyko.at.netqos writes: "More information on Vista's TCP/IP stack from Network Performance Daily, this time from Robert Maercklein and Zach Belcher: "...security policy will come from a centralized source. When you get your DHCP lease, your computer will report to the stack what OS you're using, what version level, what patches, what anti-virus software that's active — all that kind of stuff. It will have the ability to restrict your network access if you have a down-level machine... We could see a lot of our customers with much higher WAN network utilization because of this new TCP/IP stack... CTCP can be enabled/disabled from the command prompt but there has been no mention of tuning parameters which leads us to ask the question: How are you supposed to configure this setting in Vista?... What worries us... is that Microsoft is basing this on packet round trip time. The round-trip time from the client-side will have the server processing time in it; but the clients aren't likely going to be the running the CTCP at first. If you have a server-to-server backup running, for example, CTCP may think its part of the round-trip time and it'll throw the delay window through the roof...""
Software

OpenOffice.org 2.1 Released With New Templates 262

Posted by kdawson from the ooh-shiny dept.
Several readers wrote in to mention the release of OpenOffice.org 2.1. It includes support for 64-bit Linux and a number of other improvements, including multiple monitor support for Impress, improved Calc HTML export, and automatic notification of updates. Also, all of the templates and clip-art that were submitted for the template contest are available to download.
United States

Submission + - Earth's Atmosphere Is Shrinking

Submitted by
Dotnaught
Dotnaught writes: "Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels will produce a 3 percent reduction in the density of Earth's outermost atmosphere by 2017, according to a team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and The Pennsylvania State University. The good news? A thinner atmosphere will mean satellites and space junk can stay in orbit longer due to the reduced drag and rockets will require less fuel to place satellites."

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