Comment Re:Well said. (Score 1) 279
I went to UCLA for p-chem and enjoyed it. It ended with my Ph.D, but the experience of working in a lab helped me in my next career phase, embedded software in the Silicon Valley.
Comment Re:Perspective (Score 1) 295
At nearby Langley
AFB, local land purchases are adding to the safety buffer.
Comment [[oops]] (Score 1) 1
I forgot, this is Slashdot, not [[Wikipedia]].
Comment Miramar and Oceana, similar hazards (Score 5, Interesting) 295
I used to live in Poway (1969-1982), under the approach pattern for Miramar Marine Corps, formerly Naval, Air Station. I also went to university at [[UCSD]] on the west end of the station. There were accidents over the years, this one especially bad as a single-engine [[F-8 Crusader]] lost power on approach, hit a hangar full of aircraft caught fire. I bet this tragedy and others figured into all subsequent Navy/Marines fighters having two engines.
More recently, a [[2008 San Diego F/A-18 crash]] caused four civilian fatalities, following a (relatively rare) double-engine flameout.
Most crashes were far less spectacular (ejections over open water or empty fields). Both Miramar and Oceana have more development now, adding to the danger.
Submission + - Google API Allowed Attacker to Impersonate Google (net-security.org)
Orome1 writes: Details about a recently discovered and exploited vulnerability that allowed a 21-year-old Armenian hacker to harvest Gmail addresses and send to their owners a message coming from a legitimate Google e-mail address are still unknown, but the vulnerability has been patched. The attack has been perpetrated during the weekend, but it wasn't malicious in nature. The hacker just wanted to bring the vulnerability to the public's attention, because he says that he has tried to contact Google and disclose all the details, but they won't answer his e-mails.
Submission + - The Details of Oracle's JDK 7 and 8 'Plan B' (developer.com)
gkunene writes: Oracle puts Java 7 and 8 features up for Java Community approval, providing a clear indication of what the next two major versions of Java are likely to include.
Submission + - US Launches Largest Satellite in the World
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Space.com reports that over the weekend a giant booster – a Delta 4 Heavy rocket — carrying a secret new spy satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office roared into space to deliver what one reconnaissance official has touted as "the largest satellite in the world" into orbit. The Delta 4 Heavy rocket is the biggest unmanned rocket currently in service and has 2 million pounds of thrust, capable of launching payloads of up to 24 tons to low-Earth orbit and 11 tons toward the geosynchronous orbits used by communications satellites. The mammoth vehicle is created by taking three Common Booster Cores — the liquid hydrogen-fueled motor that forms a Delta 4-Medium's first stage — and strapping them together to form a triple-barrel rocket, and then adding an upper stage. The exact purpose of the new spy satellite NROL-32 is secret but is widely believed to be an essential eavesdropping spacecraft that requires the powerful lift provided by the Delta 4-Heavy to reach its listening post. "I believe the payload is the fifth in the series of what we call Mentor spacecraft, a.k.a. Advanced Orion, which gather signals intelligence from inclined geosynchronous orbits," says Ted Molczan, a respected sky-watcher who keeps tabs on orbiting spacecraft. Earlier models of the series included an unfurling dish structure about 255 feet in diameter with a total spacecraft mass of about 5,953.5 pounds costing about $750 million and designed to monitor specific points or objects of interest such as ballistic missile flight test telemetry."
Self-Building Chips — As Easy As Microwave Meals 51
nk497 writes "Canadian researchers have found a way to speed up self-assembling chips — by using microwaves instead of traditional ovens. Self-assembly is seen as key to enabling nanotechnology, but until now the block co-polymer method, which directs nanomaterials to create moulds and then fills them in with a target material, was too slow to be useful. 'By using microwaves, we have dramatically decreased the cooking time for a specific molecular self-assembly process used to assemble block co-polymers, and have now made it a viable alternative to the conventional lithography process for use in patterning semi-conductors,' the researchers said. The technique could make the technology a viable alternative to conventional lithography for chip production. 'We've got the process — the next step is to exploit it to make something useful.'"
NASA Strikes Gold and Water On the Moon 421
tcd004 writes "The PBS NewsHour reports: there is water on the moon — along with a long list of other compounds, including mercury, gold and silver. That's according to a more detailed analysis of the cold lunar soil near the moon's South Pole. The results were released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday. [Note: Nature's papers are behind a paywall; for a few more details, reader coondoggie points out a a story at Network World.] The data comes from the October 2009 mission, when NASA slammed a booster rocket traveling nearly 6,000 miles per hour into the moon and blasted out a hole. Trailing close behind it was a second spacecraft, rigged with a spectrometer to study the lunar plume released by the blast. The mission is called LCROSS, for Lunar Crater Observer and Sensing Satellite."
Fermilab To Test Holographic Universe Theory 166
eldavojohn writes "Scientists at Fermilab have decided that it's high time they build a 'holometer' to test the smoothness of space-time. Theoretical physicists like Stephen Hawking have proposed that space-time is not smooth but it's been a lot of math and no actual data. The Fermilab team plans to build two relatively small devices that act as 'holographic interferometers' to measure the shaking or vibration in split beams of light traveling through a vacuum. If the team finds the shaking in their measurements and records them, the theory of a holographic universe will have some evidence of non-smoothness in space-time and perhaps a foothold in bringing light to the heavily debated theoretical physics."
OLPC Gets $5.6M Grant To Develop Tablet With Marvell 100
tugfoigel writes "According to Xconomy, 'The One Laptop per Child Foundation and Santa Clara, CA-based semiconductor maker Marvell have cemented a partnership announced last spring, with Marvell agreeing to provide OLPC with $5.6 million to fund development of its next generation tablet computer. Nicholas Negroponte says the deal, signed in the past week or so but not previously announced, runs through 2011. "Their money is a grant to the OLPC Foundation to develop a tablet or tablets based on their chip," he says. The OLPC tablet ... is known as the XO 3 because it represents the third-generation of the XO laptop currently sold by OLPC (the foundation scrapped plans for its e-book-like XO 2 computer and is moving straight to the tablet). ... The deal, he says, means the tablet's development is "fully funded."'"
15-Year-Old Boy Fitted With Robotic Heart 241
An anonymous reader writes "What do you do when a 15-year-old boy is close to death and ineligible for a heart transplant? If you're Dr. Antonio Amodeo you turn to an artificial solution and transplant a robotic heart, giving the boy another 20-25 years of life. The Italian boy in question suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which rapidly degenerates the muscles and eventually leads to death. Having such a disease renders the boy ineligible for a heart transplant, meaning almost certain death without an alternative solution. Dr. Amodeo found such an alternative in the form of a 90-gram, fully-robotic heart that took 10 hours to fit inside the boy's left ventricle. It is a permanent solution offering as much as 25 years of life and is powered by a battery worn as a belt."
Self-Assembling Photovoltaic Cells 103
dhj writes "MIT scientists have developed a self-assembling photovoltaic cell in a petri dish. Phospholipids (think cell membranes) form disks which act as the structural support for light responsive molecules. Carbon nanotubes help to align the disks and conduct electricity generated by the system with 40% efficiency. The assembly process is reversible using surfactants to break up the phospholipids. When filters are used to remove the surfactants the system reassembles with no loss of efficiency even over multiple assembly/disassembly cycles. The results were published September 5th in Nature Chemistry."
Researchers Demo ASP.NET Crypto Attack 98
Trailrunner7 writes "The crypto attack against ASP.Net Web apps has gotten a lot of attention this week, and with good reason. Microsoft on Friday night issued a security advisory about the bug, warning customers that it poses a clear danger to their sites. Also on Friday, the researchers who found the bug and implemented the attack against it released a slick video demo of the attack, clearly showing the seriousness of the problem and how simple it is to exploit with their POET tool."
Distinguishing Encrypted Data From Random Data? 467
gust5av writes "I'm working on a little script to provide very simple and easy to use steganography. I'm using bash together with cryptsetup (without LUKS), and the plausible deniability lies in writing to different parts of a container file. On decryption you specify the offset of the hidden data. Together with a dynamically expanding filesystem, this makes it possible to have an arbitrary number of hidden volumes in a file. It is implausible to reveal the encrypted data without the password, but is it possible to prove there is encrypted data where you claim there's not? If I give someone one file containing random data and another containing data encrypted with AES, will he be able to tell which is which?"
