54551203
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coondoggie writes:
If those craters could talk, they would have one heck of a hot party on Mercury. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) — the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919 — recently approved 10 new names for impact craters on the planet Mercury. The new named craters include singer/songwriter John Lennon and author Truman Capote who join existing named crater-holders Bach, Beethoven, Salvador Dali, Victor Hugo and Mark Twain. In all there are now 124 named crater on Mercury.
54478923
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coondoggie writes:
In its annual look at what challenges NASA faces in the coming year, the agency's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) this year outlined nine key areas it says will cause the most angina. Leading the way in pain is money. NASA's current money story starts off bad and just gets worse.
54442381
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coondoggie writes:
IBM today took the wraps off of its eight annual "IBM 5 in 5" appraisal of the key technologies that could change high-tech life in the coming five years. Perhaps not surprisingly Big Blue this year says future tech developments will revolve around cognitive or smart learning systems that will learn, reason and involve human interaction like never before.
54200049
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coondoggie writes:
The California-based operator of a revenge porn website who posted more than 10,000 sexually explicit photos and then allegedly tried to extort victims for as much as $350 each to remove the content is sitting in a San Diego jail today with $50,000 bail and possible jail time hanging over his head. According to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Christopher Bollaert, 27, of San Diego, was arrested by California Department of Justice agents and according to documents filed in San Diego County Superior Court, has been charged with 31 felony counts of conspiracy, identity theft and extortion.
54157371
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coondoggie writes:
Private Mars mission planners said today that Lockheed Martin is onboard to build the spacecraft that would land a technology demonstration robot on the Red Planet by 2018. The Mars One group ultimately wants to establish a human outpost on Mars.The lander robot would use technology Lockheed previously built for NASA's Phoenix lander which touched down on Mars in 2008. The Mars One lander will evaluate the use of the Phoenix design for the Mars One mission and identify any modifications that are necessary to meet future requirements. In addition, the mission would go a long way toward determining the cost and schedule of future missions.
54116143
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coondoggie writes:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has written a check for $4.8 million to Raytheon BBN Technologies and GrammaTech to build software that blocks backdoor security holes in commodity network devices. The contract falls under DARPA's Vetting Commodity IT Software and Firmware (VET) program which address the threat of malicious code hidden in mobile phones, network routers, computer workstations and other networked devices can be secretly modified to function in unintended ways or spy on users.
53990979
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coondoggie writes:
This IT guy had an all-together different idea of how to spend government money. The Department of Justice today said James Troy Clark, 51, of Fredericksburg, Va., an IT specialist with the National Science Foundation plead guilty this week to theft of government property totaling more than $90,000.
53955325
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coondoggie writes:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking to shelve the heavy glass lenses and mirrors that make up the key components of space telescopes. The agency said this week it successfully demonstrated a ground-based prototype telescope that used lightweight polymer membrane optics to replace traditional glass mirrors as part of its Membrane Optic Imager Real-Time Exploitation (MOIRE) project.
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coondoggie writes:
With an eye toward keeping satellites as sprightly as possible and their instruments functioning at optimum temperature levels, Lockheed Martin says it has developed a cooling system three-times lighter than its predecessor.
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coondoggie writes:
CBS news show “60 Minutes” recently said that if Santa had a real workshop (and who says he doesn’t really) it would look like an Amazon distribution or fulfillment center. Usually massive, and highly organized the centers contain all manner of products that the company moves and ships at lightning pace. Here we take a look at a few of those centers and a few future plans for services surrounding them.
53845055
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coondoggie writes:
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently said its program to develop cutting edge photonics products has yielded two chips that can support long optical delays with low loss useful for a number of applications including wideband wireless systems, optical buffers for all-optical routing networks, and ultra-stable optical interferometers for sensing applications.
53416885
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coondoggie writes:
t may come as no surprise to those who know NASA's penchant for coming up with amazingly cool solutions to major problems, but its still pretty intersting when you some major innovation pulled off. This maybe the case with NASA's planet-hunting space telescope Kepler, which has been out of commission since May and thought to be kaput. But this week the space agency said it has come up with a way to make use of the Sun and Kepler's orbit around it to stabilize the craft and let it start taking images of space again.
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coondoggie writes:
The New York State Police have a new weapon to fight the plague of drivers that insist on texting while operating their vehicle: Great Big Tall SUVs. Most recently reported by the AP, NY has begun operating a fleet of 32 unmarked SUVs that let troopers more easily peer down into a car to see if the driver is texting or not.
53180297
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coondoggie writes:
Many say Windows turned 30 this year, but it was actually 28 years ago this week that the first commercial version of Microsoft's signature operating system shipped. The justification for calling it the 30th anniversary is that Windows was announced in 1983 but was in such dismal shape at that point that it took two more years to whip it into a product people might buy.
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coondoggie writes:
The White House today said it strengthened the nonprofit program aimed at getting veterans and returning service members jobs in the hot wireless telecommunications arena. “Warriors 4 Wireless,” brings together government agencies and private companies such as Cisco, American Tower, Dynis, and PCIA to offer job training and placement services.
