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NASA

Space Station Astronauts Gain Internet Access 201

Posted by kdawson
from the how's-the-latency-up-there dept.
cyclone96 writes "Internet access on the International Space Station went live this morning. The crew now has full browsing capability via a special LAN and the Ku-band data link on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network, as described in the NASA press release. Flight Engineer T. J. Creamer used the access to post the first tweet from orbit about 7 hours ago. Previous astronaut tweets had been posted by a third party on the ground via email."
Google

Google Docs To Host Any File Type 186

Posted by kdawson
from the not-the-g-drive dept.
ezabi writes "According to a post on the official Google blog, in the coming weeks Google Docs will offer to host all file types with a limit of 250 MB, which as they say is larger than the current limit for email attachments. This will have its consequences: paid file sharing will die, more shared pirated material, newer vulnerabilities and malware distribution channels..."
Businesses

+ - Hispanic electronics chain switches to Linux-> 1

Submitted by
DJ DeFi
DJ DeFi writes "La Curacao is a Los Angeles-based chain of Hispanic-focused electronics stores. Its locations are decorated with symbols of ancient Mayan and Aztec civilizations: the chain's motto, "Un Poco De Su Pais," translates to "a little bit of your country."

While La Curacao enjoys strong levels of customer loyalty, its previous operating system sometimes left both customers and sales associates frustrated. Transactions could take a long time to complete, which prompted some sales associates to abort the process and start over... In addition, the system would occasionally crash and remain down for 15 or 20 minutes — usually during the company's busiest sales periods.

Read about how La Curaco took the plunge and switched to Linux."
Link to Original Source
Privacy

Judge Rules IP Addresses Not "Personally Identifiable" 436

Posted by Soulskill
from the what-about-the-ip-on-the-chip-in-my-head dept.
yuna49 writes "Online Media Daily reports that a federal judge in Seattle has held that IP addresses are not personal information. 'In order for "personally identifiable information" to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies a computer,' US District Court Judge Richard Jones said in a written decision. Jones issued the ruling in the context of a class-action lawsuit brought by consumers against Microsoft stemming from an update that automatically installed new anti-piracy software. In that case, which dates back to 2006, consumers alleged that Microsoft violated its user agreement by collecting IP addresses in the course of the updates. This ruling flatly contradicts a recent EU decision to the contrary, as well as other cases in the US. Its potential relevance to the RIAA suits should be obvious to anyone who reads Slashdot."
Music

+ - Pandora no longer completely free

Submitted by AbyssWyrm
AbyssWyrm writes "Today, I received an email (alternatively, see the blog) from Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, informing me that Pandora will no longer free for all users. Instead, it will be really cheap — for those with a free account, there will be a cap of 40 hours per month, and a user may pay a one-time fee of $0.99 to resume listening to music unlimited for a month. According to the blog entry, this will affect the top 10% of listeners.

Certainly not a bad deal considering the price, and I suspect that Pandora is one of few free internet resources whose users are loyal enough to pay a small fee to keep it afloat. Hopefully this does not become a slippery slope."
Security

+ - Is there a zero-day OpenSSH exploit in the wild?->

Submitted by eefsee
eefsee writes "sans.org reports 'Over the past 24 hours we've had a number of readers tell us that there is an OpenSSH exploit in active use.' It is not clear if this is a real exploit or sysadmin CYA masquerading as exploit, but some web hosts have already turned of SSH in response. On 7/5 HostGator shut down SSH on all its shared servers. Site5 did the same thing the next day. The loss of SSH, of course, kills SFTP on these hosts as well, forcing customers to fall back on FTP. Now that is security!"
Link to Original Source

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. -- Publilius Syrus

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