LeCaddie - Slashdot User

Why is Facebook spamming my email contacts ? 1

Submitted by

IMarkov

on Wednesday July 22 2009, @11:02PM

IMarkov writes "I've seen several people complain about Facebook invitations sent on their behalf to their friends and relatives. This happened to me too. When I wanted to invite several new people two weeks ago, Facebook offered to import my contacts from my gmail account, and I keyed in my login/password (silly me). Facebook then offered checkboxes to select people to invite, however, it eventually invited everyone, including the mailing lists from which I received messages many years ago. It even sent second reminders a week later, and I didn't see how to stop it. Granted, a number of people signed up, but this was awkward, and several people complained about receiving four invitations sent on my behalf through several mailing lists. I wonder why Facebook is doing this — this does not look like a innocent bug, or lack of social skills. But doing this deliberately can quickly backfire. In any case, one should probably _not trust their account info to even best-known Web sites."

NASA Running Out of Plutonium 264

Posted by Soulskill on Friday March 07 2008, @01:49PM
from the so-am-i dept.

PRB_Ohio takes us to Space.com for a story about NASA's plutonium shortage, and how it may affect future missions to the far reaches of the solar system. The U.S. hasn't produced plutonium since 1988, instead preferring to purchase it from Russia. We discussed the U.S. government's plans to resume production in 2005, but those plans ended up being shelved. If NASA is unable to find an additional source, it could limit missions that take spacecraft too far from the Sun. Quoting: "Alan Stern, NASA associate administrator for science, ... said he believed the United States had sufficient plutonium-238 on hand or on order to fuel next year's Mars Science Lab, an outer planets flagship mission targeted for 2017 and a Discovery-class mission slated to fly a couple years earlier to test a more efficient radioisotope power system NASA and the Energy Department have in development. To help ensure there is enough plutonium-238 for those missions, NASA notified scientists in January that its next New Frontiers solicitation, due out in June, will seek only missions that do not require a nuclear power source."