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Space

Submission + - New images of deep Martian caves

Submitted by untree
untree writes: The Astronomy Picture of the Day today is an image recently taken by the HiRISE instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. More information is available on the Planetary Society blog, including a description of the paper (pdf) that describes this series of caves.

From the image description:

"Black spots have been discovered on Mars that are so dark that nothing inside can be seen. Quite possibly, the spots are entrances to deep underground caves capable of protecting Martian life, were it to exist."


And for fans of traditional units of measure, this cave entrance is about the size of a football field.
Announcements

Submission + - Mars - holes in surface discovered

Submitted by
tqft
tqft writes: "http://www.universetoday.com/2007/05/25/dark-caver ns-discovered-on-mars/
"
See that dark spot in the middle of the picture? It seems to be a hole, in an otherwise smooth landscape of lava. It isn't an impact crater because it lacks a raised rim or ejecta. Light from the Sun must be getting down there, but it's so deep that none of it is bouncing back out. It's just a dark hole."

Pic:http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/upload s/2007/05/2007-0525cavern.thumbnail.jpg

More here:
http://planetary.org/blog/article/00000984

Entrance to Podkayne's Bar & Grill? Collapse in a lava tunnel? Missile Bay door opened?"
Utilities (Apple)

Submission + - Good note-taking software

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I've noticed that I do a lot of brainstorming on paper, and I wondered why I don't use my computer more. I realized that one of the things I like about writing on paper is the ability to arbitrarily position my text. Is there good software for OS X that lets me put the cursor anywhere I want and begin typing immediately? As for PCs, I think OneNote allows this — is there anything else? What about software that also lets me drag and drop entire blocks of text any way I want to organize them?
Patents

Submission + - Life Imprisonment for Copyright Infringement

Submitted by
ronadams
ronadams writes: "P. Parameswaran writes in his AFP article:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he proposed comprehensive legislation to Congress Monday against copyright thieves, including raising the maximum penalty to life imprisonment and seizing the illicit profits of offenders.
Nick Ferrel at the Inquirer confirms the reports and adds a few interesting insights of his own. Good to know RIAA is a vital part of the US Government. I must have been asleep when my Government & Law professor glossed over that one."
iMac

Submission + - Apple to kill 17" iMac?

Submitted by djfake
djfake writes: According to the Apple Insider, the 17" iMac model may go the way of the 12" Powerbook in the upcoming product refresh in June. If true, Apple would once again demonstrate that it knows much better than its customers what they need.
Security

Submission + - Essential Bluetooth hacking tools

Submitted by J.R
J.R writes: The guys at Security-Hacks have compiled a list of Bluetooth hacking tools: "If you are planning to gain a deeper understanding of Bluetooth security, you will need a good set of tools with which to work. By familiarizing yourself with the following tools, you will not only gain a knowledge of the vulnerabilities inherent in Bluetooth-enabled devices, but you will also get a glimpse at how an attacker might exploit them. This hack highlights the essential tools, mostly for the Linux platform, that can be used to search out and hack Bluetooth-enabled devices." http://www.security-hacks.com/2007/05/25/essential -bluetooth-hacking-tools
Privacy

Submission + - Sex Offenders Have To Register Emails

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Internet e-mail addresses used by convicted Connecticut sex offenders may soon be in the hands of law enforcement. In the latest attempt to stop online predators, the House passed a bill Thursday requiring convicted sex offenders to register all their e-mail addresses, in addition to their home addresses, with state police. "We feel this is a very, very important tool as we go forward to protect children," state Rep. Stephen D. Dargan, D-West Haven, said in announcing the proposed legislation at a morning press conference. Dargan is co-chairman of the legislature's public safety committee. The House of Representatives passed the measure by a 149-0 vote Thursday afternoon. The legislation, part of an omnibus bill dealing with changes to existing sex crime laws, now goes to the Senate. For now, lawmakers are focusing on the e-mail registration effort as the primary way to increase Internet security on popular social networking sites such as MySpace.com. The proposal to require e-mail registration grew out of recent discussions between Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and executives from MySpace, who have been working together for the past two weeks to crack down on convicted sex offenders using the popular youth-oriented site. Earlier this week, MySpace officials said they had identified more than 5,000 registered sex offenders nationally who had created personal profiles on the network, including about 100 individuals from Connecticut. MySpace released the names to law enforcement officials after receiving subpoenas from Connecticut and several other states. Connecticut authorities are currently reviewing the data to see whether any of the offenders, by creating the profiles, violated the conditions of their probation and parole. Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer and a Cheshire native, was present Thursday when the e-mail bill was announced at the Capitol. "This is a critical issue for Internet safety," Nigam said. "As the social activities in the online communities increasingly mirror that of the offline world, our laws need to change with the times," Nigam said. "We can no longer unwittingly provide an advantage to predators online." The bill stipulates that the e-mail addresses would be maintained by police but would not be part of the state's sex offender registry accessible to the public on the Internet. http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-ctmyspace0525 .artmay25,0,312922.story?coll=hc-headlines-local
Announcements

Submission + - Antartic melting faster then anticipated.

Submitted by boylinux
boylinux writes: "The melting of snow cover in regions in January 2005 was the most significant Antarctic melting seen since satellites began observing the continent three decades ago, NASA said Tuesday."

""Antarctica has shown little to no warming in the recent past, with the exception of the Antarctic Peninsula, but now large regions are showing the first signs of the impacts of warming as interpreted by this satellite analysis," said Steffen in a statement."

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/05/16/scie nce-antarctic-melt.html
Republicans

Submission + - Robo-calls piss off voters

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Pissing off voters is the last thing you want to do if you are trying to get elected. But potentially thousands of voters were just that in Kentucky this week as they were repeatedly blitzed by out of control automated call distribution (ACD) software asking them to vote for Republican candidate for Governor Anne Northup. But the glitch and its fallout are likely to further heat up an already hot national topic: should politicians be able to use ACD or robo-calls without any controls. The answer in many cases ha been no. Nebraska's legislature this week gave final approval to a bill that would restrict to two the number of automated calls each campaign could make each day to a resident. Also, the calls could only be made between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1524 9"
Security

Submission + - How to securely share passwords

Submitted by
vginders
vginders writes: "Whilst the idea of "securely sharing passwords" doesn't seem very secure by itself, the reality of system administration makes you do such a thing.
The idea of just giving everyone a personal password is just not realistic, when talkin of a support shop with many clients. Having all (e.g.) ten colleagues maintaining a personal password for all of your (e.g.) hundred and twenty clients is a nightmare.
Face it, every IT Support shop has a bunch of customers and a bunch of coworkers, all needing access at one time of another to the administrator password, some root accounts, some router enable passwords or other firewall credentials. It obviously is'nt always as easy as using certificate logins with SSH.
Through serving in different support shops myself, I have seen different approaches, from using a pass like "[customer_name_tag][postalcode]" over noting passwords in a Visio network scheme till storing them in a high encrypted distributed database (which was protected with one unique password).
I've been thinking a lot about a pretty safe way of managing passwords, but couldn't find something good enough, especially when accepting solutions which aren't 100% secure to keep the solution a bit usable as most clients aren't big banks or nuclear power plants, but mostly small businesses.
So my by now obvious question to the IT Support guys within the /. community, is what you think is a decent, say good-enough solution?"
Software

Submission + - Determining Density from 2D Digital Photos?

Submitted by
RockoTDF
RockoTDF writes: "I work in a lab at a university where we study the behavior of fish, specifically the Betta. One thing we would like to examine further is the density of the bubble nests they create. We have several tanks with cameras mounted above them taking photos (10 Megapixel) at specific intervals. Is there any way we can determine density from this? What software is available? We thought that perhaps we could do a white pixel count in the areas of the bubbles and figure out an algorithm by which to calculate the density, but of course software (preferably FOSS) that does this for us would be ideal."
Security

Submission + - Indianapolis public school security failure

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "An Indianapolis Star reporter using Google found information on at least 7,500 students and some staff members, including phone numbers, birth dates, medical information and Social Security numbers."

"Internet security experts said the inadvertent release of information resulted from a network setup that was sloppy"

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