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Comment Re:Maybe they did it wrong... (Score 1) 395

by TrueKonrads (#34110706) Attached to: A Decade of Agile Programming — Has It Delivered?
The key message behind that principle is: "Don't deliver working software that has no more purpose for business". If you can deliver a well QA'd and developed software that is obsolete by the time it is shipped then that is money wasted. If the development overall objective is always slipping, but along the way useful software modules are delivered to the users and they make money, then it is a success.
United Kingdom

Badgers Digging Up Ancient Human Remains 172

Posted by samzenpus from the someone-get-a-snake dept.
One of England's oldest graveyards is under siege by badgers. Rev Simon Shouler now regularly patrols the grounds of St. Remigius Church looking for bones that the badgers have dug up. The badger is a protected species in England so they can not be killed, and attempts to have them relocated have been blocked by English Nature. From the article: "At least four graves have been disturbed so far; in one instance a child found a leg bone and took it home to his parents. ... Rev. Simon Shouler has been forced to carry out regular patrols to pick up stray bones, store them and re-inter them all in a new grave."

Comment Re:Challenge response or custom hardware (Score 1) 1155

by TrueKonrads (#33866920) Attached to: British Teen Jailed Over Encryption Password
I think it is important to make sure no trickery occurs - the system has to be reasonably secure even if all implementation details are known.

Encryption key could be stored in self-destructing HSM. And forgetting a passphrase/password or PIN is a common thing. You could try to perform trickery and say "I am confused and these are my likely guesses". Then watch as police type pin 3-5 times wrong and HSM self-destruct. Proving that you intentionaly misled police would be very difficult, I believe (IANAL).

Comment Re:Only 16 weeks? (Score 1) 1155

by TrueKonrads (#33805142) Attached to: British Teen Jailed Over Encryption Password
Here's a simple option that might very well work. Design a simple challenge response device with LCD which requests PIN code and then provides the long password. Have one PIN that opens and another, say 0000 that unloads a lot of energy into the simple memory chip frying it. Then, when police come, let them guess the PIN or give thre incorrect attempts saying that all this stress caused me to forget exact combination.
Space

Submission + - SpaceX Conducts First On-Pad Test-Fire Of Falcon 9 (spaceflightnow.com)

Submitted by FleaPlus
FleaPlus writes: On Saturday SpaceX successfully conducted a launch dress rehearsal and on-pad test firing of their completed Falcon 9 rocket, with the 15-story tall rocket held down to prevent launch (Videos). SpaceX is one of several likely competitors (ranging from the upstart Blue Origin to the more experienced Boeing) in NASA's new plans for commercial crew transportation to low-Earth orbit. SpaceX has been cleared by Cape Canaveral for the Falcon 9's first orbital launch next month, carrying a test model of the company's Dragon cargo/crew capsule, although CEO/CTO Elon Musk has cautioned that they're still in the equivalent of 'beta testing' for the first few flights.
Space

Submission + - Attack of the Killer Electrons 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "At the peak of a magnetic storm the number of highly energetic 'killer electrons' strong enough to damage electronics and human tissue can increase by a factor of more than ten times and they can be dislodged, posing a danger to spacecraft, satellites, and astronauts. Killer electrons can penetrate satellite shielding, so if electrical discharges take place in vital components, a satellite can be damaged or even rendered inoperable. For many years, the mechanism by which killer electrons are produced has remained little understood, in spite of physicists’ attempts at solving this puzzle. Now Astrobiology Magazine reports that data shows that the increase in the creation of a substantial number of killer electrons is due to a two-step process. First, the initial acceleration is due to the strong shock-related magnetic field compression. Immediately after the impact of the interplanetary shock, Earth’s magnetic field lines began wobbling at ultra low frequencies. In turn, these ULF waves effectively accelerate the seed electrons provided by the first step, to become killer electrons. “These new findings help us to improve the models predicting the radiation environment in which satellites and astronauts operate. With solar activity now ramping up, we expect more of these shocks to impact our magnetosphere over the months and years to come,” says Philippe Escoubet, ESA’s Cluster mission manager."

Submission + - Puzzle in xkcd book finally cracked (xkcd.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: After a little over five months of pondering, xkcd fans have cracked a puzzle hidden inside Randall Munroe's recent book xkcd: volume 0. The thread on the xkcd forums starts here; the post revealing the final message (a latitude and longitude plus a date and time) is here.
Apache

Submission + - Serious Apache exploit discovered (zdnet.com.au) 2

Submitted by bennyboy64
bennyboy64 writes: An IT security company has discovered a serious exploit in Apache's HTTP web server, which could allow a remote attacker to gain complete control of a database. ZDNet reports the vulnerability exists in Apache's core mod_isapi module. By exploiting the module, an attacker could remotely gain system privileges that would compromise data security. Users of Apache 2.2.14 and earlier are advised to upgrade to Apache 2.2.15, which fixes the exploit.

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