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Submission + - Mangalyaan successfully put into Mars orbit

Submitted by knwny
knwny writes: India's Mars satellite Mangalyaan was successfully placed into orbit around Mars early on Wednesday following a 10-month journey from Earth. India thus joins the U.S., the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union in having successfully completed a Mars mission. It is however the only one to have done so on the first attempt. Headed by the Indian space agency ISRO, Mangalyaan was made in 15 months at a cost of just around 70 million USD crore — the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever to be undertaken.
The Media

Submission + - Some Wikileaks Contributions to Public Discourse 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "EFF reports that regardless of the heated debate over the propriety of Wikileaks actions, some of the cables have contributed significantly to public and political conversations around the world. The Guardian reported on a cable describing an incident in Afghanistan in which employees of DynCorp, a US military contractor, hired a "dancing boy," an underaged boy dressed as women, who dance for gatherings of men and is then prostituted — an incident that contributed important information to the debate over the use of private military contractors. A cable released by Wikileaks showed that Pfizer allegedly sought to blackmail a Nigerian regulator to stop a lawsuit against drug trials on children. A Wikileaks revelation that the United States used bullying tactics to attempt to push Spain into adopting copyright laws even more stringent than those in the US came just in time to save Spain from the kind of misguided copyright laws that cripple innovation and facilitate online censorship. An article by the New York Times analyzed cables released which indicated the US is having difficulties in fulfilling Obama's promise to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and is now considering incentives in return for accepting detainees, including a one-on-one meeting with Obama or assistance obtaining IMF assistance. "These examples make clear that Wikileaks has brought much-needed light to government operations and private actions," writes Rainey Reitman, "which, while veiled in secrecy, profoundly affect the lives of people around the world and can play an important role in a democracy that chooses its leaders.""
iMac

Submission + - Apple support company sues customer for complaint (tekgoblin.com) 1

Submitted by tekgoblin
tekgoblin writes: An Apple authorized Service Provider called Stemgraph is suing a customer who complained online about poor service from them. The customer Dimitrios Papadimitriadis took his iMac to them because he was seeing gray spots on his LED panel.

The Greek company Stemgraph recommended a full interior cleaning of the iMac and performed the service for Dimitrios. He then got his iMac back and noticed moisture behind the screen and that it still did not work properly and took it back to the repair center. Stemgraph then told him that they needed to keep his iMac to replace the LED screen and he would be without it for another week.
Earth

EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Bees 410

Posted by Soulskill from the how-could-that-bee dept.
hether writes "The mystery of the disappearing bees has been baffling scientists for years and now we get another big piece in the puzzle. From Fast Company: 'A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined — electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.' Now environmentalists and bee keepers are calling for an immediate ban of the pesticide clothianidin, sold by Bayer Crop Science under the brand name Poncho."
Businesses

Submission + - Stuxnet virus now biggest threat to industry (yahoo.com)

Submitted by digitaldc
digitaldc writes: A malicious computer attack that appears to target Iran's nuclear plants can be modified to wreak havoc on industrial control systems around the world, and represents the most dire cyberthreat known to industry, government officials and experts said Wednesday.

They warned that industries are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the so-called Stuxnet worm as they merge networks and computer systems to increase efficiency. The growing danger, said lawmakers, makes it imperative that Congress move on legislation that would expand government controls and set requirements to make systems safer.

The complex code is not only able to infiltrate and take over systems that control manufacturing and other critical operations, but it has even more sophisticated abilities to silently steal sensitive intellectual property data, experts said.

Comment Re:Less Secure (Score 0) 466

by netchaos (#33857394) Attached to: Indian Military Organization To Develop Its Own OS

If I were responsible for protecting India's IT infrastructure, I might start an Indian state project to create an OS. But I'd just start with Android or Linux, and assign the people I have to investigating its open code for security holes and starting applications needed by essential Indian users.

There is already a state backed OS named BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) which is a Debian derivative. BOSS Linux

Submission + - Solar on the White House a Success! (whitehouse.gov)

Submitted by
CartaNova
CartaNova writes: "On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced plans to install Solar Panels and Solar Hot Water on the White House. The Carter administration had previously installed a 32 panel solar system to white house — which was quietly removed during Reagan's tenure in office. Solar Hot Water and PV (Photovoltaic) firms had been campaigning on this issue for some time."
Space

FTL Currents May Power Pulsar Beams 236

Posted by kdawson from the it's-the-law dept.
thomst passes along news out of the recent AAAS meeting of a new explanation for pulsar beams that involves faster-than-light currents. Here are Los Alamos's press release and three related papers on the arXiv. "The new model explains the beam emissions from pulsars as products of superluminal currents within the spinning neutron stars' atmospheres. According to the authors' model, the current generated is, itself, faster than light, although the particles that compose it never individually exceed the universal speed limit, thereby preventing Einsteinian post-mortem rotation. The new model is a general explanation of the phenomenon of pulsar beam emissions that explains emissions at all observed frequencies (and different pulsars emit everything from radio waves to x-rays), which no previous model has done."

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