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Communications

Fun To Be Had With a 10-Foot Satellite Dish? 386

Posted by CmdrTaco from the build-a-death-star dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I'm moving to a rural community in the central United States. On the property is a satellite dish in excess of 3 meters in diameter that seems to still be in excellent condition. I already enjoy shortwave radio and was wondering what interesting TV feeds I might be able to catch with the dish. What kind of equipment would I need and how much should I expect to spend? If it's not useful for that purpose, what other fun projects might I use it for?"
Education

Skills Needed For a Future In IT 258

Posted by Soulskill from the zeno's-arrow-points-to-the-help-desk dept.
Lucas123 writes "An increase in the pace of change in IT has created new dynamics for jobs involving the Web, mobile computing and virtualization. For those looking to enter the marketplace in years to come, 30-somethings hoping to upgrade their skills, or those who'll be winding their careers down by 2020, skill sets are drastically changing. For example, graphics chips are doubling in capacity every six months. That translates into a thousandfold increase in capacity over a five-year period — the average shelf life of most game platforms. 'We've never seen anything like it in any industry.' Colleges are in continual catch-up mode and have only recently added project management and soft skills training to computer science programs. According to one expert, 'They're about five years behind where they need to be.'"

Comment Surely this is just a poor implementation (Score 1) 245

by psysjal (#31112832) Attached to: European Credit and Debit Card Security Broken
A while ago (admittedly 4 years) I worked on the ATM side of an EMV chip and pin implementation. Yes the chip can lie to the terminal and yes the terminal can lie to the bank. But all results of a transaction from the card/chip result in the generation of a small cryptographic token generated using the cards view of how the transaction went. The information included in the generation of this is variable but should at least include things like whether the card thought PIN verification was sucessful or not, the transaction amount and whether the card thought the transaction was succesful or not.

This is normally printed on the receipt and either sent online to the bank or uploaded later in a batch transfer. If the system has been implemented sensibly it shouldn't be difficult to prove that this has happened. For an online transaction I don't really see how it can happen at all in a well implemented system.
Space

Setbacks Cast Doubt On NASA's Ares Project 255

Posted by timothy from the tax-dollars-to-space-at-best dept.
stoolpigeon writes with this excerpt from an Orlando Sentinel article about the Ares program, which paints a bleak picture of the program's future: "Bit by bit, the new rocket ship that is supposed to blast America into the second Space Age and return astronauts to the moon appears to be coming undone. First was the discovery that it lacked sufficient power to lift astronauts in a state-of-the-art capsule into orbit. Then engineers found out that it might vibrate like a giant tuning fork, shaking its crew to death. Now, in the latest setback to the Ares I, computer models show the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff. "
Businesses

Diebold Rebrands What No One Wants 175

Posted by CowboyNeal from the rose-by-a-different-name dept.
Irvu writes "Diebold has apparently failed in their bid to sell their tainted elections systems unit. Unable to find a buyer the CEO of Diebold promised that the system will be run more 'openly and independently.' To prove that they are serious, they renamed it. Diebold Election Systems is now Premiere Election Solutions. They still sell GEMS, AccuVote OS and the ever-unpopular AccuVote-TSX which performed so disastrously in California's Top-to-Bottom Review under the same names. Apparently their rebranding effort only goes so far."

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