Mar
24
2009
Iddo Genuth writes “NASA and the US Air Force have successfully tested a new super-chute system aimed at reclaiming reusable Ares booster rockets. On February 28, 2009 a 50,000-pound dummy rocket booster was dropped in the Arizona desert and slowed by a system of five parachutes before it crashed to the ground. The booster landed softly without any damage. This was possibly the heaviest parachute drop ever, and NASA is planning to perform even heavier drops of up to 90,000 pounds in the next few months.”

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Comments Off on NASA Tests Heaviest Chute Drop Ever | tags: google | posted in technical news
Mar
24
2009
George Maschke writes “I recently received a takedown notice from a corporate lawyer demanding that I remove a post on my Web site’s message board. It purportedly lists the first 75 of 567 questions on the MMPI-2 paper-and-pencil psychological test. It seems to me that such posting of a limited amount copyrighted material for discussion purposes on a public-interest, non-profit Web site falls within the scope of the fair use exemption of US copyright law. I have thus declined to remove the post. I believe that the corporation in question is seeking to chill public discussion of its test, which applicants for employment with many governmental agencies are required to complete. I would be interested in this community’s thoughts on the matter.”

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Comments Off on Dealing With a Copyright Takedown Request? | tags: google, web | posted in technical news
Mar
23
2009
The Obama administration for the first time is weighing in on a Recording Industry Association of America file sharing lawsuit and is supporting hefty awards of as much as 0,000 per purloined music track.
Comments Off on Obama Sides With RIAA, Supports $150,000 Fines/Music Track | tags: obama | posted in technical news
Mar
23
2009
diegocgteleline.es writes “Linus Torvalds has released Linux 2.6.29. The new features include the inclusion of kernel graphic modesetting, WiMAX, access point Wi-Fi support, inclusion of squashfs and a preliminary version of btrfs, a more scalable version of RCU, eCryptfs filename encryption, ext4 no journal mode, OCFS2 metadata checksums, improvements to the memory controller, support for filesystem freeze, and other features. Here is the full list of changes.”

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Comments Off on Linux Kernel 2.6.29 Released | tags: encryption, google, linux | posted in technical news
Mar
23
2009
CoreDuo writes “The people who bring you the DroneBL DNS Blacklist services, while investigating an ongoing DDoS incident, have discovered a botnet composed of exploited DSL modems and routers. OpenWRT/DD-WRT devices all appear to be vulnerable. What makes this worm impressive is the sophisticated nature of the bot, and the potential damage it can do not only to an unknowing end user, but to small businesses using non-commercial Internet connections, and to the unknowing public taking advantage of free Wi-Fi services. The botnet is believed to have infected 100,000 hosts.” A followup to the article notes that the bot’s IRC control channel now claims that it has been shut down, though the ongoing DDoS attack on DroneBL suggests otherwise.

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Comments Off on Botnet Worm Targets DSL Modems and Routers | tags: google | posted in technical news
Mar
23
2009
As we speculated a couple of weeks back, it has come to pass. Reader mknewman writes to tell us that comedian Stephen Colbert has won the vote to have his name immortalized (or at least until it crashes) as the moniker on NASA’s newest addition to the International Space Station. We can but wonder what NASA will do now. “NASA’s mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, ‘The Colbert Report’ to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.”

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Comments Off on Colbert Wins Space Station Name Contest | tags: google | posted in technical news
Mar
23
2009
Since Firefox is one of the most important tools of Web designers and also other internet users, and because of big mount of Firefox memory usage, I decided to write this article and make it visual for all to be more interesting. Well, if you have a laptop and want to work with Firefox, Photoshop, Dream Weaver and….
Since Firefox is one of the most important tools of Web designers and also other internet users, and because of big mount of Firefox memory usage, I decided to write this article and make it visual for all to be more interesting. Well, if you have a laptop and want to work with Firefox, Photoshop, Dream Weaver and … as web design’s tools, you may need many memory on your computers But as we know, it costs much expensive to upgrade your hardware and for laptop owners that would be a disaster if their laptop maximum Ram support doesn’t let them to add another Ram in order to have more memory. ( I’ve also wrote another article for laptop owners: 32 Useful Tips To Improve Laptop Performance )
In this article I am going to tell you how to decrease firefox memory usage and increase firefox speed. This article of mine has two parts. So, follow each part to the end to make your Firefox Faster and Reduce your Firefox Memory Continue reading
Comments Off on 20+ Ways to Increase Firefox Speed & Decrease Memory Usage | tags: firefox, laptop, web, website | posted in problems and solutions, technical news
Mar
23
2009
Truth of the fact is; by restricting the material the networks are not only losing potential weekly watchers; they’re also losing a stream of ex facto revenue potentially more reliable then DVD purchases.
Comments Off on An Honest Open Letter to Hulu | tags: network | posted in technical news
Mar
23
2009
Man, this is just sad. Over a year after the internet was set ablaze with rage after seeing Monster’s HDMI cable scam, we’ve just been notified that the tactic is still being used in at least one Fry’s Electronics store. For those unaware, the rig works as such: two TVs are set beside each other along with a sign that says “See the Monster HDMI…
Comments Off on Monster "HDMI Difference" scam still kickin’ in Fry’s… | tags: tv | posted in technical news
Mar
23
2009
Nicholas Arthur Woodhams, a 23 year old from Kalamazoo, Michigan, was recently slapped upside the gord with federal charges of fraud and money laundering after he managed to con Apple into shipping him around 9,000 iPod shuffles.
Comments Off on Scammer shuffles Apple out of 9,000 iPods | tags: Apple | posted in technical news