Slashdot Mirror

maetenloch writes: "Last week Falun Gong hackers in China were able to briefly take over the Sinosat-1 satellite and broadcast a banner for several minutes on all channels of China Central Television. This was apparently repeated several time on different channels on Sunday but so far the Chinese government has imposed a news blackout on the incident. However thanks to the Internet and the millions of witnesses, word has leaked out. Surprisingly, security on satellites can be very weak - often transponders are left on when not active and will continue to rebroadcast whatever is beamed at them. It's believed that Falun Gong used a 3 meter dish antenna mounted on a vehicle to overpower the government's uplink signal. This is not the only time that satellite signals have been hacked - there was the famous 'Captain Midnight' incident in 1986 and it's believed that Iraq has been attacking Kurdish satellite tv channels for several years. Hackers have even (discreetly) made use of the U.S. Navy's FleetSatCom satellites."

jonerik writes "The June issue of the Atlantic Monthly has this account of the history of the Joint Strike Fighter competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin (which the latter company ended up winning this past fall, with Boeing now touting its expanding line of unmanned aircraft as the true future of tactical aviation). The article does a fine job of showing how the competitors dealt with the challenge of producing an aircraft (now dubbed the F-35) that the Air Force, Navy, Marines, RAF, and Royal Navy could all live with. Funniest part: Boeing's X-32 entry, with its enormous pelican-like jet intake, had some questioning whether the plane's bizarre appearance didn't hurt its chances more than its performance. 'Helpful as my contacts at Boeing were, no one was eager to claim credit for the design of the plane,' says the article's writer James Fallows." Fascinating article.

schnippy writes: "Researchers at the University of Arizona have calculated that small earth-crossing asteroids can be deflected by "coating them with a layer of white paint or dust." This finding won't be of much help against the larger doomsday asteroids (like the recently discovered 1950 DA) but it will help deflate military proposals to use nuclear weapons to deflect potentially hazardous asteroids."

jonerik writes "Following up on today's story on the Soviet Union's massive N1 rocket are these two articles on the latest US and Russian rocket designs. Space.com covers the American side of things, with a story on Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 and Boeing's Delta 4 boosters. The Associated Press has this article on the Russians' Rokot booster, originally built in the '70s as the SS-19 ICBM and converted to civilian use in the mid-'90s. The Rokot was in the news this past weekend when it successfully launched a pair of US-German satellites - dubbed Tom and Jerry - into orbit to map the Earth's gravitational field and 'chart large-scale movements of water around Earth.'"

joestump98 writes: "Yahoo! News is running a story about those crazy, cash strapped, Russians building a space shuttle for tourists. For under $100,000 you can take a one-hour flight that includes a mere 3 minutes of weightlessness. Apparently the flights are to start around 2004/2005." 21mhz adds a link to this press release from Russia's Myasishchev Design Bureau, writing: "On close examination, it turns out to be a downscaled version of Buran."

securitas writes: "The most controversial part of the Combatting Terrorism Act of 2001 is Section 832 (full text) that would expand government powers to capture information about your Internet activities. A UCLA law professor and the former NSA general counsel debate the pros and cons at Slate in a series of e-mails this week (see the upper left hand side for links to each day's exchange). Here's an overview at the NY Times Archive (no registration required)."

Timothy has compiled a good list of links related to this morning's terrorist attacks around America. Many photos and video clips. There's a lot of good links there and I highly recommend that you read them. And thanks to the Slashteam for keeping the servers up through this. Its not easy dealing with 3x the traffic. I apologize to readers that have been inconvenienced.

Two major news updates: the plane downed near Pittsburgh is reported not to have been shot down. A fifth plane which had been feared hijacked, this one a Korean Air jetliner, was forced down by Canadian Air Force planes over the Yukon. However, this plane is reported not to have been hijacked -- instead, its emergency beacon was triggered by a low-fuel indicator.

Importantly -- remember, blood is in demand. The Red Cross' site is mobbed, but here's the blood donation information on a the cached page at google.

More details of the attack and its aftermath: a report at at gnome.org, and a photo at indymedia.org. pajama links to NYC Police scanner traffic (winamp) streamed online, and an anonymous reader also points to another scanner feed.

Shadowwalker Delaforge writes "Hey guys: I'm submitting my web site to yours to get the word out. I've been compiling web sites, and info on the U.S. Attack. These sites are ones that work, and arent' swamped out of existence. I'm also adding new data about where people can donate money, blood, and other things dealing with this.

soccerdad writes "Due to the activities of today, the internet/networking experts at my firm have been asked by some of our clients to be on standby in case anything untoward occurs. They've been monitoring backbone activity, etc., in a "just in case" mode. They've described the activity they're seeing as somewhat strange. The backbone is, according to them, at about 80% utilization -- they've never seen it above 40% before. However, the main portal sites such as Yahoo aren't having substantively higher than normal traffic. They're working on doing some traffic analysis but haven't completed that effort yet."

A small piece of that bandwidth may be saved if you go to the link Kalak suggests: "William Shunn is collecting short notes from people in the terrorist affected areas so you can see who is OK." Look here (or post your name here if you're in an affected city) before tying up a phone connection. Alex Fabrikant submitted another personal information site at Berkeley

Thapthim writes "http://cbc.ca/ has all sorts of information, even in our own city buildings are being shutdown, all air traffic has been suspended. However Canadian Airports are taking in international flights heading into US so the air ports there are free for emergencies."

sn0wcrsh wrote to say that a "short blurb on Channel 7 Boston that the CTO of Akamai was on the fateful plane that hit the trade center" confirms the earlier reports that he was on board.

And ectrix writes: "The CFO of my company, Netegrity was on United Airlines Flight 175, which has been confirmed to us by United Airlines to have hit tower two of the WTC.

WAVY NBC - Norfolk, VA (among other local TV stations I'm sure) is reporting on the air the Threatcon levels at the area Naval, Air Force, and Army bases. They are all at Threatcon Delta. Their website currently only lists their status as of the beginning of the attacks, which was Threatcon Charlie. Norfolk, VA is the home port for the US Atlantic Fleet. Local TV stations also are showing armed (M16s, shotguns) guards patrolling the base grounds and perimeters."

There are updated photos and videos here, and CarbonFusion wrote with another good link to photos and videos.. eddiem writes: "http://www.flightexplorer.com/ will soon let you view the flight path of the planes." Explanations of airport security at How Stuff Works and Cryptome are an interesting read under the circumstances as well.

Bard, Andrew wrote with some updates as well:

"Just to let you know:

1. I heard a woman who was on the 92nd floor of the first WTC building when the plane hit it. She was able to escape and so was everyone "in her company" so it is assumed that virtually everyone from the 92nd floor down was evacuated successfully - an estimated 20,000 people of the 25,000 in the building.
2. the plane that went down in PA had a woman onboard who locked herself in the bathroom with her cellular phone - she was telling authorities about the hijacking when the plane crashed and killed her - that is the only way the authorities knew for sure what plane went down in PA so quickly, she gave her flight number
3. the Mexican border is completely closed and the Canadian border is still open - all International flights have been redirected to Northern Canada
4. the planes from Boston were presumably chosen because they were going on long flights (to LA) which would make them larger than average airliners with full tanks of gas
5. when the first WTC building crashed (which was the 2nd one to be hit), 125 firemen were down below fighting the fire on the first building to be hit... none of them have been heard from yet - 10,000 emergency personnel in NYC responded to the first WTC getting hit... it is unknown how many of those were crushed in the two collapsed buildings."

We've been deluged with Echelon stories today, although as far as I can tell, there was no real news about it whatsoever. The committee examining Echelon met today, and that was apparently enough of an excuse for news agencies to report stories based on the draft report that was leaked last week. (The final report isn't due to be presented until September - it doesn't appear that today's committee meeting actually released anything.) News stories from here and there: CNN, BBC, Computerworld... well, I'll skip the non-English ones. And if you're wondering what this "Echelon" thing is, there's a handy guide.

Deglr6328 writes: "The U.S. Department of Energy's Fossil Energy site has a story about using lasers to drill through rock at 10 to 100 times as fast as conventional rock boring technologies. One of the lasers tested was the 2.2 megawatt M.I.R.A.C.L., which was originally designed in 1985 for the star wars program. A cool video clip of its test firing can be found at the GTI page here. It looks like we'll be stuck with fossil fuels like oil and natural gas for some time, so we might as well do it James Bond style!" Sounds more like Real Genius style to me. Who brought the popcorn?

In an attempt to amplify, revisit, correct or update some recent Slashdot stories, the following tidbits have been hand-trimmed for your reading pleasure. I hope you like them. (Read more.)

Library of Congress will have online items o'plenty. franimal wrote in reaction to the report that the Library of Congress does not plan to digitize its collection. "Even though reading online may be 'mindless,' 'isolating,' 'lonely' and 'arrogant' the Library of Congress plans to have 5 million 'items' posted by the end of the year."

Twice as close to the middle of nowhere. HerringFlavoredFowl pointed out that "Ikonos 1 has just raised the bar on Area 51 images. As we all remember, terraserver just released a set of two meter images taken in 1998. Space Imaging snapped this set on April 4th, 2000. The Federation of American Scientists [has posted] a wonderful side by side interpretation of these images. Thank you John Pike for clueing me in on the FAS update. Space.com also has some color images and an the steps Mr. Pike went through to obtain these images. "

One lump or two? Or three? Scott Marks and hordes of fellow travelers let us know that "The US DOJ U.S. v. Microsoft web site has all the gory legal details on the Proposed Final Judgment as well as a number of other interesting tidbits. Not the least is the ability to comment on the trial directly: 'If you would like to send the Antitrust Division your comments on this case, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov .'"

What kind of power is that? After the latest brouhaha both on Slashdot and in the rest of the world about the link between violence and video games, Jer Davis wrote: "The Tech Report has an article up written by Andy Brown dissecting some of the psychological studies that have been released recently regarding correlations between real-life violence and violent video games. ... This is a very important issue, and Andy does an excellent job at dissecting the very suspect results these studies have claimed."

And speaking of violence ... Deadli contributed the news that the secretary of education opposes mechanical profiling programs according to this Washington Post article. Perhaps he's been reading the reaction to Jon Katz' article on WAVE.

Once in a while, some good news slips through. In this case, it's from TheGreek, who wrote, "Jason Haas is out of the hospital and well on his way to recovering." Congratulations, Jason.

In an attempt to amplify, revisit, correct or update some recent Slashdot stories, the following tidbits have been hand-trimmed for your reading pleasure. I hope you like them. (Read more.)

Library of Congress will have online items o'plenty. franimal wrote in reaction to the report that the Library of Congress does not plan to digitize its collection. "Even though reading online may be 'mindless,' 'isolating,' 'lonely' and 'arrogant' the Library of Congress plans to have 5 million 'items' posted by the end of the year."

Twice as close to the middle of nowhere. HerringFlavoredFowl pointed out that "Ikonos 1 has just raised the bar on Area 51 images. As we all remember, terraserver just released a set of two meter images taken in 1998. Space Imaging snapped this set on April 4th, 2000. The Federation of American Scientists [has posted] a wonderful side by side interpretation of these images. Thank you John Pike for clueing me in on the FAS update. Space.com also has some color images and an the steps Mr. Pike went through to obtain these images. "

One lump or two? Or three? Scott Marks and hordes of fellow travelers let us know that "The US DOJ U.S. v. Microsoft web site has all the gory legal details on the Proposed Final Judgment as well as a number of other interesting tidbits. Not the least is the ability to comment on the trial directly: 'If you would like to send the Antitrust Division your comments on this case, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov .'"

What kind of power is that? After the latest brouhaha both on Slashdot and in the rest of the world about the link between violence and video games, Jer Davis wrote: "The Tech Report has an article up written by Andy Brown dissecting some of the psychological studies that have been released recently regarding correlations between real-life violence and violent video games. ... This is a very important issue, and Andy does an excellent job at dissecting the very suspect results these studies have claimed."

And speaking of violence ... Deadli contributed the news that the secretary of education opposes mechanical profiling programs according to this Washington Post article. Perhaps he's been reading the reaction to Jon Katz' article on WAVE.

Once in a while, some good news slips through. In this case, it's from TheGreek, who wrote, "Jason Haas is out of the hospital and well on his way to recovering." Congratulations, Jason.

Nachtjäger writes "The Federation of American Scientists has an entire section of their site devoted to US Government secrets, including the lately hyped Echelon stuff. " Interesting project - it's an interesting chronicle of the declassification of massive amounts of papers.