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Domain: wiccaweb.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to wiccaweb.com.
Stories · 14
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Japan Probes Mysterious Vapor Eruption
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "From the BBC, Japan's Coast Guard dispatched aircraft Sunday to survey a 3,300-foot-high column of steam rising from the Pacific Ocean off the island of Iwo Jima. MSNBC has a nice picture. The vapor was reported Saturday after Japanese troops stationed on the small island observed the massive cloudy plume rise from the sea about 30 miles southeast of the island. 'It's highly likely that it's caused by an eruption of an underwater volcano,' Japanese officials said. But others are not so sure, and are speculating that Godzilla has awoken from its nap. Tokyo remains calm at this hour." -
New Production of Plutonium 238
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "According to the New York Times (login req, but you can google for it as well), the Bush administration is planning the government's first production of plutonium 238 since the cold war. Federal officials say the program would produce a total of 330 pounds over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory. Officials denied that any of the classified missions would involve nuclear arms, satellites or weapons in space, but rather would power 'secret espionage devices.' Plutonium 238 has no central role in nuclear arms. Instead, it is valued for its steady heat, which can be turned into electricity. Nuclear batteries made of it are best known for powering spacecraft that go where sunlight is too dim to energize solar cells. For instance, they now power the Cassini probe exploring Saturn and its moons." -
NASA Discovers Space Spies From the 60's
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "In a room forgotten for more than thirty years at NASA's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA recently found suits for space spies. Originally thought to be Gemini suits, the manufacturer determined that they were suits from a short-lived Cold War-era military program to put a manned reconnaissance station in space. Begun in 1964, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program was an Air Force initiative that would have sent Air Force astronauts to a space station in a Gemini capsule. After spending a few weeks in orbit, the crew would undock and return to Earth. An interesting blast from the past." -
Kernel Changes Draw Concern
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Is the Linux kernel becoming fat and unstable? Computer Associates seems to think so. Sam Greenblatt, a senior vice president at Computer Associates, said the kernel is 'getting fatter. We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel. We are interested in a more stable kernel.' There continues to be a huge debate over what technology to fold into the Linux kernel, and Andrew Morton, the current maintainer of the Linux 2.6 kernel, expands on these subjects in this article at eWeek." -
Telecom Outages Now a State Secret
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "In the past, before negotiating important or large telecommunications contracts, you could check out the detailed network outage reports that large telecommunications carriers file with the FCC. By knowing where carriers had experienced problems, buyers can negotiate better service contracts and know where to plan on redundant services. As recently as last summer, the FCC championed the marketplace benefits of making outage data available to the public. But after more than a decade of making such carrier outage reports available to the public, the FCC in August ruled that the information will be kept secret, lest it fall into the hands of terrorists." -
Supernova Imaged by Hubble Telescope
Delta Vel writes "First discovered by a Japanese amateur astronomer on July 31, this Type II supernova was imaged by Hubble on August 17th. The newly named SN 2004 dj, the closest supernova to be observed in over ten years, is about 11 million light-years away in the spiral galaxy NGC 2403. Looks like they goofed in one of the images, though--the arrow points to a different bright spot on the before-and-after image than it does on the main and annotated images." Reader Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Today, astronauts Gennady Padalka and Mike Fincke popped open the hatch on the Russian side of the ISS spacecraft and quickly stepped through the fourth and final spacewalk of their six-month mission. Their mission? Install three antennas and replace a 2-foot-square Russian pump panel. But of course, because it isn't a part or our Mission to Mars, it is still too dangerous work on the Hubble Telescope, which after all, is only used for science." -
VeriSign Pursues ICANN In State Court
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Like a page out of the SCO how-to book, in the wake of its legal loss in U.S. District Court, VeriSign is moving on to attack ICANN in California's Los Angeles Superior Court. It's the same old story from VeriSign, and they seem intent on dragging it out. 'ICANN's unjustified and overreaching efforts over a three-year period to regulate services that VeriSign offers to registrars and domain name registrants ... has delayed and otherwise impeded the introduction of new services by VeriSign,' the company alleges in its filing. Funny, I have several active and inactive domains at VeriSign, and I can't remember being 'offered' these 'services'. I think most people would have declined such an 'offer'." -
Munich to Go Ahead with Linux After All
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "According to Groklaw and the German publication Heise (it's in German, of course) Munich's mayor Christian Ude has held a press conference, in which he said that the bidding process for the switch from Windows to Linux will go forward as originally planned, despite patent issues. InfoWorld (in English), quotes Bernd Plank, a spokesman for Munich town hall, saying that he expected that the administration would take a maximum of 'two to three weeks' to decide whether the EU's Directive on software patents could affect the city's plan to switch to Linux, and that would be no 'dramatic setback.'" We reported this earlier as well, but now that it's making the rounds again in English, more of us can read it without resorting to Babelfish. -
More Accusations of Scientific Abuse by the Bush Administration
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists released new evidence that the Bush Administration continues to suppress and distort scientific knowledge and undermine scientific advisory panels. Of course we're not talking about such subjective issues like stem cell research which Bush objects to on religious grounds. Here we are talking about money. The cases discussed in this story detail incidents of suppression and distortion of scientific knowledge on issues ranging from mountaintop removal strip mining to endangered species such as wild Salmon in the Pacific Northwest." -
Supreme Court Rules Against Anti-Porn Law
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "From Fox News/AP, the Supreme Court has ruled that the COPA (Child Online Protection Act), passed in 1998 ostensibly to shield kids from Web porn, is probably an unconstitutional muzzle on free speech. This is not quite like 'striking the law down' because the court simply said a lower court was correct to block the law from taking effect, since it likely violates the First Amendment, and sent the law back to a lower court for trial. The American Civil Liberties Union and other critics of the antipornography law said that it would restrict far too much material that adults may legally see and buy, the court said." -
Turning Up The Heat On On-Line Registration
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "CNN is running a story on the growing number of print newspapers with on-line editions that are requiring registration. Apparently there are some folks out there who don't like this 'feature'! I found a few things interesting about the story: Privacy groups say it's a dangerous practice and promotes spam; I didn't realize people put real personal info into these things (110-year-old surgeons from Bulgaria named Mickey Mouse). About 15 to 20 percent of the registrations for the Philadelphia Inquirer turned out to be bogus, a figure that was much lower than I would have thought. Also mentioned in the story is a web site called BugMeNot.com, which lists 'communal' logins and passwords for on-line newspapers." -
Not-So-Clean Hard Drives For Sale
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "The Register is running a story about a security consulting company that as part of a study bought hard drives and laptops on eBay, and then was able to recover highly sensitive data including customer databases, financial information, payroll records, personnel details, login codes, and admin passwords for their secure Intranet site. This is a bit scary considering all of these drives were supposedly formatted and sold for surplus by major companies (although few of us actually use the multiple formatting standards of the DoD). Looks like it's hardly necessary for crooks to get at your private information, although I sure industrial espionage spooks have probably done this for awhile." Shades of the recent post about recovering sensitive contents from swap partitions. -
FCC Move Could Shut Down High School Radio Station
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "This probably has been happening all along, maybe just not in my area. A broadcasting company bought an FM radio station in The Dalles, Oregon (a little hick town east of Portland), and wants to move it to a much choicer market in Seattle, Washington. The FCC has given the green light for the move. Problem is, the frequency in Seattle is being used by a station owned by a local high school, Mercer Island High School. The school has appealed, saying the decision ignores the FCC's own rules, and questioned the FCC's assertion that there's space available elsewhere on the Seattle-area radio dial. The school says the proposal is 'little more than an effort to migrate from a rural community to an extremely well-served urban area.' Critics of the proposal contend that the move is an attempt to tap the much larger Seattle radio advertising market." -
Disney Completes Dali Animation
jbottero writes "Wired News has an interesting piece on a Salvador Dali animation coming out of Disney Studios. It seems that in 1946, Walt Disney and Dali teamed up on a short film called Destino. The film was shelved for money reason, and now, 57 years later, Disney animators has finished what Dali started. The six minute film will be shown in theaters next year before a Disney feature film. The remnants of the aborted film include 150 storyboards, drawings and paintings, which have sat for the last half-century in the Disney vaults. Notably, some of the project was modeled on the animation program Maya. An interesting quote from the article, Dali describes Walt Disney as one of America's greatest surrealists."