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Huge Volcanic Eruption Observed on Io
minesweeper writes "Astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii recently monitored the largest volcanic eruption ever observed on Jupiter's moon Io. The eruption took place in February 2001, though image analysis was only recently completed by a team of University of California, Berkeley, astronomers. More info is available from the Berkeley press release, and an image is available here."
...a huge volcanic eruption
--- IN MY PANTS!
Could someone please explain why it took so long to analyze the data?
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Interesting snip:
...this is the yet another result of global warming.
People, we've already lost Venus to corporate carelessness and greed, and now Io is being turned into a wasteland! How many more Jovian moons must be covered in molten rock and sulfurous ash and before all the evil American companies wake up? The Face on Mars weeps for us all!!!
Please forgive my emotional tirade; I'm just upset because Stephen King died again.
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As a counterweight to the preceding foolishness, I'll add some meaningful data to the discussion by correcting the following line of the press release:
"The Surt eruption appears to cover an area of 1,900 square kilometers, which is larger than the city of Los Angeles and even larger than the entire city of London," Marchis said.
The city of Los Angeles covers 5,959 km^2, and London covers 4,147 km^2, so the eruption wasn't even half as large as either of them. Even Melbourne, at 2,027 km^2, would not have been completely covered by the lava flow, though I'm sure tourism would have been affected.
when you could be helping to fight cancer?
Thats no Space Station....
Its a small moon!
Guess not because you used your precious time to mod the parent down. :-(
The Federal Information Assurance Conference 2002 is taking place this Tuesday through Thursday at the University of Maryland. Some of the most prestigious government agencies and private businesses in the realm of Information Security are attending, including among others the National Security Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Defense Information Systems Agency; and RSA Security, Symantec, and IBM, respectively. The speakers included professionals from the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, and the Office of Homeland Security.
Yesterday, the very first day, Microsoft announced that Windows 2000 has passed all required tests for certification under the Common Criteria (CC) at Evaluated Assurance Level 4 (EAL4) to demonstrate their "commitment to security." Unlike the Windows® NT 4.0 TCSEC (Trusted Computer Security Evaluation Criteria, a.k.a. "Orange Book") C2 certification which was on a non-networked machine without a floppy drive, the Windows 2000 CC EAL4 tests included among others the Active Directory Service, Virtual Private Networking (VPN), the Kerberos implementation, and the Encrypted File System. Where was Linux(TM) when Microsoft dropped this bombshell? Linux(TM) was nowhere to be found. There was no one from Red Hat, no one from Mandrakesoft (makers of Mandrake Linux), and no one from SuSE. Linus wasn't there. Not even the self-appointed patron saint of open source, Richard Stallman, bothered to show up.
Oh Linux(TM), oh Linux(TM). Where art thou, Linux(TM)? Why dist thou not showst up? The answer lies in a small, little excerpt from John Pescatore, Director of Internet Security for Gartner. He said, "Not all but some of versions of Linux could meet this level [CC EAL4] as well."
That's right. Not all versions of Linux could meet CC EAL4. In other words, not all versions of Linux could meet the same minimum security requirements as Microsoft Windows 2000.
"Well," you ask, "exactly which versions of Linux can and cannot meet CC EAL4 requirements?" It stands to reason that the core Linux(TM) kernel, the version distributed by Linus at http://www.kernel.org, cannot meet these minimum requirements, because if it did, all versions of Linux(TM) would meet these minimum requirements. After all, other Linux distributions are not going to be made less secure. I also know for a fact that this is true. The reason that only some of the Linux(TM) versions would pass CC EAL4 is that those versions patch the main Linux(TM) distribution. In other words, those more secure versions are forks, alternative versions of Linux(TM) that were not accepted into the main distribution.
This means that Linux(TM), as released by saint Linus, the same Linux(TM) that all these so-called "experts" have been touting as the more stable, more secure alternative to Windows, is actually less secure than Windows 2000. Now I don't want to get any email from you Linux(TM) naysayers asking me that if Microsoft Windows 2000 is so secure why does Microsoft® Windows 2000 have so many more security bugs, or security bulletins, than Linux(TM). Measuring the security of an operating system by the number of security bulletins is like measuring the security of a bank by the number of robberies. By that standard, my small town bank out here in the sticks with 2 tellers, 3 security cameras, and never more than US$1,000 cash on-hand is the most secure bank in the world.
The "theory of a thousand eyes" (the theory that open source is more secure because everybody can see the code and instantly discover a problem) doesn't make an operating system any more secure either. While the potential for more security exists, this doesn't ensure that the "thousand eyes" are actually looking. To the contrary, Red Hat has discovered bugs in the Linux kernel in sections that went unchanged for years. For example, not only did the Teardrop vulnerability in TCP/IP exist for decades, but the Teardrop vulnerability was ported to other operating systems, even though "thousands of eyes" had to be looking at the code in order to port it to another operating system. Peer review, an extension of this theory, doesn't provide any assurance either, because the reviewing peer may not be well versed in security and hence not fully understand or appreciate the implications of a given piece of code.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The only way to fully evaluate operating system security, and to compare one operating system's security to another operating system's security, is to have that operating system evaluated under TCSEC or CC. These are comprehensive methods of fully and exhaustively evaluating security, and the fact that they are common standards allows operating systems evaluated by the same criteria to be compared in terms of total security assurance. Until Linus and his open source goons get their act together, get their kernel up to snuff, and get their kernel certified, Linux(TM) will remain less secure than its arch-nemesis, Microsoft Windows 2000.
On Soviet Io, eruption observes You.