Archive for the ‘03-Mar 09, 2009’ Category

Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cybersecurity Center resigns

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Rob Beckstrom, director of the NCSC resigned on Friday. His resignation will become effective March 13th. Beckstrom put in his resignation because the NCSC did not receive enough funding from the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and he was “unwilling to subjugate” his office to the NSA.

He has recommended that the Deputy Director Mary Ellen Seale be his successor.

Rob was Chairman and Chief Catalyst of TWIKI.NET, which supports the open source wiki Twiki. He also founded C*ATS Software Inc., and is the author of The Starfish and The Spider.

Social Networking for pets is now cool

Monday, March 9th, 2009

ZooToo is an online “facebook for pets and their owners.” (as I describe it).  They are holding a national competition to renovate an animal shelter somewhere in the country.

Central Missouri Humane Society has with support from the online Missouri Community and our local media has taken the NUMBER ONE spot in the standings with just 3 days to go.

I like this story because I like Columbia, MO.  It seems to me that our lil’ berg has been way ahead of the curve in a lot of ways when it comes to tech.

The main paper is also generously covering the story an if you’re not a supporter yet, you have 3 days to add some ‘points’ to the cause.

Second Earth, here we come!

Monday, March 9th, 2009

On Saturday at 9:49pm,  Keplar successfully launched into space.

It’s a new telescope with an intriguing mission: find earth-sized planets in earth-distant orbits around other stars.

We have been finding lots of other planets around stars for a while now (hundreds), but none can even hope to be earth-like. Most are too big. Jupiter big. That is because the technique used to find them: measuring the gravitational wobble of the star, is too small to see with the current telescopes unless the planets are huge.

This satellite will enter solar (not earth) orbit. It will be scanning for photonic variations from a particular swath of stars. It has a 95 megapixel camera. Distant from earth, it will have less RF/light noise to deal with.

Ideally, it will return size, mass, orbital distance, and even, hopefully, surface temperature.

We might find that second Earth.

NASA’s link: Kepler

News Bytes for 3/9/2009

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

Enzyme behind spread of cancer in the body is found

Pay-to-play comes to online radio

Amex demands right to call and SMS any phone you call them from

Cisco in talks to acquire Flip Video camera company

Doctors force patients to sign gag orders forbidding online reviews of their services

Warning: don’t wear medication patches during an MRI

New vaginal gel stops the AIDS virus

Scientists make HIV strain that can infect monkeys

Gravitational waves may have been detected in 1987

Child porn suspect ordered by court to decrypt own hard drive