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Space

Orbit Your Own Satellite For $8,000 208

Posted by kdawson from the be-the-first-on-your-block dept.
RobGoldsmith sends word of Interorbital's TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit, which allows anyone to send a half-pound payload to low-earth orbit for $8,000. Your satellite will fly to orbit from Tonga atop an Interorbital Systems NEPTUNE 30 rocket along with 31 other TubeSats. It will function for several weeks, then its orbit will decay and it will burn up in the atmosphere. Interorbital plans to send up a load of 32 TubeSats every month. If you pay in full in advance, you get slotted onto a particular scheduled launch. Here are Interorbital's product page and brochure (PDF).
The Internet

One Broken Router Takes Out Half the Internet? 412

Posted by kdawson from the brain-gone-punky dept.
Silent Stephus writes "I work for a smallish hosting provider, and this morning we experienced a networking event with one of our upstreams. What is interesting about this, is it's being caused by a mis-configured router in Europe — and it appears to be affecting a significant portion of the transit providers across the Internet. In other words, a single mis-configured router is apparently able to cause a DOS for a huge chunk of the Net. And people don't believe me when I tell them all this new-fangled technology is held together by duct-tape and baling wire!"
Patents

Is Apple's Multi-Touch Patent Valid? 112

Posted by timothy from the what-the-judge-says-it-is dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There is evidence that Apple's multi-touch patent application may have failed to list some prior art that showed gestures in multi-touch interfaces as early as the mid 1980s. Some of these examples even appear in the bibliography of Wayne Westerman's doctoral dissertation, and he's one of the inventors on the application's list. If true, that could leave them wide open for legal attack, should they try suing someone like Palm for patent infringement. Also, Apple may be infringing some key multi-touch patents owned by the University of Delaware — and co-developed by Westerman while getting his doctorate."

Comment Re:Which way is this impressive? (Score 1) 287

by jfclavette (#25388345) Attached to: World's Smallest IPv6 Stack By Cisco, Atmel, SICS

While the 11 KB code footprint might not be all that impressive (altough I think it is), the 13 is very impressive for an IPv6 stack. I haven't RTFA but if it accepts a largeish number of simultaneous connections, I highly doubt they got it working at all with that kind of footprint.

Heck, 13KB is only slightly over the space required to load a 64 by 64 24 bits bitmap in memory. And you haven't displayed it yet.
Data Storage

Submission + - A new global memory card standard (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "The Technology Research Institute has approved a new memory card standard called the Multiple Interface Card (miCard). The card will make transferring pictures, songs and other data between electronic gadgets and PCs easier. Twelve Taiwanese companies are preparing to manufacture the new miCard. 'The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means most users won't need separate card readers anymore. MMC cards fit most consumer electronics, while USB connections are built into a wide range of IT hardware, including laptops, desktops, printers and home entertainment gear.'"
Privacy

Bill To Outlaw Genetic Discrimination In US 353

Posted by kdawson from the hands-off-my-genes dept.
fatduck sends us a brief note from New Scientist about the overwhelming passage in the US House of Representatives of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. As written, the bill would prohibit insurance companies from charging higher rates, and employers from discriminating in hiring, based on the results of genetic tests. A Boston Globe editorial notes that the bill has been held up in the Senate by the action of a single senator, who has an (outdated) objection based on his anti-abortion stance. President Bush has said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

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