81014823
submission
knwny writes:
In what is believed to be the first such incident in modern times, a meteorite strike in India killed a man and injured three others. According to police sources, a loud blast was heard at the site of the strike which also left a four-feet deep crater. Preliminary investigation by forensic and bomb experts showed no sign of any explosive substance at the scene. The second link has a picture of the supposed crater which I believe will interest Slashdotters with experience in this area.
76588361
submission
knwny writes:
The government of India is working on a new National Encryption Policy the contents of which have raised a few alarms.Among other things, the policy states that citizens and businesses must save all encrypted messages (including personal or unofficial ones) and their plaintext copies for 90 days and make them available to law enforcement agencies as and when demanded. The policy also specifies that only the government of India shall define the algorithms and key sizes for encryption in India.
The policy is posted on this website.
72318717
submission
knwny writes:
In a bizarre move that threatens the privacy of over a million internet users in India, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the list of email IDs from which it received responses regarding net neutrality. Most of these responses were sent by the general public following a massively popular online campaign to protect Internet neutrality in India.
The regulatory body says that it has received large number of comments from the stakeholders on its Consultation paper on "Regulatory Framework for OTT services". So to aid the reading of comments, it has divided them into three blocks — 'comments from the service providers', 'comments from the service providers' association' and 'comments from other stakeholders' (this includes individuals, organizations, consulting firms etc)
In the meantime, the TRAI website remains inaccessible after a DDoS attack by Anonymous India, the hacker collective, apparently in retaliation for the date breach.
71406259
submission
knwny writes:
The battle to dispel smog, cut greenhouse gases and solve the energy crisis is moving to space. If news reports are to be believed, Chinese scientists are mulling the construction of a solar power station in a geosynchronous orbit 36,000 kilometres above ground. The electricity generated would be converted to microwaves or lasers and transmitted to a collector on Earth. If realized, it will surpass the scale of the Apollo project and the International Space Station and be the largest-ever space project.
64807225
submission
knwny writes:
India's Mars satellite Mangalyaan was successfully placed into orbit around Mars early on Wednesday following a 10-month journey from Earth. India thus joins the U.S., the European Space Agency and the former Soviet Union in having successfully completed a Mars mission. It is however the only one to have done so on the first attempt. Headed by the Indian space agency ISRO, Mangalyaan was made in 15 months at a cost of just around 70 million USD crore — the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever to be undertaken.
59279759
submission
knwny writes:
Peeved by the widespread misconception that siphons work because of atmospheric pressure, physics lecturer Dr. Stephen Hughes, wrote a mail to the prestigious Oxford English Dictionary(OED) pointing out the error. To back his claim, Dr.Hughes tested a siphon inside a hypobaric chamber to check if changes in atmospheric pressure had any effect on the siphon and demonstrated that gravity and not atmospheric pressure was the driving principle. The paper detailing his experiment was published in Nature. The OED spokesperson responded saying that his suggestions would be taken into account during the next rewrite.
47612803
submission
knwny writes:
The Times of India reports:
India has launched a wide-ranging surveillance program that will give its security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into e-mails and phone calls without oversight by courts or parliament, several sources said.
47110541
submission
knwny writes:
Atul Chitnis, the man who popularized open software in India died on 3rd June of intestinal cancer. As a technology mentor, writer and public speaker he promoted Linux and FOSS since the late 1980s through his association with various tech magazines and conferences. He introduced Linux to thousands of PC Quest magazine readers by convincing them to carry the first ever Linux distribution in India on its cover CD in 1996.
