Mario’s World

Just heard today that the Indian Navy sunk a Somalian pirate ship and foiled their plans. Go India!!!

Seems the Somalian pirates were attacking an Indian vessel, the MV Jag Arnav, but our chaps got there in time for some good old fashion action, not swords or cannons, but some new age machine gun fire. They also went to the rescue of another Saudi ship.

Its amazing that in this age of hi-tech security and stuff, a bunch of rowdies in little rib boats managed to hijack the Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million in oil. I was under the impression that the US Navy was mainly in the region to protect these oil assets and the shipping route. Maybe the Saudi’s and others should hire the Indian Navy.

I guess the movie “Pirates of Somalia” will release soon.

MSDN is planning to go social on their site. They’ve got a survey on. [Link]

According to Alonso Vera, the lead of the Ames Human-Computer Interaction Group, the single, universally accessible PRACA package is replacing a set of more than 40 different database systems that had been used over the past 30 years by the many different parts of that Shuttle ecosystem.

And, like a related database system known as Items for Investigation (IFI) that is used for tracking International Space Station issues, the new PRACA was written using open-source Bugzilla tools that will save NASA considerable amounts of time and money.

Vera wouldn’t say exactly how much the new systems cost to build, but he said they were an order of magnitude cheaper than what was being used before, closer to $100,000 than the $1 million it would have cost in the past.

More to the point, Vera explained, by using open-source Bugzilla tools, technicians will be able to make changes to either PRACA or IFI more or less on the fly, rather than having to submit any proposed changes to the publishers of proprietary software, steps that often took weeks to achieve.

Stores in Tokyo districts such as Akihabara have launched sales of Intel’s Core i7 processor, due to be officially rolled out on Monday.

Sofmap store in Akihabara is selling boxed Core i7 processors
(Credit: Sofmap)

The Core i7 represents the vanguard of Intel’s new Nehalem microarchitecture. The i7 is a desktop processor targeted initially at gaming boxes.

Major retailer Sofmap, for example, is showing Core i7 processors, motherboards, and systems on its Web site.  [Link]

Found this post on Project CYAN [link]. This is a real funny. I’m sure all the pro-linux geeks will enjoy.

OK. I’m gonna stay on earth if this is what happens in space. Read on…

If you’re the kind of person who wants to do research on the International Space Station, it appears that you may need to cross some boundaries of taste many of us wouldn’t even consider.

According to a BBC News story Friday, the crew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Friday afternoon, will be handing off to their Space Station colleagues a water regeneration system designed to, among other things, recycle urine for reuse as fresh water.

The system, which will ionize, filter, distill, and oxidize wastewater, “will make yesterday’s coffee into today’s coffee,” one astronaut told the BBC.

The idea behind the $250 million system seems to have been to figure out a way to ensure that residents of the Space Station had a supply of fresh water. To date, the Space Station has had the luxury of getting water deliveries from newly arrived Space Shuttles. But the Shuttle program is slated for retirement after 2010, and that looks to end the program’s role as, among other things, the Space Station’s personal water truck.

Still, the system won’t be implemented right away. First, NASA wants to be sure that it works, as designed, in a zero-gravity environment.

On Earth, astronaut testers are apparently convinced that the filtration technology works just fine.

“Some people may think it’s downright disgusting,” Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper told the BBC, “but if it’s done correctly, you process water that’s purer than what you drink here on Earth.”

Some who have tried the recycled water did report a faint taste of iodine, but they didn’t see that as a problem.

“Other than that, it is just as refreshing as any other kind of water,” said Bob Bagdigian, who ran the system’s development. “I’ve got some in my fridge. It tastes fine to me.”

India’s first unmanned lunar spacecraft, Chandrayaan 1, has placed a probe on the surface of the Moon.

The probe, painted with the Indian flag, touched down at 2034 (1504 GMT), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

It will perform various experiments, including measuring the composition of the Moon’s atmosphere.

The mission is regarded as a major step for India as it seeks to keep pace with other space-faring nations in Asia.

[Link]

I like these cartoons. Its a similar style to the old Tom & Jerry cartoons.

Its geared towards Hotel employees.

I tried this out and its real cool although it takes a lil while to start up. I recommend upgrading to the latest version of Google Earth for this.

Overall the new GoogleEarth is great. I think this 3D technology on google earth should be used more on travel websites. People can get a better feel of the place and it should help them plan out the trip better.

Internet hosting site McColo disappeared on Tuesday. Along with it went thousands of pieces of spam, thanks, in part, to investigative work by Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs.

For about four months, security experts have been collecting data about McColo Corp., a San Jose, Calif.-based Web hosting service that may have been used by by the cyber underground, according to the The Washington Post. Krebs said that the McColo hosting company had been responsible for up to 75 percent of all spam spent.

Security vendor MXLogic said it was seeing about a 50 percent decline in spam volume as a result on Wednesday.

Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks, a company that monitors botnet activity, speculated that McColo vanished at around 9 a.m. Eastern time on November 10. Botnets are frequently used to relay spam, and McColo may have hosted some of the command and control servers necessary to coordinate spam campaigns.

Adam O’Donnell, writing on theZDNet Zero Day blog, speculates that the spammers might regroup in Eastern Europe.

The Post credits Benny Ng, director of marketing for Hurricane Electric, an upstream provider for McColo, for pulling the plug on the company. Another provider, Global Crossing, declined to comment, telling Krebs the company “communicates and cooperates fully with law enforcement, their peers, and security researchers to address malicious activity.”

Something similar happened in September when another hosting site, Intercage/Ativo, was shut down by its upstream providers.