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Drink Guinness, win a space flight

Contest winners will ride for free aboard the suborbital Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo spacecraft.
Submitted by Layer 8 on Thu, 07/02/09 - 12:38pm.

Hold on to your beer!Belly up to the space bar boys. The dark beer masters are serving up a wild contest that will let two lucky people ride for free aboard the suborbital Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo spacecraft.

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US sets final emergency responder wireless pilot

Ambitious Multi-Band Radio project seeks to unite first responder community.
Submitted by Layer 8 on Wed, 07/01/09 - 5:12pm.

Looking to help eliminate the dangerous and inefficient hodgepodge of communication and network technology used by emergency response personnel, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today said it had picked 14 groups from across the country to pilot an ambitious Multi-Band Radio project.

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FTC opens all-out assault on economic cyber-scammers

FTC goes after Google Money Tree, Mentoring of America and others in Operation Short Change
Submitted by Layer 8 on Wed, 07/01/09 - 11:29am.

The Federal Trade Commission today announced a wide-ranging attack on cyber-vultures looking to feast on the current moribund economic situation.

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NASA moon shot gets rocket blast, more money

Northrop Grumman tests new rocket, $20M more for lunar spacecraft
Submitted by Layer 8 on Tue, 06/30/09 - 10:46am.

lunar lander ascent craftNASA continued to develop its future moon landing program this week by getting a positive test on the rocket it might use to land humans on the moon and increasing the budget for the spacecraft it will use to get them there.

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DARPA wants a super-efficient supercomputer that can fit into a 19-inch cabinet, thanks

If you can squish an IBM Roadrunner in a large suitcase, DARPA wants to hear from you.
Submitted by Layer 8 on Fri, 06/26/09 - 4:10pm.

If you can squish all the processing power of say an IBM Roadrunner supercomputer inside a 19-inch box and make it run on about 60 kilowatts of electricity, the government wants to talk to you.

The extreme scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency this week issued a call for research that might develop a super-small, super-efficient super beast of a computer. 

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How NASA connects with its latest moon orbiters

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission uses latest communications technology.
Submitted by Layer 8 on Fri, 06/26/09 - 11:11am.

The LRO in actionFlying to the moon is not easy feat but communicating with as well as relaying information to and from rocketing space probes  is the most critical part of the mission.

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Scareware peddlers will only fork over $116,000 of $1.9M settlement

FTC charged hawkers of WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus.
Submitted by Layer 8 on Thu, 06/25/09 - 12:21pm.

Two defendants charged in a massive scareware scheme will reconcile Federal Trade Commission charges and give up more than $116,000 in assets as part of an original $1.9 million settlement.

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Seeing without revealing: IBM touts encryption breakthrough

IBM Researcher Craig Gentry creates"fully homomorphic encryption."
Submitted by Layer 8 on Thu, 06/25/09 - 11:05am.

IBM today is saying one of its researchers has made it possible for computer systems to perform calculations on encrypted data without decrypting it.  While that sounds somewhat counterintuitive and complicated, IBM says the breakthrough would let computer services, such as Google or others storing the confidential, electronic data of others will be able to fully analyze data on their clients' behalf without expensive interaction with the client and without actually seeing any of the private data.

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Lasers keep quantum bits from dying before their time

Quantum computing developements come fast and furious
Submitted by Layer 8 on Wed, 06/24/09 - 2:29pm.

The heart and sole of quantum computing - its quantum bits - tend to have a short shelf life but scientists are looking at a way to keep them around longer.  Physicists have found a way to drastically prolong the shelf life of quantum bits, the 0s and 1s of quantum computers, letting them keep and act on data longer.  

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What's your weather? Americans see 300 billion forecasts each year

Weather forecasts "worth" $31.5 billion
Submitted by Layer 8 on Tue, 06/23/09 - 1:02pm.

US weather mapOne way or another nine out of 10 adult Americans get weather forecasts an average of more than three times each day, adding up to 300 billion forecasts each year. And not only that, most people were satisfied with weather forecasts and had fairly high confidence in forecasts with a lead time of one to two days, despite appearances to the contrary.

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Largest registered traveler service, Clear, craps out

TSA, security issues made it rough for the company
Submitted by Layer 8 on Tue, 06/23/09 - 9:43am.

The idea was good - help business travelers mostly zip through airport security checks. But those perks apparently weren't enough as Clear, the largest of the registered travelers service with over 165,000 members shut down last night.   

 On the company's Web site it stated:

At 11:00 p.m. PST on June 22, 2009, Clear will cease operations. Clear's parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations. 

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Obama to sign "Cash for Clunker" bill

Turn in your junky old car for cash, well sorta
Submitted by Layer 8 on Fri, 06/19/09 - 11:55am.

That old car of yours may soon be worth more to you than you think.  A $1 billion cash-for-clunkers bill has been sent to President Obama for his signature, after the Senate approved the bill as part of a broader $106 billion war spending package.

The idea is to stimulate car sales by offering as much as $4,500 to owners of older cars who trade in older, less-efficient vehicles. The act will go into effect 30 days after the president signs the bill, and will run through October 31.

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Wireless services complaints find confusing path at FCC

The FCC isn't as effective as it should be in dealing with wireless complaints
Submitted by Layer 8 on Thu, 06/18/09 - 10:31am.

The Federal Communications Commission has a lot of work to do when it comes to regulating the burgeoning wireless industry. 

For example, in 2008 of the 430,000 informal complaints it got from consumers, more than19,000 were directly related to wireless carriers services. But it is how the FCC handles, or doesn't handle in many cases, those complaints that has overseers more than a little concerned.

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Satellite glitch rekindles GPS concerns

Could ubiquitous GPS coverage soon get spotty?
Submitted by Layer 8 on Wed, 06/17/09 - 12:30pm.

GPS satelliteNews today that the Air Force is investigating signal problems with its latest Global Positioning System satellite are likely to rekindle the flames of a congressional report last month that said the current GPS coverage may not be so ubiquitous in the future. 

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Can commercial space technology get off the ground?

NASA’s commercial space technology is seemingly at a crossroads.
Submitted by Layer 8 on Tue, 06/16/09 - 3:40pm.

While NASA's commercial partners such as SpaceX and Orbital have made steady progress in developing space cargo transportation technology, they have recently fallen behind their development schedules.  Combine that with the fact that the most critical steps lie ahead, including successfully launching new vehicles and completing integration with the space station and you have a hole that will be tough to climb out of.

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Feds bust $55 million international telephony hacking ring

The losses in this case, which exceeded $55 million in the US alone and impacted more than 2,500 companies across the globe
Submitted by Layer 8 on Fri, 06/12/09 - 5:09pm.

The US Department of Justice today said it helped crack a ring of fraudsters who allegedly hacked into the telephone systems of large corporations and entities in the United States and abroad and sold information about the compromised telephone systems to Pakistani nationals residing in Italy.

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$50M in hand, Feds go looking for bleeding edge data center technology

The electricity consumed in data centers and telecom systems is three percent of the US system.
Submitted by Layer 8 on Fri, 06/12/09 - 1:04pm.

The data centerAlarmed by the amount of electricity data centers across the country are swallowing up, the government is offering up millions in research and development money to radically advance the energy efficiency of servers and telecommuni

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Saving Unix one kernel at a time

Submitted by Layer 8 on Thu, 06/11/09 - 1:18pm.

Bell Labs Unix mantraIn this its 40th year of operating system life, some Unix stalwarts are trying to resurrect its past. That is they are taking on the unenviable and difficult job of restoring to its former glory old Unix software artifacts such as early Unix kernels, compilers and other important historical source code pieces.

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FBI warns of Asian-specific telephone extortion scam

Submitted by Layer 8 on Wed, 06/10/09 - 3:02pm.

The FBI today said it was warning what it called Asian business owners of a nationwide attempt to extort money via threats of violence over the phone.

Offering very little detail, the FBI said the telephone calls appear to be originating from foreign countries. The caller acquires an adequate amount of open source information about the victim through Internet searches. This misleads the victim into believing the subject has personal knowledge about the victim.

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The Borg lives: BBN gets $30 million for artificial intelligence wizard

Submitted by Layer 8 on Tue, 06/09/09 - 10:50am.

The Borg Queen -- Startrek.comDeveloping a an artificial intelligence system that can read, learn and develop knowledge about all manner of digital material in a quick, cost effective way sounds like a bit of a pipe dream.  But those are some of the lofty items that are now on BBN Technology's plate as the firm this week got $29.7 million from the Air Force to develop a prototype

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Layer 8 is Network World's daily home for the not-just-networking news.