The Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched in February of this year. Earlier today NASA held their first briefing where pictures and some video clips were released. One word, stunning!
Significant data was gathered on the recent solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections. This are of interest to Amateur Radio operators as when they happen, the HF bands are pretty much unusable.
Still though, the detail is just stunning.
Its taking up quite a bit of my time at the moment, and rapidly approaching (19th May). Registration opened today (finally!), and the (draft) agenda is:
08:30 Registration and Coffee/Tea
09:00 Ministerial Launch
09:30 Welcome Address
NATIONAL CONTEXTS
10:00 KEYNOTE New Zealand and Ireland: IPv6 Deployment Challenges for Islands
10:30 Irish IPv6 Policy
11:00 Coffee/Tea Break and Networking
MOBILE WIRELESS AND FIXED BROADBAND
11:30 Dutch Experience with Fixed IPv6 Broadband
12:00 Campus Deployment of IPv6
12:30 Irish Experience of Wireless IPv6 Broadband
13:00 LUNCH and Networking
DEPLOYMENT AND POLICY ISSUES
14:00 KEYNOTE: RIPE NCC and IPv6
14:30 Irish IPv6 Deployment for Hosting Providers
15:00 The Story so Far: IPv4 Depletion
15:20 Coffee/Tea Break and Networking
ENTERPRISE ISSUES AND DISCUSSION
16:00 IPv6 Enterprise Strategy
16:30 Panel Session: IPv6 Deployment Challenges
17.30 Finish
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Not much apparently:
Matt Blaze
Don’t get me wrong; cryptography was, and is, important. But in 1995, broken or weak cipher algorithms and implementations were the least of our problems. Has anything improved since then?
Hmm. We’ve made some progress on #4 and #10, but basically, not much has changed in 15 years.
Read the full text here. Worth reading for anyone with any interest in computer security.
… and neither is Anglo Irish Bank, read more here and here. While Gavin will probably not be successful in the long run. Given that it is in the taxpayers “interest”, the government created one institution, and it is the taxpayer has paid to keep another from closing shop; it is annoying that the taxpayer has no visibilty as to how either organisation is being run. It is almost insulting. I wonder would a highly visible facebook campaign ala the campaign to keep 24 hour cover with the Waterford based Coast Guard Helicopter bear any fruit in this case? Good luck with your enquiries Gavin.
I sooooo want one …
Recently I’ve got more time to operate radio, so I’ve been working on my DXCC totals. Its becoming very, very addictive. For various reasons, my Antenna isn’t exactly a work of art. It is a 7m long piece of wire taped to a fibre-glass fishing pole, tuned against ground. I’m predominantly operating in “search-and-pounce” mode using morse code, where I continuously tuning up and down, looking for stations (rather than sitting on a frequency, and putting out endless CQ calls). While it’s not very efficient, it’s great fun, and I’m really enjoying it.
So, where do I stand? Well at the moment, I’ve 87 different DXCC entities worked, with 55 confirmed. Visualising this using Xplanet, it looks like:
Green are DXCC entities that I’ve already worked and confirmed. Yellow are ones worked but not confirmed, Red are ones that I’ve not worked yet. If I can keep my current level of activity, HF band conditions keep improving, and I “work” more stations that use Logbook of the World, rather than depending on QSL cards (my own below), I should achieve 100 countries confirmed by the summer. In theory 😉
Well, not quite, but you will understand when you read this. Bertrand, F5PL, recorded the tone of the Radio Carrier from Mars Express as it approached Phobos. Great work from an “Amateur”.
Great videos on how one can capture data that is unintentionally transmitted by interconnecting cables.
The receiver used is a Software Defined Radio, specifically the Ettus Research USRP. The software is based on the GNU Radio suite.
…is available here. And I feel old looking at it.
This is a very funny post from Jeff, KE9V.
Dmetry and Olaf walked into a dimly lit tavern and selected a booth far in the back where they could not be easily overhead. Dmetry was a hulking 300 lbs man who had muscled his way into the lower echelons of leadership in the Russian mafia but he was most interested in disappearing a very wealthy man as soon as possible.
It goes on..
“This application includes a Trojan horse; it will offload itself from the primary application upon installation, and play hide and seek with any anti-virus measures that may have been installed” Olaf said as a perverted grin spread across his face. “Then when we are ready, we will have at our disposal 100,000 networked computers that will do our bidding whenever the signal is given”.
Dmetry wasn’t easily convinced. “But why, why should these people be willing to install this botnet?”
Olaf replied, “They have no idea what they are doing. Urmil has written an application for radio amateurs, maybe you’ve heard of these radio ‘hams’, no? They love to play with their computers and their radios but they know little about the technology behind it all. This new application will be software that permits their computers to communicate via HF radio, they are crazy for free software and shiny new baubles to play with.”
“We will tell them that this software is for a new mode of communication and it will spread like wildfire in their community. They will never be the wiser…”
So funny, but it isn’t all that big a leap to see it actually happening. Very funny, thanks Jeff.
(Of course I use fldigi, build it from source, and keep an eye on what stuff is actually leaving my machine as much as possible.)