Tag: computers

Two hacker attacks of American climate satellites in the past four years

1:12 pm

A congressional report today revealed that two American climate satellites were attacked by hackers in the past four years.

In October 2007 and July 2008, a NASA-managed Landsat-7 satellite experienced 12 or more minutes of interference, and a Terra AM-1 satellite was disrupted for two minutes in June 2008 and again that October for nine minutes, according to Bloomberg Businessweek’s analysis of the annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The report says the hackers gained access to the satellites — both are used for Earth climate and terrain monitoring — through the Svalbard Satellite Station in Spitsbergen, Norway. It’s believed the attackers may have hijacked the Internet connection at the Norway ground station to interfere with the operation of the satellites.

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Proposed changes in hardware specifications may make it impossible to run free operating systems such as Linux on computers.

11:04 pm

Proposed changes in computer hardware specifications may make it impossible to run free operating systems such as Linux.

The extension of Microsoft’s OS monopoly to hardware would be a disaster, with increased lock-in, decreased consumer choice and lack of space to innovate.

The article also notes how these restrictions might violate European Union competition law.

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First sale for quantum computing

9:53 am

Lockheed Martin buys the first commercial quantum computer. More here on the science of quantum computing.

Quantum computers could revolutionize the way we tackle problems that stump even the best classical computers, which store and process their data as ‘bits’ — essentially a series of switches that can be either on or off. The power of quantum bits — or qubits — is that they can be on and off simultaneously. Connect enough qubits together using quantum entanglement and a computer should be able to zip through a multitude of calculations in parallel, at astonishing speed.

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