Galactic Views (55)

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SPACE WATCH

The Flame Nebula

NASA – The Flame Nebula sits on the eastern hip of Orion the Hunter, a constellation most easily visible in the northern hemisphere during winter evenings. This view of the nebula was taken by WISE, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.

This image shows a vast cloud of gas and dust where new stars are being born. Three familiar nebulae are visible in the central region: the Flame Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula and NGC 2023. The Flame Nebula is the brightest and largest in the image. It is lit by a star inside it that is 20 times the mass of the sun and would be as bright to our eyes as the other stars in Orion’s belt if it weren’t for all the surrounding dust, which makes it appear 4 billion times dimmer than it actually is. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

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U.K. starts Libor criminal probe

INFOGRAPHIC

By Greg Farrell and Lindsay Fortado – The U.K. Serious Fraud Office opened a criminal investigation this month after Barclays Plc was fined a record 290 million pounds ($450 million) by U.K. and U.S. authorities. Politicians including U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour Party, called for a criminal probe, and the agency was told it would be given a budget to take on the case. The SFO had declined to get involved in the investigation for more than a year.

“It’s partly the difference in culture,” said Andrew Haynes, a law professor at the University of Wolverhampton in England. “In America, economic crime is something that’s regarded as desperately serious. In this country it is regarded as a problem, but there’s sometimes a slothful response.”

The wider interest in the Libor case in turn has altered the trajectory of the criminal probe, changing the timetable of criminal charges. more> http://tinyurl.com/cq8jw2e

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Are Firewalls Dead?

By Alan Shimel – is your firewall doing anything for your security? No, really. With so many of today’s attacks coming over port 80, is your firewall providing any defense anymore? Has the firewall outgrown its usefulness and been passed over by a new generation of sophisticated attacks?

Microsoft security expert Roger Grimes writes for InfoWorld and back in May he set off something of a firestorm in the security industry when he suggested that firewalls are dead. Ever since there has been a back and forth over this alleged heresy in the security arena. Roger published a second article on his views where he did a nice job of responding to some of the more reasoned responses to his original article. more> http://tinyurl.com/c83zwcc

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Single-photon transmitter could enable new quantum devices

R&D Mag – MIT and Harvard University has achieved a crucial long-term goal of such efforts: the ability to convert a laser beam into a stream of single photons, or particles of light, in a controlled way. The successful demonstration of this achievement is detailed in Nature by MIT doctoral student Thibault Peyronel and colleagues.

In the new system, no matter how many photons are sent into such a cloud of atoms, only one at a time emerges from the other side. The cloud acts as a kind of turnstile for photons, forcing a jumbled mob into an orderly succession of individuals. more> http://tinyurl.com/d78du8z

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IBM comes out swinging against revised cybersecurity bill

46th Munich Security Conference 2010: Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (ri) and Senator John McCain (le).
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Brendan Sasso – Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and other lawmakers scaled back their cybersecurity legislation in a bid to win over businesses and Republicans, but the changes weren’t enough to satisfy IBM.

The company acknowledged that lawmakers made “substantial changes,” but said the bill “remains flawed.”

IBM worried that the the incentives would “quickly transform into a de facto government regulatory scheme.” The company also complained that the legislation unnecessarily slows down the sharing of cyber threat information and imposes too much bureaucracy on the process. more> http://tinyurl.com/c2bstwv

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