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April 30, 2003
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Hubble Temporarily Out of Service
The Hubble Space Telescope is temporarily out of commission because one of its gyroscopes, which keeps it stable in space, has failed, according to NASA sources.
Telescope observations are expected to resume by Wednesday night, but the telescope now has only one spare gyroscope and no firm date for a shuttle servicing mission. The next, and last, servicing trip is loosely scheduled for late 2004, according to NASA.
But inside sources say all such missions have been on hold since the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1.
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Windows Server 2003 - Secure by Default?
Opinion With Windows Server 2003, Microsoft has finally produced an operating system that isn't begging to be hacked on the first boot, writes SecurityFocus columnist Tim Mullen.
One of the biggest criticisms of Windows 2000 was its "everything on" default installation state. For a consumer operating system, it made sense: people wanted specific functionality, and Microsoft provided it for them. For example, IIS installation was enabled by default with all possible mappings and sub-services enabled.
The problem was that no one really needed Internet Printing services enabled by default. Few needed IDQ mapped to the Index Server ISAPI extensions. And production environments certainly didn't need sample files and code examples loaded and reachable by anonymous users.
The thought was that if you didn't need a service or application, then you would go and turn it off or uninstall it.
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Windows 'Longhorn' Leaked To Public -- Again
For a third time, the successor to Windows XP has appeared on the Internet, raising suspicions among some that Microsoft isn't all that interested in plugging the leaks.
Milestone 5 of Longhorn, an alpha build tagged as 4015, has appeared on numerous newsgroups and IRC threads. As in the past, Microsoft has acknowledged the leak and says it is seeking the source.
Testers who have posted screenshot and comments about Longhorn at various Web sites note that this build sports several incremental improvements, including a new startup logo; enhancements to the sidebar, a desktop element that will display search tools and access to applications; and a refined search interface that lets users dig through local files, contacts, and the Internet.
Longhorn is not expected to release until next year, and possibly not until 2005.
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Italian satellite plunges right into Pacific Ocean
All fragments of the Italian-made Bepposax satellite have entered the earth's atmosphere and plunged into the Pacific Ocean near the Galapagos and Kiribaki islands yesterday.
The first fragment entered the atmosphere between 100 and 160 west longitude, west of Ecuador, South America, at 7.30am, with the last fragment impacting about one-and-a-half hours later.
National Space Agency director-general Prof Datuk Dr Mazlan Othman said Malaysians, especially those staying in areas where the fragments could fall, should no longer be worried.
From information relayed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), all the fragments have impacted between 7:30am and 9am yesterday.
Further data on the speed of the satellite and the number of actual fragments are being studied by the ASI.
Prof Mazlan said so far the ASI had yet to receive any report on probable injuries caused by the impacting fragments.
All of the fragments from the 1.4-tonne Bepposax satellite, deactivated on April 30 last year, had fallen due to uncontrolled re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, she said.
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