Power to weight ratio
dition 11-03-05
Power to weight ratio
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By Alon Ben-David JDW Correspondent Tel Aviv The launch into space of Iran's first satellites - reconnaissance satellite Mesbah (Lantern) and research satellite Sina-1 - has been postponed from the scheduled date of 30 September due to a malfunction in the Sina-1 satellite. The press chief of the Russian Space Troops, Colonel Alexei Kuznetsov, told the Itar-Tass news agency that the launch was postponed because of a delay in the manufacture of the Sina-1, which was assembled by Polyot of Omsk. However, when the launch does go ahead in the coming weeks, it will make Iran the 43rd country to possess its own satellites and a member of the much more exclusive club of countries with spy satellites. Iran unveiled its military space programme in 1998, when the then defence minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani declared that the future design of Iran's intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), the Shahab 4, would be capable of launching payloads into orbit. Iranian television presented a mock-up of a future satellite launch vehicle, dubbed IRIS, which appeared to be a three-stage, constant-diameter launcher based on the Iranian Shahab 3 and North Korean No-dong IRBMs. Since then, Iran is believed to have abandoned its Shahab 4 programme and instead presented and tested in August 2004 a new Shahab 3 design with a greater range capability. Source: Janes Defense Weekly |
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| To prevent your fireplace from smoking, raise the fire grate by placing bricks under the legs. | ||
| Think Square! You'll gain more room in less space with square and rectangular storage containers. Round containers waste more room, in the fridge, freezer and cabinets. | ||
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Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You Tiny Dots Show Where and When You Made Your Print San Francisco - A research team led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently broke the code behind tiny tracking dots that some color laser printers secretly hide in every document. The U.S. Secret Service admitted that the tracking information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser printer manufacturers, ostensibly to identify counterfeiters. However, the nature of the private information encoded in each document was not previously known. "We've found that the dots from at least one line of printers encode the date and time your document was printed, as well as the serial number of the printer," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth David Schoen. You can see the dots on color prints from machines made by Xerox, Canon, and other manufacturers (for a list of the printers we investigated so far, see: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/list.php). The dots are yellow, less than one millimeter in diameter, and are typically repeated over each page of a document. In order to see the pattern, you need a blue light, a magnifying glass, or a microscope (for instructions on how to see the dots, see: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/). EFF and its partners began its project to break the printer code with the Xerox DocuColor line. Researchers Schoen, EFF intern Robert Lee, and volunteers Patrick Murphy and Joel Alwen compared dots from test pages sent in by EFF supporters, noting similarities and differences in their arrangement, and then found a simple way to read the pattern. "So far, we've only broken the code for Xerox DocuColor printers," said Schoen. "But we believe that other models from other manufacturers include the same personally identifiable information in their tracking dots." You can decode your own Xerox DocuColor prints using EFF's automated program at http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/index.php#program. Xerox previously admitted that it provided these tracking dots to the government, but indicated that only the Secret Service had the ability to read the code. The Secret Service maintains that it only uses the information for criminal counterfeit investigations. However, there are no laws to prevent the government from abusing this information. "Underground democracy movements that produce political or religious pamphlets and flyers, like the Russian samizdat of the 1980s, will always need the anonymity of simple paper documents, but this technology makes it easier for governments to find dissenters," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "Even worse, it shows how the government and private industry make backroom deals to weaken our privacy by compromising everyday equipment like printers. The logical next question is: what other deals have been or are being made to ensure that our technology rats on us?" EFF is still working on cracking the codes from other printers and we need the public's help. Find out how you can make your own test pages to be included in our research at http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/wp.php#testsheets. Contact: Seth Schoen Staff Technologist Electronic Frontier Foundation seth@eff.org |
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WORD of the DAY |
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lamia
\LAY-mee-uh\ Example sentence: Did you know? *Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence. |
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Drug free since 1-01-87 |
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