Roy Mark

It was October 1969 and Paul McCartney was not dead. He even said so in a press conference. The 100-to-1 shot New York Mets won the World Series. The cold war between Russia and the United States was anything but with nuclear testing continuing unabated by both sides. The United States, though, was riding high […]

Score one for Albert Einstein. In May, NASA’s Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope and other satellites spotted a short gamma ray burst, an explosion that astronomers think happens when neutron stars collide. NASA scientists calculated the explosion took place in a galaxy 7.3 billion light-years away.Of the many gamma ray photons Fermi’s LAT (large area […]

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved Oct. 30 the new Internationalized Domain Name Fast Track Process to allow nations and territories to apply for Internet extensions reflecting their name – and made up of characters from their national language. Currently, Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters. If the applications meet criteria […]

IBM debuted a new software platform Oct. 30 that Big Blue says is designed to change the way that local, state and national governments manage and deliver services to the public. The IBM Government Industry Framework is a base software platform enhanced by the contributions of independent software developers who are using the platform to […]

When the United Nations Climate Change Conference, aka COP15, opens in Copenhagen Dec. 7, Cisco Systems will be there … and there and there, as its telepresence and conferencing technologies extend the global reach of the climate change delegates.Cisco’s GCCMP (Global Climate Change Meeting Platform) will initially “connect Copenhagen’s Bella Center conference venue with a […]

The prototype of the next generation of NASA rockets–at least for the time being–successfully lifted off Oct. 28 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Ares I-X test rocket flight lasted only 2 minutes, the time it took for the first-stage solid-fuel booster to burn out. With a maximum altitude of approximately 28 miles, […]

Alcatel-Lucent on Oct. 28 introduced two IP routers designed to provide smaller communities with” the same advanced mobile, residential and business services currently delivered in larger metropolitan areas. The new products … will extend the benefits of service routing further out into the network,” the company said in a news release.The 7750 SR-c12 and 7750 […]

The Department of Health and Human Services should replace its controversial harm standard for triggering a personal health record data breach notification with a risk assessment approach that requires organizations to determine whether the data was actually viewed or acquired by an unauthorized person, according to the Center for Democracy and Technology. Under the current […]

President Obama announced Oct. 27 “the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history” with $3.4 billion in Smart Grid Investment Grant awards, said a statement by the Department of Energy. The funding is “part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and will be matched by industry funding for a total public-private investment […]

Very few things went right for NASA Oct. 27 as the space agency attempted to launch the Ares I-X flight test vehicle, the proposed space flight vehicle scheduled to replace the space shuttle fleet. First, foul weather caused a delay in the original 8 a.m. launch and then as the weather opened a small launch […]

Despite layoffs and a growing wireless segment, Verizon Communications reported Oct. 26 a 10 percent decline in third quarter profits. Verizon said net income for the quarter totaled $2.89 billion, down from $3.20 billion in the third quarter last year as customers continued to cut their wireline services.But Verizon did add 1.2 million mobile customers […]

NASA plans a $445 million, 2-minute test launch of its experimental test booster rocket Ares I-X Oct. 27. Barring weather delays, which forecasters predict is likely, the Ares I-X is scheduled for an 8 a.m. EDT launch from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39B.The Ares I-X is currently scheduled to become NASA’s primary launch vehicle […]