Tuesday 15 April 2003

Leading edge panel damaged during earlier shuttle mission It now seems that Discovery suffered damage to the leading edge of its left wing in 2001 as this report from Space Today indicates. The Associated Press reported Monday that internal NASA documents revealed that another shuttle orbiter suffered a serious crack in a critical panel on the leading edge of its left wing. According to those documents, engineers found a 5-centimeter fracture in one of the reinforced carbon-carbon panels on the leading edge of Discovery's left wing after its STS-102 mission in March 2001. While the damage was considered serious, NASA concluded that it did not pose a threat to crew safety, linking the damage to corrosion caused by oxygen. The report provides additional evidence that Columbia's panels might have become brittle with age because of corrosion, allowing a falling chunk of foam to break one during its January 16 launch. In related news, the New York Times reported last week that investigators no longer believe that an object spotted on radar moving away from the shuttle a day after launch was a carrier panel. Searchers combing debris fields in Texas and Louisiana have recovered the carrier panels from the left wing, leading investigators to conclude that the object spotted on radar is from another portion of the orbiter. The debris that has been recovered will be stored and made available to future researchers, NASA officials said Monday afternoon. [spacetoday.net] 8:19:31 PM    comment []  Google It!

AOL targets spam e-mails AOL takes legal action to try to stop the millions of junk e-mails sent to its customers. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition] About time too. 8:08:34 PM    comment []  Google It!

GM apologizes for "freaks and weirdos ride the bus" ads Cory Doctrow over at Boing Boing Blog has this story about a General Motors advert that offended bus users everywhere. The President of the Canadian Urban Transport Asoociation wrote a letter to the President of GM Canada, protesting GM's ads that characterized public-transit riders as freaks and weirdoes who smelled bad. GM Canada's Director of PR apologized. We deeply regret that this ad ran and we apologize if some individuals have been offended by its content. The ad has been pulled from circulation and will not be run in any other publication. Link to letter from CUTA president (20k PDF), Link to letter from GM Canada Director of PR (84k PDF) [Boing Boing Blog] 8:06:16 PM    comment []  Google It!

Mac-Only Comic Thinks PC's a Hoot You gotta love this guy. Comedian Scott Bruce delights in poking fun at Windows computers while extolling the virtues of his Mac. He's one of the few comedians who routinely works the subject of computers into his act. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News] 8:01:39 PM    comment []  Google It!

Want a job? Lose the 'wacky' e-mail CNET News.com reports on a survey conducted by Yahoo that found that job applicants using wacky personalied e-mail addresses definitely stand out from the crowd, but not in a good way. Another interesting factoid was that job hunters who use their current company's e-mail to send out a resume were also likely to get turned down as potential e-mail abusers. 7:59:31 PM    comment []  Google It!

An alternate view of the war in Iraq William Gibson blogged this story in the Moscow Times by an "independent" defence analyst. It makes very interesting reading. 9:46:59 AM    comment []  Google It!

New Safari version release. Apple has also released a new version of Safari. The product is still in beta but the version sports tabbed browsing. Can't wait to download it. 12:02:36 AM    comment []  Google It!

Bereskin comments on OS update The Mac OS X 10.2.5 update is now available through the Software Update utility. Be warned however, it's 84MB so make sure you have a broadand connection before even thinking about downloading. Ken Bereskin has more details about the update: Be sure to check your Software Update. Mac OS X v10.2.5 is now available and there are a lot of improvements in this update. Here are some of the highlights from my perspective (in addition to the normal fixes for application reliability and addressing key issues reported by customers). Digital Hub peripherals. More Bluetooth devices, disc burners and digital cameras are now supported. Networking. A host of improvements for dialup, DSL/cable modem, LDAP and .Mac users. Security updates. As always, the latest security improvements are rolled in to system updates [Ken Bereskin's Radio Weblog] 12:00:04 AM    comment []  Google It!

© Copyright 2003 David Stewart. Last update: 24/06/2003; 20:53:46.