NASA Endeavour astronauts to host President Obama

Facebook boosts application privacy controls

NASA Endeavour astronauts to host President Obama

By Michael Cooney
www.itnews.com (Network World)
February 17, 2010

President Obama along with a host of other guests are expected to hold a yakfest with the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour and International Space Station this afternoon. (watch it here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/live).

NASA telescopes watch cosmic violence, mysteries unravel
Joining the president at the expected 5:15pm EST call are 12 students from Birney Middle School of Detroit, Elkhorn Middle School of Omaha, Neb., St. Thomas the Apostle of Miami and Davidson IB Middle School of Davidson, N.C. These students are in Washington as leaders of four of 39 teams participating in the "Future City" engineering competition hosted by National Engineers Week, NASA stated.

The president speaks to the astronauts as his administration is looking to reshape the space agency. For example during its 2011 budget rollout earlier this month the administration today said NASA should further commercial space flight efforts and asked for $6 billion over five years to spur the development of American commercial human spaceflight vehicles. As the space shuttle retires this year, NASA will have to use other means to get its astronauts to the ISS.

Endeavour's crew members are Commander George Zamka, Pilot Terry Virts and Mission Specialists Kathryn Hire, Stephen Robinson, Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken. The Expedition 22 space station crew members are Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineers Oleg Kotov, Maxim Suraev, T.J. Creamer, and Soichi Noguchi.

NASA astronauts officially opened the cupola observatory today. Its seven windows face Earth and can be shuttered when not in use to protect them from micrometeoroids and the harsh space environment. At just under ten feet in diameter, the Cupola will accommodate two crew members and portable workstations that can control station and robotic activities. The view will let the ISS crew monitor spacewalks and docking operations, as well as provide a spectacular view of Earth and other celestial objects, NASA stated.

The Tranquality module adds room for crew members and many of the space station's life support and environmental control systems including include air revitalization, oxygen generation and water recycling.

Endeavour is scheduled to land at Kennedy Space Center next Sunday, Feb. 21, after undocking from the station at 6:54 p.m. Friday.

http://www.itnews.com/industry-verticals/14475/nasa-endeavour-astronauts-host-president-obama

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Facebook boosts application privacy controls

By JJuan Carlos Perez
www.itnews.com (IDG News Service)
February 17, 2010

Facebook has made it possible for its members to assign, on the fly, a wider variety of access levels to content they post using third-party applications and Web sites, the company said Wednesday.

Previously, members chose a default privacy setting for content shared via applications, and that setting was then applied across the board to this type of post going forward.

While this default setting remains, members now have the option to apply a different access setting to each thing they post through an application or Web site, on a case-by-case basis, according to Facebook.

For example, when using an application that lets members post greeting cards, members can now handpick on whose friends' Walls they want a particular card to appear.

The more granular access controls apply to third-party applications, external Web sites linked to Facebook via the Connect system and Facebook's mobile version. Some client software that lets members perform Facebook actions, such as Seesmic, is also incorporating the new access levels.

This change is consistent with a similar move Facebook made previously to let members assign different privacy settings to every post they make using the site's core features.

The access controls include options such as "everyone," which makes a post visible to all Facebook members, "friends of friends" and "friends."

Social-networking privacy, always a hot topic, has been in the spotlight in the past week due to an outcry over Google's Buzz social feature for Gmail.

Buzz initially created an automatic list of friends for users based on the people they interact with the most via Gmail and Google Talk. It made that list public by default on the user's Google Profile. Google has since apologized and modified Buzz to address the privacy concerns.

Facebook got hit recently with a class-action lawsuit over the modifications it made late last year to its privacy settings, which included making some profile information public that previously could be kept hidden.

http://www.itnews.com/industry-verticals/14475/nasa-endeavour-astronauts-host-president-obama