NASA, perchlorates and the giant Mars soil composition question mark.

NASA, perchlorates and the giant Mars soil composition question mark.
There has been mildy interesting news from NASA,

The news and blogosphere is all abuzz with various theories and news, that they have found perchlorate, and this is surprising scientists at NASA,

Its been found in the soil near where the rocket landed, and it also occurs naturally on earth,

if you are wondering what perchlorate is, well its used in rocket fuel, and wikipedia has this to say about it;

Perchlorates are the salts derived from perchloric acid (HClO₄). They occur both naturally and through manufacturing. They have been used as a medicine for more than 50 years to treat thyroid gland disorders. They are also used as an oxidizer in rocket fuel and explosives and can be found in airbags and fireworks. Both potassium perchlorate (KClO₄) and ammonium perchlorate (NH₄ClO₄) are used extensively within the pyrotechnics industry, whereas ammonium perchlorate is a component of solid rocket fuel. Lithium perchlorate, which decomposes exothermically to give oxygen, is used in oxygen "candles" on spacecraft, submarines and in other esoteric situations where a reliable backup or supplementary oxygen supply is needed. Most perchlorate salts are soluble in water.^[1]

Its not a definitive sign of life, or lack thereof either way, in fact its pretty much an issue of "well yeah, and?"

its a hell of a lot less exciting than when they proved the existence of water!

These perchlorates occur naturally, and coincidentally they occur naturally in the area of the Atacama desert in chile that NASA use as a  testing ground for martian missions!

and even though this is one of the driest places on the planet;

The Atacama Desert is a virtually rainless plateau in South America, covering a 966 km (600 mi) strip of land on the Pacific coast of South America, west of the Andes mountains. The rain shadow on the leeward side of the Andes keeps this over 20 million-year-old desert^[1] 50 times drier than California's Death Valley. It is the second-driest desert in the world, after the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica.^{[citation needed]} The Atacama occupies 181,300 square kilometers (70,000 mi²)^[2] in northern Chile, composed mostly of salt basins (salares), sand, and lava flows.

It still plays host to plenty of life, nothing which is particularly large in size, but there are even microbes and some life forms that feed on the perchlorates in the soil!

What is particularly unfortunate about NASA releasing these findings is that the results whilst first detected several weeks ago,
using the Wet chemistry lab, they then tried to confirm using the gas analyzer,

but they haven't yet confirmed it as those tests remain incomplete!

As I already mentioned, they picket up these traces near where the rocket landed and plenty of scientists have pointed out that it could be contamination from the rockets

-However-

Many other scientists have been quick to point out that the engines use hydrazine and not chlorine ( which is what they might have found)
and when they calibrated the wet chemistry lab after landing they found no traces of perchlorate.

So really its a big question mark that wont be answered until the Mars Science lab arrives, and that isn't even scheduled to launch until 2009

Forum: Who should lead National's ICT agenda?
National's transformation will be proven in the detail

Wall of Sheep: Coming to your company?
Founders of Defcon's Wall of Sheep have started an education and security awareness consultancy

It's finally back - Vodafone reinstates the online Internet plan change feature...
Don't know why they had removed it on the day of the launch of the Red network, but it's finally back!



Just a note to people who like to get migrated over to the Red network - you can't do that via this form... (yeah, just tried it out)

You're going to have to wait, or encourage them to do your one ASAP.

Microsoft Windows DirectX SAMI Code Execution
Microsoft Windows DirectX could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the system.

In the begining...

Hello all.

Well, here I am. Posting what will be the first of many blogs to come from NZ's tech guy, drdanick.
All i'm really going to do in this first post is introduce myself and what I do.
Well, here goes...
I'm currently 17 years old (don't let that put you off) and am a student at one of Aucklands fine old Colleges.
I have had high contact with techy stuff ever since my first encounter with the faamily DOS computer way back in the early '90s. Naturally, the first four letter word I learnt to spell was 'menu'.
I alway's had interest in the inside 'workings' of computers and took it on myself to learn all the components names and functions, even going as far as learning a small amount of binary (long since forgotten now).
When I was 13 I discovered html. I was amazed at how fast I got all the basics and was soon manually writing my own web pages.
After about a year, I moved on to my first full programming language, Java (not Java Script). Since then I still program for mostly Java, and am begining to learn C++.

Anyway, that's a small look into my background. I will be posting more into this blog on the topic of crrent tech news, oppinions, and anything else that I find would interest my readers.

Thank's for reading this.
Stay tuned for more!

Prepare for another bubble FAIL: Yahoo!Xtra cancelling Flickr PRO status?
UPDATE: read the bottom for an update.

Arghhh. When are things going to look good for the Telecom Yahoo!Xtra team and their included premium services? Ive just posted this in our Geekzone forums and contacted Telecom - someone is looking into this now:

Hi freitasm_xtra,

Your Flickr Pro account expired on . You have 316 photos but you're now only seeing the last 200!

Perhaps you'd like to renew your Pro account?

You'll even get 3 months free for purchasing before 30 September 2008!

You can learn more here:


http://flickr.com/yay/comeback/3mo/
The Flickreenos

No date in the "expired on", and indeed my PRO status is gone. Another storm coming? Or is just my account?

I contacted the Telecom support and received a response, which is obviously not good enough. I don't think I should be contacting Flickr since this is a Telecom service:

I am sorry to hear about your Flickr Pro account has been cancelled. Unfortunately we do not support the Flickr here, I would need to refer your to the help section within www.flickr.com/help/ There is a "contact us" option on this page that maybe your best option.

I can confirm that your Xtra account is all active and can see no reason why you shouldn't have a valid Flickr account.

UPDATE: After talking to someone at Telecom New Zealand the case was escalated to Yahoo! in the U.S. It looks like there aren't any other cases of accounts being cancelled so let's see how it goes - waiting for my account to be reinstated.

UPDATE: The Flickr team at some point reprovisioned the account and it is all fine again. Also their team member Tara posted in the forums to confirm this was ok.

/n software discount code
I usually don't post discount codes (not that I have many anyway, when I receive one I try to spread the love), but this one is good for developers: 20% off /n software Red Carpet subscription.

I use /n software on the Geekzone server for some IP stuff. The company has some cool piece of software and the subscription gives you access to all components for your development environment.

Of course if you buy I get an extra 3 month in my own subscription. So let's go for it. The promotion code to get your 20% off /n software Red Carpet subscription is "66275696471637D604765656B6A7F6E656E236F6E2E6A7".


Scott Hanselman speaking at Blogger Dinner during Microsoft Tech Ed New Zealand 2008
I just got my hotel booking and air tickets confirmation today, so I will be coming to the Microsoft Tech Ed New Zealand 2008 for sure.

I will be landing in Auckland on Sunday 31st August, and attending the speakers' dinner on that evening.<... (more in the full post)

Management buy for Symantec
Virtualisation and security are motives for purchase

How to Drop a Column

• Discover whether there is a constraint;

DECLARE @ConstraintName NVARCHAR(50);
SELECT @ConstraintName = [name]

FROM sys.objects o

WHERE o.[parent_object_id]=OBJECT_ID('Schema.TableName')

AND o.type='D'

AND o.[name] LIKE '%First5LettersOfColumnName%'

• If there is, remove it;

IF NOT (@ConstraintName IS NULL)

   EXECUTE ('ALTER TABLE Schema.TableName 
   DROP CONSTRAINT ' + @ConstraintName)
GO

• Remove the column

IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.columns WHERE [name]='ColumnName 
   AND [object_id]=OBJECT_ID('Schema.TableName'))

      ALTER TABLE Schema.TableName

      DROP COLUMN ColumnName;

GO