Decrypt This: The Password Management Software Quiz

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Password management software corrals all of your wayward little passwords together while keeping them out of the clutches of hackers. Curious about how this shepherding software works? Take our quiz to test your skills.

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Why is NASA studying car safety?

by Scott C. Benjamin | February 14, 2011 NASA engineers found no electronic flaws in Toyota vehicles capable of producing the large throttle openings required to create dangerous high-speed unintended accelerations. (Stefan Zaklin/Getty Images)

I’m sure by now you’ve heard the latest Toyota news: A little less than a week ago, it was announced that “NASA found no evidence that a malfunction in electronics caused large unintended accelerations.” That’s according to Michael Kirsch, the principal engineer and team lead of the study from the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

And if you recall, reports of unintended acceleration were being blamed on three possible factors: sticking accelerator pedals, a design flaw that enabled accelerator pedals to become trapped by floor mats and electromagnetic interference and/or software flaws. In all, nearly 8 million Toyota vehicles were recalled. In the end, only two of those factors proved possible: sticking accelerator pedals and a floor mat design flaw. There simply was no evidence that a malfunction in electronics caused unintended acceleration.

So here’s my question — and it’s a question that I’m sure many of you were probably already thinking, too: Why is NASA studying car safety alongside the NHTSA? On the surface, it seems like an odd combination, doesn’t it?

But if you take a moment to think about it, you’ll realize that NASA employs some of the “best and brightest” software and electronics experts in the world. And so, according to a recent news article from NASA, in addition to the U.S. Department of Transportation‘s research into the issue, 30 NASA engineers also played a part in the ten-month study to determine the possible electronic causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles.

And now it all makes perfect sense, right? Oh, and don’t forget that you can keep up with CarStuff on our Facebook page and on our Twitter feed, too. Let us know what you think!

Tags: Car safety, NASA, NHTSA, Toyota

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10 Gadgets for Your Next Road Trip

You already know the downsides of a long trip by car: traffic, road construction and boring hours with nothing but the highway to look at. Any device that can make the journey easier, safer and more entertaining for you and your passengers is going to be well worth the cost. There are many gadgets available today that can help make the journey more pleasant -- even fun.

The key thing to remember is that a road trip doesn't mean going without. Whether it's phone service, your favorite television programs, games, or the full range of information and entertainment available over the Internet, you can have it at all your fingertips while you travel.

Travel gadgets are aimed at making your time on the road easier and more enjoyable, so it's not unusual for people to become completely attached to them. Take global positioning systems. A novelty not too long ago, GPS is now something many drivers can't live without. The latest GPS devices not only give you driving directions, they guide you into the proper lane at intersections and offer updates on weather and traffic. Many new cars come with GPS built in.

These 10 cool gadgets may soon make it onto your must-have list for future highway excursions.

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Can someone own the moon?

"Buy land," the old saying goes. "They're not making it anymore." But that’s not entirely true. Across the cosmos, the accretion disks of young suns churn out new land all the time -- if you can wait a few billion years for it to finish baking.

The ether abounds with established acreage, too. As of February 2012, NASA’s planetary property birddog, the Kepler spacecraft, had found 2,326 planetary candidates (61 confirmed), one of them nestled in its star’s habitable zone [source: NASA]. You know what they say in real estate: location, location, location.

Closer to home, Mars offers more than 55.7 million square miles (144.3 million square kilometers) of prime desert property, and Venus balloons to roughly Earth size, but without all of those pesky oceans [source: NASA]. Granted, its runaway greenhouse effect and lead-melting surface temperatures might be a bit blistering for non-Floridians, but at least there are no mosquitoes.

All kidding aside, a space land rush is the most likely thing in the world (or, rather, out of it). As private companies gaze spaceward with dollar signs in their eyes, and as ever more countries pay the cosmic club’s hefty dues, the time to settle questions of space ownership, use and management might arrive sooner than we expect.

Can someone own the moon? Can you stake a claim to any part of a planet, asteroid or other celestial body, or exploit its resources for profit?

The short answer is no. International law and treaties governing space (that’s right -- we actually have space treaties) consider celestial objects the "common heritage of mankind." They argue that space should benefit everyone, and that all peoples should share free access to celestial bodies. Article II of the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (aka the Outer Space Treaty), settles the issue clearly:

Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

This prohibition extends to private parties, although not everyone shares this reading (more on this later) [sources: United Nations; Jakhu and Buzdugan]. It also encompasses the moon’s subsurface, orbital space and approach trajectories -- so no building lunar toll roads.

The documents also require that the moon be used in peace. All parties must preserve it for future generations, keep their activities transparent, avoid getting in each other’s way, warn each other about hazards (such as gun-toting space macaques), offer refuge and aid as needed, and report any resource they might stumble across.

As we’ll see, such legal realities haven’t stopped people from laying claim to the moon, or from selling it off one acre at a time.

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Rogers Launches “Rogers App Zone”, Sprint’s “Family-Friendly” ZTE Fury Available & Happstr Is the App That Finds Your Happy Place

Irina (1 day ago)

Rogers Launches Exclusive BlackBerry App Called “Rogers App Zone”
Rogers has released a new app in the BlackBerry App World called the “Rogers App Zone”. We’re told that this exclusive app is only for Rogers BlackBerry customers and to download it you must have App World 3.0 or higher. As for the details of what the app does, basically organizes all the Rogers apps in one area (similar to how folders work), updates with the latest news and highlights various games. The app is free and there are no plans to create similar “app zones” for Android, Windows Phone or the iPhone.
MobileSyrup

Sprint’s “Family-Friendly” ZTE Fury Available for $19.99
Sprint together with ZTE announced the Fury, a new budget friendly Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) powered smartphone available March 11th for under $20 with two-year agreement. Specs for the Fury consist of a 3.5-inch capacitive display, 1GHz single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 5MP camera with LED flash, 4GB of internal storage with up to 32GB of MicroSD card support.
SmartPhoneEnvy

Happstr, the App That Finds Your Happy Place … Literally
Looking for happiness? Now there’s a map for that. Mobile web app Happstr lets users mark the locations at which they’re happy on a map and browse for happy spots left by others nearby. Here’s how it works: When users are feeling happy, they navigate to the Happstr mobile site, where they find a huge pink button labeled “feeling happy?” Since they are feeling happy, they push the button.
Mashable

Chinese Official: We’re not Issuing 4G Licenses for Another Two to Three Years
China isn’t in a huge hurry get its own 4G network up and running, instead wanting to ensure the infrastructure is primed and enough compatible handsets are available before it launches. According to the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Miao Wei, the country needs plenty more base stations — beyond the existing 220,000 TD-SCDMA bases and closer to 400,000 — before the government starts offering 4G licenses.
Engadget

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Fido Makes $50 Unlimited Plan Available on 3-Year Terms, Lumia 900 Pre-Orders Beginning ‘Next Week’ & Instagram for Android is ‘Better than iPhone App’

Irina (5 hours ago)

Fido Makes $50 Unlimited Canada-Wide Talk & Text Plan Available on 3-Year Terms
Quick and important plan update here for those on Fido. They’ve recently opened up the flood gates to have their $50 Unlimited Canada-wide talk/text plan available on 3-year terms (basically for those who sign up for a smartphone contract). This was previous only available to customers on a 2-year or no-contract, but now those interested in having a no-zone restrictions can go forth.
MobileSyrup

Rogers Confirms Lumia 900 Pre-Orders Beginning ‘Next Week’: Get Your Wallets Ready, Canada
Good news for Nokia fans located in the land known as Canada. Rogers recently took to its Twitter, announcing that pre-orders for the hotly anticipated Lumia 900 will begin at some point next week. If you’ll recall, it was last month that Nokia confirmed the LTE-enabled Windows Phone would be arriving on the network in April.
Engadget

Instagram for Android Coming Soon, ‘Better than iPhone App’
During the annual South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger of Instagram teased the company’s long awaited Android app. During an interview with TechCrunch, the duo said that an Android version of the app is coming “really soon.” Systrom briefly showed the app running on his Galaxy Nexus and claimed that “it’s one of the most amazing Android apps you’ll ever see, in some ways, it’s better than our iPhone app.”
BGR

When It Comes To Shopping, Mobile Web Trumps Apps – Led By Amazon, Says Nielsen
The research, which took into account data from some 5,000 Android and iOS smartphones in the U.S., doesn’t spell out how much money is actually spent on mobile web versus apps. And it looks like at least in the period covered by the research — which included the holiday shopping season — the results may have been particularly skewed by the sheer force of Amazon.
TechCrunch

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