TechLuver.com

Houston — Dec 05, ‘07 — On August 07, 2008, after 20 years of hype, disappointment, blunders, triumphs and peerless glittering vistas of space and time, and four years after NASA decided to leave the Hubble Space Telescope to die in orbit, setting off public and Congressional outrage, a group of astronauts will ride to the telescope aboard the space shuttle Atlantis with wrenches in hand. Says NYTimes.

That, at least, is the plan.

Servicing Mission 4
NASA managers officially are targeting August 7, 2008, for the launch of the fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. During the 11-day flight, Atlantis’ seven astronauts will repair and improve the observatory’s capabilities through 2013.

Mission planners have been working since last fall, when the flight was announced, to determine the best time in the shuttle manifest to support the needs of Hubble while minimizing the impact to International Space Station assembly. NASA also will support a “launch on need” flight during the Hubble mission. In the unlikely event a rescue flight becomes necessary, shuttle Endeavour currently is planned to lift off from Launch Pad 39-B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. However, managers constantly are evaluating the manifest to determine the best mission options.

Shuttle missions beyond the Hubble flight, designated STS-125, still are being assessed. Shuttle and station program officials will continue to consider options for the remainder of the shuttle flights to complete construction of the space station by 2010, when the fleet will be retired. Those target launch dates are subject to change.

More at NASA, NYTimes.

What’s on your old hard drive? If you think a) There’s nothing interesting on my drive or b) Reformatting/repartitioning a hard drive is good enough or c) Deleting all of the files is good enough, think again.

A lot of information is stored on your hard drive. What you look at on the internet, emails, personal photographs, passwords to online banking, social security numbers, the list is endless. Probably enough for an attacker to know your name, address, location, what you look like, and probably quite a bit more. If nothing else, the people in your email contact list deserve anonymity.

Starting at $100 for a standard version to $200 for a Drive eRazer Versatile bundle, WiebeTech is offering its newest hardware solution to completely erases all your data from a hard drive quickly and easily. Stand-alone operation. No computer required! Faster than software.

Why use hardware? Drive eRazer is faster than software programs, and Drive eRazer doesn’t tie up a computer. What’s more, it’s far easier. Simply connect it to a drive and flip a switch. No computer needed. More info at WiebeTech here and you can get one at here.

Christopher Null of Yahoo! Answers writes a fine article on a new community-based tech support system site for all manner of electronics devices, FixYa.com.

Excerpts from the article:

You simply find your product in the database, then click “Post a new problem.” After explaining your issue, with luck, someone will come along with a solution. And of course, there’s a huge database of previously asked questions which you can search through.

Most problems seem to have some answer associated with them, though since the service is so new, not all of them do, and not all of them are useful. (Readers get to rate the solutions on the site: The most recent “top expert” has more than half of his solutions rated as “irrelevant.”)

Fixya rates the people who offer advice. Anyone can claim to be an expert on a topic, but their rating will rise or fall with the quality of their answers. The site also offers paid services from users who charge about $10 to $20 a problem.

Overall quality of answers at FixYa.com is actually quite good, with several deeply technical, well thought-out solutions to specific complaints. It’s like Yahoo! Answers, but exclusively for tech.

One of FixYa’s most interesting features is that you can get live support from experts that you’ve come to trust. A chat system is built right into the FixYa website. Just click the “Let one of our Experts Solve your Problem” button in the upper right corner and give it a whirl. More at Yahoo! Answers.