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U NIVERSITY
DECEMBER 9, 2010
T H E DA I LY TA R G U M
HACKERS ATTACK WEBSITES THAT DENOUNCE WIKILEAKS A group of activist hackers known as Anonymous launched a campaign of cyberattacks yesterday in support of the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, according to an ar ticle in The New York Times. Targets of the attack, which included MasterCard.com, Amazon.com, PayPal.com and Visa.com, were those that publicly denounced WikiLeaks and stopped cooperating with the website, according to the article. Several groups were responsible, accounting for 1,500 people who were logged on from chatrooms
DINOSAURS: Iridium
and Internet forums including Anonops.net and were mounting reported “denial of ser vice” attacks on websites that stood in resistance to WikiLeaks, according to the article. Gregg Housh, one of the activists willing to speak about the events publicly, said in the ar ticle that the actions taken against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — who was ar rested in Britain and subsequently denied bail Tuesday on sex of fense allegations — are politically motivated ef for ts to silence people who challenge authority.
fluids move through all sor ts of rocks. “These findings are significant has been here for 65M years because they show one iridium anomaly related to meteorite continued from front impact and are found displayed fossils and mollusks as well as along the K-Pg boundary in a high measure of iridium, shocked quartz cores that source Miller said. the large impact of the meteorite “The iridium was not found to the mass extinction of dinosaurs at the top of the bed but at the and other creatures,” Field said. base of the bed, which gave us This may be one of the first two hypotheses — either studies that show iridium can impact occurred move in sediment and ever ything and be mobile lived on or the after it is deposit“They show one iridium had ed, he said. iridium anomaly moved,” he said. Miller added Miller sampled that another interrelated to cores and found esting discover y iridium was not meteorite impact.” was made in the at the boundary Bass River samPAUL FIELD as expected, ple, when a University Research Scientist which brought 6-centimeter layer researchers to of ballistic-like question the metematerial was orite impact theory, Field said. found embedded in the sediment. “In 2008 to 2009 at the K-Pg This was unusual because boundaries in Monmouth counthese findings are usually concenty’s Tighe Park in Freehold and trated in areas of Mexico, he said. Cumberland county’s Bass River, Not only did the team uncover we found sections in which both iridium, but also shock minerals cases that were equivalent had such as quartz came when vaporan iridium displacement of 20 ized rock from the Yucatán centimeters from their origin and Peninsula was carried leaving a 6were both found to be porous,” centimeter deposit in New Miller said. Jersey, said University research When questioned why the professor of earth and planetary rocks found were porous, sciences Richard Olsson. Field said iridium has been on “A lot of New Jersey residents Ear th for more than 65 million depend on groundwater,” Olsson years and since it is located said. “So this drill is not only for scirelatively close to the sur face, ence but also to help New Jersey.”
RUSA: Students use about six guest swipes per semester continued from front the meal sign-away program and said the new system also requires voting for meal sign-away organizations to take place a semester prior to fundraising. “It will allow them to take advantage of the entire semester by knowing at least a few months in advance,” said Kleiman, a School of Engineering junior. “When the semester starts and everybody has their guest swipes, they can start out right then.” In the past, RUSA would decide which group could raise funds through the meal signaway program and conduct the actual time of fundraising in the same semester, Kleiman said. By using this method, the amount of possible donations from students is reduced. “It may take another week to get it all set up [after the vote],” he said. “Then all of the sudden, it is halfway through the semester and it is tough now.” The Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund experienced this last semester, after their fundraising period was delayed because of the controversy that arose after RUSA awarded them the rights to the meal sign-away program, Kleiman said. This forced PCRF to postpone fundraising until the
“To all of us, there is no distinction,” Housh said in the article. “He is a political prisoner, and the two things are completely entwined.” The Anonymous group released two manifestos over the weekend vowing revenge on those websites and corporations who aligned themselves against WikiLeaks, according to the article. “We fight for the same reasons,” according to one of the manifestos in the article. “We want transparency and we counter censorship.”
following semester, which impacted their ability to raise money for their cause. As president of the Rutgers Undergraduate Research Society, Kleiman said the more notice he receives about an event reciprocally helps a group coordinate their event more efficiently and allows time to maximize productivity. “So it gives a buffer. It is just better to know ahead of time,” he said. “I wouldn’t imagine it being to anybody’s detriment.” The motivation to expand the meal sign-away plan developed after this year’s meal sign-away vote, where many RUSA members expressed the difficulty in choosing the eventual winner, Rutgers Future Scholars Fund over Give Kids the World, Kleiman said. “Members felt that choice was really tough and people mentioned they wanted to do more than one group at once,” he said. “I reached out to Sams after I had heard people mention that and spoke to Saleh as well to put this together.” Kleiman also said the expansion of the meal sign-away program was not due to a realization of flaws in the system but rather an updated version to attend to the concerns of both RUSA members and University students. “It’s not like it was put together badly,” he said. “It just grew out of that and this is now an expansion.”
— Maxwell Barna
Although RUSA Vice President Matt Cordiero holds the same concern as Saleh, he said the only way to learn is through experimentation. “I just don’t know how it is going to turn out but I am excited to see what happens,” said Cordiero, a School of Arts and Sciences junior. “If it helps people donate, it would be interesting to see that.” In an ef for t to ease this concern of both Saleh and Cordiero, Kleiman said the average University student uses about five or six guest meal swipes a semester, which would provide a fair opportunity for the second group to fundraise. “Do I imagine that it will be easier to raise money in the beginning than the end? Probably,” he said. “But the goal of this is to expand it as much as possible and I think this is a good improvement.” RUSA member Dan Herber t worried the expansion of meal sign-aways would force two groups to raise funds at the same time, increasing unnecessar y competition in the charitable program. “You’re left with two charities sor t of fighting for people’s meal swipes at the counter,” said Herber t, a School of Ar ts and Sciences senior. “But this solution is pretty good and I’m happy it is working out this way.”