Posts tagged Mars

I Dialed a Wrong Number and Stumbled Into International Phone Fraud

cuba, economy, fraud, telephony, phreak, martians, Mars, VOIP

A few weeks ago, I was trying to call Cuba. I got an error message—which, okay, international telephone codes are long and my fingers are clumsy—but the phone oddly started dialing again before I could hang up. A voice answered. It had a British accent and it was reading: “…the moon was shining brightly. The Martians had taken away the excavating-machine…” Apparently, I had somehow called into an audiobook of The War of the Worlds. Suspicious of my clumsy fingers, I double-checked the number. It was correct (weird), but I tried the number again, figuring that at worst, I’d learn what happened after the Martians took away the excavating machine. This time, I got the initial error message and the call disconnected. No Martians.

via http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/12/cuban-telephone-fraud/509006/?single_page=true

Financial Times; Apr 2, 2001

FT, Starlab, FoAM, reearch, pranks, Mars, deep-future

Beyond the financial hurdles, the centre’s determination to fund offbeat projects such as the Foundation of Affordable Mysticism - an association of artists and technologists exploring new modes of artistic expression - has prompted some critics to question whether Starlab is a group of pranksters masquerading as serious scientists. Time machines and teleportation modules may have great implications in the deep future but few realistic applications in the here and now.

via http://web.archive.org/web/20010823073007/globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=010402010132&query=Starlab

Mission Accomplished: Mangalyaan Enters Mars Orbit

Mangalyaan, space, india, Mars, ISRO

India created history on Wednesday, becoming the first country to successfully get a spacecraft into the Martian orbit on its maiden attempt. Indian Space Research Organisation’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft started orbiting the red planet at 7.47am, but it was only 12 minutes later – because of a time delay in radio signals travelling the 680 million km – that scientists at Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network in Bangalore, could erupt in joy as Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood a happy witness.

http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/mission-accomplished-mangalyaan-enters-mars-orbit–175632.html