Every online scam begins more or less the same—a random e-mail, a sketchy attachment. But every so often, a new type of hacker comes along. Someone who rewrites the rules, not just the code. He secretly burrows his way into your hard drive, then into your life. Is he following your every
Melissa wondered why her goof-off sister was IM’ing from the next room instead of just padding over—she wasn’t usually that lazy—so she walked over to see what was up. Suzy just shrugged. She had no idea what her sister was talking about. Yeah, the IM had come from her account, but she hadn’t sent it. Honest.
That night, Suzy’s 20-year-old friend Nila Westwood got the same note, the same attachment. Unlike Melissa, she opened it, expecting, say, a video of some guy stapling his lip to his chin on YouTube. She waited. Nothing. When she called her friend to see what she’d missed, things actually got freaky: Suzy’d never sent a thing. The girls pieced together the clues and agreed: Suzy’s AOL account had been hacked. For the next couple of weeks, the girls remained watchful for malware, insidious software capable of wreaking all sorts of havoc. But with no sign of trouble on their machines—no slow performance, no deleted files, no alerts from antivirus programs—they pretty much forgot about it.
A month passed. Suzy, Melissa, and Nila went about their lives online and off. They chatted with friends, posted pictures, and when they were tired, stretched out on their beds to rest. But at some point, each of them looked up and noticed the same strange thing: the tiny light beside their webcam glowing. At first they figured it was some kind of malfunction, but when it happened repeatedly—the light flicking on, then off—the girls felt a chill. One by one, they gazed fearfully into the lenses, wondering if someone was watching and if, perhaps now, they were looking into the eye of something scary after all. Nila, for one, wasn’t taking any chances. She peeled off a sticker and stuck it on the lens.
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Martin Luther King Jr. Day “This federal holiday honoring the civil rights leader is observed on the third Monday in January. In 2012, the holiday falls on Jan. 16. Related sites: MLK Day.gov | Wikipedia Article on MLK Day.”
“At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.” – Provided by NobelPrize.org
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
On April 4, 1968, LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva, on assignment in Alabama, learned that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. They raced to the scene and there, incredibly, had unfettered access to the hotel grounds, Dr. King’s room, and the surrounding area. For reasons that have been lost in the intervening years, the photographs taken that night and the next day were never published. Until now …
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Presenting Miss America, Laura Kaeppeler!
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If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Navy has a backup plan to save one-fifth of the world’s daily oil trade: send in the dolphins.
The threat of Iran closing the strait has reached a fever pitch, reports today’s New York Times, with U.S. officials warning Iran’s supreme leader that such moves would cross a “red line” provoking a U.S. response. Iran could block the strait with any assortment of mines, armed speed boats or anti-ship cruise missiles but according to Michael Connell at the Center for Naval Analysis, “The immediate issue [for the U.S. military] is to get the mines.” To solve that problem, the Navy has a solution that isn’t heavily-advertised but has a time-tested success rate: mine-detecting dolphins.
“We’ve got dolphins,” said retired Adm. Tim Keating in a Wednesday interview with NPR. Keating commanded the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain during the run-up to the Iraq war. He sounded uncomfortable with elaborating on the Navy’s use of the lovable mammals but said in a situation like the standoff in Hormuz, Navy-trained dolphins would come in handy:
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Annual flu shots might soon become a thing of the past, and threats such as avian and swine flu might disappear with them as a vaccine touted as the “holy grail” of flu treatment could be ready for human trials next year.
That’s earlier than the National Institutes of Health estimated in 2010, when they said a universal vaccine could be five years off. By targeting the parts of the virus that rarely mutate, researchers believe they can develop a vaccine similar to the mumps or measles shot—people will be vaccinated as children and then receive boosters later.
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Could this be the secret new strike weapons Boeing executives told a bunch of us reporters the company was working on during the Farnborough air show in 2010?
I spotted the mystery weapon in Boeing’s booth at the Surface Navy Association’s annual conference here in Washington. I’d never seen the design or the name before so I promptly asked about it; no one staffing the booth claimed to know any more than I did about the weapon (they did, however, give me a refresher on their railgun tech).
Here’s what Bill Sweetman wrote at Av Week after a Boeing official’s admission that it had a secret new strike weapon (I’ve got to admit, I was in the room, but chose to write about the new stealthy Super Hornet that Boeing unveiled at the same press conference.):
Boeing is in production on at least one “proprietary” strike weapon system, claims Shelley Lavender, vice president and general manager of global strike systems. But Lavender refused July 20 at the Farnborough International Airshow to provide more information when pressed.
“I have nothing further for you on that,” the executive said.
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Babies’ Sleep Troubles Linger
Studies indicate that up to 33 percent of children experience sleep problems like difficulty falling asleep, frequent waking, nightmares, and an inability to sleep in their own beds. A recent survey found that one in 10 kids under age three has problems sleeping and that those who have trouble as babies are likely to continue to have sleep issues as toddlers. The findings challenge the notion that sleep problems are simply a phase that children will outgrow. More …
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In the summer of 1996, rains flooded the Amazon, rendering it virtually impenetrable. Bridges were swept away, and, amid vast stretches of mud, small holes appeared where cobras and armadillos had buried themselves. Then the sun came out and scorched the region. Rivers sank by thirty feet; bogs became meadows; islands turned into hills. Finally, after months of waiting, a team of Brazilian adventurers and scientists headed into the jungle, determined to solve what has been described as “the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.” The group was searching for signs of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, a British explorer who, in 1925, had disappeared in the forest, along with his son and another companion.
The expedition expected to find little more than bones—yet even discovering those would have been a revelation. When he vanished, Fawcett and his party had been trying to uncover a lost civilization hidden in the Amazon, which Fawcett had named, simply, the City of Z. In the next seven decades, scores of explorers had tried and failed to retrace Fawcett’s path. Some nearly died of starvation, while others retreated in the face of tribes that attacked with poisoned arrows. Then there were those adventurers who had gone to find Fawcett and, instead, disappeared along with him, swallowed by the same forests in the Mato Grosso region which travellers had long ago christened the “green hell.”
The latest attempt was led by James Lynch, a Brazilian financier who had trekked through the most unforgiving terrains of South America. A man in his early forties, with blue eyes and pale skin that burned in the sun, he had competed in many gruelling adventure contests: once, he had hiked for seventy-two hours without sleep, and traversed a wide canyon by shimmying across a rope. For all their physical challenges, Lynch’s voyages were also intellectual endeavors, and he spent months in the library, researching and planning them. On one trip, he located the long-disputed source of the Amazon, and pinpointed where, in 1937, a pioneering German aviator had crashed in the Andes. He had never, however, encountered a case like that of Colonel Fawcett.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, Fawcett had been acclaimed as one of the last of the great amateur archeologists and cartographers—men who ventured into uncharted territories with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose. Fawcett survived in the jungle for years at a time, without contact with the outside world, often subsisting for days on a handful of nuts; he was ambushed by hostile tribesmen, many of whom had never seen a white man before; he emerged with maps of regions from which no expedition had returned.
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Bitter About Your Life? Blame Facebook
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More than 1.4 million Americans are wearing the colors of more than 33,000 gangs across the country, according to a report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Based on evidence from federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement, the FBI says gangs commit 48% of violent crime, and are only becoming more dangerous. Some even source weapons from the military.
While many of these groups are regional and only loosely organized, many gangs are expanding their ranks and establishing themselves at international levels.
[you would be amazed at hom many places track you!...try this]
HERE.
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Big, mean dinosaur had stubby arms and fat fingers.
Latest microscopy reveals inner working of viruses – .
Island of Montecristo to be bombed with poison after rat infestation .
Photos: Iranian Navy’s parade in the Strait of Hormuz.
Sex-guide according to your age – .
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The United States and allied forces have been in Afghanistan for over ten years, an occupation that approaches the 2014 deadline for a full withdrawal of those forces. As the transition draws closer, problems with security, the economy, and cultural mores are growing even more apparent. Included in this monthly look at Afghanistan are images that highlight these issues, as well as images that point to a more hopeful future. The activist group YoungWomen4Change prepares posters demanding women’s rights even as the horrific torture of 15-year-old Sahar Gul, who refused her husband’s family’s demands that she become a prostitute, came to light. Also included here are images of another Afghan girl, 12-year-old Tarana Akbari, who witnessed the terrible suicide bombing in Kabul that killed at least 80 Shiites during observances of the Ashura holiday. The bombing has raised fears of renewed sectarian violence. — Lane Turner (37 photos total)
Originally posted 2012-01-16 10:45:23. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
