Fake DHS emails sent to officials

By
Ahleen
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0

Ha! Its times like these that I wonder if I will ever get even a tiny grasp of how the minds of hackers work.

All I can imagine is a group of hackers in a dark room littered with all sorts of wires and gizmos and contemplating about the essence of their existence.

Hacker 1: I’m tired of hacking into big businesses. What do we do now?

Hacker 2: I have a great idea! Why don’t we hack into the computers officials in a defense department?

Hacker 3: Cool! Lets start off by sending fake emails with spyware! 😉

Well, at least that’s what I imagine these guys did when they sent fake emails claiming to be from the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence division.

These were sent to the officials in the Defense Department, and to the state and local officials since June of this year. The emails contain text that are made to look like they are from a department intelligence assessment but are actually embedded with spyware known for stealing banking data and protected passwords.

According to a three-page alert document from the Homeland Security Department’s counterintelligence unit which was obtained by the The Associated Press, the emails actually originated from Internet addresses in Latvia and Russia.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090824/ap_on_hi_te/us_homeland_e_mails

Nokia reveals Booklet 3G

By
Ahleen
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0
Credit: Nokia
Credit: Nokia

Nokia wasn’t kidding when they said they plan on looking at the Netbook market “to see what kind of opportunity is there.”

Today, they’ve finally announced a their own 10-inch Netbook they’ve dubbed the Booklet 3G.

Nokia’s newest baby boasts a 12-hour battery life and an ultra-portable aluminum chassis. The Booklet 3G is tailored just like the company’s high-end mobile phones and has a variety of connectivity options such as Bluetooth, 3G/ HSPA and Wi-Fi. Nokia hasn’t announced whether the netbook will be running on Windows 7 OS.

The 10-inch netbook runs on an Atom Z520 processor and has an HDMI port for HD video out, a built-in camera and a convenient SD cardreader. The netbook comes integrated with Nokia’s Ovi services that allows users to access Ovi’s maps, music store and the cloud-based Ovi Suite.

“A growing number of people want the computing power of a PC with the full benefits of mobility,” Kai Oistamo, Nokia’s Executive Vice President for Devices said.

“We are in the business of connecting people and the Nokia Booklet 3G is a natural evolution for us. Nokia has a long and rich heritage in mobility and with the outstanding battery life, premium design and all day, always on connectivity, we will create something quite compelling. In doing so we will make the personal computer more social, more helpful and more personal.”

No word yet as to how much the netbook is gonna cost but stay tuned because Nokia will be revealing more about the netbook on September 2 at Nokia World.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10315916-1.html

Mac-compatible scanners from Cannon

By
Ahleen
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0

Canon U.S.A has unveiled the newest addition to their already wide rage of electronic products: the imageFormula DR-2510M (retails at $795) and DR-2010M (retails at $555) desktop scanners.

These two high-speed document scanners are the first fully Mac-compatible from Cannon and requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

Both the scanners have USB 2.0 interfaces and  “Scan-to-Job” buttons that send images directly to an application, shared network folders, to an e-mail or the printer.

The DR-2510M and DR-2010M also features “Advanced Text Enhancement,” “Color Dropout Correction” and “Auto Color Detection” as well text orientation recognition. Both operate at 600 per inch optical resolution and allows 50 pages of documents to be scanned automatically in its document feeder.

The DR-2510M is able to scan B&W, color, and grayscale page at 25 pages per minute while the DR-2010M scans 20 pages per minute.

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/macworld/20090824/tc_macworld/canonoffershighspeedbusinessscannersformacs

More federal charges for accused hacker

By
Ahleen
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0

Miami Beach, Florida has enamored lots of people with its sublime beaches and luxury hotels: locals, tourists and er..criminals.

On May 7 of last year, Albert Gonzales or “soupnazi” was arrested while staying at the National Hotel on South Beach. Feds were able to seize two computers, a gun and $22,000 in cash. He was charged with credit and debit card accounts theft as well as hacking into business computer networks.

Last week, he was indicted in New Jersey on more federal charges, with his hacks totaling to 170 million accounts – the biggest of the decade.

Gonzales, 28, is not a newbie when it comes to arrests. He was first arrested for hacking in 1998 and a year after, was charged for marijuana possession. In 2003, he had his first federal arrest for hacking. By acting as an informant to the U.S. Secret Service however, he managed to escape from being charged. He helped them hunt other hackers.

But I guess leopards really cannot change its spots because over the next five years after his 2003 arrest, he continued to hack into computer systems of Fortune 500 companies and national restaurant chain Dave & Buster’s.

It was around 2005 when Gonzales and others devised a hack that could steal credit and debit card data and send them to remote computer servers. The feds said the hackers were able to steal approximately 40 million credit card numbers – the biggest theft at that time.

If convicted, Gonzales will be facing a lifetime imprisonment and nope, he couldn’t use a computer there I guess. 😉

Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090820/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_ritzy_hacker

Facebook to hire more employees

By
Ahleen
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0

And by more I mean, half a thousand more. 🙂

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive said in an interview that they plan to expand their staff by as much as much as 50 percent this year. The interview was dated August 20 conducted by Bloomberg.

Currently, the company has more than 900 employees according to Facebook’s website. Zuckerberg mentioned that a lot of engineers and developers would probably be added to their headcount.

In the interview, Zuckerberg also said they’re trying to finally achieve profitability by keeping costs at a minimum.

“The thing I want to remind people of is we’re way closer to the beginning than the end,” Zuckerberg said in the Bloomberg interview, explaining why Facebook moved to a stripped-down, concrete-walled office building.

“A lot of times buildings can be a signal that you’ve made it. I would rather that our building feel much more like a very large garage.”

Some garage that’ll be. 😉

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE57N1AU20090824

Intel acquires Cilk and Rapidmind

By
Ahleen
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0

Over the last few months, Intel has gone on a shopping spree – of software companies, that is.

By the end of last month, it quietly acquired Cilk and then just last week, the company has also purchased Rapidmind. These two are both small companies with under 50 employees.

These software companies specialize on parallelism – maximizing application performance by taking advantage of on multicore processors.

So what’s the reason behind the buy-outs?

In a phone interview with CNet News last Friday, James Reinders, chief evangelist and director of marketing and sales at Intel explained that the gradual emergence of multicore processors over the last few years has put parallelism in more machines.

“If you look at traditional applications, ones that we use every day, it’s fair to say that most are not exploiting parallelism–at least not to the full extent,” Reinders said.

With the two software companies under its wings, Intel aims to better facilitate parallel programming to make the most out of multicores.

Intel didn’t reveal how much the two companies cost. Care to make a guess?

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10315534-64.html

Countdown begins for Discovery launch

By
Ahleen
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0

Yup, the Discovery shuttle is ready to launch into space following the successful maintenance mission of Endeavour.

Discovery’s launch countdown begun late Friday night and is scheduled to blast off early Tuesday morning.

Forecasters predicted that conditions suitable for the launch on Tuesday will be 70 percent –  a very good chance,  I might add.

The crew of seven will be on a delivery mission – taking about 17,000 pounds of supplies and equipment to the international space station.

The folks at NASA are crossing their fingers on this blast off, coz they only have until August 30 to launch Discovery. If they don’t, a Japanese cargo ship and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft are both set to fly in September, will have to be prioritized and they’d have to sit this one out – or at least until the others return.

Hmmmn, I hope Discovery doesn’t follow its predecessor, Endeavor, who took five failed launch attempts before finally taking off on the eve of Apollo 11’s 40th anniversary launch.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8gpZRl3t8mV2RxsVjIuPU75dJeAD9A7M6CG0

Apple: We did not reject Google App

By
Ahleen
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0

In a formal response to the Federal Communications Commission inquiry, Apple told the FCC that it did not reject Google Voice and is in fact still studying it.

Google Voice, a VoIP service lets users set up one phone number and like their other phone numbers to it. It can also control which phones to ring depending on the time of the day, etc. Furthermore, it allows users free domestic telephone calls and discounted international calls and texts.

So what’s stopping Apple from approving the app?

The company said that Google Voice duplicated the functions of the iPhone which might confuse readers. The app “appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voice mail,” Apple explained through the letter.

Another concern of Apple is privacy issues.  According to the company, Google Voice copied info about a user’s contacts to Google’s servers and they have “have yet to obtain any assurances from Google that this data will only be used in appropriate ways.”

Apple further denies that AT&T has no hand in making the decision as to whether Google Voice will be approved or not, although it did say that it had agreed not to allow any applications that sent voice calls over the Internet, bypassing AT&T’s network, without the phone company’s permission.

AT&T has previously sent its letter of response to FCC dated August 21. The letter explains that the phone company had “no role in any decision by Apple to not accept the Google Voice application for inclusion in the Apple App Store” and that it was “not asked about the matter by Apple at any time, nor did it offer any view one way or the other.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/technology/companies/22apple.html

Hewlett Foundation bestows half a million grant to Wikimedia

By
Ahleen
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0

Wow, the people from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation sure have big hearts!

Since 2001,  the foundation has bestowed more than $100 million in grants to make educational materials available to all people for free. And they’re not stopping yet.

The nonprofit organization that runs Wikipedia has just received a$500,000 grant from the foundation to help the org expand its efforts to make educational information freely accessible.

In a statement released by Barbara Chow, director of the educating program at Hewlett, the foundation expressed their reason for choosing to bestow the grant on Wikimedia.

“The enormous popularity of Wikipedia and its collaborative premise make the Wikimedia Foundation an ideal vehicle for spreading the open educational resources movement,” she said.

The folks at Wikimedia are very grateful for the grant as this came at a “critical time” for the  foundation.

“We’ve just begun the planning that will help us identify how to maximize our impact around the world,” the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation Sue Gardner, explained in their own the statement. “This support will help us to execute our priorities for the current year, and enable us to plan for the future.”

Pretty cool of them huh? Let’s hope other multi-billion companies follow suit and share some too. 😉

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10314609-93.html

Amazon gets away with Dan Brown novel

By
Ahleen
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0
Credit: Amazon
Credit: Amazon

Dan Brown’s newest book, The Lost Symbol, is available in hardcover version in Amazon and users can preorder the book. It is slated for release on September 15.

Users however, also have the option to buy the Kindle version of the book on the same date. Random House, the book’s publisher, didn’t agree with this arrangement…at first.

The publishing company feared that with the Kindle version priced only at $9.99, it might cannibalize the sales of the hardcover version which is currently offered for $16.17.

This issue could have been a big battle between Amazon and Random House. And with Dan Brown’s book promising to be a bestseller upon its release, Random House might just win the battle.

But after some through discussions going on between the two Random House eventually announced last week that they had approved a Kindle version of the book.

“Now that all of our security and logistical issues surrounding the e-book of ‘The Lost Symbol’ have been resolved, the e-book will be released simultaneously with the hardcover on September 15,” the publisher announced.

This week, Amazon also followed up with their confirmation which is a bit interesting. CNet reports that Amazon’s writing their own press release to announce the availability of the book’s version underlies “the importance of Brown’s book and perhaps of Amazon’s desire to show other publishers that Random House is allowing one of the biggest books of the year to hit the Kindle at a reduced price on the same day it’s offered as a hardcover in stores.”

LOL, I can just imagine Amazon wiping its forehead and exclaiming “Whew!”, coz this could have been a major battle that they had just managed to wiggle out of. 😉

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10314670-17.html

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