100 Million Year old Data Card!

Data card of million years

Researchers claim to have developed a new water proof storage device that can endure extreme temperatures and hostile conditions like fires and tsunami 'forever' without degrading.

Japanese multinational conglomerate Hitachi has unveiled the chip, which it claims is resistant to many chemicals and unaffected by radio waves, can be exposed directly to high temperature flames and heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius for at least two hours without being damaged.

The chip is also waterproof, meaning it could survive natural calamities, such as fires and tsunami, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

"The volume of data being created every day is exploding, but in terms of keeping it for later generations, we haven't necessarily improved since the days we inscribed things on stones," Hitachi researcher Kazuyoshi Torii said.

"The possibility of losing information may actually have increased,' he said, noting the life of digital media currently available - CDs and hard drives - is limited to a few decades or a century," he said.

The company's new technology stores data in binary form by creating dots inside a thin sheet of quartz glass, which can be read with an ordinary optical microscope.

Provided a computer with the know-how to understand that binary is available - simple enough to programme, no matter how advanced computers become - the data will always be readable.

"We believe data will survive unless this hard glass is broken," said senior researcher Takao Watanabe.

The material currently has four layers of dots, which can hold 40 megabytes per square inch, approximately the density on a music CD, researchers said, adding they believe including more layers should not be a problem.

The company has not decided when to put the chip to practical use but researchers said they could start with storage services for government agencies, museums and religious organisations.

Water in Mars?

A rocky outcrop on Mars has sent a shot of excitement through the scientific community with the evidence it provides of an ancient riverbed -- Martian "water transport" -- according to NASA.

NASA's Curiosity rover has sent back pictures of a section of the Martian surface called Link, an outcrop of rocks whose surface is not coated in the ruddy dust of Mars but is exposed and clean, the space agency says. 

As the Los Angeles Times' Science Now reported Thursday, the combination of sandy rock and large pebbles tells a story of an ancient river, with rocks that traveled far, bumping into -- and smoothing -- one another out.  It was water, not wind, that created that rocky scenario on Mars, scientists said.

Water flow in Mars

Link, says NASA, shows rock formed by water deposits, made up of smaller, rounded rocks cemented together. "Water transport is the only process capable of producing the rounded shapes of clasts [gravel fragments] this size," according to NASA. 

As of Thursday, Curiosity was 2 to 4 miles from a triangular network of channels, an alluvial fan. Another indicator of ancient water activity on Mars, the slope looks as though flowing water may have spread material downward.

Like other formations in this portion of Mars, by the way, Link gets its name from a noted rock formation in Canada.

In an earlier interview with The Times, Curiosity deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada explained that the landing site and Glenelg -- the formation where Curiosity is headed -- were named prior to the rover's landing.

"Both our landing site and Glenelg are within the Yellowknife quadrangle, named for the Canadian city that is the jumping-off point for expeditions that study the oldest rocks in North America," he said. "Glenelg and other features within Yellowknife on Mars are named for the geologically famous rock outcrops around the Yellowknife area on Earth."

4D Clock Up for tick tock

Scientists have proposed to build the first ever 4D space-time crystal clock that they claim will keep accurate time forever, even after the heat-death of the universe.

This is the “wow” factor behind a device known as a “space-time crystal,” a four-dimensional crystal that has periodic structure in time as well as space, scientists said.

Researcher Xiang Zhang from Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, who led this research, and his group, have come up with an experimental design to build a crystal that is discrete both in space and time— a space-time crystal

However, there are also practical and important scientific reasons for constructing a space-time crystal.

With such a 4-D crystal, scientists would have a new and more effective means to study how complex physical properties and behaviors emerge from the collective interactions of large numbers of individual particles.

A space-time crystal could also be used to study phenomena in the quantum world, such as entanglement, in which an action on one particle impacts another particle even if the two particles are separated by vast distances, scientists said.

Scientists from the US Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has proposed the experimental design of a space-time crystal based on an electric-field ion trap and the Coulomb repulsion of particles that carry the same electrical charge.

The concept of a crystal that has discrete order in time was proposed earlier this year by Frank Wilczek, the Nobel-prize winning physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

While Wilczek mathematically proved that a time crystal can exist, how to physically realize such a time crystal was unclear.

Do You know why Facebook trying to Delete over 5M account?

Facebook

A majority of employers and recruiters are now using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines and criminal records to learn the truth about job seekers. 

A survey conducted by Australia-based software firm Nuage Software showed over half of human resource managers surveyed ran a Google search on candidates, 74 per cent checked LinkedIn, 23 per cent Facebook and three per cent Twitter. 

According to tech firm Nuage's managing director David Wilson, some employers are asking to view Facebook and Twitter profiles at interviews in order to avoid privacy concerns, Perth Now reports. 

"The internet has a very long memory. An ill-advised or impulsive post can be rapidly replicated across many sites and be impossible to take back," the report quoted Wilson, as saying 

"People really do enjoy the freedom of expression on social media, but it is worth considering the cumulative effect of their postings," he added. 

According to the report, Australia's National Crime Check managing director Martin Lazarevic said the variety of employers getting police checks on applicants had grown rapidly in the past six months, and as many as one in ten checks were catching people out. 

NASA to examine Pyramid in Mars..

Mars Pyramid

Curiosity's robotic arm is set to get its first workout. It's been tasked with examining a football-sized rock whose odd pyramidal shape caught the eyes of NASA scientists--and fueled the imagination of earthlings everywhere who are perhaps a tad too eager for the rover to find evidence of intelligent life on the Red Planet.

"The target rock looks like a miniature Great Pyramid of Giza, with one face artisans neglected to maintain," noted The Christian Science Monitor. "It is not something you would expect to see on the surface of Mars," wrote the Daily Mail.

Turns out there is a straightforward explanation for the rock. Project scientist John Grotzinger told The Independent that the pyramid rock shape is not uncommon on Mars. Wind erosion probably did the carving.

So the Jake Matijevic -- the name given to the rock, after a NASA engineer who died on Aug. 20 -- is probably just a rock.

"Our general consensus view is that these are pieces of impact ejecta from an impact somewhere else, maybe outside of Gale Crater [where the rover landed], that throws a rock on to the plains, and it just goes on to sit here for a long period of time," he said to The Independent. "It weathers more slowly than the stuff that's around it. So, that means it's probably a harder rock."

Curiosity's arm sports a spectrometer for reading a target's chemical composition and a lens for close-up imaging.

Now! Call Your Loved One's from Mt.Everest

Standing atop the mighty Everest can be an exhilarating experience, but imagine being able to make video calls from the base station of Mount Everest. Reports confirm that a Chinese company has installed its station at a base camp that is at a height of 5200 metres. 

A Call from Mt.Everest 

 Reports quoted Zhuo Feng, General Manager with the branch as saying that the signal from the station at the base camp can reach as high as 6,500 metres. He went on to add that several tourists complain of being unable to make phone calls while at the base camp. "Now they can call their friends here and show them the picturesque landscape of Mount Qomolangma, the local name for Mt Everest,” he added.

A statement issued by the mobile operator’s Tibetan branch read, “A just-finished week-long trial of the No 2 China Mobile 3G base station at the camp has found to be working well, providing a stable network service”. 

As per Zhou, there are no plans yet to move the base station to a higher altitude, because of pressure from environmentalists. Interestingly, he went on to add that the mobile network has been spread across 90 percent of the areas, along the route linking Lhasa, capital of southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, and the base camp. The base camp is known to be often used as a place to rest for climbers preparing for ascent or descent of the 8,848-meter-high Mountain.

An attempt to study the effects of climatic change on Mt. Everest gained popularity recently. A webcam, developed by a Germany-based surveillance firm, Mobotix had been set up at Kalapathhar, a base camp close to Mt Everest, which stands at an altitude of 5,675 meters. The webcam is powered by solar energy, and operates during the day. The camera began operations last year, and can withstand temperatures as harsh as minus 30 degrees. The live images sent in by the webcam will be wirelessly transmitted to Ev-K2-CNR Pyramid Laboratory, which will then be studied by scientists from Italy, who are running the entire project. 

Just this morning, we reported about state-run operator, BSNL together with SIS Infosystems launching telephones with video calling capabilities, in what is a much wider attempt to replace several of the existing Public Call Offices with public Video Call Offices. 

In his statement to reporters, BSNL Chairman and MD, R K Upadhyay affirmed that using the telephones with video calling capabilities, BSNL will set up public Video Calling Offices (VCOs), where users will be able to make voice calls to any phone and video calls to any other IP (Internet-based) phone. 

A 45-second video calling session at a VCO will cost a user Rs 3, which is inclusive of the 30 percent commission for the franchise owner. Upadhyay was further quoted as saying, “There will be no need to use computers for making video calls for user of these video phones.”

US government A Cyber Crooks: This report Says!

As the U.S. government defends our interests and technology in the escalating global cyberwar, could it inadvertently be handing cyberweapons to criminals? 

Cyber Crooks

Last week, security firm Kaspersky hinted that such a nightmare situation may have taken one step closer to reality. Kaspersky revealed that a sophisticated program had been used to record instant messaging and social networking logins and bank account information and passwords -- including targets such as Citibank and PayPal accounts -- on some 2,500 infected PCs. 

It may have been based on the Stuxnet cyberweapon widely attributed to the U.S.

This program, dubbed Gauss, raised alarms for its financial focus: Rather than trying to disrupt nuclear lab equipment or steal cruise missile plans it seemed devised for monetary gain, the very goal of cybercriminals worldwide.

"There's no doubt in our mind that the authors [of Gauss] needed to have access to that [Stuxnet] source code to create this malware," Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab, told FoxNews.com. "Therefore, we're convinced this is coming from the same factory which created Stuxnet."

"The only alternative is that the source code has been leaked or stolen, which is an extremely scary scenario."

'We're convinced this is from the same factory which created Stuxnet. The only alternative is an extremely scary scenario.'

- Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab

Millions of dollars were invested in viruses like Stuxnet, which was designed by the United States and Israel, according to The New York Times, to infiltrate and then disrupt Iran's nuclear program. If that cutting-edge, expensive software fell into the wrong hands, and hackers were able to reverse engineer the program, then banks, brokerages, and businesses all over the planet could be vulnerable. 

Unfortunately, once a program like Stuxnet or its derivative Flame is released on the Web, it is then "in the wild," meaning that a determined crook -- or other espionage agency -- could get his hands on it and turn it into his own weapon of choice.

Contrast this situation to the days of the Cold War, when a foreign power would have to physically steal a fighter jet, James Bond-style, to uncover an enemy's secret technology. Today, simply releasing a spy program on the Net could mean that one is essentially handing over the blueprints to your country's latest cyberstealth technology.

That possibility is "scary" because of the level of sophistication of this espionage software. For example, Flame can not only record every keystroke on a computer but also grab screen images and turn on a microphone, eavesdropping on conversations in the room or during an online call. 

Programs like Flame are also difficult to trace and difficult to detect because they contain multiple self-destruct mechanisms like a modern-day "Mission Impossible" tape recording. There's also the challenge of determining exactly who created it or what information the program is seeking because portions of the software are encrypted to such a degree that Kaspersky Lab has been unable to crack it.

"Malware overall is an arms race," noted Michael Sutton, vice president of security research at Zscaler, pointing out that the techniques used by Flame and other programs "will certainly be studied and adapted by other malware authors that may well be involved in cybercrime."

The extreme efforts taken by the software to conceal Gauss' source mean it's difficult to say who's responsible -- cybercrooks or cyberspies -- but this very feature also is a potential silver lining: If security researchers can't crack its encryption, then it's unlikely that any hackers can copy the software. (Kaspersky is now petitioning other researchers to help it crack Gauss.)

There is at least one reason to think that Gauss is the work of government espionage and not crooks looking to skim millions from bank accounts. Most of the infected computers -- but by no means all -- were in the Middle East and most of the targeted banks were in Lebanon. Some of those banks have been accused of laundering money for drug smugglers and terrorists. 

Whoever developed the software may have simply been looking for terrorists, following Deep Throat's advice to "Follow the money." 

Terrorist networks tend to trade information via SMS and funnel money through online banks. Tracing the flow of money could lead a government to a terrorist's physical location and reveal networks of operatives.

Unfortunately, the malware genie may already be out of the bottle. It's been demonstrated time and again that just about any encryption scheme can be broken -- given the proper amount of effort and computing resources. So it may only be a matter of time until criminals -- or other governments -- have their hands on espionage-grade software. 

If they don't already.

Mr.Bean's New Game on Facebook

Mr.Bean's New Game

Hello everyone! The Mr Bean team are super excited about the brand new game app that they have launched for Facebook fans! Click on the link to play -http://www.facebook.com/MrBean/app_208195102528120

Track your Tracks by GPS Shoes

GPS shoes

An English shoemaker has invented a pair of shoes that can help you navigate anywhere you want to go with three simple clicks. 

The shoes are called 'No Place Like Home' after Dorothy's famous line from 'The Wizard of Oz.' 

The heel of the left shoe is hollowed out to hold a GPS unit, ABC News reported. 

A small antenna, covered in red fabric on the back of the shoe reads signals from GPS satellites, the report said. 

To start the GPS, you just click your heels three times. A magnet in the right shoe and a sensor in the left detect when you've done it. 

The GPS is powered by a small battery similar to that in a cellphone. 

There is a computer program that allows you to plot your destination on a map, which you upload to the shoes via USB cable. 

The left shoe has a circle of LED lights on the toe that light up to show you the direction you need to go. 

The right shoe has a line of LEDs that act as a progress bar, telling you how close you are to your destination. The shoes communicate via wireless, the report said. 

The shoes have red calf leather inside, homage to Dorothy's red shoes, Dominic Wilcox from London said. 

Wilcox was commissioned by the Global Footprint project to design a pair of shoes. He was allowed to make any shoe he wanted. 

"I thought about the 'Wizard of Oz' and Dorothy and how she clicks her heels three times to get home," Wilcox said. 

"I thought, 'Is it possible to make that real in some way using the technology that we have?'" 

Wilcox said he doesn't have any plans for the shoes yet, calling them a "work in progress." 

He originally made one pair just for the exhibition at the London Design Festival, but because of all the attention they've been getting, he may try to make more, he said.

Why your dogs are thinks like a doggie?

Doggy

You say your pet is your baby. But when you speak human, it thinks in doggie. Here's how to get on the same page

Aneesha Rai, a pet groomer, admits to being a "paranoid pet parent who used to humanise my pets and treat them as my babies". She cooed enthusiastically when four-monthold Elsa and five-year-old Bubbles played rough and tumble games for hours. She allowed Bubbles to sleep up on the bed and get away with disobedience, putting it down to her being a brat.

Slowly, as the disobedience issues got worse, she realised the problem was of communication. She was sending them signs, which in doggie language, meant they were the boss and did not have to listen to her.

This gap in language is usually the root of a lot of parent-pet discord. According to canine behaviourist Shirin Merchant, the best thing you can do for your pet is understand (s)he is a dog and relate to it as such. Here are a few behaviours that we could think are cute but mean something more serious in the doggie world.

Rough play
If you have two or more dogs, they tend to play rough games that involve nipping with each other, especially if one or both of them are puppies. They are practising dog-to-dog aggression, and are most likely to carry it on to other dogs, or even humans. This would pose a problem with socialisation. Aneesha figured this out and now lets them play together only when they are too tired to play rough games. The aggression is channelised into chew toys, walks or runs.

Hugging
A hug is a greeting gesture for us, but dogs only stand on their hind legs and hug each other when they attack. While pet dogs may have been bullied by our affections into accepting this behaviour, strange dogs find this very intimidating. So if you are going to greet an unknown stray with an embrace, don't blame it if it bites.

Sleep on the bed: You think its love; the dog thinks its promotion. In animal packs, the leader usually sleeps in an elevated position. So when you allow your dog on the sofa or bed, and (s)he does not climb off when you tell it to, it's because (s)he thinks (s)he's the boss. Usually, such a dog with also show other signs of disobedience, such as not coming when called, refusal to give his/her toy to you or growling when you touch his/her food. That's because it can't understand why (s)he has to listen to underlings like you.

Playing tug
Playing tug by itself is a fight for dominance, but it can be a game if you set the rules. You should initiate the game, not it; and it should let go of the toy when you ask. Pull in an up-down motion, or backwards and forwards; never side-ways. This mimics the motions of killing a prey, and you don't want it to make that association with the toy.

Mild reprimands
If your dog barks at another dog, and you just reprimand mildly by saying, "No baba. Don't do that. You're a good dog, na?" the dog is hearing, "Good job. Go, get that pest." When dogs display attention, they glance back at their owners or elder dogs to confirm support. They wouldn't take on another dog without being assured of back-up. The first step is to not make eye-contact with a dog when there is mild barking (while still sitting down), and when it gets out of hand, give a sharp tug and say 'No' in a very loud, sharp voice. Dogs catch on to tone more than the meaning of words. Soft tones mean encouragement and if you sprinkle the words 'good' or 'nice', they do not get the meaning and perceive it as encouragement.

Jesus Married or Unmarried? New Reports

Jesus

A previously unknown scrap of ancient papyrus written in ancient Egyptian Coptic includes the words "Jesus said to them, my wife," -- a discovery likely to renew a fierce debate in the Christian world over whether Jesus was married.

The existence of the fourth-century fragment -- not much bigger than a business card -- was revealed at a conference in Rome on Tuesday by Karen King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim," King said in a statement released by Harvard.

"This new gospel doesn't prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage."

Despite the Catholic Church's insistence that Jesus was not married, the idea resurfaces on a regular basis, notably with the 2003 publication of Dan Brown's best-seller "The Da Vinci Code," which angered many Christians because it was based on the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had children.

King said the fragment, unveiled at the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies, provided the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had been married.

Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York, said he believed the fragment, which King has called "The Gospel of Jesus's wife," was authentic.

But further examination will be made by experts, as well as additional testing of the papyrus fragment, described as brownish-yellow and tattered. Of particular interest will be the chemical composition of the ink.

The fragment is owned by an anonymous private collector who contacted King to help translate and analyze it, and is thought to have been discovered in Egypt or perhaps Syria.

King said that it was not until around 200 A.D. that claims started to surface, via the theologian known as Clement of Alexandria, that Jesus did not marry.

"This fragment suggests that other Christians of that period were claiming that he was married" but does not provide actual evidence of a marriage, she said.

"Christian tradition preserved only those voices that claimed Jesus never married. The 'Gospel of Jesus's Wife' now shows that some Christians thought otherwise."

King's analysis of the fragment is slated for publication in the Harvard Theological Review in January 2013. She has posted a draft of the paper, and images of the fragment, on the Harvard Divinity School website:

http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty-research/research-projects/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife

100 Mbps speed Internet in India Sooon!

BSNL

 BSNL here would launch by this month-end 'Fibre to Home' (FTH) facility for customers seeking internet, telephone and TV channels' access. 

A high speed up to 100 mbps on internet would be given with FTH in which customers could download a movie in just one minute, a BSNL spokesman said today quoting Senior General Manager G C Pandey. 

Besides, most of the popular TV channels, and landline phone services were annexed with FTH, he said. 

BSNL also planned to extend FTH service at the Global Investor Meet, slated here next month for which mobile towers were erected, he said. 

FTH network is being laid at the important points including High Court, State Bank of India, GP, IT Park, IIM and University area in the city too for the launch of the very service by the end of this month, he said. 

For getting a FTH connection with a speed of one mbps the customers would have to pay Rs 300 per month, and for 100 mbps it would be about Rs 84,000 per month. Installation charges would be around Rs 1000, according to the BSNL tariff. 

What was the fate of IPT service provided to customers on fixed landline, when asked the GM said there was some difficulty in getting private service players for IPT, and now FTH would get momentum. 

India To Make its Own first Super Computer!

Super computer

India wants to get ahead in the technological revolution. And just how will it manage this? By building a new supercomputer that aims to be 61 times faster than IBM Sequoia, currently the world’s fastest.

According to reports, Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sharing the roadmap to develop “petaflop and exaflop range of supercomputers” at an estimated cost of Rs 4,700 crore over 5 years.

“In his (Sibal’s) letter, he has said that C-DAC has developed a proposal with a roadmap to develop a petaflop and exaflop range of supercomputers in the country with an outlay of Rs 4,700 crore,” a government official said.

India’s attempts at making the world’s cheapest tablet, Aakash might not have been so successful thanks to in-fighting among the manufacturers and government agencies, but the government is clearly not disheartened and has moved on to bigger and more powerful projects.

So what will India have to beat as far current supercomputers go? The world’s fastest supercomputer is the IBM Sequoia, which has a peak speed of 16.32 petaflops. The computer is based in Livermore, USA and consumes, nearly 7890.0 kW of electricity. According to the Top500 list, the Sequioa is one of the most energy efficient systems in the world.

But does India have a supercomputer in the current top ten list? No, India’s highest ranked supercomputer in the 2012 list is the one at CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation in Bangalore which is ranked at 58. You can view the entire list of supercomputers for 2012. 

As far as rivals go, China has 2 supercomputers in the top ten list for 2012. Tianhe — 1A at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin was the world’s fastest super computer in 2010. The other Chinese computer in the 2012 list is Nebulae at the National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen which is at number 10.

Floating Operations per seconds (Flops or Flop) determines the time used by a computer to make heavy calculations. Exaflops are higher than petaflops and the Indian government claims that its five year project will be enough to build a range of supercomputers with processing speeds in petaflops and exaflops. Click here to know more about petaflops.

Hopefully this one won’t be another failed IT project and India will finally get a supercomputer in the top ten.

Intel's new Password Technology..

 Passwords for online banking, social networks and email could be replaced with the wave of a hand if prototype technology developed by Intel makes it to tablets and laptops.

Intel

Aiming to do away with the need to remember passwords for growing numbers of online services, Intel researchers have put together a tablet with new software and a biometric sensor that recognises the unique patterns of veins on a person’s palm.

“The problem with passwords — we use too many of them, their rules are complex, and they differ for different websites,” Sridhar Iyengar, director of security research at Intel Labs, said at the annual Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Thursday. “There is a way out of it, and biometrics is an option.”

Iyengar demonstrated the technology, quickly waving his hand in front of a tablet but not touching it. Once the tablet recognizes a user, it can securely communicate that person’s identity to banks, social networks and other services where the person has accounts, he said.

Making laptops, tablets and smartphones responsible for identifying users would take that requirement away from individual websites and do away with the need to individually enter passwords into each of them, Iyengar said.

“We plan to work with service providers to take full advantage of this,” he said.

A device using the technology would use built-in accelerometers to detect when a user puts it down, and would then log its owner off to keep unauthorized people from getting in.

The palm-identification technology was one of several demonstrations during a keynote address by Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner at the forum. Rattner runs Intel Labs, which focuses on identifying and solving future technology problems.

Rattner also showed prototype technology to improve cell-phone base stations and to efficiently and wirelessly connect devices such as printers, tablets and monitors throughout the home.

He debuted a prototype microchip with wifi technology made with digital circuitry instead of analog, a development that has the potential to lead to major improvements in performance and efficiency.

The palm-reading technology, still under development, requires new software and biometric sensors built into consumer devices, but does not require the development of any new kinds of chips, Rattner said.

The technology works much better than the finger-print scanners found on some laptops today, he said.

PC's are Pre-installed with Malwares-Microsoft

New computers, still under development in factories, are being infected with malware in their production lines, a new Microsoft study has suggested.

Malware

One virus called Nitol found by Microsoft steals personal details to help criminals plunder online bank accounts.

The viruses were discovered when Microsoft's digital crime investigators bought 20 PCs, 10 desktops and 10 laptops from different cities in China, out of which four were infected with malicious programmes even though they were fresh from the factory, the BBC reports.

Nitol was the most pernicious of the viruses Microsoft caught because, as soon as the computer was turned on, it tried to contact the command and control system set up by Nitol's makers to steal data from infected machines

.

Further investigation revealed that the botnet behind Nitol was being run from a web domain that had been involved in cybercrime since 2008. Also on that domain were 70,000 separate sub-domains used by 500 separate strains of malware to fool victims or steal data.

"We found malware capable of remotely turning on an infected computer's microphone and video camera, potentially giving a cybercriminal eyes and ears into a victim's home or business," said Richard Boscovich, a lawyer in Microsoft's digital crimes unit in a blogpost.

A US court has now given Microsoft permission to seize control of the web domain, 3322.org, which it claims is involved with the Nitol infections.

Lincoln Directed by Steven Spielberg has been Out

  The Official full trailer of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" Starring Daniel Day Lewis as  Abraham Lincoln and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Todd Lincoln.

  As the Civil war nears its end, President Abraham Lincoln clashes with members of his cabinet over the issue of abolishing slavery. Also Starring Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader, Jared Harris, John Hawkes, Sally Field and David Strathairn.

A new nanomaterial point to ways to help prevent explosions in nuclear power plants!

A new nanomaterial vanquishes the bubbles that normally pop up with boiling, a finding that may point to ways to help prevent explosions in nuclear power plants, researchers say.

A new nanomaterial

To understand how this material works, imagine a hot skillet. When its surface is warm, water on it will bubble. However, once the skillet gets hot enough, the water drops will skitter across its surface as they levitate on a cushion of vapor, an effect known as the Leidenfrost regime after the scientist who investigated it in 1756.

"The Leidenfrost state of a water drop is often used worldwide to gauge the temperature of a hot skillet while cooking," researcher Neelesh Patankar, a mechanical engineer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., told LiveScience.

Tinkering with a surface's properties can alter the temperature at which water touching it goes from this explosive bubbling phase to the Leidenfrost regime. Making a surface hydrophobic, or water-repellant, affects how well heat gets transferred from that surface to water. Making it craggy instead of smooth also controls how heat flows from it. 

Scientists developed a craggy super-water-repellant coating made of nanoparticles covered with an organic, hydrophobic compound. (Nanoparticles are particles only nanometers, or billionths of a meter, in size.)

When a steel rod covered with this coating was heated, the result was a continuous film of vapor on the rod without bubbling. "One can make surfaces on which a liquid will never bubble as it starts boiling, a phenomenon that is contrary to the experience of anyone who has ever cooked," researcher Ivan Vakarelski, a physicist at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, told LiveScience.

iPhone and iPad users out in the cold by Google in US

If you are traveling to or within the US in September you can enjoy free Wi-Fi at 4,000 hotspots following an announcement by Boingo that Google is sponsoring free internet access in the country. 

Google WiFi

Internet provider Boingo announced this Tuesday that Google is sponsoring free Wi-Fi at 4,000 hotspots in the US including 15 airports as well as a number of hotels, shopping centers and Manhattan's subway stations. The free service is running through September.

Google and Boingo have said that only Android phone or tablets as well as Windows and Macintosh laptop users will be able to access the service, leaving iPhone and iPad users out in the cold.

The agreement come as an extension of the initial offering by the two companies which started with free Wi-Fi at some subway stations in Manhattan at the beginning of the summer and a number of shopping malls in the country in August.

Boingo Internet access costs around 10 dollars a month for unlimited use; the hourly rate depends on the user's location.

Do You have Less friends in Facebook, You can be Banned from FB!

Facebook

 If you don’t have enough friends on Facebook, you might surely lose your Facebook account. Its now time to protect your Facebook account from ban. This epic decision was taken the social networking giant Facebook itself. Recently a day before, Facebook mentioned their huge effort to weed out fake profiles. Facebook now will prevent misuse of such identities, who create a fake pages to get someones attention. Facebook India Business Manager Mr. Pavan Varma said that Facebook will ask any user to identify themselves when they doubt the ownership of an account.

This doubt about the authenticity of a Facebook account, will  rise if any account has generic name instead of a proper name. People cannot use images of celebrities/cartoon characters as display pictures. Even if people who have very less friends are asked to prove their original identity. Facebook might ask any user to prove their identity with a proper authentication. The message might be some what like this, “Could you help us identify yourself if you don’t have enough friends, because we don’t want fake identities,”

How to Protect Your Facebook Account from Ban: 

So to protect your Facebook account from ban, you have to keep few things in mind.

1) Don’t use a universal name or a popular name in your profile name. Just use your real name in your Facebook account.
2) Maintain more friends in Facebook. Because less friends might block you from Facebook, considering you as a fake account.
3) Don’t use a celebrity or a cartoon picture as you Facebook display (profile) picture.
4) Don’t support Spam, Bots or any kind of programmable files in your profile.

Facebook India said they are not worried to protect their brand name, but infact they are worried about the experience which they deliver. Recently, there were a lot of reports regarding the fake accounts being created by computer programs. These computer programmed Facebook accounts are used for inflating certain number of likes on Facebook pages for branding.

Facebook has announced saying, We will take out even the fake likes generated by spammers, malware and black marketers. Pavan Varma said, “How does and advertiser today is treating a Facebook page? It is treated as a place where they just come with a number of people who are seen there. This is not the correct way of doing it” . He said, stressing that the conversations around a brand should assume importance, rather than the number of fans seen there. Mere Likes on a page will not help a brand to grow online. Usually companies pay Facebook for a dedicated page on its platform. This will allow Facebook to connect them to a target audience.

I hope everyone will keep their Facebook profiles safe and secure. You never knew when Facebook might delete your account all of the sudden. So do check the guidelines we gave above, and keep your Facebook profile updated with correct info. Doing this will surely keep your account safe and long going. If you want to protect your Facebook account from ban, feel free to share with us.

iPhone 5 with Specifications

iPhone 5

GENERAL	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
		CDMA 800 / 1900 - for Verizon
	3G Network	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
		CDMA2000 1xEV-DO - for Verizon
	4G Network	LTE 700 MHz Class 17 / 2100 - for AT&T
		LTE 700 MHz Class 13 - for Verizon
	Announced	Exp. announcement 2012, September
	Status	Rumored. Exp. release 2012, October

BODY	Dimensions	123.8 x 58.5 x 7.6 mm
	Weight	-

DISPLAY	Type	LED-backlit IPS TFT, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	640 x 1136 pixels, 4.0 inches (~326 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes
	Protection	Corning Gorilla Glass, oleophobic coating

SOUND	Alert types	Vibration, propriety ringtones
	Loudspeaker	Yes
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Card slot	No
	Internal	16/32/64 GB storage, 1 GB RAM

DATA	GPRS	Yes
	EDGE	Yes
	Speed	DC-HSDPA, 42 Mbps; HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps, LTE, 73 Mbps; Rev. A, up to 3.1 Mbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Plus Cellular
	Bluetooth	Yes, v4.0 with A2DP
	NFC	TBD
	USB	Yes, v2.0

CAMERA	Primary	12 MP, autofocus, LED flash
	Features	Touch focus, geo-tagging, face detection, HDR
	Video	Yes, 1080p@30fps, LED video light, video stabilization, geo-tagging
	Secondary	Yes, videocalling over Wi-Fi and 3G/4G

FEATURES	OS	iOS 6
	Chipset	Apple A6
	CPU	Quad-core 1.2 GHz
	Sensors	Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
	Messaging	iMessage, SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email
	Browser	HTML (Safari)
	Radio	No
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support and GLONASS
	Java	No
	Colors	Black, White
		- nanoSIM card support only - Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic - Siri natural language commands and dictation - iCloud cloud service - Twitter and Facebook integration - TV-out - iMaps - iBooks PDF reader - Audio/video player and editor - Image editor - Voice memo/command/dial

BATTERY		Standard battery, Li-Po
	Stand-by
	Talk time

Disclaimer. We can not guarantee that the information on this page is 100%