Saturday, May 14, 2011

The Morning Scoop - The Awkward Exit of Mideast Envoy George Mitchell

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MAY 14, 2011

The Awkward Exit of Mideast Envoy George Mitchell

President Obama's special Mideast envoy George Mitchell told his bosses yesterday that he'd had enough. With the president about to meet two big allies—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jordan's King Abdullah—and make a major speech on Mideast policy, the timing of Mitchell's departure couldn't be more uncomfortable. The Daily Beast's Daniel Stone on why Mitchell was increasingly annoyed—and what his resignation means for Israel and Palestine.

Read it at The Daily Beast

Louisiana Prepares to Open Spillway

Army engineers are preparing to open the gates of an emergency spillway along the Mississippi River in an attempt to divert floodwaters from Baton Rouge and New Orleans. But opening the gates, which haven't been unlocked in 38 years, will swamp the homes of about 25,000 people in Cajun country and inundate Morgan City, an oil-and-seafood hub. Sheriffs and National Guardsmen have begun warning people in a door-to-door sweep, and shelters have begun preparing to accept evacuees. When the gates open, the water they release could submerge about 3,000 square miles under as much as 25 feet of water. But if the spillway isn't opened, officials fear the flood will overcome the levees in New Orleans in a disaster that would be much worse than Hurricane Katrina.

Read it at the Associated Press

Obama Wants to Open Alaska Petrol Reserve

President Obama plans to open Alaska's national petroleum reserve to new drilling, he said in his weekly radio address. The plan would also fast-track environmental assessment of petroleum exploration in some portions of the Atlantic and extend leases to oil companies who stopped working in the Gulf of Mexico and Arctic Ocean because of the moratorium on offshore drilling following the BP disaster. House Republicans dismissed the plan as weak. The U.S. consumes nearly 25 percent of the world's daily crude oil output but contains only 2 percent of its reserves, and analysts say increased domestic production won't drive down prices substantially. The proposal does not include drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Read it at Los Angeles Times

First Worker at Fukushima Dies

A worker at Japan's troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has died, but Tokyo Electric Power says his body shows no signs of radiation overexposure. Still, the first death in the effort to stabilize the reactor raises concerns about conditions at the plant, where workers must operate in a cramped and sweltering environment and rotate in and out so as not to be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Tepco says the worker, a subcontractor in his 60s, had begun work at the plant only the day before. He had been exposed to 0.17 millisieverts of radiation on Saturday, about the equivalent of a chest X-ray, and no radioactive material was found on his body.

Read it at The Washington Post

Syria Offers Concessions to Protesters

Could Syria be trying a less violent approach? A top government adviser said Friday that the regime is looking to heed demands of peaceful protesters, implying that the government is realizing their violent crackdown tactics have not succeeded in repressing the opposition. Tens of thousands of Syrians prayed across dozens of towns and villages on Friday after government forces attacked neighborhoods where demonstrations were being held, killing six protesters in three separate locations. The death toll was lower than it had been in past weeks. "We don't crush peaceful protesters by force. Our problem is with armed groups," said the government adviser. Tanks and troops are being pulled out of cities, and officials say committees have been formed to vote on new political party laws and start a "comprehensive national dialogue" next week.

Read it at The Washington Post

Mubarak's Wife Has Apparent Heart Attack
After being detained for corruption allegations.

Derek Boogaard Found Dead
New York Rangers enforcer.

Uganda Dismisses Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Until next parliamentary meeting.

Parakeets Overrun England
No one knows what caused population to explode.

Space Shuttle to Launch Monday
After being postponed due to electrical problems.

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The 12 Juiciest Bits From the Ensign Sex Scandal Report
by David A. Graham

A new Senate report chronicles the ex-senator's sordid affair, obsession for his mistress, illegal coverup, and Rick Santorum's attempt to protect him. The Daily Beast delivers the most salacious tidbits.

'Unlawful Killing': Cannes' Princess Di Outrage
by Richard Porton
Wacky theories about Diana's death in the new doc 'Unlawful Killing' are making waves at the French festival. Richard Porton says the film is as awfully made as factually confused.

May 14: The Week in Viral Videos
by The Daily Beast Video
From Lindsay Lohan's vampire make-out session and Tina Fey's triumphant return as Sarah Palin to Charlie Sheen's proposed suicidal Men ending and Justin Bieber's bratty CSI stint, watch the week's buzziest videos.

The March to a Police State Continues

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The citizens of Indiana no longer have the Fourth Amendment protection under the US Constitution.

Android@Home Aims to Make Home Automation a Cozy Concept; Your Lips Say Yes, but Your Body Says No

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The New Voice of the CIO: 6 Tips for IT Managers Today's most successful CIOs have grown into full-fledged business leaders. They have accomplished this transformation by both providing sound IT services and by assuming leadership roles to tackle non-technological issues within the company. Recognizing that successful IT innovation requires deep involvement with the business overall, CIOs increasingly: help set business strategy; use IT to enable business flexibility; innovatively deploy technology to enhance the competitiveness of their organizations; and help corporations meet enterprise-wide goals and solve enterprise-wide problems. Learn what this means to IT managers, operations managers, development managers, strategy and architecture leaders. View this resource now Storage Armageddon: What Your Database Admin Isn't Telling You If your company is like most, you probably believe you have a good handle on storage growth.The truth is that data growth is rapidly outpacing our ability to process, analyze and store the data we are collecting. And the problem goes well beyond resources consumed. Unbridled data growth combined with inefficient storage will lead to application performance problems which can cause productivity loss, customer dissatisfaction, and hits to the bottom line. View this resource now Predictive Analytics: 5 Ways to Maximize Customer Value Most customer relationship management systems rely on historical analytics that provide a "rear-view mirror" of your customer relationships, offering little support for the decisions that shape the future. With predictive analytics, you can meet your customers' evolving needs with forward-looking insights that anticipate changes in customer attitudes, preferences and actions. This white paper describes how a set of five predictive imperatives can help ensure that your company maximizes the value of its customer relationships and sustains higher levels of revenues and profits. View this resource now	Top Resources of the Week

	Global Cloud Computing: The Pros & Cons of Outsourcing Cloud computing represents a radical new set of principles and practices - paying for what is use, flexibility in contracts and commitments, and ease of use - that are changing the IT status quo. As the need for external IT resources increases, enterprises need to understand the shift in outsourcing models to ensure that they buy the right things, manage the services effectively and not get locked in to outdated models. This paper analyzes the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing cloud services, examines the business benefits and risks, and provides the steps one should take for a successful implementation. READ MORE >>> Everything You Didn't Know About Cloud Computing This article discusses cloud computing in general, then dissects the layers of the cloud, presents the different cloud types, along with their benefits and drawbacks, and explains why this movement is important for enterprise developers. Read this article to discover the details behind the definition: cloud computing is an all-inclusive solution in which all computing resources (hardware, software, networking, storage, and so on) are provided rapidly to users as demand dictates. READ MORE >>> iPhone & iPad Development Tools: A Buyer's Guide Businesses need to be more responsive to changing conditions, act quickly on new business opportunities, and improve customer service. The popularity and usefulness of the iPad and iPhone are making these devices the ideal platform for improving business operations. This white paper examines why companies that want to take advantage of the platform need a cost-effective, quick, and easy way to develop, prototype, deploy, and update iPad/iPhone solutions. READ MORE >>> The Linux Support Model Revolution: An Executive Perspective Oliver Wyman, a global strategy consulting firm, recently conducted structured interviews with IT decision-makers at large enterprises worldwide. The primary focus of this study was to understand the need for changes to the conventional Linux support business model and how new models of support, specifically Novell's Expanded Support Services, affect IT organizations. This study finds that Novell ESS represents an important break from the conventional Linux support model, increasing the range of options available to IT executives looking to manage their Linux environment and better integrate Linux into the overall management of their server environments. READ MORE >>>
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NetReport: via Google - Color your DATE

NetReport: via Google - Color your DATE

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Friday, May 13, 2011

The Facebook Worm Named After a High School Girl

By Adrian Chen

The Facebook Worm Named After a High School Girl

The Facebook Worm Named After a High School Girl Here's how easy it is to become the most hated person on the internet: An innocent high schooler has had her life turned upside down after a hacker put her name in a potent Facebook worm that told people to kill themselves.

If you were browsing Facebook late Wednesday night, you might have found this jarring message spammed all over your newsfeed:

"Fuck you faggot. Go kill yourself. Vote for Nicole Santos. I hate you and the only way to remove all these posts is by disabling this below."

But clicking "remove this app" let the worm access your account and spammed your friends with the same message. Facebook quickly fixed the bug that the worm exploited, and by late Thursday morning the Nicole Santos worm was dead. But not before tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people were left wondering "Who the hell is Nicole Santos?" It was a powerful worm.

The Nicole Santos worm turned into the Nicole Santos meme: "Nicole Santos" trended on Twitter for hours Thursday morning. The Facebook page "FUCK Nicole Santos" quickly garnered over 20,000 "likes"; an Etsy user is selling five varieties of "Vote for Nicole Santos T-shirts" while a YouTube user produced a Nicole Santos parody rap song in astonishingly short order, which now has over 7,000 views.

The potency of the meme sprung from the mystery of the girl: Just a name. Thousands of "Nicole Santos" are on the Internet. Which one was her? Did she even exist, or was she just the whim of the hacker who invented the worm?

A cruel portrait of Nicole Santos began to emerge as blogs and newspapers picked up the story: In the internet's imagination, Nicole Santos was a young woman running for something—speculation ranged from prom queen, to class president, to Miss Brazil USA. She had hijacked Facebook as a campaign tool, roping innocent Facebook users into her quest for global domination.

Now, people are not happy with Nicole Santos. "I hope this bitch goes down like osama bin ladin (sic)," writes one user on the "FUCK Nicole Santos page." Another poster: "She was probs trying ta just grab attention and annoy everyone????? What a desperate fuck?????" The gay blogosphere was outraged at the homophobic slurs Nicole Santos employed.

Nobody thinks about things for more than one second on the Internet, but even that is enough time to realize that no one would think spamming thousands of people with "go kill yourself" is a good way to win support. Nicole Santos wasn't the perpetrator: She was the hack's biggest victim.

Nicole Santos does exist. She's a high school student in Northern California running for vice president of her class. We spoke to one of her friends who said at around 11pm Wednesday night he noticed the "fuck you faggot" message posted to dozens of his friends' accounts. He called Nicole who was "really surprised" by what was happening. "Nicole Santos was NOT involved with the hack," he said. In fact he started a whole Facebook page to explain the fact.

It's unclear how Nicole became associated with the "Nicole Santos" worm. Another friend says Nicole suspects the hacker somehow came across her vice presidential campaign poster on her Tumblr blog (above) and decided to put it in his virus. They then targeted Facebook users at Nicole's high school, and a few hours later it had spread all over the world.

The "Nicole Santos" hacker's identity remains a mystery, but it's probably someone who has no stake in the real Nicole's life. Online rumors put the hacker in both Wisconsin and Boston. They say he was a dumb script kiddie ripping-off of an expert hacker's Facebook worm, and that the hack stemmed from drama in the online game MapleStory. 4chan probably factors in there somewhere.

All this has had real impact on the real Nicole's life, even if most people hating on her are just mad at some abstract concept of "Nicole Santos". "She is still in shock," said one friend. Nicole had to delete her Facebook profile after she was flooded with friend requests, hate mail and death threats. Her school is buzzing about the classmate who "went viral," according to Tumblr posts from students.

As for her vice presidential campaign: From what we gather, Nicole Santos is a very responsible, totally sweet person who would never hack Facebook. Vote for Nicole Santos.