Internet surveillance in Britain

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to unveil sweeping legal reforms to give police and security forces the power to monitor all digital communications and establish special courts that can review top secret intelligence information. This move to increase Internet surveillance is threatening to destroy the country’s ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, has written a letter to fellow cabinet ministers on the National Security Council warning them the security services "cannot be allowed to ride roughshod over the principle of open justice."

However Britain has international criminals, terrorists, and cyber crime on its radar with the new powers of Internet surveillance. A spokesman said, "It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public."

Anders Breivik was using computer games for practice

USA Today reports that Norway killer Anders Breivik played the computer game "Modern Warfare" for 16 months starting in January 2010, primarily to get a feel for how to use rifle sights. In 2006 he devoted a full year to playing "World of Warcraft," for 16 hours a day. Whether target practice can be had by using computer games is hotly disputed. Christopher Ferguson, of Texas A&M International University, said that action games can improve "visuospatial cognition," he said it's difficult to say whether Breivik could have improved his accuracy by playing Modern Warfare. "Let us keep in mind too that he was shooting kids on an island from which they could not escape easily," Ferguson said. "That does not require great accuracy."

Paula Patton money

Paula Patton was part of the massive money making franchise, the Mission Impossible movies, which gross billions of dollars. But the stunning actress, and her R&B artist husband Robin Thicke, were slapped with a tax lien by the IRS for not paying federal taxes in the amount of $492,583. A lien is the government's legal claim on property, in the case of Paula Patton and Thicke, it was their Los Angeles mansion.

The IRS lien came last year and has now been lifted. With money from movies and songs not being enough, Paula Patton and Robin did a TV spot for an alcoholic beverage, Remy Martin VSOP cognac. Another thing they spend money on is cars. Paula Patton used to drive a Range Rover, while Robin Thicke owns a Porsche.

Now Robin has gifted Patton a black Porsche. Above, Paula Patton spotted with her Porsche on the way to gym.

Computers study brain

In an interview with GenomeWeb, Hanchuan Peng senior computer scientist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, talks about Bioimage informatics: "Bioimage informatics has been a field that many people have been involved in for about 15-20 years. Once people started to have automated microscopes, about 20 years ago, they had the ability to generate a lot of images. There was a need to do image analysis. The other is from more traditional biomedical image analysis."

Could you provide some background about how you got into bioimage informatics?

"I did some early work on automated analysis of gene expression patterns using microscopic images of fruit fly and C. elegans, and now work on several neuroscience problems — especially on reconstructions of three-dimensional digital brain atlases....We actually do high-throughput, high-content image analysis to map brains and try to find associations between neurons and animal behaviors. This type of technique is not only useful for neuroscience research, but also useful for developmental biology, cell biology, and molecular biology for many different problems because phenotype screening based on microscopy is becoming one of the must-have tools for biological studies."



Scientists, computational biology students, doctors and patients can now study the brain and other parts of the human body with their iPhones and iPads. University of Utah researchers had created apps like ImageVis3D Mobile, AnatomyLab and MyBody. The apps enable modern technology to help doctors explain medical issues at a patient's bedside, enable students to study and help the average patient better understand his or her own body.

Anti-abortionist computer hacker jailed

27-year old James Jeffery defaced the British Pregnancy Advisory Service website with an anti-abortion statement and the Anonymous logo, and stole personal information about some 10,000 women. Jeffery was tracked down through his Internet service provider address, and pleaded guilty to two charges under the Computer Misuse Act.

The court heard that 60,000 women contact BPAS every year and 53,000 have abortions under their supervision. The hacker used "learning penetration testing software" to get into the website. When Jeffery was arrested, police found his computer was "in the process of being wiped clean". Shaun Wallace, defending, said Jeffery "is not a staunch anti-abortionist. He is a bit of a computer whizkid." Judge Michael Gledhill QC told Jeffery: "Just as many people disagree with the view you held, many do agree. However, those who find abortion repugnant do not use this as an excuse to justify deliberately committing offences."

Program using math to prevent crime

The Los Angeles Police Department is using a computer program to actually predict where crimes will happen. It's called "Predictive Policing" a program which Capt. Sean Malinowski says puts officers on the scene before crimes occur. "Sixty-five percent of our crimes are burglary, grand theft auto and burglary from a motor vehicle." The computer program is using the same kind of mathematical calculation used to predict earthquakes and aftershocks. By analyzing the times, dates, and places of recent crimes computers project "hot spots" for burglaries, break-ins, and car thefts. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck says increasing police patrols inside those boxes denies criminals opportunity. The LAPD began testing the Predictive Policing model in the Foothill Division in November. And the early results are encouraging. Burglaries are down 33 percent and violent crime is also down 21 percent.

Most popular browser

If recent statistics are to be believed the most popular browser continues to be Internet Explorer. According to StatCounter IE bagged a share of 35 per cent, against Google Chrome's 30 per cent for the month of March. However Microsoft claims the statistics to be closer to 45% and 24% respectively. Chitika's network also analyzed browser usage statistics across its network of users across the US and Canada, finding that overall IE remained a popular browser at the office, with 55.3 per cent usage, while Google Chrome at 24.6% was more used at home. Other browsers like Opera and Safari were lower in the list.

Eye strain remedies and prevention

Optometrists report that workers under 40, even those with small prescriptions, are struggling to keep their eyes healthy in an increasingly digital world. Staring at 2D computer screens, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, all day long causes eye strain and leads to computer vision syndrome. Cell phone screens can also cause eye strain because increasingly people are playing games on these devices. Just a few hours a day of using a computer can cause eye strain, according to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. Children aged 8 to 18 have better vision and but they spend on average 7.5 hours staring at computer screens, and unblinking staring causes dry eyes and blurred vision. Prevention is the best remedy for eye strain. If you are spending more than 2 hours sitting and staring at a computer screen, take a physical break every hour, go outside and walk around for a few minutes. It's also important to take visual breaks: every fifteen minutes look away from the computer screen to rest your unblinking eyes. It's best to have your workstation near the window so you can stare outside at the more in-depth 3D environment.



Optometrists prescribe computer glasses with single-vision lenses for people with blurred vision. Some others advocate using anti-glare lenses, but these can only slow down and not prevent eye strain. It's claimed that the new iPad's ultra-high-resolution retina display can prevent eye strain....but no studies have verified this claim. Degeneration of vision is a slow process and using the iPad is no way for prevention of eye strain, if you're using it for long hours without taking breaks. There are also home remedies for treating eye strain disorders: daily splashing the eyes with cold water, putting cool cucumbers or used tea bags on your eyelids gives some relief. But taking breaks is still one of the best remedies for eye strain prevention.

Mac malware Flashback Trojan

After the supermodel malware on mac machines, there is more bad news for those using Apple computers. A malware outbreak called 'Flashback Trojan' has infected more than 650,000 Apple computers, of which 303,000 were hit in the US and another 106,379 in Canada. The Flashback Trojan virus is written in Java and exploits a Mac OS X vulnerability to direct the users to one of more than four million bogus websites. Those sites contain a virus code written in an unknown computer language that can access the infected Mac machines from a remote server without a password.

Apple issued two automatic security updates this week to remove the Flashback Trojan virus; Mac users who did not activate the patch will need to manually remove the malware, or employ a security firm to scan and disinfect their operating system. Boris Sharov, chief executive of Doctor Web, said the attack should finally dispel the notion that the Mac OS is immune to cyber attacks. Technology experts have always known that to be a fallacy, and predict that with the growing popularity of Macs, malware attacks will only increase.

Penetration testing computer security

The market for data-vulnerability management may grow to almost $1 billion in 2016, from $400.5 million in 2011, according to consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. "Some of the mega-breaches are likely to become more common," said Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute, a privacy and data-protection research group. "The cyber criminal has more tools at their disposal." Vickie Miller, the security director at credit-scoring company Fico, uses penetration testing to test computer security at her firm. Miller's servers at Fico include data from 90 of the 100 largest financial institutions in the country, as well as more than 150 health care and science companies - data that, if lost, could cost the company its credibility. She started using a Core Security penetration testing tool in the fall and met with Fico's chief executive officer last month to strategize further. It lets her scour a digital map to find ways to break into her company's data before a cyber criminal can.

Other prevention methods include gathering reams of data and finding hackers in the early stages of a probe. IBM reviewed 13 billion data events each day in 2011 to find cybercrime trends. Juniper Networks now has a service that places fake weaknesses into a network and alerts a user to block potential hackers that trip the traps. From SF Gate.