>Samsung installs keylogger on its laptops

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In the fall of 2005, the security and computer world was abuzz with what was at the time dubbed as the “Sony BMG rootkit Fiasco.” Sony BMG used a rootkit, computer program that performs a specific function and hides its files from the regular user, to monitor computer user behavior and limit how music CDs were copied and played on one’s computer. …

Sony BMG settled the federal lawsuit with the FTC without admitting guilt. However, given the number of CDs it was ordered to replace and the agreed upon compensation of up to $150 per computer owner it had to pay to consumers whose computers may have been damaged as a result of attempts to remove the rootkit, the $575 million payout for the incident was far more expensive than any return on investment Sony BMG may have received by preventing the potential consumer from copying, illegal distribution or sharing of the music CDs.

Some in the computer security industry had hoped that the criminality of the act that Sony BMG had engaged in together with the huge business costs associated with the settling of the case with consumers and federal authorities would act as a deterrent to any company which might want to monitor computer usage. Others, including Mark Russinovich, the developer and blogger who first discovered the rootkit, were not so sure. In fact Mr. Russinovich warned that “Consumers don’t have any kind of assurance that other companies are not going to do the same kind of thing (as Sony)” (Borland, 2005).

How right has Mr. Russinovich been!

While setting up a new Samsung computer laptop with model number R525 in early February 2011, I came across an issue that mirrored what Sony BMG did six years ago.  After the initial set up of the laptop, I installed licensed commercial security software and then ran a full system scan before installing any other software. The scan found two instances of a commercial keylogger called StarLogger installed on the brand new laptop. Files associated with the keylogger were found in a c:\windows\SL directory.

According to a Starlogger description, StarLogger records every keystroke made on your computer on every window, even on password protected boxes.

This key logger is completely undetectable and starts up whenever your computer starts up. See everything being typed: emails, messages, documents, web pages, usernames, passwords, and more. StarLogger can email its results at specified intervals to any email address undetected so you don’t even have to be at the computer your[sic] are monitoring to get the information. The screen capture images can also be attached automatically to the emails as well as automatically deleted.

After an in-depth analysis of the laptop, my conclusion was that this software was installed by the manufacturer, Samsung. I removed the keylogger software, cleaned up the laptop, and continued using the computer. However, after experiencing problems with the video display driver, I returned that laptop to the store where I bought it and bought a higher Samsung model (R540) from another store.

Again, after the initial set up of the laptop, I found the same StarLogger software in the c:\windows\SL folder of the new laptop. The findings are false-positive proof since I have used the tool that discovered it for six years now and I am yet to see it misidentify an item throughout the years. The fact that on both models the same files were found in the same location supported the suspicion that the hardware manufacturer, Samsung, must know about this software on its brand-new laptops. …

via Samsung installs keylogger on its laptop computers.

>Military Expert: The World Could Never Survive a Real ‘Battle: Los Angeles’

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…A giant spaceship from another world arrives during the day and positions itself above the White House in Washington, while more ships do the same over other major cities around the world.

Then, without warning, all hell breaks loose, and the ships begin using devastating weapons and power to destroy everything around them — people, buildings, military resistance.

This continues for about two hours of popcorn-eating enjoyment until the Earthlings on screen somehow come up with a miracle to stop these unwelcome invaders from laying waste to our beloved planet.

From “The War of the Worlds,” “Independence Day,” “Mars Attacks!” “Transformers,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “V” and the current box office favorite, “Battle: Los Angeles,” alien invasion is most definitely part of our culture — and maybe our fears.But, in the real world, if predatory ETs come to Earth to take us over, for whatever their reasons, could we, in fact, prevent it from happening? Could we actually survive such an attack?

“The bottom line for a hostile engagement between aliens and humans is not a pretty picture, and there is no happy ending for us,” according to John Alexander, a retired Army colonel who spent 25 years searching top levels of the U.S. government for evidence of a reported UFO cover-up — and couldn’t find one.

From a military point of view, Alexander, author of “UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies and Realities” (Thomas Dunne Books), says entertainment depicting alien invasions of Earth is pretty much just a vehicle to blow stuff up.

“If they chose to use physical force, they would simply destroy our infrastructure, power, communications, transportation and economic systems. While a terribly blunt approach, it could be accomplished without any danger to the aliens, or direct confrontation with any military system.”

As long as we’re offering a sober, logical, strategic scenario in which unfriendly extraterrestrials want to take over our home turf with the least amount of destruction possible, Alexander speculates there’s a much easier way to do it. “If depopulation of Earth is an objective, the simplest way to accomplish that would be to introduce one or more biological organisms that kill humans.

“There is no reason for them to engage in the time-consuming effort to physically eliminate the armed forces of Earth. Biological warfare would be the most efficacious, energy-efficient and safest means for them to conquer Earth. For the aliens, this is a no-risk option.” …

via Military Expert: The World Could Never Survive a Real ‘Battle: Los Angeles’.

This Military Expert knows something even bigger that he’s not telling us. Look closely… he is smiling, but he isn’t. If you stare at him, even at his picture, you’ll get hypnotized and you may start to have visions.  If that happens, don’t be alarmed. Just go with it and try to remember what you see. The earth is counting on you.

>Noisy cat hits purr-fect pitch in world record bid

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A cat from Northamptonshire has made an official attempt to become the world’s loudest purrer.

Smokey made the record attempt in front of four independent witnesses at her owner Ruth Adams’ home in Northampton.

Smokey was tested by a music expert from Northampton College who found her purr reached 73 decibels – 16 times louder than the average cat.

The evidence will now be submitted to the Guinness Book of Records for verification.

Mrs Adams said: “Guinness has very strict criteria and the college has been very helpful in supplying the specialist recording equipment needed to measure Smokey’s purr and for arranging the official witnesses.

via BBC News – Noisy cat hits purr-fect pitch in world record bid.

>Noisy cat hits purr-fect pitch in world record bid

>

A cat from Northamptonshire has made an official attempt to become the world’s loudest purrer.

Smokey made the record attempt in front of four independent witnesses at her owner Ruth Adams’ home in Northampton.

Smokey was tested by a music expert from Northampton College who found her purr reached 73 decibels – 16 times louder than the average cat.

The evidence will now be submitted to the Guinness Book of Records for verification.

Mrs Adams said: “Guinness has very strict criteria and the college has been very helpful in supplying the specialist recording equipment needed to measure Smokey’s purr and for arranging the official witnesses.

via BBC News – Noisy cat hits purr-fect pitch in world record bid.

>Virus-eating virus identified in Antarctic lake

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Deep within the waters of Antarctica’s Organic Lake an Australian research team, led by microbiologist Ricardo Cavicchioli from the University of New South Wales, have discovered a new virophage, or virus eater. Their findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

The new virophage was discovered by graduate student Sheree Yau and given the name Organic Lake Virophage, or OLV. The new virophage was identified when she noticed that sequences in the protein shell from the lake were similar to a previously discovered virophage named Sputnik.

Sputnik, which was first discovered in the water-cooling tower in Paris in 2008, was the first virophage ever identified. Earlier this month, Matthias Fischer and Curtis Suttle announced the discovery of a second virophage known as Mavirus.

The discovery of OLV makes this only the third virophage, though there is evidence of sequence matches to OLV in numerous other locations including the nearby Ace Lake. However, the other matches span the globe, including a lagoon in the Galapagos Islands, a bay in New Jersey, and a freshwater lake in Panama.

Virophages, which are known as virus eaters, attack other viruses, as is the case with the first virophage, Sputnik. Unable to multiply within a host, virophages rely on hosts infected with other viruses. In the case of Sputnik, it was an amoeba infected with a mamavirus. Sputnik would essentially take over the replication process of the mamavirus. Because of this takeover, the mamavirus is unable to produce properly, thus reducing its ability to infect the amoeba.

The new OLV genome was discovered within the sequences of phycodnaviruses. Phycodnaviruses are a group of large viruses that attack algae. The OLV targets these phycodnaviruses, allowing the algae in the lake to survive and bloom during the summer months. …

via Virus-eating virus identified in Antarctic lake.

>Virus-eating virus identified in Antarctic lake

>

Deep within the waters of Antarctica’s Organic Lake an Australian research team, led by microbiologist Ricardo Cavicchioli from the University of New South Wales, have discovered a new virophage, or virus eater. Their findings were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

The new virophage was discovered by graduate student Sheree Yau and given the name Organic Lake Virophage, or OLV. The new virophage was identified when she noticed that sequences in the protein shell from the lake were similar to a previously discovered virophage named Sputnik.

Sputnik, which was first discovered in the water-cooling tower in Paris in 2008, was the first virophage ever identified. Earlier this month, Matthias Fischer and Curtis Suttle announced the discovery of a second virophage known as Mavirus.

The discovery of OLV makes this only the third virophage, though there is evidence of sequence matches to OLV in numerous other locations including the nearby Ace Lake. However, the other matches span the globe, including a lagoon in the Galapagos Islands, a bay in New Jersey, and a freshwater lake in Panama.

Virophages, which are known as virus eaters, attack other viruses, as is the case with the first virophage, Sputnik. Unable to multiply within a host, virophages rely on hosts infected with other viruses. In the case of Sputnik, it was an amoeba infected with a mamavirus. Sputnik would essentially take over the replication process of the mamavirus. Because of this takeover, the mamavirus is unable to produce properly, thus reducing its ability to infect the amoeba.

The new OLV genome was discovered within the sequences of phycodnaviruses. Phycodnaviruses are a group of large viruses that attack algae. The OLV targets these phycodnaviruses, allowing the algae in the lake to survive and bloom during the summer months. …

via Virus-eating virus identified in Antarctic lake.

>Has Black Hole wiped out all alien life?

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A phenomenon known as a white dwarf hypernova could have sucked alien life into a black hole.

Scientists have been long baffled how despite years of searching there has been no evidence of life beyond our planet.

But now some astronomers believe the answer may lie in the destructive force of exploding stars – and claim ET (extraterrestrial) may simply have been wiped out.

Hypernovas are essentially massive supernovas, or giant exploding stars, with a mass of between 100 and 300 times that of the sun.

And because this process, when an exceptionally large white dwarf star, a collapsed remnant of an elderly star, becomes unstable and explodes, has occurred several times over millions of years, it is possible that life may have wiped out more than once, the Daily Mail reports.

Scientists also believe there is a possibility that life on earth too could be wiped out by the process of gamma ray bursts. Intense gamma radiation produces nitrous oxides that could perhaps destroy the ozone layer.

They call the lack of evidence of alien life the ‘Great Silence’. …

via Has Black Hole wiped out all alien life?.

>Has Black Hole wiped out all alien life?

>

A phenomenon known as a white dwarf hypernova could have sucked alien life into a black hole.

Scientists have been long baffled how despite years of searching there has been no evidence of life beyond our planet.

But now some astronomers believe the answer may lie in the destructive force of exploding stars – and claim ET (extraterrestrial) may simply have been wiped out.

Hypernovas are essentially massive supernovas, or giant exploding stars, with a mass of between 100 and 300 times that of the sun.

And because this process, when an exceptionally large white dwarf star, a collapsed remnant of an elderly star, becomes unstable and explodes, has occurred several times over millions of years, it is possible that life may have wiped out more than once, the Daily Mail reports.

Scientists also believe there is a possibility that life on earth too could be wiped out by the process of gamma ray bursts. Intense gamma radiation produces nitrous oxides that could perhaps destroy the ozone layer.

They call the lack of evidence of alien life the ‘Great Silence’. …

via Has Black Hole wiped out all alien life?.

>Broken Heart Burns Like Hot Coffee, Brain Study of Former Lovers Shows

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Elizabeth Lopatto – Heartache over lost love is similar to the physical pain of spilling hot coffee on your lap, scientists studying brain scans say.

The sting of seeing photos of an ex-lover stimulated the same parts of the brain as intense heat applied to the arms of 40 people in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research builds on a 2010 study published in the journal Psychological Science that showed people who took the painkiller acetaminophen, sold by Johnson & Johnson as Tylenol, felt less rejected when excluded from a ball-passing game. While rejection and physical pain aren’t identical, they are more similar than anyone had realized, said Edward Smith, a psychology professor at Columbia University in New York and an author of today’s study.

“There may be something special about rejection,” Smith said in a telephone interview. “No other negative emotion, not anger and not fear, elicits reactions in the pain matrix of the brain.”

The brain scans showed involvement of the secondary somatosensory cortex, which processes types of sensations including light touch, pain, pressure and temperature. Also activated in both rejection and physical pain was the dorsal posterior insula, which senses temperature.

Participants were shown photographs of a former partner who dumped them and of a friend who was the same sex as their former partner. Then heat was applied to elicit a burning feeling on their left arms and, in a separate application, a warm stimulation. Patients rated how they felt after each trial on a distress scale, and underwent fMRI brain scans. The warmth and the friend served as controls.

“Spilling a hot cup of coffee on yourself and thinking about how rejected you feel when you look at the picture of a person that you recently experienced an unwanted breakup with may seem to elicit very different types of pain,” said Ethan Kross, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan and the article’s lead author, in a statement. “But this research shows that they may be even more similar than initially thought.”

via Broken Heart Burns Like Hot Coffee, Brain Study of Former Lovers Shows – Bloomberg.

>The secret sex life of the Amoeba

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After taking a second look at the tree of life, researchers are rethinking the asexuality of amoebas, considered the epitome of chastity. They now have evidence of amoeboid sex lives, suggesting the act didn’t evolve, it has always been there.

Amoebas are blob-like creatures about a billion years old ­— the oldest members of the domain of life called the eukaryotes. This group is fundamentally different in appearance and various other features from the two other domains of life. Amoeba species are spread throughout this tree on every branch, interspersed with familiar lineages like animals and plants. They are known for how they move, slowly extending foot-like portions of their cell membranes.

“It changes how we interpret the evolution of organisms,” study researcher Daniel Lahr, of the University of Massachusetts, told LiveScience. “If the last common ancestor of eukaryotes was sexual, then there is in practice no evolution of sex.”

By taking a sweeping look at what we know about them by searching through the scientific literature, the researchers say those amoebas are more sexually active than we think.

“When discussing the sex of amoeboid protists, the existing evidence does not evoke chastity but rather Kama Sutra,” Lahr writes in the paper, published in the March 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.  …

Amoeba sex might have been missed because when grown in the lab, many of them don’t show any signs of engaging in sex — they have the ability to reproduce themselves by cloning, or copying themselves, indefinitely. And when they did show signs of sex, researchers may have mistaken it for a rare exception to the no-sex rule. …

via Amoebas: Sexier than anyone knew – Technology & science – Science – LiveScience – msnbc.com.