Student Googles himself, 

finds he's accused of murder

 

GAINESVILLE, Florida -- A University of Florida student is relieved to know deputies aren't searching for him...but he's still in shock that the Polk County Sheriff's Office erroneously released his photo in connection to a September murder.

Investigators originally released a driver's license photo of Zachary Garcia -- spelled with an "A" -- but it was Zachery Garcia -- spelled with an "E" -- who was charged in connection with the crime.

On September 23, authorities say two teenaged boys broke into a home in Davenport, while two other teens waited outside. One of the homeowners, Jose Oyola-Aponte, was able to grab his gun and shot one of the burglars, 15-year-old Otilio Rubio. He later died.

Because the death occured during commission of a felony, all three surviving teens were charged with murder.

UF student Zachary Garcia learned about the error after searching for his name on Google.com.

"I was just very shocked to find my picture and the article saying that I was convicted of a felony murder charge," he said, "and I was just very shocked and angry that someone put my name up there and said I did something I didn't do."

"Everybody makes mistakes," Garcia added. "I work at Publix and I might get somebody's sub (order) wrong. But for somebody to get (the photo of a suspect) wrong...it's not a sandwich, it's somebody's life you're playing with."

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The Food Crisis Of 2011

 

Every month, JPMorgan Chase dispatches a researcher to several supermarkets in Virginia. The task is to comparison shop for 31 items.

In July, the firm’s personal shopper came back with a stunning report: Wal-Mart had raised its prices 5.8% during the previous month. More significantly, its prices were approaching the levels of competing stores run by Kroger and Safeway. The “low-price leader” still holds its title, but by a noticeably slimmer margin.

 

Within this tale lie several lessons you can put to work to make money. And it’s best to get started soon, because if you think your grocery bill is already high, you ain’t seen nothing yet. In fact, we could be just one supply shock away from a full-blown food crisis that would make the price spikes of 2008 look like a happy memory.

Fact is,  the food crisis of 2008 never really went away.

True, food riots didn’t break out in poor countries during 2009 and warehouse stores like Costco didn’t ration 20-pound bags of rice…but supply remained tight.

Prices for basic foodstuffs like corn and wheat remain below their 2008 highs. But they’re a lot higher than they were before “the food crisis of 2008” took hold. Here’s what’s happened to some key farm commodities so far in 2010…

• Corn: Up 63%
• Wheat: Up 84%
• Soybeans: Up 24%
• Sugar: Up 55%

What was a slow and steady increase much of the year has gone into overdrive since late summer. Blame it on two factors…

• Aug. 5: A failed wheat harvest prompted Russia to ban grain exports through the end of the year. Later in August, the ban was extended through the end of 2011. Drought has wrecked the harvest in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan – home to a quarter of world production

• Oct. 8: For a second month running, the Agriculture Department cut its forecast for US corn production. The USDA predicts a 3.4% decline from last year. Damage done by Midwestern floods in June was made worse by hot, dry weather in August.

America’s been blessed with year after year of “record harvests,” depending on how you measure it. So when crisis hits elsewhere in the world, the burden of keeping the world fed falls on America’s shoulders.

According to Soren Schroder, CEO of the food conglomerate Bunge North America, US grain production has filled critical gaps in world supply three times in the last five years, including this summer…

• In 2010, when drought hit Russian wheat
• In 2009, when drought hit Argentine soybeans
• In 2007–08, when drought hit Australian wheat

So what happens when those “record harvests” no longer materialize?

In September, the US Department of Agriculture estimated that global grain “carryover stocks” – the amount in the world’s silos and stockpiles when the next harvest begins – totaled 432 million tons.

That translates to 70 days of consumption. A month earlier, it was 71 days. The month before that, 72. At this rate, come next spring, we’ll be down to just 64 days – the figure reached in 2007 that touched off the food crisis of 2008.

But what happens if the U.S. scenario is worse than a “nonrecord” harvest? What if there’s a Russia-scale crop failure here at home?

 “When we have the first serious crop failure, which will happen,” says farm commodity expert Don Coxe, “we will then have a full-blown food crisis” – one far worse than 2008.

Coxe has studied the sector for more than 35 years as a strategist for BMO Financial Group. He says it didn’t have to come to this. “We’ve got a situation where there has been no incentive to allocate significant new capital to agriculture or to develop new technologies to dramatically expand crop output.”

“We’ve got complacency,” he sums up. “So for those reasons, I believe the next food crisis – when it comes – will be a bigger shock than $150 oil.”

A recent report from HSBC isn’t quite so alarming…unless you read between the lines. “World agricultural markets,” it says, “have become so finely balanced between supply and demand that local disruptions can have a major impact on the global prices of the affected commodities and then reverberate throughout the entire food chain.”

That was the story in 2008. It’s becoming the story again now. It may go away in a few weeks or a few months. But it won’t go away for good. It’ll keep coming back…for decades.

There’s nothing you or I can do to change it. So we might as well “hedge” our rising food costs by investing in the very commodities whose prices are rising now…and will keep rising for years to come.

“While investor eyes are focused on the gold price as it touches new highs,” reads a report from Japan’s Nomura Securities, “the acceleration in global food price is unrestrained. We continue to believe that soft commodities will outperform base and precious metals in the future.”

So how do you do it? As recently as 2006, the only way Main Street investors could play the trend was to buy commodity futures. It was complicated. It involved swimming in the same pool with the trading desks of the big commercial banks. And it usually involved buying on margin – that is, borrowing money from the brokerage. If the market went against you, you’d lose even more than your initial investment.

Nowadays, an exchange-traded fund can do the heavy lifting for you, no margin required. The name of the fund is the PowerShares DB Agriculture ETF (DBA).

There are at least a half-dozen ETFs that aim to profit when grain prices rise. We like DBA the best because it’s easy to understand. It’s based on the performance of the Deutsche Bank Agriculture Index, which is composed of the following:

• Corn 12.5%
• Soybeans 12.5%
• Wheat 12.5%
• Sugar 12.5%
• Cocoa 11.1%
• Coffee 11.1%
• Cotton 2.8%
• Live Cattle 12.5%
• Feeder Cattle 4.2%
• Lean Hogs 8.3%

So you have a mix here of 50% America’s staple crops of corn, beans, wheat and sugar…25% beef and pork…and 25% cocoa, coffee and cotton. It might not be a balanced diet (especially the cotton), but it makes for a good balance of assets within your first foray into “ag” investing.

The meat weighting in here looks especially attractive compared to some of DBA’s competitors, which are more geared to the grains. It takes about six months for higher grain prices to translate to higher cattle and hog prices.

You can capture that potential upside right now…and you’ll be glad you did when you sit down to a good steak dinner a few months down the line. After all, it’s going to cost you more.

o

High-Tech 

Credit Card Thieves

  RFID, Radio Frequency Identification, is the technology that lets you simply wave your credit card, passport or license in front of a nearby scanner instead of having to slide the magnectic stripe through it. It’s a fairly simple concept. The electronic scanner sends a signal which is received by an antenna embedded into the card, which is connected to the card's RFID chip, thus activating it.

 

RFID and Card Calling and Sinking

The RFID chip in a credit card emits the account number, expiration data and other information.

Just like a submarine uses sonar to seek out a ship it’s trying to sink, the criminals send a radio signal or “ping” from a standard checkout contactless card reader purchased online for under $100. The victim’s credit cards’ antennae automatically answer the call by providing their card information. The criminal then uses this card information to make purchases, thereby “sinking the card.”

About 100 million credit cards now have this technology embedded into them. However, over the next 2-3 years, it is expected that credit card issuers will replace every single magnetic stripe credit and debit card with a new contactless smartcard, and why shouldn't they? The new cards seem to make it all easier. So much easier that some folks are reading your credit cards before you even take them out of your wallet.

Those folks are called identity thieves, and the unfortunate truth is that RFID technology has made identity theft quite literally a stroll in the park. Where credit card "Skimming" used to require the thief to get his hands on your card, acquiring your personal data is now as easy as passing you on the street. 

RFID readers

Readers are employed by convenience stores, pharmacies, restaurants, fast food markets, and many other places of business. Credit card companies say it keeps your identity safer, because your card is never in the hands of a stranger. Readers include safety features to keep your data from being intercepted once it has been read from your card.

However, these same readers can be freely purchased and attached to a laptop with very little technical knowledge required. They’ve even created cell phones with built in card readers that can steal your information. How many times have you walked by someone carrying a briefcase? Would you even be suspicious? By simply walking past you, this person acquires your credit card number, expiration date and more to do with what he pleases.

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School Bans Christmas Colors?

A school in Florida has not only banned Christmas - but everything associated with the Christian holiday.

Teachers at Heathrow Elementary School have been ordered to banish images of Santa Claus from classrooms - along with traditional Christmas colors like red and green.

"You can't use red and green," one outraged parent told WESH. "It's ridiculous."

The parent, who serves as a volunteer room mother, said she was recently given a list of guidelines that listed the holiday restrictions.

She said the basic theme of the letter was, "We don't want to offend anyone who doesn't believe in Santa Claus or the Christian beliefs."

  This is insanity. The color red is banned from a Florida school. Green too. Apparently, those colors are too closely associated with Christmas according to militant anti-Christians. The reason? “So that "nobody gets offended." Well guess what - this is offensive to all Christians, and this is a predominantly Christian country. But that's the whole point, isn't it now 

A school in Florida has not only banned Christmas – but everything associated with the Christian holiday.


Teachers at Heathrow Elementary School have been ordered to banish images of Santa Claus from classrooms – along with traditional Christmas colors like red and green.


“You can’t use red and green,” one outraged parent told WESH. “It’s ridiculous.”


The parent, who serves as a volunteer room mother, said she was recently given a list of guidelines that listed the holiday restrictions.


She said the basic theme of the letter was, “We don’t want to offend anyone who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus or the Christian beliefs.”

o

While TSA here in the states is giving the elderly and cancer survivors a colonoscopy to get on planes while ignoring those they should be patting down in the name of political correctness, Canada is ahead of the game in that regard. They are literally letting anyone veiled onto planes without nary a question. This is pretty recent news from Homeland Security Newswire:

Canadian airport security personnel do not ask veiled Muslims women to lift their veils, show and ID, and prove their identity; the veiled women do not even interact with security personnel: rather, a man traveling with the women typically hands in all the passports and is the only one to communicate with airline staff while the veiled women simply walk through, unchecked and unidentified; a video showing two veiled women walking unchecked through security at Montreal's Trudeau International Airport causes outrage in Canada

...The Toronto Sun’s Brian Lilley and Bryn Weese write that neither airlines nor security services are asking Muslim women to lift their veils and prove that the face beneath matches their photo ID.

The issue came to light through a video taken by Mick Flynn of Bradford, England. Flynn was boarding a flight at Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport when he witnessed two women with their faces covered board an Air Canada Heathrow-bound flight without being asked to remove their veils.

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Not Cool Say Some About 

S.F.’s Sit-Lie Law

 
A new law targeting those who hang out, and lie down, on the sidewalks and streets of San Francisco has some asking whether this city, known for its "love thy neighbor" attitude, has perhaps decided some neighbors aren't welcome.

In November, 53% of voters here passed Prop. L, which forbids people from sitting or lying on public sidewalks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. The ordinance is very similar to anti-sit/lie laws in Berkeley, Seattle, and other liberal cities, and received strong support from Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief George Gascon.

After civil rights advocates and the progressive majority on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors opposed the idea, Mayor Newsom pushed to get it on the ballot.

Critics like Andy Blue call it cruel and heartless, words not normally directed at "The City by the Bay."

"If we're only going to embrace certain people than not only will we make San Francisco a less vibrant and progressive place, but we will cease to be that beacon for the world, and the world needs San Francisco," says Blue, a community activist.

Residents argue the violent transients and their dogs have nothing to do with the iconic street culture for which the Haight-Ashbury District is known.

"There's a difference between an individual that's contributing to the society and being part of the cultural fabric of a neighborhood, versus an individual that is sitting on the street with their very scary dog, to the point that I am scared to walk down the Haight with my family," says resident Kathleen Shanahan.

But critics say cracking down on the sidewalk gatherings will alter the neighborhood's unique character, and cause the city to suffer more economically.

Under the new sit-lie law, people could face fines and arrest if they don't move along, after being warned by police. The ordinance takes affect in January. Critics vow to challenge it in court, even as supporters say they hope it's strictly enforced.

o

Bank of America 

may be the next target of a cache of Wikileaks documents.

Earlier this week, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that he planned to release tens of thousands of documents on one of the largest banks in the U.S. The documents would reveal unethical behavior at the bank that would likely prompt official investigations and reforms, Assange said.

Assange refused to reveal which bank was the source of the documents.

But in an interview last year, Assange said Wikileaks had acquired a huge cache of documents on Bank of America.  

"At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive's hard drives," he said. "Now how do we present that? It's a difficult problem. We could just dump it all into one giant Zip file, but we know for a fact that has limited impact. To have impact, it needs to be easy for people to dive in and search it and get something out of it."

That interview did not gain much notice at the time, in part because it was given to Computer World rather than the financial press. But now it has been picked up by Sahil Kapur at the Raw Story and Ryan McCarthy, the business editor at Huffington Post. We expect it's about to get a lot of attention.
 
Bank of America sounds skeptical of Assange's claims. "More than a year ago WikiLeaks claimed to have the computer hard drive of a Bank of America executive. Aside from the claims themselves, we have no evidence that supports this assertion. We are unaware of any new claims by WikiLeaks that pertain specifically to Bank of America, " said a spokesman for the bank.

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Interpol issues arrest warrant 

for Julian Assange 

 

Interpol, the international police organisation, has issued an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, as the activist website continued its US diplomatic cables leaks today.

The Australian was added to the organisation's "wanted" list for alleged sex crimes committed in Sweden this year.

He is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion, after an investigation by Swedish prosecutors into his encounters with two women in Sweden in August.

Wanted ... Julian Assange. Photo: Reuters

The arrest warrant, called a "Red Notice", is "not an international arrest warrant" but means Mr Assange could be arrested and extradited to Sweden from any country if local authorities act on it.

"Many of INTERPOL's member countries consider a Red Notice to be a valid request for provisional arrest," Interpol said on its website.

Mr Assange, 39, is currently contesting the warrant in a Swedish appeals court.

He has denied the accusations, with his British lawyer Mark Stephens saying last month that they were "false and without basis".

The Sydney Morning Herald

 

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WikiLeaks under new 

cyber attack

 

 Whistleblower website WikiLeaks on Tuesday claimed to be the victim of a fresh cyber attack, just days after it made public more than 250,000 confidential U.S. cables.

Information about the attack appeared on the twitter account of WikiLeaks.

"We are currently under another DDOS attack," the whistleblower told its followers.

Ahead of the release of the secret cables on Sunday, WikiLeaks also experienced a cyber attack, however it was soon repelled.

The current attack is much more powerful than the previous one. "DDOS attack now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second," WikiLeak's twitter read.

The main suspect in the leak of the documents, along with the previous logs, is jailed U.S. Private Bradley Manning, who had top-secret clearance as an intelligence analyst for the Army when he was stationed in Iraq.

Pentagon investigators believe Manning accessed a worldwide military classified Internet and e-mail system to download the documents.

Manning was charged in June with several violations of the U.S. Criminal Code for allegedly transferring classified data without authorization.

The WikiLeaks website does not have a central office or any paid staff and its operations are run only by a small dedicated team and some 800 volunteers.

Wikileaks' founder, Australian activist Julian Assange, has no home address but he often pops up in Sweden and Iceland, where Internet anonymity is protected by law. He is being hunted by Pentagon investigators and is suspected of releasing confidential U.S. State Department documents.

MOSCOW, November 30 (RIA Novosti)

 

 

 

 

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Patriotic 'Hacktivist' Claims 

He Took Down Wikileaks Site

 

Hacker-Activist 'The Jester' Says He Attacks Jihadist Websites Trying to Recruit Young Muslims 

 A computer hacker is claiming he temporarily disabled the Wikileaks site Sunday afternoon, right as the latest dump of leaked State Department memos were scheduled to publish on the site.The site was down temporarily on Sunday, the same time the hacker began tweeting he had begun attacking it.

"www.wikileaks.org - TANGO DOWN - for attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, 'other assets' & foreign relations," he tweeted late Sunday morning.

"Tango down" is a special forces military term for having eliminated a terrorist.

He goes by the Twitter handle "th3j35t3r", which is leetspeak for "The Jester."

On his website, th3j35t3r calls himself a "hacktivist for good." A "hacktivist" -- a hacker-activist, supposedly hacks for a good cause. His cause is preventing young people from being recruited online by jihadists. He does this by hacking jihadist websites, and temporarily disabling them. 

"PS for me personally WL is a sideshow target, I am more interested in the big jihad recruiting and training sites," he said Sunday in a direct message to ABC News via Twitter, referring to hacking the Wikileaks website.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer of global information technology security software vendor F-Secure, said today that he's familiar with The Jester.

"I don't know this guy, I've never met this guy, I've been running into his attacks because he is fairly visible unlike other attackers, because he documents his attacks, runs his own blog, also tries to explain his motives and reasoning behind the attack," he said. "I've only seen him do denial of service attacks."

Hypponen said today that there's no proof that The Jester is behind the Wikileaks attack. "But he's demonstrated the capability to do an attack like this. He seems to have the motive against Wikileaks, and he claims he did it. I don't think there is much reason to doubt that it was him."

"Wikileaks is being attacked right now, starting three hours ago, and The Jester is being silent so we don't know if the attacks are being done by him or someone else." ABC News conducted an exclusive interview online with a person calling himself The Jester last month, during which he revealed details of how he takes down sites, and why he does it.

He says the reason he takes down jihadist websites is "multi-fold."

"big thing is the fact that we waste billions on troops risking their lives in the field (hats off)" he writes.

"but the real threat now is the way they can radicalize 'normal' muslims into doing awful stuff on their own countries ground?.." he continues, "they can groom. recruit, train, and manourvre, home grown terrorists without ever having to meet them."

He says his aim was "initially to make those sites sporadically unavailable," yet he did not want to tread on the toes of countries' secret services. He says he used an attack tool he developed, "XerXeS", which will "pull down a site at will." 

o

 

 

Google Earth 6 Adds Millions of 3D Trees and Better Street View Integration

 

Today Google introducing the latest version of Google Earth, our interactive digital atlas. Now you can explore your childhood home, visit distant lands or scope out your next vacation spot with even more realistic tools.

In Google Earth 6, we’re taking realism in the virtual globe to the next level with two new features: a truly integrated Street View experience and 3D trees. We’ve also made it even easier to browse historical imagery. Over the next several days, we’ll be digging deeper into these great new features, but here’s an overview to whet your appetite.

Integrated Street View

When Google Earth was first introduced, people were wowed by the ability to virtually fly from outer space right down to the roof of their house. While flying over rooftops gives you a super-human view of our world, the ground level is where we experience our daily lives. We took our first baby steps toward bringing the Google Earth experience to street level with our implementation of Street View in Google Earth in 2008, which enabled flying into Street View panoramas. In Google Earth 6, the Street View experience is now fully integrated, so you can journey from outer space right to your doorstep in one seamless flight.

Now, you’ll notice that Pegman is docked right alongside the navigation controls—an ever-present travel companion ready whenever you want to get your feet on the street and take a virtual walk around. Just pick up Pegman and drop him wherever you see a highlighted blue road to fly right down to the ground. Once there, you can use the navigation controls or your mouse to look around. And unlike our earlier Street View layer, you can now move seamlessly from one location to another as if you’re walking down the street by using the scroll-wheel on your mouse or the arrow keys on your keyboard. If you want to visit somewhere farther away, simply click the “exit” button and you’ll immediately return to an aerial view where you can easily fly to your next destination.

Drag and drop Pegman to enter Street View. The blue lines indicate where Street View imagery is available.

3D trees

I think we can all agree that our planet without trees would be a pretty desolate place. Besides the ever-important task of providing us with the oxygen we breathe, trees are an integral part of the landscape around us. In Google Earth, while we and our users have been busy populating the globe with many thousands of 3D building models, trees have been rather hard to come by. All that is changing with Google Earth 6, which includes beautifully detailed, 3D models for dozens of species of trees, from the Japanese Maple to the East African Cordia to my personal favorite, the cacao tree. While we’ve just gotten started planting trees in Google Earth, we already have more than 80 million trees in places such as Athens, Berlin, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Tokyo. Through our Google Earth Outreach program, we’ve also been working with organizations including the Green Belt Movement in Africa, the Amazon Conservation Team in Brazil and CONABIO in Mexico to model our planet’s threatened forests.

To enjoy these leafy additions to Google Earth, make sure you turn on the 3D buildings layer on the left side panel. As a starting point, try a search for “Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco.” Once you arrive at your destination, click the zoom slider. You’ll then be taken down to the ground where you can use our new ground-level navigation to walk among the trees.

3D trees in San Francisco, California

Easy-to-use historical imagery
One of the features people told us they liked best in Google Earth 5 was the availability of historical imagery, which enables you to visually go back in time to see such things as Warsaw in 1935, London in 1945, and Port-au-Prince Haiti before and after the devastating earthquake of January 2010. But it wasn’t always obvious when historical imagery was available for a particular place, making this feature one of Google Earth’s lesser-known gems.

So with this new version, we’ve made it very easy to discover historical imagery. When you fly to an area where historical imagery is available, the date of the oldest imagery will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. If you click on this date, you’ll instantly be taken back in time to view imagery from that time period. You can then browse through all the historical imagery available for that location, or simply close the time control and return to the default view. 

The site of Google's Mountain View campus in 1948

 To download Google Earth 6, or to see videos of our newest features, visit http://earth.google.com.

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager

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Don’t Supersize Me!

Via: Registered Nurse

o

 

Surprise: 90% of students admit to texting in class, 50% say no one notices them do it

 

 

A recent survey of 269 students from Wilkes University in Pennsylvania has turned up some results that you and I might not find too surprising, but will probably send parents up the wall. Roughly nine in ten students admitted to sending text messages during class and half of those say it’s incredibly easy to do without getting noticed. They don’t even need to look at the screen. But wait, it gets worse: 10% of students say that they’ve texted during exams and 3% have admitted to cheating using their mobile phone. These are the kids who had the courage to answer truthfully, so that figure may be even higher. When the same set of students were asked whether or not they think they should be allowed to have their devices in class, 62% said they should be allowed to SMS as long as it isn’t causing a distraction. Shockingly 25% said they’d rather not have texters around them because it creates a distraction.

“There are people who can text and still be focused on class,” said Dan Kautz, a senior at the University. “If my roommate is short on quarters for laundry and wants to borrow some, of course I’m going to want to text him back right away and not hold him back for 40 minutes.” Poor roommate, 40 whole minutes! Later he added: “I know some people will sit there for the entire class just typing away, I don’t even know why they bother coming.”

This is what happens when your parents pay for you education and you have no idea how much money is really worth. I’m all for issuing bans on technology in the classroom. For all the good that technology gives us, it’s the old method of learning that teaches us the discipline needed to focus for long periods of time. Being in touch during all hours isn’t really that important … now we just need to convince these damn young kids of that.

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Roxi Copland- I'll be groped for Christmas (TSA Edition)

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STARTLING REPORT! 

Experts: Missile was CHINESE - President KNEW IT. Systems Failed. Cover-up! 

 

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Angry Birds Christmas to be free upgrade to Halloween edition

Rovio: Over 7 Million People Helping Those Angry Birds Out on Android; Christmas Update Coming

Rovio’s been fielding questions on their Twitter account from users in a conversation that went from inquiries about a Christmas add-on to why Angry Birds is free on Android and not on other platforms. Firstly, yes: there will be an update for Android (as well as other platforms) come Christmas time. (Here’s the tweet they responded to the question with.) Many were asking about it because Android was left out of the Halloween update (even though we received a whole new set of levels for free around the same time.)

And when asked why they offer free downloads on Android, they responded “because it’s the Google way.” One user wasn’t having that though: not all games on Android are free. Rovio came back with a very interesting stat, however:

Wait, what? It’s only been a month and a half since the popular game was released on Android and it’s already reached 7 million downloads. (We assume these are numbers from GetJar and the Market combined.) I don’t even want to begin thinking about how much money they’re making from ads, but something tells me they’re quite pleased with how this little experiment has turned out.

As we still experience growing pains in the Android market and as developers try to find more ways to make money, we’ll continue to see freemium and ad-supported models favored over paid downloads. If any developers were toying around with the idea of an ad-supported game, Rovio’s achievements should do well to convince you that it’s worth a shot.

 Rovio’s twitter account is an excellent place to find the latest and greatest news about Angry Birds. Unlike many companies that keep information under wraps and use Twitter as a one-way marketing conversation, Rovio is up front about its future product plans and is engaged in conversation with its followers.

The latest series of tweets confirms that Angry Birds is popular among Android fans, all 7 million of them. When the popular mobile game debuted on Android last month, GetJar went belly up for several hours due to unexpectedly high demand. Demand was so great that Rovio was forced to launch the game in the Android Market earlier than planned.

On its rocky first day of availability, Rovio logged an impressive one million downloads of Angry Birds and demand for this game  has continued to grow. In the six weeks after launch, Angry Birds has now been downloaded more than 7 million times to Android handsets. While impressive, this 7M figure does trail the 10 million paid downloads attributed to iOS. Across all platforms and versions, Angry Birds has been downloaded a staggering 30 million times. That, my friends, is a lot of Angry Birds.

Rovio has taken notice of these 7 million users and has confirmed that Android will receive a special Christmas version of the popular mobile game. This is good news for fans of Google’s mobile OS as Rovio previously left the mobile platform in the dust when it released its iOS-only Halloween edition of Angry Birds. A release date for this Christmas edition was not given but Rovio hinted that it would arrive “any day now”.

 Via Twitter

 

 

 

 

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This Cheetah Had A Shitty Day                  And Is Pissed Off

 

 

I think there are some days where we all feel like Kekay. I guess if someone were snooping around my house in some weird vehicle, with cameras and such I would behave in the exact same manner. Good job for her to just let it out and exact her revenge. It’s gonna be tough to get that smell out for sure.

o

Senators: 

Prosecute the WikiLeakers

Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) slammed international whistleblower WikiLeaks on Sunday, ahead of a reported data dump that opponents say could damage U.S. diplomatic efforts around the world.

“Leaking the material is deplorable,” Graham told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday."

“The people at WikiLeaks could have blood on their hands,” he said, before admitting he wasn’t sure how the dump would affect the country’s strategic negotiations abroad.

“I don’t know what the cables may say, but we’re at war," Graham said. "The world is getting dangerous by the day. People who do this are low on the food chain as far as I’m concerned. If you can prosecute them, let’s try.”

McCaskill agreed, saying “the people who do these document leaks need to do a gut check about their patriotism.”

“I hope we can find out where this is coming from and go after them with the force of law,” McCaskill said.

 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should review whether Wikileaks can be declared a terrorist organization, according to a senior Republican.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, called for U.S. officials to get aggressive against Wikileaks after the website published highly-sensitive, classified diplomatic cables that reveal frank assessments of foreign leaders and the war on terror.

“I am calling on the attorney general and supporting his efforts to fully prosecute Wikileaks and its founder for violating the Espionage Act. And I’m also calling on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to declare Wikileaks a foreign terrorist organization,” King said on WNIS radio on Sunday evening.

“By doing that, we will be able to seize their funds and go after anyone who provides them help or contributions or assistance whatsoever,” he said. “To me, they are a clear and present danger to America.”

Wikileaks has released thousands of cables that reveal embarrassing comments about foreign leaders and U.S. operations abroad. The White House and Clinton have been forced to conduct an outreach campaign to smooth the waters.

The Obama administration hasn’t taken legal action against Wikileaks, but has condemned the release in the harshest terms. But the clamor for legal action by lawmakers in both parties increased the pressure for prosecution based on the leaks. 

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Rep. King on NBC "Today" on WikiLeaks release of classified documents

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Eric Holder 

on WikiLeaks Release

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What’s it all about?

Read it for yourself

@Wikileaks web site

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/

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Wonder where WikiLeaks come from;

this is their underground server room

Bahnhof ISP  in Stockholm is hosting 

Wikileaks servers.

The spectacular server hall is located 

in a nuclear bomb shelter built during 

cold war under 30 meters or 98

feet of mountain rock.

A REAL MUST SEE

Please use FULLscreen button for better experience !

CLICK HERE

http://www.fotograf.nu/360/bahnhof/

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Julian Assange: 

Why the world needs WikiLeaks 

 

The controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who's reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED's Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished -- and what drives him. The interview includes graphic footage of a recent US airstrike in Baghdad

 

Internet activist Julian Assange serves as spokesperson for WikiLeaks, a controversial, volunteer-driven website that publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct.

Why you should listen to him: 

 

You could say Australian-born Julian Assange has swapped his long-time interest in network security flaws for the far-more-suspect flaws of even bigger targets: governments and corporations. Since his early 20s, he has been using network technology to prod and probe the vulnerable edges of administrative systems, but though he was a computing hobbyist first (in 1991 he was the target of hacking charges after he accessed the computers of an Australian telecom), he's now taken off his "white hat" and launched a career as one of the world's most visible human-rights activists.

He calls himself "editor in chief." He travels the globe as its spokesperson. Yet Assange's part in WikiLeaks is clearly dicier than that: he's become the face of creature that, simply, many powerful organizations would rather see the world rid of. His Wikipedia entry says he is "constantly on the move," and some speculate that his role in publishing decrypted US military video has put him in personal danger. A controversial figure, pundits debate whether his work is reckless and does more harm than good. Amnesty International recognized him with an International Media Award in 2009.

Assange studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne. He wrote Strobe, the first free and open-source port scanner, and contributed to the book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier.

"WikiLeaks has had more scoops in three years than the Washington Post has had in 30."

Clay Shirky

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