The Beatles: Rock Band intro (Cinematic Trailer – Animated Promo) HD

Exposed: the PC repair shops that rifle through your photos and passwords

When Sky News launched an undercover investigation into PC repair shops, it turned to PC Pro readers for help with identifying rogue traders. As a result, Sky’s cameras caught technicians scouring through private photos, stealing passwords and over-charging for basic repairs. Here is what they found How many technicians does it take to fix a laptop? Just one, but if you know where to find him, please let us know.

We’d heard there were serious problems with computer repair shops: faults misdiagnosed, overcharging for work and data deleted. So we put them to the test in order to find out why customers were getting such a raw deal and who the culprits were.

The exercise was simple. Create a simple fault on a laptop, load it with spy software, take it into several repair shops, then sit back and see what happened. Would they arrive at the same diagnosis and charge us a fair price to fix it?

First, Sky News engineers installed professional spy software on a new laptop. Spector Pro was programmed to load on start-up and silently record every ‘event’ that took place. If the mouse was moved, a folder opened or a file looked at, we would know about it. Every event would also trigger a screen snapshot to be taken.

We also installed Digiwatcher. This devious little tool auto-runs on start-up and quietly tells any connected webcam to secretly film whoever is at the machine. The process is invisible and the video file is hidden on the hard drive and password protected.

We then filled the hard drive with the sort of data anyone might have on their PC: holiday photos, curriculum vitae, MP3s, Word documents and log-in details. Our laptop now looked just like any other.

To create the fault, we simply loosened one of the memory chips so Windows wouldn’t load. To get things working again, one needs only push the chip back into the slot and reboot the machine. Any half-way competent engineers should fix it in minutes.

All we needed now was our targets. We teamed up with PC Pro readers to track down shops with the worst reputation and took our laptop into be repaired. We expected poor customer service, but nothing prepared us for the first shop we visited.

Snooping on holiday snaps

Laptop Revival in Hammersmith initially offered us a free diagnosis when we dropped our laptop off. Yet the spy software later revealed something extraordinary. The webcam shows that almost immediately the technician discovers our loose memory chip and clicks it back into position [based on recorded boot and shut down times]. The machine is rebooted and the problem solved.

Yet he then begins browsing through our hard drive. A folder marked ‘Private’ is opened and he flicks through our researcher’s holiday photographs, including intimate snaps of her wearing a bikini. He stares at picture after picture, stopping only to show them to colleagues.

He then picks up the phone and calls our researcher. He tells her our motherboard is faulty and will need to be replaced. Usually it costs £130 but he’ll do it for £100. We tell him we’ll think about it and call him tomorrow.

After more snooping, he logs off. But a few hours later, another technician boots our machine. He also begins searching our hard drive until he finds log-in details for our Facebook and Hotmail accounts. With a cackle he removes a memory stick from around his neck, plugs it in and then copies them across.

He also discovers our holiday photos and copies those of our researcher in her bikini. The spy software takes a snapshot of the files on his memory stick. One is called “MAMMA JAMMAS” (urban slang for females with large breasts). It contains more holiday snaps of girls in their bikinis.

Most worryingly, when he discovers log-in details for our online bank account, he logs onto the bank’s website and attempts to break into the account.

He only fails because the details we created were false.

Laptop Revival declined to comment when confronted by Sky’s cameras.  …

via pcpro

Alien landscapes on Earth

Check out the great alien landscapes here. The one I’ve decided to visit ASAP is this:

Black Rock Desert, Fly Geyser.

The Black Rock Desert is a 400-square-mile, relatively flat, prehistoric lakebed that lacks any animals or vegetation.

Photo by Peter Goin.

I’d also like to see the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument

Vanish Security

I can think of several reasons this won’t work. First, people are lazy and they will store your message decoded by taking a screen shot or coping the text… Interesting idea, however.

Alien Evidence or Eerie Cosmic Coincidence: Objects Hit Jupiter on 25th and 40th Anniversaries of Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Scientists have found evidence that another object has bombarded Jupiter, exactly 15 years after the first impacts by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Following up on a tip by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, that a new dark “scar” had suddenly appeared on Jupiter, this morning between 3 and 9 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. and noon EDT) scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, gathered evidence indicating an impact.

New infrared images show the likely impact point was near the south polar region, with a visibly dark “scar” and bright upwelling particles in the upper atmosphere detected in near-infrared wavelengths, and a warming of the upper troposphere with possible extra emission from ammonia gas detected at mid-infrared wavelengths.

“We were extremely lucky to be seeing Jupiter at exactly the right time, the right hour, the right side of Jupiter to witness the event. We couldn’t have planned it better,” said Glenn Orton, a scientist at JPL.

Orton and his team of astronomers kicked into gear early in the morning and haven’t stopped tracking the planet. They are downloading data now and are working to get additional observing time on this and other telescopes.

This image was taken at 1.65 microns, a wavelength sensitive to sunlight reflected from high in Jupiter’s atmosphere, and it shows both the bright center of the scar (bottom left) and the debris to its northwest (upper left).

“It could be the impact of a comet, but we don’t know for sure yet,” said Orton. “It’s been a whirlwind of a day, and this on the anniversary of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Apollo anniversaries is amazing.”

Shoemaker-Levy 9 was a comet that had been seen to break into many pieces before the pieces hit Jupiter in 1994. …

via New Images Indicate Object Hits Jupiter.

The odds of another comet hitting Jupiter exactly a year later would be astronomical.  But if Andrew Scott and Arthur C. Clarke are correct, this recent hit is WAY more bizarre than I at first suspected!

In a recent issue, Arthur C. Clarke described as “truly incredible – one might almost say eerie” the fact that the impacts of the largest fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 coincided with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. The fact that the impact of the largest fragment coincided, almost to the minute, with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the landing is actually only the centrepiece of a wider and more incredible set of coincidences: the first fragments of the comet hit Jupiter on 16 July (twenty-fifth anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11), and the final fragments hit on 22 July (twenty-fifth anniversary of Apollo 11’s departure from Moon orbit). So the start, climax and end of the series of impacts coincided exactly with the start, climax and end (in the sense of departure from the Moon) of the Apollo 11 mission. A recent television documentary informed me that the first SL9A impact, on 16 July, hit Jupiter at 4.18 p.m. US time (I am not sure what time standard that was). Today, I looked up the timings of the Apollo 11 mission in an encyclopaedia, and found the time of the Moon landing quoted as 4.18 p.m. US Eastern time. I am a lifelong [skeptic] but these coincidences interest me… – Andrew Scott Nature 371, 97 (8 September 1994) | doi :10.1038/371097c0

Do the impact locations on Jupiter correspond to the landing sites of the Apollo missions?

Even if we have captured (or secret German) UFO technology, I do not think we humans have the ability to hurl asteroids at Jupiter yet!

Which means, unless this is the most unusual coincidence that ever coincided, it could be communication (a warning?) from … aliens.

Researchers Set New Distance Record for Quantum Key Distribution

Quantum key distribution (QKD) could be the next commercial success of quantum physics, and a recent study has taken the field a step closer to this reality. Researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and Corning Incorporated in New York have demonstrated a new QKD prototype that can distribute quantum keys over a distance of 250 km in the lab, improving upon the previous record of 200 km. The scientists hope that the achievement will lead to the goal of distributing quantum keys over intercity distances of 300 km in the near future.

As the researchers explained, the purpose of QKD schemes is to distribute a secret quantum key between two distant locations with security relying on the laws of quantum physics. The idea of QKD was first proposed in 1984, and in 1992, scientists could distribute quantum keys over 32 cm, while the technology has improved from there. Despite these advances, the scientists say, the main challenge is still to achieve higher bit rates over longer distances.

To reach their new record of 250 km, the scientists made three significant improvements to their QKD technique. First, they developed a coherent one way (COW) protocol tailored specifically for quantum communication over optical fiber networks. In addition, they used an improved superconducting single-photon detector to decrease noise, as well as ultra low loss fibers made by Corning to minimize channel loss and improve the distribution rate.

By making these improvements, the physicists could distribute quantum keys in the lab at a rate of 15 bits per second over 250 km of optical fiber, or 6,000 bits per second over 100 km, with low error rates. The system is also fully automated, and can run for hours without human intervention.

via Researchers Set New Distance Record for Quantum Key Distribution.

That’s 155.343 miles! Impressive…. but somehow, even when this is perfected… somehow I feel certain there will be something we have not yet considered which will allow this encryption to be broken. For example, it is possible to slow photons down and stop them. Perhaps there would be a way to duplicate a stopped photon without tipping your hat.

Oldest UK television discovered

Britain’s oldest working television has been tracked down in a house in London.

The 1936 Marconiphone is thought to have been made in the months that Britain’s first “high-definition” television service began.

The set belongs to Jeffrey Borinsky, an electrical engineer and collector of antique television and radio sets.

He bought the set, which has a 12-inch (30cm) screen from another collector 10 years ago and is still working on restoring it to its original state.

The screen is mounted inside a wooden cabinet. The image from the cathode ray tube, mounted vertically inside the cabinet, is reflected onto a mirror.

The few controls include volume and vertical hold, but there is no channel changer, as there was only one channel when it was made: the BBC.

via BBC NEWS | Technology | Oldest UK television discovered.

Get Smarter

Seventy-four thousand years ago, humanity nearly went extinct. A super-volcano at what’s now Lake Toba, in Sumatra, erupted with a strength more than a thousand times that of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Some 800 cubic kilometers of ash filled the skies of the Northern Hemisphere, lowering global temperatures and pushing a climate already on the verge of an ice age over the edge. Some scientists speculate that as the Earth went into a deep freeze, the population of Homo sapiens may have dropped to as low as a few thousand families.

The Mount Toba incident, although unprecedented in magnitude, was part of a broad pattern. For a period of 2 million years, ending with the last ice age around 10,000 B.C., the Earth experienced a series of convulsive glacial events. This rapid-fire climate change meant that humans couldn’t rely on consistent patterns to know which animals to hunt, which plants to gather, or even which predators might be waiting around the corner.

How did we cope? By getting smarter. The neuro­physi­ol­ogist William Calvin argues persuasively that modern human cognition—including sophisticated language and the capacity to plan ahead—evolved in response to the demands of this long age of turbulence. According to Calvin, the reason we survived is that our brains changed to meet the challenge: we transformed the ability to target a moving animal with a thrown rock into a capability for foresight and long-term planning. In the process, we may have developed syntax and formal structure from our simple language.

Our present century may not be quite as perilous for the human race as an ice age in the aftermath of a super-volcano eruption, but the next few decades will pose enormous hurdles that go beyond the climate crisis. The end of the fossil-fuel era, the fragility of the global food web, growing population density, and the spread of pandemics, as well as the emergence of radically transformative bio- and nano­technologies—each of these threatens us with broad disruption or even devastation. And as good as our brains have become at planning ahead, we’re still biased toward looking for near-term, simple threats. Subtle, long-term risks, particularly those involving complex, global processes, remain devilishly hard for us to manage.

via The Atlantic Online | July/August 2009 | Get Smarter | Jamais Cascio.

Tough Microbe Has The Right Stuff for Mars

Biologists have found microbes that live in the hottest, coldest, driest and most unpleasant places on Earth. Many of these bugs don’t adapt well to new surroundings, but one microbe is remarkable for withstanding a wide range of conditions. This quality might make this unique organism suitable for adapting to life on Mars.

This ultimate survivor is called Methanosarcina barkeri. It is found in freshwater and marine sediments, and other places where oxygen is scarce. Because it breathes out methane, researchers are interested to see if it — or some other “methanogen” — could be responsible for the methane that was detected in the martian atmosphere in 2003.

What makes M. barkeri stand out among its methanogen cousins is that it is not as picky about where it lives. Recent studies have found that it can manage long dry spells and wide temperature swings.

“It has all the characteristics to survive on Mars,” says Kevin Sowers of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.

Sowers thinks a M. barkeri-like bug might handle everything the red planet throws at it: strong seasonal water cycles, scarce nutrients, and day-night temperature differences as high as 100 degrees Celsius.

To support this hypothesis, Sowers and his colleagues plan to put M. barkeri through the wringer to see how just how adaptive it is. Under extremes of dryness, temperature and oxidation, they will investigate the organism’s DNA and cell functions, as well as an outer “armor” that may be the microbe’s key survival mechanism.

This research is funded by NASA’s Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program.

via Tough Microbe Has The Right Stuff for Mars | LiveScience.

Japanese fishing industry stung by plague of giant jellyfish

They poison fish, sting humans and even attack nuclear power stations. They are 6ft wide, up to 440lb in weight, and they are pink, slimy and repellent. They sound like rubber monsters from a Godzilla film, but they are Echizen kurage, or Nomura’s jellyfish, an authentic horror of the deep about to launch its latest assault on Japan. …

In 2005, fishermen looking for anchovies, salmon and yellowtail began finding huge numbers of the jellyfish in their nets. When the Nomuras grow larger than a metre in diameter, half a dozen of them can destroy a fishing net. The fish caught alongside them are poisoned and covered in slime and rendered unsaleable.

So serious was the situation that salmon boats in northern Japan stopped going out, and in some places fishermen lost 80 per cent of their income. Even staff at some of the nuclear power plants along the Japan Sea coast found that the jellyfish got sucked into the pumps which take in sea water to cool the reactors.

No one is sure about the reasons for the slimy plague. …

Meanwhile, enterprising Japanese are making the most of the maritime catastrophe. Fishermen have devised ways of keeping the jellyfish out of their nets with sharp wires. Scientists have discovered a method of extracting collagen form the jellyfish, an ingredient of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, increasingly valued as a health food, and usually extracted from pig or fish carcasses.

Most unlikely of all, a company called Tango Jersey Dairy sells vanilla and jellyfish ice cream, created by soaking diced cubes of Echizen kurage in milk. The resulting desert is described as “slightly chewy”.

via Japanese fishing industry stung by plague of giant jellyfish – Times Online.