Symantec's 10 Most Dreaded Computer Worms And Viruses

To mark the 40th birthday of the Internet, online Security software manufacturer Symantec has put out a list of the "Top 10 Web Threats in the Internet History."

So here goes. The descriptions are Symantec's.

1. I Love You (2000) -- Who wouldn't open an e-mail with "I Love You" in the subject line? Well, that was the problem. By May 2000, 50 million infections of this worm had been reported. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the British Parliament all had to shut down their e-mail systems in order to purge the threat.

2. Conficker (2009) -- The Conficker worm has created a secure, worldwide infrastructure for cybercrime. The worm allows its creators to remotely install software on infected machines. What will that software do? We don't know. Most likely the worm will be used to create a botnet that will be rented out to criminals who want to send SPAM, steal IDs and direct users to online scams and phishing sites.

3. Melissa (1999) -- Melissa was an exotic dancer, and David L. Smith was obsessed with her and also with writing viruses. The virus he named after Melissa and released to the world on March 26, 1999, kicked off a period of high-profile threats that rocked the Internet between 1999 and 2005.

4. Slammer (2003) -- This fast-moving worm managed to temporarily bring much of the Internet to its knees in January 2003. The threat was so aggressive that it was mistaken by some countries to be an organized attack against them.

5. Nimda (2001) -- A mass-mailing worm that uses multiple methods to spread itself, within 22 minutes, Nimda became the Internet's most widespread worm. The name of the virus came from the reversed spelling of "admin."

6. Code Red (2001) -- Web sites affected by the Code Red worm were defaced by the phrase "Hacked By Chinese!" At its peak, the number of infected hosts reached 359,000.

7. Blaster (2003) -- Blaster is a worm that triggered a payload that launched a denial of service attack against windowsupdate.com, which included the message, "billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!"

8. Sasser (2004) -- This nasty worm spread by exploiting a vulnerable network port, meaning that it could spread without user intervention. Sasser wreaked havoc on everything from The British Coast Guard to Delta Airlines, which had to cancel some flights after its computers became infected.

9. Storm (2007) -- Poor Microsoft, always the popular target. Like Blaster and others before, this worm's payload performed a denial-of-service attack on www.microsoft.com. During Symantec's tests an infected machine was observed sending a burst of almost 1,800 e-mails in a five-minute period.

10. Morris (1988) -- An oldie but a goodie; without Morris the current threat "superstars" wouldn't exist. The Morris worm (or Internet worm) was created with innocent intentions. Robert Morris claims that he wrote the worm in an effort to gauge the size of the Internet. Unfortunately, the worm contained an error that caused it to infect computers multiple times, creating a denial of service.

Microsoft To Provide Free Anti-Virus

The software giant Microsoft has been criticised in the past for failing to include free security software with Windows.

Its first security package, Windows Live OneCare, failed to attract many customers and will be discontinued.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) promises to provide people with basic protection against viruses, trojans, rootkits and spyware.Microsoft is hoping that MSE, available as a free download from its site, will prove more popular. It has said it will automatically update it for users.

However, rival security vendors have questioned whether Microsoft can compete with more established anti-virus players.security firms like Symantec,AVG have had their fare share of criticism regarding the effectiveness of the free anti-virus provided by Microsoft.

A trial version of Microsoft's free anti-virus software has been launched in the US, China, Brazil, and Israel.Initially 75,000 trial versions of MSE, codenamed Morro, will be available in the US, Brazil, China and Israel.

The software will be rolled out in other countries later this year.

Researchers Identify "Gangsta Gene"

Scientists say that its possible to predict whether a person is a gangster or not through DNA tests.Males with a particular form of gene called MAOA are twice as likely to join a gang, compared to those with other forms, finds a new study of more than 2000 US teens. What's more, gang members with these mutations are far more likely to use a weapon than other members.

According to Kevin Beaver, a biosocial criminologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, who led the study.The relatively common mutations result in reduced levels of a protein, called monoamine oxidase A, which recycles several of the chemicals that foster neuron connections. Low MAOA activity has been linked previously to antisocial behaviour in people who experienced child abuse. While two brain regions involved in perceiving and controlling emotions are shrunken in people with no history of criminality or abuse who have the mutation.

To determine whether an environment besides an abusive childhood could elicit MAOA's connection to violence, Beaver's team looked at the genotypes of 1155 females and 1041 males who participated in a long-term study of adolescent health that covered the period 1994 to 2002.

During two rounds of interviews, participants indicated whether they had been in a gang in the past year and whether they had ever used a weapon in a fight.Overall, 42 per cent of males possessed the low activity form of MAOA, and about 5 per cent of all males said they had joined a gang. However males with the low activity form were twice as likely to join a gang as those with the high activity form.

Similarly, males with the low activity form were about twice as likely to have used a weapon as other teens. While male gang members with the same mutations were four times as likely as other members to wield a weapon.

"This gene is predicting gang membership, but it's really predicting it for the very violent gang members," Beaver says.

Nonetheless, he cautions against over-interpreting his team's results. "It doesn't mean that everyone with this particular allele is going to be violent and is going to become a gang member – or vice versa," he says.

Rather, in communities where gangs are common, people with low MAOA activity could be slightly more likely to join a gang than others, Beaver says.

However, given the high prevalence of these mutations and low rates of gang membership, genetic counselling to identify youth at an increased risk of joining gangs would be unfeasible.

PhonePoint Pen LetsYou Write On Thin Air !

The phrase"writing on thin air",atleast up till now has referred to something that gets vanished quickly.Researchers at Duke University have created what they are calling a "PhonePoint Pen" that uses a modern cell phone's built-in accelerometer to detect writing in thin air, and then automatically send a note to a designated e-mail account. There are still some bugs to work out, but the researchers believe they've proven that the idea really works.

"We are convinced that this is feasible and this will become something that people will use," Romit Roy Choudhury, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke.

"The existing technology wasn't all that great," he added. "And the idea struck me that maybe it's possible that I could have a pen with an accelerometer and I could just write in the air with the pen."

The accelerometer would detect the movement of the pen, and "then and I could press a button or something and the writing would get e-mailed to my mailbox. But getting a pen with an accelerometer was hard."

As an assistant professor, Roy Choudhury had a gaggle of creative students at his disposal, and he suggested they try to figure out how to use a cell phone as the magic pen he had wanted in college.

One cell phone manufacturer, Nokia, donated "a bunch" of phones, and the students found that if they held the phone like a pen, grasped between the thumb and the forefinger, they could control it's movements well enough for it to recognize letters of the alphabet.

They had to be pretty big letters, about six inches tall, and the user had to learn how to write with no frame of reference other than an imaginary blackboard, but it worked well enough to jot down a phone number, or an address, or where the car was parked at the airport.

That's progress, but it's not good enough. The researchers now say they've figured out how to make the phone recognize script, and translate that into text before sending it to a designated e-mail account.

"The phone can track what you are writing," Roy Choudhury said, and even if your penmanship isn't perfect it should be able to figure out which letter of the alphabet you are trying to write. Meanwhile, the accelerometer will track other movements as well. It should be possible to "write" yourself a note while driving your car.

"There are a lot of signals that the accelerometer captures," he added. "From all those signals, we can pluck out the part that comes from the moving vehicle, because there is a particular signature from a car's movements, and we can subtract that. "

A moving hand, for example, can change direction much more frequently and more quickly, than a vehicle. So the car can be taken out of the equation.

That may not sound too safe, but it could be a lot better than trying to text-message yourself on a keyboard that just seems to get smaller and smaller.

The device would also be able to clean up the signal while the user is walking, or doing just about anything else, he added.

The Duke researchers are also working on an idea that has intrigued many other scientists since the advent of cell phones with accelerometers. Theoretically, it should be possible for cell phones to provide real-time alerts on traffic congestion.

Prototype Game Review and Gameplay

One of the most anticipated games of 2009,'PROTOTYPE' hits PC,PS3 and XBOX 360 this week.You are Alex Mercer. What exactly that means is initially unclear because this is a man who has lost his memory, but awoken in a morgue to a world in which he possesses untold power. A viral outbreak has claimed Manhattan, forcing the island into a military quarantine. The infected citizens are undergoing radical, monstrous changes -- none more drastic than Alex himself. This anti-hero finds himself with the ability to shape shift and absorb other beings. As the most powerful being on a closed island, the entire city is your playground. And it is a game world that feels unfinished.

Prototype is a single player, open-world action game in the style of Crackdown or The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. You play as a man gifted with superhuman powers and the option to go most anywhere you like and do most anything you want once you get there. It's sandbox gaming with a heavy focus on pure action.

Though you play as a man bestowed with superhero power, Mercer is anything but heroic. There are no moral choices here. Mercer has vowed to destroy those responsible for his current situation and he has the means to do it. To gain new powers or refill your health bar, you'll literally absorb other living beings. Find yourself a little low on hit points and you can simply grab an innocent bystander, crush his or her head, and then consume them for a quick boost. If you find yourself in a pinch with attack choppers chasing you through the roads, you can absorb a person and morph into their likeness to blend in with the crowd.

As you work your way through the game you'll unlock new and ever more exotic powers. There's an air dash and a glide move that help you quickly travel from one side of Manhattan to the other. There's a massive elbow drop that can destroy a tank in one hit. There's even a whiplash arm that can be used to latch onto passing helicopters to hijack them, Just Cause style. These moves give Prototype its personality. These are what set it apart from most other sandbox games and make it worth a look. Sure there are a few guns to fire and some tanks you can drive around, but the real draw here is the fact that you can turn your arm into a giant blade and then dice monsters with it. Or, if you're a bit twisted, the draw is the fact that you can grab a person by the neck and simply run across the city with their flailing body in tow.

But how long can you do flying elbow drops onto tanks or throw people off of rooftops before it gets boring? The world itself here is far from the most engaging...
The answer to that will vary by the player, but obviously messing around with the powers isn't all there is to do in Prototype. The storyline involves 31 missions including everything from simple seek and destroy affairs to stealthy infiltrations to escort missions and massive boss battles. Most of these missions are standard in design. In fact, if you've played many open-world games, you've probably played identical copies of these in the past. And since repetition is oftentimes the name of the game here, you can be sure you'll be doing uninspired tasks over and over again.

Quite often Prototype follows the design philosophy of everything and the kitchen sink. Instead of fighting a few enemies, the game tosses dozens upon dozens at you. Then it throws in a few tanks and helicopters as well as a couple dozen innocent bystanders for good measure. It's a design that creates a lot of tension, though I found the action too chaotic at times. Even the policing system is dialed to the max and too aggressive. You can't do something as simple as run through the city while leaping off of buildings without alerting the Strike Teams, at which point you're forced into some shape shifting or combat. This can make the basic act of exploration more work than it should be. There is very little downtime to counteract the high stress of the missions.

Prototype's design leans heavily on the fact that you can refill your health by consuming victims at any time. Some attacks can drain half of your health bar or more. Others juggle you in the air leaving you open to frustrating combos from enemies. And sometimes you'll think you've dodged an attack only to get hit a few feet away anyway. But it's OK, because you can always go get more health, right? Not really. The action heavy sequences involve barely surviving to the next checkpoint or running in and out of the action ad nausea trying to stay alive. Skilled players won't have too much trouble, but Prototype's chaos could quickly become overwhelming for others. I found several points of the game to be unnecessarily aggravating to the point where I would have turned Prototype off and walked away if I weren't reviewing it.

Alongside the main quest is a set of side missions called events to tackle at your discretion. Beat them and you earn some Evolve Points (EP) used to upgrade Mercer's powers. Radical smartly hands out EP like candy. Complete just a mission or two and you'll quickly find yourself spending EP to grab new powers and abilities early and often. It's hard to stop playing when you know you'll get a new move by making it through just one more mission.

Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of variety in these events and I often found myself wishing they made better use of Mercer's vast array of powers. Those included here are dominated by things like checkpoint races and killing sprees -- things that have been done so often as side missions in games like this that they're hardly worth mentioning. It's cookie cutter game design at this point. There is one exception: A mission that tasks the player with gliding long distances towards a bulls-eye. Why aren't there more imaginative events like this? You can throw a person hundreds of yards. Why not include some sort of shot-put event? There was a real opportunity to get creative here, but instead too many of the side missions directly mirror the mindless killing or limited stealth of the main game.

More interesting than the halfhearted side events are the undirected diversions. These don't pop up on your city map and aren't missions in a traditional sense. These diversions merely exist within the world -- even while playing through one of the main missions -- for you to tackle. The concept of collectibles has been extended to what's called the Web of Intrigue. These are people that, by being hunted down and consumed, reveal splintered visions of the infection's history. They're slick and wonderfully tantalizing -- little in Prototype is more exhilarating than being in the midst of a tough mission only to see one of these targets stroll by.

There are a couple of other diversions that I found interesting, as well, including army bases that must be stealthily infiltrated to score weapon and skill upgrades. It's through these that you can even unlock the ability to call in airstrikes. I quickly had this skill maxed out -- infiltrating the bases is pretty darn fun -- only to learn that the airstrikes look rather poor. Which brings us to one of the biggest problems with Prototype.

Even while confined to a relatively small game world -- Manhattan is not recreated to scale -- Prototype manages to have visuals that range from bland to downright ugly. The only real savior is the smooth animations which do a great job towards making Mercer's powers feel real. Running up the side of a building, doing a flip over a railing, and then leaping off into a charged drop attack just feels cool.

Unfortunately, there's the rest. The blandness is seen throughout in a city recreated with few landmarks and instead filled with generic, lifeless buildings. It's seen in the drab color palette. And it's seen in a city filled with what appears to be a dozen or so identical clones all wandering the streets together. Just climb a building or get in a helicopter and look out at the skyline to get an eyeful of Prototype's ugliness. The draw distance in Prototype is atrocious. Move quickly along the building tops and trees, bushes, cars and other structures pop in and out as the game struggles to draw them. Everything else is shrouded in an ugly fog. In a game where you spend much of the time pouncing from one roof to the next, this ugliness is felt throughout.

It isn't just the streaming world that suffers in the looks department. Aside from specific infected buildings, no structural damage can be done. You can't even knock over billboards. And when you do take down the few buildings you're allowed to damage, the resulting explosion is laughably bad. All of the real chaos you can create is limited to vehicles and passing pedestrians. Your cool powers don't feel quite so cool when you can't even break a window by throwing a tank at it.

These technical issues are so severe that they do in fact impact the game's ebb and flow. There are 250 orbs scattered throughout Manhattan for you to collect. Unfortunately, you oftentimes can't see them until you are literally on top of them. The game engine fails to draw them at any meaningful distance. You can be across a street and not know that you're within 20 yards of one of these orbs. Without any other ways to find them -- there are no maps or sound indicators -- tracking down all of the orbs is less fun than it is chore.

It seems Prototype's developers didn't know when to say when. Tons of enemies are tossed into the mix, and so the visuals suffer and the gameplay occasionally becomes too chaotic and unfocused. Some cutscenes feel out of place and pointless while others are well done. Nobody ever put the finishing touches on Prototype to tidy it up and make it fully presentable.

A case in point is the power set. There are a ton of upgrades to nab in Prototype and improving your character is some of the most rewarding gameplay offered here. There are so many powers, in fact, that cramming them all on a controller proved difficult. The most disappointing moment I had while playing Prototype came when I finally earned enough EP to unlock the Cannonball move. I don't think I need to point out how cool that sounds. And then I looked up how to do a cannonball: Hold the X Button and then hit B at the same time while in the air. X and B, two buttons that require you to tie your fingers in a pretzel to hit at the same time. That's just awful design.

Now lets take a look at the story background trailer and some gameplay movies

opening Cinematic Teaser

Video Games | Prototype | Opening Cinematic Teaser

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Story Background

Top 10 reasons why Prototype must me given a try

Video Games | Prototype | Top 10 Reasons Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Variety mission walkthrough

Video Games | Prototype | Mission Variety Walkthrough

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Top 7 Ways In Which Gadgets Can Hurt You

Recently, doctors are noticing an uptick in more ignoble injuries, such as the "cell phone elbow."

Instead of the usual carpal tunnel syndrome from typing, Dr. Peter Evans of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio began to see more of his patients coming in with an unexplained stinging, burning and tingly feeling in their hands.

"When the elbow is flexed greater than 90 degrees you're now stretching the nerve around your elbow," explained Evans, who authored a "one-minute" consultation about cell phone elbow in this week's Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.

Evans said the longer the nerve is stretched, the greater the risk of cutting off blood flow to the nerve.The cell phone elbow sufferers are not alone. In the past two years, doctors have reported an array of rashes, nerve damage, phantom pain and inconvenient injuries that all seem to stem from our sit-and-click lifestyle.

Cell Phone Elbow

Formally called "cubital tunnel syndrome," cell phone elbow has much more in common with carpal tunnel syndrome than tennis elbow.

When a person continually stretches the nerve around the elbow, that particular nerve, the "ulnar nerve," can stop functioningproperly.

"The analogy I give is putting your foot on the garden hose," said Evans. "It's the nerve when people say, 'I've hit my funny bone.'"

Source Behind Cell Phone Elbow Pain

The ulnar nerve controls feeling from the elbow into the ring and pinky fingers. But Evans said it also controls tiny muscles in the hand that work to grip objects. That's why people with cell phone elbow can have sensory symptoms or muscle control problems.

Usually, Evans' patients can reverse the symptoms simply by switching hands, cutting back on cell phone use, or using a hands-free device. In more seriouscases, patients can wear a brace to bed to keep their arm extended and increase the blood flow in their elbows while they sleep.But in some cases, the damage from cell phone elbow can be permanent.

"That's if they come when there's advanced neuropathy -- where the muscles have atrophied," said Evans.Unfortunately, Evans said people with cell phone elbow come in with greater damage than the usual carpal tunnel syndrome."We can usually improve numbness and pain, but when they come late we can't get their muscle control back," he said.Compared to other technology-induced injuries, like Xbox thumb, Evans said cell phone elbow is, by far, more prevalent.

Video Game Muscle Spasms

Although both sit in front of a screen, a video gamer's pose differs widely from a couch potato TV-watcher's body. A gamer sits forward, tense, eyes glued to th e screen -- often for hours. As many early gamers reach middle age, doctors warn the muscletensing habit can lead to injuries.

A child or teenager might walk away from hours of game playing with nothing more than a sore neck or back. But it's likely harder for an adult to do the same.

According to theEntertainment Software Association, the average video game player is 35 and has been playing for 12 years. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that adults average four to five hours each day spent on the computer or in front of the television.

Muscles, held in one position for a sustained period of time, can cause painful inflammation and sore areas. Trigger points -- tiny areas where the muscle spasms -- can occur, too.

Cell Phone Allergy

Putting the phone down after a long conversation has always left the check a bit warm, if not sweaty. But once people began to switch to cell phones, dermatologists noticed a curious skin condition in which people appeared to be allergic to their phones, or, more specifically, the nickel in their cell phones.

"Some people are extremely nickel-sensitive," Dr. Lionel Bercovitch, a professor of dermatology at Brown Medical School.

Nickel is used in a wide variety of products, including jewelry, belt buckles and watch bands. The metal is actually the most common cause of contact dermatitis in the developed world.

People with a nickel allergy have symptoms that can range from redness to a rash or blisters.Luckily, not all cell phones contain nickel.In an attempt to get an idea of how many phones might have the metal, Bercovitch tested 22 models of cell phones to see which makes are likely to contain the metal.Roughly half -- a total of 10 devices -- tested positive for the metal, according to her 2008 findings published the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Bercovitch found nickel in menu buttons, on decorative logos, around the edge of the screen and even on the handset if the paint was chipped.

Wii Injuries

Wiiwas supposed to be a breath of fitness fresh air to counter the typical inactivity of playing video games. Butas inexperienced and older players started to use the Wii, some exercise troubles ensued.

Wrist strains,Hamstring injuries,Knee pains are some of the injuries reported by WII users.

Phantom Mobile Phone Vibrations

Apparently a so-called "crackberry" addiction to mobile phone and e-mail devices can cause some symptoms in the form of "phantom" vibrations.

Many people who kept their phones in their pockets or purses have reported feeling vibrations when their phones are on silent, or even when their phones are not there.

When you take it off, you still feel it there on your foot. Ifyour cell phone is not there, you still feel like it is."

Barr said our reliance on our cell phones actually may be "training" some of us to believe it is vibrating when it is not.

Think of Pavlov's dog: Ring a bell enough times when you feed a dog and the dog will salivate at the ring of the bell whether or not there's food to smell.

As people repeat this behavior over and over again, connections between nerves in their brain become stronger and new ones are formed, which helps to make the behavior automatic.And sometimes, as is thecase with vibrating cell phones, the behavior becomes too automatic.

"People have gotten so good at detecting vibrations that they start responding to false positives," Kaas said. "They think something is there when it is not."

Texting Thumb

Those people with their eyes downward, wildly tapping on their mobile devices at meetings, may be putting themselves, and their thumbs, at risk.

The sores and blisters that some experience from too much texting and typing have earned monikers such as "BlackBerry thumb."

But teens might be at risk too.

According to a 2008 Nielsen Media Research report, U.S. teens sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month, or nearly 80 a day.

"They are really repetitive stress injuries -- pain, numbness, discomfort in the base of the thumbs from overuse," Margot Miller, a physical therapist and president of the Occupational Health Section of the Orthopedic Section of the American Physical Therapy Association.

These sorts of injuries, known as repetitive strain injuries or as repetitive motion disorders, are sometimes minor. But they can also lead to serious medical problems.

Guitar Hero Wrist

It didn't take long after the 2005 release of "Guitar Hero" for fans to start injuring themselves with the video game that simulates guitar playing for pop music groups.

The game has proliferated into handheld devices, mobile phones and the like, but people who play too long on the original "Guitar Hero" fake guitar might risk tendonitis of the wrist.

Anonymous Internet forum questionsabound about annoying wrist pain caused by the game. But the "Guitar Hero wrist" became famous after a Detroit Free Press report that Detroit Tigers pitcher Joel Zumaya suffered from the injury.

The injury couldn't have struck at a worse time -- during the American League Championship Series in October 2006.

According to the Detroit Free Press, team doctors became suspicious when Zumaya's sore wrist showed symptoms more similar to a guitar strain than a pitching injury. Upon the discovery of the pain, the team asked him to give up the game for the World Series.

A Closer Look At Windows 7:Putting Windows 7 to the test

The arrival of Vista was marred by technical problems and, despite Microsoft's claims to the contrary, is widely seen as getting a lukewarm reception from companies and individuals.

Many found problems with early applications and many drivers for basic hardware such as printers and scanners were not working.

Windows 7 is available as pre-release software for anyone wanting to download it, install it and try it out.

This "Release Candidate" as it is called, is an almost finished version, but it is not guaranteed to run smoothly.

Below are some of the new features that caught Click's attention.

Multi-touch Clearing desktop Live search Data protection

Super taskbar Desktop backgrounds Virtual PC mode

The task bar, which has remained pretty much the same since Windows 95, has been combined with the Quick Launch bar to become the Super Bar.

This has no text and simply lists icons for the programs already running and ones a user might like to run. Hovering the mouse over the icons brings up thumbnails of different windows.

Icons can be shuffled to suit individual needs, and anyone preferring the old view, can switch it back on.

Resizing windows is easier - just drag them to the edge of the screen and they will automatically either fill half or the whole screen. Shake a window and it minimises everything else in the background - shake it again and it all comes back. Move your mouse to the right edge of the screen and click to minimise all windows.

Multi-touch means that gestures, rather than one finger, can be used on a touchpad or screen to control what happens. A pinch might close applications and pictures can be expanded using fingers moving diagonally away from each other.

However, the only applications currently supporting this feature are Internet Explorer and Microsoft Viewer. Also, very few laptops are ready to be used in this way.

Microsoft is expecting manufacturers and software developers to start building multi-touch functions into software and hardware soon.

There are some wonderfully bizarre pre-installed desktop backgrounds. The user can also take a group of their own favourite snaps and get the desktop to display them as a background slideshow.

The Live Search feature has been improved. Looking up files and folders in the computer produces results neatly categorised by where they are on the PC. Then, by clicking on the file's heading, the user is taken straight to its location. Refined search filters can also be created.

This will open a new window with an XP desktop which can be used to run these programs. However, not all graphic cards will support this feature.

The Bitlocker application lets a user encrypt internal hard-disks and portable flash drives so the data stored is only accessible with a password. This feature was available on Vista, but only in the software's Ultimate edition.

Want To Become A Detective? Look No Further Than Facebook -Facebook Users Turn Into Detectives

Previously in ferbaruary,a central Maine police department credited the social networking Web site Facebook for helping solve a vandalism case.Auburn police said that three teenagers broke into the spa at a Hilton Garden Inn. Police posted images from the hotel's surveillance video on the department's Facebook page, which they had set up Jan. 29.Detectives then received several anonymous tips from Facebook users who recognized the boys.

This is not an isolated incident,where Facebook had given a helping hand in solving crime.Most recently,When Mary Chapman learned that two of her husband's work trucks had been burgled, her first reaction wasn't to call the police. It was to sign on to Facebook.She cracked open her laptop, logged on to the popular social networking site and sent off a quick message to a friend down the street.

A few minutes later, her friend forwarded that message to another friend in the neighborhood who, surprisingly, had noticed something strange in the middle of the day.The women put two and two together and, within a matter of hours, they'd singled out the suspect, confronted him and amicably settled the entire affair. The police had yet to come up with a name.

"I really don't think at this point they would have figured out who committed this crime," Chapman said. "If it was not for Facebook we would not have our items or our vehicles repaired."

The suspect was an 18-year-old from the neighborhood who, she said, impulsively looted her husband's trucks after a disagreement with his mother. The Chapmans ultimately downgraded the charge after the teen apologized and agreed to make amends.

Chapman said the police were a great help, but she still credits Facebook for recovering about $1,000 worth of equipment (a radar detector, GPS device and XM radio) and other damages.

Recognizing Facebook's potential to quickly sift through and reach out to others, crime victims and good Samaritans from all over the world have started to use the site to play digital detective, often with great success.

In Another case, Carla Pillo Mote a resourceful advertising executive in Philadelphia recently put her social networks to work to track down a man who drunkenly pilfered her laptop, taxes and wallet. According to the media blog MediaBistro.com, Mote was having drinks with a friend in March, when a visibly intoxicated man sat down beside her. After the bartender refused to serve him any more drinks, he took off.

The man's behavior seemed a little bizarre to her all night, so when Mote got ready to leave and realized her laptop bag was missing, it didn't take her long to identify a main suspect.She asked the bartender for the man's name (he'd paid with a credit card) and then headed for Facebook.

Explaining that she'd been robbed, she put out a "Facebook APB," asking for information on the mystery man who she thought stole her laptop.

She filed a report with the police as well. But to make a long story short, Mote's Facebook sleuthing (bolstered by some digging by her friends) led her to the front door of the drunken thief and, eventually, her computer.

Laptop in hand, Mote called off the police and, according to MediaBistro, updated her profile with: "the perp and i are now friends on facebook."

Facebook Joins Law Enforcement

For victims of crime, Facebook provides a way to supplement a police department's investigation. But that's not to say that police officers themselves aren't also using the tool. In Auburn, Maine, police set up a Facebook page in January, after a group of vandals broke into a local hotel and caused about a thousand dollars worth of damage.

On camera, the mischief-makers were caught ripping tiles off the walls of the hotel spa and throwing them in the water and down the hall.Soon after the police launched the Facebook page featuring photos of the criminals, they started receiving anonymous tips."Within 48 hours, we had them ID'd and charged with criminal mischief," said Deputy Chief Jason Moen, adding that the vandals were three boys, ages 15 and 16.

In their town of about 23,000 people, he said the Facebook page is "more than catching criminals. It's another way to communicate with our folks."

From Catching a rapist,to finding lost stuff online,Facebook is helping those people in need of immediate help.

Demigod Hits PC This Week-Demigod Hands on Review and Developer Walkthrough

Enter Demigod, a genre-bending title where you play as an incarnation of a deity, waging war against human armies and their respective godly leaders. I recently went hands-on with the game and got a taste of what it's like to wield the power of a god.

Demigod isn't what you might expect. The latest game from Gas Powered Games doesn't follow the classic real-time strategy formula like Supreme Commander did. And while Demigod is a real-time strategy game, it's also more of an arena-based combat game. In it, players control giant, powerful figures called demigods in the quest to destroy the opposing team's fortress while at the same time defending their own. It's a game of momentum, where you press the attack to its limits and then fall back at the right moment to recover. As such, Demigod has an ebb-and-flow to it, not unlike a battle for field position in a football game.

while godly avatars play a big role, they only make up a small portion of the on-field forces. Enemy and friendly soldiers are almost constantly flowing out of portals on the map, creating skirmishes all over the battlefield. During my hands-on time, I'd often follow my forces into battle, either helping them -- or perhaps using them as a diversion -- when we finally clashed with the enemy. Such are the decisions a god must make.

Even the length of a Demigod match alludes to the almost sports-like nature of it, as Gas Powered Games head Chris Taylor told us that it takes about 35 or 40 minutes to play a match. He then proceeded to show us just that, launching into a multiplayer game where the other players were controlled by the computer. So what he showed off was basically a bot match, but there is a single-player campaign that sounds like something like Unreal Tournament. The plot is that there's an opening in the pantheon of the gods, and the head god is having the many demigods (half human, half god beings) battle it out in matches to see who gets the big promotion.

Not all demigods are created equal. From what I've seen so far, none of them are, actually. That's not to say they aren't balanced, but they all certainly look and play differently. One diminutive demigod, the Torchbearer, acts primarily as a caster, wielding a combination of fire and ice spells -- seemingly best used in an assisting role to your army's A.I.-controlled forces rather than as a shock trooper. The other, the Rook -- the towering behemoth who's ostensibly become the poster child for the game -- is suited for aggressive players who like to wade into the thick of battle and just crush things under their heel. And while these demigods differ in their playstyles, both left me feeling disappointed, as they can't control their minions. Then again, both are classified as Assassin demigods -- meaning they play like typical action-RPG characters. In other words, you control a singular main character and use a variety of special abilities in combat to best an army of foes. Another demigod type, the General, can direct troops on the battlefield, but I didn't get a chance to check them out in my hands-on time. To me, though, Assassins feel a little shallow; their fates are too tied to the whims of A.I.-controlled soldiers.

The gameplay revolves on you controlling your demigod and going forth to attack the enemy forces and defenses in the goal of destroying the enemy fortress. To assist you, there are portals that spew out a stream of minions known as creeps. You can't directly control the creeps, but they surge forward and attack enemy forces and fortifications on sight. The enemy has its own creeps, too, so the battlefield is crawling with creatures and demigods.

As your demigod kills creeps, inflicts damage on enemy defensive towers, and attacks opposing demigods, it generates gold and experience. This is critical, because the entire point of a match is that demigods become more powerful the longer the battle rages. It basically escalates into an epic brawl, and even the creeps will evolve to become larger and tougher.

The challenge will be to know how far to press an attack. You must surge forward, inflict damage, then fall back to heal back at your fortress. Falling back also gives you the benefit of using that hard-won gold to purchase items and upgrades that make your demigod more formidable; healing potions will let you stay up front longer, armor can make your demigod more durable, and so on. You can also level up and acquire new powers and abilities for your demigod, like attack spells. When you're rested and ready, it's time to press forward and attack. If you die, you're penalized a number of ways; you can drop valuable items that the enemy can pick up and use, but more importantly, you have to wait to respawn. The designers are still balancing things, but let's say the battle is at a critical moment and you're killed and have to wait 20 seconds to get back into the fray. Those 20 seconds could spell the difference.

Get The Game's Look And Feel By Watching These Review and Gameplay Videos

GODFATHER 2 HITS PC,PS3 AND XBOX 360 THIS WEEK -EXCLUSIVE GAMEPLAY VIDEOS AND REVIEW

The Godfather II is an intensely violent experience that routinely surprised us with the level of potential for sadistic combat. At its core, the game is a straightforward third-person action game with a few guns and melee weapons to go along with a lock-on targeting and cover system. But when you wear down your enemies' health, you can execute them in some truly horrific ways. The most gruesome is probably the baseball-bat execution, followed closely by the Tommy gun--both of which involve shoving these weapons into someone's mouth and your inevitable wince in response.
The Godfather II is a tale of two games, a blend of sandbox action and strategic resource management. The low-level mobster in you will want to parade around 1950s-era depictions of New York, Miami, and Havana causing as much wanton destruction as you possibly can, but you'll need to get in touch with your inner Mafia boss if you want to successfully progress through the story. Taking over and managing various rackets and crime rings is key, but so is keeping an eye on your own family and those of other organizations. We've had only a taste of what sort of strategic depth The Godfather II might offer in previous looks at the game, but we've recently been spending some time with a nearly complete version of this EA Redwood Shores-developed game to see how far we could dive into the Don lifestyle.

Each potential associate has a unique background and specialty, which determines his personality and class-based abilities. To give you an idea of a few specialties that exist out there, you can hire a medic who will revive you whenever you get taken out during combat, an arsonist who excels in making impromptu doorways in the sides of buildings, a safecracker who can get you some extra cash whenever you break into a business, and a bruiser who will reduce your odds of having the police called on you for random acts of violence on the street. You'll eventually be able to recruit more associates, and subsequently promote existing ones up the ranks from associate to capo to underboss. If you really want to get into the spirit of things, you can even customize each family member's clothing to give your group a signature look, like our collection of thugs clad in periwinkle leisure shirts.

Once you get your first associate, you'll need to take over your first racket, which are critical because they let you launder dirty money through a legitimate business. This usually entails finding a business controlled by another family, taking care of all of their guards, and then shaking down the owner. The last bit is especially fun because you need to rough them up to the point where they'll give in, but not quite fight back or die. Once you control a racket, you can seek out others like it for a crime-ring bonus. For example, if you control all of the prostitution rackets in New York, you'll get brass knuckles for all of your family members, and if you control all of the drug-smuggling rackets in Miami, you'll double your daily income. Each racket you own needs to be guarded against takeovers, but guards cost money that you might otherwise spend on upgrading the abilities of you and your crew, so there's a lot to consider.

Of course, you're not the only one managing the operations of a family filled with thugs and criminals; there are plenty of rival organizations out there looking to cause you trouble. Early in the game, your primary source of conflict is the Rosato family, the crew that operates the bulk of rackets in the modest-sized chunk of New York City that makes up the game's first act. You begin by taking over their businesses, but as the story progresses and the possibility of a truce becomes less and less likely, it's revealed that you need to do more than cripple their income; you need to take them out entirely.

To do this, you'll need to stage contract hits on the various family members. But it's not enough to kill them however you see fit; you need to know the right kill condition to send the appropriate message. This requires you to do a favor for people of interest, and if you fulfill your obligation (usually an act of violence on an enemy of theirs), you'll learn the kill condition. Some rivals need to be thrown from a building, some choked, and others run over with a car, to name a few.

Later in the game you'll move your operations to Florida, and eventually Cuba. The core mechanics of the game remain the same, but the scenery changes from Brooklyn townhouses to pastel-colored art deco buildings and Spanish architecture. The number of rival families you need to deal with also grows as the story expands into a web of shady alliances, corrupt government officials, backstabbing friends, and so on. Although you don't have much control of the story proper, you at least feel pretty invested in all of this crime and corruption due to your ability to strike deals with a number of government officials and keep favors from them until you find the right time to call them in. We'd like to give you an idea of how the story plays out, but with so many turns and twists, almost anything would be a spoiler.

At the heart of all of this is something called the Don's View. This is a screen that lays out the entire city in a fully movable 3D map, detailing all of the businesses, people of interest, and missions available to you. You can manage the number of guards stationed at your rackets, call in strikes on rival businesses, send your made men to defend a racket that's come under attack, and keep tabs of how close you are to controlling an entire crime ring. You can also examine the makeup of rival family trees, examining them before calling in a contract hit. Giving you a lot of ability to stretch your strategic muscles definitely seems to have been a big goal for the developer.

Altogether, The Godfather II should offer a few interesting twists on the open-world action genre that has become so common these days.

Watch The Review of Godfather 2 by Playboy Model Jo Garcia

ERASE FEARFUL MEMORIES WITHOUT DRUGS

The concept of Memory Erasing has fuelled our imagiantion ever since MIB came out.But it would have been really easy if it were like a flashing device which instantly erases memory as seen in movies.
Up till now, the most widely used therapy for erasing memory is extinction therapy,which works up to a point, but fearful memories often reappear,according to researchers. Marie Monfils, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas in Austin and her colleagues performed intense research in this subject.For instance,Her team first taught rats to associate a musical tone with a slight electric shock. Playing the tone with no shock generally causes rats to freeze in fear. When her team played the tone over and over again, 19 times, the rats displayed less and less fear. This is standard extinction therapy. However, a month later their fear of the tone returned, strong as ever.They also wondered if performing extinction during the reconsolidation window might lead to a permanent effect.

A new drug-free therapy wipes away fearful memories in rats and humans. The simple treatment might eventually help patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, say researchers.
The new procedure relies on a quirky property of memories called reconsolidation. The process of jogging a memory – with an emotional or sensory jolt, for instance – seems to make it malleable for a few hours.

Potent drugs that block brain cells from making new proteins can erase fearful memories during this window. But these chemical are toxic, and wholesale memory erasure could do more harm than good, says Karim Nader, a neuroscientist at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who performed some of the drug studies.

But What Happens when nightmares reappear?

Schiller and Elizabeth Phelps, neuroscientists at New York University, tested whether they could block human volunteers from recalling a fearful memory. In this case they paired an electric shock with a blue square on a computer screen.Schiller and Phelps measured tiny, imperceptible changes in sweat – a well-documented fear response – in roughly 80 volunteers.

As with the rats, repeated exposure to the blue dot during the reconsolidation window seemed to block the fearful memory from returning.

Parallel Memories?

Monfils theorises that extinction therapy alone creates two parallel memories linked to the tone or blue square, one fearful, one not. Waiting for reconsolidation to kick in overwrites the original memory instead of making a parallel memory, she says.

Despite proof of principle experiments in rats and humans, Monfils says researchers should proceed with caution in applying the new findings to treating PTSD or other anxiety disorders. Some people's reconsolidation windows may be longer than others, and people respond differently to stressful situations.

"I'm a simple rat researcher. I'm in no way going to suggest that I'm going to step in and tell clinicians how they should treat their patients," she says.

ONLIVE MIGHT BRING AN END TO CONSOLE BASED GAMING

A new online video game distribution network ,OnLive to be launched at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, aims to let players stream on-demand games at the highest quality level ,hopes to revolutionise the way people play games and re-write the economics of the industry.The service could signal the end for Playstation, Xbox, and the Wii.

According to Onlive founder Steve Perlman,"No high-end hardware, no upgrades, no endless downloads, no discs, no recalls, no obsolescence. With OnLive, your video game experience is always state-of-the-art".He also added"OnLive is the most powerful game system in the world".

Onlive boasts of having a data compression technology that allows games to be powered on remote servers rather than on game consoles.Users download games instantly through the OnLive MicroConsole or straight onto a PC or Mac. The MicroConsole also connects to any TV. All that is required is a high speed connection.

Gamers will be able to select from an on-demand catalogue of video titles stored on these data servers.Dont worry,you can play all the latest games(all high end games at the highest resolution) and not just the cheap online games.To support Onlive's cause,Gaming giants like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, THQ and Atari Interactive have all signed up with onlive,giving it much credibility and some serious sleepless nihts for console giants like Sony,Microsoft and Nintendo.

BRACE YOURSELF FOR 150 MBPS OF BROADBAND SPEED FROM VIRGIN MEDIA

Currently,Virgin Media is offering broadband upto speeds of 50 Mbps while rival BT is pledging 40 to 60Mbps.BT has said its fibre network will hit the first crop of UK cities by early 2010 and will be complete by 2012.

According to Virgin Media's chief executive Neil Berkett,the cabinet (FTTC) network was capable of supporting up to 200Mbps but roll out of higher speeds was a "function of timing",and looking at the market situation righ now,he has eyes on speeds upto 150 mbps.

Mt.Beckett added,"As we work with application providers, and content providers... there will be a natural point where we upgrade from 10, 20 and 50Mbps to something more.If BT were to meet the time frame they have suggested - of finishing by 2012 - I would see us as having much, much faster upstream speed, running at a minimum of 100Mbps downstream and possibly more. You can see a real opportunity there."

BT has said it will deploy FTTC technology at 29 exchanges across the UK in the coming 9 to 12 months.The network will offer speeds of up to 40Mbps - and potentially 60Mbps - to 500,000 homes and businesses.Areas of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Greater Manchester will be able to access the fibre network, which will be opened up on a wholesale basis to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who can then offer various broadband packages to customers.Virgin Media says its network reaches half of all homes in the UK. The technology has a theoretical limit of 200Mbps downsteam speeds.

Lets have a comparison between various broadband providers

ENTROPIA UNIVERSE ONLINE GAME GETS BANKING LICENCE

Entropia Universe - an online game which calls itself "the first virtual universe with a real cash economy',has been granted a licence to be a bank.Issued by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, the licence means the game can be more closely tied to the real world finances of players.

Mindark, the developers of the game, said it aimed to launch a fully-functioning in-game bank within the next 12 months.At current exchange rates, 10 PED (Project Entropia Dollars) are worth one US dollar. Unlike many other online games, which charge a monthly subscription fee, the software for Project Entropia is free to download and install.

However, players pay real money to get at in-game items, such as guns, armour and other gear, and the micro-payment system pays for Entropia's running costs.The licence will make it easier for players to convert real world cash into PEDs and sustain their characters in the game, said Mindark in a statement.

Jan Welter Timkrans, boss of Mindark,"We will be in a position to offer real bank services to the inhabitants of our virtual universe" . The in-game banking system plans to offer players interest-bearing accounts,depositting their salaries and pay bills or lending cash. The licence also means that each account is backed by deposit insurance to the value of $60,000 (£42,000).Regulators will get oversight of financial transactions carried out in the game world, so they can spot if criminals are using it to launder money.Mindark claims that more than 800,000 people have registered to play the game and 80-100,000 are regular players. About $420m of player-to-player transactions were carried out during 2008, according to Mindark figures.

GLAMOUROUS GOCE SATELLITE IS ALL SET TO FLY

The European Space Agency's (Esa) Goce satellite
touted as the 'The most beautiful satellite that has ever been built', is intended to map minute variations in the gravitational pull experienced across the planet.Scientists will use its data to improve their understanding of how the oceans move, and to frame a universal system to measure height anywhere on Earth. The super-sleek spacecraft will go into orbit on a modified intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in north-west Russia.

Lift-off for the Rockot vehicle is timed for 1421 GMT on Monday. Goce's striking good-looks are a requirement of the extremely testing environment in which it will have to operate.The arrow shape and fins are necessary to keep the spacecraft stable as it flies through the wisps of air still present at an altitude just under 270km.This orbit is much lower than for most Earth observation missions but will be essential if Goce is to sense the very subtle gravity anomalies that exist across the planet.

Gravity,the force which makes us stand on the ground is generally misconceivedto be the same everywhere on earth,but the fact is if we go to the North Pole we will weigh more than if we are at the equator."This extraordinary phenomenon is explained in part by the shape of the planet. It is not a perfect sphere - it is flatter at the poles, fatter at the equator. Its interior layers are also not composed of uniform shells of homogenous rock - some regions are thicker or denser.This leads to an irregular distribution of mass; and as everything that has mass is pulled by gravity, its tug becomes irregular, too.The variations, though, are miniscule - almost imperceptible

At the heart of the spacecraft is a device known as a gradiometer consisting of three pairs of "proof masses", or accelerometers. They are aligned at 90 degrees, across each axis. The entire set-up is mounted inside an ultra-stable casing.As Goce bumps through the Earth's gravity field, the accelerometers will sense the fantastically small disturbances. Goce employs an ion engine to maintain a steady path - a sort of cruise control. The engine is throttled up and down, producing exquisite levels of thrust by accelerating charged atoms of xenon through nozzles at the rear of the spacecraft."We are an enabling technology on this mission; it couldn't happen without us," said Neil Wallace from Qinetiq, the UK technology firm which supplied the engine. "But then this mission has many such technologies."

1. The 1,100kg Goce is built from rigid materials and carries fixed solar wings. The gravity data must be clear of spacecraft 'noise'

2. Solar cells produce 1,300W and cover the Sun-facing side of Goce; the near side (as shown) radiates heat to keep it cool

3. The 5m-by-1m frame incorporates fins to stabilise the spacecraft as it flies through the residual air in the thermosphere

4. Goce's accelerometers measure accelerations that are as small as 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000 of the gravity experienced on Earth

5. The UK-built engine ejects xenon ions at velocities exceeding 40,000m/s; Goce's mission will end when the 40kg fuel tank empties

6. S Band antenna: Data downloads to the Kiruna (Sweden) ground station. Processing, archiving is done at Esa's centre in Frascati, Italy

7. GPS antennas: Precise positioning of Goce is required, but GPS data in itself can also provide some gravity field information.
Goce's quest is to produce a snapshot of the Earth's gravity field at an unprecedented resolution. The data will inform a multitude of science disciplines:Understanding how the mass of ocean waters circulate, moving heat around the planet, will assist climate prediction and because gravity defines what is meant by "up", "down" and "level", the new data can underpin a truly universal system to compare heights the world .

OverSix missions have so far been approved; a seventh is in discussion. All will use cutting-edge space technology to acquire their data. Goce will be put into a sun-synchronous orbit, meaning the spacecraft will be kept in daylight for a sustained period of time. The Breeze-KM upper-stage booster will release Goce at an altitude of about 285km.The satellite will then gradually fall to its operational altitude of 263km, where its ion engine will maintain a steady orbit for the science campaign.Two major data-gathering periods are planned, each lasting about six months. The first should start in early September after all the in-orbit testing is complete.The mission will probably be extended if sufficient xenon is left, although some propellant will be needed to take the spacecraft safely out of the sky in a controlled burn-up over ocean waters.

1. Goce senses tiny variations in the pull of gravity over Earth

2. The data is used to construct an idealised surface, or geoid

3. It traces gravity of equal 'potential'; balls won't roll on its 'slopes'

4. It is the shape the oceans would take without winds and currents

5. So, comparing sea level and geoid data reveals ocean behaviour

6. Gravity changes can betray magma movements under volcanoes

7. A precise geoid underpins a universal height system for the world

8. Gravity data can also reveal how much mass is lost by ice sheets