A blog about technology and how it interfaces with life.

Facebook Hacked

abhivibhuti — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 19:09:59 +0000

Facebook hit with unsolicited porn, violent videos

Facebook Inc said on Tuesday that it is investigating a rash of unsolicited graphic images that hit some users’ accounts this week. The images, Internet links and videos depicting pornography and violence have hit some people’s Facebook newsfeeds in recent days. “We experienced a coordinated spam attack that exploited a browser vulnerability,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a statement emailed to Reuters. “Our efforts have drastically limited the damage caused by this attack, and we are now in the process of investigating to identify those responsible.” Facebook does not know yet who was behind the attack and a motive was not clear, Noyes added during an interview with Reuters. Facebook users were tricked into pasting and executing “malicious” javascript in their browser URL bar, which led to them unknowingly sharing the content, Noyes explained. Facebook engineers have been working to reduce this browser vulnerability, he added. Facebook and other “Web 2.0″ sites are easy targets for such attacks because they pull in a lot of content from outside sources, according to Paul Ferguson, senior threat researcher at Trend Micro Inc. “It seems every other day there is some new Facebook ‘threat,’ but this is just the new reality of Web 2.0 and social networking,” Ferguson said. “It is ‘low-hanging fruit’ for criminals.”

World population not only grows, but grows old

abhivibhuti — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:59:09 +0000

The United Nations has declared that the human population will hit 7 billion Monday, and an expanding percentage of those people are in the market for reading glasses. The aging of the human race has been faster than anyone could have imagined a few decades ago. Fertility rates have plunged globally; simultaneously, life spans have increased. The result is a re-contoured age graph: The pyramid, once with a tiny number of old folks at the peak and a broad foundation of children, is inverting. In wealthy countries, the graph already has a pronounced middle-age spread. This is, in many respects, very good news. Longer life is a blessing of modern medicine and improvements in nutrition. Lower fertility rates have corresponded to more educational opportunities for women and greater prosperity for societies in general. But the unexpectedly abrupt demographic transition has created economic upheaval. For the countries that hit the fertility brakes the hardest, the graying of society has become a full-blown crisis. They’re suddenly desperate for babies. They need more workers to provide goods and services to huge numbers of pensioners. The fertility rate in Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and many other nations is less than 1.5 children per woman, dramatically lower than the “replacement” rate of 2.1 children (the extra 0.1 accounts for children who do not survive to adulthood). Japan (fertility rate 1.4) is already the oldest country in the history of the world; South Korea (1.2) is not far behind. China (1.5) is racing to get rich before it becomes old. In far better shape demographically is the United States, with a fertility rate just slightly below replacement level. Immigration boosts the workforce. But the baby-boom generation is storming the higher age brackets; the number of Americans 60 to 64 jumped from 11 million to 17 million in the most recent census. When Social Security was established in 1935, life expectancy in the United States was just under 62 years at birth. Today, it is 78 and rising. The precipitous drop in fertility in many nations caught demographers by surprise, said Linda Waite, director of the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago. No one realized until relatively recently that fertility rates would keep dropping even when women began having fewer than two children, she said. “It’s sort of a head slap,” Waite said. “It wasn’t even talked about. It was more an unspoken assumption that fertility would fall to replacement and then stabilize.” “There are many countries, more all the time, that are going to be looking at a population implosion, rather than a population explosion,” said Matthew Connelly, a Columbia University professor of history and the author of “Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population.” The aging of the world will change cultures in myriad ways. People may have to extend their working lives far beyond the traditional retirement age. Countries may start competing for immigrants. Across the planet, vast numbers of people already are migrating from high-fertility countries to those that need workers. The planet as a whole doesn’t have a baby shortage. Every minute of every day, according to the Population Reference Bureau, the number of births exceeds the number of deaths by 158. But the growth isn’t spread evenly. Of the net increase, 154 are in the developing world. Ethiopia and Germany have roughly the same population today, but Ethiopia’s is expected to more than double in the next four decades while Germany’s is projected to shrink by 10 million people. The demographic transition is a significant factor in the financial crisis in Europe and the ongoing debt debate in the United States. In both places, the number of workers will steadily and dramatically decrease in relation to retirees. In the United States, the ratio of working-age people to retirement-age people will go from about 5-to-1 to 3-to-1 in the next two decades, according to the Census Bureau. And America is a juvenile country compared with Japan, where, by mid-century, the 65-plus cohort will reach 40 percent of the population. If the trend holds, there will be just one working-age person per Japanese retiree. “It’s a big, big social change. Lots of things are going to be disrupted,” said Ted C. Fishman, author of “Shock of Gray,” a 2010 book whose subtitle frames the issue comprehensively: “The Aging of the World’s Population and How It Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation.” Fishman points out that this isn’t all bad, although it is a challenge: “Longer life is what human beings have wanted ever since we started talking to spirits and mixing herbs in bowls. And we worked at the top of our intelligence to get to this point of our life. It took almost the sum total of human history to get it. And now we have to work at the top of our intelligence to solve the social challenges that come with longer life and aging societies.” The global transition to lower fertility has many factors, including a basic change in attitudes toward children. In societies with high infant mortality or without social programs to support the elderly, parents desired many children as a kind of insurance. And in some countries, having lots of children was considered a patriotic duty. For example, at one point under Mao Zedong, China made heroines of women who had large families. In the 1970s, China abruptly reversed course and instituted a coercive one-child policy that sent the nation’s birthrate into free fall. It’s unclear how big the human population will get. The planet added a billion people, net, in the past dozen years (and is now more than twice as crowded as it was when Barack Obama was born). The most likely scenario, the United Nations said, will put the population at 10 billion at the end of this century and growing only modestly. But a relatively small uptick in the predicted fertility rate could result in a world with 16 billion people; a down-tick could mean a drop to 6 billion. Another uncertainty is the extent to which environmental problems and resource scarcity will bend the population curve. People are contributing to climate change, acidifying the oceans, clearing the rain forests and pushing species to extinction — among other behaviors that do not appear to be sustainable over time. The environmental footprint of people in wealthy, high-consuming, low-fertility countries is greater than that of people in poorer, high-fertility nations. That raises a philosophical question: Is a baby primarily a future consumer of precious resources on an already overstressed planet, or primarily a future producer of goods and services that sustain an economy — one with a growing cohort of people past their working years? The answer in many aging countries is emphatic: Babies wanted. Pro-natalist policies — government-funded child care, tax breaks, cash payments for additional births — have proliferated in many European countries. National leaders in many countries recognize that cultural and economic factors are making it too costly to bear children. In Russia, with a birthrate of 1.5, the government has offered women the equivalent of $9,000 in cash to have a second baby. On Oct. 20, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin traveled to St. Petersburg to observe the ceremonial arrival from Greece of the Belt of the Mother of God, according to Agence France-Presse. It is an Orthodox relic believed to have belonged to the Virgin Mary and to have powers to boost fertility. Hundreds of Russians, mostly women, stood in line to see it.

Make your Site or Blog SEO Friendly (Comments from Google Experts) See Video

abhivibhuti — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:27:49 +0000

In Today’s world when ever you have any question or any query, the first thing which comes to your Mind is Google Search. Imagine if you did not had this option then where would you have gone to look for the answer to your queries. Google is like a God which have all the answer to your queries. And the best part here is it show the results for what you are looking in seconds. Did you ever had a thought as how google acts when you click on search button. For this you can refer to one of the Expert comments from Google. Most of the sources shown by the Google search engine comes from millions of websites or Blogs where people like us continuously Posts relevant information. If Google had to show the results by creating their own Database then it would have taken millions of years to get this much search results which we see now. So Hats off to all the Website owner who knowingly or unknowingly does this Job without being known as how google is going to use their information to show others. Now if you are a blogger or a website owner then you need to follow some steps to make Google find your Website. For this Google provides Various tools to make our websites SEO Friendly. Here I am going to share some of my learning which might help you understand some basic concept as How Google can find your website easily? How Google Crawls your site? How to create a SEO Friendly Sitemap? What are Meta Tags and how it plays vital role in SEO? What are Tags? and many more questions. I would request you all to post your comments or queries if any. Traffic – building tips, straight from Google How to Make youur site Accessible How Google “discovers” your site How Google “ranks” your site Google’s advice on why and how to create good meta tags How google works How Google rates from sites like Twitter and Facebook

LG Doubleplay lives up to its name with two screens

abhivibhuti — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:50:04 +0000

This is the LG Doubleplay, and honestly, I couldn’t think of a better name. After all, what else do you call a smartphone that has two screens? Originally, it was code-named the Flip II, but I guess they decided that name was too sequel-ish. I’ve never really seen a phone like this with a 320 x 480 HVGA main display, a secondary display, and a QWERTY keyboard that is split down the middle like that. I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that both screens are touchscreens. Not much else is known about this phone, and I suppose that it was just a matter of time before someone created a flip-phone with two screens. I would have thought that the designer of such a phone would have phased out a QWERTY keyboard entirely, and have gone with a touchscreen keyboard on the secondary screen. We do know that the phone has a 5 Megapixel rear camera with LED flash, as well as a front facing camera. We don’t know the resolution of the front-facing one, though. The LG Doubleplay is planned to launch on November 2nd for a price of $150 with contract. It looks like users will have to go through T-Mobile to get it, and it will be running with some Android.

Rumours that Facebook going to Charge Held False By Facebook Home Page

abhivibhuti — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:57:55 +0000

Is Facebook going to charge users for its service from 2011 onwards? Do we all have to subscribe to the Facebook money plan in order to use this service further? These are some of the Facebook charging in 2011 rumors. Facebook…Charged service…New Subscriptions…These are some terms that we all are hearing since last few days. The Facebook charging in 2011 rumors are actually spreading even today like fire over the World Wide Web to inform users about the drastic step to be taken by this social networking giant. However, the good news is that Facebook itself has announced that it will take ‘no charges’ and that the service will remain free. There is no plan of charging the customers at any cost. The Spread of Facebook Charging in 2011 eRumor This time the rumor for Facebook sparked via several group messages and feeds on Facebook pages as well as via emails, which stated that this social networking giant will now be charging its members. The fees might go up to £$14.99 per month. Further, most of us came across a new price grid for members, which was as follows: “Facebook have introduced their price grid for $6.99 for silver member services per month, $9.99 for gold member services per month, and $3.99 for bronze member services per month. However, one can get rid of these services by copying and pasting this message before midnight. When you will sign in the next day morning, a prompt for payment info will appear.” Further, even the news channels such as The Weekly World News have revealed of Facebook charging users. Proving the Rumor as False Although Facebook has not officially reacted to the rumor, we know that the home page still mentions of its free service. You can find this out by visiting the home page after logging out. The Facebook charging in 2011 rumors sparked after this famous site made a few modifications. So, it might be due to these changes that the rumors got the sustenance to spread. However, an official Facebook page of the September month revealed that Facebook has plans to charge its users and that the service will always remain free. Moreover, Facebook does not get benefit for charging a subscription fee. This is because it generates most of its revenue from the ads viewed by over 800 million active users.