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Are you staying Home This Summer? here are some things to do

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 13:41:00 +0000

Are you staying Home This Summer? here are some things to do

It's New Year's, time to set goals and contemplate how we can make this year different from the year before. This year I want to focus on spending more meaningful time with my children and do more to take advantage of living in New York. To that end, I have created what I call a Life List for Raising NYC Kids. A life list is a list of things you want to achieve in your lifetime. This life list is all the things I hope to experience with my kids in New York before they grow up. Not just the stuff that is fun to do, but the stuff that I think will be important to do with them. The things that will shape them and be formative in their experience as little New Yorkers. The things that they will remember as adults and cherish as part of the cool experience of growing up in New York. Now, off I go to wring every drop of goodness from that damp, dirty rag that is New York City... Life List for NYC Kids (or 100 things to do with your kids before they grow up)

Visit the NY Hall of Science
Go on an audition just for the heck of it
Wave to the cameras on The Today Show
Have tea at the Plaza
Ride the Shark Boat
Climb the Statue of Liberty
Ride the row boats in Central Park
Go to Dylan's Candy Bar
Go to Economy Candy
Get locked up at the Police Museum
Go kayaking on the hudson
Take the ferry to Sandy Hook beach
Ride a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park
Have dim sum in Brooklyn's Chinatown
Go hiking in the Staten Island Greenbelt
See the new Liberty Science Center
Go fishing in the East River
Go on a fishing boat from Sheepshead Bay
See the money train at the Transit Museum
Go to the Brooklyn Children's Museum
Get a taste of country life at the Queens Farm Museum
Ride on a tug boat
Sail on the historic schooner Pioneer
Sail in the hudson
Take a helicopter ride
ride the Cyclone before it's gone
Grab the ring at the Coney Island carousel
Spend my wad at Dave and Buster's Arcade
march in the Mermaid Parade
Go to a Brooklyn Cyclone's game
Fulfill a child's wish through operation santa claus
See the ballet
Watch a dress rehearsal of an opera at the Met
Sleep over at the Bronx Zoo
See the unicorns at the Cloisters
Go horseback riding
Go sledding in Central Park
Cross-country ski down a city street
Bike across the Brooklyn Bridge and get ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory
Take the Roosevelt Island Tram
See the piano dancers at FAO
Visit the Sony Wonder Technology Lab
Children's Museum of Manhattan
Children's Museum of the Arts
Sketch at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Stargaze at the Hayden Planetarium
See the rest of the AMNH after the dinosaurs and mammals
Visit the top of the Empire State Building
Take an art class at the MoMA
Chinese Scholar's Garden in Staten Island
Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Holiday Train Show at NY Botanical Garden
Check out the Queens Zoo
See the wandering wallabies at the Prospect Park Zoo
Watch a movie under the stars
Madame Tussauds
Try all the flavors at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory
Look up relatives in Ellis Island
Visit new waterside playground in Chelsea
Get colonial at the Fraunces Tavern Museum
Do a medieval workshop at Cathedral of St John the Divine
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum
See the rollerbladers perform in Central Park (just West of the Sheep's Meadow)
Fly a kite on the Sheep Meadow
See Shakespeare in the Park
Going biking on Governor's Island
Find the secret Downing Street Playground in the Village
Explore Battery Park City Parks from the South Cove to Penny Park
Ride the Staten Island Ferry
Have knishes and egg creams at Yonah Schimmel's
See the giant buddha in the Mahayana temple
The Skyscraper Museum
Play vintage video games at The Museum of Moving Image
The Museum of the American Indian
Buy comic books at Forbidden Planet
Free concert in Madison Square Park and Get lunch at the Shake Shack
Buy flowers from the flower district
Buy wholesale toys in the wholesale district (27th and 6th)
Swing Clubs at the Chelsea Piers Driving Range
Climb the rock wall on Broadway
Visit the Science Barge
Visit the Intrepid
Test out the Whispering Gallery at Grand Central
Coney Island Arcade
Cook our own food in a Korean restaurant
Sail boats on the boat pond in Central park
Billy Johnson Rustic Playground in Central Park
Explore Belvedere Castle
Medieval Festival in Fort Tryon Park
Ride the carousel in Bryant park
See the to scale panorama of the City of New York at the Queens Museum of Art
Get Egyptian at the Brooklyn Museum of Art
See the new Greeks and Romans at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Go ice skating in Prospect Park
Riverbank State Park carousel
See the holiday lights in Dyker Heights
Take a trapeze lesson
See the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloons get inflated
Watch the circus elephants march into town
Swim in the floating barge pool

Do you Buy On Amazon ?

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 22:15:00 +0000

איך וויל נישט זיין א ציבראכענע טעיפ ריקארדער
אבער די מציאות איז אז טויזענטער טויזענטער אידען קויפן פין עמעזאן
איעדען טאג רובא דרובא גייען דירעקטלי צי זייער סייט פאר די זעלבע געלט קענט איר בוקמארקען די לינק אין איר שטיצט דורך דעם מקימי

http://www.amazon.com/s/?tag=nie01-20
ביטע קויפט פין עמעזאן נאר דורך די לינק
אין בעט אייערע חבירים, משפחה אויכעט

תזכה למצות

Amazon

Are you starting a new Amazon Business and need an Amazon Expert to Guide you?

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:53:00 +0000

When selling on Amazon Wining the BuyBox on Amazon is the most important feature and highest reward everyone is looking to achieve, but HOW do you achieve that? is there any method to the madness and tips , secrets or tricks?

Pick up this book today Amazon Seller Underground Tactics, Sell on Amazon, Using FBA
and learn the secrets

Amazon Seller Underground Tactics, Sell on Amazon, Using FBA

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:52:00 +0000

I guarantee you that this guide will teach you more then you have learned in many books regarding selling on Amazon. With 8 years of experience selling on Amazon and other channels, I herby share with you the tips, tricks and quite frankly some serious Borderline tactics that’s Amazon does not like and may be against their policy, but when done smartly, and thoughtfully, this will work in your favor and you will be king in your industry, you will be the number one seller of your category guaranteed! Learn how to OWN the BUYBOX!, Learn how to sell on Amazon, Learn the hidden secrets and benefits of using the FBA Program, Learn how to outsmart your competition on amazon and more.

buy the book here

Groupon Killers Deals are LIVE

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:52:00 +0000

Groupon Killers Deals are LIVE

BN.com Hits it out of the park

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Buy 2 Home & Gift Items, get Canvas Tote (choice of 3) for $9.95 ($24.95 value) at BN.com!

MORE BN DELAS

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MORE BN DELAS

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:51:00 +0000

BN.com Deals

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:51:00 +0000

Winning the BoxBox on Amazon, some great tips and ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 03:32:00 +0000

I must share with you a recent book I have read
Amazon Seller Underground Tactics, Sell on Amazon, Using FBA as an amazon seller I learned so much
What I learned are really some great great tips and tricks as to how to outsmart the competition and win the buybox, Winning the Buy Box is every sellers main focus, and most important and this book Amazon Seller Underground Tactics, Sell on Amazon, Using FBA has given me the ways and means on how to do that.

Amazing book for Amazon Sellers "Amazon Seller Underground Tactics, Sell on Amazon, Using FBA"

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:43:00 +0000

Amazon Seller Underground Tactics, Sell on Amazon, Using FBA

TAKEN FROM THE FIRST PAGE

Pre-word:
I start this guide with the assumption that you already have an Amazon seller account, already sold items on Amazon, and you are fairly familiar with the basics, if you do not know the basics of selling as a pro-Merchant account then you need other books out there and then read this, I also assume that you have your products line, you are either the manufacturer or the have great supplier for the items you sell, you are reading this guide because you want to become better at it, you want to kill your competitor, you want to be the number one seller in your market, this is what you will learn here, step by step of the best tactics available on Amazon, the best ideas on being a great seller.

What qualifies me to write this guide?
I have been selling on Amazon for the past 8 years, first I sold on the Z-Shops (this is what the third party seller platform was called back in the days when Amazon lost 100 million dollars each year), the Z-shops was just a store on Amazon selling the items without great visibility, we then become one of the first to join the Amazon Third Party Merchant Seller Platform, where we become eligible to complete with Amazon direct and the huge explosion of the Buy Box, have are almost at the highest seller level, (there are some tiers, with additional benefits to each new tier), OF course once Amazon announced the FBA program we jumped in, we are now shipping trailer load weekly to FBA and making a killing,

So with 8 years of experience selling on Amazon and other channels, I herby share with you the tips, tricks and quite frankly some serious Borderline tactics that’s Amazon does not like and may be against their policy, but when done smart, and thoughtful, this will work in your favor and you will be king in your industry, you will be the number one seller of your category guaranteed!

I guarantee you that this 20 page guide will teach you more then you have learned in many books regarding selling on Amazon.

Inside Intel / Who was killed in Tehran last week?

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:29:00 +0000

Was he a dangerous nuclear scientist or a harmless student; that will determine whether it was a successful operation.

Five days have passed since the assassination in Tehran, but the mystery surrounding the murdered man's identity has not yet been solved. The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, claimed he was a nuclear scientist, but the Iranian government's lips are sealed.

This, combined with the contradictory reports in the Iranian media, has thus far prevented the uncertainty from being dispelled. Was he a scientist named Dariush Rezaei-Ochbolagh, 46, a member of the physics faculty at the University of Mohaghegh Ardabili who also worked with Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, as initially reported by several news sites in Iran? Or was he an engineering student named Darioush Rezaeinejad who had no connection to the nuclear project?

It is of utmost importance to identify the murdered man. Saturday's assassination in Tehran was the fourth such effort over the last 20 months. The three previous assassinations, all in Tehran as well, were of scientists associated with Iran's nuclear program. Two of them, Masoud Ali Mohammadi (January 2010 ) and Majid Shahriari (November 2010 ), were killed, and the third, Fereydoun Abbasi Davani, was injured in November 2010. When the latter recovered, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed him to head the country's Atomic Energy Organization.

All these incidents followed a similar pattern. They were aimed not merely at scientists connected with Iran's nuclear program, but specifically at those who worked in weaponization, the last stage before nuclear weapons production, in which fissionable matter is combined with a detonator to form a bomb or warhead. All the assassinations took place near the targets' homes, as they were entering or leaving their cars. Their wives were nearby, and some of them were injured, too. Another common denominator is the modus operandi: A pair of motorcyclists approached the target and either fired at close range or attached bombs to their cars.

All the signs say the assassinations were carried out by a daring and determined organization that did not hesitate to operate in Tehran (in the latest case, the killing took place close to a Revolutionary Guard base not far from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security ). This organization has precise information about the targets' addresses, their daily routine (though they presumably tried to vary their routines for security reasons ) and what kind of security they had. All this, and more, implies that the assassinations were the work of an intelligence agency with the ability to gather intelligence for such a campaign and then utilize this intelligence to carry out assassinations.

Since these were evidently not chance killings, but rather part of an ongoing plan, correctly identifying the third murdered man is even more important. If he really was a senior nuclear scientist involved in weaponization, the organization behind the assassination can rack up an important success in the ongoing battle to cripple, confound and delay Iran's ability to produce nuclear weapons. The assassinations are only one element of this secret war, whose other elements include destroying equipment at nuclear facilities (such as by infecting the computers operating the centrifuges that enrich uranium with a virus ), disrupting Iran's overseas purchasing network, recruiting scientists as informers, and so on.

Grave consequences

But if the murdered man was an engineering student rather than a nuclear scientist, there is no doubt that it was a serious mistake. And if so, it will undermine a tactic that has been viewed as a means of "punishing" Iran and those involved in its nuclear program.

This is because it will likely force the responsible organization to either halt the assassinations entirely or suspend them for a time. The organization will have to conduct investigations to determine what went wrong, and perhaps even fire those responsible for the failure.

Ali Larijani predictably blamed the United States and "the Zionists" for the assassination. The U.S. denied this on Monday: "We were not involved," a State Department spokeswoman said. Israel, in contrast, is keeping mum: "Israel will not comment," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said earlier this week.

Regardless of which organization is actually behind the assassinations in Tehran, the difference between success and failure in the latest killing is like the difference between the failed Mossad operations in Lillehammer and Amman and the successful action attributed to the Mossad in Malta.

In July 1973, Mossad assassins mistook a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, for their target, Ali Hassan Salameh of the Black September terrorist organization, and killed him. In September 1997, Mossad agents injured senior Hamas official Khaled Meshal, but due to a navigational error, they were caught, and Israel was forced to provide the antidote for the poison the agents used, thereby contributing indirectly to his advancement in the movement.

In October 1995, by contrast, assassins riding motorcycles, who were widely thought to be from the Mossad, succeeded in assassinating Fathi Shkaki, the leader of Islamic Jihad, and thereby impaired the organization's functioning for several years.

For 50 years, assassinations of enemies have been attributed to Israel and its intelligence agencies. In the 1960s, there were attempts to assassinate German scientists employed by Egypt's rocket program. Scientists who worked on Saddam Hussein's nuclear and missile programs - including the Canadian Dr. Gerald Bull, inventor of the Supergun - met their deaths in the 1970s and 1980s under murky circumstances that have never been clarified. Leaders of Palestinian terror organizations and other senior Palestinian terrorists were also assassinated during those decades in operations attributed to the Mossad.

But at the same time, there has been a heated debate in the inner circles of the intelligence community, and also outside it, about just how effective these assassination campaigns are and whether they achieve their goals. There is no definitive answer. But even those who support the use of assassinations know this is a weapon of last resort and that their use must be minimized.

If it turns out that the wrong man was killed in Tehran, this argument will heat up again. But even if this was not a case of mistaken identity, it seems very doubtful that assassinations - even if they hit the right targets and succeed in sowing fear among the scientists - will prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Most experts agree that this depends mainly on the decisions of Iran's leadership, first and foremost Supreme Leader Ali Khaminei. If and when he orders his scientists to build nuclear bombs, Iran will become the tenth member of the nuclear club

Iran to UN: Israel behind scientist's murder

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:28:00 +0000

Iranian senior official demands UN's Human Rights Council investigate Daryoush Rezayeenejad's assassination
Iran has submitted a letter to the UN's Human Rights Council demanding an investigation into the assassination of Daryoush Rezayeenejad last week.

Javad Larijani, the secretary general of Iran's High Council of Human Rights, accused Israel and the West of assassinating an electrical engineering graduate student.

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"The UN Security Council issues a resolution and makes a list of our scientists, then some terrorists who receive money from the CIA and the Mossad kill them. This is a very clear game and strong action should be taken about it," he said.

"Mr. Rezayeenejad's assassination shows that there is quite a hostile policy against our nation, in which the Zionists and the United States and some European governments are fully engaged."

Larijani described Rezayeenejad as an elite member of the science community and mentioned nuclear scientists who were murdered in the past two years.

Earlier this week, the Fars news agency said the victim the attack was Darioush Rezaeinejad, a university student in Tehran and not Iranian physicist Darioush Rezaei as initially reported.

Iran's Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi Thursday that Iran has yet to find evidence indicating that foreign intelligence agencies were behind the assassination.

Stuxnet returns to bedevil Iran's nuclear systems

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:50:00 +0000

קימט אפט צי "נייעס יעצט" פאר אינטערסאנטע נייעסליך פין איבער דע וועלט

EBKAfile's intelligence sources report that the Stuxnet malworm which played havoc with Iran's nuclear program for eleven months was not purged after all. Tehran never did overcome the disruptions caused by Stuxnet or restore its centrifuges to smooth and normal operation as was claimed. Indeed, Iran finally resorted to the only sure-fire cure, scrapping all the tainted machines and replacing them with new ones. Iran provided confirmation of this Tuesday, July 19 in an announcement that improved and faster centrifuge models were being installed.
Iran would clearly not have undertaken the major and costly project of replacing all its 5,000-6,000 centrifuges with new ones if they were indeed functioning smoothly. The announcement was made by the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman at a press briefing although no one present had raised the nuclear issue. He said: "The installation of new centrifuges with better quality and speed is ongoing… this is another confirmation of the Islamic republic's successful strides in its nuclear activities."
Britain and France immediately condemned the announcement. It proved, official spokesmen commented, that Iran plans to triple the amount of uranium it enriches in contravention of six UN Security Council Resolutions and defiance of ten International Atomic Energy Agency decisions in Vienna. The announcement also "confirmed suspicions that the Iranian nuclear program had no credible civilian application."
In recent months, Iran has taken advantage of the West's preoccupation with the Arab revolt to quietly forge ahead unnoticed with its weapons program. So if everything was moving smoothly forward why did Tehran suddenly decide to raise the touchy subject again?
Indeed, by doing so, the official spokesman placed in doubt the three major strides Iran was generally presumed to have made while the West was otherwise engaged:
1. The dramatic speeding-up of uranium enrichment and expansion of the quantities produced.
The West has no credible information, whether from intelligence, research, or nuclear watchdog inspections, as to how much enriched uranium Iran has produced and how much it has in stock.
As DEBKAfile reported previously, for the past six months, Iran managed to keep the full scope of its enrichment activities hidden from IAEA inspections. Although inspectors were allowed to visit Iran's acknowledged enrichment facility at Natanz, they were unable to gauge how many active centrifuges were present and how many removed to unknown site or sites. The sophisticated cameras supposed to monitor the Natanz facility were unable to record all of Iran's enrichment activities because key production sites were moved out of range.
2. The glitches bedeviling their centrifuge machines were overcome and all 5,000 were spinning away without interruption. After expunging the Stuxnet virus which first struck in June 2010, all their nuclear program's control systems and installations, including Natanz and the Russian-built Bushehr reactor, were functioning perfectly. It took Iranian and Russian computer and cyber-terrorism experts a year to cleanse the system. This gave security agencies their first indicator of the time it takes to overcome a large-scale, sophisticated cyber attack.
On July 5, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, head of Israeli military intelligence, said that Iran is currently running 5,000 active centrifuges and aiming for 8,000. He made no reference to their replacement with newer and faster machines - which the Iranian spokesman disclosed suddenly last Tuesday.
3. The Iranians are engaged in the relocation of the centrifuges spinning 20-percent grade enriched uranium to a new underground facility at Fordo, 100 kilometers away near Qom. Tehran has rejected every European and IAEA demand to install monitoring and inspection equipment at the new facility which is therefore functioning without international oversight.
Those presumptions are now largely suspect.
Western intelligence sources tell DEBKAfile that until recently, the Iranians believed they had a clear road for enriching large quantities of high-grade uranium after solving technical obstructions and beating back the cyber attack. But then, they were stunned to discover that the Stuxnet virus, far from being eradicated, was back with a vengeance and on the offensive against their centrifuges. Iran was forced to adopt a course it had avoided last year, namely to destroy the entire plant of approximately 5,000 working centrifuges and replace them all with new machines.
This decision led to the foreign ministry spokesman's one-sentence announcement. He delivered it to pre-empt Iran's enemies from picking up on the installation of the new centrifuges and making it public with the real reason for dumping the "smoothly" operating ones.

Did you buy yet? $6 worth $12 at Kliens Ice Cream House

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:46:00 +0000

Did you buy yet? $6 worth $12 at Kliens Ice Cream House
http://livingsoci.al/oBEnQV

Analysis from an individual What can we learn from #BPBOY ?

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Analysis from an individual

What have we learned from this terrible terrible tragedy?
Every person with a microphone or a blog, and pen and paper is trying to explain as to what needs to be done, how we have to change for the better in light of such a horrible story. I have read blogs, listen to online conferences and other phone outlets where very smart and educated rabbis, therapist and community leaders are telling us what needs to be changed.
The most common Analysis seem to be that the new technology is what has caused all of this, I have heard from Satmar Rabbi (R”A) Shlit”a, about the horrors of technology, we also heard from Nikelsburg Rabbi Shlit”a as well as some other speakers and individuals all over the web.

However with all due respect I beg to differ, technology is not all evil! Of course it may make a sinner sin easier, but so can a car, a phone and many other technologies that we have come to rely on, should we ban cars now?, NO! the Blackberries or iPhones are NOT to Blame, for this horrible crime, as a matter of fact I will say that that technology has created new way to do great Mitzvahs, Chaveirim, Chessed, Mekimi and many other organizations rely almost solely on text messaging and internet connections to a WAP site.

Every item can used for good and evil it’s up to the individual to choose, (as someone pointed out Levi are same letters as EVIL but also the same letters as LIVE) it’s to the each person to choose his way, so of course I won’t deny that a smart phone can be connected to evil, However f a person wants to sin, wants to do an avaira he will find his way to do it , there have been sinners before the iPhone, iPod and Blackberry.

I will be the first to say that the massive search that has been established has only been accomplished through technology like sms, text messages, black berry groups and twitter, Yes Twitter had the latest and quickest breaking news all night and brought together people from all over to help with the search, so in my opinion technology is a good thing, it’s all up to the education of the Yeshivah and schools to teach us how to choose between Evil and LIVE, not take away the option so we don’t need to choose, we are grown ups and we need to make choices we need to be taught how to choose between good and bad, I’Buchartu Bachaim!

In My humble opinion, if a lesson is to be learned I would say, let’s look as to what happened once the story broke, people from all no matter what Chasidus, not matter what hat, not matter which shul he Davins, no matter if he belongs to a one rabbi or his Rabbi’s brother, everyone came together like we have not seen before all K’ish Achod. Blev Achod with a determined Achdos to find Leiby, no one cared who was part of his search team, me myself the writer of this Analysis went searching both nights with people who I do not know we were four people searching a few blocks up and down inside out, I have learned that One is a Satmar’r, one is a Skver and the other was a S’klener, but it did not matter, we were determined to find Leiby and bring him back to his Mommy!

so to me it’s clear that if a lesson is to be learned is the fact that unfortunately Klal Yisraol is divided in too many pieces, we are splintered and splattered in too many fractions, many times full of hatred to one another, and too many times, Oh Gavlad! even using valance one another fellow yid just because he doesn’t warship the same Rabbi.

So again IMHO we need to stop hating each other, Start loving your fellow Yid, and let’s make this Achdos created now last forever and this will help bring MoShiach! Let’s do more Chessed!

This has been written by an individual and does not express the views on the blog owner, if you wish to have your opinion posted here, please email us your article at NiesNow@gmail.com

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Are we really doing EVERYTHING to protect our children?

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:01:00 +0000

Dear Mrs. Freier

Thanks for the great article on VIN.
This shabbas All of us showered our kids with love, we lectured them and taught them what is allowed and what not, no one can touch bully or even be nice to you. there are no secrets from parents, etc etc.

Evil is walking around on every block, and NOTHING is being done to remove them from the streets, you can teach a small child so much, but at the moment when is lost, exhausted, and scared, he looses his common sense and will walk up to anyone that will help him and take him to his mom, our kids are not the problem, it's the rabbis who
protect the Evil Doers that are the problem, evildoers must be removed from our streets.

You do GREAT work with B’Derech and you need to be commended for that!
Thank you so much,
But is there really no way to remove the danger before it happens? are we really not creating the danger ourselves by harboring and protecting pedophiles, without the pedophiles there will be no need for B’Derech, help us get rid of them before they strike!

What will we do about that?

--

This has been written by a parent who lives in BP and does not express the views on the blog owner, if you wish to have your opinion posted here, please email us your article at NiesNow@gmail.com

A flying car retailing for $227,000 could be on roads in a matter of months

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:51:00 +0000

A flying car retailing for $227,000 could be on roads in a matter of months -- and customers are already lining up to be the first to get their hands on one, its maker claims.

The manufacturer of the two-seat plane that transforms into a car at the touch of a button says prospective travellers have been paying £6,200 deposits to be the first in line to buy one.

More than 20 Britons have reportedly expressed interest in the new transport phenomenon - despite its release date not set down until late 2012.

The Terrafugia Transition craft can fly 500 miles (800km) on a single tank of fuel and can lift off from almost any long straight road.

The Terrafugia Transition transforms from a car to a plane. Picture: Terrafugia

Once in the air it has a top speed of 115mph (185km/h); while on the ground, its wings fold up in 15 seconds and it can reach up to 62mph (100km/h).

"It's like a little Transformer," Carl Dietrich, the founder and chief executive of Terrafugia, said.

The vehicle gained preliminary approval from US flight regulators in June - more than a year since it took to skies for its first successful flight.

The flying car is expected to go on sale late next year. Picture: Terrafugia

After the debut flight in March last year, Mr Dietrich said it was a historic milestone for the aviation industry.

"This breakthrough changes the world of personal mobility," he said.

"Travel now becomes a hassle-free integrated land-air experience. It's what aviation enthusiasts have been striving for since 1918."

He said the craft would only be available to those with a light aircraft licence.

MURDERER !!! WALK OF SHAME

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:03:00 +0000

How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:49:00 +0000

it was January 2010, and investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency had just completed an inspection at the uranium enrichment plant outside Natanz in central Iran, when they realized that something was off within the cascade rooms where thousands of centrifuges were enriching uranium.

It was January 2010, and investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency had just completed an inspection at the uranium enrichment plant outside Natanz in central Iran, when they realized that something was off within the cascade rooms where thousands of centrifuges were enriching uranium.

Natanz technicians in white lab coats, gloves and blue booties were scurrying in and out of the “clean” cascade rooms, hauling out unwieldy centrifuges one by one, each sheathed in shiny silver cylindrical casings.

Any time workers at the plant decommissioned damaged or otherwise unusable centrifuges, they were required to line them up for IAEA inspection to verify that no radioactive material was being smuggled out in the devices before they were removed. The technicians had been doing so now for more than a month.

“We were not immune to the fact that there was a bigger geopolitical picture going on. We were definitely thinking … do I really want my name to be put on this?” – Eric Chien

Normally Iran replaced up to 10 percent of its centrifuges a year, due to material defects and other issues. With about 8,700 centrifuges installed at Natanz at the time, it would have been normal to decommission about 800 over the course of the year.

But when the IAEA later reviewed footage from surveillance cameras installed outside the cascade rooms to monitor Iran’s enrichment program, they were stunned as they counted the numbers. The workers had been replacing the units at an incredible rate — later estimates would indicate between 1,000 and 2,000 centrifuges were swapped out over a few months.

The question was, why?

Iran wasn’t required to disclose the reason for replacing the centrifuges and, officially, the inspectors had no right to ask. Their mandate was to monitor what happened to nuclear material at the plant, not keep track of equipment failures. But it was clear that something had damaged the centrifuges.

What the inspectors didn’t know was that the answer they were seeking was hidden all around them, buried in the disk space and memory of Natanz’s computers. Months earlier, in June 2009, someone had silently unleashed a sophisticated and destructive digital worm that had been slithering its way through computers in Iran with just one aim — to sabotage the country’s uranium enrichment program and prevent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from building a nuclear weapon.

But it would be nearly a year before the inspectors would learn of this. The answer would come only after dozens of computer security researchers around the world would spend months deconstructing what would come to be known as the most complex malware ever written — a piece of software that would ultimately make history as the world’s first real cyberweapon.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad observes computer monitors at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in central Iran, where Stuxnet was believed to have infected PCs and damaged centrifuges. (Photo: Office of the Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran)

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On June 17, 2010, Sergey Ulasen was in his office in Belarus sifting through e-mail when a report caught his eye. A computer belonging to a customer in Iran was caught in a reboot loop — shutting down and restarting repeatedly despite efforts by operators to take control of it. It appeared the machine was infected with a virus.

Ulasen heads an antivirus division of a small computer security firm in Minsk called VirusBlokAda. Once a specialized offshoot of computer science, computer security has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry over the last decade keeping pace with an explosion in sophisticated hack attacks and evolving viruses, Trojan horses and spyware programs.

The best security specialists, like Bruce Schneier, Dan Kaminsky and Charlie Miller are considered rock stars among their peers, and top companies like Symantec, McAfee and Kaspersky have become household names, protecting everything from grandmothers’ laptops to sensitive military networks.

VirusBlokAda, however, was no rock star nor a household name. It was an obscure company that even few in the security industry had heard of. But that would shortly change.

“If I turn up dead and I committed suicide on Monday, I just want to tell you guys, I’m not suicidal.” – Liam O Murchu

Ulasen’s research team got hold of the virus infecting their client’s computer and realized it was using a “zero-day” exploit to spread. Zero-days are the hacking world’s most potent weapons: They exploit vulnerabilities in software that are yet unknown to the software maker or antivirus vendors. They’re also exceedingly rare; it takes considerable skill and persistence to find such vulnerabilities and exploit them. Out of more than 12 million pieces of malware that antivirus researchers discover each year, fewer than a dozen use a zero-day exploit.

In this case, the exploit allowed the virus to cleverly spread from one computer to another via infected USB sticks. The vulnerability was in the LNK file of Windows Explorer, a fundamental component of Microsoft Windows. When an infected USB stick was inserted into a computer, as Explorer automatically scanned the contents of the stick, the exploit code awakened and surreptitiously dropped a large, partially encrypted file onto the computer, like a military transport plane dropping camouflaged soldiers into target territory.

It was an ingenious exploit that seemed obvious in retrospect, since it attacked such a ubiquitous function. It was also one, researchers would soon learn to their surprise, that had been used before.

VirusBlokAda contacted Microsoft to report the vulnerability, and on July 12, as the software giant was preparing a patch, VirusBlokAda went public with the discovery in a post to a security forum. Three days later, security blogger Brian Krebs picked up the story, and antivirus companies around the world scrambled to grab samples of the malware — dubbed Stuxnet by Microsoft from a combination of file names (.stub and MrxNet.sys) found in the code.

As the computer security industry rumbled into action, decrypting and deconstructing Stuxnet, more assessments filtered out.

It turned out the code had been launched into the wild as early as a year before, in June 2009, and its mysterious creator had updated and refined it over time, releasing three different versions. Notably, one of the virus’s driver files used a valid signed certificate stolen from RealTek Semiconductor, a hardware maker in Taiwan, in order to fool systems into thinking the malware was a trusted program from RealTek.

Internet authorities quickly revoked the certificate. But another Stuxnet driver was found using a second certificate, this one stolen from JMicron Technology, a circuit maker in Taiwan that was — coincidentally or not – headquartered in the same business park as RealTek. Had the attackers physically broken into the companies to steal the certificates? Or had they remotely hacked them to swipe the company’s digital certificate-signing keys? No one knew.

“We rarely see such professional operations,” wrote ESET, a security firm that found one of the certificates, on its blog. “This shows [the attackers] have significant resources.”

In other ways, though, Stuxnet seemed routine and unambitious in its aims. Experts determined that the virus was designed to target Simatic WinCC Step7 software, an industrial control system made by the German conglomerate Siemens that was used to program controllers that drive motors, valves and switches in everything from food factories and automobile assembly lines to gas pipelines and water treatment plants.

Although this was new in itself — control systems aren’t a traditional hacker target, because there’s no obvious financial gain in hacking them — what Stuxnet did to the Simatic systems wasn’t new. It appeared to be simply stealing configuration and design data from the systems, presumably to allow a competitor to duplicate a factory’s production layout. Stuxnet looked like just another case of industrial espionage.

Antivirus companies added signatures for various versions of the malware to their detection engines, and then for the most part moved on to other things.

The story of Stuxnet might have ended there. But a few researchers weren’t quite ready to let it go.

Symantec's Liam O Murchu was the first to notice that Stuxnet was much more complex and sophisticated than previously believed. (Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired)

“Everything in it just made your hair stand up and go, this is something we need to look into.” – Liam O Murchu

Researchers in Symantec’s offices in Europe and the United States were among those who grabbed the code in July and created signatures for customers. But once they had done this, the malware passed to Liam O Murchu in the company’s Culver City, California office.

O Murchu is a 33-year-old Irishman and avid snowboarder with a lyrical accent and crop of brown hair sculpted vertically in front like the lip of a halfpipe. As manager of operations for Symantec Security Response, it was his job to review significant malware threats to determine if they should be analyzed in-depth.

Of the more than 1 million malicious files Symantec and other AV firms received monthly, the majority were variations of already-known viruses and worms. These were processed automatically without human intervention. Algorithms searched the files for telltale strings of data or behavior to identify the malware, then produced and pushed out signatures to antivirus scanners on customer machines.

Malware containing zero-day exploits, however, were special and got examined by hand. O Murchu passed Stuxnet to an engineer with no zero-day experience, thinking it would be a good opportunity to train him. But as he tucked into the code simultaneously himself, he realized it was much more complex than he’d thought.

Several layers of masking obscured the zero-day exploit inside, requiring work to reach it, and the malware was huge — 500k bytes, as opposed to the usual 10k to 15k. Generally malware this large contained a space-hogging image file, such as a fake online banking page that popped up on infected computers to trick users into revealing their banking login credentials. But there was no image in Stuxnet, and no extraneous fat either. The code appeared to be a dense and efficient orchestra of data and commands.

O Murchu’s interest was immediately piqued.

His first encounter with malware had been in 1996 when a fellow student at the College of Dublin crafted a virus targeting the university’s network. On the Ides of March, hundreds of terminals in the school’s computer labs locked students out until they could answer 10 questions flashing on their screens. Most were annoyed by the inconvenience, but O Murchu was fascinated by the code and took it apart to see how it worked. It was part of his DNA to deconstruct things. As a child, he’d been the kind of kid who, instead of playing with a toy car, would tear it apart to map how the gears worked.

It was that curiosity that drove him to security.

After graduation from college, O Murchu worked briefly as a penetration tester for a United States maker of internet kiosks, trying to break the kiosk’s payment wall to see if he could get free internet access. The company hired him just to run a few tests, but kept him and other testers on for three months because they kept finding ways to break the system.

In 2002 he took a job with an antispam firm, which was gobbled up by Symantec soon afterwards. O Murchu eventually transferred to the corporate giant’s Culver City office, leaving Dublin for Southern California.

When you’ve seen as many viruses and worms as O Murchu has, you can glance at a piece of malware and know instantly what it does — this one is a keystroke logger, that one is a banking Trojan — and whether it was slapped together sloppily, or carefully crafted and organized. Stuxnet was the latter. It contained multiple components, all compartmentalized into different locations to make it easy to swap out functions and modify the malware as needed.

What most stood out, though, was the way the malware hid those functions. Normally, Windows functions are loaded as needed from a DLL file stored on the hard drive. Doing the same with malicious files, however, would be a giveaway to antivirus software. Instead, Stuxnet stored its decrypted malicious DLL file only in memory as a kind of virtual file with a specially crafted name.

It then reprogrammed the Windows API — the interface between the operating system and the programs that run on top of it — so that every time a program tried to load a function from a library with that specially crafted name, it would pull it from memory instead of the hard drive. Stuxnet was essentially creating an entirely new breed of ghost file that would not be stored on the hard drive at all, and hence would be almost impossible to find.

O Murchu had never seen this technique in all his years of analyzing malware. “Even the complex threats that we see, the advanced threats we see, don’t do this,” he mused during a recent interview at Symantec’s office.

Clues were piling up that Stuxnet was highly professional, and O Murchu had only examined the first 5k of the 500k code. It was clear it was going to take a team to tackle it. The question was, should they tackle it?

No one would have blamed Symantec for dropping Stuxnet at this point and moving on to other things. The primary task of any antivirus firm is detection — stopping infections before they occur and ridding already-infected systems of malicious files. What malware does once it’s on a computer is secondary.

But Symantec felt an obligation to solve the Stuxnet riddle for its customers. More than this, the code just seemed way too complex and sophisticated for mere espionage. It was a huge adrenaline-rush of a puzzle, and O Murchu wanted to crack it.

“Everything in it just made your hair stand up and go, this is something we need to look into,” he said.

By the time O Murchu finished his initial assessment of the code, it was the end of day Friday, so he sent an update to Symantec’s research team in Tokyo. Symantec has labs in Europe, the United States and Japan, so that researchers in different time zones are always available to jump on important threats, handing them off to each other like tag-team wrestlers as the sun sets on one office and rises over another.

The Tokyo team spent the weekend mapping Stuxnet’s components so they could get a handle on what they were dealing with. On Monday, O Murchu picked up where they’d left off, joined by Eric Chien, technical director of Symantec Security Response, and Nicolas Falliere, a senior software engineer and code analyst in Symantec’s Paris office.

They determined that each time Stuxnet infected a system, it “phoned home” to one of two domains — www.mypremierfutbol.com and www.todaysfutbol.com hosted on servers in Malaysia and Denmark — to report information about the infected machines. This included the machine’s internal and external IP addresses, the computer name, its operating system and version and whether Siemens Simatic WinCC Step7 software, also known simply as Step7, was installed on the machine. The command-and-control servers let the attackers update Stuxnet on infected machines with new functionality or even install more malicious files on systems.

The DNS providers for the two domains had already dead-lettered the incoming traffic to prevent it from reaching the attackers. Symantec had a better idea. The company contacted the providers and persuaded them to reroute any traffic to a sinkhole — in this case, a computer dedicated to receiving hostile traffic — that Symantec controlled. By Tuesday morning, Symantec was getting reports from machines as Stuxnet infected them. The company shared the data with other security firms.

Within a week of establishing the sinkhole, about 38,000 infected machines were reporting in from dozens of countries. Before long, the number would surpass 100,000. Stuxnet was spreading rapidly, despite signatures distributed by antivirus firms to stop it.

As Chien and O Murchu mapped the geographical location of the infections, a strange pattern emerged. Out of the initial 38,000 infections, about 22,000 were in Iran. Indonesia was a distant second, with about 6,700 infections, followed by India with about 3,700 infections. The United States had fewer than 400. Only a small number of machines had Siemens Step 7 software installed – just 217 machines reporting in from Iran and 16 in the United States.

The infection numbers were way out of sync with previous patterns of worldwide infections — such as what occurred with the prolific Conficker worm — in which Iran never placed high, if at all, in infection stats. South Korea and the United States were always at the top of charts in massive outbreaks, which wasn’t a surprise since they had the highest numbers of internet users. But even in outbreaks centered in the Middle East or Central Asia, Iran never figured high in the numbers. It was clear the Islamic Republic was at the center of the Stuxnet infection.

The sophistication of the code, plus the fraudulent certificates, and now Iran at the center of the fallout made it look like Stuxnet could be the work of a government cyberarmy — maybe even a United States cyberarmy.

This made Symantec’s sinkhole an audacious move. In intercepting data the attackers were expecting to receive, the researchers risked tampering with a covert U.S. government operation. Asked recently if they were concerned about this, Chien replied, “For us there’s no good guys or bad guys.” Then he paused to reconsider. “Well, bad guys are people who are writing malicious code that infects systems that can cause unintended consequences or intended consequences.”

Whether the “bad guy” was the United States or one of its allies, the attack was causing collateral damage to thousands of systems, and Symantec felt no patriotic duty to preserve its activity. “We’re not beholden to a nation,” Chien said. “We’re a multinational, private company protecting customers.”

The clock was ticking. All the researchers knew at this point was that Stuxnet had a foothold on more than 100,000 computers, and they had no real idea what it was doing to them.

“For the longest time we were thinking, well, maybe it just spread in Iran because they didn’t have up-to-date security software, and that if this gets over to the United States, some water-treatment plant or some train-control system or anything could be affected,” Chien recalled recently. “So, really, we were trying to find out, full steam ahead, what exactly does this thing affect?”

Eric Chien, of Symantec, said his company wasn't concerned that its revelations about Stuxnet might have derailed a covert U.S. government operation against Iran. (Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired)

“We were talking about blowing stuff up!”
- Eric Chien

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Report: Amazon readying a tablet PC

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:46:00 +0000

Amazon.com may introduce a tablet computer to compete with Apple's iPad, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal Wednesday afternoon.

The new tablet, which is supposedly due out in October, will reportedly have a nine-inch screen. And it will run Google's Android operating system, the Journal said, citing unnamed sources. Amazon isn't designing the tablet itself. Instead, it will outsource the design of the device to an Asian manufacturer, the report said.

The Amazon tablet will reportedly be designed to allow Amazon customers to watch movies, listen to digital music, and read e-books, all of which are offered through the Amazon online store. The new tablet isn't expected to have a camera, according to the Journal's sources.
The article also said that Amazon is planning to announce two new black-and-white Kindle e-readers. The new e-readers will reportedly use the same faux paper and ink technology as the previous Kindles that makes the pages easy to read. One of the new Kindles will reportedly be a cheaper version of the existing Kindle. The company will also introduce a touch screen version of the product, which will compete against readers offered by Barnes & Noble and Kobo, the article said.
The new Amazon tablet will be entering a crowded field. Since Apple first launched the iPad a couple of years ago, the segment has been a hot category. And it's quickly filled with competitors using the Google Android operating system. Hundreds of companies have entered the market, including big names like Samsung with its Galaxy Tab products. Others including Sony and Hewlett-Packard have also recently announced products in this category. Even mobile phone maker Research In Motion has tried to get into the market with the Playbook.
But so far, none of them has met the success of the Apple iPad.

Netflix managers prepared for backlash to price hike

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:46:00 +0000

Netflix managers knew that some customers would be unhappy with the company's decision to raise prices, and a day before announcing the fee increase they told customer-service personnel to be prepared for angry callers.

Netflix managers knew that some customers would be unhappy with the company's decision to raise prices, and a day before announcing the fee increase they told customer-service personnel to be prepared for angry callers.
Some of Netflix's customer-service representatives told subscribers today that they added extra employees in the department to help handle the flood of calls, many of them emotional, the employees said. Hundreds of Netflix employees were answering phones today and that still wasn't enough to prevent some callers from experiencing extended delays before speaking to a Netflix employee, the reps told customers.

Starting in September, the company will no longer offer users the ability to access both streaming video and by-mail DVDs for $9.99 a month. Netflix said Tuesday that it was splitting each distribution mode into two separate subscription plans, each costing $7.99 per month. To receive both, subscribers must pay $15.98. The announcement saw the company's blog fill up with 4,000 responses, most of them negative.
Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey confirmed that Netflix had indeed prepared employees to receive a certain amount of calls from those unhappy with the hike. Swasey said Netflix did not go into this with its eyes closed.
"We tested, we researched, we analyzed," Swasey told CNET this evening. "We knew what the reaction would be. We are not surprised. We knew that there would be some people upset by the service and with the price being adjusted."
Rich Greenfield, a Wall Street analyst with BTIG Research, conducted a test of how Netflix's customer service department was handling calls following the announcement. In a report issued today, Greenfield said he learned Netflix was being overwhelmed by calls. He said BTIG made 35 calls over two hours and waited on hold typically between 9 minutes and 15 minutes.
Greenfield also said he was unhappy with the response from Netflix employees. He wrote that they suggest to any people who threaten to cancel their subscription that they should wait until September, when the plan is due to take effect

iPhone 5 rumor roundup

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:44:00 +0000

In a big change from the previous three events, Apple's 2011 Worldwide Developers Conference didn't reveal new iPhone hardware. Sure, attendees got details of iOS 5 at the June 6 keynote address, but true iPhone fans also left the session without any hint of what a new handset might offer or when it would arrive.

With Apple devices in particular, the rumor mill tends to kick into high gear in the absence of any official announcement. And that's certainly been the case with the iPhone 5. The first gossip started to trickle in even as the iPhone 4 went on sale last year, but in the last few weeks that trickle has become a flood. Some of the rumors contradict each other--one camp suggests a minor update with an iPhone 4S, while another predicts a big update with an iPhone 5--but disagreement, after all, often is what the rumor mill is all about. And since conflicting information can be hard to track, we offer this handy timeline of iPhone 5 rumors so far in 2011. We'll add to it as we go along, and please let us know if we've left any juicy tidbits out.
Editors' note: This roundup was updated on July 13 with new information.
July 13, 2011
Now hiring for an August iPhone
After some clever detective work, CNET UK finds a job posting repeated throughout the United Kingdom that asks for "Apple iPhone Sales Specialists" to work in Apple retail stores. The temporary positions would last from mid-August through the end of October and would be for what the recruiter describes as "an exciting project."
July 6, 2011
Suppliers get their orders
Anonymous sources to The Wall Street Journal claim that Apple has asked suppliers to build 25 million units of its next iPhone by August for a third-quarter launch.

Job posting hints at mid-August iPhone 5 release

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:43:00 +0000

Our CNET UK colleagues have a juicy find today. It centers around job postings for an influx of temporary workers to help sell Apple's iPhone, right around when the iPhone 5 is expected to hit.
The post--there are several in various regions around the U.K.--seeks an "Apple iPhone sales specialist" to work for two and a half months in Apple retail stores beginning in mid-August for what recruiter Gekko calls "an exciting project":

"Our client, Apple, one of the largest consumer electronic hardware and software companies in the world are seeking full-time iPhone Sales Staff for an exciting project to work 5 days a week (Tuesday-Saturday) for the period 16th August - 29th October within key retail stores," the posting reads.
Gekko notes that those who get the gig need to attend a four-day "training event" during the second week of August, presumably to be briefed on any new product information.
Apple has released a new iPhone every year since unleashing the original model on June 29, 2007. The latest, the iPhone 4, is now more than a year old, and multiple reports of Apple delivering a next-generation version of the handset have pointed to a release in the August/September time frame. It's worth noting that the iPhone 4 was released in the U.S. and the U.K. on the same day last year.
Alongside new hardware, another key release to expect in the fall is iOS 5, the next version of the system software that powers the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Apple this week delivered the third beta of that software to developers so they can ready their apps ahead of a public release.

14 Year old boy from catskill ALIVE called parents from staten island mall #catskillboy #bpboy

noreply@blogger.com (Nies Now) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:56:00 +0000

14 Year old boy from catskill ALIVE called parents from staten island mall #catskillboy #bpboy