The images appear to show rows of dark "conifers" sprouting from dunes and hills on the planet surface. But the scene is actually an optical illusion. The photographs actually show sand dunes coated with a thin layer of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, less than 240 miles from the planet's north pole.
The photographs actually show sand dunes coated with a thin layer of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, less than 240 miles from the planet's north pole.
Internet giant Google has said it may end its operations in China following a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack originating from the country. It did not accuse Beijing directly, but said it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn.
It did not accuse Beijing directly, but said it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn.
Chinese rival Baidu called the move "hypocritical" and financially driven. In US trade on Wednesday Baidu's shares were up 10%, and Google's down 1.5%. Google said the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were the primary target of the attack, which occurred in December.
Google said the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were the primary target of the attack, which occurred in December.
Google, by implying that Beijing had sponsored the attack has placed itself in the center of an international controversy, exposing what appears to be a state-sponsored corporate espionage campaign that compromised more than 30 technology, financial and media companies, most of them global Fortune 500 enterprises....
Ironically, "bulletproof hosting" in China is a well-established, commercial model. Also The reporting isn't clear to me whether or not the corporate "systems" were GOOG-hosted rather than independently owned and operated networks.
[Hackers] apparently were able to access a system used to help Google comply with search warrants by providing data on Google users, said a source familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press. Read more...
Read more...
in other news,
Baidu.com was unavailable part of Monday [12 Jan], but early in the outage the site displayed a message that read: "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army," according to a report on the People's Daily, the Web site of the Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper. The group was the same that had taken responsibility for an attack against Twitter.com last month that redirected the micro-blogging service's traffic to a domain that hosted the same message. Read more...
The group was the same that had taken responsibility for an attack against Twitter.com last month that redirected the micro-blogging service's traffic to a domain that hosted the same message.
Across the US, death rates among black women diagnosed with breast cancer are 37 per cent higher than for whites, but in Chicago the difference is an astonishing 68 per cent (Cancer Causes & Control, vol 18, p 323). Something about this heaving metropolis is sending black women to an early grave. Poor access to screening and therapy is clearly an important factor. But according to a novel collaboration between sociologists and biologists, the strain of living in some of the toughest neighbourhoods in the US may cause biological changes that lead directly to earlier deaths.
Poor access to screening and therapy is clearly an important factor. But according to a novel collaboration between sociologists and biologists, the strain of living in some of the toughest neighbourhoods in the US may cause biological changes that lead directly to earlier deaths.
But the doctrine of corporate personhood was smuggled into the law without argument. Before oral argument, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the US instructed the participants the case, telling the attorneys during pre-trial that "the court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." This oral instruction to attorneys was duly copied by the court reporter and later came to be interpreted as settled law.
History and discussion, cum rant, can be found here. How many US voters had any idea in 1886 of what would be the consequences of granting individual civil rights to the "fictitious legal entities" that are corporations and who also enjoy, potentially, immortality and limited liability.
If this can best be opposed by making common cause in this matter with libertarians, so be it. About now I am wishing I had voted for Ron Paul. At least he campaigned on bringing the troops home and dismantling the Federal Reserve System. Even substantial progress in those goals would be better than anything we can reasonably expect from the corporatist clowns we put in charge, (and for whom I voted.)
As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
