Web browsers are new frontline in internet war - tech - 05 May 2007 - New Scientist Tech

YOU are surfing the net, and stop at a sports site you regularly visit to read the latest headlines. You are always careful to avoid sites that appear suspect, so you feel safe online. Unbeknownst to you, though, and to the innocent owner of the website, a piece of malicious code has been added to the page you are viewing. This uploads software onto your computer via your browser, turning it into a “zombie” PC under the remote control of a malicious user.

While installing firewalls and antivirus software on your computer may keep it safe from conventional threats such as worms and viruses, these security tools do not inspect data downloaded through browsers - a loophole that attackers can exploit. “The firewall is dead,” says Google security specialist Niels Provos.
….
To determine the scale of the problem, Provos’s group at Google analysed several billion web pages and selected 4.5 million suspicious pages for more detailed study. To test for malicious software, or malware, they loaded a program designed to simulate a computer with a vulnerable version of Internet Explorer and monitored what happened. They found around 450,000 web pages that launched drive-by downloads of malicious programs. Another 700,000 pages launched downloads of suspicious software. More than two-thirds of the malicious programs identified were those that infected computers with bot software or programs that collected data on banking transactions and emailed it to a temporary email account.

Think Progress
Bush: If You Judge My Iraq Strategy By The Number Of Violent Attacks, The Terrorists Win »

In an interview last night on PBS, President Bush complained that people who measure progress in Iraq by how many car bombs and suicide attacks occur are giving a “huge victory” to the enemy by making it more difficult for him to promote the war to the American public.

“If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings,” Bush said, “we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory.” He repeated later that people who “judge the administration’s [escalation] plan” based on such acts of violence “have just given Al Qaida or any other extremist a significant victories [sic].”

Bush said that these images of brutal violence on television are “one of the problems I face in trying to convince the American people” that the war is worthwhile.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Google Earth
Genocide emergency: Darfur
In 2004 the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum declared a genocide emergency for Darfur, Sudan. To date about 2,500,000 civilians, targeted because of their ethnic or racial identity, have been driven from their homes, more than 300,000 people killed, and more than 1,600 villages destroyed by Sudanese government soldiers and government-backed militias, known as the “Janjaweed.” More than 200,000 Sudanese are refugees in neighboring Chad. The crisis continues as thousands more die each month from the effects of inadequate food, water, health care, and shelter in a harsh desert environment. Learn more about Darfur.

Witness the destruction for yourself. Using coordinates provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Google acquired high-resolution imagery over the region of Darfur and Eastern Chad. Now you can witness the destruction in Darfur via Google Earth. Zoom down and see what a burned village looks like from above, the vast tent cities of people displaced from their homes, and photographs on the ground of refugees struggling to survive. Read eyewitness testimony of atrocities in attacked villages. Visualize what genocide looks like today in Darfur. Learn more about the layers.

Daily Kos: Body armor: I don’t know whether to puke or scream
The guy who was in charge of testing a piece of equipment that would have killed contracts worth $360 million dollars last year for Armor Holdings, NOW WORKS FOR ARMOR HOLDINGS!

What else is there to say?

The armor should be tested, and if better, put into immediate use. I will save lives. THAT’s supporting the troops.

Hybrid images: Now you see them… - being-human - 31 March 2007 - New Scientist
The processing for coarse features, such as groups of large objects, happens fastest, within 50 milliseconds, giving the viewer an immediate general sense of the scene; then come the finer details like edges and faces, which take 100 milliseconds or more to register. If you caught only a glimpse of a city street scene, for instance, you’d tend to notice the buildings before the pedestrians.

Click the picture and see how it looks different up close and at a distance