This $1200 rebate is part of a 2008 Economic Stimulus Package announced by president George W. Bush in which individuals will receive $600 and couples $1200. Families with children could receive up to $300 additional on their checks. For those who earn too little to pay income taxes, a provision was agreed to that would give them a check for $300.

AIMRCo has found that since the checks were sent out there has been an uncharacteristic increase in spending for online pornography sites. Kirk Mishkin, head research consultant for AIMRCo said:

Many of the sites we surveyed have reported 20-30 per cent growth in membership rates since mid-May when the checks were first sent out, and typically the summer is a slow period for this market.

This economic stimulus package was supposed to provide relief to the people affected by recession but in reality it has provided relief to the porn industry. According to Jillian Fox, spokeswoman for LSGmodels.com, one of the sites reporting figures to AIMRCo:

In a June 15, 2008 survey to our members, thirty two percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either become a new member, or renew an existing membership. Getting more people to buy porn was probably the last thing Bush had on his mind when he came up with his ’stimulus package,’ but we’ll take it.

AIMRCo is a non-profit organization that specializes in gathering, interpreting and distributing data on the online adult market.

Hackers embedded a tiny piece of malicious JavaScript code into some of the pages which showed pop-up advertisements to users asking them to buy an anti-virus software that does not work.

SQL injection is a technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of an application. The vulnerability is present when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and thereby unexpectedly executed.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos said:

Obviously some people can be fooled into [buying] these sorts of things. There’s underlying infrastructure here that Sony and many other websites need to fix. We’ve seen thousands upon thousands of examples of this. If you’re running an SQL database on your website, have you secured it?

Normally these type of attacks insert IFRAME code into compromised website which when visited by a user, works in background to pull the malicious content from the hacker site.

Some of the most famous examples if websites hit by SQL injection are when in June 2007 hackers defaced Microsoft U.K. Web Page using SQL injection which was later acknowledged by Microsoft. In another case the United Nations web site was defaced using SQL injection in August 2007.

Sony has now appeared to fix the SQL injection code although its spokerperson was not available to comment.

All three persons Yuriy Rakushchynets, Ivan Biltse and Angelina Kitaeva have been charged and their trial is under progress in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Seven other people have been arrested over the case and they may have stolen over $2 million by making clones of cards and then withdrawing the money from legitimate cash machines. On his arrest Biltse was reportedly found with $800,000 in cash at his home, so the final total may be much higher.

According to the details these three hacked into an ATM transaction processing firm and collected the PIN numbers from cards used in 7-11 stores. These machines were built and maintained by 7-11 chain although they were branded as Citibank’s. The incident happened in March 08.

Rob Julavits, spokesman for Citibank said:

Citibank’s systems were not compromised in this incident, which ended in March. This had to do with 7-11’s network. Earlier this year Citibank received notice from a third-party transaction processor for the ATM industry that the processor’s systems were potentially compromised in late 2007.

Citibank has already notified and reissued cards to all customers who were affected by this incident.

The 7-11 network is run by two companies which operate the ATMs, Cardtronics and Fiserv Inc. Fiserv was unavailable for comment but is reportedly not involved with the case and Cardtronics has also denied involvement.

Cardtronics released the following statement:

Cardtronics is not involved in this criminal prosecution and therefore does not anticipate that it will issue any statements with respect to this case or the alleged conduct of the defendants in this case. All ATMs owned or operated by Cardtronics have encrypted PIN pads, as well as triple data encryption (3DES) as required by the various electronic fund transfer networks.

FBI says the main perpetrator of this crime is in Russia, who supplied the information and took 70 per cent of the proceeds, with 25 per cent going to the people withdrawing the cash and five per cent covering expenses.

7-Eleven is a worldwide chain of convenience store in eighteen countries, with its largest markets being Japan, the United States, Taiwan, and Thailand.

The survey published in PLoS Medicine asked questions about legalized drug use, such as alcohol and tobacco, and illegal drug use, including cocaine and marijuana from more than 54,000 adults in 17 countries.

The data showed that 16 percent Americans were more likely to report using cocaine (the second most popular illegal recreational drug in the U.S.) in their lifetime than the next closest country, New Zealand with 4 percent. It is commonly used in middle to upper class communities and is popular amongst college students, not just to aid in studying, but also as a party drug.

Marijuana (Cannabis) use was more widely reported worldwide, and the U.S. also had the highest rate of use at 42.4% compared with 41.9% of New Zealanders.

On the other hand in the Netherlands, which has more liberal drug policies than the U.S., only 1.9% of people reported cocaine use and 19.8% reported marijuana use.

Tobacco use was also most common in the U.S. (74%), followed by Lebanon (67%) and Mexico (60%).

According to Louisa Degenhardt, a researcher in the University of New South Wales, Australia:

Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.

Gender and socioeconomic differences were also found in both legal and illegal drug use. For example, men were more likely than women to have used legal and illegal drugs, and younger adults were more likely than older adults to have used drugs of all kinds.

Countries which participated in the survery are: Colombia, Mexico, United States, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine, Israel, Lebanon, Nigeria, South Africa, Japan, China and New Zealand.

The report said that Adobe and Electronic Arts are charging users different prices to download video games and graphics software depending on which country they’re in.

For example Australian users are charged as much as $1000 extra by Adobe to download the same program as customers who log in from the US.

Similarly, gamers who visit the Steam and Electronic Arts websites are charged up to five times more to download popular titles like Medal Of Honour: Airborne — which Australians can buy and download for $99.95, while users in the US pay just $21.15 ($US19.95).

Choice magazine spokesman Christopher Zinn said companies charged varying prices in different regions simply because they could. The pertinent point is that they are actually excuses as to price discrimination. They’re not necessarily reasons, or good reasons.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it was powerless to stop the practice of regional price discrimination, as it does not contravene trade laws.

According to an ACCC spokesperson:

There is no prohibition on price discrimination in the Trade Practices Act 1974. For example, it is not illegal for a supermarket chain to charge more for a particular product (such as soup) in a more affluent area where there may not be as much competition than it does in an area of greater competition, or less affluence.

An Adobe spokesperson said that it does not control prices set by retailers and that its online store had been priced to support those retailers in Australia.

Pacific marketing manager Mark Cokes said:

When setting our store price we analyse the market and set our pricing accordingly. In this way we try to actively support our local Australian channel partners who have invested a lot in their own businesses.

Credit: CHOICE Australia

This new technology will help Google and Yahoo better index dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications (RIA) that include the Flash file format, or Shockwave Flash (SWF).

The new optimized Adobe Flash Player will enhance search engine indexing by uncovering information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines.

According to David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe:

Search engines already index static text and links within SWF files, but until now it has been extremely challenging to search the millions of RIAs and dynamic content on the Web, so we are leading the charge in improving search of content that runs in Adobe Flash Player.

We are initially working with Google and Yahoo! to significantly improve search of this rich content on the Web, and we intend to broaden the availability of this capability to benefit all content publishers, developers and end users.

Google has already begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine. It can now better read the content on sites that use Adobe Flash technology, helping users find more relevant information when conducting searches.

Yahoo plans to add the technology to a future update of Yahoo Search. According to Sean Suchter, vice president Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering:

Yahoo! is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation.

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief, SearchEngineLand.com was of the view that designers and web developers have long been frustrated that search engines couldn’t better access the information within their content created with flash.

It’s great to see Adobe and the search engines working directly together to improve the situation. The changes should help unlock information that’s previously been ‘invisible’ and will likely result in a better experience for searchers.

he concluded.

He was an employee of a legendary chain of British tea shops found the earliest ways to use a computer for business purposes, including standardizing flavorful, cost-effective cups of tea.

Born David Treisman in the East End of London, his father was killed in action during the First World War.

He worked generally in the area of operations management and cost accounting. He helped to design, along with John Pinkerton, the LEO (Lyons Electronic Office), which has been certified by the Guinness World Records as the worlds first business computer.

The computer was used to automate stock control and payroll functions initially and was so successful that it was also outsourced to companies such as Ford for similar functions.

The 500Khz computer cut the average time to calculate a worker’s salary from eight minutes to 1.5 seconds and enabled the company to analyze sales in order to maximize profitability.

He designed the first flow charts to show how software should be written and the punchcard operated system was soon running a variety of applications.

Caminer joined Lyons & Co. as a management trainee in 1936 and became Manager of the Lyons Systems Research Office before concentrating on the computer innovation. He became Director of LEO Computers Ltd in 1959 and was subsequently General Sales Manager of English Electric LEO Marconi, while retaining his responsibility for consultancy and systems implementation.

He chose to complete his formal career in the field as Project Director for the implementation of the computer and communications network for the European Economic Community, where he developed a computer system for the European Common Market, for which he was appointed, in 1980, to the Order of the British Empire.

His death was announced by the Leo Computers Society, whose purpose is to keep alive the memory of LEO.

As per latest statistics by Marshal, Srizbi botnet sends 60 billion spam emails a day and has compromised almost a third of a million PCs worldwide. Currently it is the largest botnet and one of the main malware responsible for the global tide of spam, generating 46 percent of all spam traffic.

Srizbi has beaten Storm botnet which at one time was the leader by accounting for 20 per cent of spam. Bradley Anstis, vice president of products at Marshal said:

At its peak, the highly publicised Storm botnet only accounted for 20 per cent of spam. Srizbi now produces more spam than all the other botnets combined.

Srizbi sprang to fame in March when a Marshall report identified it as one of a small group of ’super-bots’ starting to monopolise global internet traffic.

Anstis pointed to the industry-wide success in repressing the Storm botnet, which appeared early last year, as a glimmer of hope in dealing with the new threat posed by Srizbi.

He said:

Microsoft recently announced its success in combating the Storm botnet with its Malicious Software Removal Tool. The challenge now is for the security industry to collectively turn its sights on Srizbi and the other major botnets. We look forward to seeing Microsoft target Srizbi in the near future.

Following are the latest botnet statistics from Marshal.

• Srizbi: 46.1%
• Mega-D: 17.1%
• Rustock: 12.3%
• Pushdo: 5.5%
• Bobax: 4.4%
• Grum: 1.1%
• Others: 13.5%

The messenger is feature rich just like desktop version such as:

• Changing status
• Changing nick
• Ability to send file
• Grouping contacts
• Sending emoticons (just like desktop version)
• Saving message history

The messenger is available free of cost to all customers. It will compete head to head with other big players in the market like JiveTalk and IM+ that are one of the most widely used multi-messaging softwares on BlackBerry.

CDC is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services which works to protect public health and safety.

It collected data on HIV/AIDS diagnoses from 2001 to 2006 in 33 states. During that time, those states had 214,379 HIV/AIDS diagnoses. Men who have sex with men account for almost half — 46 percent — of those diagnoses. Findings indicated that, during that period the number of HIV/AIDS diagnoses increased 8.6% among gays overall.

Every year from 2001 to 2006, HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men rose by 1.5 percent overall. But more worrying is the fact that when it comes to youngest men, those aged 13-24, HIV/AIDS diagnoses increased by 12 percent per year.

African-American men aged 13-24, who have sex with men saw 15 percent increase per year, while it was  9 percent among white and 8 percent among Hispanic men of the same age who have sex with men.

HIV diagnoses dropped during that time among heterosexuals who have high-risk sex, injection drug users, and men who are injection drug users who also have sex with men.

It should be noted that this report is about HIV/AIDS diagnoses, not infection rates. Although it is safe to assume that HIV infection is also rising among gays aged 13-24.

According to Richard Wolitski, PhD, acting director of the CDC’s division of HIV/AIDS Prevention:

Because these men probably have not been sexually active for a very long period of time, there’s reason to believe that these diagnoses probably represent fairly recent infections and so it’s an indication that infections may be increasing in this population.

The findings appear in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.