Another attack :(

Posted on Sat, Oct. 01, 2005

22 killed, 50 wounded in Bali explosions

WAHJOE BOEDIWARDHANA

Associated Press

BALI, Indonesia - At least two bombs exploded almost simultaneously Saturday in tourist areas of the Indonesian resort island of Bali, killing at least 22 people and wounding about 50 others, officials said. The blasts came a month after Indonesia's president warned of possible terrorist attacks.

The wounded included at least two Americans.

The blasts at two packed seafood restaurants in Jimbaran beach and a bustling outdoor shopping center in downtown Kuta were the work of terrorists, Indonesian President Suslio Bambang Yudhoyono said. He also warned that more attacks were possible.

"We will hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice," he said after being briefed by top security officials. He also urged people "to be on alert."

The attacks occurred nearly three years to the day that bombings in Kuta killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. Those attacks, and subsequent deadly bombings in 2003 and 2004, were blamed on the al-Qaida-linked terror group Jemaah Islamiyah.

Western and Indonesian intelligence agencies have consistently warned the group was plotting more attacks. Last month, Yudhoyono said he was especially worried the extremist network was about to carry out more attacks.

"I received information at the time that terrorists were planning an action in Jakarta and that explosives were ready," he said late Saturday.

Vice President Yusuf Kalla told the British Broadcasting Corp. it was too soon to identify the bombers. He said Yudhoyono will visit the area Sunday.

Putu Putra Wisada, spokesman at the Sangla Hospital in the capital, Denpasar, said 11 dead were taken to the hospital and 38 other people were admitted with injuries - 28 Indonesians, eight Australians and two Americans.

Officials at the Graha Asih Hospital close to Jimbaran Bay said at least 11 bodies were in its morgue, and doctors were treating about a dozen people.

"It's a horrible scene," said a receptionist, Komang.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Sunday that at least one Australian was killed. Metro TV said a Japanese citizen also was killed.

The latest bombs went off at about 7:30 p.m. at three restaurants packed with foreign and Indonesian diners.

I Wayan Kresna said he witnessed the first bomb at a seafood restaurant on Jimbaran beach. He counted at least two dead and said many others were brought to a hospital.

"I helped lift up the bodies," he told the private El Shinta radio station. "There was blood everywhere."

Baradita Katoppo, an Indonesian tourist from Jakarta, said another bomb went off in the Nyoman Cafe, where he was eating dinner with friends.

"I could see other people sustained injuries," he said. "There was blood on their faces and their bodies. It was very chaotic and confusing, we didn't know what to do."

About 18 miles away in Kuta, an explosion hit the three-story Raja noodle and steakhouse in a bustling outdoor shopping center. Smoke poured from the badly damaged building.

The bomb apparently went off on the restaurant's second floor, and an Associated Press reporter saw at least three bodies and five wounded people there. There was no crater outside the building, indicating the blast was not caused by a car bomb.

The area includes a KFC fast-food restaurant, clothing stores and a tourist information center.

The exact number of blasts was not clear. Some witnesses said they heard at least two explosions at each location.

Since the Oct. 12, 2002, Bali blasts, Jemaah Islamiyah has been tied to at least two other bombings in Indonesia, both in the capital, Jakarta. Those blasts, one at the J.W. Marriott hotel in 2003 and the other outside the Australian Embassy in 2004, killed at least 23.

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Is your son a computer hacker?

As an enlightened, modern parent, I try to be as involved as possible in the lives of my six children. I encourage them to join team sports. I attend their teen parties with them to ensure no drinking or alcohol is on the premises. I keep a fatherly eye on the CDs they listen to and the shows they watch, the company they keep and the books they read. You could say I'm a model parent. My children have never failed to make me proud, and I can say without the slightest embellishment that I have the finest family in the USA.

Two years ago, my wife Carol and I decided that our children's education would not be complete without some grounding in modern computers. To this end, we bought our children a brand new Compaq to learn with. The kids had a lot of fun using the handful of application programs we'd bought, such as Adobe's Photoshop and Microsoft's Word, and my wife and I were pleased that our gift was received so well. Our son Peter was most entranced by the device, and became quite a pro at surfing the net. When Peter began to spend whole days on the machine, I became concerned, but Carol advised me to calm down, and that it was only a passing phase. I was content to bow to her experience as a mother, until our youngest daughter, Cindy, charged into the living room one night to blurt out: "Peter is a computer hacker!"

[link]

Civil aviation more talked about in a decade?

I have a feeling that civil aviation is more popular/talked about than at any time in the last 4 years or more. this is a big stand, "half the wolrd and his dog are talking about civil aviation" this was from the toronto air canada crash highlighting how safe aircraft are and the recent release of the pmdg 747-400 "queen of the skies" which is the best 747 for flight simulator, or even the best plane for flight sim ever, over 1,200 moving parts, well, i cant wait till i get a copy. this phenomenon has swamped the aviation world and in the simulation world, alot of servers that hosted pmdg files or even forums, were so swamped that they had to be shut down temporarily. Big days in the history of aviation

What is happening??? (personal note)

i dont know whats happening with my life right now... i dont feel like doing anything, i dont feel like friends, or like anything, i have no life and i am bored sums it up, so bored that i dont know what to do with myself, i dont feel like chatting, all i feel like doing is blogging, is it like a mid-teen crisis, like, comment here if you have had a part of your life where you dont care about anything, i think im gonna snap, teachers have been annoying me, i know, and feel like im on the brink of doing something rash. (not suicide or anything) just like, i know i can walk out the classroom, i can walk out the school, i know i dan do anything, and i want this freedom, i only do things if they dont involve energy, like i was like i might as well walk out the school, but there are repercussions, who gives a stuff about em anyway?
anyway, i dont know, i begin to wonder why i am here, why everything is here, what purpose do we represent? what are we doing here? why is the world like this, i dont know what to believe, creation, or evolution? and the big bang, or creation. i cant see if theres anything to live for, i can't hear anyone from "above" telling me stuff, im just well, me. any help on my social/emotional state will be greatly appreciated. i feel like, i have just opened my mind to every possible thing, ever made, and possible/impossible. i am on the fine line between true and flase.

Plastic to Steel

One day, a garbage researcher called Tony Eastley cam up with an idea, it was simply this: plastic>carbon>steel!
what she did, was extracted the carbon out of plastic, then used that carbon to make steel, a great way to get rid of plastic from dumps, if only we could do that with everything, well, then this could make the steel exports rise by a heap and the plastic amounts will slowly dissapate. Thats pretty cool huh!?

Vista GUI

hey, ive been looking at the windows vista GUI, god, theyve tried to mix up Fedora core, mac and the XP interface into one, it does look good but it isn't very original.
just look, the nice little mac themes in the buttons on boxes and bar thingies at the top of program windows, linux ish start bar and control panel (although linux doesn't have one tyhe icons) and the windows start menu. mix it into 1, and what do u get?? lol. Vista

Not me!!! i hope not

There was a recent dicovery by the US government about a massive ID theft ring called coolwebsearch, and this is what it looks like whats above:
this program was a massive operation that collected personal information and uploaded it to a server. Sunbelt, the people who discovered this found the identities of two people, which could be sold for up to $350,000USD.
The list of stolen information includes not only bank accounts but website passwords, eBay accounts, what sort of adult images you fancy, and, supposedly, even more.

this is what sunbelt said:
"We have notified the FBI, but of course no response (too busy doing other more important things). We have notified a few of the parties involved...If anyone has any other ideas, send 'em to us. Right now, we're sitting upon literally thousands of pages of stolen identities that are being used right now."


more:

"Updated (08/06/2005 4:24PM CDT): I've received a little bit more information on what's going on from the employees of Sunbelt Software. What follows is more or less the exact email I received from Alex Eckelberry:

Basically, it went like this:

Patrick Jordan, our CoolWebSearch expert, was doing research on a CWS exploit. During the course of the research, he disovered that a) the machine he was testing became a spam zombie and b) it send a call back to a remote server. He traced back the remote server and found what you have heard about.

The scale is unimaginable. There are thousands of machines pinging back in a day. There is a keylogger file that grows and grows, and then is zipped off and then the cycle continues again.

It is sophisticated. There are nifty little PHP scripts that help the criminals get reports. There is a special upload area.


Updated (08/06/2005 5:38PM CDT): Here's more information from Eric Sites, VP of R&D at Sunbelt:

While one of my spyware researchers was tracking down new variants of CoolWebSearch he came a cross a payload of crap that was downloaded to his VMware. This payload included a program that monitored the users internet traffic, chat activity and Windows protected storage store. When using Internet Explorer with autocomplete turned on, your autocomplete info gets stored in protected storage.

This piece ofspyware collected your protected storage info plus URLs, chat activity and website usernames and passwords. The real problem with this spyware was that it collected this information and posted it back to a public website that anyone could go to and read all of your personal information. Some examples of this include all the credit card info entered on HTML forms while purchasing something online. It did not matter that the webpage was using HTTPS.

This website had collected over 500 different computers very private information within a 24 hours period. Including chat activity and login info to online bank accounts. One company had over $380,000 in a compromised account. The information was not the normal info collected for hacking purposes. It was collected to steal your money, SSN, credit card info, address, and identity. We have already found two variants of this spyware with multiple locations for its stolen info upload. We are working with the FBI and Secret Service to track everything back to the source."

Hacking the flourescent light

more from slashdot, god i love that place:


[0]DynaSoar writes "MSNBC reports on an [1]elegant hack performed on the common fluorescent tube. By mixing phosphorescent material with the usual white fluorescent material, American Environmental Products has developed a [2]tube that continues to glow when shut off. Originally intended for submarines, and then used in places where terrorists could disrupt services, they are also perfect for power outages, providing some light so you don't have to thrash around in the dark looking for your candles and flashlights. Since the 'hack' is inside the tube, they can also be removed from their fixtures and carried around, as well as provide light even if they're shattered."

RC people?

from slashdot:

utherdoul writes "Say goodbye to remote-controlled cars, say hello to remote-controlled people. Forbes.com (disclosure: I work there) sent a lucky reporter (further disclosure: I am jealous it was not me) to the SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference in Los Angeles, where NTT researchers debuted a device designed to exploit the effects of Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation. As the story explains, when a weak electrical pulse is delivered to the mastoid behind your ear, your body responds by shifting your balance towards it. If the current is strong enough, it not only throws you off balance, but alters the course of your movement. Reading about it really doesn't do it justice -- you have to check out the crazy video of a remotely controlled woman. (Realvideo)"

Fire from Water!

Gizmodo has a story out about a new product that makes fire from water. Gizmodo explains how it works: 'Ordinary tap water (preferably distilled) is supplied to the fireplace through a pipe or tank, a 220 volt electrical service then separates the hydrogen and oxygen atoms through electrolysis, the Aqueon ignites the hydrogen, and ta-dah, fire! The oxygen is then added for color and brightness, while the rest is released into the room. It doesn't require venting because it doesn't produce any harmful emittents like carbon monoxide -- just water vapor.' The manufacturer's website has more information on the science behind this new product. While splitting water to get hydrogen and oxygen is not new, this product will likely make the technology more accessible to the masses and might hopefully show that hydrogen is a more attractive fuel than petroleum-based fuels.