Amazon is building an app store and a new device for the Android Market

Amazon is building an app store and a new device for the Android Market as it looks to deliver proprietary products beyond the Kindle. 

Also in today's App Industry Roundup, BlackBerry reveals its "PlayBook" while a new iPad rumor says the next device from Apple will be thinner.Web retailer Amazon.com is preparing to launch a store for Android apps, according to TechCrunch. If true, Amazon will join a growing field of companies that look to offer their own versions of an Android storefront.Most of the action is coming from the carriers, as both Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile are creating new versions of an Android store to appeal to their customers. The T-Mobile store, for instance, is expected to lean heavily on apps that appeal to families.

The interesting thing about Amazon's approach is that it appears to be acting more like a gatekeeper for apps than T-Mobile's glorified recommendation engine. Hence, it's akin to Apple's approach, where it will have strict requirements on what apps will be approved for sale and they will to be "laced with Amazon DRM," according to TechCrunch.

 The store will be U.S. based to start, and reporter MC Siegler did not have information on a launch date or the devices that will work with the store.However, in a later post, Siegler wrote that there were strong rumors that Amazon is developing and would sell an Android tablet of its own to compete with the Apple iPad. That sounds completely logical as Amazon looks to push beyond its successful foray into eReaders -- the Kindle -- into new devices. 

Yet another Facebook scam: conned woman loses $4,000

Don’t we already know that we lay ourselves vulnerable with our online existence and constantly updated presence? It seems that this open vulnerability has been rearing its ugly head to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Jayne Scherrman was conned of ‘$4,000 by scammers who hacked into a Facebook page belonging to one of her friends.’ This is not the first time that we learn about such Facebook scams, in particular, and online identity theft, in general.

It all started when the log-in information of Scherrman’s friend, Grace Parry, got stolen. Then, the people on Parry’s friends list received ‘messages saying that she and her husband had been robbed in London and needed funds to get home.’

Scherrman did receive such messages and even ‘a call from a man with a British accent who said he was an immigration official.’ “He said the woman and her husband were being detained and that more money was needed to fly them home,” police spokesman Jason Selzer told the Press Association.

The messages must have seemed credible to Scherrman. Either that or she must be one of Parry’s closest friends because she was too concerned that ‘she sent three different wire transfers to London.’

In the meantime, Parry was trying to communicate to her friends the fact that her Facebook account had been hacked, and that she was locked out of her account.

The lesson to be learned is more for the conned woman as she was too trusting of a social networking site, and failed to verify the fraudulent messages she received. In fact, swindling does not only happen online.

We are either vulnerable or gullible. Sometimes, there’s just a thin dividing line between the two.

Al-Qaeda is at its poorest but the Taliban is well-funded:

The US Treasury reports that al-Qaeda is ‘in its worst financial state for many years while the Taliban’s funding is flourishing.’ According to David Cohen, a terrorist financing official, al-Qaeda ‘had made several appeals for funds already this year.’ Cohen adds that ‘the al-Qaeda leadership has already warned that a lack of funds was hurting the group’s recruitment and training efforts.’ “We assess that al-Qaeda is in its weakest financial condition in several years and that, as a result, its influence is waning,” Cohen said.

It seems that the US strategy to choke all funding routes to al-Qaeda has been effective.

On the other hand, Afghanistan’s ever-booming opium trade has been assuring the Taliban of financial stability. It is said that the Taliban exacts no less than 10% tax from Afghan poppy farmers. Also, Afghanistan is the world’s largest exporter of heroin, which is sourced from opium.

According to Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Envoy to Afghanistan, ‘the Taliban get most of their funding from private benefactors in the Gulf,’ which makes the Taliban one of the most well-funded militant insurgencies in the world today.

However, it would only take al-Qaeda’s ‘multiple donors’ who were ready, willing and able to contribute’ to pump money into the terrorist group once again, and the group will be back in its original fighting form.

Cyber attack appears to target Iran:US

A computer virus that attacks a widely used industrial system appears aimed mostly at Iran and its power suggests a state may have been involved in creating it, an expert at a U.S. technology company said on Friday.Kevin Hogan, Senior Director of Security Response at Symantec, told Reuters 60 percent of the computers worldwide infected by the so-called Stuxnet worm were in Iran, indicating industrial plants in that country were the target.Hogan's comments are the latest in a string of specialist comments on Stuxnet that have stirred speculation that Iran's first nuclear power station, at Bushehr, has been targeted in a state-backed attempt at sabotage or espionage.

"It's pretty clear that based on the infection behavior that installations in Iran are being targeted," Hogan said of the virus which attacks Siemens AG's widely used industrial control systems."The numbers are off the charts," he said, adding Symantec had located the IP addresses of the computers infected and traced the geographic spread of the malicious code.Diplomats and security sources say Western governments and Israel view sabotage as one way of slowing Iran's nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at making nuclear weapons but Tehran insists is for peaceful energy purposes.Hogan said it was not possible to be categorical about the exact targets. It could be a major complex such as an oil refinery, a sewage plant, a factory or a water works, he said.But it was clear the worm's creators had significant resources.

"We cannot rule out the possibility (of a state being behind it). Largely based on the resources, organization and in-depth knowledge across several fields -- including specific knowledge of installations in Iran -- it would have to be a state or a non-state actor with access to those kinds of (state) systems."

BUSHEHR CONNECTION

Siemens was involved in the original design of the Bushehr reactor in the 1970s, when West Germany and France agreed to build the nuclear power station for the former Shah of Iran before he was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic revolution.The company has said the malware is a Trojan worm that has spread via infected USB thumb drives, exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system that has since been resolved.Siemens, Microsoft and security experts who have studied the worm have yet to determine who created the malicious software, described by commentators as the world's first known cyber "super weapon" designed to destroy a real-world target.Western countries have been critical of Russia's involvement in completing the long-mothballed Bushehr plant. Moscow says it is purely civilian and cannot be used for any weapons program.

Israel, which is assumed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, has hinted it could attack Iranian facilities if international diplomacy fails to curb Tehran's nuclear designs.The Jewish state has also developed a powerful cyberwarfare capacity. Major-General Amos Yadlin, chief of military intelligence, last year said Israeli armed forces had the means to provide network security and launch cyber attacks of their own.Construction of two pressurized water nuclear reactors at Bushehr began in 1974 with the help of Siemens and French scientists. The plant started up finally last month after Iran received nuclear fuel for Bushehr from Russia.In Washington, Vice Admiral Bernard McCullough, the head of the U.S. Navy's Fleet Cyber Command, told Reuters on Thursday after testifying about cyber operations before a House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee, that the worm "has some capabilities we haven't seen before."

On Wednesday, Army General Keith Alexander, head of the Pentagon's new Cyber Command, said his forces regarded the virus as "very sophisticated."Siemens is the world's number one maker of industrial automation control systems, which are also the company's bread-and-butter, but it was not immediately clear whether the specific Siemens systems targeted by Stuxnet are at Bushehr.Siemens told Reuters on July 21 it would offer to customers up-to-date virus scanners to detect and eliminate the virus.

Quasimodo dino leaves experts grappling for a hunch

Palaeontologists in Spain have discovered the remains of a strange dinosaur with a hump that they believe is the forerunner of flesh-eating leviathans which once ruled the planet.

The fossil was uncovered in the Las Hoyas formation in central Spain's Cuenca province, a treasure trove of finds that date to the Lower Cretaceous period of between 120 and 150 million years ago.

The nearly-complete skeleton is as exquisite as the dinosaur is "bizarre," Fernando Escaso of the Autonomous University of Madrid, told AFP by phone.

"This dinosaur is very remarkable," Ecaso said.

"It is a unique specimen. It is the most complete dinosaur ever found in the Iberian peninsula and is a new species of theropod," a carnivore that moved on two rear limbs.

Six metres (20 feet) long from snout to tailtip, the dinosaur is the earliest member ever found of a branch of Carcharodontosauria, the largest predatory dinos that ever lived and which until now 

were thought to be confined to southern continents.

The lineage expanded hugely over the aeons, both in size and number of species.

Its numbers include Giganotosaurus, estimated up to 14.5m (47 feet) long, and Carcharodontosaurus, up to 13 metres (44 feet) long, and each weighing some seven or eight tonnes.

The new find has jaws and small, clawed forelimbs that bear a resemblance to the Tyrannosaurus rex which belongs to a different dinosaur family.

But all similarities end with the spine, which is astonishingly curved and has a small hump, Ecaso said.

"It is the first time we have ever seen a structure like this on the spine of a dinosaur, although it is common on some animals today, such as cows," Escaso said.

"At the moment, the function of this structure is unclear. We believe that the animal was not diseased because the spine shows no sign of being cracked or broken, we think it is a feature of this species. One hypothesis is that it was a reservoir of fat."

The new species has been named Concavenator corcovatus, from "Conca," the Latin word for Cuenca; "venator," for hunter; and "corcovatus," or hump-backed.

The study is published by the British science journal Nature.

                

Apple publishes guidelines for app approval

 Apple Inc. gave software developers on Thursday the guidelines it uses to determine which programs can be sold in its App Store, yet it reserved for itself broad leeway in deciding what makes the cut.

The move follows more than two years of complaints from developers about the company's secret and seemingly capricious rules, which block some programs from the store and hence Apple's popular iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices.

The guidelines go some way toward addressing those complaints and broadening the discussion about Apple's custodianship of the App Store, but they leave much for the developers to figure out.

"We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, 'I'll know it when I see it'. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it," the guidelines say.

Earlier this year, Apple forced the creator of a comic-book version of James Joyce's novel "Ulysses" to alter some panels featuring nudity, echoing the censorship debate in the 1920s and 30s, when the novel itself was banned in the U.S. for obscenity.

In the guidelines, Apple draws a line between broader expressions of freedom of speech and the App Store.

"We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app," the guidelines say.

Apple also says it will block applications that don't do "something useful or provide some lasting entertainment."

"We don't need any more Fart apps," Apple said, referring to prank programs that let off noise.

Despite the restrictions, or perhaps because of them, Apple's store has been a runaway success since its launch in 2008, and now has more than 250,000 applications for its popular devices.

The App Store's chief competitor, Google Inc.'s Android Marketplace, has few restrictions for developers. That's been welcomed by developers, but has also led to a flood of low-quality applications and even some that prey on buyers. Security firm Kaspersky Lab said it found one media player application that secretly sends text-message payments — which get added to phone bills — when installed by Russian phone users.

Apple has previously named some broadly worded restrictions in its developer agreement, but the agreement itself is confidential. In the guidelines, which offer a bit more details, Apple warns about publicity as well.

"If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps," the company said.

Also Thursday, Apple also said it will lift restrictions imposed earlier this year on using third-party development tools that "translate" code written for another platform. That means developers who work in Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash or Oracle Corp.'s Java language can convert their programs into iPhone apps without rewriting them.

Adobe shares jumped on the news, rising $2.83, or 9.7 percent, to $32.14 in morning trading. Apple shares rose $3.26, or 1.2 percent, to $266.18. Google shares gained $8, or 1.7 percent, to $478.58.

Fidel Says Osama Bin Laden Is A US Agent

Fidel Castro… has claimed that Osama bin Laden is in the pay of the CIA and that President George Bush summoned up the al-Qaida leader whenever he needed to increase the fear quotient. The former Cuban president said he knows it because he has read WikiLeaks.

Castro told a visiting Lithuanian writer, who is known as a font of intriguing conspiracy theories about plots for world domination, that Bin Laden was working for the White House.

"Bush never lacked for Bin Laden’s support. He was a subordinate," Castro said, according to the Communist party daily, Granma. "Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, Bin Laden would appear, threatening people with a story about what he was going to do."

He said that thousands of pages of American classified documents made public by WikiLeaks pointed to who the al-Qaida leader is really working for.

"Who showed that he [Bin Laden] is indeed a CIA agent was WikiLeaks. It proved it with documents," he said, but did not explain exactly how.

He made his comments during a meeting with Daniel Estulin, the author of three books about the secretive Bilderberg Club…Actually, Mr. Castro only ‘knows’ what he reads in the papers. And even then, his understanding is a bit questionable.

In his August 4th blog entry, Mr. Castro mentioned where he got his deep insight:

A call to the President of the United States
Fidel Raul Castro
August 4, 2010

July 29: an AFP cable informs on the unimaginable: Osama Bin Laden was an agent of the U.S. intelligence services: “… Osama Bin Laden appears in secret reports published by Wikileaks as an active agent, present and adulated by his men in the Afghan-Pakistani area.” …
Of course no AFP article has made this claim, as far as we know.
But it’s been quite a while since Mr. Castro and reality have been in the same room.

The above news is copied from :http://sweetness-light.com/archive/fidel-says-osama-bin-laden-is-a-us-agent

God did not create the universe: Stephen Hawking

God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In "The Grand Design," co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics -- Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.


His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

He wrote in A Brief History ... "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.

He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world's leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in "Star Trek" and the cartoons "Futurama" and "The Simpsons."

Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.

Indian government begins allocating 3G bandwidth

India's government on Wednesday began allocating third-generation (3G) bandwidth for cellphone services to mobile operators after a multi-billion-dollar auction of licences.

The auction for high-speed 3G services raised 15 billion dollars for the government from successful bidders who included leading mobile companies Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and VodafoneEssar, among others.

"We have started the allocation," a spokesman for the telecom ministry told AFP, declining to be identified.

The government had promised to start allocating 3G spectrum on September 1.

The government's auction of 3G bandwidth for cellphone services, which ended in May, saw the winning bids for 71 licences in 22 service areas soar to up to five times the original reserve price.

For at least the first year as 3G is rolled out, the main focus is expected to be on improving call quality. India's 2G spectrum is congested and, as well as serving high-end users, the 3G spectrum will also allow operators to free up bandwidth for more voice users.

3G uptake in India is expected to be slow in the initial stages as 3G handsets are costlier than second-generation handsets.

The country is following in the footsteps of fellow emerging market giant China, which started offering 3G services last year.

3G allows mobile phone users to surf the Internet, video conference and download music, video and other content at a much faster pace than the current second-generation service.

Analysts say India's rural areas offer huge market potential but rolling out infrastructure to support 3G networks will be costly and the main, immediate battleground for 3G customers will be in urban areas.

For telecom firms the high bids reflect the importance of retaining an edge in the world's fastest growing mobile market, which has more than 636 million subscribers and has been adding up to 20 million customers a month.

Seven of India's 14 mobile operators won the right to offer 3G services in different regions, but none managed to secure bandwidth in all 22 areas. Bharti and Reliance led the pack, securing 13 areas each in the bidding.

Companies are expected to form alliances so they can offer 3G service nationwide. State-owned telecom firms BSNL and MTNL were awarded 3G spectrum last year provided they matched the final auction price.

NASA tests most powerful booster rocket ever

This is copied from the Yahoo News

NASA and aerospace company ATK Aerospace Systems successfully tested  the most powerful solid-fuel rocket engine ever, even though its future in the spaceprogram remains in doubt. 

A huge roar and massive flames accompanied the two-minute "static" or non-flight test of the five-segment DM-2 (Demonstration Motor 2) rocket booster in the western desert state of Utah.

The DM-2 was designed as the first stage of the Ares I rocket to provide the lift-off thrust for the next generation of Orion spacecraft, which NASA hoped would return astronauts to the moon by 2020.

US President Barack Obama has said he plans to cancel the Constellation program in which the boosters would have been used, throwing the fate of the next-generation engine into question.

The second test of the DM-2 was aimed at seeing if it could work at lower temperatures and verify the performance of new design materials.

The solid rocket boosters are an upgrade in design over ones used to propel NASA's shuttle fleet into space and are the largest and most powerful ever designed for flight.

Once the shuttle program ends early next year, the United States will rely on Russia's Soyuz rockets to carry its astronauts to the International Space Station until a commercial US launcher can be developed, scheduled for 2015.

The second test of the DM-2, aided by more than 760 on-board measurement devices, showed the motor's performance had met all expectations.

"For every few degrees the temperature rises, solid propellant burns slightly faster," said Alex Priskos, first stage manager for Ares Projects at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

"Only through robust ground testing can we understand how material and motor performance is impacted by different operating conditions."

Seeking to cut the massive US budget deficit, Obama's administration has proposed scrapping the costly and over budget Constellation rocket program.

Instead, NASA would concentrate on research and development that could, over a longer time-frame, eventually see astronauts travel outside low Earth orbit and even aim for Mars.

The US space agency would also be encouraged to develop operations with commercial partners to fly astronauts to the space station.