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11-year-old Austin Forman and his appropriately-named golden retriever Angel went out to get some firewood this past Sunday evening to feed the family’s wood-burning furnace for the night. Not acting like her usual self, Austin noticed that instead of playing around the yard, Angel was keeping close to his side as he performed his chore.

As he began piling wood, Austin said he saw another animal in the yard but assumed it was a dog. Once it moved under the light, however, he saw that it was a full-grown cougar. 18-month-old Angel reacted quickly, placing herself between the boy and the big cat and taking the brunt of an attack as the cougar lunged and clamped its mouth around Angel’s head. Austin ran inside to tell his mother what was going on, and she called 911.

A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer made it to the home within minutes and was able to kill the cougar after firing two shots. Angel, who looked to be in pretty bad shape, was immediately taken to the vet where it was found she had extensive injuries to her head, including a fractured skull and numerous puncture wounds. She’s had surgery and while she’s still recuperating she is expected to make a full recovery.

The family said they’ve bought her a nice, big juicy steak for when she comes home. I’d say she more than deserves it!

Post from: Blisstree

Young Boy Rescued from Cougar by Pet Dog

Bradford Plumer makes a really excellent point here about how prices and incentives and good energy policy don’t always align, and still won’t even if we pass cap and trade:

A renter might notice
that his windows are leaky and the refrigerator is old and
decrepit–and that all this waste is hell on the monthly electric
bill–but he’s not going to caulk the windows for a place he’ll move
out of in a few years. And the landlord, meanwhile, isn’t paying the
energy bill, so why should he buy a new fridge? No one’s behaving
irrationally here–it’s just that the incentives don’t align in favor
of efficiency. And a price on emissions wouldn’t necessarily fix this.
That’s why, in some cases, there’s a rationale for well-designed
regulations in addition to a carbon cap.

This pivots off an interblog discussion about whether there are lots of firms passing up profits by not adopting “pollution-abatement” policies, like the ones in the graph below.

Last year EnerNOC, an energy efficiency consulting company, located
$100,000 in energy savings for Morgan Stanley’s Times Square offices
(they were keeping the elevator machinery rooms as cool as the
corporate suite, and things like that). Morgan Stanley’s profit in the
first three quarters of 2009 was more than $100,000. To be specific, it
was $729 million more. So you can understand why spending time on an
energy efficiency policy was not a big concern for their
board. But that’s exactly why it’s likely that there are a lot of firms
like Morgan Stanley who are likely passing up abatement policies, even
if they save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It makes sense that adopting a national cap and trade policy would
raise national awareness of emissions, and that awareness might trickle
up to the folks who exercise control over their buildings’ energy use.
But Plumer’s exactly right that not everybody has a financial incentive
to care about how much energy they consume. For example, I live in an
apartment where heat is included in the rent, so nothing’s stopping me
from turning the thermostat to Tropical and watching TV in my
bathing suit all year.
The cost of heating being factored into my rent is a bit like an employer taking health care out of our
compensation. We don’t see the money being spent, so we don’t have the
same incentive to ration our use — of heat or health care.

Caso fosse vivo, Elvis Presley conhecido como rei do Rock, faria hoje dia 8 de Janeiro de 2010 o seu 75º aniversário.

Elvis Presley – Always On My Mind

WebTuga – Elvis Presley (75)

Peugeot announced today that it will unveil its new SR1 Concept car at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. The Peugeot SR1 Concept (Grand Touring Car) hints at the future design trend for Peugeot models so don’t expect it to enter production anytime soon.

Power for the SR1 Concept comes from the French automaker’s Hybrid4 technology, which consists of a 1.6L THP gasoline engine that sits at the front helping it produce 218-hp. The engine is mated to a rear electric-motor that produces an additional 95-hp for a total combined output of 313-hp. In electric-mode, the Peugeot SR1 becomes a zero emissions vehicle with a combined fuel-economy of 48 mpg.

The Peugeot SR1 concept car will be unveiled to the public at the next Geneva Motor Show, in March.

Follow the jump for the press release and the high-res image gallery.

Peugeot SR1 Concept:

Press Release:

Peugeot combines emotion with the pursuit of perfection

Through the Peugeot SR1, the Marque reveals the stylistic design trends for its future models. The concept car embodies the new world of Peugeot, reflected by the new Lion badge which adorns its body.

Dynamic, balanced, sensual, with an exclusive high-tech interior, this “dream car” explores and reinterprets the theme of the “Grand Touring Car”.

The use of HYbrid4 technology allows the Peugeot SR1 to offer an engineering specification in keeping with its styling: 230 kW (313 bhp) with emissions of only 119 g/km of CO2 (0 in electric mode), 4 wheel drive and steering…. for an ideal blend of excitement and efficiency.

Styling that predicts the future

Elegance, purity, dynamism, allure, controlled power… these ideas find their fullest expression with the Peugeot SR1, the dream car par excellence. More than ever, the aesthetic traits of this concept show the general design trends of the Marque’s future products, renewing Peugeot’s strong stylistic identity.

In short, this concept car creates a new design language.

The Peugeot SR1 is a vehicle with timeless, ideal proportions, revisiting the great traditions of grand touring cars of the past: a large bonnet, flowing wings and a very low centre of gravity.

The design of the body gives the car a new balance: a sculpted bonnet, sweeping sides and a chiselled rear design. At the side the styling lines merge into the side windows and the front windscreen, emphasising the design of the bonnet.

This overall effect blends easily with the design detailing: the design of the lights and the air intakes, the shape of the door mirrors. these elements merge seamlessly with the vehicle’s carbon “skin”. In parallel, some features (”full LED” internal headlamp functions, radiator grille contour); stand out, as if suspended. The hard top echoes the feel of this intense, high-tech assembly: It uses preformed profile technology derived from the world of sailing. It blends with the body, creating the illusion of a Coupé. The SR1, however, radiates the same visual strength, with or without the hard top. Finally, the SR1 displays the new Peugeot Lion badge. Redesigned, finely worked and sculpted, it mirrors perfectly the perception of the vehicle as a whole.

Overall the Peugeot SR1 concept car gives the impression it has been carved from a solid block of material, monolithic, protective, sculptural and dynamic. At every moment it makes a great play on contrasts: purity and technological sophistication, authenticity and advanced technologies, expressiveness and understatement. making it a car that is quite simply desirable!

A modern and exclusive “2+1″ interior

The interior, too, promotes the idea of contrast. While the driver’s seat and all controls are dedicated to out-and-out enjoyment for the driver, the passenger compartment is designed to provide optimum versatility and new sensations for all its occupants.

There is room in the vehicle for three people as the third rear seat nestles in the middle, behind the two front seats. Entry to this seat is facilitated by the centre console, which can slide forward to improve access.

The interior ambience blends colours and materials, with strong references to “a past motoring era” combined with “the latest advanced technology”. Inside the vehicle, patinated leather and different grained wood are examples of the use of authentic and natural materials, warm, sensual and charged with history, that blend seamlessly with, “high tech” materials such as nickel and satin-finished chrome.

The construction of the fascia panel, optimised to perfection, gives a visual prominence to certain mechanical components such as the steering column and a number of peripheral controls. Similarly, the instrumentation combines analogue and digital read-outs, giving clear emphasis to every item of information conveyed to the driver. This is the case for instantaneous fuel consumption and vehicle range, displayed on two glass crystal gauges directly in front of the driver.

Another technological innovation is the creation of an exclusive wristwatch, designed in partnership with Bell&Ross®. This timepiece, with milled inserts of solid aluminium, slots perfectly into a dedicated housing on the fascia panel.

Every component and every detail has, therefore, benefited from meticulous attention, both in terms of design and manufacture, to guarantee perfection and an unrivalled refinement of perceived quality.

Technologies at the service of movement

The SR1 concept also blends styles in terms of its technical characteristics. For example, it incorporates HYbrid4 technology, which will be launched in the Peugeot 3008 in 2011. In the SR1, at the front, a 1.6 litre THP petrol engine with a power of 160 kW (218 bhp), is combined with a rear electric motor developing 70 kW (95 bhp). In electric only mode, the car becomes a ZEV (Zero Emission Vehicle), while its combined cycle fuel consumption is only 4.9 litres/100 km or 119 g/km of CO2.

When the two power trains operate simultaneously, the SR1 develops a potential maximum power of 230 kW (313 bhp) and also benefits from 4-wheel drive.

Using HYbrid4 technology, which will eventually become available on different models in the Peugeot range, the SR1 concept offers convincing proof that driving pleasure can be combined with environmental friendliness.

Exploiting the best of existing technology to offer road holding worthy of this exceptional concept, the suspension consists of double wishbones with drop links both at the front and the rear. For even greater driving precision, the SR1 benefits from the adoption of 4-wheel steering. The turning angle of the rear wheels is controlled as a function of the vehicle speed, via motorised links on the rear wishbones, giving the vehicle superb agility under all circumstances.

The Peugeot SR1 concept car will be unveiled to the general public at the next Geneva Motor Show, in March.

– By: Omar Rana

You may remember our review on the first generation Bed Shaker. Its a great idea to have an iPod docked alarm clock with a bedshaker to rumble you out of bed. However, we had a bit of a gripe with the sound. The 2nd gen supposedly has fixed this problem. While you sleep you can charge your iPod/iPhone and it synchronizes the time with them as well. Looks like that should prevent you from oversleeping on the days the power goes out overnight and your alarm clock thus turns off. With the synchronization it should pick back up on the right time. Plus you can control the environment you wake up to. Maybe put together a playlist of soft wake up music? Of course you will be rumbled out of bed at the same time with the bed shaker.  See iLuv’s site for more info.

Did you see Jersey Shore’s Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi do the weather on WPIX News in New York this morning?

Dallas Breast Augmentation – What should you expect following your breast augmentation surgery? Some things will differ from one doctor to another. It is probably safe to say that your doctor will recommend against any heavy lifting for a while, and since smoking can cause problems with excess bleeding, that’s probably out as well. One area of divergence is recuperation time. Some doctors say several days. Dr. William P. Adams, who provides breast enlargement in Dallas, states the turnaround time for “baseline activities of daily living” as about 24 hours with the use of “several specialized maneuvers to minimize post-operative pain.” A personal consultation with your plastic surgeon is the perfect time to get all the information you can about breast surgery, including more details about what your post-operative expectations should be.

Reuters today, citing unnamed sources, reports that Apple’s supply chain will begin manufacturing aluminum casings for their upcoming tablet device next month. That means a shipment could come as early as this spring.

Taiwanese manufacturer AVY Precision Technology, Inc has been tapped to provide the cases, while Wintek Corp and TPK Solutions will supply the panels for tablet, according to Reuters. This backs up the WSJ’s report on Monday that the Apple tablet will ship in March and the rumored January 27th announcement.

With major new product launches like this, you can generally expect these types leaks and rumors with increasing frequency right up to the announcement—that is, until the Apple gestapo has their way. [Reuters via MacRumors]

GSM networks in the US and Europe use the A5/1 stream cipher to ensure cellular calls cannot be listened into by unauthorized parties monitoring radio traffic. However, the guarantee of privacy is no longer ensured. New attack techniques were unveiled at the Hacking at Random conference in The Netherlends which would allow an attacker to decrypt cellular calls made over a GSM network. The attacker only needs the new software and about $500 in radio monitoring equipment. The AS5/1 cipher has been criticized for many years, but this is one of the first publicly available exploits to demonstrate the weaknesses first hand.

The presentation is here.
The A5/1 cracking project homepage is here.

GSM is used by many major cellular providers such as AT&T and T-Mobile (see GSM Coverage Map). The main alternative to GSM network is CDMA which is used by providers such as Verizon, Alltel and US Cellular (see CDMA World Map).

Impacts?
The ability to decrypt A5/1 encryption would enable an attacker to listen in to all cellular communications made over a GSM network. To execute the attack the attacker would need to be close enough to the target to monitor the radio waves emitted from the phone. However, this isn’t much of a restriction since the radio waves can be picked up from quite some distance.

This attack should raise serious concerns about the sensitivity of information exchanged over cell phones. An attacker with this equipment situated near a major corporate office or within a large city could easily glean very sensitive data from cellular voice calls.

Regarding data exchanged over cellular phones (e.g. 3G or EDGE), this shouldn’t really have any impact. All sensitive data should already be configured to use SSL/TLS or VPN for protection during transmission. Therefore, the attacker could break the A5/1 cipher, but they would only see encrypted data being exchanged. However, all data that is exchanged using clear text protocols (HTTP, telnet, ftp, etc) would be visible to the attacker. This is not much of a concern since there should not be any expectation of confidentiality when using a clear text protocol anyway.

About the attack
The attack leverages rainbow tables for a Time-Memory Trade-Off based attack. The A5/1 cracking project is enabling volunteers to help develop the rainbow tables for the A5/1 cipher and distributing the generated tables over bittorrent. Clever adaptations were made to the rainbow table generation to minimize the number of tables that were needed and thus dramatically reduced the required processing efforts.

This is a guest post by Michael Coates, a senior application security consultant with extensive experience in application security, security code review and penetration assessments. He has conducted numerous security assessments for financial, enterprise and cellular customers world-wide.

The original text is published on …Application Security…

Talkback and comments are most welcome

Related posts
Google Voice – No Privacy Remains?

We recently told you about 5 Great Blogs For Funding Advice, and now we wanted to remind you about a resource that can get you advice straight from the horse’s mouth: Larry Cheng’s extensive list of 131 top blogs from venture capitalists and firms – a priceless tool for any entrepreneur looking for free advice.

The blogs are ranked by their number of Google Reader subscriptions, though Cheng, himself ranked 33rd, says, “there are many great blogs with fewer subscribers as the number of subscribers doesn’t necessarily correlate to the quality of content.”

Nevertheless, resources like this are a great tool for keeping up with what the VC’s are talking about, but how can one possibly manage a blogroll so large? Thankfully, there are plenty of solutions for managing RSS feeds so you can stay on top of it all.

Sponsor

Along with his list, Cheng offers Google Reader bundles of various breakouts of the list. If 100 blogs is too much, you can alternatively subscribe to the top 10, 25 or 50 blogs. Or if you only want to read blogs from your neck of the woods, there are location based bundles for California, Massachusetts, New York, Europe, Canada and Israel. If you just can’t get enough VC blogs, there’s also an option to get the whole kit and caboodle – over 130 blogs total.

Whichever bundle or bundles you choose, Google Reader is an excellent way to filter through your feeds. The best solution for managing a large list is a feature Google recently rolled out: sort by magic. The more you use Google Reader, the more it learns about what kinds of stories you read, and it reflects these trends when it sorts a feed by “magic”.

Another tool for sorting through a heavy list of blogs is to use OPML files and filter them through PostRank – a process we described in great detail last January. In short, PostRank takes your list and creates a new feed, sifting through the noise and filtering out only the best and most popular posts. The only drawback is it takes time for PostRank to determine which posts are more popular, periodically dumping out a dozen or so posts at a time.

If you really want to stay on top of the VC game, applications like Snackr can provide a scrolling marquee of your feeds across your screen while you continue to work on other things. Snackr is built using Adobe AIR, so it’s compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

Discuss

We’re still roaming the show floor, hunting down what webOS news we can find – meanwhile our forums are afire with talk of the new 3D apps. This app review is brought to you by forum member FiXXXerX.  

So here we are, hours after the CES Press conference with a series of new apps that have been released by some fairly high profile companies, a first for WebOS and a much needed boost to the App Catalog. Today I will be reviewing Need For Speed – Undercover. In case you’ve been living under a rock that has been hidden in a cave for the past decade you most likely know what Need For Speed is, however, for those of you that have only recently emerged I’ll give you an overview of what your looking at here. The Need For Speed (Or NFS for short) franchise from Electronic Arts is all about taking a stock production car and personalizing it per your taste and then driving it… fast. This personalization includes performance tweaks and visual modifications and then going out and establishing yourself as a dominant racer in a number of different scenarios. The game we’re looking at today has you going Undercover (As the title suggests) and racing against all sorts of nasty-for-no-reason thugs who apparently spend a majority of their time street racing… in fact, just imagine Fast and The Furious with less plot and your in the right zone, so lets get into it…

read more

The free BD Remote app lets users control their Sony BD equipment (no PS3 support, yet) via wifi from any iPhone or iPod Touch.

The app launches quickly and the interface is intuitive. Pairing the device is a simple three step process that should be easy for most users. There was a very slight lag with the TV interface, but the Blu-ray player I tested the app with was a pre-production unit.

Meta-data for media being played can be displayed on the iPhone along with related YouTube clips. Is the app revolutionary? No, but the app is free and adds good value for users who already have Sony BD devices.

Rihanna and her new man, Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Matt Kemp, have sparked quite a media frenzy after news of their whirlwind relationship hit the Interwebs this week. In a new FunnyOrDie video spoof of a Match.com, “Matt” professes his love for “public ass groping” and “chicks who share umbrellas.. .ellas… ellas”

[See post to watch Flash video]

In this Fortune Magazine interview Steve Ballmer is asked about their mobile strategy, and he made it clear they are in it to win it.

He notes the market changes rapidly, and the smartphone market is apt to flip when new innovation comes.  He expects such a “whole new set of innovation” to come from the next generation of Windows Mobile, which certainly does little to dampen the hype factor for the new OS.

See the excerpt below, and the full interview at CNN Money here.

The Camcorder has been hard pressed by flash cams and DSLRs for awhile, but now we’re seeing the ever-improving HD cheapies and DSLRs taking over the semi-pro space with external microphones, lights and grips. Here are some awesome rigs…

…as seen at CES, in the field, by those covering the show. Camcorder companies should be further worried. But Flash camcorder companies should be worried by cameraphones— check out the iPhone 3GS case with mounts for accessories and lenses. And remember, these things can instantly upload. It’s only a matter of time before video shooting DSLRs with 3G/4G hit with instant upload features.