Category: Technology

Google Inc will launch a mobile payment system on Thursday, in the latest bid to help consumers pay at the checkout with smartphones instead of traditional credit cards, a person familiar with the matter said. Google will work with MasterCard Inc, the world’s second-largest credit and debit card processing network, to launch the system, the source said.

The world’s largest Internet search engine has been working with MasterCard and Citigroup Inc to develop a mobile payments system. Citigroup did not immediately respond to requests for comment and MasterCard declined to comment.

Hackers have attacked Sony Ericsson’s Canadian eShop website, affecting 2,000 users, the latest online strike against the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant, a Sony spokesman said on Wednesday.
Sony Ericsson eShop site Hacked cause loss of $ 3.2 Billion. The new security breach follows a massive theft of personal data from Sony’s PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment services, including names, passwords and addresses from more than 100 million accounts.

And on Tuesday Sony said its websites in three countries had been hacked with 8,500 Greek user accounts compromised, while sites in Thailand and Indonesia were also affected. The most recent attack — targeting the mobile phone joint venture between Sony and Sweden’s Ericsson — was discovered on Tuesday local time, and the affected website was shut down, a Sony spokesman told.

Provincial Minister for Environment, Wajid Ali Khan has called upon all the stakeholders to create awareness among people regarding importance of bio-diversity so that the species facing threats could be saved from being extinct. Addressing a function jointly arranged by Wildlife Department, Environment Protection Agency (EPA), Forest and Fisheries Departments, Wajid Ali Khan said its time to give serious consideration to issues concerning biodiversity and earth.

It is need of the hour to create awareness among the masses about threats like habitat loss, deforestation, pollution, global warming etc. The People must be educated about proper use of natural resources on sustainable basis. “If these issues were not given serious consideration, we would not only create problems for our coming generation, but also for ourselves,” Wajid warned.

A baby who didn’t breathe for 17 minutes was saved after being put in a ‘fridge’ for three days,  she was born, Sophie Fleet swallowed fluids which caused a blockage in her airways and starved her brain of oxygen. Doctors treated her using medically-induced hypothermia, lowering her body temperature from the normal 37°C to 33.5°C for three days by putting Sophie into a special ‘fridge’ suit pumped with water to keep her body cool.

This reduced pressure on Sophie’s brain, thereby preventing further brain damage. She could go home with her parents nine days later, and only sustained mild brain damage. Sophie’s parents know that the outcome could have been much worse – their daughter could have suffered either severe or brain damage – without the hypothermia.

Watch out the capabilities and purpose of PC3 Orion Aircraft being used by Pakistan Navy which was destroyed in terrorist attacks on PNS Mehran.

Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM) said Monday it is recalling around 1,000 PlayBook tablet computers because of an operating system issue. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said most of the affected devices were still in the distribution channel and had not reached customers.

RIM said the affected PlayBooks may not be able to properly load software upon initial set-up. “RIM is working to replace the affected devices,” it said in a statement. “In the small number of cases where a customer received a PlayBook that is unable to properly load software upon initial set-up, they can contact RIM for assistance,” the company added.

The PlayBook has a seven-inch (17.8-centimeter) touchscreen, smaller than the iPad’s 9.7 inches (24.7-cm) and at less than a pound (425 grams), the PlayBook is lighter than the iPad 2′s 1.3 pounds (590 grams).

 

Microsoft has warned that hackers use mind tricks more often than software skills to get viruses into computers. Feedback from globally popular Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser indicated that one of every 14 programs downloaded turned out to be malicious code, according to the US software titan. “Social-engineering attacks, like tricking a user into running a malicious program, are far more common than attacks on security vulnerabilities,” Microsoft SmartScreen program manager Jeb Haber said in a blog post.

“SmartScreen” technology has blocked more than 1.5 billion attempts to slip “malware” into computers since version IE8 was released in March of 2009, according to Microsoft. “User-downloaded malware is a huge problem and getting bigger,” Haber said. Microsoft’s latest version of the browser, IE9, checks reputations of websites and their creators to let Internet users know when they are dealing with unknown characters online.

 

Shoe bombs are still a threat so for now US air travellers will have to continue to take off their footwear for security screenings, homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano said. Napolitano said her department has been looking for a technological solution to the shoe problem, drawing applause at a conference of travel and tourism industry leaders. She further added: “We’re not there yet, so wear slip-ons.”

The shoe requirement is probably the most hated symbol of the raft of security measures imposed on air travellers after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Napolitano said that nearly 10 years after September 11, the US government was pursuing strategies to take some of the hassle out of air travel, where possible.

She said nearly a million people have now enrolled in “Global Entry,” a so-called “trusted traveller” programme that allows Prue-vetted passengers to clear customs more quickly. The administration’s goal is to double that number.

An Austrian man has voluntarily had his hand amputated so he can be fitted with a bionic limb. The patient, called “Milo”, aged 26, lost the use of his right hand in a motorcycle accident a decade ago. After his stump heals in several weeks’ time, he will be fitted with a bionic hand which will be controlled by nerve signals in his own arm.

The surgery is the second such elective amputation to be performed by Viennese surgeon Professor Oskar Aszmann. The patient, a Serbian national who has lived in Austria since childhood, suffered injuries to a leg and shoulder when he skidded off his motorcycle and smashed into a lamppost in 2001 while on holiday in Serbia.

While the leg healed, what is called a “brachial plexus” injury to his right shoulder left his right arm paralysed. Nerve tissue transplanted from his leg by Professor Aszmann restored movement to his arm but not to his hand. A further operation involving the transplantation of muscle and nerve tissue into his forearm also failed to restore movement to the hand, but it did at least boost the electric signals being delivered from his brain to his forearm, signals that could be used to drive a bionic hand.

Such bionic hands, manufactured by the German prosthetics company Otto Bock, can pinch and grasp in response to signals from the brain that are picked up by two sensors placed over the skin above nerves in the forearm. In effect, the patient controls the hand using the same brain signals that would have once powered similar movements in the real hand. The wrist of the prosthesis can be rotated manually using the patient’s other functioning hand (if the patient has one).

 

Gliese 581d A Planet Discovered Where Human Can Live. Scientists may be just steps from discovering the first habitable planet beyond our own. Gliese 581d, a planet orbiting the red-dwarf star Gliese, may be the first real candidate for human expansion. That is, if it didn’t take 3,000 lifetimes to get there.

581d is the third candidate for becoming the first hospitable exoplanet from the Gliese system, but the previous two candidates have both been ruled out. Gliese 581e was ruled too cold, and 581g turned out to be entirely nonexistent.

In order to determine that this planet was actually a viable candidate, the scientists behind the new report used a new computer model, which uses methods similar to those used to measure Earth’s own climate, to analyze the atmosphere of 581d.