Hackers Rig Google To Deliver Malware

Erik Larkin, PC World

If last November you googled one of thousands of innocuous and common search terms, such as "Microsoft excel to access" or "how to teach your dogs to fetch," you were in line for an Internet attack that infects PCs with spam senders, password stealers, and other kinds of nasty malware.

Beginning on November 24 of last year and continuing for less than a week, bad guys loaded up more than 40,000 Web pages with malicious software and thousands of common search terms. They then employed an automated network of malware-infected computers--known as a botnet--to link to those sites in blog-comment spam and other places. The mentions elevated the position of the poisoned sites in search results, often to the first page.

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100 Best Companies To Work For In 2008

CNNMoney.Com surveyed nearly 100,000 employees from 406 different companies and asked them to evaluate their employers. These firms ranked the highest.

1.Google
Best Companies rank: 1
2006 Revenues (millions): $10,605
Headquarters: Mountain View, CA
Get quote: GOOG

What makes it so great? Back in our No. 1 spot, Google continued to mint millionaires as the stock cracked $700. The company gives stock options to 99% of employees.

2. Quicken Loans
Best Companies rank: 2
2006 Revenues (millions): $602
Headquarters: Livonia, MI

What makes it so great? "Ethically driven" is what one employee calls the online mortgage lender. It avoided the subprime crisis by sticking with plain-vanilla loans.

3. Wegmans Food Markets
Best Companies rank: 3
2006 Revenues (millions): $4,119
Headquarters: Rochester, NY

What makes it so great? Shopping is theater at this family-owned 71-store chain. It was named the nation's top supermarket by the Food Network in 2007.

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King Momo Kicks Off "Royal" Carnival In Rio!

RIO DE JANEIRO
(Reuters) - Actors posing as Portugal's royal family joined the fictional King Momo at the start of Rio de Janeiro's Carnival celebrations on Tuesday to mark 200 years since the court's arrival in Brazil. Various samba groups have chosen as their parade theme the 1808 event that briefly made Rio the capital of the Portuguese empire. The royals had fled from Napoleon's advancing armies. Carnival King Momo in red and golden robes and his samba-dancing entourage crossed the city in three antique carriages escorted by 19th-century guards on horseback.

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InDiggNation: The Web 2.0 Honeymoon Ends

By John S. AlwaysOn: The Insider's Network

Why would the founders of Digg, the fast-growing social news site that says it gets more than 20 million unique monthly visitors, keep trying to sell it?
The question could have two answers, both of which may be true: either Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson want to get rich and/or the traffic on the site they run isn't quite what it seems.

The second possibility is more compelling now that longtime Digg users have revolted because of changes the site recently made to its algorithm. Those changes will dilute the power of prolific posters. While the disgruntled Digg veterans now say they're appeased after an online heart-to-heart with Digg's founders, the truce won't change this simple fact: if a sale goes through, Adelson and Rose are about to get rich, thanks in part to their own vision and hard work but also to long hours of effort from people who won't get a dime from any acquisition. Therein lies the great irony of social networking startups: for all the socialist-like talk of building a community, every successful site will eventually be divided into its haves (i.e,, people who will profit from its success) and its have-nots (those who won't.) Digg today is not what it once was.
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"Borg War: Episode 1"

It's 17 years after the return of Voyager. The Alpha quadrant has been preparing for the return of the Borg by investing massive R&D in offensive and defensive weaponry. The Federation/Klingon alliance has worn thin, with younger warriors seeking a return to the old ways. A Borg Cube stumbles onto a Klingon freighter belonging to the House of Mi'qoch, the clan responsible for the Empire's anti-Borg development programme. The Mi'qoch clan sends its mightiest warship to investigate

Black Pharaohs-National Geographic Magazine

By Robert Draper
Photographs by Kenneth Garrett

For 75 years Nubian kings ruled over ancient Egypt, reunifying the country and building an empire. Until recently, theirs was a chapter of history lost in the shadows.
In the year 730 B.C., a man by the name of Piye decided the only way to save Egypt from itself was to invade it. Things would get bloody before the salvation came.“Harness the best steeds of your stable,” he ordered his commanders. The magnificent civilization that had built the great pyramids had lost its way, torn apart by petty warlords. For two decades Piye had ruled over his own kingdom in Nubia, a swath of Africa located mostly in present-day Sudan. But he considered himself the true ruler of Egypt as well, the rightful heir to the spiritual traditions practiced by pharaohs such as Ramses II and Thutmose III.

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