Kanye West Outburst Mars MTV Music Video Awards

The MTV video music awards held on Sunday paid tribute to the late Michael Jackson, but was overshadowed by an outburst by rapper Kanye West, who interrupted an acceptance speech by U.S. singer Taylor Swift.

West, who is known for his outspoken ways, jumped up on stage while the 19-year-old Swift was making an acceptance speech for best female video for her hit song "You Belong With Me," beating out singers including Beyonce Knowles and Lady Gaga.

"I am really happy for you," West said. "But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time."

MTV said West, who was spotted earlier on the red carpet drinking alcohol, was ejected from an awards show already known for its circus-like atmosphere. West received loud boos from the crowd when his name was mentioned later in the show.

West apologized on his website. "I'm sooooo sorry to Taylor Swift and her fans and her mom," he wrote. "... I'm in the wrong for going on stage and taking away from her moment!"

Beyonce took the show's top honor -- video of the year -- for her single "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" before recalling her first MTV award with her old band, Destiny's Child, and calling back Swift to the Radio City Music Hall stage to finish her acceptance speech.

"I would like Taylor to come out and have her moment," she said, before the country music star reappeared and thanked her fans.

MTV said Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Green Day won three awards apiece, the most of any artists on this year's awards show.

JACKSON TRIBUTE

The cable channel's awards show began with a tribute to Jackson less than three months after the man known as the King of Pop died from what authorities call a prescription drug overdose at age 50.

"Most of us had turned our backs on him," Madonna said in a speech at the beginning of the awards that recalled his lost childhood. "He was so unique, so original, so rare and there will never be anyone like him again. He was the king."

Performers dressed like Jackson filled the stage and danced to some of his hit songs including "Thriller," "Bad" and "Smooth Criminal."

Janet Jackson then appeared on stage. With the video for her brother's song "Scream" playing on a screen behind her, she mimicked his dance moves in unison with the video. She did not speak.

Michael Jackson promoted many of his ground-breaking videos on MTV in the 1980s.

The network also aired a trailer for "This Is It," a documentary about Jackson due out in October that features footage from Jackson rehearsing for his comeback concerts.

The show's other top awards went to U.S. dance music star Lady Gaga, who won best new artist for "Poker Face." Rapper T.I. featuring Rihanna won best male video for "Live Your Life," and Britney Spears cemented her successful comeback winning best pop video for "Womanizer."

Eminem won best hip-hop video for "We Made You," and Green Day took the best rock video award for "21 Guns."

The show's performances included Pink, who wowed the audience singing while twirling on a trapeze high above the crowd. Lady Gaga performed her song "Paparazzi" while smeared with fake blood.

Some of the biggest cheers came after Beyonce performed her award-winning single surrounded by dozens of female dancers.

The night ended with a final reference to Swift, with the show's host, British comedian Russell Brand, joking he would give her "a shoulder to cry on."

Labels: Kanye West, Kanye West Ego, Kanye West outburst, MTV Music Video Awards, Taylor Swift, VMA

Asian Girls: Their Fondness of Picture Taking Has Lead to this....


Over the years, Asian girls have gained notoriety for their love of picture taking. Like a moth to a flame, whenever there is a special occasion, daily event, or a "moment", the Asian girl can not resist whipping out the camera to take a picture.

Common pictures that are taken include:
1. Food
2. Close up of the face..with a "cute" impression (But honestly, as your getting older, doing cutsey poses tend to make you look like a deutsch.
3. Puppy..or other cute animal
4. Over-kill dress for not that big of a deal occasion

Labels: asian pictures, Asian posing for camera, FOB, photo poses, poser

Global Warming Could Forestall Ice Age



The human-driven buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere appears to have ended a slide, many millenniums in the making, toward cooler summer temperatures in the Arctic, the authors of a new study report.

Scientists familiar with the work, to be published Friday in the journal Science, said it provided fresh evidence that human activity is not only warming the globe, particularly the Arctic, but could also even fend off what had been presumed to be an inevitable descent into a new ice age over the next few dozen millenniums.

The reversal of the slow cooling trend in the Arctic, recorded in samples of layered lakebed mud, glacial ice and tree rings from Alaska to Siberia, has been swift and pronounced, the team writes.

Earlier studies have also shown that the Arctic, more than the planet as a whole, has seen unusual warming in recent decades. But the new analysis provides decade-by-decade detail on temperature trends going back 2,000 years — five times further than previous work at that detailed a scale.

Several climate scientists said the new study was most significant for showing just how powerfully the Arctic climate appears to be responding to a greenhouse-gas buildup that is having more complex and subtle mix of effects elsewhere around the globe.

Darrell S. Kaufman, the lead author and a climate specialist at Northern Arizona University, said the biggest surprise was the strength of the shift from cooling to warming, which started in 1900 and intensified after 1950.

“The slow cooling trend is trivial compared to the warming that’s been happening and that’s in the pipeline,” Dr. Kaufman said.

Several scientists who were not involved with the study concurred that the pace of the temperature reversal far exceeded the natural variability in Arctic temperatures, supporting the idea that the warm-up is human-caused and potentially disruptive.

According to the study, after a slow cooling of less than half a degree Fahrenheit per millennium, driven by a cyclical change in the orientation of the North Pole and the Sun, the region warmed 2.2 degrees just since 1900, with the decade from 1998 to 2008 the warmest in 2,000 years.

In theory, summer temperatures in the Arctic region would be expected to cool for at least 4,000 more years, given the growing distance between the Sun and the North Pole during the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, the study says.

But Jonathan T. Overpeck, a study author and climate specialist at the University of Arizona, said the rising concentration of long-lived greenhouse gases guaranteed warming at a pace that could stress ecosystems and cause rapid melting of Greenland’s great ice sheet.

“The fast rate of recent warming is the scary part,” Dr. Overpeck said. “It means that major impacts on Arctic ecosystems and global sea level might not be that far off unless we act fast to slow global warming.”

In the very long term, the ability to artificially warm the climate, particularly the Arctic, could be seen as a boon as the planet’s shifting orientation to the Sun enters a phase that could initiate the next ice age.



As a result of such periodic shifts, 17 ice ages are thought to have come and gone in two million years. The last ice age ended 11,000 years ago and the next one, according to recent research, could be 20,000 or 30,000 years off discounting any influence by humans. The last ice age buried much of the Northern Hemisphere under a mile or more of ice.

With humans’ clear and growing ability to alter the climate, Dr. Overpeck said, “we could easily skip the next opportunity altogether.”

Labels: artic, cliamte change, darrell s. kaufman, Global warming, ice age

GOOGLE PAGERANK INSPIRES SCIENTISTS TO RANK ANIMALS

A major reason Google’s search engine is so successful is its PageRank algorithm, which assigns a pecking order to Web pages based on the pages that point to them. A page is important, according to Google, if other important pages link to it.

But the Internet is not the only web around. In ecology, for instance, there are food webs — the often complex networks of who eats whom.



Inspired by PageRank, Stefano Allesina of the University of Chicago and Mercedes Pascual of the University of Michigan have devised an algorithm of their own for the relationships in a food web. As described in the online open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, the algorithm uses the links between species in a food web to determine the relative importance of species in a food web, which will have the most impact if they become extinct.

Dr. Allesina, who studies network theory and biology, was reading a paper about Google’s algorithm one day while at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “I said, ‘This reminds me of something,’ ” he recalled.

One key to PageRank’s success is that its developers introduced a small probability that a Web user would jump from one page to any other. This in effect makes the Web circular, and makes the algorithm solvable. But in food webs, Dr. Allesina said, “you can’t go from the grass to the lion — the grass has to go through the gazelle first.

“We could not use the same trick to make food webs circular,” he went on.

So they used another trick, he said. Since all organisms die and decompose, they created a “detritus pool” that all species link to. The pool also links to primary producers in a food web, which make use of the decomposed matter.

Their algorithm differs also in that it determines the relative importance of species through reverse engineering — by seeing which species make the food web collapse fastest if they are removed. The researchers found that the algorithm produces results that were as accurate as much more complex (and computationally costly) software that builds webs from the ground up, simulating evolution.

The next step, Dr. Allesina said, is to refine the algorithm so that it will work with more complex webs. There are many other factors that affect extinctions, including pollution and habitat loss. The goal is to create an algorithm that can take these and other elements into account as well.

Labels: food web, google pagerank, nature, stefano allesina, university of chicago

OMG Seriously, Fuck You Harvard University

After trying for years to overcome its elitist image, Harvard is in a deal to promote a line of clothing that only the elite can afford. The new line will feature polos, cardigans, and loafers. The clothes will be similar to the J.Crew brand, but will be a tad more deutschbaggie.

Here are the pics:

Labels: cardigans, deutschbag, elite clothing line, Harvard university, j.crew

Andy Roddick's Lose: The Student Becomes the Master

Andy Roddick's U.S. Open rally has been squashed by his former student.
Coming off a close-as-could-be loss in the Wimbledon final, Mr. Roddick came to Flushing Meadows with a rebuilt game and some serious self-belief. Running into strong-serving, 6-foot-9 American John Isner in the third round proved to be too much to handle.



The 55th-ranked Mr. Isner smacked 38 aces to beat the No. 5-seeded Mr. Roddick 7-6 (3), 6-3, 3-6, 5-7, 7-6 (5) Saturday.

It's the first time Mr. Isner has reached the fourth round at a Grand Slam tournament. Mr. Roddick, in contrast, won the 2003 U.S. Open and has been the runner-up at a major four times, most recently at the All England Club in July.

"It's tough. I mean, I don't know if I've come to a tournament with as much confidence, into a Slam, as I did with this tournament," Mr. Roddick said. "Leaving earlier than I want to."

His loss marked the first significant upset of Week 1 of the men's tournament: The men seeded No. 1 through No. 16 were 38-0 before Mr. Roddick and Mr. Isner stepped on court.
Mr. Roddick broke Mr. Isner's serve twice and was only broken once himself. His groundstrokes were clean, with only 20 unforced errors, 32 fewer than Mr. Isner. And then there was this little detail: Mr. Roddick won 162 points, Mr. Isner 155.



But Mr. Isner came through in the tiebreakers.

"I mean, there's a lot that's out of your hands with the way he plays. I said it before: You can't really teach 6-9, especially coming down on a serve," Mr. Roddick said. "You try to fight it off as much as you can. Sometimes you can, and sometimes it's completely out of your hands."

How does Mr. Isner do so well in such pressure-packed situations?
"I'm real poised and real under control," Mr. Isner said. "I don't panic."

Mr. Isner, who led Georgia to the 2007 NCAA team tennis championship, lost in the first round at five consecutive major tournaments until this one. He missed three months this season from mid-April to mid-July with mononucleosis, but Saturday's victory will push him into the top 50 in the rankings.

"I was watching the French Open. I remember how ticked off I was at home," Mr. Isner said. "But I think it might have been a blessing in disguise."

Labels: Andy Roddick, Flushing Meadows, John Isner, Tennis, U.S. Open, US Open

Hyori Top Girl Fashion Spring/Summer 2009 - Photo

Hyori, the former member of the Korean girl group FINKL and now solo artist and MC, is gaining fresh popularity among audiences at home and abroad. I'm sure these are the reasons why.

(Come on folks...seriously...She's bangin'. Case closed.)

Labels: fashion summer 2009, hot korean, hyolee, Hyori, hyroi lee, top girl fashion

3 Indicted in Theft of 130 Million Card Numbers



SAN FRANCISCO — The man who prosecutors said had masterminded some of the most brazen thefts of credit and debit card numbers in history was charged on Monday with an even larger set of digital break-ins.

In an indictment, the Justice Department said that Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami and two unnamed Russian conspirators made off with more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers from late 2006 to early 2008.

Prosecutors called it the largest case of computer crime and identity theft ever prosecuted. According to the government, the culprits infiltrated the computer networks of Heartland Payment Systems, a payment processor in Princeton, N.J.; 7-Eleven Inc.; Hannaford Brothers, a regional supermarket chain; and two unnamed national retailers.

An unspecified portion of the stolen credit and debit card numbers were then sold online, and some were used to make unauthorized purchases and withdrawals from banks, according to the indictment, which was filed in United States District Court in Newark.

Although some states require card issuers to notify customers about security breaches, it is unclear whether all individuals whose card numbers were stolen in this case have been notified and offered new account numbers.

Mr. Gonzalez has been in custody since May 2008, when he was arrested in connection with another prominent data theft at the Dave & Buster’s restaurant chain. He has also been indicted in other thefts of credit and debt cards, including the 2005 data breach at T. J. Maxx stores, a division of TJX, based in Framingham, Mass.

Mr. Gonzalez is awaiting a trial in New York in the Dave & Buster’s attack and, separately, another in Massachusetts in the TJX breach. Trials on the charges announced on Monday will have to wait until those cases are completed, federal prosecutors said.

Mr. Gonzalez’s lawyer, Rene Palomino Jr., did not respond to requests for comment.

Erez Liebermann, an assistant United States attorney in the Justice Department’s New Jersey office, said Mr. Gonzalez’s involvement in so many data breaches suggested that “perhaps the individuals capable of such conduct are a tighter-knit group than may have been previously thought.”

Mr. Gonzalez once worked with federal investigators. In 2003, after being arrested in New Jersey in a computer crime, he helped the Secret Service and federal prosecutors in New Jersey identify his former conspirators in the online underworld where credit and debit card numbers are stolen, bought and sold.

But Mr. Gonzalez secretly reconnected with his old associates, federal officials have said, and continued to ply his trade using a variety of online pseudonyms, including Segvec and Cumbajohnny.

According to the new indictment, Mr. Gonzalez and his conspirators reviewed lists of Fortune 500 companies to decide which corporations to take aim at and visited their stores to monitor which payment systems they used. The online attacks took advantage of flaws in the SQL programming language, which is commonly used for databases.

Prosecutors say the defendants created and placed “sniffer” programs on corporate networks; the programs intercepted credit card transactions in real time and transmitted the numbers to computers the defendants had leased in the United States, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

The conspirators tried to erase all digital footprints left by their attacks, according to the indictment.

Heartland, one of the world’s largest credit and debit card payment processing companies, announced in January that its network had been breached but declined to provide many details. The disclosure came during President Obama’s inauguration, which prompted critics to question whether the company was trying to play down the news.

Neither the Department of Justice nor the Secret Service would discuss the investigative breakthroughs in the case. Each defendant faces the possibility of 35 years in prison, and more than $1 million in fines or twice the amount made from the crime, whichever is greater.

Threat Level, a blog run by Wired magazine, reported that Mr. Gonzalez had lived a lavish lifestyle in Miami, once spending $75,000 on a birthday party for himself and complaining to friends that he had to manually count thousands of $20 bills when his counting machine broke.

Richard Wang, manager of SophosLabs, a security company, said the case provided more evidence that retailers and banks needed to strengthen industry standards and encrypt credit card numbers when they are transmitted between computers. Currently, major banks agree to encrypt such data only when it is stored.

Mr. Wang also doubted that the world had seen the last significant theft of credit card numbers.

“I’m not sure how likely it is that they are going to get the Russian co-conspirators,” Mr. Wang said. “Obviously there are still plenty of people with the necessary expertise to pull off these kinds of attacks.”

Labels: albert gonzalez, cybersecurity cybercrime, identity theft, Justice department

Kanye West Outburst Mars MTV Music Video Awards

The MTV video music awards held on Sunday paid tribute to the late Michael Jackson, but was overshadowed by an outburst by rapper Kanye West, who interrupted an acceptance speech by U.S. singer Taylor Swift.

West, who is known for his outspoken ways, jumped up on stage while the 19-year-old Swift was making an acceptance speech for best female video for her hit song "You Belong With Me," beating out singers including Beyonce Knowles and Lady Gaga.

"I am really happy for you," West said. "But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time."

MTV said West, who was spotted earlier on the red carpet drinking alcohol, was ejected from an awards show already known for its circus-like atmosphere. West received loud boos from the crowd when his name was mentioned later in the show.

West apologized on his website. "I'm sooooo sorry to Taylor Swift and her fans and her mom," he wrote. "... I'm in the wrong for going on stage and taking away from her moment!"

Beyonce took the show's top honor -- video of the year -- for her single "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" before recalling her first MTV award with her old band, Destiny's Child, and calling back Swift to the Radio City Music Hall stage to finish her acceptance speech.

"I would like Taylor to come out and have her moment," she said, before the country music star reappeared and thanked her fans.

MTV said Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Green Day won three awards apiece, the most of any artists on this year's awards show.

JACKSON TRIBUTE

The cable channel's awards show began with a tribute to Jackson less than three months after the man known as the King of Pop died from what authorities call a prescription drug overdose at age 50.

"Most of us had turned our backs on him," Madonna said in a speech at the beginning of the awards that recalled his lost childhood. "He was so unique, so original, so rare and there will never be anyone like him again. He was the king."

Performers dressed like Jackson filled the stage and danced to some of his hit songs including "Thriller," "Bad" and "Smooth Criminal."

Janet Jackson then appeared on stage. With the video for her brother's song "Scream" playing on a screen behind her, she mimicked his dance moves in unison with the video. She did not speak.

Michael Jackson promoted many of his ground-breaking videos on MTV in the 1980s.

The network also aired a trailer for "This Is It," a documentary about Jackson due out in October that features footage from Jackson rehearsing for his comeback concerts.

The show's other top awards went to U.S. dance music star Lady Gaga, who won best new artist for "Poker Face." Rapper T.I. featuring Rihanna won best male video for "Live Your Life," and Britney Spears cemented her successful comeback winning best pop video for "Womanizer."

Eminem won best hip-hop video for "We Made You," and Green Day took the best rock video award for "21 Guns."

The show's performances included Pink, who wowed the audience singing while twirling on a trapeze high above the crowd. Lady Gaga performed her song "Paparazzi" while smeared with fake blood.

Some of the biggest cheers came after Beyonce performed her award-winning single surrounded by dozens of female dancers.

The night ended with a final reference to Swift, with the show's host, British comedian Russell Brand, joking he would give her "a shoulder to cry on."

Labels: Kanye West, Kanye West Ego, Kanye West outburst, MTV Music Video Awards, Taylor Swift, VMA

Asian Girls: Their Fondness of Picture Taking Has Lead to this....


Over the years, Asian girls have gained notoriety for their love of picture taking. Like a moth to a flame, whenever there is a special occasion, daily event, or a "moment", the Asian girl can not resist whipping out the camera to take a picture.

Common pictures that are taken include:
1. Food
2. Close up of the face..with a "cute" impression (But honestly, as your getting older, doing cutsey poses tend to make you look like a deutsch.
3. Puppy..or other cute animal
4. Over-kill dress for not that big of a deal occasion

Labels: asian pictures, Asian posing for camera, FOB, photo poses, poser

Global Warming Could Forestall Ice Age



The human-driven buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere appears to have ended a slide, many millenniums in the making, toward cooler summer temperatures in the Arctic, the authors of a new study report.

Scientists familiar with the work, to be published Friday in the journal Science, said it provided fresh evidence that human activity is not only warming the globe, particularly the Arctic, but could also even fend off what had been presumed to be an inevitable descent into a new ice age over the next few dozen millenniums.

The reversal of the slow cooling trend in the Arctic, recorded in samples of layered lakebed mud, glacial ice and tree rings from Alaska to Siberia, has been swift and pronounced, the team writes.

Earlier studies have also shown that the Arctic, more than the planet as a whole, has seen unusual warming in recent decades. But the new analysis provides decade-by-decade detail on temperature trends going back 2,000 years — five times further than previous work at that detailed a scale.

Several climate scientists said the new study was most significant for showing just how powerfully the Arctic climate appears to be responding to a greenhouse-gas buildup that is having more complex and subtle mix of effects elsewhere around the globe.

Darrell S. Kaufman, the lead author and a climate specialist at Northern Arizona University, said the biggest surprise was the strength of the shift from cooling to warming, which started in 1900 and intensified after 1950.

“The slow cooling trend is trivial compared to the warming that’s been happening and that’s in the pipeline,” Dr. Kaufman said.

Several scientists who were not involved with the study concurred that the pace of the temperature reversal far exceeded the natural variability in Arctic temperatures, supporting the idea that the warm-up is human-caused and potentially disruptive.

According to the study, after a slow cooling of less than half a degree Fahrenheit per millennium, driven by a cyclical change in the orientation of the North Pole and the Sun, the region warmed 2.2 degrees just since 1900, with the decade from 1998 to 2008 the warmest in 2,000 years.

In theory, summer temperatures in the Arctic region would be expected to cool for at least 4,000 more years, given the growing distance between the Sun and the North Pole during the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, the study says.

But Jonathan T. Overpeck, a study author and climate specialist at the University of Arizona, said the rising concentration of long-lived greenhouse gases guaranteed warming at a pace that could stress ecosystems and cause rapid melting of Greenland’s great ice sheet.

“The fast rate of recent warming is the scary part,” Dr. Overpeck said. “It means that major impacts on Arctic ecosystems and global sea level might not be that far off unless we act fast to slow global warming.”

In the very long term, the ability to artificially warm the climate, particularly the Arctic, could be seen as a boon as the planet’s shifting orientation to the Sun enters a phase that could initiate the next ice age.



As a result of such periodic shifts, 17 ice ages are thought to have come and gone in two million years. The last ice age ended 11,000 years ago and the next one, according to recent research, could be 20,000 or 30,000 years off discounting any influence by humans. The last ice age buried much of the Northern Hemisphere under a mile or more of ice.

With humans’ clear and growing ability to alter the climate, Dr. Overpeck said, “we could easily skip the next opportunity altogether.”

Labels: artic, cliamte change, darrell s. kaufman, Global warming, ice age

GOOGLE PAGERANK INSPIRES SCIENTISTS TO RANK ANIMALS

A major reason Google’s search engine is so successful is its PageRank algorithm, which assigns a pecking order to Web pages based on the pages that point to them. A page is important, according to Google, if other important pages link to it.

But the Internet is not the only web around. In ecology, for instance, there are food webs — the often complex networks of who eats whom.



Inspired by PageRank, Stefano Allesina of the University of Chicago and Mercedes Pascual of the University of Michigan have devised an algorithm of their own for the relationships in a food web. As described in the online open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, the algorithm uses the links between species in a food web to determine the relative importance of species in a food web, which will have the most impact if they become extinct.

Dr. Allesina, who studies network theory and biology, was reading a paper about Google’s algorithm one day while at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “I said, ‘This reminds me of something,’ ” he recalled.

One key to PageRank’s success is that its developers introduced a small probability that a Web user would jump from one page to any other. This in effect makes the Web circular, and makes the algorithm solvable. But in food webs, Dr. Allesina said, “you can’t go from the grass to the lion — the grass has to go through the gazelle first.

“We could not use the same trick to make food webs circular,” he went on.

So they used another trick, he said. Since all organisms die and decompose, they created a “detritus pool” that all species link to. The pool also links to primary producers in a food web, which make use of the decomposed matter.

Their algorithm differs also in that it determines the relative importance of species through reverse engineering — by seeing which species make the food web collapse fastest if they are removed. The researchers found that the algorithm produces results that were as accurate as much more complex (and computationally costly) software that builds webs from the ground up, simulating evolution.

The next step, Dr. Allesina said, is to refine the algorithm so that it will work with more complex webs. There are many other factors that affect extinctions, including pollution and habitat loss. The goal is to create an algorithm that can take these and other elements into account as well.

Labels: food web, google pagerank, nature, stefano allesina, university of chicago

OMG Seriously, Fuck You Harvard University

After trying for years to overcome its elitist image, Harvard is in a deal to promote a line of clothing that only the elite can afford. The new line will feature polos, cardigans, and loafers. The clothes will be similar to the J.Crew brand, but will be a tad more deutschbaggie.

Here are the pics:

Labels: cardigans, deutschbag, elite clothing line, Harvard university, j.crew

Andy Roddick's Lose: The Student Becomes the Master

Andy Roddick's U.S. Open rally has been squashed by his former student.
Coming off a close-as-could-be loss in the Wimbledon final, Mr. Roddick came to Flushing Meadows with a rebuilt game and some serious self-belief. Running into strong-serving, 6-foot-9 American John Isner in the third round proved to be too much to handle.



The 55th-ranked Mr. Isner smacked 38 aces to beat the No. 5-seeded Mr. Roddick 7-6 (3), 6-3, 3-6, 5-7, 7-6 (5) Saturday.

It's the first time Mr. Isner has reached the fourth round at a Grand Slam tournament. Mr. Roddick, in contrast, won the 2003 U.S. Open and has been the runner-up at a major four times, most recently at the All England Club in July.

"It's tough. I mean, I don't know if I've come to a tournament with as much confidence, into a Slam, as I did with this tournament," Mr. Roddick said. "Leaving earlier than I want to."

His loss marked the first significant upset of Week 1 of the men's tournament: The men seeded No. 1 through No. 16 were 38-0 before Mr. Roddick and Mr. Isner stepped on court.
Mr. Roddick broke Mr. Isner's serve twice and was only broken once himself. His groundstrokes were clean, with only 20 unforced errors, 32 fewer than Mr. Isner. And then there was this little detail: Mr. Roddick won 162 points, Mr. Isner 155.



But Mr. Isner came through in the tiebreakers.

"I mean, there's a lot that's out of your hands with the way he plays. I said it before: You can't really teach 6-9, especially coming down on a serve," Mr. Roddick said. "You try to fight it off as much as you can. Sometimes you can, and sometimes it's completely out of your hands."

How does Mr. Isner do so well in such pressure-packed situations?
"I'm real poised and real under control," Mr. Isner said. "I don't panic."

Mr. Isner, who led Georgia to the 2007 NCAA team tennis championship, lost in the first round at five consecutive major tournaments until this one. He missed three months this season from mid-April to mid-July with mononucleosis, but Saturday's victory will push him into the top 50 in the rankings.

"I was watching the French Open. I remember how ticked off I was at home," Mr. Isner said. "But I think it might have been a blessing in disguise."

Labels: Andy Roddick, Flushing Meadows, John Isner, Tennis, U.S. Open, US Open

Hyori Top Girl Fashion Spring/Summer 2009 - Photo

Hyori, the former member of the Korean girl group FINKL and now solo artist and MC, is gaining fresh popularity among audiences at home and abroad. I'm sure these are the reasons why.

(Come on folks...seriously...She's bangin'. Case closed.)

Labels: fashion summer 2009, hot korean, hyolee, Hyori, hyroi lee, top girl fashion

3 Indicted in Theft of 130 Million Card Numbers



SAN FRANCISCO — The man who prosecutors said had masterminded some of the most brazen thefts of credit and debit card numbers in history was charged on Monday with an even larger set of digital break-ins.

In an indictment, the Justice Department said that Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami and two unnamed Russian conspirators made off with more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers from late 2006 to early 2008.

Prosecutors called it the largest case of computer crime and identity theft ever prosecuted. According to the government, the culprits infiltrated the computer networks of Heartland Payment Systems, a payment processor in Princeton, N.J.; 7-Eleven Inc.; Hannaford Brothers, a regional supermarket chain; and two unnamed national retailers.

An unspecified portion of the stolen credit and debit card numbers were then sold online, and some were used to make unauthorized purchases and withdrawals from banks, according to the indictment, which was filed in United States District Court in Newark.

Although some states require card issuers to notify customers about security breaches, it is unclear whether all individuals whose card numbers were stolen in this case have been notified and offered new account numbers.

Mr. Gonzalez has been in custody since May 2008, when he was arrested in connection with another prominent data theft at the Dave & Buster’s restaurant chain. He has also been indicted in other thefts of credit and debt cards, including the 2005 data breach at T. J. Maxx stores, a division of TJX, based in Framingham, Mass.

Mr. Gonzalez is awaiting a trial in New York in the Dave & Buster’s attack and, separately, another in Massachusetts in the TJX breach. Trials on the charges announced on Monday will have to wait until those cases are completed, federal prosecutors said.

Mr. Gonzalez’s lawyer, Rene Palomino Jr., did not respond to requests for comment.

Erez Liebermann, an assistant United States attorney in the Justice Department’s New Jersey office, said Mr. Gonzalez’s involvement in so many data breaches suggested that “perhaps the individuals capable of such conduct are a tighter-knit group than may have been previously thought.”

Mr. Gonzalez once worked with federal investigators. In 2003, after being arrested in New Jersey in a computer crime, he helped the Secret Service and federal prosecutors in New Jersey identify his former conspirators in the online underworld where credit and debit card numbers are stolen, bought and sold.

But Mr. Gonzalez secretly reconnected with his old associates, federal officials have said, and continued to ply his trade using a variety of online pseudonyms, including Segvec and Cumbajohnny.

According to the new indictment, Mr. Gonzalez and his conspirators reviewed lists of Fortune 500 companies to decide which corporations to take aim at and visited their stores to monitor which payment systems they used. The online attacks took advantage of flaws in the SQL programming language, which is commonly used for databases.

Prosecutors say the defendants created and placed “sniffer” programs on corporate networks; the programs intercepted credit card transactions in real time and transmitted the numbers to computers the defendants had leased in the United States, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

The conspirators tried to erase all digital footprints left by their attacks, according to the indictment.

Heartland, one of the world’s largest credit and debit card payment processing companies, announced in January that its network had been breached but declined to provide many details. The disclosure came during President Obama’s inauguration, which prompted critics to question whether the company was trying to play down the news.

Neither the Department of Justice nor the Secret Service would discuss the investigative breakthroughs in the case. Each defendant faces the possibility of 35 years in prison, and more than $1 million in fines or twice the amount made from the crime, whichever is greater.

Threat Level, a blog run by Wired magazine, reported that Mr. Gonzalez had lived a lavish lifestyle in Miami, once spending $75,000 on a birthday party for himself and complaining to friends that he had to manually count thousands of $20 bills when his counting machine broke.

Richard Wang, manager of SophosLabs, a security company, said the case provided more evidence that retailers and banks needed to strengthen industry standards and encrypt credit card numbers when they are transmitted between computers. Currently, major banks agree to encrypt such data only when it is stored.

Mr. Wang also doubted that the world had seen the last significant theft of credit card numbers.

“I’m not sure how likely it is that they are going to get the Russian co-conspirators,” Mr. Wang said. “Obviously there are still plenty of people with the necessary expertise to pull off these kinds of attacks.”

Labels: albert gonzalez, cybersecurity cybercrime, identity theft, Justice department