As Pentagon leaders go, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen are fairly mild-mannered — prone to quiet, careful assessments, not table-pounding bluster. But they could barely contain their anger on Thursday at WikiLeaks for publishing tens of thousands of secret documents about the Afghanistan war. Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went so far as to say that the transparency activists “might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier” or an Afghan partner during a Pentagon press briefing, his voice elevating slightly.

Neither Mullen nor Gates considered the documents WikiLeaks obtained to have strategic value or even particular utility to understanding the war. But that didn’t diminish their anger at WikiLeaks’s huge disclosure on Sunday, which they described as having consequences on the battlefield and beyond. The consequences of the leak are “potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and our Afghan partners,” said Gates, a former CIA director with a famous penchant for secrecy. “Tactics, techniques and procedures will become known to our adversaries.” An internal department investigation into who leaked is already underway, aided by the FBI.

Ever since the first Gulf War, there’s been an effort to broaden and flatten access to information within the military in order to foster an ethic of small-unit initiative. Beyond the inquiry’s narrow question of who leaked, Gates said that the “massive breach” will force department leaders to reconsider whether that information needs to be stovepiped again.

“We want those soldiers at a forward operating base to have all the information necessary, not just for their own security, but to accomplish their mission,” Gates said. “Should we change the way we approach that or do we continue to take the risk” of more exposures? (So long, SIPRNET access?) Gates added that he couldn’t confirm whether there have been new leaks waiting to come to light since WikiLeaks obtained its tranche of documents, some thousands of which it has yet to release.

Then there’s the consequence to America’s partners, particularly Afghans who put their lives at risk working with U.S. troops and whose identities are now exposed in the WikiLeaks documents. Gates said there was a “moral obligation” for the United States to “take some responsibility for their security,” but didn’t elaborate what measures the military might take. “Will people whose lives are on the line trust us to keep their identities secret?” Gates asked. “Will other governments trust us to keep their documents secret?”

Reporters challenged Mullen’s comment about WikiLeaks having blood on its hands, but the usually soft-spoken chairman didn’t back away. While he said he didn’t know that anyone has died because of the leaks, Mullen said that people who don’t handle battlefield reports of the sort that WikiLeaks published “can’t appreciate, in my opinion, how this information is networked together…. The potential threat is there to risk the lives of soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines,” as well as U.S. foreign allies in Afghanistan, “as well as Afghan citizens. And there’s no doubt in my mind about that.”

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Attribution is one of the biggest problems on the internet when it comes to cyberwarfare. How do you hold a nation responsible for malicious attacks if you can’t determine whether the activity was state-sponsored?

Retired General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, said Thursday that one solution being discussed in government is to simply forget about trying to determine if the source of an attack is state-sponsored and hold nations responsible for malicious activity coming from their cyberspace. His words were greeted with applause from the audience of computer security professionals.

“Since the price of entry is so low, and … it’s difficult to prove state sponsorship, one of the thoughts … is to just be uninterested in that distinction and to actually hold states responsible for that activity emanating from their cyberspace,” said Hayden during his keynote address at the Black Hat security conference. “Whether you did [the attack yourself] or not, the consequences for that action [coming from your country] are the same.”

Asked later for examples of what the consequences to a nation might be, he suggested some kind of cyberexile, or a response that would thwart the flow of the internet from the suspect country in a way that would slow their cybercommerce and ability to communicate.

Hayden, who is currently a principal at the Chertoff Group, a security consultant company founded by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, focused his talk on cyberwarfare and acknowledged that the term is thrown “pretty much at anything unpleasant.”

He said the U.S. military doesn’t consider intelligence attacks acts of war but the kind of “normal espionage thing that routinely happens between states.”

“Without going into great detail, we’re actually pretty good at this, and the Chinese aren’t the only ones doing this,” he said.

Outside of this, the U.S. and international community haven’t made much progress in determining what would actually constitute an act of war in this domain, but he said there have been some initial discussions about the idea of having global agreements to restrict certain kinds of activity. He cited denial-of-service attacks as an example of one type that could be restricted under a kind of Geneva Convention agreement on the rules of cyberwar.

“That is such an easily available weapon that we [might decide we] ought to stigmatize its use so that adult nations don’t do it and they don’t allow it to happen from their sovereign space — that’s one thought,” he said.

He also said ideas have been raised about forming the cyber equivalent of demilitarized zones for sensitive networks, such as the power grid and financial networks, that would be off-limits to attack from nation states. He acknowledged that this contradicts the view in kinetic warfare where attacks on power grids and other infrastructures are considered legitimate targets.

In a press conference following his talk, Hayden was asked about cyberespionage and whether the United States considers collateral damage that could occur as a result of such activity by the United States, such as an incident that reportedly occurred in the early ’80s in Russia.

In 1982, the United States reportedly sabotaged the Siberian pipeline through a logic bomb planted in software, causing an explosion. The United States learned from a Russian scientist that the Soviets were stealing data on U.S. technology, so the CIA hatched a plot to insert the logic bomb into software headed to Russia to operate pumps, valves and turbines on the Siberian natural gas pipeline.

At a pre-programmed time, the malware caused excessive gas pressure to build on the valves, resulting in an explosion that was captured by orbiting satellites. Although there were no human casualties, there might have been under different circumstances if the explosion had occurred in a populated area.

Hayden acknowledged during his keynote that there are problems with anticipating consequences of cyberwarfare attacks.

“You can never do anything in this domain without something going pop in [the physical world],” he said. “At the end of the day, it really isn’t a videogame and something’s going to happen in somebody’s physical space.”

He added that in considering the possibilities for collateral damage from a cyberattack, generally the military considers whether the good that is perceived to come out of an action greatly outweighs the possible unintended consequences. But with cyberattacks, the consequences can be much less predictable.

“When you do this, are lights still going to be on on the eastern seaboard?” he said. “When you do something in the cyberdomain, you’re asking a policy maker to accept a risk that’s probably a little less measurable than a parallel operation outside of cyberspace…. The thinking on cyberstuff is so immature that, if we’re not careful, they’ll become the special weapon of the 21st century like nuclear weapons were [in the last century] that you really had to have the president in the room before you could use them.”

Hayden was asked about WikiLeaks and the possible repercussions that will come from the secret-spilling site publishing 77,000 intelligence documents on the Afghanistan war.

“This is an interesting aspect of a cyberwar [that] would not exist in physical space,” he said. “So, how now do we deal with this? Can we sustain espionage? Will it be possible for America to spy if this cultural trend is not modified or muted …? We have less control of our secrets than some other states.”

Hayden said the intelligence community will likely push back against open intelligence-sharing initiatives that evidently made this and other documents published by WikiLeaks vulnerable to leaking. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government made the sharing of intelligence easier in order to combat criticism that people responsible for defending the country didn’t have the information they needed. As a result, intelligence reports and documents were made available to a much wider group of people in the government and military.

Hayden said “it’s going to take very strong leadership” to ensure that there isn’t a knee-jerk reaction that simply closes access to intelligence going forward.”

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Also available: rating information from the same business review sites that appear in Google Maps search results. So show me the best-rated coffee shop within a mile of me that's described as dog-friendly in user reviews. That would be awesome.

How it Might Be Used

When Google first began discussing the Places API in April, we discussed as an example a pizza restaurant that edited its delivery area on Google and then made that information available to apps that pinged the API for information.

Those kinds of examples are less likely to be implemented at first, since the first developers being allowed access to the API are people building check-in apps. But the possibilities beyond checking in are many and diverse.

Just as Google Maps made it easy for any developer to add a map and display location, the Places API could make it easy for any developer to search up to date information about any location for their application. At least that's what seems to be possible. The Terms of Service favoring search and prohibiting caching may prove frustratingly prohibitive.

That data may be free, but it will come at the expense of integrating with Google's Adsense platform. "Note that in order to be issued credentials for this service," the API documentation reads, "you must provide a valid Adsense publisher id that matches the Google account with which you are currently logged in." That's pretty smart of Google and maybe a little nefarious, but someone's got to pay the bills.

Why is Location so Hot?

Why is location becoming such a hot commodity? From one perspective, the proliferation of smartphones and the development of easy-to-use, compelling applications like Foursquare and MyTown are making it easier than ever for consumers to publish and leverage information about their location. Consumers want to do that for a variety of reasons, from recording their travel history to letting family know where they are to bragging about the hip places they hang out.

For developers, location data is a whole new world to pivot on when looking at feeds of user activity data. Our online activity has to date gone on in the placeless ether. Applications could offer features, highlight content or make recommendations based on things like our interests and social connections - but now any of that and more can be sorted by location. That's a very potent column to add to any spreadsheet, too. We're just beginning to see what all the recombinations of these types of data can look like.

It's an exciting new location-based world, and much of it may be powered by the Google Places API.

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About 80% of U.S. households have come to do their banking over the Internet, banking consultancy Novantas says. Many consumers believe online banking is every bit as safe as branch banking. But that's clearly not the case, banking and tech security specialists say.

Cyberattacks against individual online accounts have become so sophisticated and pervasive that the American Bankers Association (ABA) is now asking consumers to "partner" with banks to keep cyberrobbers in check.

The banking industry wants consumers to monitor their online accounts for unauthorized transactions on a "continuous, almost daily, basis," says Doug Johnson, the ABA's vice president of risk-management policy. That's because PCs and smartphones have become "the online bank branch for a lot of individuals," he says. "The customer needs to really recognize that security is most effective when they work in partnership with their financial institution."

This shifting burden has come about because of developments that the banking industry did not anticipate a decade ago, when it began promoting personal computers as convenient venues for consumer banking. Ambitious online attacks soon followed. Banks have spent heavily to shore up cyberdefenses, and they've kept a policy of reimbursing individual online account holders who can verify that they've been ripped off, Johnson says.

Even so, cyberrobbery has evolved into a multifaceted, multibillion-dollar global industry that shows little sign of cooling. Last year, the number of malicious software programs designed to pilfer online bank accounts — referred to as banking Trojans — rose to 65,098 in December, up from 4,295 at the start of 2009, according to Panda Security, a Madrid-based antivirus software supplier.

Writers of malicious software code are prolific, always focusing on new ways to get past the latest defenses erected by banks and antivirus companies, says Panda Security researcher Sean-Paul Correll.

A 2009 ABA survey of 170 U.S. banks revealed that 85% of big banks are incurring losses stemming from cyberattacks on consumer online accounts. Banks responding to the survey rated the "threat level" of online attacks at 2.58 on a scale of zero to five; that's up from a 1.84 rating in 2007.

"Every single bank I've talked to in the last six months, big and small, has seen these attacks," says Avivah Litan, banking security analyst at research firm Gartner. "It's an arms race. There are solutions — until the next kind of attack comes along. And if you're caught in the middle, you're screwed."

Successful robbers are patient

Janis Stuart, a retired San Diego personal trainer, barely dodged one recent cutting-edge attack. Returning from an out-of-town trip in April, Stuart booted up her desktop PC and began checking e-mail. She found a notice from her community bank advising her that all future e-mails would be sent to a new e-mail address, as per her online instructions. Stuart never requested such a change.

"My immediate reaction was that they had confused accounts, and this was a big mistake," she recalls. Stuart drove down to the branch office. A clerk informed her that $5,836.66 was about to be transferred from her savings account to a woman Stuart had never heard of, in the form of a bill-payment check. Payment was stopped.

Stuart says bank officials advised her that she most likely had a computer infection that allowed an attacker to gain access to her account, change the e-mail address and set the bill payment in motion. The bank authorized the transfer because the thief knew the answers to Stuart's "secret questions" — such as her mother's maiden name and the city of her birth — and because a similar bill-payment check had been sent from Stuart's account to the same woman 12 months earlier. That initial check was never cashed, Stuart says.

It was a ruse that allowed the attacker to remain undetected while establishing the woman as an approved recipient of bill-payment checks from Stuart. After waiting a year, the attacker triggered the second payment. "It was a fluke that I caught it in time before the money disappeared," says Stuart. "I was very upset." Stuart says she "felt the bank was somehow responsible" for enabling an intruder access to her account.

Stuart's experience illustrates a prerequisite for accomplished cyberrobbers: patience. The cyberunderground has advanced to the point where very powerful hacking tools and tutorials are readily available for free, and a highly efficient and organized support infrastructure has been established to help thieves. Taking full advantage of such tools takes time.

Chasing thieves' technology

Instead of holding up a bank branch at gunpoint, modern-day cyberrobbers do their homework.

"To maximize their effectiveness and streamline their ability to move money quickly, criminals take the time to learn your online banking platform and do account reconnaissance," says Terry Austin, CEO of Guardian Analytics, which supplies fraud-detection systems.

First, they acquire valid account log-ons, often by purchasing them from specialist data thieves. Next, they quietly access accounts, making note of high cash balances and access to credit lines. They also familiarize themselves with the bank's protocols for authorizing the creation of new online accounts and approving cash transfers.

They look for coding security holes — and invariably find them in the Web browser, the tool banks rely on to run programs that serve as a virtual bank teller. But Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome and Apple Safari are designed to let users navigate the entire Internet; they weren't meant to execute secure financial transactions. Cyberrobbers craft banking Trojans that inject software code into the Web browser, letting the attacker take control of online banking sessions, alter what the account holder sees and make stealthy transactions.

"With the exception of some rare cases, the current online banking systems are at least one full generation behind the current techniques employed by cybercrooks," says Costin Raiu, Kaspersky Lab research director.

Cyberrobbers also take great care in setting up "drop" accounts — online accounts they control, usually at the same bank as victims — poised to receive cash transfers. They typically recruit "money mules," accomplices who execute the final, riskiest step of withdrawing cash from drop accounts and forwarding proceeds to the ring leaders.

Mules are recruited through work-at-home advertisements on employment websites and, increasingly, on popular social networks. Typical pitches promise high earnings for minimal work involving accepting deposits and handling cash transfers. Kaspersky Lab researcher Dmitry Bestuzhev recently tracked down one Facebook-based mule recruiter who had 224,000 friends. "Who knows how many of them accepted the offer to be a money mule?" Bestuzhev says.

In one caper recently investigated by SecureWorks, the attacker embedded a banking Trojan in the victim's Web browser by getting the person to click on a corrupted Web link in an instant message. The Trojan watched for when the victim next accessed his online bank account and sent a copy of the user name and password to the attacker. It also automatically injected a spoofed bank form into the legitimate banking Web pages.

The bank form asked for the last four digits of the user's debit card number, ostensibly to complete a security update. The victim complied and filled out the form. The attacker now had a key piece of information necessary to execute large cash transfers.

On a Wednesday shortly before noon, the attacker logged on and began a series of transactions. He changed the e-mail address associated with the account, so notices of any questionable transfers wouldn't reach the account holder. He next accessed a credit card line of credit and transferred the maximum loan amount into checking.

He then emptied the account of more than $20,000, via a series of transfers into a drop account. To execute the transfers, the thief had to answer this question: "What are the last four digits of your debit card account number?" It took four days for the bank to reimburse the victim.

Such attacks are likely to continue to be commonplace, says Joe Stewart, senior threat researcher at SecureWorks. "Cybercriminals can steal credentials for thousands of accounts at a time with very little effort," he says. "They have access to more accounts than they could possibly ever use, and most of those are personal accounts."

Consumer distrust increases

To slow down cyberrobberies, banks increasingly are asking "knowledge-based authentication" questions at key junctures of online banking sessions, says Johnson, the bankers association risk expert. Such questions, derived from data amassed by the big three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion and by data aggregators LexisNexis and Axiom, ask about obscure personal details such as the name of one's mortgage holder or father-in-law, a previous address, even the color of one's car.

"The questions are going to get more difficult over time," Johnson says. "The threat is real, and (banks) are providing the tools to help customers protect themselves."

Citibank and Bank of America rank third and seventh among the top 10 most frequently attacked banks in the world, according to Kaspersky Lab. Each uses a variety of security systems and relies on consumers to help protect their online accounts.

"It is paramount that our customers know how to protect themselves," says Bank of America spokeswoman Tara Burke. "We recommend that customers always protect their passwords, ensure the bank has up-to-date contact information and review their accounts on a regular basis."

Litan, the Gartner banking security analyst, says banks need to move away from technologies that rely on common Web browsers, which is where banking Trojans thrive. Handheld optical readers, a more advanced technology, are available from Gemalto and Cronto. These devices must be used to take a picture of a visual cryptogram — a secure image produced by the bank — as part of authorizing any cash transfers.

Mandatory use of a verification device that operates separately from the browser would enable banks to ensure "secure transactions no matter what is on the customer's PC," says Paul Beverly, executive vice president at Gemalto.

But Litan says banks are a long way from even thinking about widely distributing such devices to consumers. "They don't want to get into the business" of providing hardware to customers, she says.

Banking and security experts say the only thing that will change the banking industry's current approach is widespread consumer backlash. Stuart's reaction to her brush with a near robbery could be a harbinger. The experience prompted her to get offline and revert to branch banking.

"It's inconvenient not to be able to check my account whenever I feel like it. I have to go by the bank and ask for printouts," says Stuart. "But at this point, I distrust the system of online banking."

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Bottles of Vitaminwater at a New York City convenience store

Over the past few years, an increasing number of worn-out consumers have reached for a bottle of Vitaminwater after a workout. The sports drink has emerged as a serious competitor to Gatorade and other noncarbonated beverages, so much so that Coca-Coca forked over $4.2 billion in cash to buy the brand from Glaceau back in 2007. On its July 21 earnings call, Coke CEO Muhtar Kent was particularly bullish about Vitaminwater, which is now being sold in 15 markets worldwide, including France, China and South Africa.

But do some of these weekend warriors think they're just getting a healthy mix of vitamins and water, as the name of the product implies, when they chug that sweet drink? Probably so. But they're getting more: 33 grams of sugar and 125 calories, for every 20-ounce bottle. Hey, where's the sugar in the name?

Such mixed-message marketing has caused one food-health advocacy group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), to lead a class-action suit that claims that Coca-Cola is violating consumer-protection laws with its Vitaminwater brand. According to CSPI nutritionists, Vitaminwater's sugar content more than offsets any advertised health benefits provided by the nutrients in the drink. "They added vitamins to crap," says Stephen Gardner, chief litigator for CSPI. "And it's still crap. Consumers shouldn't have to assume that the front of a label is a lie. You cannot deceive in the big print and tell the truth later."

The group achieved a victory last week, when a federal judge tossed out Coke's motion to dismiss the case. In a strongly worded 55-page opinion, Judge John Gleeson of the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn said that the health claims on some Vitaminwater bottles may be in violation of FDA regulations since the drink "achieves its nutritional content solely through fortification that violates FDA policy." The judge thinks Coke could be violating the so-called jellybean rule, which says that a food- or drinkmaker cannot load otherwise unhealthy products with vitamins or other nutrients in order to claim it is healthy. A sugar product is a sugar product: you can't say a jellybean fights heart disease because it contains no cholesterol.

Gleeson also ruled that the claim that the Vitaminwater name misleads consumers is potentially actionable, since that key third ingredient, sugar, is conveniently absent from the title. "The potential for confusion is heightened," Gleeson wrote, "by the presence of other statements in Vitaminwater's labeling, such as the description of the product as a 'vitamin enhanced water beverage' and the phrases 'vitamins + water + all you need' and 'vitamins + water = what's in your hand' which have the potential to reinforce a consumer's mistaken belief that the product is comprised of only vitamins and water." 

Coke responded to the judge's ruling in a statement. "Vitaminwater is a great tasting, hydrating beverage with essential vitamins and water — and labels clearly showing ingredients and calorie content," the company said. "The court's opinion was not a decision on the merits, but simply a determination that the case can proceed beyond the initial pleadings stage. We believe plaintiff's claims are without merit and will ultimately be rejected."

If the case goes to a full trial, the judge will ultimately decide whether the Vitaminwater name is legal. But is it ethical? "The inference is that the water contains vitamins," says Terry Childers, a marketing professor at Iowa State. "Vitamins are generally considered healthy so in the semantic network of connections in our brains, it would be natural for the buyer to associate Vitaminwater with healthy. Given the associations and that it contains that much sugar, I think it is misleading to portray it as a healthy drink." 

Marketers, however, get paid to move bottles off the shelf. And this brand managed to merge two words, vitamin and water, which epitomize good health. "From a marketing standpoint, it's brilliant," says Matt Goulding, an editor at Men's Health magazine and co-author of the Eat This, Not That! diet books. "From a corporate-responsibility standpoint, it's not exactly straight shooting."

But isn't the onus on the consumer, who can read about Vitaminwater's sugar supply in the small print, to pick up the bottle and examine what they're gulping? Yes, most people are too busy — or lazy — to read every food label. But should Vitaminwater be liable for that fact of life?

Coke is sure to make this argument as the case progresses. Still, all those exercise fiends might want to get their vitamins the old-fashioned way: a pill and a glass of water. After all, it's sugar-free.

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Musician Kanye West performs onstage during the 2010 BET Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium on June 27, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.

Kanye West doesn't like his new rug. The rapper appears to be redecorating his house — buying gold-encrusted goblets, coveting 19th century artwork, and turning his home "real Kingish," as he puts it. But the rugs are all wrong. "I specifically ordered Persian rugs with cherub imagery!!!" He wrote on Twitter on July 28. "What do I have to do to get a simple Persian rug with cherub imagery uuuuugh."

Oh, Kanye. We've missed you.

Hip-hop's most ridiculous rapper has been relatively quiet in recent months — ever since that 2009 MTV Music Video Awards outburst about Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video being better than Taylor Swift's (which, by the way, it was) and someone on his PR team told him to shut it until the backlash died down. Well, time's up. Kanye has a new album out in September — formerly called Good Ass Job, it's currently without a name — and the promotional firestorm is kicking into gear. Kanye has already performed at the BET Awards and appeared at the khaki-clad offices of Facebook and Twitter. Then, on July 28, he opened a Twitter account. And here's what we discovered: Kanye is funny.

His blog, Kanyeuniversecity.com, has made us laugh for years, but it was sometimes hard to tell if we were laughing with Kanye or at him. The all-caps rants — such as the January 2009 post that began with the phrase, YOOOO WHY WON'T YOU LET ME BE GREAT!!! and ended with the request that we all "LOOK HOW FRESH MY SUIT IS" — seemed to be accidentally hilarious. And when fans complained that he showed up two hours late for a 2008 Bonaroo performance, Kanye didn't apologize, he blogged an obscenity-laced rant and called everyone at Bonaroo "squid brains." Basically, Kanye seemed like a diva. But on Twitter, he's different. He's more sarcastic, even tongue-in-cheek. Maybe we've had Kanye all wrong.

According to Twitter, here are some things Kanye West has done in the past two days:

• Flown on a private jet

• Complained that the private jet he flew on was too small.

• Called himself king and then posted a photo of one of Napoleon's thrones

• Drank wine out of a gold goblet

• Bemoaned the lack of cherubs

• Listened to the "William Tell Overture" ("Classical music is tight, yo")

• Listened to Leonard Bernstein. ("[His] flute player is snapping write now!!! Are those Christmas bells?")

• Put fresh flowers in his house

• Explained what it was like to date a model: "I had to learn to like small dogs and cigarettes"

• Asked for decorating advice: "Is the Versace sofa too hood? Might need to cover it in plastic!!!"

• Ordered his salmon cooked medium instead of medium well ("I didn't want to ruin the magic")

• Posted photos of Louis XIV's credenza

• Asked someone to give him this horse

Close to 300,000 people are now following his Twitter account and looking at his pictures of furniture. The number of people Kanye is following? Zero.

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It seems that Kanye West is doing a tour of the Silicon Valley’s nerd hubs. After freestyling over at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, California, the other day — and subsequently joining Twitter  yesterday — he jammed on over to Twitter Central and treated Biz Stone and Co. to a performance as well.

As pointed out yesterday, Kanye West has an almost embattled relationship with the micoblogging service. Last year, he busted out with the following rant on his blog — which now only yields an “Error 404″ when you try to locate it. Regardless, here it is:

“I DON’T HAVE A F*CKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I’M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF. THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER KNOW I DON’T HAVE A F*CKING TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL TO THERE FAITHFUL USERS. REPEAT… THE HEADS OF TWITTER KNEW I DIDN’T HAVE A TWITTER AND THEY HAVE TO KNOW WHICH ACCOUNTS HAVE HIGH ACTIVITY ON THEM. IT’S A F*CKING FARCE AND IT MAKES ME QUESTION WHAT OTHER SO CALLED CELEBRITY TWITTERS ARE ACTUALLY REAL OR FAKE. HEY TWITTER, TAKE THE SO CALLED KANYE WEST TWITTER DOWN NOW …. WHY? … BECAUSE MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS LOUD!!!!!!!!!”

Now it seems that West has full-on embraced the service, even noting once — in the midst of a torrent of tweets — “awwwww man this is addictive I might get in trouble on here!!!!” So much for only blogging “5%” of what he’s up to.

When it was written about his entrance on to Twitter yesterday, West had around 20,000 followers — now he has 228,862.

What do you think of the rapper’s reversal of his previous opinion? Do you think his embracing social media can save his tarnished image? Let us know.

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A hacker has discovered a way to force ATMs to disgorge their cash by hijacking the computers inside them. The attacks demonstrated Wednesday targeted standalone ATMs. But they could potentially be used against the ATMs operated by mainstream banks.

Criminals have long known that ATMs aren't tamperproof.

There are many types of attacks in use today, ranging from sophisticated to foolhardy: installing fake card readers to steal card numbers, hiding tiny surveillance cameras to capture PIN codes, covering the dispensing slot to intercept money and even hauling the ATMs away with trucks in hopes of cracking them open later.

Computer hacker Barnaby Jack spent two years tinkering in his Silicon Valley apartment with ATMs he bought online. These were standalone machines, the type seen in front of convenience stores, rather than the ones in bank branches.

His goal was to find ways to take control of ATMs by exploiting weaknesses in the computers that run the machines.

He showed off his results here at the Black Hat conference, an annual gathering devoted to exposing the latest computer-security vulnerabilities.

His attacks have wide implications because they affect multiple types of ATMs and exploit weaknesses in software and security measures that are used throughout the industry.

His talk was one of the conference's most widely anticipated, as it had been pulled a year ago over concerns that fixes for the ATMs wouldn't be in place in time. He used the extra year to craft more dangerous attacks.

Jack, who works as director of security research for Seattle-based IOActive Inc., showed in a theatrical demonstration two ways he can get ATMs to spit out money:

-- Jack found that the physical keys that came with his machines were the same for all ATMs of that type made by that manufacturer. He figured this out by ordering three ATMs from different manufacturers for a few thousand dollars each. Then he compared the keys he got to pictures of other keys, found on the Internet.

He used his key to unlock a compartment in the ATM that had standard USB slots. He then inserted a program he had written into one of them, commanding the ATM to dump its vaults.

-- Jack also hacked into ATMs by exploiting weaknesses in the way ATM makers communicate with the machines over the Internet. Jack said the problem is that outsiders are permitted to bypass the need for a password. He didn't go into much more detail because he said the goal of his talk "isn't to teach everybody how to hack ATMs. It's to raise the issue and have ATM manufacturers be proactive about implementing fixes."

The remote style of attack is more dangerous because an attacker doesn't need to open up the ATMs.

It allows an attacker to gain full control of the ATMs. Besides ordering it to spit out money, attackers can silently harvest account data from anyone who uses the machines. It also affects more than just the standalone ATMs vulnerable to the physical attack; the method could potentially be used against the kinds of ATMs used by mainstream banks.

Jack said he didn't think he'd be able to break the ATMs when he first started probing them.

"My reaction was, 'this is the game-over vulnerability right here,'" he said of the remote hack. "Every ATM I've looked at, I've been able to find a flaw in. It's a scary thing."

Jack wouldn't identify the ATM makers. He put stickers over the ATM makers' names on the two machines used in his demonstration. But the audience, which burst into applause when he made the machines spit out money, could see from the screen prompts on the ATM that one of the machines was made by Tranax Technologies Inc., based in Hayward, Calif. Tranax did not immediately respond to e-mail messages from The Associated Press.

Triton Systems, of Long Beach, Miss., confirmed that one of its ATMs was used in the demonstration. It said Jack alerted the company to the problems and that Triton now has a software update in place that prevents unauthorized software from running on its ATMs.

Bob Douglas, Triton's vice president of engineering, said customers can buy ATMs with unique keys but generally don't, preferring to have a master key for cost and convenience.

"Imagine if you have an estate of several thousand ATMs and you want to access 20 or so of them in one day," he wrote in an e-mail to the AP. "It would be a logistical nightmare to have all the right keys at just the right place at just the right time."

Other ATM manufacturers contacted by the AP also did not immediately respond to messages.

Jack said the manufacturers whose machines he studied are deploying software fixes for both vulnerabilities, but added that the prevalence of remote-management software broadly opens up ATMs to hacker attacks.

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Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and allowed them to use official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week, prosecutors said Sunday.

After carrying out the killings the inmates would return to their cells, the Attorney General's Office said in a revelation that was shocking even for a country wearied by years of drug violence and corruption.

"According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorization of the prison director ... to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards' weapons for executions," office spokesman Ricardo Najera said at a news conference.

The director of the prison in Gomez Palacio in Durango state and three other officials were placed under a form of house arrest pending further investigation. No charges have yet been filed.

Prosecutors said the prison-based hit squad is suspected in three mass shootings, including the July 18 attack on a party in the city of Torreon, which is near Gomez Palacio. In that incident, gunmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of mainly young people in a rented hall, killing 17 people, including women.

Police found more than 120 bullet casings at the scene, and Najera said tests matched those casings to four assault rifles assigned to guards at the prison.

Similar ballistics tests linked the guns to earlier killings at two bars in Torreon, the capital of northern Coahuila state, he said. At least 16 people were killed in those attacks on Feb. 1 and May 15, local media reported.

Najera blamed the killings on disputes between rival drug cartels. "Unfortunately, the criminals also carried out cowardly killings of innocent civilians, only to return to their cells," he said.

Coahuila and neighboring Durango are among several northern states that have seen a spike in drug-related violence that authorities attribute to a fight between the Gulf cartel and its former enforcers, known as the Zetas.

Mexico has long had a problem with investigating crimes, catching criminals and convicting people. Reports estimate less than 2 percent of crimes in Mexico result in prison sentences. But Sunday's revelation suggests that even putting cartel gunmen in prison may not prevent them from continuing to commit crimes.

Interior Secretary Francisco Blake said the revelation "can only be seen as a wake-up call for authorities to address, once again, the state of deterioration in many local law enforcement institutions ... we cannot allow this kind of thing to happen again."

Also Sunday, Mexican federal police announced the arrest of an alleged leading member of a drug gang blamed in recent killings and a car-bombing in the violence-ridden border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.

Police described Luis Vazquez Barragan, 39, as a top member of La Linea gang, the enforcement arm of the Juarez cartel, saying he received orders directly from cartel boss Vicente Carrillo Fuentes.

Vazquez Barragan allegedly organized payments, moved drugs and oversaw a system of safe houses in and around Ciudad Juarez.

Police said he held the same rank as fugitive gang leader Juan Pablo Ledezma, though Vazquez Barragan is not named on reward or most-wanted lists published by the Attorney General's Office, as Ledezma is.

La Linea has been blamed for a car bomb that killed three people July 15 in Ciudad Juarez and for two separate shootings March 13 that killed a U.S. consular employee and two other people connected to the consulate.

Police did not say when they caught Vazquez Barragan, but he was allegedly in possession of about a half-kilogram (pound) of cocaine and two guns.

His arrest led to a raid on a safe house where authorities detained four suspects and freed a kidnap victim.

Also Sunday, the Attorney General's Office said soldiers on patrol in Ciudad Madero in the border state of Tamaulipas seized an arsenal of about three dozen guns, 17 grenades and thousands of bullets in a house.

Elsewhere in Tamaulipas, police and prosecutors raided a lot full of truck-pulled tankers in the border city of Reynosa and seized two loaded with oil of a type sometimes stolen from the pipelines of the state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos. Nore than a dozen other tankers and freight containers were also seized.

Mexican drug cartels have allegedly become involved in increasingly sophisticated thefts of fuel and oil from Mexico's pipelines.

In the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, authorities reported Sunday they had found the bullet-ridden bodies of six men dumped in various locations, including three in or around the resort of Acapulco. Two of the dead men were identified as people kidnapped earlier in the month.

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It's practically a daily ritual: Accused drug traffickers and assassins, shackled and bruised from beatings, are paraded before the news media to show that Mexico is winning its drug war. Once the television lights dim, however, about three-quarters of them are let go.

Even as President Felipe Calderon's government touts its arrest record, cases built by prosecutors and police under huge pressure to make swift captures unravel from lack of evidence. Innocent people are tortured into confessing. The guilty are set free, only to be hauled in again for other crimes. Sometimes, the drug cartels decide who gets arrested.

Records obtained by The Associated Press showed that the government arrested 226,667 drug suspects between December 2006 and September 2009, the most recent numbers available. Less than a quarter of that number were charged. Only 15 percent saw a verdict, and the Mexican attorney general's office won't say how many of those were guilty.

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EDITOR'S NOTE -- This is one in an occasional series of reports by The Associated Press examining why -- four decades and $1 trillion after Richard Nixon declared war on drugs -- the U.S. and Mexico continue to fight a losing battle.

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The judicial void is a key reason why Mexican cartels continue to deliver tons of marijuana, methamphetamines, heroin and cocaine onto U.S. streets.

"It in effect gives them impunity," U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual told the AP, "and allows them to be able to function in ways that can extend themselves into the United States."

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Mexico's justice system is carried out largely in secret and has long been viciously corrupt. Add a drug war that Calderon intensified, and the system has been overrun. Nearly 25,000 people have died in the war to date, and the vast majority of their cases remain unsolved.

The AP obtained court documents and prison records restricted from the public and conducted dozens of interviews with suspects' relatives, lawyers, human rights groups and government officials to find out what happened after suspects were publicly paraded in key cartel murder cases.

In Ciudad Juarez, where a war between two cartels over trafficking routes killed a record 2,600 people in 2009, prosecutors filed 93 homicide cases that year and got 19 convictions, the AP found. Only five were for first-degree murder, court records show, and none came under federal statutes with higher penalties designed to prosecute the drug war.

"They never charge anyone with homicide because they don't have the evidence, they don't have proof," said Jorge Gonzalez, president of the public defenders association. "They just show them to the media to give the impression that they're solving cases."

Soldiers in Juarez routinely announce to the public that suspects have confessed to a shocking number of murders.

Hector Armando Alcibar Wong, known as "El Koreano," killed 15, they said. But a year after his August 2009 arrest, authorities don't even know where he is. Chihuahua state officials say they handed him over to federal authorities; the attorney general's office says it never had him.

Soldiers told the media in 2008 that Juan Pablo Castillo Lopez was tied to 23 killings. He was never charged with homicide and was freed from state prison less than a year later. The army quickly arrested him again, saying he killed two more people within three days. Nine months after that, he still doesn't face a homicide charge.

Oswaldo Munoz Gonzalez, known as "El Gonzo," admitted to killing 40 people, according to the joint police-army operation in Ciudad Juarez. His family says he was tortured into that confession. Eight months later, he hasn't been charged with a single homicide either.

Munoz was first detained in 2008 and accused of aggravated robbery but he was released after prosecutors failed to present enough evidence.

Two months after he was released, authorities say they nabbed Munoz during a traffic stop, and found drugs and guns in his truck.

His sister, Petra Munoz Gonzalez, says they're lying -- he was dragged from his home while his wife and two young daughters watched. She says her brother, a taxi driver and occasional bus driver with a third-grade education, does not drink or use drugs.

Munoz's family didn't know where he was until they saw him paraded on television days later, with guns and drugs in front of him.

"He told me, 'I never killed anyone,'" Petra Munoz said. "He said he confessed because he had been tortured. He told me they put a bag over his head so he couldn't breathe and gave him electric shocks down there (on his genitals) and beat him until he fell over in pain. Who would endure that?"

"I just ask that the truth be told," she added. "Why haven't they presented proof, or witnesses, or anything that incriminates him? It's been almost a year."

Chihuahua authorities say they can't discuss open cases. Mexico Attorney General Arturo Chavez declined several AP requests for comment.

The attorney general's records show the same pattern of catch and release in all states where Calderon's government sent federal police and soldiers to crush the cartels.

In Baja California, home to the border city of Tijuana, nearly 33,000 people were arrested but 24,000 were freed. In the northern state of Sinaloa -- the cradle of the powerful cartel by the same name -- more than 9,700 were detained, but 5,606 freed. In Tamaulipas, birthplace of the Gulf cartel, nearly 3,600 were detained while 2,083 were freed.

Calderon first launched his military assault in December 2006 in his home state of Michoacan, deploying thousands of troops shortly after a new cartel called La Familia rolled five severed heads onto a nightclub's dance floor.

Since then, federal forces have arrested more than 3,300 drug suspects. Nearly half have been released.

In 2008, drug traffickers in Michoacan lobbed hand grenades into a crowd celebrating Mexico's independence. Eight revelers died, including a 13-year-old boy, making it one of Mexico's highest-profile murder cases. Police and federal authorities arrested three suspects within 10 days. None of the men had criminal records. All three confessed.

But at least 16 people say the three men weren't even there.

The witnesses -- next-door neighbors, relatives, bar owners, waitresses, a corner store owner and a doctor -- told authorities they saw all three that night in Lazaro Cardenas, more than 300 miles from the colonial square in Morelia where the attacks occurred, according to interviews and statements obtained by the AP.

Neighbor Gloria Ortiz and her daughter, Selene, told the AP they had dinner with one of the men in his cramped living room. Juan Carlos Castro, a mechanic who loves to cook, invited them over for a favorite dish -- stewed pig's feet in chili sauce -- and discussed a menu for Selene's 15th birthday party, which Castro had offered to cater.

Edith Franco, a Lazaro Cardenas doctor, testified under oath that she had dinner with Julio Cesar Mondragon at her mother's taco restaurant that night.

Three days later, Castro's wife, Esperanza Fajardo, was told that gunmen had taken him away in a car. She reported a kidnapping to police.

Three days after that, Mondragon was kidnapped as he washed his car outside his house. His wife said she heard her husband scream for help, but by the time she rushed to the window he was gone.

Alfredo Rosas' girlfriend said he was abducted in a similar way two days later.

The next time the three women saw them, the men were being paraded in front of television cameras in Mexico City by federal police, who identified them as terrorists and members of the Zeta drug cartel.

Castro was cut and bruised. Mondragon's face was black-and-blue. Rosas, who was wearing a hospital robe, had five broken ribs and a black eye.

"At that moment, you cry, you scream. You feel impotent," Fajardo said. "I said, 'How is it possible that they are accusing him of something he didn't do?'"

Castro says he was beaten until he not only confessed, but gave them Mondragon's name as an accomplice.

"They showed me videos in which they were cutting someone's head off, and they told me they would cut me up finger by finger, arm by arm, and my family, too," Castro said in handwritten court testimony obtained by the AP. "I would repeat what they told me to say, and if I made a mistake, they would hit me."

Mondragon said in his court statement that his captors took him blindfolded to a spot where he heard what he thought were the screams of a man being burned alive. "Set him on fire!" Mondragon's captors shouted. He prayed he "would die quickly."

Instead, he said, his captors took him to a house and repeatedly dunked his head into a bucket of water, beat him with a rifle butt and hung him from a tree, singeing his ears with a lighter. Mondragon said he gave them Rosas' name.

Federal police say an anonymous phone tip then led them to a house in the Michoacan town of Apatzingan, a known stronghold for La Familia, where they found the three men tied up, blindfolded and whimpering.

The tip came days after the government accused La Familia of staging the grenade attack, and the cartel responded by hanging a banner claiming its innocence and vowing to find the killers.

Police say the battered men confessed and claimed allegiance to La Familia's biggest rival. They were flown blindfolded to Mexico City, still unaware who their captors were.

"I started to think, 'Could this be the government?'" Mondragon said in his statement. "'What if I tell them the truth, that I didn't do any of the things I've been talking about?' But I didn't say anything. I was afraid."

The attorney general's office had two secret witnesses who claimed Castro and Mondragon smuggled drugs and attacked police, but said nothing about the grenade attack. One witness was killed last year, said Rosas' attorney, Raul Espinoza de Los Monteras Santillan. The other, he said, admitted he never met the defendants.

In February, the prosecution's own expert dismissed as unreliable a blurry surveillance video that supposedly placed two of the suspects at the celebration.

A year after the arrests, an appeals judge dismissed charges of organized crime, terrorism and grenade possession against all three men. The confessions have been retracted, but homicide charges still stand.

The proceedings have been delayed because at least one of the three arresting officers failed to show up at the last eight hearings. The judge recently notified defense attorneys that two of the officers are being tried on federal charges in another state -- though they don't know what charges.

The government says it cannot comment on an ongoing trial.

Castro, Mondragon and Rosas remain in jail.

"I'm really disappointed in the government," witness Franco told the AP. "They didn't look for the culprits. They looked for someone to blame."

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Even Mexico's president admitted the court system is inept recently as he touted a new judicial system that Mexico has begun to adopt.

"It fosters injustice, impunity and corruption," Calderon wrote on the presidential website. "We need a profound change and that's why we have begun an unprecedented effort to modernize and redesign our legal system."

That effort, with aid from the United States, started under a constitutional amendment passed by the legislature, approved by all 32 states and signed by Calderon in 2008.

Under the old system, defendants are presumed guilty until proven innocent, proceedings are carried out almost entirely in writing, and judges usually rubber-stamp whatever government prosecutors and investigators hand them. Without public scrutiny, mistaken arrests, bungled investigations and false confessions are commonplace.

With the reform, defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty; police must investigate crimes and collect evidence before making arrests; a panel of judges decides whether there is enough evidence for the case to proceed, and trials are argued orally in courts open to the public.

The law calls for the changeover to be completed by 2016. The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided training in forensics, interviewing and courtroom arguments to 550 Mexican prosecutors. Some 5,000 federal police officers have taken basic investigation courses, also with U.S. funding. The Obama administration is requesting $207 million in its 2011 budget for judicial and government reforms in Mexico.

The new system was piloted in Chihuahua state, home to Ciudad Juarez, in 2007 -- just before the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels began their bloody war to control drug routes into the United States. All Chihuahua prosecutors and judges were trained in the new techniques.

But even state prosecutors say the drug war has stymied the new system.

Soldiers, who under Mexican law can't do police work, routinely bring in evidence such as illegally obtained confessions that judges are forced to throw out.

"The numbers of arrests increased tremendously but the numbers of prosecutions virtually didn't change," noted Pascual, the U.S. ambassador.

Since the reform was implemented, 98 officials who had received training -- police investigators, forensic experts, prosecutors -- have been assassinated by gangs, said Carlos Gonzalez, spokesman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office.

Nobody has been arrested in any of those killings

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Source: Woopra

How it Works

"Explore the web like never before," declares the StumbleUpon sign up page. And indeed the beauty of StumbleUpon is how easy it makes browsing the Web. It's often called a 'serendipity engine' for its ability to turn up strange and new content.

Here's how StumbleUpon works as a user. You firstly download and install a browser add-on, then select categories that interest you. Now you're ready to explore. Simply click the Stumble button in your browser to be magically transported to an unknown web page. Where you're taken is driven by StumbleUpon's sophisticated recommendation engine, which is fueled by data from its users - who vote on whether they 'like' or 'dislike' web pages across the Web.

What's Popular on StumbleUpon?

It's simple for the users, yet surprisingly difficult for the media industry to get its collective head around. Its randomness and lack of an easily identifiable core audience are two things that make StumbleUpon hard to understand. So what kind of content is popular there?

Much like Digg, another crowd-sourced recommendation engine, the most popular content on StumbleUpon tends to be easily digestable and entertaining. Lists, bizarre things, scientific discoveries, animals, humor, images, and so on. Among the most stumbled content of 2009 were these articles: '99 Things You Should Have Seen On The Internet' (471K Stumbles), 'Life Summarized in 4 Bottles' (439K Stumbles), '14 Rare Color Photos From the FSA-OWI' (341K Stumbles),... you get the idea.

We queried our community via Twitter to find out their main use cases. Here's a representative sample of the replies (you can see them all via Twitoaster):

@brettmorrison: "I use it to share things I find interesting and I use it to find randomly interesting things when I have a few free moments."

@EssenteeWeb: "So's I can share what I think is cool and find content I otherwise wouldn't have."

@andinarvaez: "I do, on occasion. Whenever I'm online, want to stay online, but just feel like browsing. [...] Even though they're [within] my interests, stumble upon helps me burst my usual browsing patterns & online bubble."

@rjanyk: "boredom... killing time a couple minutes at a time... entertainment. Sadly, almost thrilling not knowing what's coming next"

@MicaR: "Been a Stumbler for yrs. Great to get new ideas flowing when stuck, and, of course, great time waster. I've learned a lot, randomly."

@ezy80: "I find its a good source of 'random relevant' that nothing else provides in quite the same way..."

@lauratellsjokes: "i stumble when i am bored and to learn new things. i love stumbling through photos, art and philosophy."

@estateofflux: "I do, great for entertainment and uncovering hidden gems of content when you've exhausted all your usual sources!"

These and other replies often used words like "random" or "new." Also it seems that people tend to use StumbleUpon when they have a bit of spare time, or are bored.

Let us know in the comments whether you currently use StumbleUpon; and if so, how and why?

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Jailbreaking Is "Fair Use" But Voids Warranty?

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, to "jailbreak" a phone is to hack a smartphone in order to gain access to additional features or install unapproved applications. Up until now, however, Apple claimed that jailbreaking an iPhone allowed people to install unapproved apps and should not be permitted. That claim has been rejected, with the Copyright Office saying that jailbreaking is actually fair use.

An Apple spokeswoman told Cult of Mac's Leander Kahney that, aside from possibly degrading the user experience, jailbreaking can void the warranty.

Apple's goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we've said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably."

Jailbreaking Threatens Apple's Assets

While Apple has a valid point - that jailbreaking the iPhone and installing unverified third-party apps "can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably" - there is something bigger at stake here. Apple is saying it wants to preserve the quality of the user experience, but it also wants to protect its assets.

Apple and AT&T started offering wifi tethering at $20 per month in June. With a jailbroken iPhone, 10 spare minutes and $10, you can turn your iPhone into wifi hotspot and avoid the monthly fee. There are even other tethering apps that are completely free (though we've found MyWi to be reliable). How about those apps that Apple will only let you run over wifi connections, like FaceTime? Apps for jailbroken iPhones, such as My3G, allow users to run wifi-only apps over 3G. There are even apps to block Apple's new "iAd" advertising on jailbroken phones. It's even feasible that, with jailbreaking officially off the DMCA list of offenses, alternatives to programs like Apple's MobileMe could enter the market at less than the $99 per year pricetag.

In essence, a jailbroken phone is something that Apple can't closely control and it's a threat. Apps that would never make it through the App Store, for any number of reasons, can be installed onto a jailbroken phone. Say "hello" to third-party browsers, porn, bittorrents, direct-downloaded podcasts and TV shows and more.

The reality, so far, is that only a small percentage of iPhone owners have jailbroken their phones, but the flip-flop in legality could change this. As Kahney suggests, maybe "legitimate software companies will publish jailbreaking software, instead of shady rings of underground hackers" and maybe a "healthy market for unofficial and banned apps" will come from all of this.

What About The Warranty?

Oh yes, the warranty. While Apple is quick to say that jailbreaking an iPhone will void the warranty, there's one thing - it's but a simple step to restore your iPhone to its original condition and have that be that. As ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez writes in her latest jailbreaking guide, "if you have a jailbroken phone, you can't get support from Apple for any issues you may have. However, jailbreaking isn't permanent. You can revert your phone to its factory settings at any time via iTunes with no one the wiser."

Our suggestion? Go backup all your data and jailbreak that iPhone. There's a million reasons you should, it's not illegal and, if you run into trouble, you can easily restore everything to a clean slate.

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Mike Lazaridis, the man who virtually invented the smart-phone market, insists his company is just getting started.

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You know those YouTube videos with that manly Old Spice guy and his hilarious responses to Twitter fans? Of course you do. So does everybody, it seems, because Old Spice body wash sales have increased 107% in the past month in part thanks to that social media marketing campaign.

Already published stats from video analytics company Visible Measures that made it clear that the Old Spice guy was a hugely successful initiative from marketing firm Wieden + Kennedy, achieving millions of viral video views quicker than past hits like Susan Boyle and U.S. President Barack Obama’s election victory speech.

The statistic of the 107% sales increase over the past month comes from Nielsen, which also revealed that sales increased 55% over the past three months. Individual products that were slipping in sales saw spikes after actor Isaiah Mustafa showed them off in the TV and Internet video ads. Those numbers were cited in an article at BrandWeek.

The campaign began with simple TV ads, which then went viral on YouTube. The follow-up program in which Mustafa recorded funny videos in response to fans, bloggers and Twitter influencers hit it out of the park in the zeitgeist. Adweek quotes Visible Measures’ Matt Cutler saying that the total web views for all Old Spice brand videos have reached 110 million, “surpassing the reach of traditional broadcast.”

Adweek also reports that Old Spice is working on a new campaign, but that it’s “unrelated” to the Mustafa videos. That’s a tough act to follow, but we don’t think anyone at Old Spice is complaining today.

Update: Some readers have pointed to news stories saying that sales for Old Spice went down. Not exactly.

The earlier reports of drops in sales referred to the Old Spice product Red Zone After Hours, which experienced a 7% drop. WARC, the source for that story, also acknowledges Nielsen’s data, saying, “Despite reports to the contrary, Nielsen data shows that sales of the Old Spice Body Wash range as a whole rose by 55% over the last three months, and by 107% in the last month alone.”

We will acknowledge the point that there is simply a timeframe correlation between the boosts in Old Spice sales and the ad campaign.

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WikiLeaks is currently in the news because its Afghan War logs comprise one of the largest and most controversial intelligence leaks to date. But while WikiLeaks is relatively new to the public, it is actually a product of a long-established culture. That culture has already had a banner-bearer; a quintessential exemplification of its values — The Pirate Bay. WikiLeaks is akin to The Pirate Bay, but for another purpose.
 

WikiLeaks disregards the letter of the law and grants political analysts and citizens new information, then defends that choice with an argument for a higher virtue: Freedom of information and knowledge. The founding figures behind WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay each claim to place that value above all others — that, and a little bit of anti-establishment zeal.

At this point, its name is merely symbolic — a statement of philosophical association. WikiLeaks is not a wiki, but shares the same culture, along with The Pirate Bay, Linux, and the open-source movement. For decades, the members of this “hacker” community have espoused the free flow of information in a world without borders, where no institution, neither corporation nor government, could hinder independent thought and the democratization of knowledge.

The connections between WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay are not merely conceptual. There are also more direct correlations. Both WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay have been hosted by Swedish Internet service provider PRQ, which also hosted the website of insurgents in Chechnya who sought a publishing platform that would not represent any established state. It’s the Swiss bank of Internet providers, and a bastion of 21st century hacker values and individualism.

In The New Yorker’s detailed profile of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, it’s clear that he belongs to this tradition. He began his adult life as a computer hacker with no formal education. Though he did eventually attend college, he had nothing good to say of the experience. This was in part because his mother discouraged him from traditional education, fearing it might rob him of his individualism and will to learn. Today, it seems almost as if Assange is trying to live out the radical philosophies of Ayn Rand.

We all know the stories of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs — computer whizzes who dropped out of college because they had technological revolutions to tend to. Assange is in some ways cut from the same cloth, though his choice has not yet earned him dramatic wealth, and his commitment to openness is more radical.

But through his project, the tradition has reached the world stage in a whole new way. Computer hackers with this Internet-born, fundamentalist philosophy of information and individual entrepreneurship are not just dictating the terms of technology and digital entertainment, but of journalism, political discourse and military engagement.

WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay are also similar in this regard: You can say what you will of the ethics of it all, but you have to admit it’s remarkable.

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Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. AP

U.S. government grants Google first security certificate for cloud computing bundle

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An advertisement for prepaid funerals stands over a cellphone hut on a residential street in Soweto, South Africa. Brian Bahr/Getty Images

Mobile phone use has exploded, and thanks to the new technology ‘tweet’ is a verb in everything from Swahili to Zulu

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“As a result of how Blackberry data is managed and stored, in their current form, certain Blackberry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions,” UAE regulator said. Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

United Arab Emirates, which actively censors websites considered harmful to conservative local values, seeks greater control over smart phone data

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