SciTechBits – Interesting Bits of Science & Technoglogy Served For You!

“Google Suggest” is a feature which suggests search queries as you type — based on the spelling and the search frequency of potential matching search terms.  There is one other feature “Searches Related to” which is displayed in the bottom of the search page. This feature is not based on the spelling, and is usually referred to as query refinement; much similar to Amazon’s “people who bought X also bought Y & Z”. This main difference of using the spelling and search frequencies to generate suggestions and other metrics to generate related searches helps Google expose quite an array of other possible searches the user could be doing.

Now, here is what Google thinks is related to a couple of interesting search terms.

Intellectually, you know better than to do something stupid like surf for porn while at work. Just the same, some people do it like the dozens of NSA, DARPA, DoD, and other Pentagon officials who possess security clearances, but allegedly purchased and downloaded child pornography over the Internet.


According to a report in The Boston Globe, the porn downloaders represent a “small percentage” of the Pentagon’s massive staff. It is however concerning since it puts the Pentagon “at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats, especially since these individuals typically have access to military installations.’’

The knowing possession of child pornography is a federal felony. Accessing or purchasing porn on a government computer is beyond stupid as well as a misuse of government property. Some of the porn downloading was done by people who deal with the most sensitive intelligence and defense work. Two of the cases were contractors with top NSA secret clearances; their work involves eavesdropping on foreign communications. One of those contractors was indicted two years ago and fled the country. He’s believed to be hiding in Libya.

Dell ’s quality control seems to have been smoking the same weed as the Dude, you’re getting a Dell guy did. The Texas based computer manufacturer shipped server system boards with infected and embedded malware code.


If you’ve heard about scammers calling customers as if they are Microsoft technicians, there is little wonder why the Dell customer was confused and posted on a Dell support forum:

“I just got a telephone call from a service scheduler informing me that the replacement R410 motherboard I received several weeks ago contains spyware in its embedded systems management firmware, and wanting to schedule an additional service call for a tech to come clean it off.

Unfortunately since the person calling was non-technical, she was unable to provide a lot of details. But I do believe the call to be legitimate as she had the service tag of one of my systems which did indeed receive a motherboard replacement recently.”

A Dell support technician, DELL-Matt M, replied via a post to the customer: “The service phone call you received was in fact legitimate. As part of Dell’s quality process, we have identified a potential issue with our service mother board stock, like the one you received for your PowerEdge R410, and are taking preventative action with our customers accordingly. The potential issue involves a small number of PowerEdge server motherboards sent out through service dispatches that may contain malware. This malware code has been detected on the embedded server management firmware as you indicated.”

DELL-Matt M later posted again as if recanting his previous post. “The W32.Spybot worm was discovered in flash storage on the motherboard during Dell testing. The malware does not reside in the firmware.”

Meanwhile, yet another seemingly stoned to the bone Dell employee confused another customer artadams, who then posted a question to DELL-Matt M: “Will you please post your employee number? In a phone call to Dell this morning I was told that no Dell employee wrote this….”

The infection hit replacement PowerEdge 310, 410, 510 and T410 boards. The direct seller said less than 1% of boards were affected and complete new server systems were quite safe. Dell is still not admitting how the W32.Spybot worm got into its systems and onto its hardware.

Interestingly enough, a Dell spokesman said the problem was worldwide but all infected motherboards had now been removed from the supply chain and it was already shipping clean boards. He added that only people running unpatched versions of Windows without any anti-virus would be infected.

What was Dell thinking? Or were they not thinking, like they had been toking some pretty potent weed, when they apparently decided to run no antivirus software and unpatched Windows OS in their factories?

Dell FAIL!

What would Steve Jobs and Bill Gates talk, if they met now. Here is the imagination of a netizen.

So how long will Bing take to catch up? Bing you are not new, you are just a renamed search engine.
UPDATE: To people denying this, visit www.bing.com/?cc=de and enter world cup as you query.

An Orange County man suspected of hacking computers was arrested on federal charges related to demands for explicit videos from women and teenage girls.


A man, claiming to be affiliated with an underground gang of hackers, was arrested on federal extortion charges that allege he hacked into dozens of computers, obtained personal data about people using the computers, and then demanded explicit videos from female victims in exchange for keeping their personal information private.

Luis Mijangos was arrested after a six-month FBI investigation into his involvement in computer hacking, identity theft and video nosiness. Mijangos infected more than 100 computers which were used by about 230 individuals, at least 44 of whom were juveniles.

Mijangos used peer-to-peer networks to infect computers with malware that he made appear as popular songs. Once his victim was infected, Mijangos sent instant messages to people in the victims’ address books. The malicious code in the IMs gave Mijangos control of those computers too.

Once he had control of a computer, he would search for intimate images or videos of young women in various states of undress or engaged in naughty acts with their partners. Mijangos contacted the female victims and threatened to send the explicit photos or videos to everyone in their contact lists unless they made additional videos for him. He also told the victims that because he controlled their computers, he would know if they attempted to contact the authorities. He told one victim that she did not want to “mess” with a team of hackers.

Viacom is in court with YouTube claiming more than $1 billion for copyright infringement — to be exact, for using advertisement over or around the videos and thus making money. However, Viacom is now caught red-handed doing the same to a teeny-weeny small time artist, who released his content under the Creative Commons license.


Spike.com the subsidiary of Viacom has a video of Jonathan Coulton singing, which is an excellent music video made with a slide-show of Creative Commons pictures from Flickr (the video is by itself titled “Flickr”). This slide-show is released under CC license, which implies that the video can be reused only for non-commercial purposes and with proper attribution. The problem here is that, you can’t watch the video on Spike.com unless you watch a handful of advertisements.

If the same crazy math Viacom used to calculate the over $1 billion claim against YouTube (which uses a very idealistic income one could make out of advertisements from the video), it works out to $13,823 – based on the 18,000 views the video has had on Spike.com. However, the video embedded below only asks for a practical and fair compensation of $37.

Searching for Red Dead Redemption treasure hunting clues? Beware of low-down, scum sucking, scareware-toting outlaws.Search results for the wildly popular game are being exploited with malware.


Although Red Dead Redemption, an action-adventure western video game by Rockstar, was only released a few weeks ago, it’s wildly popular. In fact, it’s slick as a whistle and one of the highest ranking video games in years. If you tired of whipping out your six-shooter and gunning down cowboys in the Wild West, you probably are hunting for treasure. There are a total of 9 treasures in Red Dead Redemption, but if you get stuck by the cryptic clues and drawings linked to landmarks while on the treasure hunt, ya better proceed with caution partner. Beware of low-down, scareware-toting outlaws.

Adam from United Kingdom has created a Lego Printer. This printer is not only special in that it is done using Lego, it uses the cheapest possible print cartridge in the world, felt tip pens. He has named his printer as “Lego felt tip 110″ and has it connected to an Apple Mac. This is not a kit you can buy and does not use mindstorms. It was done from from scratch using analog motor electronics, sensors and printer drivers and much more. The USB interface uses a “wiring” board.

LittleDog, the quadruped robot and the little brother of the scary BigDog – designed by Boston Dynamics is being used at various research facilities to explore different aspects of learning locomotion. DARPA, the agency that developed the internet is funding several robotics research projects, including the LittleDog – to build robots which can help soldiers in every possible way. USC is one of the research organizations, working on algorithms for learning locomotion and testing them using the LittleDog. A video recently released (embedded below) by USC demonstrates the intriguing capabilities the LittleDog now possesses.