Ubaldo making start despite trade rumors

From jail to Jets, Burress finds a new NFL home

  Stuck in prison and his NFL career derailed, Plaxico Burress insisted he’d be back one day.

Article source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/43958642/ns/sports-player_news/

Miley Cyrus debuts equal rights tattoo on finger

When it comes to tattoos, pop star Miley Cyrus “can’t be tamed.”

The 18-year-old singing sensation posted a photo Friday of her latest finger tat, an equal sign.

“All LOVE is equal,” the Southern songstress tweeted alongside the Twitter pic, showcasing her longstanding support for gay marriage. Cyrus quickly defended her views when a dissenting Twitter user questioned the “Party in the U.S.A” singer’s knowledge of the Bible. (RELATED: Miley Cyrus turns 18 [SLIDESHOW])

“look up Leviticus, 1 Corinthians. Read both chapters and tell me where God says homosexuality, incest, and polygamy is ok?” the Twitter user wrote.

Cyrus tweeted back, “where does it say in the bible to judge others? Oh right. It doesn’t. GOD is the only judge honey. ‘GOD is love.’”

This isn’t Cyrus’s first tattoo, as the “Last Song” actress reportedly flaunted a “Just Breathe” ribcage tat in 2009 as a tribute to a friend who died of Cystic Fibrosis. At the time the tattoo snapshot was taken, Cyrus was just 17 years old. Earlier this year, Cyrus also reportedly had a dream catcher inked onto her torso. The “Hannah Montana” star also has “love” tattooed on her ear and a heart and a small cross on her fingers.

Follow Laura on Twitter.

Article source: http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/31/miley-cyrus-debuts-equal-rights-tattoo-on-finger/

Obama treads the Twitter path

Illustration: Adam Davidson.

WASHINGTON. President Barack Obama is pressing Republicans to change their minds on the debt-ceiling debate 140 characters at a time.

He put his political organisation to work on the social network last week, mobilising supporters on Twitter for the Washington wrangling over lifting the federal debt limit.

With 9.4 million followers, @barackobama, the President’s campaign Twitter feed, is the third- most followed on the service, sandwiched between pop music stars Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber and Britney Spears and Katy Perry, according to fanpagelist.com.

A day after Mr Obama’s campaign aides posted more than 100 Twitter messages urging followers to pressure their legislators to find a compromise in the debt-ceiling stand-off, Mr Obama’s campaign Twitter feed had just one posting as of 7 pm Washington time on Saturday. The end of the Twitter blitz came as legislators sought to break a stalemate and Mr Obama held a meeting at the White House with Vice-President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat.

The lone message posted at noon included a link to the President’s weekly radio address in which he again encouraged legislators to reach a compromise to raise the $US14.3 trillion ($A13 trillion) debt by Tuesday.

Article source: http://www.smh.com.au/world/obama-treads-the-twitter-path-20110731-1i6cb.html

Google+ Faces Hurdles on its Ascent

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Google’s direct entry into the social networking arena only exacerbates that.

But beyond the obvious consumer realm, the next biggest thing could be a social networking space for businesses. To date there’s only one social network that has had success in this area, LinkedIn, which saw an $8 billion IPO in May.

Google has already shown its inclination to go into business networking, saying its service would be “amazing” for businesses. They key was it would happen at a later date, so Google deleted profiles of businesses off Google+, causing a mild uproar that Facebook happily milked.

Facebook rolled out “Facebook for Business,” which teaches companies how to use the site’s “powerful marketing tools” to create a Facebook Page, build relationships with members of the Facebook community, and use Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories.

While not necessarily being new, as businesses already use Facebook, the announcement focused on how businesses could further take advantage of Facebook. The timing, however, perfectly highlighted Google’s stumble.

Broader Challenges

The decline, however small, shows the challenges Google faces as it attempts to break into the already crowded social networking space.

While Google+’s rate of growth is unrivaled, the social network is still small in comparison to mature rivals Facebook and Twitter, which have 750 million and 200 million registered users, respectively.

Google also needs to take steps to ensure that its new offering doesn’t follow the same fate as its predecessors: Google Buzz and Google Wave.

While those sites saw initial interest, participation waned and the projects were eventually pulled.

“[Google+'s] ultimate success will depend on how well it converts this strong trial base into regular users,” ComScore’s Andrew Lipsman warned.

Indeed, while rivals like Facebook and Twitter have become online destinations in themselves, over 50 percent of traffic coming to Google+ originates from Google or Gmail.

Facebook also enjoys stronger user engagement than Google+. In the increasingly competitive digital marketing environment, advertisers are concerned with not only reach and targeting, but also how long users are interacting with the site.

The time users spent on Google+ saw a decrease last week by 10 percent, with users spending an average of 5 minutes 15 seconds on the site.

“The 10 percent drop seems somewhat big, but in reality it is not,” Tatham said, saying he believes that would “continue to grow.”

In comparison, Facebook users on average spend 55 minutes on the site per day, according to Facebook’s self-reported statistics.

And while Google CEO Larry Page told investors the site has already amassed 10 million users, HitWise data indicates that just 10 percent of those registered visit the site.

With strong integration to Google’s ecosystem of products and services and plenty of hype, Google+ will have little problem reaching more people.

The challenge will be converting them from passers-by to dedicated users.

Article source: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/189923/20110731/google-faces-hurdles-on-its-ascent.htm

Facebook’s Bug Bounty Program Pays $500 to Find Security Bugs

Facebook Launches Bug Bounty Program – Ines Teijeiro

Facebook recently announced it is hiring hackers to help find bugs in its popular website. On July 29th, 2011, the social networking giant announced the launching of its Bug Bounty program to help find security-related issues, holes and potential vulnerabilities on Facebook.

Facebook’s Security Researchers

With over 750 million active users, Facebook takes security seriously. According to the website, “security researchers” will be paid at least $500 for finding and responsibly reporting bugs. If a security vulnerability has been discovered, the researchers are asked to send in as much information as possible. In order to receive the award, detailed reproduction steps or benign proof-of-concepts are required and all legitimate reports will be investigated. It goes without saying, strict guidelines are involved.

Facebook’s Bug Bounty Eligibility Rules

In order to be eligible for compensation, researchers must adhere to Facebook’s Responsible Disclosure Policy.

• Among other things, the policy states researchers must give Facebook a “reasonable time to respond” before making the information public.
• You must be the first person to “responsibly disclose the bug.”
• You must live in a country “not under any current U.S. Sanctions.”
• You agree to report issues that may compromise a user’s information including Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF/XSRF) and Remote Code injection.
• Only one payment per bug will be awarded.
• Bugs in third-party applications, third-party websites that integrate with Facebook, Denial of Service Vulnerabilities or Spam or Social Engineering techniques will not be eligible.

Facebook also publicly thanked a group of about 40 researchers who have made “responsible disclosures” in the past.

Other Bug Bounty Programs

Facebook is not the only company to hire hackers. Other companies including Google, Mozilla and Microsoft have been compensating security researchers for finding qualifying security bugs as well.

For instance, Mozilla’s Bug Bounty program pays $3,000 in cold, hard cash plus a free Mozilla T-shirt for finding bugs! Google also has a vulnerability rewards program along with a Security Hall of Fame list. While Google’s base reward for qualifying bugs is $500, rewards up to $3,133.70 may be paid for severe or “unusually clever” bugs.

While compensation rates vary depending on the company, Microsoft offered a $250,000 reward “for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Rustock operators.” The Rustock botnet infected over 1.6 million computers earlier this year. While Microsoft does not pay bounties for bug finders, the company also offered $250,000 in rewards for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for both the MSBlast worm and Sobig.F.virus as well.

Potential security vulnerabilities are discovered when companies implement bug bounty programs and compensate the security researchers who find them.

Jace Shoemaker-Galloway
- Jace is more than passionate about online safety awareness. She has devoted and dedicated over five years to Internet Safety education
…

Article source: http://www.suite101.com/content/facebooks-bug-bounty-program-pays-500-to-find-security-bugs-a382393

Missouri Bans Student-Teacher Facebook Friendships

It’s time to do a massive Facebook friend-purge, Missouri teachers. A new bill signed into law by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon makes it illegal for students and teachers within the state to have private relationships on Facebook.

We should note that the new law isn’t targeting Facebook exclusively–or even social networks. The entire point of the legislation centers on curbing sexual misconduct between teachers and students. The “Amy Hestir Student Protection Act,” named for a former Missouri public school student who was molested by a teacher decades prior, increases penalties for school districts that fail to report abuse allegations within a timely manner and fail to disclose instances of past abuse by former staff members.

Buried within the law, however, is a provision that effectively eliminates private social relationships between students and teachers on any of the Web’s many social networks. Missouri school districts are required to develop written policies to address the “appropriate use of electronic media” by the start of 2012, which must include guidelines for social network use.

“Teachers cannot establish, maintain, or use a work-related website unless it is available to school administrators and the child’s legal custodian, physical custodian, or legal guardian,” reads the law. “Teachers also cannot have a nonwork-related website that allows exclusive access with a current or former student.”

The word “exclusive” is the key part of the text, as the law still allows teachers to set up social networking pages for friendships, class use, or program support so long as the site is publicly available to all. But even that provision isn’t sitting well with Missouri teachers who maintain that Facebook is a valuable tool for students that might otherwise feel uncomfortable bringing up issues in a face-to-face setting.

“For some students, that move could very well prevent them from confiding in a trusted adult friend who might be able to help them get through serious problems in their lives,” writes Randy Turner, a middle school communications arts teacher in Missouri’s Joplin School District.

“For Joplin students, that could be dealing with the aftermath of losing their homes and having their lives uprooted on May 22. For others, it may be confiding in just the kind of horrific crime that the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act is supposedly designed to eliminate,” she adds.

For more from David, follow him on Twitter @TheDavidMurphy.

For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.

Article source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2389485,00.asp

Kings of Leon show in Dallas derailed

DALLAS, July 31 (UPI) — Rocker Jared Followill said on Twitter his band, Kings of Leon, had some serious internal problems after a show in Dallas abruptly ended.

Followill’s brother and lead singer, Caleb Followill, walked off the stage Friday night complaining of the heat and saying his voice was not right, but Jared told the band’s fans there were deeper issues.

“There are problems in our band bigger than not drinking enough Gatorade,” Jared Followill wrote. He added there were “problems that needed to be addressed.”

The band did not supply any further details but The Wall Street Journal said the group announced it was postponing a Sunday gig in The Woodlands, Texas, until Sept. 22.

Article source: http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/Music/2011/07/31/Kings-of-Leon-show-in-Dallas-derailed/UPI-89521312120349/?spt=hs&or=en

Video: Bill Belichick isn’t a Twitter guy

Watch time-lapse photos of Madison Square Garden makeover

Ochocinco, Beltran, McNabb keep their old numbers with their new teams

Article source: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2011/07/bill-belichick-social-media-twitter/1

Obama Turns to Twitter to Press Republicans

Enlarge image

Obama’s Twitter Town Hall

Jae C. Hong/AP

Then-Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., checks his BlackBerry in St. Louis, Missouri.

Then-Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., checks his BlackBerry in St. Louis, Missouri. Photographer: Jae C. Hong/AP

President Barack Obama is pressing
Republicans to change their minds on the debt-ceiling debate 140
characters at a time.

The president put his political organization to work on the
social network last week, mobilizing supporters on Twitter Inc.
for the Washington wrangling over raising the federal debt
limit.

With 9.4 million followers, @barackobama, the president’s
campaign Twitter feed, is the third most followed on the
service, sandwiched between pop music stars Lady Gaga and Justin
Bieber and Britney Spears and Katy Perry, according to
fanpagelist.com.

A day after Obama’s campaign aides posted more than 100
Twitter messages urging followers to pressure their lawmakers to
find a compromise in the debt-ceiling standoff, Obama’s campaign
Twitter feed had just one posting as of 7 p.m. Eastern time
yesterday. The end of the Twitter blitz came as lawmakers sought
to break a stalemate and Obama held a meeting at the White House
with Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,
a California Democrat.

The lone message was posted mid-day and included a link to
the president’s weekly radio address encouraging lawmakers to
reach a bipartisan compromise to raise the $14.3 trillion debt
by Aug. 2.

Twitter Blitz

Campaign aides used the site to flood followers on July 29
as the House of Representatives was heading toward a vote on a
Republican plan to raise the debt ceiling. The House bill passed
that day solely on the basis of Republican support, 218-210. The
Senate later killed it, continuing the impasse in the debt-
ceiling debate.

Obama had already threatened to veto the bill when he went
before White House microphones to urge voters to “let your
members of Congress know” how they feel. “Make a phone
call. Send an e-mail. Tweet,” he said. “Keep the pressure on
Washington.”

Over the course of the day, Obama’s campaign aides posted
Twitter messages, some spaced just a minute apart, giving out
the Twitter addresses of more than 230 Republican lawmakers.
Obama’s followers were urged to contact the Republicans in
support of legislation from the Democratic-controlled Senate to
raise the government’s borrowing authority and take a slice out
of the deficit.

Boehner Message

Obama isn’t alone in the capital contest of 140 characters
or less: Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, in
advance of his chamber’s vote yesterday rejecting a Senate plan
to raise the debt ceiling, issued this Twitter message: “DOA:
@SenatorReid’s bill a non-starter in the House (and the
Senate?)”

Not everyone was a fan of the president’s message blitz.
Obama’s campaign Twitter feed lost 33,243 followers July 29,
according to Twitter Counter, a website that tracks statistics
for more than 10 million Twitter users. By 7 p.m. Washington
time yesterday, the site had gained 10,786 followers, according
to Twitter Counter.

“Tweet at your Republican legislators and urge them to
support a bipartisan compromise to the debt crisis,” said one
Obama campaign message on July 29. “Massachusetts voters: Tweet
@USSenScottBrown and ask him to compromise on a balanced deficit
solution,” said another, referring to the state’s Republican
senator.

While the directives to contact Republican lawmakers came
from Obama’s campaign Twitter account, White House
communications director Dan Pfeiffer has been using Twitter for
days to engage and debate lawmakers, pundits and voters on the
debt-ceiling issue issue.

‘Silly Little Gimmick’

Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican and one
of the targets of the Twitter campaign, called the move a
“silly little gimmick.” He said Obama should have spent more
time engaging directly with House Republicans and putting
deficit-cutting specifics on paper.

“I wish the president would tweet us,” Franks said. “He
is AWOL in this discussion.”

The Obama campaign’s Twitter blasts also set off a series
of retaliatory broadcasts.

‘No Ronald Reagan’

“President Obama is no Ronald Reagan,” Representative Joe Walsh, an Illinois Republican, said in a Twitter message.

Senator Dan Coats, an Illinois Republican, told his
followers in a Twitter message: “Hoosiers: Tweet @BarackObama
and ask him what his plan is.”

According to Rachael Horwitz, a spokeswoman for the biggest
U.S. microblogging service, San Francisco-based Twitter posts
about 200 million messages each day and has more than 200
million registered users.

Twitter Inc. was No. 4 in June in the U.S. among social
networks, with 30.6 million users, according to ComScore Inc.
That was up 14 percent from the previous month and a 31 percent
increase from a year earlier, ComScore said.

“What’s exciting about Twitter is it’s another way to have
an ongoing dialogue between many Americans across the country,”
said Macon Phillips, the administration’s director of digital
strategy, who manages @WhiteHouse, the official White House
Twitter page, which has 2,306,503 followers.

Ronald Yaros, a professor of new media and mobile
journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park, said
as Twitter becomes a mass medium it could play a significant
role in mobilizing voters and that how successful Obama is in
using it in the debt-ceiling debate will be watched by other
campaigns.

For the president’s campaign staff and White House
advisers, Yaros said, the aim is not only for Obama supporters
to mobilize “but that the followers will pass the word and use
this as just one stage of the networking process.”

“It’s a very effective, efficient way to get the word out,
and to let the network of existing followers be the disciples
for, without waiting for the television camera to turn on,”
Yaros said.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Kate Andersen Brower in Washington at
Kandersen7@bloomberg.net;
Margaret Talev in Washington at
mtalev@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Mark Silva at
msilva@bloomberg.net

Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-31/obama-turns-to-twitter-to-press-republicans-on-debt-limit-debate.html

Trials, terrorism: yep, it’s definitely too hot to fish

Man for our times … Bobby Kirk has captured the attention of the world with his words of wisdom. Photo: NYT

BOGART, Georgia: It was hard not to notice that the stream of tobacco juice spat expertly by Bobby Kirk barely missed the summer sandals on the feet of the New York television producer.

A crew from The Colbert Report, a Comedy Central show, had travelled from New York to a dirt road here in Georgia to sit on the front porch and talk to Mr Kirk, the old man in camouflage overalls who has become an unlikely savant of country wisdom.

And it is all because of one simple observation: it’s too hot to fish.

Mr Kirk, 76, had caught an 18 kilogram catfish days before, so he knows a little something about when it is and when it isn’t too hot to fish. Over a steamy 90 degree weekend, he shared his Forrest Gump-like observation with a local newspaper reporter looking for a story. ”It was no good this morning,” Mr Kirk grumbled. ”I never got a bite. I reckon it was too hot.”

Then, as it does in this digital age, the swirl of fame began. The article got sent around on Twitter and picked up in other local newspapers. A CBS radio affiliate in Atlanta called for an interview, as did the crew from Comedy Central. There was talk of T-shirts and caps. A large urban newspaper took interest.

Why was the cultural landscape ripe for the rise of Bobby Kirk, a man with straight-up opinions – ”air-conditioning has ruined everyone” – and an unremarkable country life? It may be that he managed, in a simple sentence, to say what for much of a scorching July weather forecasters, journalists and the co-worker in the next cubicle have struggled to articulate.

Or it could be that he offers a diversion during a summer consumed by the national obsession with the Casey Anthony trial, a heart-wrenching terrorist attack in Norway and the numbing grind of the debt ceiling debate.

”People can identify with what Bobby was saying,” Wayne Ford, the staff reporter for The Athens Banner-Herald who found himself at Mr Kirk’s house that day, said. ”He’s just a plain-spoken, average guy. I think it’s just time for the average guy’s opinion to come out.”

Gordon Lamb, an Athens resident who follows a fake Facebook page someone established in Bobby Kirk’s name, said he was ”emblematic of a South that has disappeared entirely from the Atlanta area.”

”I’m sure some people like him out of a sense of absurdity or irony,” he added, ”but I think he’s great. And besides, he was right. It was too hot to fish.”

On the Bobby Kirk Facebook page, someone pretending to be Kirk answers questions and posts thoughts along the lines of ”Got a hankerin’ for some pork. I think I’ll head up the road to Hot Thomas for a spell.” (Mr Kirk has no computer, has no idea what Facebook is and watches a television so old that one is surprised to see that the picture is in colour.)

Other things to know about Mr Kirk: He cannot remember if he completed the sixth or seventh grade. He does not go to the grocery store much, eating mostly game and fish and the vegetables from his prolific garden.

”If I had a million dollars, I would still want butterbeans and tomatoes and okra,” he said.

He was raised nearby in a family so poor that his mother made his coveralls out of fertiliser sacks. Even so, there were not many stores nearby when he was a boy.

”If you had a pocketful of money, you couldn’t buy a dime’s worth of nothing,” he said.

Mr Kirk has had four marriages, only two of which were legal. Three of his wives died (leukaemia, complications from alcoholism and a car accident). The fourth? ”I had to run her off,” he said. Her children were stealing his deer meat.

He has two children. A daughter has been missing since 1982. His son, Bobby Kirk Jr, lives down the road and says his father was strict with them as children but has always been friendly.

”He’s a card,” he said. ”In the grocery store, he will start talking to anybody.”

He knows how to make brandy from peaches and corncobs but he himself does not drink anymore. In addition to fishing, he raises beagles to hunt rabbits. ”I gave a pair of dogs to get that roof put on,” he said.

Does it bother him that he is getting famous in part because people might be making fun of him? He answered with all the smarts of a savvy country boy.

”No,” he said. ”They can make a monkey out of me as long as I get some money.”

The New York Times

Article source: http://www.smh.com.au/world/trials-terrorism-yep-its-definitely-too-hot-to-fish-20110731-1i6gh.html

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