Country Top-Level Domain List

.ac  –  Ascension Island
.ad  –  Andorra
.ae  –  United Arab Emirates
.af  –  Afghanistan
.ag  –  Antigua and Barbuda
.ai  –  Anguilla
.al  –  Albania
.am  –  Armenia
.an  –  Netherlands Antilles
.ao  –  Angola
.aq  –  Antarctica
.ar  –  Argentina
.as  –  American Samoa
.at  –  Austria
.au  –  Australia
.aw  –  Aruba
.ax  –  Aland Islands
.az  –  Azerbaijan
.ba  –  Bosnia and Herzegovina
.bb  –  Barbados
.bd  –  Bangladesh

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Stomach Flu Spread By Contaminated Computer Keyboards

 

THURSDAY, Jan. 3 (HealthDay News) — The highly contagious norovirus, often called the stomach flu, can be passed from one person to another through contact with commonly shared items such as computer keyboards and computer mice, U.S. health officials report.

The virus, which is common in winter and is the most frequent cause of outbreaks of vomiting and diarrhea in the United States, is often contracted in schools, at work and on cruise ships.

On Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on a norovirus outbreak at a Washington, D.C., elementary school last February in which some of the victims picked up the virus from contaminated computer equipment.

“There is evidence that shared objects and surfaces help transmit disease,” said Dr. Shua Chai, a CDC epidemiologist and co-author of the report, published in the Jan. 4 issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

“This is the first time that we have demonstrated that keyboards and computer mice can be a source of transmission of norovirus,” he added.

Of the 314 students and 66 staffers at the D.C. school, 103 came down with the illness — 79 students and 24 staff members. To find the sources of contamination, samples were taken from various surfaces around the school. In one first-grade classroom, a computer mouse and keyboard tested positive for norovirus, according to the report.

The virus can live on surfaces for several days, Chai said. To prevent infection with the virus, people should wash their hands after using shared objects, and computer keyboards and mice should be disinfected regularly with diluted bleach, he said.

“In addition, people who are ill should stay home for one to three days after they have had their last symptom, because they continue to shed the virus and can still contaminate objects,” Chai added.

One infectious disease expert said norovirus is a common infection, second only to the common cold.

“These outbreaks are extremely common, and they occur in a variety of settings,” said Dr. Pascal James Imperato, distinguished service professor, chairman of the department of preventive medicine and community health, and director of the master of public health program at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, in New York City.

Most outbreaks are food-borne, Imperato said. “A smaller percentage are due to person-to-person contact, and an even smaller proportion are water-borne,” he said. “Outbreaks in schools account for about 12 percent of all the outbreaks.”

Contamination of surfaces such as computer keyboards is fairly common, Imperato added.

Norovirus causes severe vomiting and diarrhea that can last for several days. The virus is usually not serious, and most people get better without treatment. However, it can be life-threatening to infants, older people and those with weakened immune systems.

In New York City, an outbreak of norovirus has been ongoing since November. Some 500 infected people have been showing up each day at emergency rooms around the city, health department officials said.

“The best way to stop the spread of norovirus is to wash your hands regularly with soap and stay home from work or school if you are sick,” Dr. Sharon Balter, director of enteric disease for the New York City Health Department’s Bureau of Communicable Disease, said in a prepared statement. “Norovirus is common at this time of year and is not serious for most people, but it is important to take these steps to keep others from getting sick.”

Imperato agreed. “Hand-washing remains the foundation of preventing the spread of norovirus,” he said.
By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
Thu Jan 3, 5:03 PM ET

The Beauty of Maths!

1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321
1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111
9 x 9 + 7 = 88
98 x 9 + 6 = 888
987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888
Brilliant, isn’t it?

And finally, take a look at this symmetry:
1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321

 

Dating 2.0 Picks Up Speed

By JENNA WORTHAM
Dec. 20, 2007
It’s Friday night, and your date for the evening just appeared on your computer screen. He’s shifting awkwardly in his chair as he adjusts his webcam, and a comment about American Idol makes it immediately clear you haven’t found your soul mate. You promptly click “End date” and — after a few moments — your next date appears, and you’re ready to begin again.

Welcome to Dating 2.0. A bevy of new services is banking on the booming popularity of web video, text messaging and social networking to amp up online matchmaking for the Web 2.0 crowd.

“We’re the antithesis of sites like Match and eHarmony,” says Stephen Stokols, co-founder of speed-dating site WooMe. “It’s instant gratification.”

A handful of next-gen dating services updates the original online-dating sites’ standard mix of exhaustive personality surveys and poring over profiles in search of a potential mate. They’re the latest twists on internet dating, which drew in 22.6 million people this year, according to data collected by comScore.

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The government is more worried about political, economic and technical espionage than terrorists when it comes to cyberattacks, the government’s Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure (CPNI) revealed last week.

A spokesman for CPNI said the centre was particularly concerned that cyberspies were using social engineering tricks to persuade people to give them sensitive data, circumventing IT security systems.

According to reports, the CPNI has written to 300 top businesses warning that Chinese hackers are particularly active and to take special precautions against them.

In a speech to journalists in November, the director general of MI5, Jonathan Evans, said, “Despite the Cold War ending nearly two decades ago, my service is still expending resources to defend the UK against unreconstructed attempts by Russia, China and others to spy on us. A number of countries continue to devote considerable time and energy trying to steal our sensitive technology on civilian and military projects, and trying to obtain political and economic intelligence at our expense.

“They do not only use traditional methods to collect intelligence but increasingly deploy sophisticated technical attacks, using the internet to penetrate computer networks.

“It is a matter of some disappointment to me that I still have to devote significant amounts of equipment, money and staff to countering this threat. They are resources which I would far rather devote to countering the threat from international terrorism - a threat to the whole international community, not just the UK .

Security software house McAfee warned last week that it expected industrial espionage to be the major threat to businesses in the coming year, Some 120 countries are testing one anothers’ network and database defences, it said.

Speaking at the launch of the annual Sans Institute report on the top 20 threats to IT last week, a spokesman for CPNI said defending against social engineering attacks was difficult because it required users to have a balance between naivete and cynicism.

A spokesman for CPNI said attackers often pretended to be in authority over the victim, and used tricks such as threatening to fire them. In a likes and similarities attack, the attacker pretended to see the victim as a kindred spirit and groomed them.

A reciprocation attack involves “doing favours” for each other, and a social validation attack uses the approach that “your friend or boss did me this favour, please will you help me”. Scarcity attacks put pressure on the victim to rush them into insecure behaviour.

Awareness and training were good defences, but a spokesman for CPNI said people need to practise to overcome their shyness in confronting requests for insecure acts.

“There are also times when an attacker can exploit your actions even when you are just doing you job,” he said. “This can happen when you feel you are just a cog in a broken machine,” he said.
 

One in three websites are infected, Sans Institute reveals

Nearly 33% of websites are infected with downloadable malware, after infection rates almost doubled in the past year, according to research from the Sans Institute.

Users’ confidence in online security is waning, leading small and medium sized companies to lose business, it said.

The security training organisation last week published its annual list of the top 20 cyber security threats.

Gerhard Eschelbeck, chief technology officer at Webroot, one of the firms that contributed to the study, said, “Since January 2007, Webroot has seen a 183% increase in websites that harbour spyware. Infection rates for spyware and Trojans that steal keystrokes are currently at 31% and growing rapidly.

“In a survey of small and medium enterprises we conducted in September, 77% said their success depends on the internet, and 47.2% reported lost sales due to spyware.”

Rohit Dhamankar, senior manager of security research at security specialist TippingPoint, said 50% of the total vulnerabilities reported in 2007 were in web applications.

“But it is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “This data excludes vulnerabilities in custom-developed web applications. Compromised websites provide avenues for massive client-side compromises via web browsers, office documents and media player exploits.”

The number of vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office products nearly trebled in 2007, said Amol Sawarte, manager of security firm Qualys’s Vulnerability Laboratory. This was due primarily to new Excel vulnerabilities that can be exploited by getting users to open Excel files sent via e-mail and instant messenger.

Sans Institute research director Alan Paller said web application insecurity was particularly troublesome because so many developers write insecure code. “Most of their web applications provide access to back-end databases that hold sensitive information,” he said.

“Until colleges that teach programmers, and companies that employ programmers, ensure that developers learn secure coding, and until those employers ensure that they work in a secure development lifecycle, we will continue to see major vulnerabilities.”

Paller said new attacks use ­social engineering to expose internal company networks to exploitation. These attacks are much harder to defend against, he said. “They take a commitment to continuous monitoring and uncompromising adherence to policy with real penalties.”

Technical defences have improved, but hackers are using automated attack programs to constantly scan the web for vulnerable systems.

“So many automated programs are searching for victims that Sans’ Internet Storm Center (an early warning system for the internet) reports that computers can expect to survive only five minutes before being attacked, and will withstand the attacks only if they are configured securely before being connected to the internet,” he said.

Why IT must attract more women

 

Senior female executives explain why the IT industry is failing to attract women, what must be done to remedy the situation, and the benefits this would bring

It is crucial that more work is done to attract women into the IT profession; senior female IT executives in the IT industry told an Intellect roundtable event last month.

The group said that if the UK is to remain competitive, employers will have to work harder to plug the IT skills gap with talented female developers and project managers - who must be paid the same as their male counterparts.

Gillian Arnold, hardware outsourcing executive at IBM, said more resources should be ploughed into tackling the issue. “The IT sector should put forward a group of people, funding, and a location to work on this full-time for a couple of years. There are issues that need desperate attention, and while the current army of part-timers is well-meaning, progress is too slow if we are to make any headway.”

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Revealed: Top Two Google Ranking Factors

In this article I reveal what I believe are the two most important ranking factors used by Google.

My findings are as a result of my ongoing optimization experiments of my network of web sites on Google.

The top two Google ranking factors are:

1. PageRank
2. Incoming Text Link Keywords

I’ll explain each in more detail and what you MUST do to maximize the effectiveness of each element.
1. PageRank

PageRank is determined by the number and quality of links to a page. Both the quantity and quality of text links are important. Always try to get links from web pages with a PageRank rating of at least four.

Concentrate on getting as many different quality sites as possible to link to one page on your site, usually your home page. Do not spread the links to different pages. This will maximize the PageRank of your main page, plus those of the subpages.
2. Incoming Text Link Keywords

ALWAYS provide text links for linking to your site. Avoid image links.

Google does index image links, but without any text for it to index, it won’t help your link popularity rating for your important keywords.
In addition:

1. Include the most important keyword phrase in the text link, using the EXACT spelling.
2. Do not pluralize the keyword phrase, if people usually search the singular version of the phrase. And vice versa.
3. Avoid excess words, where possible.
4. The linked to page MUST have the text link keywords in the body of the page, otherwise Google will discount the page.
5. Include the text link keywords within the title tag of the linked to page. It is possible for a page without the text link keywords in the title tag to get top rankings. But I have discovered that around 80% of top 10 rankings have the text link keywords in the title tag, so always include it.

Well, there you have it. Those are what I consider the two most important ranking factors used by Google. Other factors are considered by Google, but their importance pales in comparison to the two I have discussed in this article.

Follow these tips whenever you optimize your web pages and they will quickly shoot up the Google rankings.

 

Advice for Problems in a Relationship

I think long distance relationships are challenging, but it’s important that they stay as connected as possible whether over the phone, over the Internet, or meeting halfway as often as possible. I know it is not all that common yet, but there are people who have these videophones and can kind of see themselves in the phone over a live contact in real time. I would recommend that people send surprise gifts to each other to keep them on their toes. It doesn’t have to be anything costly. It could be flower once in a while, just a note, or maybe even to show up unannounced.

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SOCKS Protocol Version 5

 

Status of this Memo

This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the “Internet Official Protocol Standards” (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Acknowledgments

This memo describes a protocol that is an evolution of the previous version of the protocol, version 4 [1]. This new protocol stems from active discussions and prototype implementations. The key contributors are: Marcus Leech: Bell-Northern Research, David Koblas: Independent Consultant, Ying-Da Lee: NEC Systems Laboratory, LaMont Jones: Hewlett-Packard Company, Ron Kuris: Unify Corporation, Matt Ganis: International Business Machines.

1. Introduction

The use of network firewalls, systems that effectively isolate an organizations internal network structure from an exterior network, such as the INTERNET is becoming increasingly popular. These firewall systems typically act as application-layer gateways between networks, usually offering controlled TELNET, FTP, and SMTP access. With the emergence of more sophisticated application layer protocols designed to facilitate global information discovery, there exists a need to provide a general framework for these protocols to transparently and securely traverse a firewall.

There exists, also, a need for strong authentication of such traversal in as fine-grained a manner as is practical. This requirement stems from the realization that client-server relationships emerge between the networks of various organizations, and that such relationships need to be controlled and often strongly authenticated.

The protocol described here is designed to provide a framework for client-server applications in both the TCP and UDP domains to conveniently and securely use the services of a network firewall. The protocol is conceptually a “shim-layer” between the application layer and the transport layer, and as such does not provide network- layer gateway services, such as forwarding of ICMP messages.

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