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BOJ Governor: Japan Faces Severe Situation. South Korea's Hottest IPO: Boy Band, Inc. - Jordan Weissmann - Business. Korean investors are going crazy for the country's biggest music labels. But are they just betting on a fad? Reuters For the past month, the biggest story in South Korea's stock market has centered on a five-piece boy band called Big Bang, and a couple puffs of marijuana. News that the Big Bang's front-man had reportedly tested positive for pot threatened to put a crimp in the initial public offering of YG Entertainment, the label responsible for some of the biggest acts in Korean Pop. The frenzy of Korean pop (aka K-Pop) today might be hard to believe considering the state of the music industry. Now imagine if Motown owner Berry Gordy gathered all of his talent -- Stevie, The Temptations, and Marvin Gaye among them -- to make a big announcement.

The hysteria around YG Entertainment is just part of a bigger story about South Korea's emerging status as Asia's new pop culture capital. Investors, certainly, are among the faithful. You'd be excused for asking what the heck is going on. "PayPal email address change" phishing scheme doing rounds. Posted on 25 November 2011. PayPal users are targeted again as emails supposedly sent by the online payment company urge them to fill out a form with their personal and financial information in order to prevent the suspension of their accounts: With "You have changed your PayPal email address" in the subject line, the sender attempts to convince the recipients that someone has accessed their account and changed the email address associated with it. To "keep the original email and restore their PayPal account", the users are required to fill out the attached Personal Profile Form - PayPal-.htm form.

In order for everything to go smoothly, the sender also "helpfully" notes that "the form needs to be opened in a modern browser which has javascript enabled (ex: Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Opera 9). " Unfortunately for those who fall for this scam, the submitted information gets sent directly to the phishers, points out Sophos. Now You’re Just Messing With Us Wikipedia. The good news is that Wikipedia has finally switched up that image of Jimmy Wales begging for money on its homepage.

The bad news is that they’ve replaced it with another unfortunately left-aligned image of some random guy (Wikipedia programmer Brandon Harris to be precise) who, according to my email inbox, looks like everything from Jesus, to Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger to a member of the Hell’s Angels. And because Harris’ image is left aligned, the weird article title/image juxtaposition thing still stands; The last straw was when I was Wikipedia-ing actress Diane Keaton last night and up he came, inadvertently wearing the same outfit and in the same pose as the Annie Hall star. Here is a particularly hilarious conversation I had about it with somebody on IM. “I donated to get Brandon Harris’ picture off the top. I didn’t mind Jimmy Wales’ piercing gaze but Brandon was just disturbing,” notes interaction designer Xianhang Zhang on Quora.

Exclusive - Japanese banker, key figure in Olympus scandal, found in Hong Kong. By James Pomfret HONG KONG Sun Nov 27, 2011 7:46pm IST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Reuters found a Japanese banker who is a key figure in the Olympus Corp accounting scandal at a luxury apartment block in Hong Kong on Sunday, where he exploded in anger at finally being tracked down. Akio Nakagawa's boutique U.S. investment firm earned a $687 million fee from Olympus for a 2008 deal that made it the biggest advisory payment in history, and which the Japanese camera maker now admits was used to hide investment losses.

The whereabouts of the former PaineWebber banker had been unknown until Sunday. Nakagawa looked startled when a reporter introduced himself outside the building, located in a high-priced area near the financial district on Hong Kong island. "Get out of here. Get out of here," Nakagawa yelled in English at the Reuters reporter who approached him. Nakagawa was tanned, tall and slim. When asked about the advisory fee, he told the concierge: "Please contact the police.

" Japan’s Fat Tax. This has been going on for three years, yet I just learned of it: In 2008, Japan’s Ministry of Health passed the ‘metabo’ law and declared war against obesity. … Japanese people are normally envied for their lean physiques. In fact, the OECD ranks them, with only 3% population obesity, one of the least obese developed countries. … Comparing the time periods 1976-1980 and 1996-2000, prevalence of obese boys and girls increased from 6.1% and 7.1% to 11.1% and 10.2%.

The law mandates that local governments and employers add a waist measurement test to the annual mandatory check up of 40-75 year olds. Employers or local government … are required to ensure a minimum of 65% participation, with an overall goal to cut the country’s obesity rates by 25% by year 2015. Even before Japanese lawmakers set the waistline limits last year, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) amended its recommended guidelines for the Japanese.

Two interesting patterns: My tentative explanations: Trackback URL: African-American Atheists. Japanese female executive aims to elevate her gender - Business - Ohio.com. TOKYO: As vice president of Shiseido, Kimie Iwata helps lead one of the biggest cosmetics companies in the world and among Japan’s best known brands. She is also a rare female executive in the country, a powerful symbol of the progress and ongoing struggles of Japanese women in the workplace. Iwata, 64, has been on the front lines of the fight for gender equality for more than a quarter century. She played an instrumental role in crafting the landmark Equal Employment Opportunity Law in the mid-1980s as a labor ministry bureaucrat. Now at Shiseido Co., she is the driving force behind the company’s efforts to foster its female talent and spark broader changes within corporate Japan. While Japanese women have made significant professional strides over the last 25 years, Iwata is virtually alone in having made it to the top of a major company.

Women’s participation in the work force still lags that of men, with most leaving after their first child. News Anchor for Mac OS X - RSS/ATOM feed reader/aggregator with text to speech (voice text),speak RSS to voice. The Most Complete Twitter Application List Available - 2011 Edition. I believe this is the best, most complete and accurate list of valuable Twitter applications available on the internet right now. To be fair, I absolutely have merged and plagiarized other older and outdated lists that I found (the larger ones are credited below).

However, I spent a good deal of time to clean out the dead applications, delete the apps that were overly quirky or being developed, focus more on the apps that increase productivity, and add in many of the new great apps that have come out over the past six months - particularly in the productivity / business apps section where my primary interest lies. I have also tagged the tools that cost money / have a premium option ($) as well as if they have a valuable free option (F/$). Finally, while application selection can be a personal thing, I tagged my favorite app (*) in each category. Simple Web Based Clients and Twitter Viewing Tools Twitter.com (*): Can't go wrong with this -- web, iPhone, etc. Track The Latest Trends and Tags. Mike Cassidy: How to build a $500M company in 500 days. Last week, Cassidy traveled to Turkey for a start-up event, and he talked about how he does it. Below right is one of the slides he showed to the audience of about 200 entrepreneurs and investors.

It documents the milestones he hit while building DirectHit, which he sold 500 days after he started it, for $532 million to AskJeeves. Above: MIke Cassidy's slide on Direct Hit milestones, on way to $500M exit I’ve been soaking up the lore of Silicon Valley for the past ten years, but something about Cassidy’s talk still grabbed me: With infectious energy, Cassidy takes the classic tenets of entrepreneurship and douses steroids on them. For the uninitiated, Cassidy’s recommendations look a tad perverse, but the results, like former SF Giants’ Barry Bonds’ home-runs, are effective. To be sure, Cassidy’s is not the recipe used by folks like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates, who think especially long-term while building their companies. Cassidy’s slide presentation below. 9 Reasons Wired Readers Should Wear Tinfoil Hats | Threat Level. There’s plenty of reason to be concerned Big Brother is watching. We’re paranoid not because we have grandiose notions of our self-importance, but because the facts speak for themselves.

Here’s our short list of nine reasons that Wired readers ought to wear tinfoil hats, or at least, fight for their rights and consider ways to protect themselves with encryption and defensive digital technologies. We know the list is incomplete, so if you have better reasons that we list here, put them in the comments and we’ll make a list based off them. Until then, remember: Don’t suspect a friend; report him. Warrantless Wiretapping The government refuses to acknowledge whether the National Security Agency is secretly siphoning the nation’s electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges. When a federal judge said a lawsuit on that issue could go forward, Congress passed legislation stopping the case in its tracks.

Lockers vs Streaming Services. I'm on vacation so I'll keep this short. I don't get the idea of music locker services like the one Amazon just announced. If I'm going to stream music from the cloud, why should I continue to buy files and collect them? I've been a Rhapsody subscriber for something like 11 or 12 years and although it has taken a while to get used to, I vastly prefer subscription streaming services over file based music. I've just stared using rdio on my Android and on the web and I love it too. I've used Spotify and it is also excellent (once it is fully licensed in the US). Locker services seem like they are designed to continue the physical model of collecting music and buying music when there is a new and better way – just subscribe to music dial tone and listen to whatever you want wherever you want.

I'm bearish on locker services and bullish on subscription streaming services. Intel, MIPS scramble to support Android 4.0 on tablets. News By Agam Shah November 4, 2011 01:50 PM ET IDG News Service - Intel and MIPS Technologies expect the next version of Google's mobile operating system, Android 4.0, to soon run on tablets and smartphones based on their processors. Android 4.0, also called Ice Cream Sandwich, has already been shown to work on a smartphone with an ARM processor, which is used in most smartphones and tablets today. Google showed Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) last month running on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus, which will go on sale this month in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Google chose Samsung and Texas Instruments, whose dual-core OMAP4460 chip is being used in the Nexus Prime, as the lead hardware makers for ICS. The OS is ready to work with tablets and smartphones based on Intel's x86 mobile processors for tablets and smartphones, Intel said this week. "Ice Cream Sandwich includes OS optimization for x86, so Intel architecture-based devices can support it," said Suzy Greenberg, an Intel spokeswoman. Liquid Robotics’ Waveglider Plumbs the Depths. China's industrial robotics market sees rapid growth - Technology News. 2011-11-03 02:30:34 GMT2011-11-03 10:30:34(Beijing Time) China Daily An industrial robot on display at the China International Industry Fair on Nov 1, 2011 in Shanghai.

[Photo/Xinhua] SHANGHAI - A top industry body says that China is the fastest-growing market for the use of industrial robotics. It is also the market with the most potential, according to an executive of the Swedish power and automation technology company ABB Group. "We expect China's application of robotics to grow by at least high double-digits this year, providing the opportunity for our robotics business to register close to triple-digit growth by the year end," said Gu Chunyuan, head of ABB China's robotics business unit. The application of robotics in Chinese industry has grown rapidly over recent years as a result of the country's efforts to improve efficiency of its manufacturing processes. The federation also said that industrial robotics applications in China will increase by 64 percent in 2012. Hackers go after Facebook sites 600,000 times every day. Bill Gates: money isn’t everything. Panasonic sees $5.5 billion annual loss, worst in a decade. China Unveils Supercomputer Based on Its Own Chips.

FINALLY: First Born Females Win Right To The UK Throne. Premature Orgasm Affects Women Too, Study Suggests | Female Sexual Dysfunction & Female Orgasm | Sexual Complaints of Women & Sexual Satisfaction. Men aren't the only ones who might find themselves peaking too early in the sack. According to a new study, a small percentage of women also experience premature orgasm. The research, a survey of Portuguese women, found that 40 percent occasionally came to orgasm faster than they intended during sex. For about 3 percent of women, the problem was chronic. "For this group, female premature orgasm is more than bothersome," said study researcher Serafim Carvalho, of the Hospital Magalhães Lemos in Porto, Portugal.

"We think it's as serious a distress as it is in men. " Finishing too fast Traditionally, female sexual dysfunction has not received the same attention as male sexual dysfunction, and early orgasm is no exception. To find out if the experience of early orgasm is one that troubles women, Carvalho and his colleagues sent out a questionnaire to a general sample of Portuguese women ranging in age from 18 to 45.

Just over 60 percent, or 510 women, responded to the mail-in survey. VIDEO: Spirits Haunt Cuba Road, White Cemetery - Algonquin, IL Patch. Paranormal activity has been spotted on numerous occasions along Cuba Road near White Cemetery in Barrington. Have you ever driven down Cuba Road in Barrington and thought you saw something out of the ordinary? Even ghostlike? You aren’t alone. Dozens of people have claimed to see ghosts and other paranormal activity along Cuba Road, specifically around White Cemetery. The so-called haunted cemetery dates back to the 1800s, and its past is teeming with spooky legends.

Chicagoland ghost researcher Dale Kaczmarek explains the paranormal activity associated with this spot. “There are a lot of old local legends associated with the cemetery, first of all, including one that was actually started in the 1960s by a Palatine school teacher of a hooked spirit, a man with a hook, that’s been seen out here. Although Kaczmarek says the urban legends aren’t true, there are some real ghost stories of White Cemetery and Cuba Road that he’s collected over the years. 'Rogue websites' bill introduced in US House. US lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday that would give US authorities more tools to crack down on websites accused of piracy of movies, television shows and music and the sale of counterfeit goods.

The Stop Online Piracy Act has received bipartisan support in the House of Representatives and is the House version of a bill introduced in the Senate in May known as the Theft of Intellectual Property Act or Protect IP Act. The legislation has received the backing of Hollywood, the music industry, the Business Software Alliance, the National Association of Manufacturers, the US Chamber of Commerce and other groups.

But it has come under fire from digital rights and free speech organizations for allegedly paving the way for US law enforcement to unilaterally shut down websites, including foreign sites, without due process. "Rogue websites that steal and sell American innovations have operated with impunity," Smith said in a statement. Windows XP: It Will Not Die. Bluetooth 4.0 gets rebranded Bluetooth Smart Ready. Leaked Pics of Three New Nokia Windows Phones Surface | Gadget Lab. Apple wins patent for Slide to Unlock iOS gesture. Top 15 Horror Games for PCs and Consoles.

Bombings, beheadings? Stats show a peaceful world. Iris for Android: Kind of Like Siri, But for Android. NASA, Japan Enhance Earth Topographic Map - Government - Enterprise Applications. CDNetworks Accelerates China and Japan Market Penetration for Jimdo. It's official: to protect baby's brain, turn off the TV. 30+ Best Websites to download free E-books. 100 Incredibly Useful and Interesting Web Sites. How to Fix Internet Embarrassments and Improve Your Online Reputation. Best iPhone And iPad Apps. 4 Simple Tools for Creating an Infographic Resume. Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS] Spies Like Us: Spy Gear for Your Inner Secret Agent. A Collection of Beautiful, Free Fonts  Gandhi Letter To Hitler. Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control.

Cryptocurrency. 15 Best Mobile Anti-Viruses [Android and iPhone Included] - AhnLab V3 Mobile 2.0, android antivirus, android security apps, AVG mobile antivirus, Best Mobile Anti-Viruses, best mobile security, Bitdefender Mobile Security, blackberry antivirus, ESET Mobil. German government accused of spying on citizens with state-sponsored Trojan. Fukushima Desolation Worst Since Nagasaki. Shipwrecks From Around the World. Five Best Facebook Customizers. 10 Ways To Be More Intelligent.

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