Last 6 Hours

Lockerbie

2009-08-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

On the BBC: Lockerbie bomber released to hero's welcome. Duh! Big deal. Before him was Mandela and Arafat. Just shows that if you can get enough international political backing, that activity that starts with "t" and ends with "m" (with 3 "r"s in between) pays off.

Anti Virus Company Infects Visitors With Virus

2008-02-10T03:34:00.000-08:00

Hackers recently hit AvSoft Technologies - causing its web servers to infect visitors' computers with the Virut virus. AvSoft Technologies produces anti virus programs Smartcop and Smartdog, mainly for the Indian and Asian market.

The hackers opened an invisible iFrame Window within the victim's browser, which redirects the client to another server. That server, in turn, launches attack code that attempts to install malicious software on the victim's computer. This technique has been seen in thousands of similar hacks over the past few months.

Fortunately, the malware used to install Virut exploits only well-known bugs, meaning that users who are running antivirus software on fully patched systems will probably not be infected by the attack in its current state, security experts say.

Nobody knows how the malware got onto the AvSoft web site in the first place. However, criminals have written automated programs that scour the Web for these types of flaws and then automatically infect sites, making this an increasingly common problem.

Comedian Ahmed Ahmed On Tour With Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show

2008-02-09T00:20:00.000-08:00

In 2005, comedian Ahmed Ahmed joined 3 other comics from Los Angeles' Comedy Store on tour in Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show. They sped through 30 shows in 30 days through the heartland from Dallas to Atlanta to Louisville to Chicago. Ouch.

Fast forward to today - they filmed Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show and turned it into a sort of documentary cum concert movie, though not quite like Eddie Murphy Raw.

It's not all fun and laughter. Don't forget that comedy's roots lie in tragedy. The soft-spoken Ahmed Ahmed riffs on being Arabic after 9/11 and describes getting arrested at an airport just because he's there. The Egyptian-born comic does a hilarious routine on his problems with airport security and having the same name as a wanted terrorist, frankly admits that he capitalizes on his ethnicity. Exploitation of this material requires courage and the breaking of unspoken taboos. In between his stand-up routines, he said, "Fifteen minutes of validation is what we look forward to in our lives."

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