Facebook and Microsoft battle child porn

SAN FRANCISCO:  Facebook and Microsoft on Friday formally unveiled an alliance to ferret out child porn and those that share such images at the world’s leading online social network.

Facebook will use PhotoDNA technology developed by Microsoft and Dartmouth College computer science professor Hany Farid to search for matches to pictures in a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) database.

“We think this is a game changer and we are thrilled to be a part of this partnership,” Facebook assistant general counsel Chris Sonderby said in broadcast streamed at the social network.

PhotoDNA has evaluated more than two billion digital pictures at Microsoft services, finding 1,000 matches on SkyDrive and 1,500 matches through Bing image indexing, according to Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit associate general counsel Bill Harmon.

“It is very efficient technology and will not slow down a network,” Farid said during the live-streamed presentation.

“It has scanned over two billion images without a single false positive.”

PhotoDNA will scan the hundreds of millions photos uploaded daily to Facebook, blocking pictures recognized as child porn and, hopefully, leading police to the sources, according to Sonderby.

If caches of such imagery are seized, new pictures will be “fingerprinted” and made part of the PhotoDNA net, according to NCMEC chief executive Ernie Allen.

“This is a problem that is global in nature,” Allen said. “We think with Facebook we will be able to identify perpetrators preying on kids all over the world.”

The California-based social networking service is reported to have more than 600 million members around the planet.

“Facebook is becoming a model for the entire Internet industry,” Allen said, who expressed hope that pressure would be put on other online services to employ the child-porn-detecting technology.

PhotoDNA will also be scouring Facebook uploads for pictures of children reported missing, since youths tend to stay connected with friends at the social network even if they are dodging family, according to police.

“Facebook joining us is just a fantastic step forward,” Harmon said in the webcast.

“We plan to keep deploying and hope more partners and make this really big and help children in a large way.”

Each month Facebook users share more than 30 billion pieces of content including pictures, news stories, blog posts, and Web links, according to Microsoft.

“Identifying graphic child pornography in a sea of content like that is a daunting task, but PhotoDNA is helping to find the proverbial needle in a haystack,” Harmon said in a blog post.(AFP)

Facebook and Microsoft battle child porn

SAN FRANCISCO:  Facebook and Microsoft on Friday formally unveiled an alliance to ferret out child porn and those that share such images at the world’s leading online social network.

Facebook will use PhotoDNA technology developed by Microsoft and Dartmouth College computer science professor Hany Farid to search for matches to pictures in a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) database.

“We think this is a game changer and we are thrilled to be a part of this partnership,” Facebook assistant general counsel Chris Sonderby said in broadcast streamed at the social network.

PhotoDNA has evaluated more than two billion digital pictures at Microsoft services, finding 1,000 matches on SkyDrive and 1,500 matches through Bing image indexing, according to Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit associate general counsel Bill Harmon.

“It is very efficient technology and will not slow down a network,” Farid said during the live-streamed presentation.

“It has scanned over two billion images without a single false positive.”

PhotoDNA will scan the hundreds of millions photos uploaded daily to Facebook, blocking pictures recognized as child porn and, hopefully, leading police to the sources, according to Sonderby.

If caches of such imagery are seized, new pictures will be “fingerprinted” and made part of the PhotoDNA net, according to NCMEC chief executive Ernie Allen.

“This is a problem that is global in nature,” Allen said. “We think with Facebook we will be able to identify perpetrators preying on kids all over the world.”

The California-based social networking service is reported to have more than 600 million members around the planet.

“Facebook is becoming a model for the entire Internet industry,” Allen said, who expressed hope that pressure would be put on other online services to employ the child-porn-detecting technology.

PhotoDNA will also be scouring Facebook uploads for pictures of children reported missing, since youths tend to stay connected with friends at the social network even if they are dodging family, according to police.

“Facebook joining us is just a fantastic step forward,” Harmon said in the webcast.

“We plan to keep deploying and hope more partners and make this really big and help children in a large way.”

Each month Facebook users share more than 30 billion pieces of content including pictures, news stories, blog posts, and Web links, according to Microsoft.

“Identifying graphic child pornography in a sea of content like that is a daunting task, but PhotoDNA is helping to find the proverbial needle in a haystack,” Harmon said in a blog post.(AFP)

On May 21, the world will end!

NEW YORK:    It's raining in New York, and everyone tries to get out of the rain. Not Manny. The 56-year old Dominican, unflappable, stands on a corner with his umbrella, warning people that on Saturday, May 21, the world will end.

All over New York, preachers armed with T-shirts, brochures, books and posters are preaching the end of the world. Using a complex numerical calculation from the Bible, there are even advertisements on the New York city subway warning of the "great earthquake" that accompanies the advent of Judgement Day.

"According to the Bible, in the Book of Revelations there will be a worldwide earthquake," Manny told said. "We're not sure if it will happen at the same time everywhere, because times are different. But it is supposed to happen simultaneously around the world," he said.

The date of May 21, 2011 may seem random, but it is based on a numerical analysis by the American, Harold Camping, the president of Family Radio, a religious broadcaster based in California.

"According to Genesis, when the flood occurred in the year 4990, God told Noah that in seven days he would destroy the earth," Manny explained. "And he destroyed it in seven days.

"But Peter said: 'I know that one day for me is like a thousand years.' So 4990 plus 7001 years (the equivalent of seven days) equals 2011," he explained.

Not only that, May 21 coincides with the 17th day of the second month of the calendar used during the Biblical flood, according to Camping.

Nearby the corner where Manny is prophesying, Borce, 43, is handing out leaflets and explaining to anyone who will listen that they have a few hours left to find salvation.

"Right now there is still salvation, but when May 21st gonna come, the salvation program is finished, God gonna shut the door, and after that only five months remain for the unsaved of the world, and they're gonna be suffering and on the 21st October, God gonna destroy this world with fire," Borce said.

If Manny and Borce are out on the noisy New York City streets everyday spreading the word, they are planning to be in a quieter place when the fateful moment arrives.

"Until Friday, I gonna still pray for God for mercy. Saturday I'll be at home, just watching the news, because the doors will be shut," said Borce, who is American.

"I will kneel and ask God's mercy to see if he can save me, because God wants salvation for everyone," said Manny, who was at his side.

Despite their faith, both men realize that their message is often ridiculed. "People do not believe it," said Manny. "It is typical of what happened in Noah's time, where only eight people were saved. According to the Bible, only 200 million people will be saved" this time, Manny said.

To Borce, that reaction is predictable. "The people are laughing, they laugh at us," he says, adding: "Pray until Friday."

On May 21, the world will end!

NEW YORK:    It's raining in New York, and everyone tries to get out of the rain. Not Manny. The 56-year old Dominican, unflappable, stands on a corner with his umbrella, warning people that on Saturday, May 21, the world will end.

All over New York, preachers armed with T-shirts, brochures, books and posters are preaching the end of the world. Using a complex numerical calculation from the Bible, there are even advertisements on the New York city subway warning of the "great earthquake" that accompanies the advent of Judgement Day.

"According to the Bible, in the Book of Revelations there will be a worldwide earthquake," Manny told said. "We're not sure if it will happen at the same time everywhere, because times are different. But it is supposed to happen simultaneously around the world," he said.

The date of May 21, 2011 may seem random, but it is based on a numerical analysis by the American, Harold Camping, the president of Family Radio, a religious broadcaster based in California.

"According to Genesis, when the flood occurred in the year 4990, God told Noah that in seven days he would destroy the earth," Manny explained. "And he destroyed it in seven days.

"But Peter said: 'I know that one day for me is like a thousand years.' So 4990 plus 7001 years (the equivalent of seven days) equals 2011," he explained.

Not only that, May 21 coincides with the 17th day of the second month of the calendar used during the Biblical flood, according to Camping.

Nearby the corner where Manny is prophesying, Borce, 43, is handing out leaflets and explaining to anyone who will listen that they have a few hours left to find salvation.

"Right now there is still salvation, but when May 21st gonna come, the salvation program is finished, God gonna shut the door, and after that only five months remain for the unsaved of the world, and they're gonna be suffering and on the 21st October, God gonna destroy this world with fire," Borce said.

If Manny and Borce are out on the noisy New York City streets everyday spreading the word, they are planning to be in a quieter place when the fateful moment arrives.

"Until Friday, I gonna still pray for God for mercy. Saturday I'll be at home, just watching the news, because the doors will be shut," said Borce, who is American.

"I will kneel and ask God's mercy to see if he can save me, because God wants salvation for everyone," said Manny, who was at his side.

Despite their faith, both men realize that their message is often ridiculed. "People do not believe it," said Manny. "It is typical of what happened in Noah's time, where only eight people were saved. According to the Bible, only 200 million people will be saved" this time, Manny said.

To Borce, that reaction is predictable. "The people are laughing, they laugh at us," he says, adding: "Pray until Friday."

Man who eat human liver with potatoes

MOSCOW: Russian police said they had detained a man who was caught eating an acquaintance's liver.

Police tracked down the suspect after a trail of severed body parts including limbs and a head were found across Moscow.

"When the police came to arrest the suspect, he was eating a human liver with potatoes," a police spokeswoman for the Moscow's western district said by telephone.

The rest of the human liver was found in a refrigerator in the suspect's flat. The police spokeswoman said the cause of the acquaintance's death was not clear.

The suspect "admitted his crime and that he had eaten part of his acquaintance's liver," the prosecutor general's main investigative unit said in a statement. (Reuters)

Man who eat human liver with potatoes

MOSCOW: Russian police said they had detained a man who was caught eating an acquaintance's liver.

Police tracked down the suspect after a trail of severed body parts including limbs and a head were found across Moscow.

"When the police came to arrest the suspect, he was eating a human liver with potatoes," a police spokeswoman for the Moscow's western district said by telephone.

The rest of the human liver was found in a refrigerator in the suspect's flat. The police spokeswoman said the cause of the acquaintance's death was not clear.

The suspect "admitted his crime and that he had eaten part of his acquaintance's liver," the prosecutor general's main investigative unit said in a statement. (Reuters)

Do video games make kids eat more?

Do video games make kids eat more? NEW YORK: An hour spent playing video games may make teenage boys eat more over the rest of the day, a small study suggests.

The study, of 22 normal-weight teens, found that the boys ate a bigger lunch when they had a pre-meal video game, versus an hour spent relaxing. And they did not make up for the extra bites by burning more calories through gaming, or by eating less later in the day.

On average, the boys downed 163 calories more on the day when they played video games, researchers report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Exactly what that means for video gamers' waistlines is unknown. But the findings add to studies that have linked kids' screen time -- from TV and computers -- to the odds of being overweight.

While those studies observed patterns, and do not prove cause-and-effect, the current study actually tested the idea that something about video-gaming itself might affect eating habits, explained lead researcher Jean-Philippe Chaput.

It's not clear why boys ate more on game day, according to Chaput, who researches obesity and lifestyle at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa, Canada.

"We didn't see an increase in hunger," he told, adding that neither the boys' self-ratings of hunger nor their levels of appetite hormones appeared to be affected by playing video games.

Instead, Chaput speculated that there is a subtle "mental-stress effect," and eating food may satisfy the brain's need for a "reward."

"And most of the food we'd want," Chaput said, "would be sugary and fatty."

He noted that in past research, he has found a similar effect of computer work on calorie intake.

For the current study, Chaput's team had the teenage boys come to a research lab on two separate days: on one morning, they played a soccer video game for an hour, followed by lunch; on another morning, they sat quietly for an hour before lunchtime.

The boys then went home and kept a record of what they ate for the rest of the day.

Overall, Chaput's team found, the teens spent more energy when they played video games than when relaxing. But their food intake more than compensated for the energy they burned that day, netting them an extra 163 calories.

There are still many questions -- including whether findings from the research lab translate into the real world.

Chaput speculated that the number of extra calories could be even greater in real life, where kids often spend hours playing video games in a day, and may eat junk food while they play.

On the other hand, it's not clear if the extra calories seen in this study are an "acute effect" that would fade if someone played video games regularly, according to Chaput.

But if video games do regularly affect how kids eat, he said, it would be concerning. Even though an extra 163 calories "sounds minor," Chaput said, "if it is chronic, it could have a major effect over the years." (Reuters)

CHECK IT OUT MOST FUNNY VIDEOS OF YOUTUBE

Do video games make kids eat more?

Do video games make kids eat more? NEW YORK: An hour spent playing video games may make teenage boys eat more over the rest of the day, a small study suggests.

The study, of 22 normal-weight teens, found that the boys ate a bigger lunch when they had a pre-meal video game, versus an hour spent relaxing. And they did not make up for the extra bites by burning more calories through gaming, or by eating less later in the day.

On average, the boys downed 163 calories more on the day when they played video games, researchers report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Exactly what that means for video gamers' waistlines is unknown. But the findings add to studies that have linked kids' screen time -- from TV and computers -- to the odds of being overweight.

While those studies observed patterns, and do not prove cause-and-effect, the current study actually tested the idea that something about video-gaming itself might affect eating habits, explained lead researcher Jean-Philippe Chaput.

It's not clear why boys ate more on game day, according to Chaput, who researches obesity and lifestyle at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa, Canada.

"We didn't see an increase in hunger," he told, adding that neither the boys' self-ratings of hunger nor their levels of appetite hormones appeared to be affected by playing video games.

Instead, Chaput speculated that there is a subtle "mental-stress effect," and eating food may satisfy the brain's need for a "reward."

"And most of the food we'd want," Chaput said, "would be sugary and fatty."

He noted that in past research, he has found a similar effect of computer work on calorie intake.

For the current study, Chaput's team had the teenage boys come to a research lab on two separate days: on one morning, they played a soccer video game for an hour, followed by lunch; on another morning, they sat quietly for an hour before lunchtime.

The boys then went home and kept a record of what they ate for the rest of the day.

Overall, Chaput's team found, the teens spent more energy when they played video games than when relaxing. But their food intake more than compensated for the energy they burned that day, netting them an extra 163 calories.

There are still many questions -- including whether findings from the research lab translate into the real world.

Chaput speculated that the number of extra calories could be even greater in real life, where kids often spend hours playing video games in a day, and may eat junk food while they play.

On the other hand, it's not clear if the extra calories seen in this study are an "acute effect" that would fade if someone played video games regularly, according to Chaput.

But if video games do regularly affect how kids eat, he said, it would be concerning. Even though an extra 163 calories "sounds minor," Chaput said, "if it is chronic, it could have a major effect over the years." (Reuters)

CHECK IT OUT MOST FUNNY VIDEOS OF YOUTUBE

Italian sues runaway bride for 500,000 euros

Italian sues runaway bride for 500,000 euros ROME: An Italian groom left hanging at the altar after his runaway bride changed her mind at the last minute because she was in love with another man is now suing her for 500,000 euros (743,000 dollars).

The 32-year-old said he had suffered emotional and material damages after booking a villa for the wedding outside Rome, reserving a honeymoon on a Pacific island and refurbishing an apartment to his fiancee's tastes.

Wednesday's report by Italy's ANSA news agency said the man, referred to only by his first name, Riccardo, was already in the church when his fiancee's brother told him she would not be coming and the priest cancelled the service.

The report said that Riccardo had hired lawyers and filed a lawsuit, which emphasised that he and his family had borne all the costs for the wedding.

Italian sues runaway bride for 500,000 euros

Italian sues runaway bride for 500,000 euros ROME: An Italian groom left hanging at the altar after his runaway bride changed her mind at the last minute because she was in love with another man is now suing her for 500,000 euros (743,000 dollars).

The 32-year-old said he had suffered emotional and material damages after booking a villa for the wedding outside Rome, reserving a honeymoon on a Pacific island and refurbishing an apartment to his fiancee's tastes.

Wednesday's report by Italy's ANSA news agency said the man, referred to only by his first name, Riccardo, was already in the church when his fiancee's brother told him she would not be coming and the priest cancelled the service.

The report said that Riccardo had hired lawyers and filed a lawsuit, which emphasised that he and his family had borne all the costs for the wedding.

Kate to borrow Queen Elizabeth's wedding crown

LONDON: Kate Middleton may wear the same tiara, that Queen Elizabeth II wore, when she ties the knot to Prince William on Friday.

Queen Elizabeth has often loaned or given royal brides a tiara on their wedding day and royal wedding watchers are abuzz over which of the queen's many crowns Kate Middleton might get to wear.

The origin of the Fringe tiara is often debated among royal authorities. Some historians believe it was made in 1830 from diamonds that belonged to King George III. The Royal Collection states that it was made in 1919 for Queen Mary from a necklace she received as a wedding present from Queen Victoria.

The tiara, which is part of the Queen's personal gem collection, has been worn by handful of British royals, including Queen Victoria, Queen Mary and the Queen Mum. It was also worn by Princess Anne when she wed Captain Mark Phillips in 1973.

Kate to borrow Queen Elizabeth's wedding crown

LONDON: Kate Middleton may wear the same tiara, that Queen Elizabeth II wore, when she ties the knot to Prince William on Friday.

Queen Elizabeth has often loaned or given royal brides a tiara on their wedding day and royal wedding watchers are abuzz over which of the queen's many crowns Kate Middleton might get to wear.

The origin of the Fringe tiara is often debated among royal authorities. Some historians believe it was made in 1830 from diamonds that belonged to King George III. The Royal Collection states that it was made in 1919 for Queen Mary from a necklace she received as a wedding present from Queen Victoria.

The tiara, which is part of the Queen's personal gem collection, has been worn by handful of British royals, including Queen Victoria, Queen Mary and the Queen Mum. It was also worn by Princess Anne when she wed Captain Mark Phillips in 1973.