Major flaw revealed in Internet Explorer. Affects all versions

The major press outlets are abuzz this morning with news of a major new security flaw that affects all versions of Internet Explorer from IE5 to the latest beta of IE8. The attack has serious and far-reaching ramifications -- and they're not just theoretical attacks. In fact, the flaw is already in wide use as a tool to steal online game passwords, with some 10,000 websites infected with the code needed to take advantage of the hole in IE.

Virtually all security experts (as well as myself) are counseling users to switch to any other web browser -- none of the others are affected, including Firefox, Chrome, and Opera -- at least for the time being, though Microsoft has stubbornly said it "cannot recommend people switch due to this one flaw." Microsoft adds that it is working on a fix but has offered no ETA on when that might happen. Meanwhile it offers some suggestions for a temporary patch, including setting your Internet security zone settings to "high" and offering some complicated workarounds. (Some reports state, however, that the fixes do not actually work.)

Expedient patching or switching are essential. Security pros fear that the attack will soon spread beyond the theft of gaming passwords and into more criminal arenas, as the malicious code can be placed on any website and can be adapted to steal any password stored or entered using the browser. It's now down to the issue of time: Will Microsoft repair the problem and distribute a patch quickly enough to head off the tsunami of fraud that's about to hit or will it come too late to do any good?

Meanwhile, I'll reiterate my recommendation: Switch from Internet Explorer as soon as you can. You can always switch back once the threat is eliminated.

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FROM SANDWICH BOARD TO DREAM JOB

An out-of-work banker who became a symbol of the looming financial crisis by trudging Manhattan streets wearing a sign advertising "MIT grad for hire" has landed on his feet - scoring a well-paying job at an accounting firm.

In a more hopeful sign of the times, Joshua Persky got rid of his sandwich board and demonstrated that creative people can bail themselves out without any help from the government.

Jobless Rate Hits 26-Year High "I liked his resume. He had great business sense, great experience and great references," Elliot Ogulnick, his new boss at the Manhattan firm Weiser LLP, said yesterday. As for his unique brand of self-promotion, Ogulnick said, "I must admit, it was very innovative." Persky was hired as a senior manager for Weiser as of last week, just about a year after he was laid off by the investment bank Houlihan Lokey and some six months after he started handing out his résumé to passers-by on Park Avenue.

The road from the streets to his new office on West 50th Street was longer and more winding than he expected - but he never gave up hope. "It just took more time than I expected," he said yesterday. In his weeks as a walking classified ad, he got several job interviews. "The problem was, it was the time when Bear Stearns collapsed," he said. "I had a lot of interest, but then everybody stopped hiring."

So he tried a different tack. "The publicity I got from the sandwich board encouraged me to set up a blog to document my experience," said Persky, 49. A headhunter spotted the blog and brought it to Weiser's attention. "Obviously, I had vigorous interviews, but I think it was [the blog] which sealed the deal," Persky said. "It feels so great to be back at work. I went through some frustrating times, but every day I tried to be optimistic."

He posted the happy news on his blog and got cheers from around the world. Now the father of five - who declined to discuss his new salary - is looking forward to being reunited with his family.

His wife and youngest kids, 4 and 5, had moved to her parents' home in Nebraska to save cash. But they'll be returning to New York after the end of the school year. "We're looking forward to being back together," he said. "It's hard being a telephone dad.

"There is all this holiday spirit around me, all these holiday parties, and I've got such a lot to be grateful for myself. It's like I'm celebrating twice this year."

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Spectacular Sky Show: Venus, Jupiter and the Moon

As the sun goes down in the evening, step outside and look southwest to see a celestial phenomenon. We wont see this spectacle for another 44 years, because next they'll gather like this will be on November 18, 2052.

You’ll find the bright planets Venus and Jupiter near the place the sun went down, with a waxing crescent moon nearby. They’re low in the sky – but beautiful both November 30 and December 1. With the exception of the sun and moon, Venus is the brightest light in the heavens, and Jupiter is second-brightest.

The Venus/Jupiter conjunction happens when these objects have the same right ascension on the sky’s dome. It’s as if they cross the same line of longitude in the sky and – for a brief time – beam north and south of one another on the sky’s dome. A conjunction of the two brightest planets won’t happen again until March of 2012. During this particular Venus and Jupiter conjunction, these two brilliant worlds appear 2 degrees apart. That’s about the width of your finger at an arm length away.

It’s possible – but extremely rare – to see two planets appear to merge into a single point of light. The last time two planets met up at the same spot on the sky’s dome was in the year 1818, when Venus passed in front of Jupiter. Tonight and tomorrow night, look for Venus, Jupiter, and the crescent moon in the west after sunset.

Conjunctions of two planets are fairly common. The planets often meet and appear close together the sky’s dome. But an occultation – or covering over – of one planet by another is very rare. Two planets won’t meet again on the sky’s dome for another 247 years – or until Venus occults Jupiter in the year 2065.

The Venus/Jupiter conjunction in right ascension takes place on November 30, 2008 at 7 p.m. Central Time (1:00 Universal Time on December 1).

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Six Techniques for Remembering Dreams

By: Dayna Davis

Even though I remember a lot of my dreams, I tend to get hung up on the ones I don’t remember. I’ll sit up in my bed, trying my best to remember what I dreamt before it fades away. Sometimes I’m able to recall parts of the dream, but as much as I try, I just can’t remember all of it.

We dream about every hour and a half and the longest dreams last from thirty to forty-five minutes. One would think that so many dreams unfolding each time we sleep would leave a more lasting impression. So why don’t they? They can—if you’re willing to do a little work. If you want to tap into your subconscious and start recalling your dreams, these tips will help get you started.

1. Keep a Dream Journal
Writing our dreams down as soon as we wake is one of the best ways to remember them; it also helps us decipher them since we’re able to reference them at any time. Craig Hamilton-Parker suggests an experiment for remembering our dreams in his book, The Hidden Meaning of Dreams. Hamilton-Parker recommends investing in a long-lasting, hardcover blank book and resolving to enter at least one dream in it every night for an entire month. Once you’ve got your journal, he suggests drawing a line down the middle of the page; on the left side of the line, write your dream. On the right side, give your interpretation of it.

When writing down your dreams, don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, or the sequence of events. Concentrate on getting it all on paper as fast as you can before it fades away.

When the month is up, look back through your dreams. You’ll be amazed at what you remembered and you’ll have a lot more insight into what’s influencing your dreams.

2. Give Your Dreams a Title
If you wake up and don’t have time to journal, create a title for your dream and write that down instead. You should title dreams in your dream journal anyway, but this can be an effective way of remembering aspects of your dream without journaling right away.
Use the title of your dream as often as you can throughout the day, whether you’re telling others about it or just trying to remember more details. When you have time to go back, expand on the title as much as you can. This could give you more clues into what you dreamed.

3. Use Pictures Instead of Words
If the idea of journaling all your dreams is intimidating, try drawing them. If you’re better at images than words, this might be the best technique for you. Buy a sketchbook and keep it by your bed with a pencil nearby. When you wake up, draw images you saw in your dreams. They don’t have to be masterpieces of art, just stick figures or colors you remember.

Once you get all the images down, go back and try to connect them to reconstruct your dream. If you have time later on, look up the images in a dream journal to see what they might mean.

4. Create a Map
Have you ever seen one of those mind maps with all the bubbles connected to one another and words inside each bubble? That’s what this technique is all about. If you dream about running down a windy canyon road, but the only thing you really remember is the canyon, write the word “canyon” in a bubble, then start branching off and drawing other bubbles off of that. One of the bubbles can have the word “road” and one “running.” The more you remember about each part of the dream, the more bubbles you can add. Once you get it all mapped out, you may be surprised at how much you actually remember. By zeroing in on key words and not worrying about the sequence or plot, you may be able to fill in the gaps of your fuzzy dream.

5. Wake Yourself Up
In 1955, Eugene Aserinsky and Nathan Kleitman published a paper about rapid eye movements, or the REM phase of sleep. They found that REM sleep takes up about 20 percent of our nightly sleep and that dreams in this phase of sleep are some of the easiest ones to remember.

Try waking yourself up at different times of the night to remember more dreams. Set an alarm for early in the morning and when it goes off, challenge yourself to remember what you were dreaming.

Or, drink a glass of water before you go to bed. When you wake up to use the bathroom, see if you remember what you were dreaming. Once you get a feel for what time is the best for dream catching, you can make it a regular thing.

6. Get Yourself in the Right Mind Set
Before going to bed, say aloud, “I will remember my dreams tonight.” When you wake up, lay still in bed for a couple of minutes, eyes closed, and try to remember. Once you start remembering, sit still a little longer and try to reach for more. To get yourself motivated to remember dreams, it may also be helpful to read a dream book before going to bed.
We all dream every night; we just don’t always remember them. If we make a conscious decision to remember our dreams and try a few new techniques, we’re bound to get a little closer to our own dream worlds.

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Japanese man makes airport home. The Terminal 2?

MEXICO CITY – Hiroshi Nohara is on a layover at the Mexico City airport. It has lasted almost three months, and he has no plans to leave.

For reasons he can't explain, the Japanese man has been in Terminal 1 of the Benito Juarez International Airport since Sept. 2, surviving off donations from fast-food restaurants and passengers and sleeping in a chair.

At first, he frightened passengers, and airport authorities asked the Japanese Embassy to investigate why the foul-smelling man refused to leave. Now, he's somewhat of a celebrity, capturing Mexico's collective imagination with nearly daily television news reports on his life at the food court.

Tourists stop to pose with him for photographs or get an autograph.

The Tokyo native flew into Mexico with a tourist visa and a return ticket home, but he never left the airport. In an interview Thursday alongside the airport McDonald's, he said he had no motive for his extended stay and doesn't know how much longer he'll remain.

"I don't understand why I'm here," he said through a visiting interpreter originally hired by a television station. "I don't have a reason."

The embassy can't force him to leave, and since Nohara's visa is valid all Mexican officials can do it wait for it to expire in early March.

During his stay, Nohara's wiry goatee has grown into a scraggly mass. His red-tinted hair is speckled with dust and dandruff, and his cream-colored jacket and fleece blanket are dingy with overuse. He smells like he hasn't had a shower in months.

"He's a calm person, a nice man," said Silvia Navarrete del Toro, an airport janitor. "He just sits here and eats all day."

Various stalls in the food court give Nohara free snacks and drinks, sometimes even throwing in hats or coffee mugs with store logos to get free publicity during his frequent television appearances.

Strangers often buy him pastries or hamburgers; he prefers the latter.

He sits with the interpreter, talking and laughing for hours, at a small table covered with cups of cold coffee, packets of ketchup and sandwiches wrapped in foil.

Stroking his facial hair, Nohara said the 2004 film "The Terminal," starring Tom Hanks as an Eastern European man stuck in a New York City airport, was not his inspiration. But he acknowledged the similarities.

"My life," he joked, "is 'The Terminal 2.'"

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