College cheerleader's $75,000 decision - Georgia's Anna Watson Is College Football's Strongest Female Cheerleader

It's one thing for professional athletes to have to make an ethical decision about using steroids, but college cheerleaders?

Anna Watson has to be America's strongest female cheerleader; the University of Georgia student loves spending time in the weight room, and it certainly shows. But she has more important things in her life: Watson passed up a big money fitness modeling contract because she refused to use a legal steroid.

"It's an elite position to be a cheerleader at UGA," Watson told Red and Black, her school's award-winning student newspaper. "They have hundreds of girls try out, and to be selected out of all of those people to be on the team, it’s kind of a big deal. So those girls were very humble and gracious and patient to help me just learn the basic stuff."

Most Expensive Plane: B-2 Bomber costs more than the Space Shuttle

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America’s longest married couple

In this video, we meet Wilbur and Teresa Faiss, America's longest-married couple. The Las Vegas residents were first wed in April, 1933. Wilbur, now 100-years-old, tells KVVU TV, "I just had no idea of us ever winning the longest-married couple."

A group called the Worldwide Marriage Encounter certified the marriage as the nation's longest ongoing union. On a recent trip to Nevada, President Obama was even scheduled to deliver brief remarks acknowledging the couple.

Many Chinese Workers Want Those Jobs at Foxconn

As hard as it may be for most Americans to believe, apparently things are so bad in rural China that those Foxconn jobs are actually in demand. 

All the media coverage of Foxconn, with its harsh working conditions, long hours, child labor, and lack of workers' rights, might make it hard to believe the demand for these jobs. But, as Paul Krugman noted way back in the '90s, these factories "are a big improvement over the previous, less visible rural poverty," he wrote in an early Slate piece. Industrialization, hardships included, is a necessary step toward modernity, the argument goes.

State Dept: Americans take refuge at Cairo embassy

CAIRO (AP) — Three American citizens barred from leaving Egypthave sought refuge at the American Embassy in Cairo amid growing tensions between the two allies over an Egyptian investigation into foreign-funded pro-democracy groups.

The White House said Monday it was disappointed with Egypt's handing of the issue, which U.S. officials have warned could stand in the way of more than $1 billion in badly needed U.S. aid.

The growing spat between the two longtime allies reflects the uncertainty as they redefine their relationship nearly one year after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak following an 18-day popular uprising.

Pirate Bay offers its home page to promote indie artists

On a day when so much of the Internet is participating in a debate about the proposed U.S. SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy legislation, Sweden’s torrent tracking site The Pirate Bay—one of the Internet’s most infamous tools for setting hands on pirated copyrighted materials—has announced a new initiative called The Promo Bay. The Promo Bay invites independent artists—whether musicians, videographers, painters, cartoonists, comedians, or whatever—to submit their work for free promotion on The Pirate Bay’s home page. If the Pirate Bay thinks the material is neat, it will be queued up for promotion on Pirate Bay’s home page in up to three countries.

Netherlands moves to block access to file-sharing sites

The Dutch government is moving to crack down on illegal file-sharing, but it’s going after Internet service providers rather than individual file-sharers. A new proposal, due to be submitted to the Dutch Parliament by the middle of the year, would make it illegal to provide access to Web sites and services that facilitate copyright infringement. If ISPs fail to comply, they would be subject to penalties of €10,000 a day, up to a maximum of €250,000, with monies to be paid to BREIN, a Dutch anti-piracy consortium that represents major entertainment companies.

Sony’s biggest misses

The PlayStation Vita won't hit store shelves for another month, but some critics are already declaring it a disaster, based on early sales returns.

That's quite premature -- not to mention a bit fatalistic -- but you don't get to become a multi-billion dollar, multinational company without making a few mistakes. For every Walkman and Playstation 2 there exists a handful of other Sony ideas that didn't ring true with consumers.

Some were critical flops. Some had disappointing sales. Some weren't even physical products. But, in the end, all of them fell short in one way or another. Here's hoping the Vita avoids the fate of these Sony misfires.

66 Percent of Healthcare IT Decision Makers Believe iPad-Style Devices Create Governance Challenges

Limited hardware configurability, device fragility and security concerns leave IT worried about deploying and supporting consumer tablets in healthcare settings

SECAUCUS, N.J., Jan 30, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Panasonic, an industry leader in rugged, reliable mobile computers, has published a white paper on the "consumerization" of healthcare IT, specifically through media tablet devices like the iPad. The white paper, "Diagnosis Danger: Governance & Security Issues Cause IT Concerns About iPad in Healthcare Setting," highlights the growing concerns of healthcare IT executives trying to meet the demands to support consumer-grade computing devices.

DARPA-Funded Hacker's Tiny $50 Spy Computer

Okay, Tin Foil Hat Brigade stand at attention. A small, disposable surveillance computer was introduced on Friday at the Shmoocon security conference in Washington. It is aptly known as the F-BOMB and developed with funding from DARPA by Brendan O’Connor, a grad student. The entire cost of building the unit is under $50 bucks, so no retrieval is necessary. Just toss, spy and forget it. Makes you feel sorta warm and fuzzy all over doesn’t it? 

Internet Economy Set to Double in Four years

The World Economic Forum is meeting in Switzerland and is making positive predictions for the future of world economic health. The growth is based on the increasing level of internet usage and mobile devices users forecast to be at almost half of the world’s population by 2016.

One of the biggest drivers of this growth will be the rise in the number of Web users, with BCG’s report forecasting that three billion people will be tapping in to the World Wide Web by 2016.

Russia Postpones Two Manned Launches to ISS

Well if this isn’t a fine mess. The Space Shuttles are all snuggled in museums, the private space endeavors are running into snags and are behind schedule and now the Russians are finding cracks in their aging Soyuz spacecraft fueling speculation for the International Space Station’s future.

It's too early to say what sort of impact the delay could have on the current space station crew, NASA spokeswoman Kylie Clem told FoxNews.com, but current crew should be fine.

Apple successfully infiltrating the office, executive washroom

The topic of Apple in the enterprise can often be a heated one—as we've learned over the years via our forums and story comments. But according to a newly published report from Forrester Research, Apple is indeed "infiltrating the enterprise." Apple products have become a growing presence in many workplaces, and as a result, says Forrester, vendors will need to change the way they deal with their clients.

Erin Brockovich investigating mystery illness affecting NY teens

Famed environmental activist Erin Brockovich has begun a private investigation into a mysterious illness affecting more than a dozen teens in Le Roy, New York.

Le Roy was home to a dangerous chemical spill 40 years ago and the children's symptoms--facial ticks and verbal outbursts--may be connected, Brockovich tells USA Today. "We don't have all the answers, but we are suspicious," Brockovich said. "They have not ruled everything out yet. The community asked us to help and this is what we do."

New powerlifting world-record holder is a 13-year-old girl from Colorado

Like many female powerlifters, Abbey Watson doesn't typically get a lot of press attention. Holding eight different world records for her relatively slight weight class -- 105.75 pounds -- as well as 23 U.S. and Colorado state records, Watson is the kind of peak performer who has forced the general public to take notice. To achieve that success, Watson spends at least three very early mornings each week in the gym, doing deadlifts and squats while surrounded by very large men.

Yet, it's what Watson does after that gym time that makes her stand out: She goes to middle school.

Bribes, Chinese Mob Ties Alleged at Casino of Gingrich Money Man

The casino company run by the principal financial backer of Newt Gingrich's presidential bid, Sheldon Adelson, has been undercriminal investigation for the last year by the Department of Justice and the Securities Exchange Commission for alleged bribery of foreign officials, according to corporate documents.

In a separate civil lawsuit, a former executive of the company has alleged that Adelson ordered him to keep quiet about sensitive issues at the Sands casinos on the Chinese island of Macau, including the casinos' alleged "involvement with Chinese organized crime groups, known as Triads, connected to the junket business." The triads -- Chinese organized crime syndicates -- are allegedly involved in organizing high stakes gambling junkets for wealthy Chinese travelers.

Dana White calls out Internet hackers, they respond by releasing his personal info

CHICAGO -- The war is on between the UFC and Internet hackers.

On Sunday, UFC.com was re-routed several times to the website UGnazi. The site's organizers, who White called terrorists several times during the "UFC on Fox 2" press conference, said the hacking of UFC.com is a result of the company's support of SOPA and PIPA. The wide-ranging bills are aimed at stopping online piracy.

If Only All Game Developers Were Like This

There is an interview with Fred Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive posted at GameSpy today that is a must read for everyone (I'm looking at you game developers). A variety of topics are covered but what is really interesting is what he says about developing for the PC, not selling out for the console money and why SecuROM DRM is "a waste of money." Thanks to samduhman for the link.

Paradox Interactive may be a relatively small publisher, but it’s defined itself as a PC-first company that goes out of its way to make its customers happy. I sat down with CEO Fred Wester at this year’s PDXCon for a refreshingly frank talk about Paradox’s ongoing focus on PC gaming, his plan for the future, and the futility of DRM. LINK

California Ordered To Pay ESA $1.3M

The sad thing about this legal victory is? It is the taxpayers that will have to foot the bill for that idiotic attempt at banning video game sales to minors. 

Trade body group ESA took this announcement as an opportunity to chide the law's sponsors who appealed the decisions of lower courts that struck it down, for wasting taxpayer funds in their "ill-fated attempt to impose clearly unconstitutional regulations on video games."

Vigilante Torturer Dies in Mexico

This is the end for Jonathan Keith “Jack” Idema. The vigilante adventurer and terrorist hunter once jailed in Afghanistan for running a private prison and torture shop has reportedly died in Mexico.

East Africa Is the New Epicenter of America’s Shadow War

When Adm. Eric Olson, the former leader of U.S. Special Operations Command, wanted to explain where his forces were going, he would show audiences a photo that NASA took, titled “The World at Night.” The lit areas showed the governed, stable, orderly parts of the planet. The areas without lights were the danger zones — the impoverished, the power vacuums, the places overrun with militants that prompted the attention of elite U.S. troops. And few places were darker, in Olson’s eyes, than East Africa.

Quietly, and especially over the last two to three years, special operations forces have focused on that very shadowy spot on NASA’s map (see below). The successful Tuesday night raid to free two humanitarian aid workers from captivity in Somalia is only the most recent and high-profile example. More and more elite forces have transited through a mega-base in Djibouti that’s a staging ground for strikes on al-Qaida allies in the Horn of Africa, especially in Somalia.

It’s not quite the new Pakistan, or even the new Yemen, but it’s close — especially as new bases for the U.S.’s Shadow Wars pop up and expand. The U.S. military sometimes seemed like it was casting about for a reason to set up shop in Africa. Counterterrorism has given it one.

Fighting Somalia’s pirates might get most of the media attention. But the U.S. is much more concerned about al-Shabab. The al-Qaida aligned movement seeks to depose the Somali government, recruits fromradicalized American Muslims and may have sought to bring terrorism back to U.S. shores. Just across a very narrow Gulf of Aden is Yemen, the home of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which has repeatedlytried to attack America.

In 2009, the top U.S. intelligence official pointed to Yemen and “parts of Africa” where al-Qaida’s leadership might “relocate” if it lost its Pakistani safe haven, to “exploit a weak central government and close proximity to established recruitment, fundraising, and facilitation networks.” His successor told Congress in 2011 that al-Shabab would “probably grow stronger… absent more effective and sustained activities to disrupt them.”

That’s where the forces Olson used to run came in.

Located northwest of Somalia is a former French Foreign Legion base in Djibouti called Camp Lemonnier. The U.S. military has been there for a decade. It’s a resupply point for U.S. ships passing by, as well as the home of a multinational, American-led counterterrorism team called the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa.

Humans Lose, Robots Win in New Defense Budget

The big loser in the Pentagon’s new budget? Ordinary human beings.

About 80,000 Army soldiers and 20,000 Marines are getting downsized. Half of the Army’s conventional combat presence in Europe is packing up and ending its post-Cold War staycation. Replacing them, according to the $613 billion budget previewed by the Pentagon on Thursday: unconventional special-operations forces; new bombers; new spy tools; new missiles for subs; and a veritable Cylon army of drones.

Someone Parked A Tank On Kim DotCom's Lawn?

Nothing like the ol' "inflatable tank on the lawn" trick to keep people at bay. It works for door-to-door salesmen too. 

"National Radio (New Zealand) called me about a half hour ago because someone texted to say that there's an army tank on Kim's lawn that is aimed at the front gate," France Komoroske, an attorney and DotCom neighbor, wrote CNET. "They asked me to go take a look."

America’s Most Dangerous Mall: Going Shopping at the Pentagon

Pop culture has lied to you about the Pentagon.

The nerve center of the U.S. military, the movies would have you believe, is a teeming hive of warplanning, a citadel on the Potomac where polished brass plan wars and calculate in dimly lit rooms how to deter attacks. Ask anyone who works here, though, and you'll learn that the Pentagon is so much less than that. Sure, the work of national defense actually gets done here. But it's actually a giant mall.

For Newt, ‘World War III’ Is Just the Beginning

Newt Gingrich doesn’t just want to lay waste to his political enemies and a large part of the news media. The former House speaker and presidential hopeful wants to bomb a significant part of the planet, too.

Gingrich is on the record favoring American military intervention from North Korea to Lebanon. He recently threatened cyberwar with China and Russia. And on Monday, he called for an all-out assault to topple the Castro regime in Cuba. With such a wide range of targets, no wonder Gingrich has consistently said that the U.S. is in the middle of “World War III.” His plans for overthrowing the Iranian government? Just the beginning. In fact, if President Gingrich encounters any little green men while building his moon base (!), they had better pray to their astral maker for mercy.

Social Media 'Private' Data Is Fair Game In Court

I'm not sure why they call it "private data" when it can be used against you in court. 

All that data, even the allegedly 'private' social media data, is not private but is fair game as e-discovery in civil litigation. Another study found who you are digitally on Facebook is who you are offline in real life. Lastly, the more data we overshare on social media, the more it becomes the "norm" for society . . . meaning for society as a whole, it lowers what is considered a reasonable expectation of privacy.

MIT's City Car is now real, but not for you unless you can share

MIT has been working on their clever little foldable, stackable City Car concept for nearly half a decade now, and they've finally made a real one. It's destined for Europe in 2013, but not for individuals: to drive one, you'll have to be willing to share.

Starship Enterprise table can dock in your living room

This article is dedicated to the man who lost his lovingly created Star Trek pad in his divorce. Hopefully a lovingly hand-crafted, hardwood NCC-1701-C table like this might be ease some of his pain settling into bachelor digs.

The old-school Enterprise table made from cherry, ash and poplar wood was handcrafted by wood artist Barry Shields (yep, his real name!). Taking over a month to create, the table was made without any screws or nails - just wood joints and biscuits. Shields even shaped the glass top to match the lines of the ship.

How much longer until we get some friggin' cloned dinosaurs already?

Back in the early 1990s, I kind of just assumed I'd have a pet dinosaur by now. I probably would have enjoyed naming him something ironic, like Peanut. Or maybe Dino Gillespie. But that's all beside the point because scientists have apparently all been spending their time discovering exoplanets and making dancing robots instead of working on cloning some friggin' dinosaurs.

But before resigning ourselves to a decidedly undinosaured fate; there are some faint beacons of hope that may yet result in something resembling a real live rawr-ing dinosaur! I guess better late than never, right? We'll see. Just make with the T. rex, scienceface.

This is the most beautiful the Earth has ever looked

Back in November, we showed you the first pictures from NASA's new weather satellite, Suomi NPP. Its gigantic camera had a big day on January 4th, and captured a series of images that NASA has stitched into the biggest, most detailed, and most beautiful picture of our planet ever created.

The 40 year wait for real X-ray specs is finally over

Anyone who grew up reading comic books, was probably tempted to splurge a buck of their lawn mowing money on a pair of those X-ray specs advertised in the back. While any hope of seeing under people's clothes was quickly dashed once you tried them on, now there's a solution that actually works.

World's longest experiment now on webcam (still going slowly)

Sometimes science experiments don't always go as planned. For example, back in 1927 it is likely physics professor Thomas Parnell never expected his demonstration of viscous liquids to last eight-five years — long past his death — to continue on and eventually be broadcast via webcam for years to come.

Parnell was trying to show students at the University of Queensland that tar pitch — a derivative of coal — while brittle enough to be shattered with a hammer is actually a liquid. Despite what it looks like, it actually will flow at room temperature. Just really sloooooowly…

Stupid FedEx Driver of the Day - was "probably a bomb"

If you thought tossing a monitor over a fence was stupid, how about causing the evacuation of hundreds of people on an Army base because you thought "it's probably a bomb" was a funny thing to say. 

A FedEx driver who allegedly said a package was "probably a bomb" as he delivered it to an Army base is now facing a felony terrorism threat charge. Military police evacuated 215 people from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers trailer at 17800 South Camp Williams Road and the surrounding area after an employee overheard the comment, according to charges filed Wednesday in 3rd District Court.

THQ Devs Call For Execs To Be Fired

Let's face it, this open letter to the THQ board could be written by anyone from a disgruntled janitor to a pissed off shareholder but, the truth be told, it doesn't really matter because we all like reading behind-the-scenes soap opera stuff like this...regardless where it comes from. 

This Board has allowed the Brian Farrell, the CEO, the ongoing ability to take a cash-rich profitable company and drive it from a $30 share price down to around $.70 without acting despite numerous mistakes that even for those lacking business training, could see were errors. Even without glaring mistakes how can the same CEO stay in charge after a 99% share price loss?

Hard drive shortage may have far-reaching effects

Storm clouds continue brewing in the usually uneventful land of hard disk drives.

The severe flooding that inundated Thailand a few months ago swamped more than 1000 factories, including some of the world’s largest hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturers. Toshiba had to halt production in the majority of its hard disk production facilities, while world number one HDD maker Western Digital ceased all production in the country.

The flood in Thailand has since receded, and the various manufacturers and their suppliers have scrambled to replace waterlogged machinery and restart production. However, this hiccup in production has far-reaching consequences to the global supply of hard disk drives.

Monster Worldwide cautious on 2012

(Reuters) - Online recruitment firm Monster Worldwide Inc forecast a weak start to the year and said it will cut jobs, as it does not expect the global job market to improve drastically in the near term.

Shares of the company, which will reduce its global workforce by about 7 percent or 400 jobs, fell 15 percent on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

"The progress we saw in the fourth quarter was much slower than what we saw earlier in the year,"Monster CEO Sal Iannuzzi told Reuters in an interview. "But the situation is not similar to 2008."

Nokia profits dive as new phones slow to take off

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia Oyj reported a 73 percent fall in fourth-quarter earnings as sales of its new Windows Phones failed to dent the dominance of Apple Inc's iPhone or compensate for diving sales of its own old smartphones.

The world's largest cellphone maker by volume unveiled a year ago a major strategy shift to Microsoft Corp software for its smartphones in an attempt to challenge Apple and Google Inc's Android. But Apple's phones in particular have proved far more popular.

Apple reported earlier this week sales of 37 million iPhones for the December quarter. Nokia has sold over 1 million Windows 'Lumia' Phones, since its launch in mid-November.

Google Launches Public Alert Page

Google's Public Alerts page is now live. Winter storm heading your way? Severe thunderstorm? Flash flooding? The map shows them all. No word on whether you'll be able to pay for better search results to have your natural disaster show up higher on the list. 

Folding Electric Car Headed For Production

Remember that folding electric car we showed you guys a while back? It is actually going into production. You wouldn't catch me dead in one of those things BUT something like this should be mandatory for teenage drivers. 

Free Open Source On-The-Fly Encryption Software

You know, with all the talk lately about the courts ordering people to decrypt their hard drives (here), now seems like a good time to look into something like this. It's free, open source and works on-the-fly.

In case an adversary forces you to reveal your password, TrueCrypt provides and supports two kinds of plausible deniability:

• Hidden volumes (see the section Hidden Volume) and hidden operating systems (see the section Hidden Operating System).
• Until decrypted, a TrueCrypt partition/device appears to consist of nothing more than random data (it does not contain any kind of "signature" ). Therefore, it should be impossible to prove that a partition or a device is a TrueCrypt volume or that it has been encrypted (provided that the security requirements and precautions listed in the chapter Security Requirements and Precautions are followed).