XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Thursday 2 August 2012

In a quarterly filing with the SEC Facebook said that as many as 83 million of its accounts are fake -

In a quarterly filing with the SEC Facebook said that as many as 83 million of its accounts are fake - 


Facebook's share price dipped below $20 on Thursday after reporting slowing growth and an admission of an alarming number of fake accounts.


In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the social media company said that as many as 83 million of its accounts are fake.


It also reported that as many as five percent of its active users have duplicate accounts.


Facebook members grew to 955 million this year.


It says 1.5 percent of its accounts are likely spam or accounts set up for other malicious activity.  The fake accounts are concentrated in developing markets, according to the filing.


It also blames people who set up accounts for non-human entities, such as pets.


There are "inherent challenges" in measuring usage," the social network said.


"We are continually seeking to improve our ability to identify duplicate or false accounts and estimate the total number of such accounts, and such estimates may be affected by improvements or changes in our methodology," the filing continued.


The number of real users is important for Facebook as it seeks to sell advertising.






Read more: http://www.myfoxny.com/story/19180366/facebook-admits-millions-of-accounts-are-fake

New Jersey man finds Pythons in yard TWICE in 4 days -

New Jersey man finds Pythons in yard TWICE in 4 days - 


Summer vacation has been anything but routine for a New York City social studies teacher who lives in northern New Jersey.
James Geist has spotted pythons twice within days in his West Milford yard.
Geist, 46, was reading on his deck when he thought he saw a branch move on July 23. He soon realized it was a snake.
Police arrived with two snake handlers who told Geist the branch was a 15-foot albino python.
"Dispatch told me to stay away, and I’m not a fan of snakes so I wasn't going to go near the thing," Geist told The Bergen Record.
Geist tells The Record newspaper the snake was huge, thick and docile. Two snake handlers who arrived on scene with police, estimated the snake worth about $8,000, The Record reported.
Four days later, Geist saw another snake. This time it was a 10-foot python.
Animal control believes the tropical snakes were released by someone who had moved from the neighborhood.
"I would rather face a black bear than a python," he told the paper.




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/02/nj-man-finds-pythons-in-yard-twice-in-4-days/?test=latestnews

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Staff Warned To Stop Surfing Porn Sites... -

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Staff Warned To Stop Surfing Porn Sites... - 


The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency warned its employees and contractors last week to stop using their government computers to surf the Internet for pornographic sites, according to the agency’s executive director.
In a one-page memo, Executive Director John James Jr. wrote that in recent months government employees and contractors were detected “engaging in inappropriate use of the MDA network.”
“Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images,” James wrote in the July 27 memo obtained by Bloomberg News.
“These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code,” he wrote.
Individuals identified as violating the rules face referral for “appropriate” disciplinary action, he wrote. They put “their security clearances in jeopardy, and are subject to suspension and removal from federal service or MDA sponsored contracts.”
Agency spokesman Rick Lehner said in an e-mail that the memo was written in response to “a few people downloading material from some websites that were known to have had virus and malware issues.”


Read more -
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-01/missile-defense-staff-warned-to-stop-surfing-porn-sites.html