Operation Odyssey Dawn?

 - Swampland - TIME.com
Operation OdesseyDawn dish washer

Remember how the late musician Frank Zappa named his kids Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen? Have you noticed how the Pentagon's names for its wars have become more bizarre since the Mothers of Invention front man left us in 1993? Perhaps his spirit has touched the Defense Department. You can imagine them in the Pentagon basement a couple of weeks ago. "War with Libya coming -- we need a nifty name!" one chief deputy under-secretary for nomenclature said to his chief assistant. "How about naming it for a minivan and a dishwashing detergent?"

"Operation Sienna Palmolive?"

"Not quite."

Anyway, here's the true story of how the Pentagon names its operations. "It is evident that the military has begun to recognize the power of names in waging a public relations campaign," Army Maj. Gregory Sieminski wrote back in 1995, "and the significance of winning that campaign to the overall effort."

I'm too broke for a long holiday

It seems this story is applicable to me..After my last China's trip had a bit mishap, I have to save money...However, I have bought a ticket or Hanoi and Bangkok. Should I still do this trip? I have wasted so much money when I was in China and it mostly went to buy a new ticket from Garuda.....

| Mail Online

Families are downsizing their holidays in an attempt to save money.

Many are cutting 14-night trips to ten, and one-week breaks to just four nights away, research shows.

In fact there has been a 162 per cent rise in the number booking ten-night holidays so far this year, and the figure for four nights is up 50 per cent.

via ScribeFire

Sian O'Callaghan, Jia Ashton, Joana Yeates

Again, another shocking murder  happens in the UK after the case of Joanna Yeates and Jia Ashton. Hope all their killers are jailed as  soon as possible/ By the way, hope the families they left behind, can be strong to overcome this painful situation
Home | Mail Online

Police were hopeful of finding Miss O'Callaghan, 22, alive yesterday morning but hours later they found her body beside a country road – and said they were searching for a second corpse.

via ScribeFire

How ten seconds a day of therapy cured my depression: A very unconventional counsellor has changed my life forever | Mail Online

Anger comes from emotional hurt and pain when we were younger,' she says

China denies obstructing Google's Gmail service

China denies obstructing Google's Gmail service | World news | guardian.co.uk

Chinese authorities have dismissed Google claims that they are to blame for technical problems with the country's Gmail service
* Tania Branigan in Beijing
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 March 2011 15.50 GMT

China has dismissed Google's allegation that Beijing is hampering access to its email service as "unacceptable". The internet provider said it believed government blocks were responsible for technical problems using Gmail from China.

The problems arose amid a tightening of internet controls that has made it increasingly difficult to use several popular virtual private networks. VPNs allow people to access material hosted overseas even if it is blocked by the Chinese government.

The new restrictions appear to be part of a security clampdown sparked by anonymous online calls for a "jasmine revolution" akin to the recent uprisings in the Middle East. Those messages were posted on an overseas website, but scores of Chinese activists and dissidents have been questioned, harassed and in some cases detained by the authorities for weeks.

A Google spokesman told the Guardian this week: "Relating to Google, there is no [technical] issue on our side. We have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail."

Users have reported frequent problems with basic tasks such as sending and searching emails or opening their address books.

But Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, told a regular news conference: "This is an unacceptable accusation." She declined to comment further. The ministry of commerce and ministry of industry and information technology did not respond to faxed questions.

This month WiTopia, one of the most popular VPNs, asked users to report problems via email rather than its live support service because of an "extraordinary volume [of issues] from China shenanigans". The architect of the online censorship system had previously said it was "lagging behind" in a battle against VPNs and that further tightening was needed.

"It's grim. The reality is they can shut off all access if they want to," said Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based internet specialist.

He added: "You are heading into a two-internet world."

One Beijing-based industry source - who, like many, did not want to be identified in connection with the subject - said he hoped controls might ease in time. He pointed out that in the past sites such as Wikipedia had become available after having been blocked for years and suggested that blocks might be a temporary measure to encourage Chinese users to switch to local alternatives.

Many users are largely oblivious to the tightening of restrictions, preferring to use domestic email and social media services. But a growing number of activists and dissidents have embraced services such as Twitter, which is blocked and available only with the use of a VPN or other censorship-evasion technology.

Richard Buangan, spokesman for the US embassy in Beijing, said: "As part of our ongoing dialogue with China, we have emphasised to the Chinese government our view on the importance of an open internet. The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy.

"The United States believes that freedom of expression, including on the internet, is a universal right that should be available to all people, whether they are in the United States, China or any other nation."

Google angered the Chinese government when it announced last year that it was no longer willing to censor search results in the country and moved its Chinese search service to Hong Kong. It cited increased censorship and a cyberattack which it said appeared to have targeted human rights activists.

Separately, Google reported this month that it had seen "some highly targeted and apparently politically motivated attacks against our users", exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. It did not identify the subjects, but journalists in China reported suspicious messages from users such as "moli hua" - Chinese for "jasmine" - at the same time.

Greg Walton, of cyber intelligence company MetaLab Asia, who analysed those messages, said users were invited to click on links that led to malware hosted on a Hong Kong server. It was apparently designed to download Gmail cookies and email them to several addresses, enabling access to the targets' Gmail accounts. One piece of malware appears to have been designed to connect the target computer to a command and control server in Heilongjiang, northern China.

Chinese officials have repeatedly said their laws ban hacking and that the country is itself a victim of cyber-attacks.