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| Rank | School Name | Country |
| 1 | Harvard University | United States |
| 2 | University of Cambridge | United Kingdom |
| 3 | Yale University | United States |
| 4 | University of Oxford | United Kingdom |
| 5 | Imperial College London | United Kingdom |
| 6 | Princeton University | United States |
| 7 | California Institute of Technology (Caltech) | United States |
| 8 | University of Chicago | United States |
| 9 | UCL (University College London) | United Kingdom |
| 10 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | United States |
| 11 | Columbia University | United States |
| 12 | McGill University | Canada |
| 13 | Duke University | United States |
| 14 | University of Pennsylvania | United States |
| 15 | Johns Hopkins University | United States |
| 16 | Australian National University | Australia |
| 17 | University of Tokyo | Japan |
| 18 | University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong |
| 19 | Stanford University | United States |
| 20 | Cornell University | United States |
See large pictures in orkut album
It replaces small images on album overview page with larger versions. It also updates the table so there is one large image per row.
Install both the above mentioned softwares, restart your firefox after installation of the greasemonkey plugin.
http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/1487.user.js
Right click the above link and click install.
The Yodobashi Shinjuku store manager pointed out that the rainy weather wasn't exactly ideal for the launch event, and that by sometime time today the store would probably sell out of the PS3 Metal Gear Solid 4 bundles.
Over in Tokyo's Ikebukuro, there were 20 or so people lined up in front of Bic Camera. By the time the store opened at 10am, the line had grown to 60 customers — mostly males in their 20s and 30s, couples too and ladies buying for their boyfriends.
Dudes with consoles.
While the rain drizzled in Tokyo's Yurakucho as MGS4 went on sale at Bic Camera. The store typically draws long lines, but at an hour before the store opened there was exactly zero people lined up out front for Metal Gear Solid 4. Because of the bad weather, the line of ten customers was waiting inside. Five minutes before opening, the line reached 23 people. Note: this is the same Bic Camera where Sony held its official Playstation 3 launch with PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi.
New YorK Launch
This was the scene outside the Metal Gear Solid 4 midnight launch at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, New York City. The epic crowds were here to get their brand-new copy of the game signed by Hideo Kojima, who was in attendance with the lovely Yumi kikuchi, the voice and model for the "Beauty" Raging Raven.
The real madness took place inside, of course. Hit the jump for full details.
Kojima's signing took place on the bottom floor of the three-story megastore, and throngs of people had already started lining up long before the event had begun to kick off. When I arrived, the energy was unbelievable, with crowds periodically chanting Kojima's name or "Metal Gear! Metal Gear!"
I chatted up some fans in line, and when one person told me he'd just bought a PS3 specifically for this game, some six or seven other people immediately chimed in that they had, too. Everyone there identified themselves as a diehard franchise fan who couldn't wait to meet the creator.
After a bit of waiting, an announcement let the crowd know that Kojima himself was about to appear. People went nuts, and began chanting his name in chorus anew, raising their fists in the air:
When Kojima descended the escalator, a flurry of cameras, flashbulbs and cheers erupted. In this blurry little pic I took, Kojima is waving to everyone as he comes down. Sorry for the poor quality, but I actually think my hands were shaking - the high energy and anticipation were very contagious!
Here, Kojima has taken his place at the table with Ms. Kikuchi. Forgive my finger in the frame. There was a big rush of people trying to get photos and I had to snap quickly!
As a game journalist, I of course have to maintain a fair and balanced objectivity when writing about games. But on a personal level, I am a mammoth fan of the Metal Gear Solid series and always have been. So when I got the chance to shake Kojima's hand, I must confess I babbled like a nut, and I think I said, "Thank you I love Snake please bring him back thank you I love Metal Gear thank you!"
I've seen a few midnight launches here in New York City, but never have I seen anything game related of this scale and spectacle. There had to have been a few hundred people there, everyone buzzing with excitement. Very cool!
TOKYO Source - KOTAKU - Brian Ashcraft
Stabbings in Japan hit Metal Gear launch
Japanese video games publisher Konami has cancelled launch events for its new Metal Gear Solid 4 game.
The company said in a statement to Japanese media that it called off the events because it was concerned about the safety of the public.
The cancellations follow a rampage by a knife-wielding man in Tokyo at the weekend in which seven people were killed.
Despite the cancellations, sales of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots will go ahead, and publicity events outside Japan will not be cancelled.
One of the cancelled launch events had been scheduled for Tokyo's Akihabara district, where the stabbing took place on Sunday.
Akihabara is home to hundreds of stores selling computers, electronics, video games and comic books. The area is a popular centre of youth culture that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors at weekends.
Metal Gear Solid 4, the newest game in the popular series, will be released for the PlayStation 3 tomorrow. It has received favourable previews from critics and is expected to sell in large numbers.
Players control a soldier armed with a knife and various other weapons who fights his way through a multitude of enemies by killing and disabling them in a variety of missions.
In the Akihabara knife incident, a 25 year-old man allegedly drove a two-ton truck into a crowd of pedestrians and then ran through the area stabbing and slashing bystanders with a machete before being arrested.
Step 2 : First open the Image Size dialogue box by pressing ALT+CTRL+I. The Height and Width of the horserider is 760 x 560 pixel and of SRK 348 x 476. The Resolution of the horse rider is 300 pixels/inch and of SRK 71 pixels/inch.
Note : If there is a great difference in the size of the images you might face trouble moving them around. It is easier to make the dimensions of both roughly equal.
Step 3 : I am therefore increasing one of the parameters i.e. Height of the SRK image to 570. Now we can go ahead.
Step 4 : Now select the Magnetic Lasso Tool or the Pen Tool, whichever you find easier to handle. I, however, suggest the Pen Tool (here is the tutorial). You can cut very precisely with the Pen Tool as you can zoom in and select. You cannot zoom in and select in the case of the Magnetic Lasso Tool.
Step 5 : Here I am using the Magnetic Lasso to click around SRK's face to make a selection. Once you come back to the point where you first started the selection will change into a column of 'marching ants'.
Alternately, Here I am selecting with the Pen Tool by zooming in. This allows me select very precisely. 
Step 6 : I have completed the path by clicking around the face with the Pen Tool.
Step 7 : Now click the Paths (see arrow) in the Layers/Channels/Paths pallette.
Step 8 : Now you can see the 'Workpath' in the Paths dialogue box.
Step 9 : Right Click the Workpath. When you click the above dialogue box opens. Click 'Make Selection'.
Step 10 : This dialogue box opens. Make sure that 'New Selection' is selected. By default it should show you this. Click ok.
Step 11 : Now you can see the selection.
Alternately you can make the selection with the Magnetic Lasso Tool. Note that a small 'o' forms near the Magnetic Lasso Tool as you come back to the point you originally began clicking.This indicates that the path is about to be closed and you should close it by clicking on the first point that you began. NOTE should you make a mistake in clicking a point, hit DELETE key on your keyboard. The point will be deleted and you can continue clicking.
Now go to Select at the top as shown by the red arrow and click Feather from the drop down box. Put 2 pixels as Feather radius. Click ok.
Step 12 : Click the Move Tool.
Step 13 : Keeping the SHIFT key pressed I have dragged SRK's face onto the horse rider photo.
Step 14 : Notice that SRK's face faces the other way from the horse rider's. That has to be fixed. Go to Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal.
Step 15 : Now you can see that SRK's face is facing the same direction as the horse rider.
On the top panel make sure 'Show Transform Controls' is checked. In PS 7 it is known as 'Bounding Box' and found in the same place.
Step 16 : Keeping the SHIFT key pressed I have resized SRK's face by dragging the corner handles though it is still too big.
Step 17 : Click the Zoom tool because we need to see the horserider's face in close up.
Step 18 : Now click on the 'Background' layer to select it. The horse rider's photo is on that layer, while Layer 1 contains SRK's face. You will need to switch between the two layers.
Step 19 : Here I have zoomed in on the horse rider's face. TIP use the bracket [ ] keys on your keyboard to zoom in and out.
Step 20 : Keeping the SHIFT key pressed I have resized SRK's face onto the horse rider.
Step 21 : Click the Move Tool or any other tool to apply the transformation. Click Apply in the dialogue box.
Step 22 : Zoom in further. Notice where the red arrows point to. The blending is not proper.
You can use the bracket keys for zooming in or out or the magnifying glass icons with the plus and minus signs at the top left panel for doing so.
Step 24 : Click the Layer Mask button where the small white hand points to and the layer mask forms shown by the red arrow on SRK's face layer.
Step 25 : Click the Brush Tool.
Step 26 : First click where the white arrow points to it. It will reveal this dialogue box. You should set the hardness at 100 % , but the Master Diameter should be set according to your need. A quick way to make the brush tip smaller or bigger is by using the bracket keys [ ] on your keyboard.
Step 27 : Now bring the brush to the image.
Step 28 : The Foreground is set to black. With the Brush Tool delicately brush away around the collar. If you go wrong change the Foreground color to White. Brush back what you have painted out. Click the small bent arrow to switch between the Foreground and Background colors.
Step 29 : SRK's face is still a bit large. Resize it further. But this makes the face of the horseman behind show at the sides. First Click on the Move Tool to Apply the transformation then go to the Layers/Channels/Paths pallette.
Step 30 : Now click back on the Background Layer to select it.
Step 31 : Now zoom in again on the face. You can easily make out the side of the horseman below SRK's face. Now choose the Clone Stamp Tool.
Step 32 : Click the Clone Tool from the flyout. To increase or decease the size of the tool tip use the bracket [ ] keys on your keyboard.
Step 33 : ALT+Click to select the area from which you will clone. I have already clicked on an area.
Step 34 : You can see that as I click the horesman's face behind SRK's disappears.
Step 34 : Notice that the horseman's face showing behind SRK's has been cloned away. Now zoom out.
And there you are it's SRK who is riding the horse now. That's all. Save your work by going to Layer>Flatten Image.Then go to File>Save as. Save as Jpeg.
Step 5 : This is how the image looks after applying the Layer Mask.
Step 6 : Now go to Layers>Blur>Gaussian Blur
Step 7 : Now drag the slider at the bottom of the dialogue box to set the amount to blur. You can see the effect on the image simultaneously.
Step 8 : Go to Filter>Pixelate>Color Halftone
Step 9 : This dialogue box will open. Click ok.
Step 10 : And here is your completed image. Go surprise you friends with your expertise.
Step 2 : Click the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the flyout.
Step 3 : Press SHIFT on the keyboard and you will be able to draw a perfect circle with the Elliptical Marquee Tool.
Step 4 : Go to Select>Inverse.
Step 5 : The selection has been inversed. Now hit the DELETE key on the keyboard.
Step 6 : This is what you get.
Step 7 : Pres SHIFT+CTRL+I on the keyboard and you will be left with the circle only selected.
Step 8 : Go to Edit>Crop.
Step 9 : This is what you get.
Step 10 : Go to Filter>Distort>Spherize.
Step 11 : Set the Amount to 100 % and Mode to Normal. Click ok.
And here is your Fish Eye. You can add a background to it if you like.
Step 1 : Here is another Fish Eye image I have created as shown above. Let us add a background to it. It is easily done.
Step 2 : Here is the background I have chosen.
Step 3 : Double click the layer (red arrow) in the Background of the photo you converted to fish eye by going to the Layers/Channels/Paths dialogue box.
Step 4 : This dialogue box opens. Click ok.
Step 5 : Now click the Magic Wand Tool (top red arrow) and click on the white portion of the image on the top left corner. The top let corner will be selected.
Step 6 : Keep the SHIFT key pressed and touch all the three other white corners with the Magic Wand Tool. The entire white portion is now selected.
Step 7 : Now press CTRL+SHIFT+I and you will find that only the circle is now selected.
Step 8 : Now press CTRL+J on your keyboard. You will immediately notice a new layer -- Layer 1.
Step 9 : Use the Move Tool to move the circular image onto the photo chosen as background. Keep the Shift Key pressed. This will make the circular image land right in the middle of the background image.
Step 10 : This is the Move Tool if you did not know (white arrow).
And here is your fish eye photo on a background. And right in the middle too.
You can try another effect too.
Step 1 : CLick the Add Layer Mask button (shown by the little white and and the blue arrow). Click it and you will find the layer mask will form (red arrow).
Step 2 : Click on top which will bring up the brush dialogue box. Choose the Master diameter at 68 % and set the Hardness to 66 %. Move the sliders (green arrow).
Step 3 : This is Brush Tool if you did not know (green arrow)
Step 4 : With the Brust Tool gently wipe away the bottom of the circular image.
Here is your fish eye with background and with an added effect. Try it out.
2008 set for record number of security breaches
The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a not-for-profit organization that helps victims of identity theft, claims that security breaches in the first three months of 2008 have more than doubled over the same period in 2007.
Up to this week, the organization had already recorded 167 incidents that exposed 8,391,871 personal records this year. This was compared to 76 breaches in 2007. For the whole of 2007, the ITRC tracked 446 breaches involving 127,725,343 personal records.
According to the center, breaches in financial institutions have seen a slight decrease. In the US so far in 2008, Educational institutions account for 25 percent of data breaches; Government agencies suffered 18 percent, with medical and health care organizations causing 14 percent of incidents.
Endpoint Security: Security/Hacking applications that run on a USB flash drive
There have been quite a collection of applications ported to run on USB flash disks. Most of these applications seem innocent enough, however some are deliberatly developed to get around IT software use policies in the workplace, such as P2P filesharing applications, instant messaging applications, FTP clients and podcast managers to name a few. Although these can be seen as a moderate security risk in the wrong hands they are more of a nuisance. However a new breed of applications are making their way to a USB drive near you that you should be more concerned with.
Applications which are used by security professionals (and hackers alike) to test the security of their networks and scan for vulnerabilities now have the capability to run independently from a USB flash drive and no longer require that WinPCap or other third-party packet capture drivers to be installed on a system. Applications such as Nmap, Ethereal, Showtraf, TCPDump, Nemesis and John the Ripper are now appearing online via sites in a modified form that contain an internal packet driver that is loaded when the application is launched.
What this means is that a hacker no longer needs to even have a laptop with them in order to compromise a network, simply bring a USB flash drive in a company and plug it into the USB drive of an available system.
Nmap is a free open source tool used for network exploration and vulnerability auditing. Using Nmap a user can quickly scan large networks as well as target specific hosts. Nmap uses IP packets in unique ways to figure ouw what hosts are available on a given network and can determine what operating system it is running as well as determine what services (including versions) it is running and can also discover what type of packet filters and firewalls are in use.
Ethereal is a free protocal analyzer, also called a packet sniffer that is used for network troubleshooting, analysis and protocol development. The tool allows the user to see all traffic being passed over a network when putting a network card into what is known as “promiscuous mode”.
Showtraf is a tool that monitors network traffic on a network and displays the traffic continuously via a GUI.
TCPDump is similar in functionality to Ethereal, however works via the command line and does not have a graphical user interface. The application allows the user to intercept and display TCP/IP and other packets transmitted and received over a network.
Nemesis works on the command line and is used for packet crafting and injection. It is used primarily for testing Network Intrusion Detection Systems, firewalls and IP stacks and other networking tasks.
John the Ripper is a password cracking tool which works to detect weak password. There are several other password cracking tools that run via USB, in fact most can. Interestingly many anti-virus applications will detect the presence of these files and quarantine them, however all one needs to do is temporarily disable the anti-virus which most users have the rights to do and it can be run without a problem.
Netpass is a utility used to recover network passwords on Windows 98/ME, however can also discover other passwords on XP such as .NET Passport passwords etc.
A “podslurping” application that allows users to copy large quantities files from a system in a matter of seconds. A version that simply audits a system as an example of how such an application works is downloadable from here.
This is just a sampling of security related applications that can be run directly from a USB drive, this is by no means complete. More applications are appearing on a daily basis that can run straight from a USB flash drive. Although this can be incredibly convenient it can also prove to be a severe security issue for network administrators. With the strong focus of network security being focused on the perimeter also known as “The Great Wall Syndrome,” endpoint security has taken a back seat. Given that 70% of security breaches and data thefts occur behind the firewall and increasing cases of data theft in the news, it is time for IT professionals to seriously reconsider their endpoint security strategy.
Disabling USB ports is not difficult, however in a corporate environment this can cause problems, as many USB removable media devices are critical to business productivity. To provide granular access controls, there are products such as DeviceWall’s endpoint security solution, which allow administrators to decide who can plug-in what devices and whether they should have read/write access to these devices.
There are 3 main ready made payload called USB Switchblade, USB Hacksaw and USB Chainsaw(still in early development).
USB Switchblade goal is to silently recover information from computers running Windows 2000 or higher. It is able to get password hashes, LSA secrets, IP information, etc… USB Switchblade also requires administrative privileges in order to run the payload. I will demonstrate on how to hack U3 smart drive with -=GonZor=- SwitchBlade technique.
1. Download -=GonZor=- Payload V2.0
2. Download Universal Customizer
3. Unzip the Universal Customizer to “C:\Universal_Customizer”
4. Unzip the -=GonZor=- Payload V2.0 to “C:\Payload”
5. Copy the file U3CUSTOM.ISO from C:\Payload to C:\Universal_Customizer\BIN replacing the old one.
6. Run C:\Universal_Customizer\Universal_Customizer.exe and plug in U3 smart drive.
- Select Accept and click Next.
- Close all U3 applications and any applications that access your U3 drive and click Next.
- Set a password for the backup zip file (Empty password not allowed)
- Click Next and it will start backing up data. Wait for the Universal Customizer to modify your CD partition and replace your files to the flash drive.
- The modification should now be complete, Unplug your U3 Drive and plug it back in
7. Copy “C:\Payload\SBConfig.exe” to the mass storage of the flash drive
8. Run SBConfig.exe from flash drive
- Select the check boxes of the Payload options you would like to use
- Enter your email address and password for the HackSaw if you wish to use it.
- Click “Update Config” button, a message box should appear to confirm this is completed
- Toggle between using the payload or not by clicking the “Turn PL On”/”Turn PL Off” button
- Toggle between using the U3 Launcher or not by clicking the “Turn U3 Launchpad On”/”Turn U3 Launchpad Off” button
9. You now have -=GonZor=- Payload V2.0 in your U3 smart drive which can automatically steal password once it is plugged in to a computer with administrative privileges.
I’ve tested it and it’s very scary because when I plugged in the hacked U3 smart drive with USB Switchblade payload, the payload ran silently and invisibly! It did not modify any system settings nor sent any network traffic. There is a log file created at F:\System\Logs\COMPUTERNAME (F: drive is the storage drive) by the payload and I am shocked to see that my network configurations, router password, Windows Live Messenger password, Google Talk password, Gmail password, all Firefox passwords, Internet Explorer passwords, ICQ password, Windows Product Keys and etc being recorded in that log file!
There are other techniques available for USB Switchblade payload that you might want to check it out.
As for the USB Hacksaw, it is an evolution of the popular USB Switchblade that uses a modified version of USBDumper, Blat, Stunnel, and Gmail to automatically infect Windows PCs with a payload that will retrieve documents from USB drives plugged into the target machine and securely transmit them to an email account. You can get more information about USB Hacksaw here.
As you can see, it wasn’t really hard to hack my U3 USB smart drive to become the ultimate hack tool. So be very careful when someone wants to plug in their USB flash drive, ESPECIALLY U3 smart drive into your computer.
If you accidentally used the payload on yourself or someone that you didn’t want to, I found two antidotes to remove it. The first antidote is by Spektormax. In Spektormax’s antidote, there are 2 antidotes, antidote(HOME).cmd and antidote(PRO).cmd. This is because Windows XP Pro has the tool taskill while HOME only has tskill. The PRO one can force stop a process even while it doesn’t want to be, the home cannot. Use the PRO if you can, use HOME if you only have XP home.
[ Download Antidote by Spektormax ]
The second antidote is called USB Antidote which is still in early planning stages with the goal of becoming a tool for systems administrators to defend against other USB based attacks, including autorun workarounds, anti-virus updating, operating system patching, and automatic configuration of other USB attack mitigation techniques. This is not just an antidote for the Switchblade, but it is a complete toolkit for quickly securing a pc, with registry tweaks, virus, spyware, and rootkit scanning, and an overall cleanup.
[ Download USB Antidote | Info ]
Get SP3 if you wanna resolve some of network problems..for rest of Pack,continue reading...) follow This basic guide to setup Hamachi without any problems....
