Getting Your Business Online with a Search Engine Marketing Agency

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The best advice any business owner can take is to leave the job to the professionals as they see better results in the long-term. Hiring a search engine marketing agency to do the job for you will mean that your time is freed up to focus on running your business. Although a lot of people can make a fair attempt at Internet marketing, the amount of knowledge you will need to learn and getting it right means that you need a lot of time on your hands. For good results you will probably need to dedicate at least three hours a day for around six months. For a complete beginner you may need to add another hour or two a day because you will need to read up on techniques that are used.

One example could be when Google recently changed their algorithms, a lot of SEO companies were prepared for it and were quickly able to keep their customers ranking high in the search engine results.

For someone who is new at Internet marketing this can be extremely difficult and you will find that you may have to spend yet more time on your website.

A search engine marketing agency will also be able to outsource work for you like web design and article writing so you don?t have to spend time doing this. They would know where to go and who to hire whereas if this is done on your own you will have to go through a trial and error process of finding out which people are reliable and which aren?t. This can cost a lot of money and also you will learn from your mistakes it will still be taking up a lot of your time which could be better spent improving your own business.

Also by choosing a local?Search Engine Marketing Agency?they will have in-depth knowledge of the local market and customers. You know where to visit them and get your ideas across of how you want your online presence to be, they will also be able to help you choose the right marketing methods that are suited to your business and industry. For example there are paid adverts that are powered by all of the major search engines that can easily increase the amount of customers that you have. It is simply like putting an advertising board on search engine results.

There are probably more methods for you to choose from to promote your business online then you could possibly research. That is why using asearch engine marketing agency would be advantageous not only to you but also your business. It is important to let the professionals get on and do their job leaving you to concentrate on your specialised field of running your business.

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'Mad Men' Fans Angered By Slate Writer, Tom Scocca's Assertion Don Draper Does Not Exist

Bad news for "Mad Men" fans who thought they were watching a five-season documentary -- Don Draper is not a real person. We know, we know -- your mind has been blown.

On June 8, Tom Scocca's Slate article, "Don Draper?s Shocking Secret: He Doesn?t Exist," blew the lid off that secret for good, and managed to anger some of the show's fans.

Twitter user Eric Thurm called the article "one of the most condescending things" he'd ever read, while Dov Friedman, called it "aggressively awful."

In the article, Scocca explains that "Don Draper is a made-up person inside your television set. He is a pattern of lit-up dots moving in front of your eyes for one hour, on Sundays, during the season run of the Mad Men program, which mercifully ends this weekend."

Though viewers of the AMC drama are more than aware that Draper, his family and advertising company Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce are all born out of the mind of the show's creator Matt Weiner, Scocca is not convinced because of how often the show is referenced in the news. He says he is perplexed by how often other writers have chosen to use a pop culture reference to help explain a concept or event.

"What's wrong with 'Mad Men' isn't that it makes you boring. What's wrong with 'Mad Men' is that it also makes you stupid," he wrote, before listing an excerpt from a 2011 column in the business section of The New York Times:

As more and more women have come into the work force, corporate America has made significant, if agonizingly slow, progress in making sure its attitudes and the conduct of its leadership reflect those changes. It's no longer a ''Mad Men'' world where women are expected to fetch coffee and whiskey and service their bosses in other ways.

Much to Scocca's chagrin, "Mad Men" has become synonymous with the '60s and Don Draper its foremost figure -- but what he's really angry about his the fact that fans and writers won't shut up about it.

After listing five articles that reference the show he explains:

"What's remarkable -- almost miraculous -- about these 'Mad Men' references is how universally, completely meaningless they are. I belong to the 99 percent of the American public that does not watch 'Mad Men,' yet there's nothing about the Don Draper comparisons that is lost on me."

It's true "Mad Men" is not the country's most watched program -- that title belongs to NBC's Sunday Night Football, which averaged 20.7 million viewers each game this season. But no one seemed to explain to Scocca that a football analogy doesn't quite work when writing about slow changes to the sexist attitudes in corporate America.

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Location app Foursquare to focus on exploration

This undated screenshot provided by foursquare displays the foursquare mobile app. While Foursquare is best known for letting smartphone users tell others about the restaurants and other places they are at, the mobile app is getting a makeover that makes it easier for people to use it to find nearby places to go. (AP Photo/Foursquare)

This undated screenshot provided by foursquare displays the foursquare mobile app. While Foursquare is best known for letting smartphone users tell others about the restaurants and other places they are at, the mobile app is getting a makeover that makes it easier for people to use it to find nearby places to go. (AP Photo/Foursquare)

This undated screenshot provided by foursquare displays the foursquare mobile app. While Foursquare is best known for letting smartphone users tell others about the restaurants and other places they are at, the mobile app is getting a makeover that makes it easier for people to use it to find nearby places to go. (AP Photo/Foursquare)

This undated screenshot provided by foursquare displays the foursquare mobile app. While Foursquare is best known for letting smartphone users tell others about the restaurants and other places they are at, the mobile app is getting a makeover that makes it easier for people to use it to find nearby places to go. (AP Photo/Foursquare)

This undated screenshot provided by foursquare displays the foursquare mobile app. While Foursquare is best known for letting smartphone users tell others about the restaurants and other places they are at, the mobile app is getting a makeover that makes it easier for people to use it to find nearby places to go. (AP Photo/Foursquare)

This undated screenshot provided by foursquare displays the foursquare mobile app. While Foursquare is best known for letting smartphone users tell others about the restaurants and other places they are at, the mobile app is getting a makeover that makes it easier for people to use it to find nearby places to go. (AP Photo/Foursquare)

(AP) ? Foursquare is best known for letting smartphone users tell others about the restaurants and other places they are at, but people are increasingly using it to find nearby places to go to. Now, the mobile app is getting a makeover that turns the focus to this sort of exploration.

In an update Thursday, Foursquare is revamping its app so users can find nearby spots without having to search for them. The app will recommend bars, restaurants or shops based on what places you frequent or what your friends like.

Recommendations will change based on where you are, so you could get different suggestions while traveling to new places, for example.

Other new features include letting people "like" check-ins, venues or comments. And photos will be larger and more prominently displayed.

Associated Press

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Women brave attack to protest Egypt harassment

Mohamed Muslemany

Banker Marwa Salah protests against sexual harassament in Tahrir Square, Cairo, on Friday.

By NBC's Charlene Gubash

A handful of women saw the ugly side of Tahrir Square Friday when they were attacked and sexually harassed soon after they held a small demonstration protesting against just that.

Sexual harassment has plagued recent Tahrir Square rallies and peaked Tuesday when a woman molested by hundreds of men fainted and fell to the ground in front of a female Associated Press journalist who had to be carried away to safety herself.

Journalist Nadia Abul Magd attended the Friday demonstration as 15 women and a few men on a corner of Tahrir Square quietly held signs decrying harassment. She said that just as the protest moved to an adjoining street, waves of men fell upon the protesters, hurling broken glass and rocks at demonstrators and harassing some of the women.? Other men in the crowd tried in vain to protect them.


?We were surrounded by men from both sides and by [the time we reached the corner] I saw a wave. I saw so many that attacked some men and women,? said Abul Magd. ?Every few minutes there was a wave. It was definitely a coordinated attack.?

She said the attackers intended to scare all women from the square and ruin the image of thousands of other legitimate protesters demonstrating against the candidacy of the former Prime Minister, Ahmed Shafiq.???

When we had dropped in hours earlier, a few men had already started arguing with women protesters.

?What are they demonstrating against?? Harassment! How can you distract like this from the public interest, which is getting rid of Shafiq!? shouted an angry young man. He gestured toward the throng of thousands filling Tahrir Square and oblivious to the smattering of women holding signs. ?There are 500,000 people out there. This is not the time.?

Mohamed Muslemany

Lubna Ezzat, an engineer, protests against sexual harassment in Tahrir Square, Cairo, on Friday.

Two other men crowded against the short line of female protesters and held up their own anti -Shafiq fliers while venting fury at the women for staging a separate protest against sexual harassment.? ?

The women explained why they took the risk to protest for the right to walk the streets unmolested.

?You know when you leave home it will happen, either touching or bad language. Every day [harassment] happens here on the streets.? Some days it?s escalated,? said May Abdul Hafiz, a travel agency supervisor. She explained that women are considered at fault for encouraging unwanted male attention by dress or behavior. ?You are not supposed to say anything because they think you brought it on yourself.?

Yasmin, a 28-year-old filmmaker who gave only her first name, called harassment a ?disease.?

?It doesn?t matter what I wear or what age they are, old, young, no reason. We want to change this situation. ? We want to criminalize harassment,? Yasmin said.

Mohamed Muslemany

May Abdul Hafiz, supervisor of a Cairo travel agency, demonstrates against sexual harassment at Tahrir Square, Cairo, on Friday.

Marwa Salah, a banker, said women?s rights will come with civil rights.

?When you have freedom you will have your rights. It?s about freedom for all Egyptians,? said Salah. ?We have been brainwashed for 60 years. All people were so busy fighting poverty, women?s rights were a low priority.?

Abul Magd said the march Friday was targeted by men who wanted to prove they could sexually harass even those who dare protest against sexual harassment in order to prove that Tahrir Square is no longer safe for women or for those who try to protect them.

But the women will have the last word.? Friday night some of the assaulted protesters were in invited to appear on a popular Egyptian talk show where they can share their concerns and fight against sexual harassment in front of a nationwide audience.

With anger growing in Egypt over the ?Mubarak verdict, protestors returned to Tahrir Square to demand justice for those who died in Egypt's revolution. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world?

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US gen apologizes for Afghan deaths in airstrike

Afghan villagers gather near a house destroyed in an apparent NATO raid in Logar province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, June, 6, 2012. Afghan officials and residents say a pre-dawn NATO airstrike aimed at militants in eastern Afghanistan killed civilians celebrating a wedding, including women and children. (AP Photo/Ihsanullah Majroh)

Afghan villagers gather near a house destroyed in an apparent NATO raid in Logar province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, June, 6, 2012. Afghan officials and residents say a pre-dawn NATO airstrike aimed at militants in eastern Afghanistan killed civilians celebrating a wedding, including women and children. (AP Photo/Ihsanullah Majroh)

Elderly Afghan men sit with the covered bodies of three children killed in an apparent NATO raid in Logar province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, June, 6, 2012. Afghan officials and residents say a pre-dawn NATO airstrike aimed at militants in eastern Afghanistan killed civilians celebrating a wedding, including women and children. (AP Photo/Ihsanullah Majroh)

The commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, US Marine Lt. General John Allen, center, meets with the Governor of Logar Province, Allhaj Mohammad Tahir Sabari, left, south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, June, 8, 2012. Lt. General Allen apologized Friday for civilian deaths in a coalition airstrike earlier this week, the first confirmation by NATO forces that civilians were killed in the operation. (AP Photo/Deb Riechmannc)

The Commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, US Marine Lt. General John Allen, center right, walks with Governor of Logar Province, Allhaj Mohammad Tahir Sabari, south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, June, 8, 2012. Lt. General Allen apologized Friday for civilian deaths in a coalition airstrike earlier this week, the first confirmation by NATO forces that civilians were killed in the operation. (AP Photo/Deb Riechmann)

Afghan villagers gather at a house destroyed in an apparent NATO raid in Logar province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, June, 6, 2012. Afghan officials and residents say a pre-dawn NATO airstrike aimed at militants in eastern Afghanistan killed civilians celebrating a wedding, including women and children. (AP Photo/Ihsanullah Majroh)

(AP) ? The top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan offered a somber apology on Friday in an eastern province where officials say 18 civilians ? half of them children ? were killed in a coalition airstrike this week.

U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen spent several hours with local Afghans to express his regrets about Wednesday's pre-dawn raid to capture a Taliban operative in Baraki Barak district of Logar province.

"We take these deaths very seriously and I grieve with their families," Allen told the provincial governor, an elderly man with a long, white beard and gray turban. "I have children of my own, and I feel the pain of this."

Hours after Allen's visit, the U.S.-led coalition issued a statement saying that it had completed its initial assessment of the operation and confirmed that "in addition to the insurgents killed during the operation, it's also responsible for the unintended, but nonetheless tragic, death of Afghan civilians."

Nighttime raids on militants taking cover in villages are a major irritant in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's relationship with the international military coalition. Karzai says the raids put civilians at risk of injury or death. Military officials say such operations are key to capturing and killing Taliban leaders.

Allen left his office in the Afghan capital in the early afternoon and boarded a Blackhawk helicopter that flew him 25 minutes south to Logar.

He met first with the governor, Mohammad Tahir Sabari. The two sat in overstuffed chairs in Sabari's office, each cupping the other man's hands in his own.

"I wanted to come immediately to see you after this tragedy and to offer you, personally, my apologies, my condolences and my regrets," Allen told the governor.

The men then moved to a large conference room where about 35 people ? relatives of the victims, members of the provincial council, Afghan army and police officials and members of parliament ? listened stone-faced as Allen repeated his apology.

"I have come here today to apologize to you all for the tragedy that occurred two days ago," the general began.

"I know that no apology can bring back the lives of the children or the people who perished in this tragedy and this accident, but I want you to know that you have my apology and we will do the right thing by the families. We will do the right thing for the community."

The governor said the anger that boiled over in the province after the airstrike had simmered, but that the residents of Logar want the military to take punitive action against those responsible for the deaths.

"We are accepting his apology, but the people who did this ? whether they were foreigners or Afghans ? should be punished," the governor said. "If they are not punished, the apology means nothing and there will be no result."

Reporters were not allowed to stay for Allen's nearly hour-long meeting with the group, but Mohammad Akbar Stanekzai, a parliamentarian and a member of a delegation Karzai appointed to investigate the incident, recounted some of what took place behind closed doors.

"The faces of the people were very sad," Stanekzai said. "We told the people to stay relaxed, calm and to just talk with the general. They told him 'These incidents don't just happen once, but two, three, four times and they keep happening.'"

Stanekzai said the people demanded that those responsible be put on trial.

A deal signed in April was supposed to resolve the controversy surrounding night raids by putting the Afghan government in charge of such operations. Afghan troops were involved in the operation in Logar, but Karzai has put the blame squarely on the international coalition, condemning its actions and calling for it to give a fuller account of how small children were among the dead.

An Afghan doctor who examined the bodies said villagers told him that a group of Taliban fighters decided to spend the night in the house because people there were celebrating a marriage and the militants thought the wedding party would provide them cover. When NATO and Afghan troops started advancing on the house in the middle of the night, they called out for any civilians to come out, but the insurgents didn't allow them to leave, said Dr. Wali Wakil.

"The Taliban stopped them from getting out of the house," Wakil said.

He said the 18 dead civilians including four women; two older men, including a tribal leader; three teenage boys; and nine young children. Six Taliban fighters were also killed, Wakil said, citing the witnesses. Police had said previously that the district Taliban commander was killed.

Allen said the U.S.-Afghan force called in an airstrike after taking fire, presumably from inside the house, and that the troops did not know civilians were inside.

"A hand grenade was thrown. Three of our people were wounded. We called for the people who were shooting to come out, and then the situation became more grave and innocent people were killed," he said.

Last year was the deadliest on record for civilians in the Afghan war, with 3,021 killed as insurgents ratcheted up violence with suicide attacks and roadside bombs, according to the United Nations.

The number of Afghan civilians killed dropped 36 percent in the first four months of this year compared with last year ? a promising trend though the U.N. emphasizes that too many civilians are being caught up in violence as insurgents fight Afghan and foreign forces.

Anti-government forces, including the Taliban and other militants, were responsible for 79 percent of civilian casualties in the first four months of this year, according to the U.N. Afghan and foreign forces were responsible for 9 percent. It was unclear who was to blame for the remaining 12 percent.

___

Associated Press writer Heidi Vogt contributed to this report from Kabul.

Associated Press

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How 'Flame' Malware Hijacks A Computer

Copyright ? 2012 National Public Radio?. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Meet Flame, every PC owner's worst nightmare. This newly discovered malware gives an attacker remote access to your computer. It can listen in on your conversations, look through your webcam. It was first detected in the Middle East and has been infecting computers for at least two years.

Antivirus experts are calling Flame one of the most complex threats ever discovered. Once a machine is infected, the operator of the malware can expand its functionality almost like adding apps to a smartphone. Its operators sent out another app with orders to erase it this week, leaving no tracks behind.

Much like Stuxnet, Flame is also believed to be the handiwork of a nation-state. Why are antivirus experts so concerned about Flame? How does this malware tool, spy kit(ph) and eavesdrop? Who's behind Flame, and who are they targeting, and why is it being compared to Stuxnet?

That's what we're going to be talking about this hour. Our number is 1-800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. My guest is Kim Zetter. She is senior reporter at Wired covering cybercrime, privacy, security and civil liberties. She's currently writing a book about Stuxnet and joins us from Oakland, California. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

KIM ZETTER: Thank you.

FLATOW: What makes Flame different?

ZETTER: Well, different from the average run-of-the-mill malware that criminals use?

FLATOW: Yeah.

ZETTER: Well, that's a good question because when it first was discovered a lot of people were saying, well, this isn't new because there is a lot of spyware out there already used by criminals. The difference here is the complexity of the malware in this case. It does some of the same things that other malware does, you know, stealing passwords, taking screenshots, that kind of thing.

But the motivation is obviously different, and it comes with just a multitude of functions, much more than something that cybercriminals would use. Cybercriminals, usually their malware is very compact in the sense that it's doing only the precise thing that they want to do, which is often just stealing your banking credentials or credit card numbers.

So Flame has - so far they've found about 20 modules that can be swapped in and out, and they do everything from turning on the internal microphone and webcam on your computer, this way that they could record conversations that you have over Skype or conversations that you have in the room, in the vicinity of the computer.

It takes screenshots of your communications. They seem particularly interested in any email communications or instant messaging communication that you do. It also turns your computer into a Bluetooth beacon. So if you have Bluetooth enabled on your computer, they will turn that on and do a discovery for other Bluetooth-enabled devices in the vicinity, such as a phone, and they will use your computer to then siphon the contact information that is in any phone in the area.

FLATOW: Wow. Wow.

(LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: Why all those things? I mean, what's the reason for that?

ZETTER: Well, it's a toolkit, and so what we think it is it's multifunctional, depending on what the particular need is for the attackers. They probably use this in multiple operations, a variety of operations, and so depending on what they need for a specific target, what they want to steal, they will only download those particular modules to the system.

So in some cases they may be wanting just documents, and so they'll just, you know, download a module that does that. If they want to be listening to meetings that are happening in a room, want to be monitoring email of who's communicating with who, then they would download, you know, those kinds of modules.

FLATOW: Who's the they behind this?

ZETTER: Well, that's the mystery. You know, if we look at where the infections are occurring, and you mentioned that it's primarily in the Middle East, there have been a scattering of infections in Hungary, Austria, Hong Kong, but they're mostly in Iran, places like Syria, Sudan as well, Lebanon, and some cases in occupied West Bank and inside Israel. But the inside Israel ones may be unique for specific reasons.

So if you look at where it's infecting geographically, that can tell you something about who might be interested in those particular areas. And since there seem to be some correlations between Flame and Stuxnet, and we're pretty sure that Stuxnet - well, actually, I guess the U.S. has copped(ph) to Stuxnet - we're pretty sure that Flame is done by the same people or at least backed by the same people.

It's not programmed by the same programmers, but it's done by people who had the same resources behind Stuxnet, and of course Stuxnet was Israel and the U.S.

FLATOW: So this is the next generation of a Stuxnet and a much more complex version?

ZETTER: No, I actually think that this was a precursor to Stuxnet. So when you do a, you know, a mission like Stuxnet, where you are sabotaging a system, you need to gather information about that system first. And the New York Times had an article last week in which they talked about how Stuxnet was conducted, and they said that a program was planted on the target machines first in order to conduct espionage and siphon out information about the system before they designed an attack for it.

So Flame could be used for something like that, but this - I don't think Flame was. Flame is pretty bulky, and, you know, it's not elegant for that kind of activity, but it would probably be used maybe in conjunction with something like that, a pre-stage of a mission.

FLATOW: Does it attack all operating systems, your iPad, your iPhone, your Mac, your PC, all those?

ZETTER: It's focusing on Windows systems. So it's, you know, we're talking about computers here, and it's very - it's doing a lot of steps before it actually infects a system. It's making sure that - you know, it's checking what kind of antivirus you have installed, and so it's going to make decisions based on that to try and thwart the antivirus.

It's looking for other capabilities on the system that might help it spread to other systems on the network. So it wants to spread, but in a limited manner, not like Stuxnet spread.

FLATOW: Yeah, usually your malware is, what, 10 to 15 kilobytes. This is a 20 megabyte piece of software. So it's intelligent on its own, it's making decisions as it goes through there about what - whom to attack, what to take out, what to do along those lines?

ZETTER: It's not making a lot of decisions on its own. It's making some decisions on its own. When it first gets on a system - there are three versions that have been found so far of different size, and one of them is about six megabytes, and that's a pretty bulky one. And the others are more pared-down versions with fewer modules.

So the six-megabyte one has a lot of modules in it, and what the system does - what it does once it gets on a system is it installs itself, and then it calls home to a command and control center. And the command and control center then can pull down - can send down other modules.

So it's basically - it can be controlled remotely. So it has some autonomous capability inside, but it's also looking for additional functionality to come from the attackers.

FLATOW: Is there any way to protect your PC from this?

ZETTER: Well, yes, antivirus systems, antivirus engines are now equipped with signatures to detect this and toolkits to eliminate it. So Flame, you know, for any system that's up-to-date with antivirus, it's not at risk of this.

FLATOW: Didn't the controllers try to snuff out the flame this week, telling it sort of to get rid of its tracks (unintelligible) send out another little app?

ZETTER: Well, it sent out a new version last week to three systems that were in Iran - I think it was Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. And it basically updated itself with a new version. There is a module that will erase Flame, but a lot of the systems were already taken offline last week.

Flame was discovered, or Flame was exposed a week ago on Monday, a week ago last Monday, and antivirus companies already had signatures out there. So for most infections out there, you know, the systems probably would have already been - erased Flame. So sending out a module at that point wouldn't have helped much.

FLATOW: If it's already in your computer, how do we know it's just not sitting there waiting to do something else?

ZETTER: Well, it could be. I mean, if you don't have detection for your system, it could indeed still be sitting there. And there are actually - so the antivirus companies, Kaspersky in particular in Russia, set up a sinkhole to actually intercept the traffic that would have gone to the attackers' command and control centers.

And so they are still seeing activity from infected machines. So there are machines out there that either don't have antivirus installed on them at all or don't have updated versions, and so they still are infected, and they're communicating now with Kaspersky's sinkhole.

FLATOW: And we don't know what the reason. I mean, you say it's got all kind of purposes that it could do, but we don't know exactly - for example, with Stuxnet it attacked the centrifuges. It had a specific job to do. We don't know what that job in this case is.

ZETTER: No, but we believe that it's probably multiple jobs, depending on who the target is. I mean, you've got targets in the occupied West Bank, you've got targets in Syria and Lebanon. They may be targeted for different reasons. So, you know, they could be looking at maybe suspected terrorist cells to see the communications between them.

But one of the interesting things about Flame is the documents that they're stealing, one of the primary interests they have are in AutoCAD documents. And AutoCAD is a software that's used to do - create a computer rendition of things like building plans, factory layouts, things like that.

FLATOW: And could there be other sophisticated malware out there that's waiting to be discovered?

ZETTER: No doubt, yes.

FLATOW: Even more powerful than Flame?

ZETTER: Possibly more powerful or an offshoot of these, yes. Yeah, there's no doubt. This has been - Flame has, looks like, created probably around maybe 2007, 2008. So you know, we're talking five years ago, and Stuxnet was created a little bit after that. And then you've got Duqu that came out a year after Stuxnet. So these are just three of them, and yeah, there's no doubt that there are others.

FLATOW: And once again you say that for people who are concerned, if you update your Windows, Microsoft has a patch out now too, doesn't it, it should remove it from your PC?

ZETTER: Well, Microsoft's patch is different. Microsoft patches the vulnerabilities that the Flame used to spread on a machine or to get on a machine. But if you have antivirus updates, that's the thing that will prevent you from getting infected as well.

FLATOW: And is there any possibility that this was done by a bunch of hobbyists or people who wanted, you know, to just show that they wanted to get into systems?

ZETTER: No, no, not - the amount of work that went into this is not hobbyists. The targets, the geographical regions of the infections, and there are some parallels to Stuxnet in this. And on - this week there were a couple of researchers that discovered - well, Microsoft revealed this week that the attackers had been using a vulnerability in Windows Update to spread.

And the way that they took advantage of that vulnerability is quite sophisticated, and in fact there were a couple of cryptographers who came out with a report saying this week that it was beyond the abilities of an attack that they had developed.

FLATOW: Kim Zetter, thank you very much for taking time to be with us.

ZETTER: You're welcome.

FLATOW: Kim is a senior reporter at Wired, and she's writing a book about Stuxnet. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to talk about why stem cells may be the real culprit behind clogged arteries and arthrosclerosis and might upset and overturn what we think about how hardening of the arteries and clogging of the arteries happens. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.

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McAllen seeks entries for Fourth of July parade

This year, McAllen has adopted the theme of "This Land is Your Land" for the traditional Fourth of July parade.

The city's Parks and Recreation department has put out a call for entries for the parade. Businesses, non-profit groups, civic and youth groups are welcome to participate with a float, vehicle, marching band, horses, animals and more.

Non-profit organizations and sponsors of the parade will have the entry fee waived. Otherwise, the cost is $50 per group, if registration is completed by Friday, June 15. A $10 late fee will be applied to those who enter afterward. Registration closes at 5 p.m. Friday, June 29.

For entry form and more information, visit www.mcallen.net or call (956) 681-3333.

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