Jennifer Sultan Pleads Guilty to Selling Prescription Drugs

At the height of dot-com mania 13 years ago, Jennifer Sultan and a few colleagues sold their small technology company for $70 million in stock and cash. She and her boyfriend rented a large house in the Hamptons for the summer and bought a spacious loft near Union Square.

John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times

Jennifer Sultan faced 15 years to life on the top charge against her, and a potential for more prison time on other counts.

In the years since, that temporary flush of wealth evaporated and Ms. Sultan, 38, developed an addiction to prescription painkillers.

On Friday, she sat handcuffed in a courtroom at State Supreme Court in Manhattan. In exchange for a promise of a four-year prison sentence, she pleaded guilty to selling prescription painkillers and conspiring to sell a firearm.

She was arrested last July and accused of being part of a ring that sold prescription drugs and guns. Four others arrested with Ms. Sultan had already pleaded guilty. One, Nicholas Mina, a former New York City police officer, agreed to serve more than 15 years in prison as part of a plea bargain under which he admitted stealing guns from his colleagues’ precinct house lockers and selling them. Mr. Mina was also addicted to prescription painkillers.

Though Ms. Sultan’s lawyer said she had hoped for less than four years, she faced 15 years to life in prison on the top count against her and the potential for more prison time on other charges. She said little in court but smiled broadly several times as she spoke quietly with her lawyer, Frank Rothman.

“She was happy to be done with it, but she was not happy with the sentence,” Mr. Rothman said afterward.

Ms. Sultan grew up in West Long Branch, N.J., five miles north of Asbury Park, and graduated from New York University in 1996. She and her boyfriend at the time, Adam Cohen, worked at a company, Live Online, that was an early pioneer in live streaming events on the Internet.

After the sale of Live Online, efforts by Ms. Sultan and Mr. Cohen to start other technology companies failed. Ms. Sultan explored other interests, including acupuncture and holistic health.

Early last year, a city narcotics investigator discovered an advertisement Ms. Sultan had placed on Craigslist offering prescription painkillers for sale. She and Mr. Cohen were still living in the penthouse loft near Union Square that they bought after the sale of Live Online.

Five times from February through June, she sold pills to an undercover officer, according to her indictment. One sale took place at the Starbucks on Union Square. In another, she sold 183 oxycodone tablets to the officer for $4,400 at a Starbucks in the Flatiron district near the school where she was studying acupuncture.

A separate investigation into the ring that sold stolen guns and pain medication picked up Ms. Sultan sending a text message to the man accused of being the ringleader, Ivan Chavez, saying she wanted to sell him a .357 Magnum handgun for $850, according to a separate indictment obtained by the Manhattan district attorney.

Mr. Chavez was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Ms. Sultan and Mr. Cohen, who was not accused of participating in the drug and guns ring, filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Last August, the bankruptcy judge ordered them to vacate the loft to allow a bankruptcy trustee to sell it. The 5,600-square-foot loft is still listed for sale at just under $6 million.

She has been incarcerated since her arrest in July because she was unable to raise $85,000 for bail. With credit for good behavior and time served since her arrest, Ms. Sultan could be released from prison in about two years.

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Gadgetwise Blog: How to Beat Some Facebook Scammers

You’ve probably seen those wildly popular Facebook postings that entice you to share something — like a photo of a bear sneaking up on a man — with the instructions, “Press Like and type the number 1 and see what happens.” These posts often list hundreds of thousands of responses.

If you’ve tried it, here’s what you saw happen: nothing. Behind the scenes something is happening, though. With each click, a scammer gets a little closer to cashing in.

The most thorough explanation I’ve seen of how this deception works comes from Daylan Pearce, whose job title is Search Lead at Next Digital, described as Australia’s largest independent digital agency, in Melbourne.

Somewhat simplified, here’s how it works. There is a thriving business in selling Facebook pages. The idea is that a page builds an audience, then essentially sells that audience to someone else. It’s a practice Facebook opposes, but has limited control over.

If a company can buy that audience, its “edge rank” will increase. Edge rank — a term people like Mr. Pearce use, but which Facebook doesn’t officially acknowledge — measures how often someone’s posts show up in other people’s news feeds. “So,” Mr. Pearce said, “a page that has 50,000 likes will have greater exposure on people’s news feeds than a page with only 10,000.”

Edge rank is based on several factors, chief among them affinity, weight and decay, Mr. Pearce said. Affinity is largely based on the number of likes. Weight is based on what accompanies those likes. “A ‘like’ isn’t worth as much as a comment and a comment isn’t worth as much as a ‘share,’” he said.

Decay relates to the age of the post. More views, likes and shares over more time increases edge rank.

Facebook did not quarrel with the basics of Mr. Pearce’s explanation, but said it’s more complicated.

These scam posts are designed to do three things. Get you to like, comment and share the post. It’s a recipe to make it go viral, which takes care of decay.

To hook you, the posts make an intriguing promise, or ask you to support a worthy cause – “like this and share it if you know of someone who has suffered from cancer.”

While you can’t stop people from such postings, you can keep them off your page and reduce the potential profit. You lower their edge rank when you report or at least hide the post.

To do that, hold your cursor over the post and an arrow should appear in the upper right corner. Click it and a drop-down menu offers you the option of hiding or reporting the post.

The more often you report or hide these kinds of posts, the less often they will show up in your news feed.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Tip of the Week: Clean Your Phone and Its Camera

Smartphones spend a lot of time in hand, where they can pick up germs and dirt. Wiping down the phone regularly with an antibacterial cloth intended for use with touch screens can help keep it clean. Many office supply stores like Staples or Office Depot carry disposable wipes for use on phone and tablet screens.

If your phone has a camera and your photos have been looking blurry, you can clean its lens with a microfiber cloth or other wipe for use with camera lenses; a cotton swab moistened with distilled water can also take off stubborn grime. Whatever you do, though, do not spray the phone with industrial cleansers or use cleaning wipes designed for household chores, because these can damage the screen and other parts of the handset.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Moving iTunes Libraries

How do I transfer my iTunes library from a desktop PC to a laptop, neither of which are Apple computers?

All the items in your iTunes library, like music, TV shows and podcasts, are stored in folders on the computer. The iTunes software itself, which is basically a big database program crossed with a media player, displays the items in your library in lists and makes it relatively easy to manage your collection.

To move your library to a new computer, you just need to move your iTunes library folder from the old machine to the new one with a copy of the iTunes software installed. You can do this in several ways depending on how you use iTunes — including transferring all the files over your network with the Home Sharing feature, copying your iTunes folder to an external hard drive or set of DVDs for transport between computers, or transferring content from the iTunes Store with an iPod, iPad or iPhone.

Apple has step-by-step, illustrated instructions for all these moving methods (and others) on its site. If you plan to get rid of the old computer, be sure to deauthorize it for use with your iTunes purchases, as explained here.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Staying Safe From Java Threats

I hear lots of scary stuff about hackers getting into computers thru Java. What do I need to do to make my Mac and PC safe? Any worries about tablets?

Java is a computing platform with its own programming language that is used in many games, business applications and other utilities. It runs on more than 850 million computers worldwide and is used often by Web browsers. Recent attacks on Apple and Facebook used a flaw in the Java Web browser plug-in to infect computers with malicious software when visiting certain sites, and the Department of Homeland Security even issued a warning about Java back in January.

Computers running Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are most at risk. Tablets running systems like Android and iOS are not generally affected; mobile browsers have a setting for the JavaScript programming language, but JavaScript is basically unrelated to Java and its not subject to the current malware issues.

Disabling Java in your Web browser should protect your computer from the recent types of security threats, although you may not be able to play certain games or use Java-dependent applications. Oracle, which develops Java, has instructions for disabling Java in several browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux systems. Independent security sites, like Krebs on Security and Sophos, have additional information.

Apple released its own Mac OS X update to deal with the Java problem on Feb. 19, and the Macworld site has an article on going beyond the browser plug-in and removing Java altogether. Oracle has instructions for uninstalling Java completely on a Windows system, as well as on a Mac.

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Nokia Unveils Low-Priced Phones

BARCELONA — Nokia on Monday introduced two new low-priced basic cellphones, plus two lower-priced versions of its flagship Lumia Windows smartphone — part of an effort by the former market leader to compete amid an intensifying price war in handsets.

The four new phones — the Lumia 720, Lumia 520, Nokia 301 and Nokia 105 — will help Nokia maintain and perhaps build on its position as the No. 2 maker of cellphones worldwide behind Samsung and fend off challenges by two Chinese manufacturers, Huawei and ZTE, analysts said.

The Lumia 520, selling for €139, or about $183, in Europe and $179 in the United States, is priced 25 percent less lower Nokia’s least-expensive smartphone, the Lumia 620.

“I think that with the Lumia 520, Nokia is really going to take the Windows 8 operating system to a much bigger, mass market,” said Pete Cunningham, an analyst at Canalys, a research firm in Reading, England. “I would expect their volumes of Lumia shipments to now start increasing slowly, but they still have a way to go.”

Samsung overtook Nokia last year as the leading global maker of cellphones, amassing a 23 percent market share. Nokia’s market share slipped to 17.9 percent from 24 percent during 2012, according to the market research firm IDC. Apple ended the year in third place at 9.9 percent, followed by ZTE, with 3.6 percent, and Huawei, with 3.3 percent.

The new handsets, which the company unveiled at the Mobile World Congress industry convention in Barcelona, reinforced Nokia’s strategy of targeting the least-expensive but fastest-growing parts of the market. The Nokia 105, the company’s new basic, entry-level phone, will sell for €15 — less than the price of a pizza in some countries.

T-Mobile U.S.A. has agreed to sell the Lumia 520, a 3G phone with a 4-inch touchscreen, in the United States starting in the second quarter, Nokia said.

In 2012, the global market for cellphones that cost $250 or less grew by 99 percent from its level in 2011, and accounted for more than half of all cellphones sold worldwide, according to IDC. The upper-end segment of smartphones costing more than $250 grew by only 23 percent during the same period.

“Nokia is targeting the right end of the market with new, inexpensive phones,” said Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst with IDC in London. “This is where the growth is.”

Nokia, the global market leader in smartphones as late as 2007 before Apple produced its first iPhone, trailed the likes of Blackberry, LG and Motorola with a roughly 4 percent market share in the fourth quarter, according to IDC. Huawei and ZTE, the No. 3 and No. 5, each sold more than twice as many smartphones as Nokia.

This year for the first time, more consumers around the world will buy a smartphone than a simple, basic cellphone, according to IDC.

Stephen Elop, the Nokia chief executive, said the new, lower-priced Lumia handsets would give the company a full array of smartphones it had been lacking.

“These are less-expensive devices, but they will move in much larger volumes,” Mr. Elop, a former Microsoft executive, said during an interview.

Mr. Elop said Nokia was committed to making some of Lumia’s unique features, such as digital lenses that allow users to enhance their own photos, available throughout the entire Lumia lineup, instead of reserving the most advanced features for the most expensive handsets.

The Nokia-Microsoft alliance that was announced two years ago in February 2011, Mr. Elop said, is gaining momentum. He dismissed the possibility that the company would eventually abandon its software partnership with Microsoft for another operating system, such as the Android system made by Google.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that that was the right decision” to choose Microsoft, Mr. Elop said. The alliance with the world’s largest software maker has set Nokia apart from handset makers relying on Android, Mr. Elop said, preserving an identify and edge for Nokia and its products.

With the Lumia line of smartphones expanding, Nokia can begin to sell Microsoft phones increasingly to businesses, which may already be reliant on Microsoft Windows and e-mail services in their operations, Mr. Elop said.

“Being able to bring those all together I think is a very powerful force,” he said. “And it’s something that’s just beginning.”

Nokia sold 4.4 million Lumia smartphones in the fourth quarter, up from 2.9 million in the third quarter. Mr. Elop declined to say how sales of Lumia had develpoped in the first two months of the year. But he suggested that the three new handsets introduced over the last three months would help sustain sales momentum.

The Lumia 920, 820 and 620 are new devices that will translate into new sales, he said. “All of those things will contribute to what we hope to see in the future,” he said.

In the fourth quarter, Nokia generated an profit of €202 million, compared with a loss of €1.1 billion a year earlier.

The Nokia 301, a mid-range feature phone, will be introduced in the second quarter and sell for €65. The 3G handset can display streaming video and comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera and panoramic, wide-angle lens. The Nokia 105 will eventually replace the entry-level Nokia 1280, which sold more than 100 million units in the past two years.

The Nokia 720, which will be sold initially in Asia and Europe, is a 3G handset targeting social media users. The phone, which will sell for €249, comes with 8 gigabytes of internal memory and an SD-card slot for additional storage. China Mobile has agreed to sell the handset in China starting in the second quarter, Nokia said.

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DealBook: Judge Sides With Einhorn and Halts an Apple Shareholder Vote

9:26 p.m. | Updated

A federal judge on Friday ordered Apple to halt collecting shareholder votes on a contentious proposal to change some of its corporate charter, handing a victory to the hedge fund manager David Einhorn.

The ruling issued Friday touches on a fairly narrow legal point. But it signals a clear victory for Mr. Einhorn, who has taken up a fight with Apple over using some of the $137 billion in its corporate treasury to make additional payouts to shareholders.

Mr. Einhorn’s hedge fund firm, Greenlight Capital, has sued Apple in Federal District Court in Manhattan, arguing that the company improperly tied together several shareholder issues to be put for a vote into one proposal. Such bundling violated rules set by the Securities and Exchange Commission, lawyers for the hedge fund argued.

At the heart of the hedge fund’s complaint was that Apple combined a plan to eliminate its ability to issue preferred stock without shareholder approval with two other initiatives that Greenlight favored. By allowing the vote to proceed, lawyers for the firm argued, Greenlight was being forced to vote against its own interests.

The judge overseeing the case, Richard Sullivan, firmly agreed with that interpretation.

“Given the language and purpose of the rules, it is plain to the court that Proposal No. 2 impermissibly bundles ‘separate matters’ for shareholder consideration,” Judge Sullivan wrote in his order. The judge said at a hearing on Tuesday that he was leaning toward Mr. Einhorn’s point of view on the matter.

His ruling comes just days before the company’s shareholder meeting next Wednesday. It will also prevent Apple from accepting shareholder votes on Proposal No. 2, which had included Apple’s plans to eliminate its preferred shares. Some shareholder rights advocates have contended that preferred shares have been used as an anti-takeover tactic by boards and have pushed for their elimination.

Mr. Einhorn’s bigger goal has been to persuade Apple to return some of its billions sitting in cash to shareholders as a way to unlock the company’s value. Greenlight Capital has contended that the company has far more cash than it will ever need, and that preferred shares could provide additional payouts worth about $61 a share, while still leaving the company with an enormous war chest.

“We know they embrace innovation and can recognize it when they see it, even if it isn’t the kind of innovation people usually think of when they think of Apple,” Mr. Einhorn said in a conference call with analysts on Thursday.

Mr. Einhorn said that Apple should issue preferred shares, that would augment a stock dividend and buyback program that the company already has in place.

Although Apple was once the stock market darling for its meteoric rise, in recent months, share prices have sagged.

In a statement on Friday, Greenlight praised the judge’s ruling. “This is a significant win for all Apple shareholders and for good corporate governance,” the firm said. “We are pleased the court has recognized that Apple’s proxy is not compliant with the S.E.C.’s rules.”

Apple will now most likely have to break Proposal No. 2 into its separate elements and resubmit them to a vote.

“We are disappointed with the court’s ruling,” said Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple. “Proposal No. 2 is part of our efforts to further enhance corporate governance and serve our shareholders’ best interests. Unfortunately, due to today’s decision, shareholders will not be able to vote on Proposal No. 2 at our annual meeting next week.”

Apple had argued that the plan in its entirety was actually shareholder-friendly, and enjoyed the backing of prominent investors like the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

Anne Simpson, the Calpers director of global governance, said in a statement: “We continue to support Apple in their efforts, and believe that the implementation of majority voting and shareholder approval for the issuance of new stock — preferred or otherwise — is worth waiting for.”

Ruling for Greenlight Capital in Battle With Apple

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/23/2013, on page B4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: U.S. Judge Halts an Apple Shareholder Vote.

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In a Slight Shift, North Korea Widens Internet Access, but Just for Visitors

HONG KONG — North Korea will finally allow Internet searches on mobile devices. But if you’re a North Korean, you’re out of luck — only foreigners will get this privilege.

Cracking the door open slightly to wider Internet use, the government will allow a company called Koryolink to give foreigners access to 3G mobile Internet service by next Friday, according to The Associated Press, which has a bureau in the North.

The North Korean police state is famously cloistered, a means for the government to keep news of the world from its impoverished people. Only the most elite North Koreans have been allowed access to the Internet, and even they are watched. And although many North Koreans are allowed to have cellphones, sanctioned phones cannot call outside the country.

Foreigners were only recently allowed to use cellphones in the country. Previously, most had to surrender their phones with customs agents.

But it is unlikely that the small opening will compromise the North’s tight control of its people; the relatively few foreigners who travel to North Korea — a group that includes tourists and occasional journalists — are assigned government minders.

The decision, announced Friday, to allow foreigners Internet access comes a month after Google’s chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, visited Pyongyang, the North’s capital. While there he prodded officials on allowing Internet access, noting how easy it would be to set up through the expanding 3G network of Koryolink, a joint venture of North Korean and Egyptian telecommunications corporations. Presumably, Mr. Schmidt’s appeal was directed at giving North Koreans such capability.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world, their economic growth and so forth,” Mr. Schmidt told reporters following his visit. “We made that alternative very, very clear.”

North Koreans will get some benefit from the 3G service, as they will be allowed to text and make video calls, The Associated Press said. They can also view newspaper reports — but the news service mentioned only one source: Rodong Sinmun, the North’s main Communist Party newspaper.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Moving the Mac’s Dock

It’s easy to move the Taskbar to a different edge of the screen on a Windows machine, but how do you move the Mac’s row of program icons from the bottom of the screen?

The Windows Taskbar — that row of program icons and open files that typically appears along the bottom edge of the screen — can be moved to the top or sides of the desktop by dragging it with the mouse, or in some later versions of Windows, by unlocking it first before dragging. The Dock, the Mac’s rough equivalent of the Taskbar, can also be moved to other edges of the screen in a few ways.

One method is to click the Mac’s Apple menu up in the top-left corner of the screen, select Dock and slide over to the submenu with the commands to position the dock on the left or right sides of the desktop. This same sub-menu holds options for automatically hiding the Dock on the screen until you pass the mouse cursor nearby, as well as the option for magnifying the icons stocked in the Dock when you pass the cursor over.

The Apple menu can take you right to the Dock’s settings in the Mac’s System Preferences if you want to fine-tune things further. You can also get to these settings by clicking the System Preferences icon in the Dock itself and clicking the Dock icon. In addition to the controls for positioning the Dock on the desktop, the preferences box contains settings for changing the overall size of it, adjusting the magnification size of the icons and other visual aspects of the Dock.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Tip of the Week: Search the Text on a Web Page

Search engines help find the Web pages you are looking for, but when it comes down to locating your keywords on the actual page, your browser can help. Most browser programs use the Control-F (Command-F on the Mac) to open a search box for finding certain words within the page itself, and most highlight the instances of the word (and number of time it appears). Google Chrome also displays yellow markers vertically along the scroll bar on the right side of the page so you can quickly see all the places the word or phrase appears.

Back and forward buttons in the search box let you click through the page for each occurrence of the word. Depending on the browser, you may be able to fine-tune your search results within the page. Internet Explorer includes an Options button that can match the whole word only or just the typographical case; Firefox can also match the word’s case, making it easier to locate proper nouns and names within a page.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Locking Caps on an iPhone

While I have no desire to SHOUT MY WAY through text messages, I do have to use ALL UPPERCASE sometimes and would like to have CAPS LOCK available on my iPhone. Do I have ANY HOPE?

While the phone’s software keyboard has no dedicated Caps Lock key, quickly tapping the Shift key twice turns on the Caps Lock function. The Shift key turns blue when in Caps Lock mode. To turn off the Caps Lock mode, tap the Shift key again.

The iPhone keyboard has a few other shortcuts to make typing in such a small area more efficient. For example, instead of tapping the .?123 key in the bottom-left corner to switch over to the section of the keyboard that holds the numbers and punctuation keys (and then having to tap the corner key again to switch back to the ABC keyboard), just press the .?123 key down and slide your finger to the number or punctuation mark you need. Once you slide over and select the character, you can resume typing without having to tap back and forth between the different keyboards.

Pressing and holding keys for vowels (and other letters) that use accent marks reveals a pop-up list of accented characters to choose from, like é or ü. When you tap the space bar twice at the end of a sentence, the iPhone inserts a period and capitalizes the next letter you type to begin a new sentence. Apple’s site has an illustrated page of other tips and tricks for the iPhone 5.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Controlling Access to a Kindle Fire HD

Is there any way to keep my kid from roaming around through the videos on my Kindle Fire HD tablet?

Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets include built-in parental controls for restricting access to specific apps, functions and content on the device. On the Kindle Fire HD, swipe your finger down on the screen to get to the settings area and tap More. Tap Parental Controls and then tap the On button. Select a password (one that will be needed to unlock the restrictions), and tap the Finish button. Select the apps and actions you want to block, like the Web browser, e-mail, video playback or the power to make purchases. Amazon has more information on parental controls here.

The newer Kindle Fire HD models also include Kindle FreeTime, an app that lets you select videos, apps and other specific content the child can view on the tablet. Instructions for setting up a child’s FreeTime profile are on Amazon’s site as well.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Deleting Photos From the iPad

How do I delete photos from the iPad? Some images have a trash can icon I can use to remove them, but others don’t.

The iPad’s Photos app stores both the images you have added directly to the tablet (like pictures saved from e-mail, downloaded from the Web or taken with the iPad’s camera) and those you have copied over from the computer through iTunes. The steps for deleting the photos depend on how the pictures got there in the first place.

The photos you have added directly to the iPad can be deleted directly by tapping that trash can icon for individual pictures on the screen. You can delete multiple photos at once by tapping the Edit button on the album-view screen (typically the Camera Roll album, where saved and shot pictures are stored by default), selecting the pictures you want to remove and then tapping the red Delete button in the top-left corner of the screen.

Photos that you have added to the iPad by using iTunes to sync them from your computer’s pictures library or photo-editing program (like iPhoto or Adobe Photoshop Elements) must be removed through iTunes as well. To do so, connect the iPad to the computer (either with its USB cable or through your Wi-Fi Syncing setup) and click its icon in the iTunes window.

When the screen of iPad settings appears, click the Photos tab so the window shows the albums you have synced to the tablet. Turn off the checkboxes next to the albums you want to delete. The click the Apply button in iTunes and then the Sync button to remove those collections from the iPad. (If you just want to remove certain photos, remove them from the album on the computer and then sync the edited album to the iPad again.)

If you use Apple’s iCloud and its Photo Stream feature, you can find instructions for deleting selected photos from the Photo Stream album here.

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Dismissed as Doomsayers, Advocates for Meteor Detection Feel Vindicated

For decades, scientists have been on the lookout for killer objects from outer space that could devastate the planet. But warnings that they lacked the tools to detect the most serious threats were largely ignored, even as skeptics mocked the worriers as Chicken Littles.

Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dr. Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive, has warned about space threats.

No more. The meteor that rattled Siberia on Friday, injuring hundreds of people and traumatizing thousands, has suddenly brought new life to efforts to deploy adequate detection tools, in particular a space telescope that would scan the solar system for dangers.

A group of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who helped build thriving companies like eBay, Google and Facebook has already put millions of dollars into the effort and saw Friday’s shock wave as a turning point in raising hundreds of millions more.

“Wouldn’t it be silly if we got wiped out because we weren’t looking?” said Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive who leads the detection effort. “This is a wake-up call from space. We’ve got to pay attention to what’s out there.”

Astronomers know of no asteroids or comets that pose a major threat to the planet. But NASA estimates that fewer than 10 percent of the big dangers have been discovered.

Dr. Lu’s group, called the B612 Foundation after the imaginary asteroid on which the Little Prince lived, is one team of several pursuing ways to ward off extraterrestrial threats. NASA is another, and other private groups are emerging, like Planetary Resources, which wants not only to identify asteroids near Earth but also to mine them.

“Our job is to be the first line of defense, and we take that very seriously,” James Green, the director of planetary science at NASA headquarters, said in an interview Friday after the Russian strike. “No one living on this planet has ever before been hurt. That’s historic.”

Dr. Green added that the Russian episode was sure to energize the field and that an even analysis of the meteor’s remains could help reveal clues about future threats.

“Our scientists are excited,” he said. “Russian planetary scientists are already collecting meteorites from this event.”

The slow awakening to the danger began long ago, as scientists found hundreds of rocky scars indicating that cosmic intruders had periodically reshaped the planet.

The discoveries included not just obvious features like Meteor Crater in Arizona, but wide zones of upheaval. A crater more than a hundred miles wide beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico suggested that, 65 million years ago, a speeding rock from outer space had raised enough planetary mayhem to end the reign of the dinosaurs.

Some people remain skeptical of the cosmic threat and are glad for taxpayer money to go toward urgent problems on Earth rather than outer space. But many scientists who have examined the issues have become convinced that better precautions are warranted in much the same way that homeowners buy insurance for unlikely events that can result in severe damage to life and property.

Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, astronomers turned their telescopes on the sky with increasing vigor to look for killer rocks. The rationale was statistical. They knew about a number of near misses and calculated that many other rocky threats whirling about the solar system had gone undetected.

In 1996, with little fanfare, the Air Force also began scanning the skies for speeding rocks, giving credibility to an activity once seen as reserved for doomsday enthusiasts. It was the world’s first known government search.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration took a lead role with what it called the Spaceguard Survey. In 2007, it issued a report estimating that 20,000 asteroids and comets orbited close enough to the planet to deliver blows that could destroy cities or even end all life. Today, with limited financing, NASA supports modest telescopes in the southwestern United States and in Hawaii that make more than 95 percent of the discoveries of the objects coming near the Earth.

Scientists lobbied hard for a space telescope that would get high above the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere. It would orbit the Sun, peering across the solar system, and would have a much better chance of finding large space rocks.

But with the nation immersed in two wars and other earthly priorities, the government financing never materialized. Last year, Dr. Lu, who left the NASA astronaut corps in 2007 to work for Google, joined with veterans of the space program and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to accelerate the asteroid hunt.

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Bits Blog: Facebook Says Hackers Breached Its Computers

Facebook admitted that it was breached by sophisticated hackers in recent weeks, two weeks after Twitter made a similar admission. Both Facebook and Twitter were breached through a well-publicized vulnerability in Oracle’s Java software.

In a blog post late Friday afternoon, Facebook said it was attacked when a handful of its employees visited a compromised site for mobile developers. Simply by visiting the site, their computers were infected with malware. The company said that as soon as it discovered the malware, it cleaned up the infected machines and tipped off law enforcement.

“We have found no evidence that Facebook user data was compromised,” Facebook said.

On Feb. 1, Twitter said hackers had breached its systems and potentially accessed the data of 250,000 Twitter users. The company suggested at that time that it was one of several companies and organizations to be have been similarly attacked.

Facebook has known about its own breach for at least a month, according to people close to the investigation, but it was unclear why the company waited this long to announce it. Fred Wolens, a Facebook spokesman, declined to comment.

Like Twitter, Facebook said it believed that it was one of several organizations that were targeted by the same group of attackers.

“Facebook was not alone in this attack,” the company said in its blog post. “It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well.”

The attacks add to the mounting evidence that hackers were able to use the security hole in Oracle’s Java software to steal information from a broad range of companies. Java, a widely used programming language, is installed on more than three billion devices. It has long been hounded by security problems.

Last month, after a security researcher exposed a serious vulnerability in the software, the Department of Homeland Security issued a rare alert that warned users to disable Java on their computers. The vulnerability was particularly disconcerting because it let attackers download a malicious program onto its victims’ machines without any prompting. Users did not even have to click on a malicious link for their computers to be infected. The program simply downloaded itself.

After Oracle initially patched the security hole in January, the Department of Homeland Security said that the fix was not sufficient and recommended that, unless “absolutely necessary”, users should disable it on their computers completely. Oracle did not issue another fix until Feb. 1.

Social networks are a prime target for hackers, who look to use people’s personal data and social connections in what are known as “spearphishing” attacks. In this type of attack, a target is sent an e-mail, ostensibly from a connection, containing a malicious link or attachment. Once the link is clicked or attachment opened, attackers take control of a user’s computer. If the infected computer is inside a company’s system, the attackers are able to gain a foothold. In many cases, they then extract passwords and gain access to sensitive data.

Facebook said in its blog post that the updated patch addressed the vulnerability that allowed hackers to access its employees’ computers.

Hackers have been attacking organizations inside the United States at an alarming rate. The number of attacks reported by government agencies last year topped 48,500 — a ninefold jump from the 5,500 attacks reported in 2006, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In the last month alone, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post all confirmed that they were targets of sophisticated hackers. But security experts say that these attacks are just the tip of the iceberg.

A common saying among security experts is that there are now only two types of American companies: Those that have been hacked and those that don’t know they’ve been hacked.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Creating Customized Shortcuts for Microsoft Word

I find the keyboard shortcut for adding a comment to a Word document cumbersome. Can I change it to different keys?

Microsoft Word’s keyboard shortcut for inserting an editorial comment into a document under review (Control-Alt-M in the Windows version or Command-Option-A for the Mac edition) does take three keys to execute, but you can reassign the command to fewer (or a more comfortable combination of) keys.

In recent versions of Word for Windows, click the File tab, then Options and then select the Customize Ribbon tab. In the “Customize the Ribbon and keyboard shortcuts” area, click Customize. Choose the name of the template or document name you want to use in the “Save changes in” area of box.

In the list of Categories shown, select the menu name or category that contains the command you want to change, like “Insert.” In the Commands list, choose the name of the particular action you want to use, like “InsertNewComment.” The box shows the current keys that are assigned for the shortcut, provides a field to create a custom key combination and a button to assign it. Click OK when you have assigned the keys you want to use for the Insert New Comment command; your new command will replace any combinations already in use as shortcuts.

Microsoft has detailed instructions for making custom keyboard shortcuts for Windows on its site, as well as the equivalent steps for Mac users who want to make their own keyboard shortcuts. The box for creating custom keyboard shortcuts also includes a reset button so you can revert to Microsoft’s original shortcuts for the program’s commands if you choose.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Tip of the Week: Adjusting Facebook Photo Previews

Hate the way Facebook seems to arbitrarily crop photos you post on your Timeline to fit the square preview windows? On the desktop version, you can change which part of the picture shows in the preview when you’re using Facebook through your Web browser.

To do so, pass the cursor over the image and then click the pencil icon that appears in the top right corner of the post. On the menu that appears, choose Reposition Photo. Click the cursor onto the photo and drag the image until you have the crop you desire for the preview window. Click the Save button. Even though you have now made the photo more appealing for friends browsing your Timeline page, the original image remains uncropped and expands into the full view when someone clicks on the preview window.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Replacing the Motherboard Battery

My ThinkPad laptop asks me to reset the date and time each time I boot up. Why?

Although there could be software issues involved, the battery on the motherboard may be weak or dead. This battery — sometimes referred to as the backup battery, BIOS battery or CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) battery — supplies power for the computer to retain basic settings like time and date.

Replacing the CMOS battery may fix the issue. If you do not feel like paying a computer-repair shop, you can do it yourself. You need to buy the correct replacement battery (less than $10). Open up the laptop’s case so you can swap in the new power cell. Lenovo’s support site has online manuals for most ThinkPad models that show the location of the CMOS battery. Third-party repair sites like iFixit offer illustrated guides for some laptops as well.

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DealBook Column: Relationship Science Plans Database of Names and Connections

It sounds like a Rolodex for the 1 percent: two million deal makers, power brokers and business executives — not only their names, but in many cases the names of their spouses and children and associates, their political donations, their charity work and more — all at a banker’s fingertips.

Such is the promise of a new company called Relationship Science.

Never heard of it? Until recently, neither had I. But a few months ago, whispers began that this young company was assembling a vast trove of information about big names in corporate America. What really piqued my interest was that bankrolling this start-up were some Wall Street heavyweights, including Henry R. Kravis, Ronald O. Perelman, Kenneth G. Langone, Joseph R. Perella, Stanley F. Druckenmiller and Andrew Tisch.

It turns out that over the last two years, with a staff of more than 800 people, mostly in India, Relationship Science has been quietly building what it hopes will be the ultimate business Who’s Who. If it succeeds, it could radically change the way Wall Street does business.

That’s a big if, of course. There are plenty of other databases out there. And there’s always Google. Normally I wouldn’t write about a technology company, but I kept hearing chatter about it from people on Wall Street.

Then I got a glimpse of this new system. Forget six degrees of Kevin Bacon. This is six degrees of Henry Kravis.

Here’s how it works: Let’s say a banker wants to get in touch with Mr. Kravis, the private equity deal maker, but doesn’t know him personally. The banker can type Mr. Kravis’s name into a Relationship Science search bar, and the system will scan personal contacts for people the banker knows who also know Mr. Kravis, or perhaps secondary or tertiary connections.

The system shows how the searcher is connected — perhaps a friend, or a friend of a friend, is on a charitable board — and also grades the quality of those connections by identifying them as “strong,” “average” or “weak.” You will be surprised at the many ways the database finds connections.

The major innovation is that, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, it doesn’t matter if people have signed up for the service. Many business leaders aren’t on Facebook or LinkedIn, but Relationship Science doesn’t rely on user-generated content. It just scrapes the Web.

Relationship Science is the brainchild of Neal Goldman, a co-founder of CapitalIQ, a financial database service that is used by many Wall Street firms. Mr. Goldman sold CapitalIQ, which has 4,200 clients worldwide, to McGraw-Hill in 2004 for more than $200 million. That may explain why he was able to easily round up about $60 million in funds for Relationship Science from many boldface names in finance. He raised the first $6 million in three days.

“I knew there had to be a better way,” Mr. Goldman said about the way people search out others. Most people use Google to learn about people and ask friends and colleagues if they or someone they know can provide an introduction.

Relationship Science essentially does this automatically. It will even show you every connection you have to a specific company or organization.

“We live in a service economy,” Mr. Goldman said. “Building relationships is the most important part for selling and growing.”

Kenneth Langone, a financier and co-founder in Home Depot, said that when he saw a demonstration of the system he nearly fell off his chair. He used an unprintable four-letter word.

“My life is all about networking,” said Mr. Langone, who was so enthusiastic he became an investor and recently joined the board of Relationship Science. “How many times do I say, ‘How do I get to this guy?’ It is scary how much it helps.”

Mr. Goldman’s version of networking isn’t for everyone. His company charges $3,000 a year for a person to have access to the site. (That might sound expensive, but by Wall Street standards, it’s not.)

Price aside, the possibility that this system could lead to a deal or to a new wealth management client means it just might pay for itself.

“If you get one extra deal, the price is irrelevant,” Mr. Goldman said.

Apparently, his sales pitch is working. Already, some big financial firms have signed up for the service, which is still in a test phase. Investment bankers, wealth managers, private equity and venture capital investors have been trying to arrange meetings to see it, egged on, no doubt, by many of Mr. Goldman’s well-heeled investors. Even some development offices of charities have taken an interest.

The system I had a peek at was still a bit buggy. In some cases, it was missing information; in other cases the information was outdated. In still other instances, the program missed connections. For example, it didn’t seem to notice that Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, should obviously know a certain senior partner at Goldman.

But the promise is there, if the initial kinks are worked out. I discovered I had paths I never knew existed to certain people or companies. (Mr. Goldman should market his product to reporters, too.)

One of the most vexing and perhaps unusual choices Mr. Goldman seems to have made with Relationship Science is to omit what would be truly valuable information: phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Mr. Goldman explained the decision. “This isn’t about spamming people.” He said supplying phone numbers wouldn’t offer any value because people don’t like being cold-called, which he said was the antithesis of the purpose of his database.

Ultimately, he said, as valuable as the technology can be in discovering the path to a relationship, an artful introduction is what really counts.

“We bring the science,” he said. “You bring the art.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/12/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: A Database Of Names, And How They Connect.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q.& A.: Checking a PC's Graphics Card

How can I tell how much memory I have for graphics and video on my Windows 7 PC?

You can check out the video card your computer uses by going to the Start menu to Control Panel, selecting Appearance and Personalization and clicking on “Adjust screen resolution.” If you want a quicker way to get the same Control Panel, just right-click on the Windows desktop and select Screen Resolution.

Once you land in the Screen Resolution box, click the link for Advanced Settings. When the Advanced Settings box appears, click the Adapter tab to see more information about your computer’s video card, including the make, model and the amount of available memory it has.

Some desktop computers — especially those designed for gaming and other video-intensive activities — may have a dedicated or “discrete” video card installed inside the machine. Laptops and more modest desktop machines tend to use integrated graphics processors built into the computer’s motherboard that typically share some of the overall system memory.

Upgrading a laptop’s graphics card is difficult (if not impossible) depending on the model and the motherboard, but many desktop computers can be upgraded. Microsoft has a guide to upgrading a graphics card in a Windows 7 computer that outlines the process.

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