Category: Technology

Tech Talk – Miscellaneous discussion of gadgets, industry, computer science, social media, AI

Phishing for spam

The New York Times this week reported that spam levels have doubled in the last six months. I’m pretty sure there was a lull towards the end of the summer, but we’ll take their word for it. The paper reports on figures released by one of the myriad spam-filtering companies, Ironport, and claims that 90 percent of the 50 billion e-mails sent across the internet (as opposed to internal company emails, which are a different matter) every day is a spam or a phishing mail.

Everyone assumes that the vast majority of the spam sent is offering pictures and videos of people in various states of undress for the one-handed surfers out there. However, the spam figures don’t quite stack up like that. The “London” Times published figures that reveal half of all spam is for health products, a third of all spam is for money and stocks advice and tips, and a mere 3 out of every 100 is adult-only content, as it were. That’s still 1.5b adult spams a day.

Moreover, the London Times’ report suggests more worryingly that spam mail has increased by 300% in the last four months, not merely doubling as the NYT has it.

The anti-spam companies claim they can trap 95% of the spam, but that leaves 2.5b spams getting through every day. The vast majority of those seem to arrive in my inbox, and I daren’t take a holiday for fear of missing that false positive when the spam trap clears the filters each week.

What do you think? Is spam affecting your work? What can we do to stem the tide?

Changing face of XP

Running Windows XP, fancy a change of scene, then download the newly released Zune theme from Microsoft. To my eye, it’s a less juvenile colour scheme than the standard XP theme with its primary colours etc.

Zune theme

There’s a totally pointless video on the web showing you how to install it, but all you have to do is click that link, save and run the MSI file and then hit “Apply” as and when.

Of course, if you’re on Linux or Mac you probably couldn’t care less about the latest XP theme, but if you’re on XP and have people walking by your desk on a regular basis you could probably persuade some of them at least that you’ve got Vista already, without having to actually install it. Or maybe not.

Is the “old” XP them too garish? Have you installed the Zune theme? What do you think of it? Are the desktop and taskbar items as clear as they are in the original?

How Not to do Cosmetic Surgery with WD-40

Ever had the urge to hit an aerosol hard with a sledgehammer, and then thought better of it?

This video will serve as a nice little warning to any budding vandals out there who think it would be fun to smash a burning can of WD-40.

WD-40, as most Sciencebase readers, will know is a petroleum product used to quickly lubricate sticky metal joints, nuts, bolts, bike chains and such. It was named by the product’s developers Rocket Chemical Company and refers to the fact that the successful water displacement formulation was made on the fortieth attempt. Obvious really, and certainly not an urban legend. Whether or not this video clip will become an urban legend one has to wonder, it doesn’t look like the guy is wearing any protective clothing other than his nice blue baseball cap. Puts a whole new slant on the term chemical peel!

Of course, the video is surely a publicity stunt of some kind, either that or the guy’s amazingly fast drop and roll to extinguish the flames was well rehearsed before hand. How else can you explain his keeping his composure to do that while his face is on fire? I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to give this a go. By the way, there’s actually no visible evidence that this was WD-40 at all (other petroleum-based lubes are available).

Chemistry with meaning

Online shopping and music downloads are full of meaning, apparently. But, they don’t mean meaning like some deep philosopical property, they mean semantics – the meta data that is hidden from shoppers and downloaders but that makes the whole consumer experience work on the web. Now, my old friends Henry Rzepa and Omer Casher, of Imperial College London, hope to adapt the semantics of other sectors of the internet to provide a richer browsing and downloading experience for chemists.

They suggest that publishers of electronic scientific journals – whether learned societies or commercial publishers – should latch on to the semantic web sooner, rather than later so that the information revolution that is underway in scientific publishing can be complete.

The Semantic Web will foster information exchange by putting documents with computer-processable meaning (semantics) on the Internet so that software agents can help in the dissemination of information. Chemistry is well stacked with latent information that is lost if meta data – such as spectra, physical properties, searchable chemical structures, is abandoned, as occurs when a research paper is published electronically as a two-dimensional PDF file, for instance.

Writing in the journal Chemical Information and Modeling, the researchers describe SemanticEye, a semantic web application that adapts the digital music model to chemical-related electronic journal articles. It allows journal articles to contain embedded document object identifiers (DOIs) and other material. Those clues enable software to find relationships between new articles and those already published, and collect all the relevant documents for the user’s benefit.

Ironically, their paper is available as one of those simple PDF things, but at least the html version has CrossRef links.

ntl Netguard

Cable company NTL offers its users a seemingly simple solution to online security in the form of its snappily named Netguard.

Netguard provides a complete package of services, including antivirus, pop-up blocker, form filler (form filer, it says on the ntl site), and a privacy manager. If you want to pay for extra components there are Firewall, Anti-spyware and Parental Control modules.

The firewall apparently “blocks other users from accessing your computer while you’re on the Internet”. Surely if you’re sitting in front of your machine you can stop them getting at your keyboard and mouse with brute force? But, yes, I know what they mean.

Parental Control – blocks thousands of inappropriate websites, tools to help you control what tools (like Chat) your kids use and flexible to allow for easy over-rides. I hate that word inappropriate? Certain sectors of society could describe almost any of the billions of pages on the web as inappropriate. Youtube is “inappropriate” if you’re supposed to be doing your assignment or the housework. Again, I know what they’re really getting at.

The Anti-spyware module blocks tracking software that tracks your Internet use and steals your personal information. Tracking software that tracks. Well, I never!

Netguard is £2.99 for 2Mb customers but free for 4Mb and 10Mb customers.

And therein lies, the rub. Always a sucker for a freebie, and running on 4Mb download, last week I thought I’d give Netguard a whirl and then review it here. Within minutes a previously entirely stable Windows XP machine was rendered into a flickering “blue-screen-of-death” brick. It took me a whole working day to resurrect the machine using the recovery discs and I still cannot access the built-in DVD player. So, thanks for nothing NTL!

Turns out I’m not the only one. A friend told me they opted for Netguard when their Norton Antivirus expired and they didn’t fancy paying to renew. Same result – blue screen brick. I suspect we’re not alone, although obviously there aren’t many posts about problems with Netguard on the internet just yet because users cannot get online (they’re machines were rendered into blue screen of death bricks, remember?)

Anyway, my advice for NTL users whatever download speed you have on broadband. DO NOT USE NTL NETGUARD. FULL STOP.

Instead, grab yourself Google toolbar for your browser. Google Toolbar has a form filler. Upgrade to Firefox or Internet Explorer 8 for your browsing as it has built-in pop-up blocking and anti-phishing settings.

Next, get the latest version of AVG Antivirus (free for personal use) and the accompanying AVG Antispyware program. And, finally, the free ZoneAlarm personal edition for your firewall. None of these programs have ever crashed or trashed my PC and as far as independent reviewers go are just as good at their jobs as any paid for software and certainly infinitely better than NTL TrashGuard, sorry NetGuard.

The only thing missing from my list of alternatives is the parental control. But, then I know what pages I personally consider inappropriate and can steer clear. That said, OpenDNS now has a powerful parental filter that can be made to work at the router level without having to install an easy to crack nanny-type program on the computer to which your kids have access.

(Hope you got your machine fixed Lesley, by the way!)

Sciencebase readers may be interested to know that since ntl became VirginMedia there is a newly named version of this software I’ve written about briefly here – www.virginmedia.com/pcguard. I’d be happy to reconsider my position on this application suite if someone from VirginMedia can offer me a test machine to try out the software.

Santa Claus Address

Santa Claus AddressNow that Thanksgiving, Black Friday, the Holiday Weekend, and Cyber Monday are over for another year, it’s time to start writing your letter to Santa Claus…

Of course, to make sure it reaches him, you’ll want to know his proper address, not just one of those scammy spammy addresses that say “North Pole”. As you probably know there are actually two North Poles and they never sit still. There’s the geographical North Pole, which is the point at the top of the world through which the earth’s axis passes, then there is the magnetic North Pole, which is quite variable and at several times in history has actually been at the South Pole.

Thankfully, NASA has done some satellite tracking and a little remote imaging to try and trace Santa Claus’ address and have come up with the goods. Check out their images and learn how to pronounce Santa’s zip code here. But, for our recent anonymous visitor who cannot click a link I’ll spell it out:

Mr S Claus

North Pole

H0H OH 0

Science journalist in the news

UPDATE: October 2023 I heard from UCL chemist Andrea Sella, who had attended a Poliakoff lecture, that Martyn still gives me a shoutout when discussing SCFs, which is great to hear!

It’s not often that I’m on the receiving end of journalism, but today Jenny Gristock gave me a taste of celebrity in a Guardian media article about the role played by science journalism in science.

I’d tipped her off about one of the biggest success stories, from the perspective of academic research becoming an industrial commercial reality, that had emerged from the pages of New Scientist in recent years. This is how she put it:

“In 1994 freelance science journalist, David Bradley, wrote an article about the work of the Nottingham University chemist, Professor Martyn Poliakoff (Yes, brother of…). Poliakoff was conducting experiments with supercritical carbon dioxide, a highly compressed gas that can dissolve all manner of chemicals. “It acts like a solvent, but has none of the environmental problems of traditional ones,” says Poliakoff.

Bradley’s article captured Poliakoff’s vision of his research. After it appeared in New Scientist, Poliakoff’s world changed completely. “I was happily working away as an academic, and then the article was published,” says Poliakoff. “Thomas Swan, an industrialist, read it and phoned me. He said we ought to collaborate.”

The result, says Poliakoff, is one of New Scientist’s greatest success stories. In 2002, Poliakoff and Thomas Swan & Co built the world’s first full-scale, multi-reaction supercritical carbon dioxide plant.”

You can read Gristock’s full article here, although you’ll need to register with the Grauniad site to do so. Alternatively, Gristock has posted the full text on her blog.

I’m just waiting for the paparazzi to arrive, and the full profile in Hello magazine, and maybe even a chance to jump up and down on Oprah’s sofa!

Geekish girls

The Cnet newsite has a rather politically incorrect item this week listing the Top Ten girl geeks. I’m not entirely sure how they’re defining geek but among those listed are Marie Curie, Ada Byron (Lovelace), Rosalind Franklin (after whom my wife wanted to name our daughter), and…Paris Hilton (don’t ask).

So, where’s crystallography pioneer Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin? And, what about Judith Howard, first female Professor of Chemistry in the UK? Then there’s Helen Sharman first British woman in space (also a chemist), finally what about Margaret Thatcher (she trained as a chemist too and then spent her time in office effectively dismantling UK science, can’t get more geekish than that!

Brainy pictures

It always surprises me what visitors to the site are searching for when they hit these pages. A common search this month is for brain pictures. Now, from the search keywords it’s not possible to tell whether it’s a photo of the brain, an MRI scan, or a schematic that the searchers are looking for. So, to cover all bases, here are a few links that might help:

All these images are hosted under the US government domain (.gov) and so should be copyright free, but don’t take my word for it if you plan to use them in your science project or for anything other than personal use. Google Images, of course, would have been my first port of call for finding brain pictures.

Play real air guitar

Air guitar shirtBB King had his Lucille, old slowhand his well-worn Strat, and who could forget Jimmy Page with his Gibson SG twin-neck? You too could join the greats and learn how to play guitar, thanks to new technology from Australia’s science research centre – CSIRO. And, all you have to do is put on their new designer shirt and start strumming…the air.

Engineer Richard Helmer in the Textiles and Fibre Technology section in Geelong has created a ‘wearable instrument shirt’ (WIS) which enables users to play ‘air guitar’ and make real sounds simply by moving one arm to pick chords and the other to strum the imaginary instrument’s strings.

“Our air guitar consists of a wearable sensor interface embedded in a conventional ‘shirt’ which uses custom software to map gestures with audio samples. ‘It’s an easy-to-use, virtual instrument that allows real-time music making — even by players without significant musical or computing skills. It allows you to jump around and the sound generated.”

The WIS works by recognising and interpreting arm movements and relaying this wirelessly to a computer for audio generation. There are no trailing cables to get in the way and no risk of electrocution when you’re getting all hot and sweaty thrashing away in front of your bedroom mirror.

The real advantage of the wear-guitar is that when you reach the climax of the gig you can smash your guitar against the imaginary stack of Marshall 4x12s without wrecking thousands of dollars of equipment. Just remember, once you’re done, to ask your mom not to add it to the regular laundry.