35.735 years in science communication
Tech Talk – Miscellaneous discussion of gadgets, industry, computer science, social media, AI
This has to be the biggest of small web pages. It’s scalled so that one electron in a hydrogen atom is a single pixel on your computer screen and the proton is 1000 pixels across. Try scrolling across one page at a time to see just how far that electron is from the proton. It will take you quite some time, to say the least as there’s a gap of 11 miles between them!
Hydrogen Atom Scale Model.
Whatever you don, just don’t try to print the page.
Inspired by orcmagazine.com’s racial profiling site Google
your race) in which they list the results entirely out of context of searching Google
with the phrases "white people are known for", "black people are known for",
"Hispanics are known for" etc etc, we thought we’d give it a try with the phrase
"Scientists are known for". Some interesting results emerged, all of them
totally out of context and not necessarily meaning what you think they mean, but
interesting in some strange way nevertheless.
Scientists are known for…
Later, we’ll Google another job to find out what Google really thinks of you…
The latest issue of the Reactive Reports chemistry news site is now live. In it, I discuss various advances in the chemical sciences including weighty issue of trans fat that has butter lovers everywhere declaring, “I told you so!” Also in issue 56, I report on the basic approach to chemotherapy that side-steps the need for a magic bullet and find out how NASA has lit a fuse under the planetary carbon debate.
Our reactive profile this month is Will Griffiths. Griffiths a chemist by training like me opted out of the lab early in his career with the aim of applying his chemical knowledge and expertise through an altogether different medium. He is now investing his time and energy in developing the ChemRefer.com website, which offers chemists every quick and open access to the free full-text chemistry literature. You can use this search tool via the Chemspy Toolbox or download the Chemrefer toolbar.
A couple of weeks ago my Dell laptop started stopping, as it were. At first, I thought it was an issue with the CPU overheating, which I thought I’d addressed with a BIOS update, but a CPU temperature monitoring program showed things were apparently fine in that department. After it happened three or four times, I realised that it was happening when I moved in my chair, or when I leant on the wrist-rest part of the base, or adjusted the screen angle, or inserted a PCMCIA card, or opened the DVD drawer…eventually it wouldn’t even POST, let alone BOOT, so basically I was stuck with a dead Dell.
I suspected a loose connection or perhaps just a chunk of conductive desktop detritus stuck somewhere in the laptop’s guts. Whatever it was I really didn’t have the tools to fix it myself and thought, why should I? The machine is only a couple of years old, and although it’s outside the standard warranty period, I’d have expected at least twice as long as being a reasonable lifetime. So, I got in touch with the manufacturer – Dell – via their press office – and suggested as much.
With the fastest turnaround of any tech support department I’ve ever dealt with, my machine was picked up by DHL on Tuesday last thing, posted to Dell, and booted back to me today (Friday) in plenty of time for the World Cup! Apparently, faulty components included ASSY, PWA, PLN, 5150, DOOR, MINI-PCI, NBK, ABCS, ASSY, HTSNK, W/FAN, THRMGRS, 5150, KYBD, ENG, UK, 86, S-PTG, ABCS…etc etc I recognise the word DOOR in their and KYBD must mean keyboard, and some of the other things seem to relate to different bits of plastic and fans and cuh, but I haven’t really the time nor the inclination to look up any of the others, so we’ll just leave it at that.
Anyway, from a quick test, it seems to be working fine. So, I’d like to extend a thank you to John L at Dell in Ireland who handled my complaint so graciously and expeditiously.
Until the fault appeared, the machine had always been fast and reliable, and when a problem arose, the company dealt with it efficiently and professionally. Now, I can get back up to speed…
The full impact of spyware has not yet been seen, individuals may suffer person computer slow down and loss of personal information to some corporate database, but in business spyware can be a far more insidious threat. Keeping your organization spyware free is essential and according to Surfcontrol’s White Paper on the subject (available for free download from Sciencebase) requires a comprehensive, multi-layered approach.
Organizations are waking up to the spyware epidemic, but many are still addressing it with point-solutions and treating it as an isolated problem. In reality, it can cost billions in compromised security, network resources, productivity, and even legal liability. This white paper explores the full impact of spyware in the enterprise, and outlines an aggressive, multi-layered approach to not only remove it from the workplace, but deny its admittance entirely.
In the same Digg discussion I read of a novel glass replacement called Kwarx that is meant to be unbreakable and so could save all that sweeping up after your next drunken cocktail party and a purported announcement from Bill Gates that the next version of the Windows operating system, Vista, will be unhackable! Is this just a coincidence or is Gates hoping to exploit the sparkling character and shatter-proof nature of Kwarx to keep his Windows nice and clean?
Microsoft, having given Longhorn a far more marketing-exec friendly name in the form of Vista, has now revealed just how powerful computer needs to be to run this all-new version of the Windows operating system. Surprisingly, the spec is actually far lower than the system inside my Dell laptop which died unceremoniously just last week (out of warranty, of course, but only 26 months old).
Would you be surprised if this new spec were not up to actually running Vista though? Of course, not. Throw a CAD program, a tabbed browser, and maybe some DVD burning and the kind of spec MS suggests as a minimum is going to grind to a halt regardless. So, inevitably users will find themselves having to ditch perfectly serviceable and adequate computer equipment and replacing it once again with the next great chip and googol’s of RAM just to get their software to run.
Anyway, this is the spec:
Minimum processor clock speed: 800MHz (recommended 1GHz 32 or 64 bit), System memory (RAM) 512MB min with 1GB, Graphics card needs to be DirectX 9 capable to run all the new 3D icons in the Windows Aero interface and have at least 128MB. You will need 15GB of free space on your hard drive.
Lots of pundits point out that the antivirus/firewall/antispyware companies are making big profits from the fear instilled in computer users the world over. Whether every threat is real or not, who’s got the guts to go out into the cyber world unprotected these days, or even plugin in someone else’s USB key for all that.
Now, it seems a Trojan horse program has surfaced that looks rather suspiciously like a goody-two-shoes kind of application. Rather than handing over access to your hard drive to the nearest script kiddy, opening ports to every electronic eavesdropper, and emailing itself to all your business contacts complete with some salacious come on, this little critter simply deletes all the porn, p2p shared files, and eradicates warez from your computer. It’s almost as if, could it possibly be, a puritanical application created with the sole intent of cleaning up the net?
The clever guys at Sophos have dubbed this latest threat to geek sanity “trojerazera” (like Trokan melded to Kazaa I guess)
http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/trojerazera.html
It also goes by the name of TROJ_P2PCOPY.A, Trojan.Win32.Eraser.a, Erazor, and Troj/Erazer-A.
If you’re desperate to retain your collection of electronic smut, don’t fancy losing all those painstakingly downloaded illegal copies of software package, and are hoping to hang on to your p2p-shared folders just long enough for the RIAA to find you, then download the latest update for your antivirus software and do a detailed trojerazera eraser job.
More than one in twenty executable files on your PC could be a spyware program, according to researchers at the University of Washington. Computer scientist Hank Levy and his colleagues analyzed over 20 million internet addresses, to track down programs that can get on to your computer without you knowing and perform tasks ranging from displaying annoying advertising banners and pop-ups to gathering personal information, redirecting you Web browser to a client’s site or even utilising your modem to call out to costly toll numbers abroad. These scams are the reason why People are looking for IT Services Ottawa, New York, Tokyo, etc.”
The researchers examined sites in the most popular Web categories, such as gaming, news, and “celebrity” sites. [Not sure whether that includes porn sites or not, Ed.]
They found that more than one in twenty executable files contained spyware piggybacking on the legitimate software users might want to install. On average, almost 2% of Internet domains performed drive-by download attacks to force spyware on users who simply visit a Web site. Game and celebrity Web sites were the worst offenders the researchers told the 13th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego, California, on Thursday. Perhaps obvious is the finding that sites offering pirated software topped the list for drive-by attacks.
“For unsuspecting users, spyware has become the most ‘popular’ download on the Internet,” explains Levy, “We wanted to look at it from an Internet-wide perspective – what proportion of Web sites out there are trying to infect people? If our numbers are even close to representative for Web areas frequented by users, then the spyware threat is extensive.”
If you’re worried about spyware, which can be anything from “annoying to catastrophic”, then you should read the major security sites for advice on general computer security, firewalls, antivirus software, and, of course, how to get rid of spyware and other computer pests.
You can read Levy’s paper in PDF format here.
There’s a heated debate underway on the NASW discussion groups about whether marijuana is addictive or not.
Deborah Frisch came up with a great comic dialogue between two dudes [has to be two if it’s dialogue, Ed.] discussing the issues and whether or not we should be talking gently about the anandamide receptor or boldly about the cannabinoid receptor in scientific circles. My cartooning colleague Peter Welleman did a great satirical cartoon to illustrate the dudish dialogue, which we reproduce with permission from Deborah and Peter on Sciencebase.
Heavy….maaaan!