News.NanoApex.com - Tiny 'test tubes' may aid pharmaceutical R&D: "The artificial cells, called liposomes, are tiny spherical containers that self-assemble from natural fats (phospholipids and cholesterol). Measuring micrometers in diameter, the fluid-filled membranes are currently used in cosmetics and for drug delivery. "
They self assemble? Sweet!
This has got to be one of the most interesting things I've read in nanotechnology lately.
The process still is highly aided by human hands: "They used pairs of infared lasers ("optical tweezers") to bring two lipsomes into contact and a single ultra-violet laser pulse (the "optical scalpel") to fuse the two cellse together. Once fused, the contents of the two cells mix and react. One liposome in each pair contained flurescent dye, the other contained calcium ions. AFter the cells merged, fluorescence increased as a result of the reaction between the dye and the ions."
These testtubes are useful for quantitative studies of chemical reactions "involving samples in the quadrillionths of liters."
Rad!
/rizzn
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Does virtual crime need real justice?
URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3138456.stm
"The police in South Korea - a country as mad about gaming as the UK is about football - report that of the 40,000 or so cybercrimes reported in the first six months of 2003, more than half (22,000) had something to do with online gaming. "
Interesting article. Interesting in this case means "What in the @#%!?"
It's a bit ambiguous from the article as to whether or not South Korea is actually considering legislating online theivery laws. The article either indicates one of two things: 1) the whole world (or S. Korea) has gone daft, or 2) the writer is an idiot.
I've played online games. I was an alpha tester for Ultima Online. Sure it sucks when someone screws up your character or takes a valuable item. Every time a PK happens, are they going to start talking about death penalties, though?
We are talking about games here people. The images on the page are the most interesting, especially in light of the captions.
"Does might make right in online games?" says one.
"It might be tricky getting a witness statement from a yeti," advises another.
If this was in Oddly Enough or a humor newsletter, or the Onion, I'd shrug it off. But this was in the technology section of the BBC!
Good grief.
/rizzn
"The police in South Korea - a country as mad about gaming as the UK is about football - report that of the 40,000 or so cybercrimes reported in the first six months of 2003, more than half (22,000) had something to do with online gaming. "
Interesting article. Interesting in this case means "What in the @#%!?"
It's a bit ambiguous from the article as to whether or not South Korea is actually considering legislating online theivery laws. The article either indicates one of two things: 1) the whole world (or S. Korea) has gone daft, or 2) the writer is an idiot.
I've played online games. I was an alpha tester for Ultima Online. Sure it sucks when someone screws up your character or takes a valuable item. Every time a PK happens, are they going to start talking about death penalties, though?
We are talking about games here people. The images on the page are the most interesting, especially in light of the captions.
"Does might make right in online games?" says one.
"It might be tricky getting a witness statement from a yeti," advises another.
If this was in Oddly Enough or a humor newsletter, or the Onion, I'd shrug it off. But this was in the technology section of the BBC!
Good grief.
/rizzn
Monday, September 29, 2003
Rizzn Gives Gentoo a Thumbs Down!
Is it wrong to want to have an OS installed in less than 16 hours? I'm sure it didn't help that I had three sources of instructions competing with each other on being the "right" set of instructions a)ssz, b)strider, c)the fscking manual.
I'm sure it didn't help that windows reported one chipset on my laptop, and BIOS reported another, so I downloaded something close to both of their reccomendations.
I'm sure it didn't help that the instructions were 30 pages long.
I'm sure it didn't help that I wrote my lilo.conf by hand.
I'm sure it didn't help that I downloaded three versions of the kernel source.
I'm sure it didn't help that I'd been up 20 hours by the end of it.
None the less, I'm disgusted by Gentoo. I really wanted to be running a bleeding edge OS, I really did. But it's not in the card for me. I've got a really busy schedule to keep up with and I can't afford spending another day attempting to install a trendy OS.
I'm re-downloading the new release of Knoppix. It installs in five minutes. It copies to the hard drive in 30. Beat that.
/rizzn
Is it wrong to want to have an OS installed in less than 16 hours? I'm sure it didn't help that I had three sources of instructions competing with each other on being the "right" set of instructions a)ssz, b)strider, c)the fscking manual.
I'm sure it didn't help that windows reported one chipset on my laptop, and BIOS reported another, so I downloaded something close to both of their reccomendations.
I'm sure it didn't help that the instructions were 30 pages long.
I'm sure it didn't help that I wrote my lilo.conf by hand.
I'm sure it didn't help that I downloaded three versions of the kernel source.
I'm sure it didn't help that I'd been up 20 hours by the end of it.
None the less, I'm disgusted by Gentoo. I really wanted to be running a bleeding edge OS, I really did. But it's not in the card for me. I've got a really busy schedule to keep up with and I can't afford spending another day attempting to install a trendy OS.
I'm re-downloading the new release of Knoppix. It installs in five minutes. It copies to the hard drive in 30. Beat that.
/rizzn
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Newsflash
Something feels funky in my upper back. Like it won't pop or something.
Ow.
In other news, what am I doing up so late/early? Well, busy as always. I'm burning more JAW tapes. I'm reading the Patriot Act. I'm writing my two articles I promised. And I'm installing Gentoo on the Laptop. Won't Rabbi be so happy.
Hyuk. Welp. Back to work with me. That's the update from Hollywood.
/rizzn
Something feels funky in my upper back. Like it won't pop or something.
Ow.
In other news, what am I doing up so late/early? Well, busy as always. I'm burning more JAW tapes. I'm reading the Patriot Act. I'm writing my two articles I promised. And I'm installing Gentoo on the Laptop. Won't Rabbi be so happy.
Hyuk. Welp. Back to work with me. That's the update from Hollywood.
/rizzn
Saturday, September 27, 2003
I'm working on several original news stories that I will be posting here soon. I look forward to comments, questions, criticism and other assundrous comments from the peanut galleries on them.
If you do a search on the web for Factbook or Cyberwar (and perhaps couple it with rizzn in the keywords), you will come up with links all over the place to a series of articles I did in 2001 strongly tied with the Terrorism Factbook I compiled and the interview series I did for John Batchelor and Paul Alexander on WABC. To save you the time searching them, they are all archived here.
I intend to do an update three years later on these programs and how they are affected by the new Patriot Acts (one and the proposed second one). This means I'll probably have to print out all one gazillion pages of the Patriot Act and actually read it top to bottom.
Furthermore, there's a war a brewin'!
I pretty much alluded to this sort of thing happening in many of my OSINT posts not long ago. I also posted something here similarly on topic. Basically, the motivation to write this article is to toot my own prognosticating horn and to bank on it and make some more predictions in this arena. Stay tooned.
/rizzn
If you do a search on the web for Factbook or Cyberwar (and perhaps couple it with rizzn in the keywords), you will come up with links all over the place to a series of articles I did in 2001 strongly tied with the Terrorism Factbook I compiled and the interview series I did for John Batchelor and Paul Alexander on WABC. To save you the time searching them, they are all archived here.
I intend to do an update three years later on these programs and how they are affected by the new Patriot Acts (one and the proposed second one). This means I'll probably have to print out all one gazillion pages of the Patriot Act and actually read it top to bottom.
Furthermore, there's a war a brewin'!
I pretty much alluded to this sort of thing happening in many of my OSINT posts not long ago. I also posted something here similarly on topic. Basically, the motivation to write this article is to toot my own prognosticating horn and to bank on it and make some more predictions in this arena. Stay tooned.
/rizzn
This is some BULLCRAP
or
Trillian and Gaim won't work anymore!
[rizzn's note: I noticed my trillian stopped working. I don't know how I'm going to protest this, but you can damn sure bet that I'm not happy and I intend to do something about it. Yahoo's quality of service has been going steadily downhill, in my opinion, over the last year or so. They've stopped offering some of my favorite newsfeeds, they've gotten too crowded with ads, all their good free services are now paid, their search engine content is for shite, and they pretty much rely on google for all search results these days, making them completely useless (why go to Yahoo! if you can just Google it?).
I mean I was one of the last holdouts. I used to have a my.yahoo page set up and use it daily, but with all the crap I had to go thru setting up a yahoo wallet, and all the things they are cutting out and now this Trillian B.S., why would I continue to use Yahoo in any form now? I think we are beginning to see the death throes of the big content providers like AOL, Yahoo and the ilk. I think this is a good thing... it's time for some new blood.]
Yahoo has begun blocking Cerulean Studios' Trillian software from communicating with its own instant messaging software as part of its plan to limit third parties from piggybacking on its service.
On Thursday, some Trillian users began reporting an inability to communicate with their Yahoo Messenger contacts. A Yahoo spokeswoman on Friday morning confirmed that Trillian users' inability to access Yahoo Messenger was the result of recent policies put in place by the Web giant.
Yahoo last week announced that it would require people who use older versions of Yahoo Messenger to upgrade to more recent versions. Coinciding with the upgrade, Yahoo said it would likely disable access to outside IM services such as Trillian. Yahoo set a deadline of Wednesday for its forced upgrade and its intention to disconnect Trillian.
"If this has affected the way in which third parties interact with our service, it is merely a byproduct of our efforts to implement preventative measures to protect our users from potential spammers," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said.
A notice posted on Trillian's Web site informed users about "an issue that may cause a crash or invalid password when trying to autoconnect to Yahoo," the site read. Trillian users who reported the problem said they were unable to view their buddy lists when connecting to Yahoo.
"We are aware of the current connectivity issues with Trillian and the Yahoo network, brought on as a result of Yahoo's recent protocol upgrade," Scott Werndorfer, co-founder of Cerulean, said in an e-mail statement. "We are working hard on a solution and will update our Web site when more information becomes available."
Trillian software, produced by privately held, Connecticut-based Cerulean, allows people to combine various IM clients into one interface. Users can view buddy lists from various services, such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, and exchange IM text messages with them.
The popularity of Trillian has risen, largely because popular IM services do not communicate with each other. As a result, people use different IM services simultaneously on their PCs to communicate with contacts who reside in different communities. These closed networks have helped incumbent leader AOL maintain its large market share while allowing rivals MSN and Yahoo to flourish alongside it.
What separates the Big Three IM services are features. AOL, MSN and Yahoo services each have distinct flavors and rely on these distinctions to maintain user loyalty. Trillian strips all clients of their differences and allows people to exchange IMs through its own look and feel.
A day after last week's Yahoo announcement, Trillian released software patches that were aimed at allowing it to continue accessing Yahoo and MSN buddy lists. But as of this week, those patches do not appear to be working.
or
Trillian and Gaim won't work anymore!
[rizzn's note: I noticed my trillian stopped working. I don't know how I'm going to protest this, but you can damn sure bet that I'm not happy and I intend to do something about it. Yahoo's quality of service has been going steadily downhill, in my opinion, over the last year or so. They've stopped offering some of my favorite newsfeeds, they've gotten too crowded with ads, all their good free services are now paid, their search engine content is for shite, and they pretty much rely on google for all search results these days, making them completely useless (why go to Yahoo! if you can just Google it?).
I mean I was one of the last holdouts. I used to have a my.yahoo page set up and use it daily, but with all the crap I had to go thru setting up a yahoo wallet, and all the things they are cutting out and now this Trillian B.S., why would I continue to use Yahoo in any form now? I think we are beginning to see the death throes of the big content providers like AOL, Yahoo and the ilk. I think this is a good thing... it's time for some new blood.]
Yahoo has begun blocking Cerulean Studios' Trillian software from communicating with its own instant messaging software as part of its plan to limit third parties from piggybacking on its service.
On Thursday, some Trillian users began reporting an inability to communicate with their Yahoo Messenger contacts. A Yahoo spokeswoman on Friday morning confirmed that Trillian users' inability to access Yahoo Messenger was the result of recent policies put in place by the Web giant.
Yahoo last week announced that it would require people who use older versions of Yahoo Messenger to upgrade to more recent versions. Coinciding with the upgrade, Yahoo said it would likely disable access to outside IM services such as Trillian. Yahoo set a deadline of Wednesday for its forced upgrade and its intention to disconnect Trillian.
"If this has affected the way in which third parties interact with our service, it is merely a byproduct of our efforts to implement preventative measures to protect our users from potential spammers," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said.
A notice posted on Trillian's Web site informed users about "an issue that may cause a crash or invalid password when trying to autoconnect to Yahoo," the site read. Trillian users who reported the problem said they were unable to view their buddy lists when connecting to Yahoo.
"We are aware of the current connectivity issues with Trillian and the Yahoo network, brought on as a result of Yahoo's recent protocol upgrade," Scott Werndorfer, co-founder of Cerulean, said in an e-mail statement. "We are working hard on a solution and will update our Web site when more information becomes available."
Trillian software, produced by privately held, Connecticut-based Cerulean, allows people to combine various IM clients into one interface. Users can view buddy lists from various services, such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, and exchange IM text messages with them.
The popularity of Trillian has risen, largely because popular IM services do not communicate with each other. As a result, people use different IM services simultaneously on their PCs to communicate with contacts who reside in different communities. These closed networks have helped incumbent leader AOL maintain its large market share while allowing rivals MSN and Yahoo to flourish alongside it.
What separates the Big Three IM services are features. AOL, MSN and Yahoo services each have distinct flavors and rely on these distinctions to maintain user loyalty. Trillian strips all clients of their differences and allows people to exchange IMs through its own look and feel.
A day after last week's Yahoo announcement, Trillian released software patches that were aimed at allowing it to continue accessing Yahoo and MSN buddy lists. But as of this week, those patches do not appear to be working.
Coded email triggers capture of al-Qaeda suspects in Internet cafe
Friday, 26-Sep-2003 9:20AM
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Sept 26 (AFP) - Two al-Qaeda suspects were arrested in an Internet cafe in Pakistan's northwest in a dramatic swoop by officers, security officials and witnesses said Friday.
The arrest was triggered when one of the suspects sat down in an Internet cafe in the wild frontier city Peshawar Thursday morning and sent an apparently coded email inviting an Arab man to meet him, witnesses said.
"Two al-Qaeda suspects have been arrested on Thursday. We are interrogating them," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The first man, who gave his name as Habib, had entered the City Net Cafe, Peshawar's latest and most modern Internet club, at around 10:30 am, cafe employee Shaukat told AFP.
He was whispering furtively into his mobile phone in the Pashtu language, unaware of the six plainclothes intelligence agents posing as net browsers in the cafe.
Habib logged on at one of the 20 terminals and sent a message through Yahoo messenger which read "I am waiting for you in net cafe. I have mother with me and we will go to village", Shaukat recounted.
But he was not accompanied by any woman. "I think the email was a coded message," Shaukat said.
Shortly after, a bearded Arab man entered the cafe and approached the Pashtu-speaker.
At that point the intelligence agents jumped up from their terminals and pounced on the two men.
Habib took out a pistol but was overpowered before he could fire it, Shaukat said.
Uniformed anti-terrorist commandos then arrived at the cafe in jeeps. Some 15 commandos blindfolded Habib, tied the hands and feet of the Arab man and bundled the pair into the waiting jeeps and drove off.
A joint team of investigators from Pakistan's police and military intelligence agencies is interrogating the pair, the security official said.
Their exact identities and nationalities were not revealed.
The Daily Pakistan Urdu-language newspaper reported that one of the men was a Yemeni national, identified as Khalid.
Pakistan has arrested more than 500 al-Qaeda suspects since joining the war on terrorism in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks in the United States. The majority have been handed over to the US.
str/sz/bc/mmc
Pakistan-attacks-Qaeda
Friday, 26-Sep-2003 9:20AM
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Sept 26 (AFP) - Two al-Qaeda suspects were arrested in an Internet cafe in Pakistan's northwest in a dramatic swoop by officers, security officials and witnesses said Friday.
The arrest was triggered when one of the suspects sat down in an Internet cafe in the wild frontier city Peshawar Thursday morning and sent an apparently coded email inviting an Arab man to meet him, witnesses said.
"Two al-Qaeda suspects have been arrested on Thursday. We are interrogating them," a senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The first man, who gave his name as Habib, had entered the City Net Cafe, Peshawar's latest and most modern Internet club, at around 10:30 am, cafe employee Shaukat told AFP.
He was whispering furtively into his mobile phone in the Pashtu language, unaware of the six plainclothes intelligence agents posing as net browsers in the cafe.
Habib logged on at one of the 20 terminals and sent a message through Yahoo messenger which read "I am waiting for you in net cafe. I have mother with me and we will go to village", Shaukat recounted.
But he was not accompanied by any woman. "I think the email was a coded message," Shaukat said.
Shortly after, a bearded Arab man entered the cafe and approached the Pashtu-speaker.
At that point the intelligence agents jumped up from their terminals and pounced on the two men.
Habib took out a pistol but was overpowered before he could fire it, Shaukat said.
Uniformed anti-terrorist commandos then arrived at the cafe in jeeps. Some 15 commandos blindfolded Habib, tied the hands and feet of the Arab man and bundled the pair into the waiting jeeps and drove off.
A joint team of investigators from Pakistan's police and military intelligence agencies is interrogating the pair, the security official said.
Their exact identities and nationalities were not revealed.
The Daily Pakistan Urdu-language newspaper reported that one of the men was a Yemeni national, identified as Khalid.
Pakistan has arrested more than 500 al-Qaeda suspects since joining the war on terrorism in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks in the United States. The majority have been handed over to the US.
str/sz/bc/mmc
Pakistan-attacks-Qaeda
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