Here’s a tech bite for you Jane.
Regulators Discover a Hidden Viral Gene in Commercial GMO Crops

In the course of analysis to identify potential allergens in GMO crops, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has belatedly discovered that the most common genetic regulatory sequence in commercial GMOs also encodes a significant fragment of a viral gene (Podevin and du Jardin 2012). This finding has serious ramifications for crop biotechnology and its regulation, but possibly even greater ones for consumers and farmers. This is because there are clear indications that this viral gene (called Gene VI) might not be safe for human consumption. It also may disturb the normal functioning of crops, including their natural pest resistance.

. . . . .

In general, viral genes expressed in plants raise both agronomic and human health concerns (reviewed in Latham and Wilson 2008). This is because many viral genes function to disable their host in order to facilitate pathogen invasion. Often, this is achieved by incapacitating specific anti-pathogen defenses. Incorporating such genes could clearly lead to undesirable and unexpected outcomes in agriculture. Furthermore, viruses that infect plants are often not that different from viruses that infect humans. For example, sometimes the genes of human and plant viruses are interchangeable, while on other occasions inserting plant viral fragments as transgenes has caused the genetically altered plant to become susceptible to an animal virus (Dasgupta et al. 2001). Thus, in various ways, inserting viral genes accidentally into crop plants and the food supply confers a significant potential for harm.

Hat Tip to a friend on FB. And they say social networking in not good for much.

Heh – hard to dispel the image of Michael Kelso. Yup. His antics on Pranks kinda support the immature Michael image, too.

I dunno anyone who wanted to buy a Surface, do you?

Internet dating scams…a little late for a warning. It’s probably been five years since a co-worker of my ex’s got caught up in one of those. Just who you’d expect, a thirty-something heavy-set woman who hadn’t dated in a long time. The guy did admit to being African, which she simply found appealingly exotic. He did ask for money, telling her some sob story. And he promised to come and visit, but kept pushing back the date of the visit.
After enough of these signs appeared, my ex tried to get her to see what was likely. She never did. And when the final date for the visit arrived but he never did, she simply refused to talk about him again.

Scammers know so well how to push the buttons of the vulnerable. Which is one reason I use a nom de clavier (as we called it on a mystery fan listserv years and years ago). ;)

hard to dispel the image of Michael Kelso. Yup. His antics on Pranks kinda support the immature Michael image, too.

That was my reaction too – not to mention starring in 2 1/2 men.

Oh, yeah…2 1/2 men. Haven’t seen that much since I became single. ; ) Forgot all about it.

I’ll bet Steve Jobs thinks he died and gone to heaven to have Ashton Kutcher play him in a movie.

Jane, tonight al-Jazeera’s Inside Story was a program about cybercrime, with a panel all from the UK: an MP on the committee dealing with the problem, a tech journalist, and a “good” hacker. (Sorry I can’t seem to find a useful link.) The consensus was that cybercrime is rampant, which will surprise no one. But they also felt that the source of the problem is the password system itself. Evidently we should go to something like a random number that is only good for 30 seeconds so that it would be useless to a hacker. They did not explain the mechanism for both the site accesser and the site having the same random number generator, but it sounds interesting.

About 10 years ago I lost my menopausy 46 year old wife to a admitted 22 year old from England, we lived in Florida at the time. She took our two kids one day to go live with him, paying their way by getting donations from others in the chat room and her dad by claiming to be a battered housewife held prisoner in her own home (complete and utter fantasy from word one BTW).

He was the better con artist since he groped my 10 year old daughter when he thought she was asleep. He wasn’t after my wife, he was after my daughter.

Long long story with no happy ending. I am very very reluctant to even do the facebook thing. I am no fan of cyber-social-networking.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is a 1% uber corporatist who gave us FOX Broadcasting, so, of course, Obama rewarded him with power over the entire industry.

He was Chief of Business Operations and a member of Barry Diller’s Office of the Chairperson at IAC/InterActiveCorp and executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting. He earned at least $2.5 million when Vivendi acquired Universal assets in 2003.[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Genachowski

So hard to tell Democrats apart from Republicans these days.

As an aside, Kutcher looks nothing like an Arab. Jobs did.