Naked Paul Toast’s Insights

Jack Szostak created …

Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life

A Harvard team of biologists and chemists have created protocells from fatty molecules. These protocells meet almost all criteria for life, the exception being they don’t replicate completely on their own. They still need a little nudge.

One of the biggest arguments against evolution made by Fundies is “Life must have been created”. Of course evidence is never presented. Positions with out evidence, simply stating something “must have…”, are always a poor arguments. What’s even worse is abiogenesis, has absolutely nothing to do with the mounds of evidence supporting evolution.

But since creationists and ID proponents still insist that abiogenesis could not have happened, and therefore evolution could not have happened. This development brings us one step closer to understanding the natural formation of life.

Described in my previous entry, Google’s newly released browser, Chrome has a major security vulnerability.

Rumor has it, they have a quick fix.

Less than 24 hours after the release of Google’s new web browser, Chrome, a vulnerability has been discovered and released into the wild.

The proof of concept is described in this zdnet article. This carpet-bombing technique allows an unsuspecting user to download and execute a JAR file without warning.

A harmless demonstration can be found on the discoverer web-page.
http://raffon.net/research/google/chrome/carpet.html

Simply browsing to the site in IE, Fx 3 and you will be prompted with the typical download prompt.

Browsing to the site with Chrome and the Java Jar file is automatically download to your host.

I think, I’ll wait for version 2, maybe 3 or 4.

I downloaded and installed Google’s web browser Chrome. So far I am very impressed.

The user interface takes a little getting used to, I’m just not used to the Tabs on top of an almost non-existent bunch of tool bars. It seems speedy, appears to work well with WordPress and all the sites I’ve tried so far.

Ironically, the thing I miss so far from the Google browser is the Google toolbar. I used it all the time for searching. But I used even more so as a Word Finder on web pages If I wanted to look for a word, I would type the word in the search bar, the word would appear on the right of the bar. I could then click on the word and be brought to the first, and successive instances.

Maybe there is some option to turn it on.

I like how it builds, the most visited page. Don’t like the integrated search and URL field.

I’ll give it a whirl and see.

OMG. You can go through all your saved password list, and have it display the plaintext of the saved password. Handy for those who forgt passwords. But cripes, I can now go up to any machine left running, get the website, username and password. The user also need not have actually visited the site in Chrome, when installing Chrome probably imported them from IE.

That’s not a good thing.

I didn’t stand in line all night for the product launch. I didn’t video and youtube, myself opening the box or activating it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I voted “I have no interest in the iPhone” in Marty’s Seriously, It’s Just A Phone poll. Though, maybe I voted “I don’t have feelings either way“. I can’t remember.

Well, I picked one up the other day. I haven’t put it down.

It really is a cool piece of technology. I just love it. I’ve never had an iPod, only lack luster MP3 players, but the house is full of other people’s iPods and iPod touches. Never really played with them.

My old phone, a Samsung, still works fine, but I knew a while ago that the next phone I wanted I wanted was going to be some kind of smart phone. I use an Palm pilot for Calendar, Scheduling and life management. But, carrying it around, was a bit of a chore. Too often I needed it, and didn’t have it, and had it, without needing it. It was also a pain in the ass to sync with the scheduling software at work.
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