Chad's News

Here’s the situation: “DNA traces of an unknown eastern-European woman had been found at almost 17 crime scenes, including two murders … but also car jackings, unprofessional break-ins and on a bullet fired in a marital dispute. The crimes [were] spread around a large area including south-west Germany, France and Switzerland.” Law-enforcement officials set up a massive task force to track down this super-criminal, and they believe they’ve found the culprit—a woman at the factory that makes cotton swabs for DNA tests. The swabs used at the crime scenes were contaminated with her DNA. Oops.

Link #1: http://mwinkelmann.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Link #2: http://en.wikipedia.org/…

Link #3: http://www.reuters.com/…

If you can get Internet Explorer 8 to work correctly, it has some nice search abilities.

Link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Well-informed Chad’s News readers may have heard about the latest variant of the Conficker worm and the fact that it’s going to do something on April 1^st. Simply put, the impact of this worm has been exaggerated. First, all that will happen is that the worm will change how it operates. Second, any effects will occur on systems that have already been infected. Keeping Windows updated and using current anti-virus software should be sufficient to keep yourself protected.

Link: http://www.networkworld.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Check out these sculptures, made using only the natural colors of the melon itself. Some of them are fantastic, especially towards the end of the page.

Link: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/…
(via digg)

There’s a serious Firefox exploit that’s been published on the web. It relies on the user viewing a maliciously coded XML file. Mozilla is working on a patch, but until it’s ready, I recommend being careful about where and what you’re browsing.

Link: http://www.infoworld.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

Update: The fix is available now but won’t be pushed out via the update channel until next week.

The Houston Chronicle allows you to build a custom page from the comics it publishes, updated daily. Similarly, comics.com is now free of charge, and will serve up comics and editorial cartoons to your email inbox or RSS feed. This is great stuff!

(1) In a recent security contest, Chrome was the only browser left standing, and (2) it finally has support for user scripts (not as good as extensions, but it’s progress…). Oh yes, and the real reasons are because it’s lean and fast and it takes advantage of multiple CPUs.

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Link #2: http://lifehacker.com/…

We’ve made some changes to our mobile device support here at Chad’s News. Previously we used a free service to do the conversion, but they append advertisements to the website—some of which are not safe for work. So our crack team of web developers jumped into action and wrote a new style sheet for mobile devices. If you’ve got an internet-enabled phone, direct your browser to chadsnews.com and check it out. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

DNA can be used to make a one-way process suitable for encryption. I don’t completely understand the details, but the concept is interesting. I’m also thinking that DNA cryptography might be easier to implement than quantum cryptography.

Link: http://it.slashdot.org/…

Is Gattaca the future? It will be if insurance companies have their way. I’ve read about pending legislation making it illegal to discriminate based on genetic predispositions. I’m not sure, however, if anything’s been made into law yet.

Link: http://www.smh.com.au/…
(via digg)

The release version of Internet Explorer is available for download. If you’re not an early adopter, it’ll be available via Windows Update in the upcoming weeks.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

The creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, predicts mobile devices are the future of the web, especially in developing countries. Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we’re way ahead of the curve on this. Browse Chad’s News with a phone, and you’ll automatically be transferred to our mobile site.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…