The claim is that GM crops are better because they can be designed to resist disease, drought, pesticides, and herbicides. Also, extra nutrients can be added to make the food more nutritious. While Biotech firms are confident that GM crops are beneficial, they never seem to consider the negative effects on human and animal health, the future of the food chain, nor the environment as a whole. However, many others have serious concerns about the dangers.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) states, “Genetically Modified foods have not been properly tested and pose a serious health risk.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) is also concerned about GM foods, primarily with three areas.

Allergenicity

Because of the way genes from different organisms are combined, a person might have an allergic reaction to a food that is normally safe. For example, if you are allergic to peanuts and eat corn that has been genetically modified with peanut genes, you could have an allergic reaction. This effect could also lead to the creation of brand new allergies.

Gene transfer

When eating genetically modified foods, strange and potentially dangerous genes can be transferred to a person. Imagine what would happen if anti-biotic resistant genes became part of your body. These genes can also be transferred to the bacteria in the stomach.

Outcrossing

When genetically modified crops are grown, the wind and other pollinators inadvertently contaminate conventional crops grown nearby.

Jeffrey M. Smith, Director of the Institute for Responsible Technology has written several books on the subject including Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette. He points out numerous findings from studies that are disturbing. These include, for instance, a greatly increased death rate of the offspring of rats fed GM soy, immune responses in mice fed GM peas, and rats fed Monsanto’s GM corn (which produces a pesticide called Bt-toxin) that developed kidney inflammation, altered blood cell counts and organ lesions.

Have you heard of Monsanto? Well you should have. Monsanto’s stated aim is to own the patents for all the food crop seeds in the world. Do you know what Monsanto does when their patented GM crops contaminate neighboring farmers’ fields? They issue a lawsuit to the farmer for infringing their patent. Hundreds of farmers are being forced to pay Monsanto to have their fields contaminated by genetically modified organisms.

So, why is it that GM food does not need to be labeled in the USA? Oh yeah, the guy in charge of regulating food in this country was the former Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp. from 1998 until 2001. That’s right, President Obama appointed Michael Taylor as the new Food Czar so don’t expect any changes in regulation any time soon.

Are GM Foods Dangerous?

Absolutely!

So what can you do about it? Well, to start off, try to avoid all GM food. This can be very difficult without the proper labeling regulations. Eat organic foods whenever possible. Get to the source. Buy your produce at a farmers market or shop at a local food co-op. Another thing you can do is to join the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign which is organized by the Organic Consumers Association.

By moving lips, eyelids, eyebrows, and other bodily joints, a robot named Kobian that was recently unveiled in Japan is able to express its emotions.

However, if you’ve ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you know about Marvin the paranoid android. Maybe there is a downside to emotional robots. After all, who wants to deal with a depressed robot?

Unfortunately, most of them are MP3s that were ripped at a low bitrate. Yes, the file size is much smaller than it would be if they were WAV files, but the quality suffers. If only there was an audio format that was similar in file size to an MP3 and similar in sound quality to a WAV. Enter Josh Coalson who is the primary author of the FLAC format. Thanks Josh! Lossless audio means that an audio file can be compressed but the original quality will be preserved. And if that’s not cool enough, its also open source, so look for this format to gain popularity. I think we should all support this format in any way we can. Now what to do with all these lo-fi MP3’s? They must be good for something, like old CDs can be used as coasters. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

http://www.flac.org

Text based CAPTCHAs are no longer able to fool the bots. How long will it be before they can handle image based CAPTCHA’s as well? And is reducing your spam worth alienating a percentage of your users? The harder it is for a computer to solve, the more inconvenient it becomes for legitimate users. This results in less users. Many have pointed out that using CAPTCHAs to stop spam bots is doomed to fail and that we should use a different approach. Simple questions are often used effectively. Perhaps flash or javascript can help. But are these really solutions or only temporary measures to prolong the inevitable?

It’s like an arms race between spammers and spam blockers. Spammers aren’t just using bots anymore either. The new trend is to buy or outsource a cheap labor force to break CAPTCHAs. These data workers often earn much more solving CAPTCHAs than doing legitimate work.

The future of this arms race between spammers and spam blockers looks bleak. However, some see a silver lining to the spam problem in that we can harness the spammers to solve important AI (Artificial Intelligence) problems by using specific types of CAPTCHAs. Some of these problems include OCR (Optical Character Regognition), Voice Recognition, etc.

That would be great for AI, but does that mean your inbox will never be free of Wholesale Watches, fake Bank Account updates, Discount Pharmacy, Multiple Orgasms, and Online Diplomas? I hope not.

While recently doing some work for a client who runs a network security business called Breached Systems, I was introduced to an end-point security software called Blink.

Blink provides home PC protection plus Internet Security including all-in-one antivirus, antispyware, antiphishing, identity theft protection, plus personal firewalls. Created by eEye digital security and offered as a fully functional (and free) one-year trial. After the first year, they charge $25/year to continue using the product.

I was convinced when a friend downloaded Blink, scanned his hard drive, and found 11 threats including a keystroke logger that his other “security” software had failed to detect.

So, if you’re worried about your security (and you should be), consider taking action before it’s too late.

http://www.eeye.com

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of S**t That Doesn’t F**king Work

Majority Of World’s Spam Email Originates From Tiny Nation Of Koy4goff

There isn’t much here yet, but check back soon because I plan on adding lots of content in the near future.