Would you click on that?

Inexperienced (young and old) users connect to the web every minute. Once these users set up an email account, or navigate to a non-reputable site on the web, they can fall prey to online scams.

Spammers and phishers (which I’m lumping together as ‘scammers’, for lack of a better term) are getting more clever. I’ve posted about this in various ‘scary phish’ posts, where I deconstruct a piece of scam mail that’s landed in my Inbox. Even with language barriers (which are immediate giveaways to a scam mail), the scammers utilize components (like images) from legitimate sites to improve the quality of the illusion to trap customers of these sites.

The scammers use frightening language, like "your account will be closed" or "it appears your account has been compromised" to lure users into their schemes, and a small percentage (albeit enough to continue to fund these operations) fall prey to their traps.

Baseline  posts: "Why We Click", presenting details of some of the psychological tricks scammers are using to trap users on the web.

Why do I have to install iTunes when installing Quicktime?

I just installed Microsoft Expression Suite and Visual Studio "Orcas" on a Windows Server 2003 Virtual PC image and when running Expression Media, I get:

"Quicktime is not installed on this computer. Do you want to download and install Quicktime now?"

Why yes, yes I do. However the download page doesn’t allow an installation without iTunes.

Now, why would I want iTunes? It’s a server, built for a development environment and further, I don’t (and won’t) own an iPod; my phone is all I need.

Kudos to the bigger brains at Apple: despite being strong-armed into installing unneeded software, I was able to remove iTunes via Control Panel, Add / Remove Programs.

Of course, it required a reboot.

Update: I take the kudos above back. The uninstall process left behind a service called “iPod Service” with the description of “iPod hardware management services”.

Apple: I don’t own an iPod. Why do I need this service?

Urban Canyon Sunset

Assuming clear skies, residents in Manhattan are in for a treat at sunset tomorrow: sun streaming northward through the urban canyons.

Direct sunlight is normally obscured by the tall buildings in the city.  As the streets are aligned to 30 degrees of north, this event will occur twice a year: tomorrow and on July 12th.

NASA has a cool picture of the phenom in their Astronomy Picture of the Day from a few years back.

Water into Hydrogen?

CNET reports Purdue scientists have sorted a way to convert water into hydrogen.

Yes: we did this in grade school with a battery, two test tubes and a fish tank.  Remember?  The hydrogen tube would ‘pop’ turned it right-side up toward a lit match.

As if anyone in grade school could avoid getting suspended for lighting a match these days.  I digress.

The grade school conversion method consumed more energy than the resulting hydrogen produces, hence is not a economically-feasible project in itself.

But what if we complete the deforestation of the planet and need the oxygen?  I digress again.

These sharp cookies are doing this conversion by adding gallium and aluminum (as opposed solely by applying an expensive electrical current) to the water; converting into hydrogen in real time.  This might just be precursor to a commercial implementation.  From the article:

The process relies on the use of aluminum pellets, which are mixed into liquid gallium (a metal that liquefies at just over room temperature) to produce a liquid aluminum-gallium. When water is added to the compound, the aluminum reacts with the oxygen to form a gel along with free-standing hydrogen, which can be collected and used to power a fuel cell. According to EDN, an Indiana-based start-up already has a license to commercialize the technology.

Read the entire article: "Eureka! Purdue scientists turn water into hydrogen".

Gone ‘fission’

I worked on a DOE contract at Hanford some years back, doing IT support for technical staff.  At the time, the site was just becoming more ‘open’, as various ‘hot’ sites were shutting down, their contents consolidated into other sites.

i was tickled to see an post in Wired about bus tours to various places in the Hanford site, including a few I worked in myself.  From the post:

The main attraction at Hanford is B Reactor, which was built in just 13 months spanning 1943 and 1944 in the sprint to supply plutonium for the Manhattan Project. Before we enter, a woman in jeans and a US Marines sweatshirt assures us that we "won’t get contaminated on this tour." What we really need to watch out for, she warns, is lead paint, uneven floors, and the occasional bat or spider. Walking inside, the air is cool, and the entryway is decorated with poster-size photographs of Hanford operations from the 1940s. Also on display: a copy of Einstein’s 1939 letter to President Roosevelt recommending research into a new resource — a nuclear chain reaction — that could produce "extremely powerful bombs of a new type."

Read the entire article: "Fission Trip".