Author Archives: Robin

DNA discrimination

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In a rare display of common sense, the US Congress has put through laws making it illegal to discriminate on DNA – ie. insurance companies can’t raise their rates or refuse to cover someone who has had DNA testing and has had results indicating a risk for certain genetic diseases. Not only is it none of the insurance companies business, but this means these tests can’t be forced on you by employers and that hopefully more people will get these tests done, allowing more scientific data to come out of it.

Howto Walk

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We’re supposed to walk on our feet, but we wear shoes for protection and fashion. This has a drastic impact on the amount of injuries we get as a result of walking the wrong way. This souds a bit wierd, but there’s an excellent article in NY Magazine which had me reading it the whole way through.

So what can we do?

We can wear Vivo Barefoot shoes:

where the sole is so thin that it feels like you’re walking on bare feet but are protected.

This is the store

Or there’s the Vibram five fingers shoes:

which you can buy here

You can buy them from toesocks.nl

Of course if you want to wear socks with them you need toe socks!

or more high tech socks

At feelmax.nl

SPAM!

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There are a couple of sites out there which give you a good look at the global spam trending. Most of the links in here I found in the following site:

Spam Links – spam stats

Messagelabs has a weekly overview of virusses, spam and phishing

Commtouch Spam lab has a nice graph with 30 / 100 days or 12 months view

The Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse has MRTG graphs of mail checked and spam ratio over 300 servers with loads of options to search through specific periods

Spamcop has good statistics showing which IP blocks the spam is coming from

Barracuda Central shows you what types of spam / phishing mails are being sent.

USB Data modems

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If you want a GPRS / HSPDA / EDGE / GPRS / GSM connection, most mobile providers will sell you a data plan and a PCMCIA card to put your SIM card in and attach your laptop to teh internets. Unfortunately there aren’t that many PCMCIA to USB convertors, nor tabletop PC motherboards with PCMCIA slots. There are now, however, a small crop of Broadband USB modems you can use. These come unlocked and support all bands. If you buy a modem from a provider you should be warned that generally they will be SIMLocked. Also, some come with data plans, but generally you can buy prepaid from a provider as well, with or without the modem. Some come with external antennae to increase the range, some don’t.

The BandLuxe C120 HSDPA USB Modem at EUR. 189,-

ZadaCom has the 3G+ USB HSDPA / UMTS / EDGE 1.8 Mbps modem

and the 3.7Mbps, 7.2 MBps ready modem

Going for GBP 198.58 and GBP 210.33 incl. VAT respectively

In the Netherlands Vodafone and KPN both use Huawei modems.

Vodafone is throwing out the E220

and is now releasing the E270 (or the E272 which is supposed to be an upgrade of the E270)

KPN also uses the E272 / E270.

Huawei also features the E510 which is mobile TV capable as well.

Unfortunately I can’t find any information on buying Huawei products by themselves.

Sony Ericsson is launching the MD400 / MD400g modems. The g version includes a GPS Receiver.

This is the press release

BT’s and Phorm eavesdrop and get away with it

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The UK Government is refusing to investigate well grounded claims that BT together with Phorm electronically eavesdropped on hunderds of thousands of ISP users without a legal reason to do so. It seems the UK Home Office stance is that since they’re companies they don’t need to be brought to account, which means basically they’re saying that big businesses have the right to trample on the privacy rights of consumers.