Pop-up ads are getting more subversive all the time. Take, for instance, a pop-up ad that attacked me today. It opened up into a browser window with no menus that looked like a dialog window from a system utility. The novice user probably would be unable to recognize the difference between it and a real application dialog box. The message in the pop-up stated "Welcome to the System Performance Wizard! I will recommend software options to keep your system running at its peak performance." Of course, if you click anywhere on the ad it opens a new browser window featuring a website selling some type of system utility. Still, I find this type of underhanded marketing very disturbing. It is in our best interest, as customers, to avoid purchasing products that force themselves upon us in this way. We don't accept it at brick-and-mortar retail establishments; we shouldn't accept it online.
11:48:06 AM    

A report raises concerns about the pitfalls of selecting genetic traits in fetuses [here]. Some diseases can be detected before birth by looking for the genetic mutations that cause a given disease. The fear is that this could be taken to the point where characteristics that seem normal today, might be viewed as diseases themselves should genetic screening be taken too far. For instance, "eccentricity or absent-mindedness, thrill-seeking behaviour or acute shyness, aggression, depression and so on" are traits that are not aberrant, but could be considered so if ethical guidelines are not set out. For a good hypothetical view of the potential consequences, go rent Gattaca.

From a very different point of view, we could just let people make whatever genetic modifications they want and see what happens. Natural Selection will be the final arbiter. Maybe a new race of beings would come into existence. I know that sounds fantastic and even frightening, but Mother Nature has been doing this type of tinkering for millions of years and we seem pretty happy with the results.
11:32:17 AM    

Memory storage at the level of the atom has been demonstrated [here].

Atoms may be among the smallest physical things that can be used to store binary data. The potential of their storage capacity is awesome. For example, a grain of sand contains about 10 million billion atoms.

It will be a while before this can be applied to commercial products, but it is one of the first demonstrations of the concept.
11:11:49 AM