The ability of HIV-1 to develop high levels of genetic diversity and acquire mutations to escape immune pressures contributes to our difficulties in producing a vaccine. Researchers have now generated an efficient algorithm to develop vaccines that cope with the diversity of HIV or other variable pathogens.

Good news, the MPAA has heard your cries and is now committed to letting you watch your movies on whatever device you want. It even wants to let you rip your DVDs to your home network. There's just one catch (you knew there would be a catch): you'll have to wait until the MPAA can develop a system of interoperable DRM. In other words, you're probably going to be waiting a long time, if not forever. This was the message from MPAA head honcho Dan Glickman, who spoke at a conference this week on the need to remove restrictions on consumers. Unfortunately for Glickman, the whole point of DRM is to restrict the use of whatever media is being protected. As for the idea of interoperable DRM, this is basically an oxymoron. If you could play a file anytime on any device it wouldn't be DRM anymore. Unless Glickman and the movie industry have no idea how the technology works, it's obvious that all of this talk about interoperable DRM is just a smokescreen to obfuscate the real issue. The sad thing, for movie studios, is that they're investing so much into a concept doesn't even do that. Still, at least Glickman is acknowledging his industry is hurting itself by being so unfriendly to consumers. He's still searching in the wrong place for the answer, but a step (even if it's a very very tiny one) is a step.

Mission critical, you say?

Payroll specialist Northgate has failed to pay its staff.

Online extortion scams seem to be a recurring problem, even though script kiddies are killing the margins. The latest scam sees users being spammed with a note from a would-be contract killer, saying he's been paid to kill them, but will let them live for $40,000, then responds to emails with personal information stolen from other sites. The whole thing sounds about as believable as the average 419 spam, but given the number of folks who should have known better that have fallen for them, it's probably worth highlighting for the sake of the wealthy individuals who are being targeted. In particular, heed the last line of the original article, which relays that a security expert "recommended that no one reply to these e-mails" -- unlike all those other scams you keep replying to.