Column of the Wolf

A daily mix of news covering technology, science, human rights, wolf news, stupid human tricks and many other topics.

10.06.2010

Twitter is testing a feature intended to make it more convenient and secure for end users to include shortened Web addresses, or URLs, in messages they post via the popular microblogging service and via its third-party applications. Expected to be rolled out broadly this summer, the URL shortening feature is now in limited testing and is designed to reduce the length of any Web page address, but particularly long ones

Olympus Japan has issued a warning to customers who have bought its Stylus Tough 6010 digital compact camera that it comes with an unexpected extra — a virus on its internal memory card. The first thing to point out is that the camera itself is not at risk — the autorun worm being carried on its internal memory can not activate on the Stylus Tough camera, but can attempt to infect your Windows PC. In other words, users are at risk of infecting their Windows computers with the autorun worm when they plug the device into their USB drive, a method of transmission effectively identical to the infected Samsung Wave smartphones

09.06.2010

Google has launched one of the biggest revamps of its search engine in history, which it said would provide search results that are 70 per cent fresher than the current algorithm. The company later revised this to say it would be 50 per cent better than before. The new indexing system, dubbed Caffeine, will provide the largest selection of web content ever offered on Google. It's faster — processing hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel every second — and takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database

Taking a page from the Australian broadband playbook, New Zealand has decided not to sit around while incumbent DSL operators milk the withered dugs of their cash cow until it keels over from old age. Instead, the Kiwis have established a government-owned corporation to invest NZ$1.5 billion for open-access fibre to the home. By 2020, 75 percent of residents should have, at a bare minimum, 100Mbps down/50 Mbps up with a choice of providers

When the phrase oil spill is typed on Google or Yahoo, the immediate result guides one to BP's Gulf of Mexico response, its official page dedicated to giving information about its attempt to curtail the spill. Search engines — especially Google and Yahoo, are the first point of contact for anyone looking for related information in a crisis situation. Thus BP's PR strategy is pretty straight forward. While a host of companies resort to this strategy in crisis situation, BP has received flak from many critics who condemned the move as unethical

08.06.2010

The next version of the iPhone will hit Australia in July as part of the second wave of countries to receive the handset, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs revealed this morning after demonstrating the new device. The phone will be available in the US, France, Germany, the UK and Japan from 24 June, but Australia will have to wait until July

Google has denied suggestions by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy that its Street Viewcars inadvertently captured people's personal banking details. Senator Conroy yesterday suggested that Google could have gathered financial information when its cars accessed private data through unsecured wireless networks. The data collection occurred while the cars were out gathering information for Google's mapping service. But Google Australia said no banking data was collected because it could not read information transmitted over secure networks like a financial website. A Google spokeswoman explained that Street View cars did not keep encrypted data

The Federal Government, alongside the Internet Industry Association (IIA), yesterday launched a code of practice that aims to reduce the amount of zombie-infected computers on the internet. Zombie-infected computers are PCs connected to the internet that are infected with malware. Drafted in September 2009, the IIA released the code of practice to internet service providers (ISPs), outlining ways they could protect and inform their users about being infected with malware. One suggestion within the code is to put users into a walled garden if their computer becomes infected, which limits internet access to prevent further security problems until the PC is quarantined. Another option is to throttle infected users' speed down

HP is set to unveil a line of printers with their own email addresses, allow people to print from devices such as smartphones and the iPad

07.06.2010

The Australian police have been ordered to investigate Google for possible breach of privacy while taking pictures for its Street View service. Australia's attorney general said he had asked police to probe the internet giant following complaints that Google had gathered personal data from some unencrypted wi-fi services. Google has admitted doing so, but apologised, saying it was in error. The company has recently criticised the government's plan for internet filters

Facebook could have a local police point of presence within months, according to Australian Federal Police High Tech Crime Centre assistant commissioner Neil Gaughan. The move would eliminate a sticking point in a high-profile slanging match between the two organisations, after the AFP questioned Facebook's willingness to co-operate with local police investigations

06.06.2010

Tinfoil hatters around the world are abuzz that UVB-76, the Russian shortwave radio station that has been broadcasting its monotonous tone almost uninterrupted since 1982, has suddenly gone offline. Of course no one knows what the significance of this is, but best brush up on your drills just in case — via Slashdot

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev students have developed an innovative optical radar system that helps blind people manoeuvre around obstacles. The radar system incorporates a computer, two video cameras and a scanning light source to warn the blind of obstacles with audible alerts. The system detects obstacles — even those overhead — by scanning the depth of its surroundings, taken from two different angles

05.06.2010

There are a few simple rules that will stand you in good stead in the markets: buy on the dips. Don't trade too often. And never bet against Rupert Murdoch. The Australian-born media tycoon, 79, has railed against the conventional wisdom in a career that has lasted many decades. He has taken plenty of rulebooks, ripped them up and come out a winner. This month he will make his most ambitious gamble yet. He will try to redesign the way the internet and the media work by putting up a paywall around two British newspapers, The Times and The Sunday Times. And this time he is doomed to fail. It's too late to start charging for newspapers online. The content isn't good enough, and newspapers themselves are a product of technologies that simply don't work in a digital economy. All Murdoch is going to achieve with this move is to kill off one of the most famous media brands in the world

In what turns out to be a major coincidence, Anthony Wesley, an amateur astronomer in Australia, is reporting that he recorded another impact on Jupiter! This time he has video of the impact, which he claims was quite bright and lasted about two seconds

Millions of documents stored at the World War II code-breaking centre, Bletchley Park, are set to be digitised and made available online. Electronics company Hewlett-Packard has donated a number of scanners to the centre in Milton Keynes so volunteers can begin the ground-breaking task. Many of the records at the once-secret centre have not been touched for years. During the war, it was home to more than 10,000 men and women who decoded encrypted German messages. The centre hopes that once the work starts, previously untold stories about the role Bletchley Park played in the war, will be revealed

Before there was Google or any other search engine, there was a phone-based information hotline at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. It was set up 40 years ago to control rumors at a time when the campus was embroiled in racial violence and anti-war protests. The student union was firebombed in 1970, the same year violence erupted at Kent State University. A few months after the union burned, two teens were shot and killed at the University of Kansas — and there was a citywide curfew. Like other campuses across the country, the University of Kansas set up a hotline to try to quell rumours, says historian Doug Harvey. Surprisingly, the hotline is still being used today

04.06.2010

The consumer watchdog has accused telephone and internet giant Optus of misleading consumers with ads claiming new phone and broadband plans allow for unlimited internet access and home phone calls. The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission launched action in the Federal Court in Melbourne yesterday accusing Optus of falsely advertising to consumers that there were no limits to the plans

Iridium continues its push into the market for satellite data and telemetry services, as it announced the company that would build its second generation of satellites. Amid a great deal of pomp and circumstance including the ringing of the opening bell at Nasdaq, Iridium announced Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between French owned Thales (67%) and Italian based Finmeccanica (33%), would be designing and building the new satellites. Iridium's old network of 66 satellites was designed for voice calls; the new satellites will also be able to handle data more efficiently, and include cameras as well. The company also plans to share the satellite platforms with some scientists for use in studying the Earth

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer. Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defence, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists. The legal justification for arresting the shooter rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where no expectation of privacy exists (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognised

Construction workers in ancient China used sticky rice to make a super-strong mortar for city walls and other structures that even withstood earthquakes. Chemists now have discovered the ingredient in sticky rice that made the mortar so strong. Scientists have discovered the secret behind an ancient Chinese super-strong mortar made from sticky rice, the delicious sweet rice that is a modern mainstay in Asian dishes. They also concluded that the mortar — a paste used to bind and fill gaps between bricks, stone blocks and other construction materials — remains the best available material for restoring ancient buildings

03.06.2010

Schoolboy Hibiki Kono climbs a sheer brick wall after turning himself into Spiderman — with the help of two £14.98 Tesco Value vacuum cleaners. Clever Hibiki, 13, made his incredible climbing machine in school technology lessons. The lad, who is a big fan of the superhero, spent five months designing and making the gadget. He attached two giant suckerpads to the 1,400-watt cleaners — and uses the vacuum suction to grip the wall and support his weight

Crystal skulls have long had a fringe following, and the most famous of them is one named for the explorer-author Frederick A Mitchell-Hedges. Mitchell-Hedges claimed to have found the skull somewhere in Central America in the 1930s, but his adopted daughter Anna later said she found it under a fallen altar or inside a pyramid at the Maya site of Lubaantún in British Honduras (now Belize) some time in the 1920s. Neither of their contradictory accounts is true. In fact, like all the other crystal skulls thus far examined, it is a modern creation, despite its nearly mythical place in the minds of devotees

02.06.2010

Australia's peak science body stands to reap more than $1 billion from its lucrative Wi-Fi patent after already netting about $250 million from the world's biggest technology companies, an intellectual property lawyer says. The CSIRO has spent years battling 14 technology giants including Dell, HP, Microsoft, Intel, Nintendo and Toshiba for royalties and made a major breakthrough in April last year when the companies opted to avoid a jury hearing and settle for an estimated $250 million. Now, the organisation is bringing the fight to the top three US mobile carriers in a new suit targeting Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile. It argues they have been selling devices that infringe its patents

This week Ottawa will try once again to update Canada's copyright law that Industry Minister Tony Clement says has holes big enough to drive a Mack truck through. The Copyright Act of Canada has not had a significant rewrite since 1988, at a time when the Internet was still in its infancy and an iPad was just a twinkle in some inventor's eye. The trick — one the Conservatives and Liberals before them couldn't master — is to find a balance between right of consumers' and the rights of the artists or creators to not have their work ripped off

01.06.2010

Is Google responsible for giving out bad directions through its Google Maps service? We're about to find out. After Googling walking directions for a trip in Park City, Utah, Lauren Rosenberg claims she was led onto a busy highway, where she was struck by a vehicle. She's now suing Google for damages

Ten engineering students from Britain hope to tackle the Pan-American Highway — all 15,000 miles of it — in the last thing you'd think to do it in: an electric car. Not just any electric car, mind you, but one originally designed for racing. Racing Green Endurance, which consists entirely of students at Imperial College London, has converted a Radical SR8 to battery electric power. As if that weren't impressive enough, they plan to spend three months driving it from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Tierra Del Fuego to show people that EVs can be quick, they can be cool and they can go the distance

An Australian Aboriginal rock art may depict a giant bird that is thought to have become extinct some 40,000 years ago, thereby making it the oldest rock painting on the island continent. The red ochre drawing was first discovered two years ago, but archaeologists were only able to confirm the finding two weeks ago, when they first visited the remote site on the Arnhem Land plateau in north Australia

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