January 2002 Archive

31 January 2002

Caught in the act of rigging ZDNet Australia online user surveys last week, Telstra has refused to issue a formal apology, saying it can't control the actions of its employees.

Laws that outlaw men kissing in public and criminalise homosexual behaviour in private homes will be repealed by the Government in a revamp of legislation against sexual offences. Ministers are preparing to announce that the Victorian criminal offence of gross indecency, which singles out gay men and which was used to prosecute Oscar Wilde, will be scrapped. They will also repeal the offence of buggery, as well as the crime of 'soliciting for an immoral purpose', which only applies to men.

America's puritanical Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, has had a half-naked statue of the Spirit of Justice covered up because he does not like being photographed in front of its exposed right breast.

Australia's security and investment watchdog is claiming a world first in ordering an individual who is not a licensed investment adviser to stop providing investment advice via internet chat rooms.

A rat boutique where researchers can browse for rare breeds and special genetically engineered rodents has opened for scientific shopping.

30 January 2002

Two years after a complaint against SOCOG's official Olympic Games web site hit the headlines, Australian businesses still have a long way to go in making their web sites accessible to people with disabilities.

The Australian Communications Authority has ruled out the possibility of SMS-based emergency services, despite calls from hearing impaired community groups that such a service be provided by the likes of the police.

More cyberattacks originate in the United States than in any other country, but the number of attacks that appear to come from Israel is nearly double that of any other nation based on the number of Internet users.

The NSW Labour Council may have a tough time convincing Australian IT workers to carry union cards despite a recent surge of job losses through the industry.

Transport Minister Carl Scully admitted using his ministerial car to chauffeur his dog, Belle, from house to house.

29 January 2002

If you've ever wondered if UFOs exist, UFO Earth Contact is a new site that will try and sway your beliefs that something is out there.

Some domestic companies are apparently considering filing lawsuits against Chinese firms selling DVD players without paying patent licensing fees on technology developed in Japan.

A team of Egyptologists from Sydney's Macquarie University is the toast of the archaeological world after making significant new finds in an ancient burial ground on the outskirts of Cairo. The Australian team, led by Dr Christiana Kohler, has uncovered more than 20 tombs from Egypt's archaic period, the First Dynasty.

28 January 2002

Telstra has confessed that a ZDNet Australia survey which questions whether the telco's Internet service provides value for money was rigged by someone within its ranks, just days after its ramped up Net access toll fell under the investigation of the competition watchdog for possible breaches of the Trade Practices Act.

California's attorney general sued Squaw Valley USA on Thursday, demanding that the popular ski resort comply with environmental laws aimed at protecting the Sierra Nevada ecosystem.

He survived a king, a coup, Soviet occupation, communist rule, internecine mujahideen battles, the Taliban and a US bombing campaign. But on Saturday, Marjan, the only lion in Afghanistan died of old age in Kabul Zoo.

27 January 2002

Marijuana advocates Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm sensed the government was out to get them. And then they were dead.

Change wireless carriers and your cellular telephone number disappears. Must it be that way? No, says the FCC, and it has given wireless companies until November to let customers take numbers with them when they switch carriers. But the major carriers are balking — much the same as Telstra did before the ACCC rapped them over the knuckles and forced the issue of mobile number portability for the Australian market.

Imagine receiving a new e-mail from an old friend that begins, 'By the time you read this, I will have passed on'. It could happen, as a result of a new internet service called TimelessMail.com. Through this new service, subscribers create and store e-mail messages containing their final adieu to friends and family. After a subscriber has bought the farm, his or her messages are forwarded to the intended recipients following a verification of Social Security Administration death records.

26 January 2002

Maybe you think NASA should send a probe to Pluto. Or perhaps you think the space agency should invest more in asteroid research to save our planet. Whatever your pet space project, you've got until the end of the month to speak your mind.

Even die hard Telstra business customers have had enough of more than a week's worth of ADSL woes in Victoria, which has seen the delivery of an emaciated service, including a seven-hour outage, the shock waves from which are still being felt.

Sony has said that 900,000 of its Vaio personal computers, are vulnerable to data security breaches, although the problem could be fixed with a software patch.

25 January 2002

Telstra has dismissed Federal Opposition claims that it's secretly planning to outsource its maintenance and services division, shedding up to 10,000 staff in the process, describing the claims as mischievous.

Yahoo plans to unveil a pay-per-view search product this week, the latest in a string of premium services aimed at offsetting a sharp decline in its online advertising.

The file-swapping heir to the pirate Napster web site, KaZaA, which amassed 30 million followers after Napster was shut down by the courts, has been sold to a Sydney company after being itself threatened with legal action in Europe.

Harassing wallabies could be the next big thing in Australia, not as a hobby for mindless thugs, but in order to protecting the species. By showing tammar wallabies a stuffed fox and then chasing them with a net, biologists have taught captive-bred tammars to be more afraid of the predators that helped make them extinct across much of mainland Australia.

In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram claimed that anyone on the planet could be linked to anyone else by a chain of only six other people — the famous six degrees of separation. Now, Columbia University is recruiting thousands of volunteers to test that theory.

Once every 100 minutes, a bargain-basement satellite built from off-the-shelf parts loops around the earth, sending and receiving digital messages over antennae made from a metal tape measure. After four months in space, the US Naval Academy's bird is proving surprisingly resilient.

24 January 2002

One of the Howard Government's most senior advisers on immigration resigned in disgust at the Government's treatment of asylum seekers.

Security researchers in Holland have found a way to crash some Nokia mobile phones using a malformed text message.

People who obtained a .info domain under false pretences could soon lose the right to run their new net name.

In an increasingly common move, Australia's competition watchdog is having a go at the managing director of wholesale ISP Dataline which it alleges is a 'bad ISP' that uses bullying tactics on it's clients.

A group of scientists and major technology corporations have jumped on the SETI band wagon and asked people around the world on Tuesday to use their personal computers to help develop a treatment for anthrax.

23 January 2002

Netscape Communications Corporation announced it has filed suit in the United States Federal District Court in the District of Columbia against Microsoft Corporation to seek redress for Microsoft's anti-competitive conduct against Netscape, a subsidiary of America Online.

Telstra is about to reduce charges on its BigPond and ADSL business services and raise them for retail customers in an attempt to drive away troublesome private clients, according to reports on an internet user-group chatroom.

Data communications company Flowcom said yesterday it had lodged a deposit with the liquidator of Karl Suleman Enterprises, advancing a proposal to take over the Froggy Internet service provider business.

This time, the Force wasn't with George Lucas. The Jedi mastermind's Lucasfilm empire has struck out in the first round of its legal battle with some upstart pornographers. At issue: the X-rated Star Ballz cartoon.

Security researcher, Kurt Seifried, has discovered that several Windows file-wiping utilities fail to completely wipe some files on Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP that use NTFS file systems.

22 January 2002

AOL Time Warner is in talks to buy Red Hat, a prominent distributor of a computer operating system, an acquisition that would position the media giant to challenge arch-rival Microsoft, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Your access to the web is being censored by the Government but it refuses to reveal exactly what it is we are not allowed to see.

Alan Nicklos's first task when he replaces Tyler McGee as managing director of Nokia Australia early in February will be dealing with the continuing phone-furore that has the NSW Department of Fair Trading investigating the company's activities.

St George Bank may be sacrificing customer security in its aggressive campaign to promote the financial institution's Internet banking facility. And a security component protecting St George Bank's business e-banking product has failed, forcing the company to accelerate plans to upgrade its security system.

Australia's competition watchdog has started investigating Telstra's new mobile call rates, which ultimately lock customers into 12-month contracts and counteract mobile number portability.

21 January 2002

Advanced Micro Devices unveiled a power management technology called Cool'n'Quiet that enables its Athlon XP family of processors to alter clock speed depending on the tasks they are performing.

OzEmail users are unable to e-mail seven million US internet subscribers after a large ISP blocked mail from the Australian company.

A wood-fired power station is being planned for Sydney's west, triggering concerns about emissions from the burning of treated timbers.

Australian mobile phone users may soon have the most expensive operating costs in the world.

20 January 2002

The latest version of Oracle's 11i e-business software has better data analysis, but analysts say users need more than this.

Telstra looks set to squeeze extra revenue from its mobile phone customer base by charging users a fee to pay parking meters via their mobile phone.

Software vendor, Borland, has admitted to a licensing error which has caused a furore among customers and privacy advocates alike. Its licensing agreements contain a clause that allows Borland to enter the premises of its customers for auditing purposes.

NSW Fisheries is appealing for witnesses to the spearing of Sydney's celebrity groper, Bluey, at Clovelly Bay last week. The metre-long fish was a star in snorkelling and diving circles and his death has left locals, including the Premier, shocked.

19 January 2002

As major record labels unveil a new breed of CDs designed to prevent Napster-style piracy, Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips, the co-creator of the CD, is refusing to play along.

Nexia Biotechnologies, a Canadian company, has successfully mimicked nature and produced spider silk, a coveted substance five times stronger — weight for weight — than steel.

A plaque intended to honour black actor James Earl Jones at a Florida celebration of the life of Martin Luther King instead paid tribute to James Earl Ray, the man who killed the black civil rights leader.

The world is full of experts on serial murder. Just walk the true-crime aisle of your local book store. But don't believe everything you read, and know that most of the common wisdom about serial murder is probably wrong.

18 January 2002

Online vandals are using a two-month-old security hole in Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system to break into servers on the internet.

A new way of making silicon explode could mean anyone trying to use a stolen laptop or mobile will be confronted by this message: 'This machine is stolen and will self-destruct in ten seconds...'

As Silicon Valley's vultures and sentimentalists gather today to inspect the assets of Be Inc prior to its liquidation auction, Palm has told community site BeUnited that it won't be licensing the BeOS operating system it acquired from Be to any third party.

They eat hydrogen, breathe carbon dioxide, and belch methane. And they form the root of an ecosystem unlike any previously known on Earth. Meet the methanogen, a tiny organism living in complete darkness 200 metres underneath the surface of Idaho.

The University of Queensland is to install a $4 million supercomputer as part of a project to develop a supercomputing consortium within the state.

17 January 2002

Microsoft opponents who signed up for information on the latest competitor to Windows, Lindows, now find that their names and addresses have been handed over to the software giant Microsoft on Monday acknowledged that it shut down a Web site for an online  Microsoft Developers Store last Thursday to look into a possible security vulnerability that could compromise customer information One of the board members of the net co-ordinating body ICANN has called the organisation secretive and undemocratic. Karl Auerbach, ICANN regional representative for North America, made his comments while testifying before a Senate subcommittee investigating the organisation Mysterious rafts made of giant bamboo have been washing up on Micronesian atolls, two of them with human skeletons on board Irish counterfeiters have brought themselves undone by not being able to spell Euro Hounded by pet lovers, South Korean dog meat proponents were forced to postpone a major event planned for this week to promote canine cuisine and fight off international critics

16 January 2002

Optus has denied rampant rumours within the broadband community that it's firing up an ADSL service that will rival Telstra's oft-criticised broadband solution.

The Korean government is to buy 120,000 copies of Hancom Linux Deluxe this year, enough to switch 23% of its installed base Microsoft user to open-source equivalents. By standardising on Linux and HancomOffice, the Korean government expects to make savings of 80%, compared with buying Microsoft products.

New security problems highlight Microsoft's ongoing battle to keep its software — and its ambitious .Net strategy — safe from malicious hackers. Critics say the company treats bugs as a PR problem.

15 January 2002

The CIA has recruited British defence and hi-tech companies in an attempt to acquire the latest technology for its spying missions and intelligence-gathering — Labour MPs protest that this would give the CIA the power to snoop on any house in Britain.

As one of the building blocks of the human genome, DNA has become an important agent in medicine and forensic crime fighting. Now DNA may be used to tag merchandise with codes that counterfeiters cannot crack. A trace of synthetic human DNA embedded with a hidden code and then applied to a designer dress, a CD or a DVD, or mixed into brand-name perfume, for example, could be used to authenticate a product — and enable someone with the key to the code to detect counterfeits.

An ADSL bug that has baffled Telstra for seven months is continuing to outwit the telco giant, with the fix date for some disabled peer-to-peer files sharing services now pushed back for the third time this year.

14 January 2002

Vipul's Razor is a distributed, collaborative, spam detection and filtering network. Razor establishes a distributed and constantly updating catalogue of spam in propagation. This catalogue is used by clients to filter out known spam.

The Open Relay Database is a non-profit organisation which stores a list of machines which are open SMTP relays. These relays are, or are likely to be, used as conduits for sending unsolicited bulk e-mail. By accessing this list, system administrators are allowed to choose to accept or deny e-mail exchange with these servers.

Ireland last week approved a €640 million plan to build the world's largest offshore wind farm, capable of generating 520 megawatts of electricity.

13 January 2002

Pakistan has banned internet access in certain areas including border belt with neighbouring India as a security measure in the wake of war threats emanating from India.

The Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Royal Hospital admitted it mistakenly sent letters to 30 patients, including six elderly men, telling them they were pregnant. They were sent by a computer system that automatically generates letters telling patients their operations have been postponed.

Crocodile hunter Steve Irwin will sing and dance on The Wiggles' next CD and video in one of Australia's dumbest show-business mergers.

12 January 2002

The US government now claims that Congress has the power not only to extend existing copyrights, but also to restore the copyright of work that has entered the public domain and that copyright is totally immune from First Amendment scrutiny.

The IRS has lost or misplaced 2332 laptop computers, desktop computers and servers over three years, according to a recent report by Treasury Department auditors. They concluded it's a persistent problem: The IRS has reported a material weakness in inventory controls every year since 1983.

Antivirus companies have received a copy of the first virus capable of infecting files based on Microsoft's .Net Intermediate Language, or MSIL.

The two groups striving to make their respective formats the standard for rewritable DVDs used this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as an opportunity to demonstrate their progress.

Computer programmer Daniel Bernstein says he just wants to make the Internet more secure. But he says the US government is still standing in his way.

11 January 2002

Britain will be the world's first country to use the Internet for voting as part of radical changes to the political system, according to Robin Cook, the leader of the Commons.

Living bandages tailored to individuals could help cure the incurable. Early studies suggest the dressings, which are coated with the patient's own cells, can mend wounds that otherwise refuse to heal.

A pedal that works as both an accelerator and a brake will save lives if car makers adopt the design, according to Swedish inventor Sven Gustafsson. The idea sounds bizarre, but officials at the Swedish National Road Administration have already done extensive road tests and approved the device for use.

Development of Sharp's Twin LCD dual-sided display was completed in December and mass production will start in May. The company expects to see high demand for the panel from the makers of mobile devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.

10 January 2002

Web sites that use animation software to create flashing graphics have become the latest target of virus writers. The Flash virus is thought to be the first of its kind.

About a month away from scheduled meetings with mobile telecommunications industry representatives, NSW Police has said it would like to see carriers become more co-operative in the fight against mobile phone theft.

In December, Java was more popular than .Net for building Web services, according to an online poll, but weeks later the position had dramatically reversed; investigation revealed just what lengths Microsoft will go to to promote its products.

A panel assembled by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences has stated that Congress should make it easier to punish companies that produce insecure software that puts business and consumers at risk.

Most consumers are not aware of their right to financial compensation if timeframes for phone connections and fault repairs aren't met by telco players, according to an Australian Communications Authority survey.

09 January 2002

Chip Rosenthal has an interesting fight on his hands. He has registered and has been using the domain name unicom.com since 1990, but now a California company — also doing business as Unicom — wants the domain name and attempting to commandeer it by alleging that Chip is engaging in Cybersquating.

Verisign is proposing to set up a waiting list for domain names, including .com addresses, which are not renewed.

Record companies' efforts to protect CDs against digital copying are beginning to draw scrutiny from lawmakers concerned that the plans might violate the law.

Science may rewrite history if bones found under an Italian church prove to be those of Cannibal Count Ugolino, one of the darkest historical figures to make an appearance in Dante's Inferno.

08 January 2002

Brushing aside criticism, a 19-year-old US college student said that he revealed a security flaw in AOL's popular instant messaging service because he was ignored when he tried to tell the media giant privately.

Toysrus.com, the online arm of toy retailer Toys R Us, has agreed to pay a US$50,000 fine to settle allegations that it shared customers' personal information with another firm.

Wildlife experts in Kenya are baffled by a lioness that adopted a baby oryx, a kind of small antelope typically devoured by big cats.

Fed up with spending more time killing than saving lives, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Hong Kong aims to abolish the practice of mercy killing of unwanted pets by the summer.

07 January 2002

Hundreds of people who bought Microsoft's hot new Xbox gaming console over the holidays received defective systems, and some said they had to wait weeks and endure shoddy customer service before their systems were fixed.

The redial button proved an inconvenient mobile phone feature for three Canadian robbery suspects, providing police with a recording of the crime and an argument over how the loot should be split.

Lawrence Lessig's passionate new book, The Future of Ideas, argues that America's concern with protecting intellectual property has become an oppressive obsession.

06 January 2002

Microsoft is being accused of infringing on six patents for a process that improves the quality of images seen on a computer screen.

Vanessa Leggett, an aspiring author jailed for more than five months for refusing to hand over her research to a grand jury, was released today from a federal detention centre when the grand jury's term expired.

Civil libertarians in Washington say they're worried that proposed new anti-terrorism laws could lump together peaceful protesters with others whose actions are criminal, despite assurances from state officials that they aren't trying to stifle free debate.

Is a drunk, rowdy passenger on an aeroplane a terrorist? Is a man who pushes a judge? They are according to annual reports from the Department of Justice. An investigation found that the department routinely overstates the number of terrorist arrests and convictions it makes every year. It does so, apparently, to cook the numbers for Congress, as a way to justify its annual $22-billion budget of which counter-terrorism is a part.

05 January 2002

The number of vandalised web sites recorded by defacement archive Alldas.de jumped in 2001 to 22,379, over five times more than the 4,393 defacements logged in 2000. Mostly Brazilian cybervandals are responsible for the surge in defacements, according to Fredrik Ostergren, a Sweden-based security analyst and spokesperson for Alldas.de. He also said that more Internet users in general are trying out tools to hack into web sites.

The European Central Bank is working with technology partners on a hush-hush project to embed radio frequency identification tags into the very fibres of Euro bank notes by 2005.

An elderly German man thwarted armed robbers by throwing a tin of sauerkraut at them.

04 January 2002

A secret group of developed nations conspired to limit the effectiveness of the UN's first conference on the environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. The existence of this cabal, known as the Brussels group, is revealed in 30-year-old British government records that were kept secret until this week.

A Japanese whaling ship that entered Australian waters in the Antarctic was ordered out by the Aurora Australis, an Australian research vessel.

AOL Time Warner on Wednesday pledged to close a security hole in its instant messenger application that experts say could provide wiggle room for a widespread and destructive worm.

The spectre of smallpox has haunted humanity for more than three millenniums and this year should have marked its final, irrevocable demise. However, a plan to destroy remaining stocks of the virus is about to be abandoned because of fears that one of history's greatest scourges may now be in the hands of a rogue state.

03 January 2002

As hundreds protested nearby, the extremely backward Christ Community Church in New Mexico burned Harry Potter and other books Though able to restore exchanges crippled during New South Wales bushfires last week, Telstra technicians are still unable to repair around 1000 fire-related faults adequately, as emergency services seal access to 17 of 91 exchange regions It will still be at least a year before DVD recorders become standard in home computers. That's because of a nasty format war among consumer electronics companies, much like the one that eventually saw VHS win over Betamax in the world of videotapes The net has shrunk ever so slightly. For only the second time ever, an authoritative monthly survey of the number of sites on the net has found fewer sites online than in the previous month. The fall has been put down to a drop in the number of registered domains. Despite the drop, the net remains hugely popular, and there are now over 36,000,000 sites in cyberspace

02 January 2002

Software giant Microsoft has sued computer operating system maker Lindows.com, claiming Lindows.com's name is too close to that of its own dominant Windows operating system.

A US man accused of sending harassing e-mails to an American police department has been told to surrender — via e-mail.

01 January 2002

Zambian High Court judge Peter Chitengi has barred the government from declaring a winner in the presidential election until he can rule on an opposition appeal after being forced to abandon the Supreme Court in Lusaka because of violent protests outside. Demonstrators and opposition groups are calling for fresh presidential elections, claiming last week's poll was rigged.

Reverend Gabriele Amorth, the Roman Catholic Church's best-known exorcist, sees ten people a day, give or take, for demonic possessions, obsessions and lower-grade infestations.

Search


Archives