September 2002 Archive

30 September 2002

We've all heard about spyware, well now KaZaA, Morpheus and LimeWire are sneaking a new type of nastiness onto your computer, software that — without you even knowing it — redirects commissions for online purchases you make from other vendors back to them.

One of the world's most unusual chemical compounds, zirconium, may prove a godsend for dentists, chefs and even Formula One drivers as it defies the normal laws of physics with a rare ability to shrink, not expand, when heated.

NASA is planning to mount a camera on the external fuel tank and broadcast a 2 October shuttle launch.

Police arrested a Texas man on child abuse charges on Friday after he allegedly used a 100,000-volt stun gun to discipline his 8-year-old stepson for missing the school bus.

29 September 2002

The Washington Post threatened an anti-abortion activist with legal action for registering a similar domain name and snatching e-mail messages intended for reporters.

Scholars from MIT, the University of California in LA, and the University of London have worked together to oppose laws restricting children from playing violent video games. The battle is currently taking place in the US Court of Appeals and the case seems to hold a decent amount of merit.

The controversial do-it-yourself medicine that inspired the heart-rending movie Lorenzo's Oil has finally been proved to work. The new research ends years of uncertainty about the treatment and demolishes the claims of experts who repeatedly said it was a worthless quack remedy.

According to Jerry Bromenshenk at the University of Montana, trained honeybees have shown a remarkable ability to sniff out land mines, suggesting a possible new way to find the estimated 110 million unexploded land mines around the world.

28 September 2002

For two weeks, volunteers have kept a round-the-clock vigil at the no-kill Animal Shelter of North County. They're afraid that if they leave, the city of Arlington will lock them out.

Recent studies in Romania where large numbers of sheep coexist with dense populations of large carnivores, such as bears and wolves, have shown that the use of electric fences in night time pens can significantly reduce sheep mortality.

NSW Police Minister Michael Costa has asked the Federal Government to shut down web sites with instructions to disrupt a World Trade Organisation meeting in Sydney.

Privacy activists warn that increasing reliance on biometric technology for security purposes is a serious threat to the rights of innocent Americans.

27 September 2002

Parts of the newest version of Red Hat's Linux software have slipped onto the Internet, nearly a week before the operating system's official release date, giving glimpses of a product with a new focus on mainstream computer users.

Following in the footsteps of fast — and often fantastic — wrappers around Gecko, the Mozilla rendering engine, Mozilla has just released their own lightweight browser, Phoenix.

The Wayback Machine, an archive of web sites as they appeared in their past incarnations, is reported as having censored the Scientology-critical Xenu.net, in a repeat of the heavy-handed tactics used against Google.

Frank Robinson is a man who is into Lego way more than the average builder. At last count the Robinson family's Lego inventory was nearing 100,000 pieces, a majority of which were tallied and itemised by type and colour on a computer spreadsheet. No Lego story would be complete without a link to something large and useless, say, a Lego harpsichord. Okay, it plays, so it's not actually useless. How about the Lego Star Destroyer.

26 September 2002

Officials at the state Directorate for Wildlife Management have said that no licenses will be issued for a wolf hunt this winter as they are only aware of two wolf pairs that can reproduce. That means there is no basis for an authorised hunt. The decision provides for some breathing room in a long-standing quarrel between Norwegian and Swedish wildlife officials. Both sides had cooperated in building up southern Scandinavia's once nearly extinct wolf population, members of which often cross back and forth over the border Google introduced a service that uses its search algorithms to create a news page that looks not much different from those of many news Web sites A 92-year-old Australian woman has become the nation's oldest first-time home buyer after securing a housing loan she does not have to pay off for another 30 years An urgent business proposition and requests for urgent assistance from a so-called Nigerian official were heeded by a Detroit bank secretary in the latest example of how the ubiquitous e-mail scam actually works

25 September 2002

Two red wolf pups born in South Carolina are being moved to a North Carolina refuge in hopes that they'll mate and raise a family. The male and female pups are between 17 and 18 months old. They're expected to arrive this afternoon at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. It's the only mainland site where the endangered species lives in the wild.

ISPs are preparing for a new cybercrime code of conduct that will detail how much data they should keep on subscribers in order to co-operate with police and other law enforcement agencies.

Millions of internet users have unwittingly consented to having their online activities monitored by agreeing to convoluted terms and conditions on web sites.

Despite a promise last week to elaborate on its plans, Palm Australia is keeping its shutters closed tightly when it comes to revealing whether Australia will be included in the company's aggressive push to capture the mass-market.

24 September 2002

Embattled computer giant Sun Microsystems has come up with a new strategy to challenge the dominance of Microsoft. In a plan, dubbed 'Project Mad Hatter' It will sell cheap desktop computers running the free Linux operating system and charge companies a small monthly fee for service and support.

Citing Microsoft's own somewhat patchy security record, Australian industry commentators have called into question the software maker's worthiness to advise the Federal Government on the country's cyber security policy.

The Liberty and Livelihood March was the biggest civil liberty protest in British history as hundreds of thousands of countryside protesters gathered in London and the Prince of Wales became embroiled in the escalating row over the future of rural Britain.

Rodent lovers are celebrating a decision by a Queensland court today to fine three people $375 for abandoning a pet rat.

23 September 2002

All that was missing was the Wonder Woman costume. Witnesses say a Jordanian woman ripped off her enveloping black cloak and veil — to reveal a traditional long dress that was nearly as enveloping — and punched and kicked into submission three young men who had been verbally harassing her.

Free Web-based e-mail services have long used customers as marketing mules, adding an unobtrusive tag line at the end of each message to tout their products. Now MailFrontier, an anti-spam company, is drawing fire for using the same tactic.

ADP Pharmaceuticals from Goulburn in New South Wales has won Federal Government backing for a project which aims to use genes from deer to repair human cartilage.

A pro-euthanasia group in Australia is planning to distribute 'exit bags' designed to help people commit suicide.

22 September 2002

California may become the first state requiring computer makers and sellers of television sets to charge buyers to recycle the machines.

An online 'anarchist scavenger hunt' proposed for next week's annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank has raised the ire of police, who fear demonstrators could damage property and wreak havoc. Break a McDonald's window, get 300 points. Puncture a Washington DC police car tire to win 75 points. Score 400 points for a pie in the face of a corporate executive or World Bank delegate.

Nearly 100 years after the Wright brothers' first heavier-than-air powered flight, the US Air Force is testing an experimental plane that uses 'wing warping', the steering and control technique that kept Orville Wright aloft in 1903. But this time round, it will be at supersonic speeds.

A shark held with no male counterpart at Detroit's Belle Isle Aquarium for the past six years has produced three babies in what zoo officials are calling 'virgin births'.

21 September 2002

Thailand's answer to 'Q', the legendary inventor of gadgets for movie spy James Bond, is busy at work at his warehouse on the edge of the country's capital. Workmen inside are trying out the latest inventions of retired Major Songphon Eiamboonyarith, who runs defence contracting firm Precipart Co. The range includes umbrellas that shoot rubber bullets, bullet-proof baseball caps and a hand-held device to fire a man-sized net 10m to stop a villain in his tracks.

A leading science magazine is offering readers a prize to die for — cryonics treatment which some hope might give them resurrection after death. The lucky winner of the prize, promoting the revamp of New Scientist magazine, will not be able to collect the award until death, when he or she will be cooled to stop the decay of the body and then suspended in liquid nitrogen.

Germans mulling joining the army may think twice now thanks to a new regulation banning soldiers from having sex while in active service.

Seven men who bared all in Toronto's Gay Pride Parade have been cleared of public nudity charges because they were wearing shoes. The men, from a social group calling itself Totally Naked Toronto Men Enjoying Nudity (TNT!MEN), were arrested and charged under Canada's Criminal Code after they marched in the annual festival wearing only footwear — and sunscreen.

20 September 2002

LindowsOS Version 2.0 offers networking features for connecting with Windows-based PCs, support for more printers and a streamlined interface similar to the Windows desktop.

Australians will soon have another alternative for wireless broadband Internet, with Melbourne startup Azure Wireless set to step into the ring with more establish players.

A concept for a colossal cargo aircraft designed to skim a few metres above the surface of the ocean has been revealed by researchers at the aerospace company Boeing. The concept aeroplane, called the Pelican Ultra Large Transport Aircraft (ULTRA), would exploit an aerodynamic phenomenon known as the 'wing-in-ground effect' to glide just six metres above the waves — no doubt scaring the hell out of the odd ocean-going vessel.

Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment that would be found in virtually any college science department.

19 September 2002

Controversial Australian domain name reseller Internet Registrations Australia is being taken to court by the ACCC amidst allegations of misleading conduct.

Billionaire engineer Charles Simonyi, who left Microsoft to co-found a company called Intentional Software, says his new firm's software-development tools will reduce annoying or even dangerous bugs to one in a million.

Microsoft has signed up Brightmail to tackle the junk mail bombarding Hotmail accounts. It is to install Brightmail Solution Suite at the SMTP gateway, to hoover up junk mail before it reaches the user.

New research has revealed that Australia's Big Four banks' poor Web account services are threatening to drive customers to rivals with more user-friendly facilities.

18 September 2002

According to Shane Hird, a research scientist at the Distributed Systems Technology Centre at the University of Queensland, unwary Windows XP users can have entire directories emptied of files simply by clicking on a hyperlink.

AOL7 will begin trial of its new broadband service in a matter of weeks, with a view to providing the service commercially by 2003. But it's worth studying the fine print before signing up for any broadband service, because tiny download limits are tripping the unwary.

Speculation is growing that Optus is about to launch a high-speed data wireless network.

Karin Spaink has had her house raided by police based on an unsubstantiated claim by the dodgy Church of Scientology.

17 September 2002

IBM has expanded a deal with software maker Red Hat to sell Linux software across the entire range of IBM's computer servers.

While Sony's online gaming experiment is only a few weeks old, PlayStation 2 gamers are already finding it helps to have a tolerance for foul play.

A robot will be sent to explore Cheops, Egypt's largest pyramid, to investigate a mystery behind a stone door.

A Digital television set that learns its owner's tastes and a dancing baby-sized robot are among new gadgets being displayed by Sony at a futuristic exhibition in Japan.

16 September 2002

A newly publicised flaw in Mozilla-based Web browsers allows servers to discover where visitors go after they leave the site.

Police are being given authority to tap telephone conversations at such an unprecedented rate that Australians are 20 times more likely to be bugged than Americans.

The widespread use of anti-personnel land mines by nations such as India and Pakistan is hampering efforts to eliminate a weapon that kills or maims thousands of people every year.

California Assembly candidate Dan Dow has an official Web site: Dandow.com. But he's also registered the URLs JohnDutra.com, JohnDutra.net and JohnDutra.org. And incumbent Assemblyman John Dutra — Dan Dow's opponent in the upcoming election for California's 20th District — is none too pleased that his name is being used against him in the campaign.

15 September 2002

UFOEarthContact and, more importantly, my mate Paul Black have managed to get a write-up in the Sydney Morning Herald M&M2000 has decided to power his AthlonXP via a Tesla Coil. Pretty pictures, shame about the troll Washington, the first state to take a legal stand against sending misleading, unwanted e-mail, won its first case yesterday, against a prolific spammer who flooded the state's computers with advertising several years ago Throughout the 1990s, designers kept putting their company logos on a mind-boggling array of new products. Now the logos have become scarce

14 September 2002

An innovative, pedal powered, wireless network provides Internet access to off-grid villages in Laos.

Accredited Australian Internet registrar NetRegistry has announced plans to set up an industry-wide legal fund to combat allegedly unscrupulous operators.

Sony Australia has revealed its blueprint for the far distant future of its highly successful PlayStation games console. Part of its plan revolves around the use of biotech games controllers.

Santa Cruz city leaders plan to join medical marijuana users at a pot give-away at City Hall next week, hoping to send a message to federal authorities that, in this town, medical marijuana is welcome.

13 September 2002

AMD are about to reveal their smallest double-gate transistor to date. The gate of the transistor, across which electrical current flows to turn the switch on, measures 10 manometers, or 10 billionths of a metre.

Tens of thousands of readers of e-mail newsletters have recently been spammed, and the newsletter publishers are blaming the company that manages and distributes the newsletters for them.

Sony has pledged to appeal a Federal Court decision that gave a green light to mod-chipping PlayStation game consoles.

Researchers have put together a 'biological pacemaker' in guinea pigs by slipping a gene into their hearts — a first step in what could lead to alternatives to the electronic devices now implanted in hundreds of thousands of people each year.

12 September 2002

Zeldman preaches the nightmare of backward compatibility: Though their owners and managers may not know it yet, 99.9% of all web sites are obsolete. These sites may look and work all right in mainstream, desktop browsers whose names end in the numbers 4 or 5. But outside these fault-tolerant environments, the symptoms of disease and decay have already started to appear.

Netscape won't dislodge Internet Explorer from its hegemony over browser space. But its open-source sibling, Mozilla, is aiming at even bigger game: Windows.

Industry figures have confirmed that Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technologies are rapidly overtaking cable as the Australian broadband connection of choice, but corporations are cautious about using broadband Internet services in essential areas of their business.

A fox snapped up two balls hit from the seventh tee on to the fairway by players in a tournament at Gronhogen golf course on the island of Oland off Sweden's south-eastern coast.

11 September 2002

Disgruntled customers of PayPal have won an important battle after a US judge ruled its arbitration policy rigid and unfair.

Microsoft's plans to crack down on hackers pirating its Windows XP operating system seem likely to come unstuck, with the internet's underground already working out ways around its latest security measure.

By now, subscription-free Internet service has pretty much proven itself an unprofitable anachronism. Except in Egypt. In this nation beset by creaky Net connections and outdated circuits, where computers remain a luxury for the vast majority, a free Internet strategy is boosting Internet access.

Local officials in Britain were reported to be furious after road workers apparently painted a white line on the side of a highway right over the furry body of a dead badger.

10 September 2002

Sony is dropping some hints about PlayStation 3's likely lack of shape — it's looking into installing an OS that could run game programs in various home appliances.

Competition in Australia's Internet ADSL market is heating up just weeks after the ACCC announced plans that will make it easier for service providers to get access to Telstra's copper network.

The Federal Court in Brisbane has banned three men, Robert James Price, Ronald Curtin, William Millar and three related companies, who conned consumers into paying up to AU$12,500 for race-betting software by marketing it as a low risk investment program, from selling the software.

Veterinarians have harnessed the power of New Zealand green lip mussels to produce a dog food that helps to relieve arthritis pain suffered by ageing canines around the globe.

09 September 2002

University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have created 'atomic scale' memory using individual atoms of silicon.

The FTC encourages consumers to forward any spam they receive to the e-mail address uce@ftc.gov.

Detectives are investigating the mystery of a hamster found driving a toy racing car along a promenade at a northern seaside resort.

A Hong Kong animal rights group, Animals Asia Foundation, will honour eight dogs this weekend to raise awareness of the therapeutic benefits of man's best friend.

08 September 2002

A Canadian Parliament committee has called for legalising marijuana use by adults, increasing pressure on the government to shift drug laws far from the zero-tolerance policy of the neighbouring United States.

There is a method of extracting audio from scanned images of vinyl records. While this method creates exceptionally noisy samples, you can definitely hear the underlying music.

Net venture business Planet Co has developed a PDA that enables customers to listen to the contents of music CDs simply by having the PDA sensor recognise the bar code attached to CD's plastic cover.

Inspired by NASA's planetary exploration program, this miniature 'caterpillar drive' ROVer (Remote Operated Vehicle), belongs in the way too cool category.

07 September 2002

Advances in optical-fibre making at the Australian Photonics research centre could bring communications at the speed of light into Australian homes and businesses in the next few years. The centre holds patents over a new way to make optical fibres using plastic polymers instead of the traditional silicon-based glass.

The tyranny of distance that has ruled over Australia's inland and remote regions for two centuries is nearing the end of its oppressive reign. Dramatic advances in communications and information technology will start to transform life in the Outback within five years.

Duke University's law school has received an anonymous US$1 million gift to fund advocacy and research aimed at curtailing the recent expansion of copyright law. The school is using the money to fund a centre focused on finding 'the correct balance' between intellectual property rights and material that should be in the public domain.

eBay, one of the biggest success stories on the Web, is being threatened with a patent infringement lawsuit that could force it to modify its winning auction format. MercExchange founder Thomas Woolston, an inventor and patent attorney who has been granted four online auction-related patents since 1998 and has some 10 others pending, said he sued eBay in 2001 after negotiations broke down over the auction site's offer to purchase his patents.

06 September 2002

At the recent O'Reilly Open-Source Convention, writer Bruce Sterling held court with 'A Contrarian View of Open-Source'.

Governments around the world, afraid that Microsoft has become too powerful in critical software markets, have begun working to ensure an 'open-source' alternative.

On track for its full commercial launch next year, wireless broadband i-Burst technology is starting commercial engineering trials in Sydney.

A flat-pack furniture kit whose parts are fitted with cheap microprocessors that monitor what you are doing during assembly has been developed in Switzerland. The kit will warn you if you are doing something wrong or dangerous.

05 September 2002

The government of Greece is making heroic efforts to humiliate the nation in front of the entire world, by banning all electronic games Spam has become such a menace to the Internet that the Federal Trade Commission should take swift steps to staunch the flow of bulk e-mail, three consumer groups — Telecommunications Research and Action Centre, National Consumers League and Consumer Action — have announced Foxtel has pledged to spend $600 million on digital television by October 2003 if the competition watchdog approves the revised pay-TV deal with Optus The middle-class entrepreneurs of the Victorian era were so successful because they invested their own money and were ruthless Scientists are developing a smart tattoo that could tell diabetics when their glucose levels are dangerously low. Once perfected, the tattoo will allow glucose levels to be monitored round the clock, and could allow an alarm system that would warn the diabetic if their glucose levels were to fall dangerously Adobe has announced that it has asked the US District Court to resolve a contractual dispute that Adobe has the right to permit its customers to embed ITC fonts in electronic documents. Adobe is also the same rights with respect to Monotype fonts. Adobe attempted to resolve this matter informally with Monotype and ITC, but was unsuccessful Walt Anderson, the financier behind such non-traditional space ventures as MirCorp and Rotary Rocket, is bankrolling a new company that intends to change the economics of the commercial satellite business The idea of an invisibility cloak has made the leap from science fiction books to an international patent application. The 'three dimensional cloaking process and apparatus' for concealing objects and people (WO 02/067196) employs photodetectors on the rear surface which are used to record the intensity and colour of a source of illumination behind the object. Light emitters on the front surface then generate light beams that exactly mimic the same measured intensity, colour and trajectory. The result is that an observer looking at the front of the object appears to see straight through it

04 September 2002

Neil Gaiman has won this year's Hugo for wonderful his novel American Gods.

VeriSign could lose its right to sell 'dot-com' domain names if it fails to address accusations that it violated its contract with global Internet addressing authorities.

The Public Anemone is an organic robot set in a rock pool filled with greenish water which reacts to light and touch, much like an real sea anemone. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston see their robot as a way of exploring artificial life.

Wanted: Talented shepherd to manage flock of 600 sheep on remote Lundy Island. Must enjoy virtual solitude. Spouse recommended.

03 September 2002

The perennial rumour that Apple is developing its OS X platform for Intel chips has come around again, with Apple reported to be running a parallel x86 version of the Unix-based OS X under the 'Marklar' moniker.

If the next big thing in computers, the grid, comes true, war will know no boundaries. Virtual war, that is. A grid is a kind of hypernetwork that links computers and data storage owned by different groups so that they can share computing power. By comparison, today's Internet, allows independent users to trade data, not computer resources.

Colin Powell has said the United States must publish its evidence against Saddam Hussein before it launches any military action against Iraq.

While delegates attending the World Summit wrangled over how best to save the planet's rapidly dwindling resources, they gave scant indication of leading by example. The 10-day summit, billed as the largest UN conference ever held, is expected to generate between 300 and 400 tons of garbage, and so far, just 20% of it is being recycled.

02 September 2002

Red Hat plans to build out a growing portfolio of enterprise products with a desktop Linux offering targeted at business users.

Venezuela has adopted a policy for the use of open-source software in government wherever possible. They have practical rather than philosophical motivations: keeping cash in the country and promoting local software development.

Be the first on your block to drive a Star Wars Land Speeder. This used to be a 1988 Ford Escort and only has 880 miles since built.

Shooting and poisoning feral animals is failing to reduce their thriving populations throughout NSW, warns a report on the National Parks and Wildlife Service's efforts to control pests. Instead, farmers and other landholders must be persuaded to repair the environment to make conditions less hospitable for introduced species.

01 September 2002

Hot on the heels of the Mozilla 1.1 release, Netscape have launched Navigator 7.0 into the world.

When MIT announced in March that it won a US$50 million grant to design high-tech gear for the US Army's 'soldier of the future', the project was hailed as the stuff of science fiction and comic book heroes. The school has grudgingly acknowledged that it copied images from the sci-fi comic book 'Radix' as part of its winning bid.

Veteran UK ex-minister Gerald Kaufman warns of 'substantial resistance' at Westminster if Mr Blair follows 'the most intellectually backward American president of my lifetime' into the looming conflict.

A federal law that the recording industry is using to unmask a suspected KaZaA music-trader is unconstitutional, according to a coalition of non-profit groups.

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