October 2002 Archive

31 October 2002

Jackie Ballard, the new director general of Britain's leading animal welfare charity — the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — wants the World Trade Organisation to start taking animal rights seriously.

With an eye toward its bottom line, Yahoo has decided to jettison its own proprietary scripting language in favour of the open-source alternative PHP.

SETI@home administrators are allegedly ignoring claims that the project is being sabotaged by miscreants who are threatening to derail its reputation and that of many valuable Internet-based distributed computing projects. They have finally yielded to pressure and announced that they will crack-down on cheats rorting statistics.

A Russian dancer held captive in the recent stand-off with Chechen rebels uses his mobile phone to post a message to the world. Neither his captors nor government censors can stop him.

30 October 2002

Anti-World Trade Organisation activists say they have been vindicated by an official investigation into two protest web sites. The Australian Broadcasting Authority has given the Melbourne Indymedia and S11 sites the all-clear after complaints they were inciting violence against police.

The British Army has appealed for anyone hiding one if its borrowed inflatable tanks — which blew away in a weekend gale — to kindly return it.

A hatchet-wielding man who lured a German tourist from his camper and then chopped his victim twice in the back of the head paid for the brazen attack with his life. The tourist, described by police sources as a 15-year-judo expert, turned the tables on his attacker Saturday morning and killed the thug with his bare hands, despite suffering two axe wounds to the head.

For hard-core computer gamers, plain beige boxes won't do. Instead, they go for jazzed-up custom jobs featuring cobalt blue cases and Spider-Man fan grills. Woodinville's pcToys sees a multimillion-dollar business in selling them the parts they want.

29 October 2002

Security companies are warning of an e-card company, FriendGreetings.com, that downloads a spamming application onto visitors' PCs.

STMicroelectronics plans to announce a breakthrough on Monday in light-emitting silicon that could lead to a new generation of more powerful computing processors and more efficient automobile components as well as potentially higher-speed optical data-transmission systems.

Men accused of 'date rape' will have to prove that they made efforts to ensure their sexual partners gave agreement under laws being considered by the UK Government.

With the US national elections just around the corner, Opensecrets.org, a web site focusing on 'Responsive Politics' recently published lobbying and donations info for the 2002 elections to date. They have a breakdown of Microsoft's individual dossier, also, looking at the 'Top Donations by Industry', Microsoft is, conspicuously, the only entry under 'Computers/Internet'.

28 October 2002

Pheasant season took an ugly turn for Michael Murray when he was shot by Sonny, his year-old English setter pup.

The Asetek Vapochill, a Vapour Phase Refrigerated PC Case, that chills a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 down to -7°C and allows it to run stable in a workstation environment at 3.3GHz and beyond.

Green campaigners handcuffed themselves to Esso petrol pumps in Luxembourg, closing down all the company's stations in the cheap-fuel country and widening a UK-based protest.

New Zealand police have become involved in a bizarre incident in Auckland, finding a severed human leg hanging off the back door of a house in the centre of the city.

27 October 2002

Want to patent a moustache protector? Or perhaps you've hit upon the idea of improving chickens' lives by giving them eyeglasses. Well, don't bother — they've already been invented. These are just some of the bizarre ideas that have trickled into the UK Patent Office on a regular basis since it opened 150 years ago. According to Steve van Dulken, who oversees the patent archive at the British Library, 'For every 100 applications lodged, I'd say that 10 are a bit wacky'.

IBM researchers have created a simple computation engine that's more than 250,000 times smaller than the most advanced silicon circuitry. Called the world's smallest computer, the system relies on a 'molecular cascade' that pushes a handful of carbon monoxide molecules across a copper surface to perform digital logic functions.

By the year 2080, Manhattan and Shanghai could be underwater, droughts and floods could become more extreme and hundreds of millions of people will be at risk from disease, starvation and water shortages.

Customers at a McDonald's in Washington DC got a shock Friday when two deer jumped through the restaurant window.

26 October 2002

The BBC have won the battle with the Metropolitan Police over the trademark police box, more commonly known as a Tardis.

Telecommunications companies are coming under intense pressure from the industry's watchdog to give rebates to customers deprived of mobile telephony services due to faulty handsets.

Two days after city inspectors ripped up illegal Nike advertising decals glued to sidewalks along Central Park West, Microsoft unleashed a swarm of large adhesive butterflies in Manhattan.

A group of Washington insiders backed by the Sci Fi Channel calls for the release of government UFO-related evidence. Sci Fi plans to milk the connection to hype its forthcoming UFO miniseries Taken.

25 October 2002

Anyone wondering why MS executives Steve Ballmer and Brian Valentine are so bent out of shape about Linux should check out SuSE 8.1, for insight. For a desktop PC or small business network it's already miles ahead of Win98SE and ME and closing fast on XP for ease of installation and use by first-timers.

Google has quietly deleted more than 100 controversial sites from some search result listings. Absent from Google's French and German listings are Web sites that are anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, or related to white supremacy, according to a new report from Harvard University's Berkman Centre. Also banned is Jesus-is-lord.com, a fundamentalist Christian site that is adamantly opposed to abortion.

The dog-only bloodmobile is the only one of its kind in the country, officials at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine believe. The white bus travels to blood drives organised by breeders, dog clubs, veterinarians and others in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland to collect blood for its well known veterinary hospital.

Despite an FDA investigator's public concern, the agency okays an implantable chip for humans — as long as it's for security and safety reasons. No sooner had the ink dried on the FDA's curiously quick approval of an implantable human chip than the company that produces it launches a national marketing campaign.

24 October 2002

According to officials at key online backbone organisations, starting late Monday the heart of the Internet sustained its largest and most sophisticated attack ever. Had it lasted longer, could have taken the Internet down.

With customers methodically switching mobile services and upgrading to newer models, discarded mobile phones are hitting incinerators and landfills in record numbers, contaminating the environment. But now users have the option of donating unwanted phones to non profit groups, developing nations, or for recycling the components in environmentally safe ways.

A world first scheme to underwrite the cost of PlayStation 2 development kits for local developers will boost Australia's games development industry. Meanwhile Microsoft intends Xbox to be a closed system and to stay that way, and will use both technical and legal avenues to protect it.

Sharp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal displays, unveiled a screen with microprocessor circuitry applied directly onto the glass, enabling it to function like a computer. It uses Sharp's continuous grain silicon technology and should be used on some products in 2005.

23 October 2002

The Direct Marketing Association has said that unsolicited e-mail has become so noxious that a federal anti-spam law is finally necessary.

The head of the National Security Agency said last week that Congress might want to aim the most powerful surveillance system in the world at American citizens. Lieutenant General Michael Hayden said the ongoing terrorist threat means America needs to debate where to draw the line between foreign and domestic surveillance. Currently the NSA is prohibited from spying domestically.

Top US science advisers say that anti-terrorism security measures have caused scientific information to disappear from the Internet.

HardCoreWare.net have built a silent PC that's well over twenty times quieter than their comparison PC (40 dB versus 65). It's quite the zippy machine; P4 2.80 GHz, 7200 RPM hard drive and an overclocked GeForce4 Ti 4200 — the only fan in the entire system is in the PSU.

22 October 2002

Lucent Technologies said its research arm Bell Labs designed two prototype chips that will allow 3G users to surf the Web via mobile phones and other mobile devices at speeds more than seven times faster than the fastest 3G connection today.

A federal judge ruled that Southwest Airlines does not have to revamp its Web site to make it more accessible to the blind.

Egypt officially reopened one of the first and most celebrated centres of learning in human history — Bibliotheca Alexandrina — the library of Alexandria whose ancient roots stretch back more than 2000 years.

Roomba, supposedly the first intelligent 'floor vacuum', as in a cross between vacuum cleaner and a robot.

21 October 2002

Microsoft must face a lawsuit by the University of California accusing the world's biggest software maker of using patented technology without permission in its Internet Explorer Web browser Prolific e-mailer, Jason Hecke, has been ordered to pay more than US$98,000 for flooding Washington computers several years ago with dubious offers to make money through the Internet Sean Penn weighed in on the international debate over a possible war with Iraq, paying for a US$56,000 advertisement in the Washington Post accusing the retarded monkey boy of stifling debate and threatening civil liberties A developer of bulk mail software has figured out how to blast computers with pop up spam over the Internet through a messaging function on many Windows operating systems

20 October 2002

Britain sought to live up to its reputation as a nation of animal lovers this week with a plan to overhaul almost 100 years of laws covering the welfare of all animals kept by humans.

A way of keeping slices of living brain tissue alive for weeks has developed by a biotech company. This will allow drug developers to study the effect of chemicals on entire neural networks, not just individual cells.

Steve has built a Lego version of Dean Kamen's Segway Human Transporter. It was constructed using only Lego, two cheap custom sensors and some smart programming using the open source BrickOS for the Lego RCX. The LegWay, as the creator calls it, can balance itself on two wheels and follow a line.

Jim McKenna and John Lieberman from California are trying to give AOL a taste of its own medicine. They're asking people to send them AOL CDs, and they're going to drop them off at the company's doorstep once they collect one million CDs.

19 October 2002

Two years from now the world's smallest optical disc will let your mobile phone store five two hour movies, squirrel away 25,000 digital photos or hoard 48 hours of MP3 music.

Toshiba has announced that it plans to market a fuel cell powered notebook computer by 2004. This unit will have an operation time of about 10 hours, three or more times longer than conventional batteries, without charging.

The future of SETI@home director David Anderson has spoken out to calm fears sparked by the project's chief scientist, Dan Werthimer, that the project is under threat of closing.

A 33-year-old has been charged with breach of the peace after police received reports that the man was engaging in a sexual act with a traffic cone at the bottom of Calton Hill, Edinburgh.

18 October 2002

A new coalition — the Pacific Alliance for Wild Wolves — is forming to fight an anticipated reduction in federal protections for wolves that could migrate back into California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington from a population reintroduced in northern Idaho.

In the same way that the home computer gave users the ability to create documents that looked good, even if they didn't necessarily read well, print-on-demand services now enable people to publish a book with ease, regardless of whether anyone else would want to read it.

Canada's Bombardier will roll out a jet engine-powered locomotive it has been quietly developing for years in partnership with the US Federal Railroad Administration.

Conservative peers and bishops joined forces in the Lords last night to block Government plans to allow unmarried, homosexual and lesbian couples to adopt children.

17 October 2002

Microsoft has yanked another of its fraudulent user testimonials, in this case a fictitious twelve-year-old boy raving about a fictional homework assignment and the indispensable insights he received from MS Encarta Reference Library in preparing it.

auDA's New Names Advisory Panel has recommended new second level domain names based on Australia's states and territories.

There are indications that Nokia Australia's customer care line may be operating under a policy that defies its agreements with the NSW Department of Fair Trading to repair Nokia 8210s carrying display faults.

The next time you're in need of a wart remover, forget combing the aisles of the local pharmacy and head over to the hardware store for a roll of duct tape instead.

16 October 2002

The Alaska Board of Game added 55 square miles of protection for wolves around Denali National Park and Preserve on Friday. The vote was unanimous. The board also extended a ban on wolf hunting and trapping in a 72-square-mile buffer established in November 2000. That protection was scheduled to end 31 March.

The future of SETI@home, an Internet-based distributed computing experiment to find radio signals from intelligent alien life forms, is in serious danger as academics behind the project face a funding crisis.

Broadband download limits are coming under scrutiny as the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman questions the capping policies of major telcos.

Government worker Ian Jarman is unhappy that he has to wear a tie to work — so he is accusing his management of sex discrimination.

15 October 2002

The District Court of Western Australia dismissed the lawsuit by Perth-based direct marketing firm T3 Direct against anti-spam activist Joey McNicol, describing it as 'speculative and based on propositions (the plaintiff) knew to be incorrect'.

Universities in metropolitan Sydney will now be linked via a fibre optic network following the signing of a $2.1 million contract. The Australian Academic and Research Network signed the 10 year agreement with telecommunications carrier Uecomm.

Telstra has spent $500 million weatherproofing its national telephone network, only to discover that the sealant used is a 'time bomb' causing widespread corrosion and could potentially disrupt millions of lines around the country.

Cyber-stalkers from around the world could be jailed for up to 10 years in Victoria under Australia's first legislation policing internet intimidation. Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls said the Crimes Act definition of stalking would be extended to cover e-mail communication, the manipulation of another person's computer and the publishing of offensive material on the internet.

14 October 2002

Ralph Nader has said that the retarded monkey boy's moves toward possible war against Iraq are a ruse to distract attention from corporate scandals Nicolas Cage has sold his personal comic book collection, including a copy of Superman's 1938 pulp debut, at auction for more than US$1.6 million Robust walking robots are still surprisingly rare. The German-American Scorpion Project is trying to conquer 25 miles of targeted navigation into the Mojave Desert and back autonomously. The eight-legged robot is triple-jointed and must travel by day for two weeks alone without human intervention Dogs and their owners could become the latest target of a clampdown on moral corruption in Iran after a hardline cleric called for canines of all shapes to be arrested

13 October 2002

Core Design is launching an Angel of Darkness version of its hit Lara Croft game, but so far no women have applied to work as testers for the project.

Western hackers are developing programs to defeat the Internet censorship barriers of repressive countries overseas — and you can take part in the effort.

Film and recording industry advocates are appealing to universities nationwide to help crack down on Internet-based piracy, which costs the entertainment world billions of dollars in lost revenues every year.

The Brazilians use sugar cane alcohol to fuel their modification of a single engine crop duster called the 'Ipanema'. The company projects a 25% increase in revenue from the new alcohol planes and increased income to convert existing gasoline fuelled Ipanemas to alcohol.

12 October 2002

While interest in Linux grows amongst organisations, Telstra and Optus are still refusing to support the open source operating system for users of their broadband services.

Australia is positioning itself to reap the benefits from the potentially lucrative venture of bio-prospecting.

A 24-year-old South Korean man died after playing computer games nonstop for 86 hours.

Fines of up to $250,000 will be levied on mobile phone networks that fail to comply with new rules for mobile towers.

11 October 2002

Microsoft announced that it is easing the DVD-copying restrictions it planned to build into new entertainment software in response to consumer protests.

A microbial fuel cell that runs on scraps of food could fuel a battery providing electricity to top up your home's supply.

Reproductive physiologist Roger Short, from the University of Melbourne's obstetrics department, said a few drops of lemon juice can be a cheap, easy-to-use solution to protect women from both HIV and pregnancy. The Australian Society for HIV Medicine is taking a cautious approach to a the claims.

After nearly five millennia clinging to a wind-swept mountain in eastern California, clips from a bristlecone pine tree believed to be the world's oldest will spend the next year in a petri dish.

10 October 2002

Microsoft will announce a new program, code-named XDocs, that it says will be the first to let ordinary computer users view and interact with information encoded in Extensible Markup Language.

Big Air, a new telecommunications company has joined the growing band of wireless networks trying to take on Telstra over high-speed internet services.

Scientists have reported that they have bioengineered a plant capable of absorbing arsenic from soil and sequenced the complete set of genes for a microbe that can remove heavy metals from water. Some scientists even see the day when trees and grasses will be used to mine metals and minerals without disturbing the soil.

A Florida family that received ID chip implants won't have much company in the United States until the FDA decides whether to regulate the subdermal device.

09 October 2002

Australian computer scientists Alexander Barmouta and Rajkumar Buyya have brought grid computing one step closer to commercialisation, releasing a preliminary prototype of their Grid Bank resource accounting infrastructure.

It's nurture over nature for a lioness in Kenya who keeps choosing to dote on baby antelope rather than devour them. Kamuniak, a lioness in northern Kenya's Samburu National Park has adopted her fifth new-born oryx this year.

Food poisoning killed thousands of foxes at Finnish fox farms last weekend in the largest case of poisoning in the world's top pelt producer.

The Scottish Executive is ready to bring in unprecedented legislation to tackle the scourge of sectarian hatred in Scotland after violence at the Old Firm game on Sunday.

08 October 2002

A single number for e-mail addresses, phone number and web sites is being considered in Australia, despite fears the technology could become a de facto identification number.

Telstra's digital CDMA mobile network, covering rural and regional Australia, is less congested but suffers more call dropouts than the older GSM network.

The entertainment industry is facing a formidable obstacle in pursuing Napster's major successor, KaZaA: geography.

In a move that marks an image make over for Palm, the handheld computing pioneer on Monday releases a sleek, affordable personal digital assistant for first time buyers.

07 October 2002

An international consortium formed by the Agha Khan's charity foundation has been named as Afghanistan's second mobile phone service provider after winning the country's first ever public tender contract.

Dennis Hopper is to play Sinatra in a re-creation of the singer's notorious 1974 Australian tour.

After a year of painstaking scientific research, scientists have revealed what they say is the world's funniest joke.

Police in France's Normandy region say a 31-year-old hunter trying out his marksmanship has accidentally cut power to 1,200 country homes and killed a cow.

06 October 2002

Think your tower case with led fans, a cold cathode and a window is cool? See what this guy did to two Sun Enterprise 15Ks — a case mod on US$1.3 million dollars of hardware.

Asian CD pirates now produce thousands of pirated VCD's on anchored ships in international waters to avoid getting caught. Malaysian marine police have been asked to be on the lookout for pirate ships.

LifeGem Memorials, the world's first purveyor of diamond memorials, announced the availability of the LifeGem, a certified, high quality diamond created from the carbon remains of deceased loved ones.

Italian porn star and former Italian parliamentarian 'La Cicciolina' has offered to give herself to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in exchange for world peace.

05 October 2002

Recent tweaks to Google's PageRank search algorithm have degraded rather than improved the accuracy of the results.

In a submission to a senate inquiry looking into Australia's telecommunications network, Telstra admitted its vaunted ADSL broadband service was not compatible with the copper cables used by many households.

Microsoft appears to have shut down one of the world's largest distributors of 'mod chips' — grey-market add-ons that allow Microsoft's Xbox and other video game consoles to play pirated games.

In a case of speedy justice a jury today ruled that Neil Gaiman was in the right on all 9 counts in the case he brought against Todd McFarlane. This case revolved around ownership stakes for Medieval Spawn, Angela, Cagliostro, and further contracts involving the rights to Miracle Man.

04 October 2002

Congratulations to Dr Karl Kruszelnicki of The University of Sydney, who was awarded the Ig Nobel Award for Interdisciplinary Research, for performing a comprehensive survey of human belly button lint — who gets it, when, what colour and how much.

Nokia's 8850 model mobile phone is coming under fire from consumers who claim the handset suffers from the same screen defects that plagued the 8210.

SETI@home is planning to transfer it's operations from Arecibo to another telescope in Australia, where they say lies an increased chance of finding extraterrestrials. The telescope at the Parkes Observatory in Australia is more powerful, with a wider view of the sky; scientists are betting that this new telescope will also help find signs of 'shriveling' black holes.

A US Senate hopeful in the state of Montana, Libertarian candidate Stan Jones, has a bad case of the blues after years of drinking a home-made silver solution for medical reasons.

03 October 2002

Australian computer users are coming under siege, with two separate worms infiltrating systems with damaging and costly effect.

Australia has been earmarked for a campus of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory.

Australia will consider forcing television manufacturers to include digital tuners in new sets to encourage consumers to take up the new technology.

Australian power company Origin Energy said it will buy the entire electricity output from Australia's largest wind farm Challicum Hills.

02 October 2002

The Australian Government has refused to allow Electronic Frontiers Australia to find out which web sites have been banned under the federal web censorship laws introduced in 2000. Government spokespeople generally insist that 'they're all hardcore pedophilia' etc, but the issue of which web sites are banned has become more interesting since the NSW Police Minister called for web sites run by WTO protestors to be shut down. So in order to ward off continuing inquiries from the likes of EFA, the Government is introducing changes to FOI laws.

Red Hat, one of the biggest distributors of the Linux operating system, released a new version yesterday designed to attract more users of desktop personal computers, even as the company plays down attempts to compete with Microsoft.

The US state of California yesterday targeted the information age scourge of 'spamming' with a US$2 million lawsuit.

John Carmack and crew at Armadillo Aerospace have gotten their first man in the air. Six seconds of perfectly controlled flight with human passenger.

01 October 2002

On 9 October the US Supreme Court will hear the case of Eldred vs Ashcroft. It's a challenge to the controversial 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which lengthened copyright terms by 20 years, stretching them to 70 years after an artist's death.

A malicious Windows XP help centre request can easily and silently delete the contents of any directory on your Windows machine. Worse, Microsoft has rolled the fix silently into SP1 without making a public announcement.

Optus has claimed that Telstra is using its market power to stop rivals in rural Australia offering fast-speed internet services.

A survey of 28 leading scientists from around the world concluded that using biotechnology to produce simple nutritional and hygienic improvements and cheap vaccines would do more to improve global health than the development of high-tech treatments.

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