January 2003 Archive

31 January 2003

As troops gather in the Middle East and the US hypes up rhetoric for war on Iraq, an army of protesters across Australia is mustering its forces to fight for peace.

Melbourne scientists, from the CSIRO and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, have made a landmark discovery that could lead to new drugs able to stop the spread of diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

The latest craze in Germany is 'Kartoffelkanone' or potato bazookas. These use hairspray ignited by a spark to fire potatoes at colossal speeds. The authorities are not amused.

A lioness in a Spanish animal sanctuary ripped the right arm off a British tourist after the 54-year old silly cow clambered up a barrier and stuck her fingers inside the cage.

30 January 2003

Children in the UK who were conceived from donated sperm and eggs will be able to find out 'limited' information on their genetic parents.

US trade negotiators are pushing for Australia to sign up to a tough new copyright regime that could hold ISPs liable for breaches.

Gibson is planning to roll out their Magic this year with the delivery of guitars using Cat 5 instead of analogue cables to connect instruments and amplifiers. The debate over the quality of digital vs analogue signal processing is not new, but using a 'Magic' Les Paul would force you entirely into the digital domain.

Nineteen Australian universities are on the way to creating a seamless virtual national research library.

29 January 2003

Antoni Gaudí, the Barcelona visionary who was the greatest Spanish exponent of the Art Nouveau style, has had his luscious 1908 design for a New York hotel submitted for the World Trade Centre site.

Gigantic dust clouds swirling over China are threatening the world's most populous country with the first-ever 'ecological meltdown'. The clouds — which stretch for thousands of miles over Asia and have even reached across the Pacific to North America — are rising from a rapidly growing dust bowl in northern China that far outstrips the notorious one in the United States in the 1930s.

Anyone can contribute an article to the Wikipedia, an open-source encyclopædia that relies solely on volunteers for its content. All that's needed is a little initiative.

A 32-year-old Boulder man who had opened his apartment's patio door to enjoy the unusually warm weather was later overheard screaming threats and seen waving what appeared to be a handgun, prompting a maintenance worker to call police. It turned out that the man was simply upset at his computer — which he had called a 'bitch' he 'wanted to kill' — and the gun was a plastic pellet gun, not the .45-caliber automatic handgun it was made to resemble.

28 January 2003

The Australian Consumers Association claim that a levy on the sale of blank CDs and DVDs may benefit buyers if it locks in a right to copy for personal use.

Linux's popularity with programmers has already managed to make a huge dent on the market share of rival software Unix and now it's gradually threatening to do the same with Microsoft's dominance of the business software market.

If you've ever used a peer-to-peer network and swapped copyrighted files, you're what prosecutors like to think of as an unindicted federal felon.

A man trying to beat his dog to death with a gun was fatally wounded when it apparently went off accidentally.

27 January 2003

Traffic on the many parts of the internet has slowed dramatically, the apparent effects of a fast-spreading, virus-like infection interfering with web browsing and delivery of e-mail through dodgy Microsoft servers Microsoft has changed the code name of its highly controversial 'trusted' computing platform from Palladium' to 'next-generation secure computing base The pre-emptive demonstration against the pre-emptive war, which drew an estimated 250,000 chilled Americans to the Mall last weekend, was as polite and peaceful as the retarded monkey boy could have asked A Sicilian man who had been pronounced dead by doctors startled relatives by sitting up just before he was to be put into his coffin and demanding a glass of water

26 January 2003

David Berlind has written about organising an industry-wide anti-spam consortium, and now it looks like this initiative to jam spam is coming to life. Together, we can fashion a royalty-free, interoperable anti-spam protocol.

Spam is not speech, it is conduct, specifically, spam is conduct consisting of a denial-of-service attack which may or may not be targeted at users, systems, networks, mailing lists, or some combination of these, sometimes in small but often in very large quantities.

Filtering firm SurfControl has compiled a list of the top 10 most annoying spam messages sent across the net in the last 12 months.

Technology groups are going on the offensive against Hollywood in a bitter dispute over a call for government-mandated copy protection.

25 January 2003

Take a desktop printer, wash out its ink cartridge, refill it with a suspension of cells, and what do you get? The answer, according to Vladimir Mironov and Thomas Boland, is a breakthrough in tissue engineering. They have successfully produced three-dimensional tubes of living tissue using just such a technique. Their work is a first step towards printing complex tissues or even entire replacement organs.

Internet address seller Network Solutions said it will apologise to tens of thousands of customers whose e-mail addresses the company inadvertently released.

Anti-abortion groups continue to wage a battle against RU-486, the abortion pill. And, according to a new University of Oregon study, their tactics appear to be working.

24 January 2003

The leaders of France and Germany used a historic meeting of their two governments yesterday to state their united opposition to early military action against Iraq. While in Sydney, more than 150 anti-war protesters today converged on Garden Island to voice opposition to the forward deployment of troops to the possible war on Iraq.

WhiteHat Security claims it has found a way to exploit a flaw in the way all web servers communicate.

Complaints about identity theft nearly doubled in America during 2002, as what is that country's fastest growing crime topped its government's list of consumer frauds for a third consecutive year.

A 60-year-old motorist in Britain, Barbara Byrne, has been banned from driving for a year after she was convicted for driving with one dog on her lap, four on the front passenger seat and 22 in the back.

23 January 2003

Federal Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston said Australia is getting 'screwed' by internet carriers' peering arrangements and that he would be directing competition and consumer watchdog the ACCC to do something about it.

Andersen is offering windows that double as entertainment centres, being used as projection screens for home entertainment systems and DVD players.

Sharp will soon launch a Linux-based home audio-visual server in Japan that uses a broadband connection to reach beyond the boundaries of the home and allow users access to their stored video and image files from computers connected to the Internet.

22 January 2003

The Australian Labor Party has offered a prize of a case of Coca-Cola and $100 worth of Linux merchandise to anybody who can find a valid e-mail address for John Howard Geneticist Giorgio Casari and neuroscientist Roberto Marconi of Milan's San Raffaele Institute have discovered a gene linked to severe migraines, a finding they say could pave the way to banishing not only migraines but everyday headaches as well In the 13th century, the Venetians built a warship a day to battle Turkey at sea. Today, the Pentagon can barely crank out a new fighter plane in 10 years. Experts blame red tape — and corruption — in the military industrial complex A man who erased his drunk-driving record from a police computer and replaced it with a winking smiley face graphic ended up with a suspended license and a fine when police failed to see the funny side

21 January 2003

Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO of the ever clueless RIAA, has said that telcos and ISPs will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites.

Legato Systems said a survey of Australian companies had shown that many of them could be breaching archives and corporation law by deleting business-related e-mail.

EuroSETI is set to reveal scientifically sound and verifiable evidence based on observations taken by the SOHO satellite and other satellites that indicate UFOs are present within our solar system.

Thousands of plastics industry workers marched in Taipei on the weekend, calling for the island's environmental chief to step down in a protest against new curbs on plastic bags and tableware.

20 January 2003

Four people are confirmed dead and up to 400 homes are in ruins after the devastating firestorm that swept through large areas of Canberra at the weekend. The historic Mount Stromlo Observatory was largely destroyed, along with equipment and property worth an estimated $20 million. Fierce flames claimed five telescopes, the workshop, eight staff homes and the main dome.

A pest-control web site that is suing someone who obviously has a particular bone to pick with exterminators: he is accused of being a troll who constantly leaving obnoxious and offensive messages on their pest-control bulletin board.

Imagine the human genome as music. Unravel DNA's double helix, picture its components lined up like piano keys, and assign a note to each. Run your finger along the keys. Spanish scientists did that just for fun and recorded what they call an audio version of the blueprint for life.

19 January 2003

A day of world-wide protests against a looming US-led war on Iraq has culminated in giant peace rallies in Washington, San Francisco and other US cities.

The increase in use of embedded operating systems is causing strange things to happen to consumer products. Such as Windows CE in the BMW 745i occasionally causing the car to go nuts.

A New York court has ruled that Network Associates, a maker of antivirus and computer security software, may not require people who buy the software to get permission from the company before publishing reviews of its products.

At the heart of Microsoft's new CD protection technology is the laying of songs onto a copy-controlled CD in multiple layers, one that would permit normal playback on a stereo and a PC.

18 January 2003

The Western Australian Internet Association has criticised MediaForce, an organisation claiming to represent Warner Bros, for sending letters to Australian ISPs asking them to terminate the accounts of users alleged to have breached copyright requirements.

Scientists have announced they had devised an instant test for detecting the plague, providing a powerful weapon in the fight against bioterrorism and for combating the disease in poor countries where it remains a peril.

A Europe-wide ban on the use of animals to test cosmetic products has been approved with an overwhelming majority by the European Parliament. It took 10 years of argument, but under the final compromise agreed the European Union will bring in the ban by 2009. However, there are some loopholes which have been condemned by animal rights groups as unacceptable.

17 January 2003

The United States of America has gone mad. The reaction to 11 September is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded.

The Supreme Court's decisive ruling to uphold a law extending copyrights for 20 years will force public-domain advocates to compete ever more fiercely with the powerful entertainment lobby.

An aerospace company is proposing to deploy what it calls a 'space sheepdog' to usher space junk safely out of orbit. It could even put the junk's spare momentum to good use.

16 January 2003

Using just 30 pounds-worth of equipment, 19 Greenpeace protesters successfully broke into the control building at Sizewell B nuclear power station in Suffolk in a bid to highlight what they said was the plant's vulnerability.

Global warming and the pollution believed to lie behind it are key reasons for the severity of Australia's drought, an ominous sign for the future of the food-producing nation. The report, by the environmental group World Wide Fund for Nature Australia and two meteorologists, said record day-time temperatures last year led to unprecedented rates of water evaporation.

In a case that underscores the increasing importance search rankings have on business, Google Technologies is fighting to dismiss a lawsuit claiming that it purposely devalued the search rankings of online advertising network Search King.

Hackers from around the world will converge on MIT on Friday to swap intelligence and marshal their collective brainpower for the fight against a seemingly indomitable opponent — spam.

15 January 2003

XWebs, a web browser said to least quadruple surfing speeds has won the top prize at an Irish exhibition for young scientists PalmSource has decided to stop using Graffiti for text input in all future versions of its operating system. Instead, it will switch to using a version of CIC's Jot recognition system, which will be called Graffiti 2 Local ISPs have doused reported attempts by a US digital copyright solutions company to force them to terminate the Internet contracts of customers suspected of breaching copyright rules As Western troops head for the Gulf, anti-war activists have descended on Baghdad, seeking a solution to the showdown between the retarded monkey boy and President Saddam Hussein

14 January 2003

For anybody into building their own computers, Lope Computer have an interesting case design. Their t-shaped case is claimed to end cable clutter and have very good airflow.

HanaHo Games are considering creating a set-top system that would run the MAME emulator and allow the user to play their collection of ROMS on a telly.

Children at a school in Norfolk have been banned from throwing snowballs at their classmates unless they ask their target's permission first.

13 January 2003

A personal flying machine originally developed for the military that straps on an individual's back and allows them to fly around for over two hours at a time. The prototype is now up for auction on eBay. The only catch — you have to agree not to operate the vehicle if you purchase it.

The US Army is working on a Transdermal Nutrient Delivery System which works similarly to nicotine or birth control patches but delivers vitamins and other micronutrients. It was developed to help 'warfighters sustain their physical and mental performance' during high intensity conflict. Stand aside lest the herd of code geeks trample you in their rush for a supply of food patches.

Concerns have been raised that Federal Parliament will not have a say in whether Australia will take an active role in any war. Australian Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown, believes Mr Howard is misleading the public. He is concerned the Prime Minister is planning to use his power to act alone.

12 January 2003

Police in Genoa, Italy have admitted to fabricating evidence against globalisation activists in an attempt to justify police brutality during protests at the July 2001 G8 Summit. In searches of the Nexis database, FAIR has been unable to find a single mention of this development in any major US newspapers or magazines, national television news shows or wire service stories.

William Gibson, whose new book Pattern Recognition is due out soon, has a weblog online.

Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, an outspoken advocate of the free publication and copying of digital works, is putting his money where his mouth is. He's giving away his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, to anyone who wants it.

The Bar Monkey is a bar built around a 486 running Linux that can dispense an 8 ounce mixed drink in under 10 seconds. It uses a Matrix Orbital Serial LCD panel with a keypad built into the bar surface for user input. Three Harvey Mudd College students built the bar in their spare time last semester. The bar holds 16 ingredients with which it can currently mix 188 drinks stored in its drink database. Total project cost: US$235.

11 January 2003

Bob Cringely takes a look at how Apple is thumbing its nose at Microsoft, and Apple's new Safari browser is just the tip of the iceberg.

On the day he was supposed to be replaced by another tree-sitter, John Quigley is served with a trespassing suit. Quigley now says he plans to remain in the ancient oak.

Vatican City, 106 acres in area and Europe's last remaining absolute monarchy, revealed that while it has a population of only 455, last year its miniature legal system hosted 397 civil cases and 608 criminal ones — two legal cases and nearly 1.5 crimes for every man, woman and child. An interesting spin that neglects to mention the millions of visitors that pass through the Vatican every year.

10 January 2003

Police video released Wednesday showed a North Carolina family kneeling and handcuffed, who shrieked as officers murdered their dog — which appeared to be playfully wagging its tail — with a shotgun during a traffic stop.

OzEmail users have been unable to send e-mail to Excite addresses for some time now, according to users, and OzEmail itself is puzzled as to why Excite has been blocking mail.

GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory and it will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location.

Printer maker Lexmark has found an unusual weapon to thwart rivals from selling replacement toner cartridges: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

09 January 2003

How do you print a light bulb? John Canny, an engineer at the University of California in Berkeley and his team are developing an ink-jet printing technology that will use polymers to print fully assembled electric and electronic gadgets in one go.

Some of those controversial proposals dealing with spam, copyright and Internet taxes will resurface now that the 108th Congress has begun — and some stand a better chance of becoming law.

The Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards has announced that it has taken on the task of improving on the omnipresent URL, or Web address, to give developers a cleaner way to design and locate Web services.

08 January 2003

A Norwegian court has acquitted a teenager accused by US entertainment groups of creating tools for hackers. The court acquitted Jon Johansen on all charges and said he did not break the law when he created a system that could remove copy protection on DVDs.

Despite the benefits of modern medical technology, new evidence suggests that doctors should sometimes cede to the authority of the earth's original healer, Mother Nature. A new study describes the benefits of using maggots to treat stubborn wounds that refuse to heal as a result of infection or other problems. Maggots digest dead tissue and destroy bacteria.

A German family has kept a live eel in its bathtub for the last 33 years and even trained it to swim into a bucket when someone needs to wash.

07 January 2003

The web site of the Recording Industry Association of America, one of the most unpopular lobby groups on the Internet, was defaced last week for the fifth time in a year.

Penn Jillette — the taller, louder half of the Penn and Teller team — had an airport security guard get a little too personal while inspecting his package.

An anti-terrorism squad raided the home of a Danish family after mistaking a light-hearted message on their answering machine for a hostage alert.

06 January 2003

The Ethiopian wolf is the most endangered species in the canid group. The biggest threat comes from rabies and other diseases carried by dogs in the wolves' mountainous habitat, but researchers now think it may be possible to develop a vaccine that could dramatically help the species' survival.

There have been developments in new plastics that exhibit magnetic fields of fractal dimensions. Whereas a simple bar magnet produces magnetic fields that go from the north pole to the south pole, the fields of the new hybrid plastic sprout like branches of a cactus lined with secondary fields that resemble needles. As these fields become increasingly interlocked, they exhibit a unique kind of order. This intensely ordered structure might one day be key to storing information with a very high density.

Star Wars Origami features about a dozen pieces of Star Wars vehicles and characters complete with diagrams on how to make them yourself.

An activist is drawing fire from National Park officials for his efforts to save a species of black rats on a remote island off the coast of southern California.

05 January 2003

A man wielding two axes went berserk in the crowded town centre of Waltham Abbey yesterday, leaving two people in hospital and a third in shock, before launching a frenzied attack inside an historic abbey.

Hotmail and Yahoo are using Carnegie Mellon developed captcha technology — completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart — to stop spammers from automating signups for accounts from which they can send spam. SpamArrest are using captcha too, but to stop incoming spam.

The MIT AI Lab, the birth place of the free software movement, walked away from a US$404K study because the government wanted to restrict participation by foreign students.

04 January 2003

It's time for Bob Cringley's predictions of what will happen in high-tech and high-tech business during 2003.

After being administered by for-profit companies since its inception in 1995, the .org Internet domain for organisations and groups is now being overseen by the non-profit Public Interest Registry.

An international group of scientists pooling more than 30 years of data has concluded that behavioural patterns among different orangutan populations show evidence of culture.

03 January 2003

Geeky college pranks are not just the purview of big name science and technology schools. Now that statutes of limitations have expired, Stealth Force Beta, a group of 'constructive vandals' who operated at New Mexico Tech, tell of their exploits.

Michael Robertson, CEO of software company Lindows, has revealed himself as the formerly anonymous donor of $200,000 in prize money in a contest to translate the Linux operating system to Microsoft's Xbox video game console.

Hunting skills may not after all have triggered the tremendous burst of human evolution at the beginning of the ice ages nearly two million years ago. Instead of man the hunter, the driving force behind this evolutionary surge may have been woman the gatherer, with both mother and grandmother playing a vital role.

McDonald's has pulled the plug on what had been envisioned as a global digital network linking its fast-food restaurants, headquarters and vendors.

02 January 2003

Portland politicians said it was okay for police to seize a citizen's garbage without a search warrant. But when some reporters swiped their garbage and reported the contents they screamed foul play.

Dan Jackson is distributing an unfortunately named program that will remove the security from Microsoft Reader ebooks. Once the security is removed, it then allows the book to be converted to html, text or any other format.

Bill Talen, known as Reverend Billy, has been exhorting people to resist temptation — the temptation to shop.

Internet domain name registrar Register.com last week won a preliminary injunction against Domain Registry of America, a reseller of domain name registrations, that it accuses of deceiving Register.com customers into transferring their registrations.

01 January 2003

Microsoft's biggest threat isn't Linux, OpenOffice, or any piece of software at all — its themselves. Over the last eighteen months two distinctly different Microsoft cultures have emerged, often in opposition to each other.

New Zealand scientists are redesigning how the 'Back' button works in your browser. They point to the fact that the current 'Back' is more of an 'Up' in a stack of pages. They propose a system that records all pages visited.

Apple is applying for a patent to release devices capable of dynamically changing their ornamental or decorative appearance.

Lesley McCulloch is paying the ultimate price for her own 'academic integrity'. After being jailed by the Indonesian authorities for her academic research into human rights abuses.

Search


Archives