May 2003 Archive

31 May 2003

Microsoft is paying $750 million to AOL Time Warner as part of a wide-ranging settlement of disputes between the two companies. As part of the deal, the two companies will drop pending litigation, including an antitrust complaint filed by AOL Time Warner's Netscape Communications unit in January 2002 against Microsoft. AOL also agreed to a seven-year royalty-free license of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. So much for Netscape 8.0, according to industry analysts who predict that the Netscape browser — currently at version 7.02 — will now move from a neglected orphan of AOL Time Warner to a candidate for euthanasia.

Lawrence Anthony, trustee of the Thula Thula Private Game Reserve in Zululand and interim head of the Baghdad Zoo, appealed this week to zoo and animal welfare groups to help raise $1 million for the once-splendid facility, which was badly damaged and had many of its animals stolen during the US-led war against Iraq.

The Federal Government will introduce new laws banning the rebirthing of stolen mobile phones.

Former governor-general Sir William Deane has criticised the federal government's human rights record, labelling the Liberal leadership intolerant and untruthful.

30 May 2003

Sony has unveiled a 'crossover' PlayStation 2 console with a built-in DVD recorder and hard drive for storing data, part of a strategy to combine technologies in hopes of boosting the company's brand and restoring its profitability.

Astronomers led by Steve Phillipps, at the University of Bristol, and Michael Drinkwater, University of Queensland, have discovered a new type of galaxy. The 'ultra-compact dwarf galaxies', are so small that scientists had previously mistaken them for nearby stars.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance claims that Communications Minister Richard Alston had abused his position by criticising the ABC's coverage of the Iraq war.

Researchers are reporting that first-person-shooter video games — the kind that require players to kill or maim enemies or monsters that pop out of nowhere — sharply improve visual attention skills.

29 May 2003

A husband and wife, both police officers, have been accused of squandering $819,000 of drug money over three years while part of a police heroin ring.

Users of the Google search engine like it because it's fast, but a team at Stanford University has come up with ways to make it up to five times faster.

Munich decides to switch a significant proportion of its computers from Windows to the open-source Linux operating system, despite an aggressive pitch from Microsoft.

28 May 2003

Italian police have seized at least two Psion PDAs from members of the Red Brigades terrorist organisation. But the major investigative breakthrough they were hoping for as a result of the information contained on the devices has failed to materialise — thwarted by PGP encryption software used by the left-wing revolutionaries.

Thanks to the availability of low cost high quality inkjet printers, crooks are now able to produce currency indistinguishable from the real banknotes, at least under dim lighting conditions like that in a bar or a nightclub.

SkyLinc are floating balloons connected to a fibre optic pole which, they say, can deliver broadband access at more than double the speed of most broadband services currently available. Apparently only 18 balloons would be necessarily to blow BT out the water.

Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at 'neutralising' — through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture — the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. It was a terrifying 'final solution' that violated the Geneva Conventions and traditional American ideas of human morality.

27 May 2003

A wrist computer that tracks and calculates safe diving times and limits for SCUBA divers had a dangerous software bug that may have been covered up by company executives for years.

Consumers will be able to buy free-standing 3D televisions in the next five years, according to an Australian company, VR21, bringing out the new product.

The University of Dundee has been accused of putting pressure on a whistleblower not to publicise concerns about the Breast Cancer Research charity that is alleged to have spent just £1.5 million of £13 million raised on good causes.

Lions once kept in a private zoo by the son of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein will be moved out of Baghdad to start a new life in the South African bush.

26 May 2003

The National Centre for Supercomputing Applications is looking at scientific computing on the Sony PlayStation 2. They've set up a cluster with 65 compute nodes. They're running Linux for PlayStation 2. What will they think of next?

The man behind the no-frills airline easyJet is opening a low-cost cinema — easyCinema — along the same lines. But you won't be able to see the hotly-awaited Matrix sequel there, yet.

25 May 2003

A former chairman of the Tasmanian Racing Authority and the Launceston General Hospital will spend six months in jail after being found guilty of dishonestly using his position as a director.

Kevin Rose was trying to figure out a case mod that would shock the mod community. He finally gave up and resorted to his backup plan: I decided to put an ant farm in his PC case.

A new anti-assault device for women wards off potential assailants with an 80,000 volt electric shock. Dubbed 'exo-electric armour', the No-Contact Jacket looks like an ordinary fashionable women's coat. But an inner layer of conductive fibre carries a low-amp charge that delivers a nasty but non-lethal shock to anyone who messes with its wearer.

24 May 2003

The European Union has pledged to stamp its identify firmly on the internet, setting up its own .eu top-level domain for use by individuals and businesses across the continent.

Australia's famous School of the Air has launched its new satellite teaching service that will bring video lessons to some of the most remote parts of Australia.

Hewlett-Packard is working on a new consumer photography system that could casually capture terabytes of images from a person's daily life and store them in data centres, where they could later be retrieved for conventional printing.

The popularity of ethical investment funds has been increasing by nearly 40% per year over the last few years, according to US research company The Social Investment Forum. A rising number of investors want their money to earn a return, but in a socially responsible way.

23 May 2003

With just 0.6% difference in the most critical DNA sites, the new work suggests chimps should not only be part of the same taxonomic family, but also the same genus as humans.

ADV Films has just announced the production of a live action movie based on many people's favourite anime series of all time, Neon Genesis Evangelion. Special Effects will be developed by Weta Workshop.

Vigilantes are fighting back at spammers by giving them a taste of their own medicine.

A new renewable energy source has emerged in Australia with the development of the world's first power station to be fuelled by waste macadamia-nut shells. The nut powered plant has since opened

22 May 2003

Canon Jeffrey John, the Chancellor and Canon Theologian of Southwark Cathedral, One of the Church of England's most prominent advocates of gay rights, who has called for the ordination of practising homosexuals and blessings of gay marriages, has been appointed Suffragan Bishop of Reading.

A Pentagon project called LifeLog seeks to record every bit of information that can be had, index it by name, or SSN or even location, and make the database searchable. While locally, a national ID number for students and a new computer system to track them has been compared with the failed Australia card bid in the 1980s.

Humanity is on the verge of causing a catastrophic extinction that rivals any in geological history, the naturalist Sir David Attenborough said as he launched a £3m web site to preserve endangered species.

They are the information and research staff of the Parliamentary Library are fuming at the prospect of having access to net nasties cut off by a new filtering system.

21 May 2003

Legalised cannabis will be prescribed to people suffering from chronic pain or wasting illnesses under a four-year trial to be run by the NSW Health Department. The State Government aims to introduce draft legislation to govern the trial during the current parliamentary sitting, with the trial to begin next year.

According to a 'Shadow G8' report by former top world officials, the Group of Eight world economic summits have become discredited because members preach to other countries while failing to put their own houses in order.

On 18 May 2003 in St Petersburg an anti-globalism demonstration, previously approved by the authorities, was brutally smashed and dispersed by police.

The lowly cockroach, loathed as an abhorrent creature worth crushing beneath one's shoe, has found respect in an unlikely place — a robotics laboratory at Stanford University.

20 May 2003

The spam-blocking technique that's attracted the most attention recently is a very simple one: challenge-response technology. The problem with CR systems is that Mailblocks claims to own all rights to the concept and hopes to prevent anyone else from selling such a system without paying hefty licensing fees.

The BBC have attacked the spin doctored reports on the story of Jessica Lynch — having her labelled a hero and dramatically rescued is more newsworthy than saying she was an unfortunate kid who screwed up and got taken to hospital. Hollywood must be beside themselves with her amnesia, they can make up anything they like for the big screen.

Air travellers in the United States could soon find a monkey sitting in the seat next to them after a report by the US Department of Transportation said that passengers who rely on their pets for 'emotional support' may be able to bring them on to flights.

19 May 2003

South Korea's OhmyNews is a unique experiment in 'citizen journalism': Anyone who registers with the site can become a paid reporter.

I guess Mac owners like their boxes how they are — until they break. Daniele Procida converted an old Apple by modding the machine with Lego.

Tourism Tasmania has lost its bid to secure the rights to a domain name currently being used to criticise the Tasmanian Government's forestry policy.

Hitachi has developed technology to make DVDs with storage capacity for 200 movies and aimed to commercialise the technology in 2007. It involves stacking multiple data-storing layers to ensure accurate reading and writing of a vast amount of data that can run up to 400 hours.

18 May 2003

Lawrence Lessig is predicting that the days of the Commons of the Internet are over, and that as a result of FCC deregulation, the concentration of digital rights in the hands of just a few large media companies will kill the internet for good. Even former FOX and Vivendi executive Barry Diller has criticised the move.

CarFree.com is a great site that proposes a delightful solution to the vexing problem of urban automobiles.

As extravagant purchases go, nothing sounds as flamboyant as buying your own holiday island. But tycoon Sir Richard Branson's latest acquisition — a tropical island in Australia — is not for his own pleasure, but for staff at his Virgin Group to use as a holiday retreat.

Genius will go online next week with the establishment of a new web site of Albert Einstein's scientific and other writings. The site is a collaborative effort of the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

17 May 2003

Australia, Canada, Japan and Chile joined a call by the US Federal Trade Commission and other agencies said for 'open relay' mail servers to be closed.

Newly established Net Return has scored exclusive distribution rights to distribute NetSuite, an SME application software package licensed from NetLedger, makers of the Oracle Small Business Suite.

People will try to get rid of any unwanted item on eBay — including one annoying twat of a girlfriend. eBay UK weren't amused and hastily pulled the auction.

16 May 2003

By examining the extraordinary grip that geckos use to walk up walls and across ceilings, scientists have been able to create a material that can stick objects weighing a few kilograms to ceilings. Future refinements hold the prospect of holding humans aloft too.

The RSPCA has called on the European Union to tighten laws governing the transportation of live animals after unveiling evidence of 'sickening cruelty'. They have also urged the British government to change domestic laws, insisting that animals be slaughtered at home before being transported to the continent.

The owner of the UNIX operating system has warned that Linux is an unauthorised derivative of its software and that commercial users of Linux may be legally liable for violation of intellectual copyright.

15 May 2003

Sony has surprised the gaming world by announcing it will launch a handheld game device called 'PlayStation Portable'.

Two students at Carnegie Mellon University have proposed two methods that can be used by organisations to defending against denial-of-service attacks.

EMI's copy-protection technology has resulted in a Melbourne resident doing exactly what the company is trying to prevent — copy a music disc in order to listen to it.

A badger on the run from a wildlife sanctuary attacked and injured five people before being cornered by police and destroyed.

14 May 2003

IT security pioneer Professor Bill Caelli has warned that Hollywood and Bill Gates may be able to take control of our PCs via new digital rights management techniques that allow content providers to enforce their policies on our machines.

Google has announced that it will begin a separate index for blogs.

Queensland Computer Company has had its site hosting pulled by iExec, its provider, after being slated as 'spammers' by frustrated ISP administrators.

Stopping spam can be a thankless task but Mary Youngblood, an investigator at EarthLink, refused to give up and finally nailed the Buffalo Spammer.

13 May 2003

Google has launched an Australian version of its beta Google News service.

An aeroplane that can diagnose and repair a faulty component while it is still in the air, or a spacecraft that can sense a cracked tile and repair itself without human intervention may be the kind of technology that comes out of a new area of CSIRO research.

Richard Johnson, a gossip columnist, at the New York Post tabloid has run an article with rampant overtones of McCarthyism in an attempt to start a boycott against celebrities who have made their anti-war feelings known.

Almost everything enterprises once found unique to Microsoft they can now find somewhere else — without some of the baggage that comes with Microsoft purchases, like ongoing security concerns and mystifying licensing practices. In a recent survey of CIOs, Forrester Research found that about 25 percent of them were already in the process of replacing Windows servers with Linux.

12 May 2003

Position Available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon. The language is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County, Portland, Oregon.

Recently, the RIAA has been trying to flood KaZaA with files that appear to be valid copyrighted material but are empty. The P2P networks are considering a possible move against the RIAA in response to this by using recently enacted anti-spam laws.

They say that an infinite amount of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce literature greater than Shakespeare. Well, it has been proven that six monkeys and one computer will produce a computer that has been smashed with a rock, urinated upon, and four pages worth of the letter 's'. Scientifically this apparently does prove that monkeys are more complex than random generators.

St George Bank has been the target of a major internet banking fraud in which thousands of dollars were being laundered through a third party account and transferred offshore.

11 May 2003

Rostislav Persion from Voltage Labs has successfully constructed a HERF gun — a device like EMP but directional — in his home that is capable of stalling cars at a distance and crashing computers as well.

The first national competition to promote the sensible use of English on product labelling has named and shamed Britain's top 10 silliest packaging instructions.

One newspaper that updates itself with the latest headlines every day — that's the vision of US researchers who have unveiled an ultra-thin electronic-ink display screen.

10 May 2003

Complete plans and pictures to build a robot from a 3½" floppy drive without taking it apart. The floppy drive has all of the motors and electronics you need to get started and compete in a robot contest. With some old 5¼" drives, you can really get some power.

People For Internet Responsibility have released a white paper aimed at starting discussion and work to fundamentally revamp e-mail systems to control spam, forgeries, and a range of other problems, while empowering e-mail users rather than ISPs.

NSW Police's understaffed high-tech crime unit will be swallowed up by a new unit, the State Electronic Evidence Branch, that will give the state one of the nation's biggest computer forensics capabilities.

Augustine Chihuri, Zimbabwe's police commissioner, who is accused of being a driving force behind President Robert Mugabe's brutal repression of opponents, has been appointed honorary vice-president of Interpol.

09 May 2003

The ACT has proposed law reforms to remove discrimination in the Adoption Act and will enable gay and lesbian couples to adopt children.

Triode Internet have been sharpening up their spam filters using Relays.OsiruSoft.com and it has halved my spam intake.

While Earthlink celebrates a US$16 million judgment against a New York spam ring, the ISP faces a legal challenge to its new anti-spam system.

The liberal enclave of West Hollywood, which has long championed the rights of gay men and women, this week became the first city in the United States to ban pet owners from removing the claws of their cats.

08 May 2003

Kermit the Frog and the rest of the Muppets are heading home after their German parent company, EM.TV & Merchandising, agreed to sell them back to their original owners, the children of Muppets creator Jim Henson — beating out Disney and Sony.

The age of consent for homosexual men will be lowered to 16 but will be buffered by tough new penalties for child sexual assault by adults in positions of trust, under an overhaul of NSW sex crime laws.

Hate-filled e-mails targeting African-Americans, Arabs and Muslims flooded the inboxes of undergraduate students during a recent hacking spree at NYU's Stern School of Business.

Foxtel subscribers will be able to access 53 new channels and the ability to pause live television under a package providing new set-top boxes from early next year.

07 May 2003

Arnott's claims the Temptin' chocolate biscuits sold by Dick Smith Foods unfairly cash in on the good name of its famous Tim Tams and is breaching trademark rules.

The RSPCA plans to build a memorial to the hundreds of thousands of horses, donkeys, dogs and pigeons and other animals that died fighting Australia's wars.

Two serious flaws in AOL's ICQ software could allow an online attacker to take control of a person's PC.

US states may sue charitable solicitation firms for fraud if they pocket most donations for their own use and mislead potential donors about that fact.

06 May 2003

New technology can mean an end to old liberties and there's little we can do to stop the surveillance state. But maybe we can turn the cameras on the watchers If two upcoming trade pacts get signed by the retarded monkey boy, the US government could paradoxically find itself accused of breaking the very copyright law it nowadays uses to prosecute others Documents reveal how McCarthy cherry-picked victims he could browbeat into submission

05 May 2003

French police have broken up a gang of crooked baggage handlers who used X-ray machines to select items worth looting from travellers at the country's busiest airport.

A rocket-powered sled shot down a 3-mile straightaway at Holloman AFB in about six seconds to break a world record that had stood for two decades.

Bruce Simpson has launched a project to build a US$5000 DIY cruise missile.

04 May 2003

With Pattern Recognition now out, William Gibson talks about blogging, which ones he's looking at and why he may have to quit blogging himself.

David Strom went in search of the oldest running commercial software application with interesting results.

A new IE exploit was found that crashes almost any version of Internet Explorer past 4.0 with just five lines of plain HTML code.

03 May 2003

Despite laws that punish marijuana cultivation more strictly than murder in some states, Americans spend more on illegal drugs than on cigarettes. And despite official disapproval of pornography, the US leads the world in export of explicit sex videos, according to Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labour in the American Black Market, by Eric Schlosser.

After years of ridicule and ruin, internet stocks are recapturing their charm and seducing investors again.

Researchers at IBM and the University of Toronto are squeezing light out of molecules. Scientists at IBM Research have discovered a new way to get carbon nanotubes to emit light, a breakthrough that might one day lead to advances in fiber-optic technology.

Run your e-mail address through the Hiveware Enkoder before you post it on your site, and the e-mail harvesting robots will pass right on over it.

02 May 2003

Radical British anti-capitalist activists had a hit-list of more than 50 'companies of mass destruction' — mainly oil companies, arms manufacturers, banks and multinationals — in their sights yesterday for May Day protests in London and elsewhere. Entirely coincidentally, the webcams that are down for maintenance are lined along the major routes for today's annual May Day demofest.

AOL incompetence has resulted in the death of a litter of puppies.

HP will outsource jobs from its frontline support operations in Sydney, Melbourne and throughout the Asia Pacific to India. And Qantas' Sydney data centre may soon follow suit.

HP has built-in time limits for its inkjet printer cartridges which means machines may stop working even if the consumable has 75% ink let to go.

01 May 2003

Details of hundreds of thousands of Nazi-era life insurance policies were published on the internet yesterday as part of attempts to call to account companies which did not pay out in the chaotic aftermath of the Second World War.

The eccentric behaviour of Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton could have been caused by a mild form of autism. Professor Simon Cohen-Baron, of Cambridge University, believes that the two greatest physicists of all time showed classic signs of Asperger syndrome.

Verbatim has just extended its Digital Vinyl series — CDs overprinted with a grooved vinyl record texture, complete with centre label — by boosting the capacity to 80 minutes (700MB), shipping them in a 50-disc spindle pack and offering a label area that can be directly printed on using an inkjet CD printer.

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