January 2004 Archive

31 January 2004

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said that people concerned about losing freedom to government anti-terrorism efforts should speak out. The Supreme Court is taking up several terror-related cases this spring, including challenges to the government detention of terror suspects without legal rights

Twenty-two human rights activists, including nuns, priests, a divinity school student, a former New York City firefighter, received three to six month sentences in federal prison for nonviolent actions to close the School of the Americas — a terrorist training camp on US soil

The retarded monkey boy and Prime Minister Tony Blair are among nominees for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize before a Sunday deadline for nominations despite failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Nobel watchers say Bush or Blair's chances of winning are close to nil. The 2002 prize went to ex-US President Jimmy Carter, who argued against war. The head of the Nobel committee called the choice a kick in the legs to Bush on Iraq

30 January 2004

Scientists have created a new form of matter saying it could provide a new way to generate electricity. The fermionic condensate is a cloud of cold potassium atoms forced into a state where they behave strangely. The new matter is the sixth known form of matter after solids, liquids, gasses, plasma and a Bose-Einstein condensate, created only in 1995 — via Die Puny Humans

A consortium of consumer electronics makers plans to unveil next week a memory card format that holds one gigabyte of data and is smaller than rival Secure Digital

Online bank Egg is considering a move away from pure Web interfaces for its customers, in a shift that will have implications for developers as well as customer

David Hasselhoff has claimed partial responsibility for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Claiming that in 1989, the year the wall fell, he had helped reunite the country by singing his song Looking for Freedom among millions of German fans at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin... I find it a bit sad that there is no photo of me hanging on the walls in the Berlin Museum at Check-Point Charlie

29 January 2004

Danish biotech company Aresa Biodetection has developed a genetically modified flower that could help detect landmines and it hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few years. The genetically modified weed has been coded to change colour when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide (NO²) evaporating from explosives buried in soil

The Prime Minister has labelled Germaine Greer pathetic after her attack on her home country's culture, claiming that Australia's city centres were marooned in oceanic tracts of suburban doldrums

28 January 2004

AARNet has bypassed router heavyweights Cisco and Juniper to select Procket as the backbone platform for its superfast national optical network, AARNet3. Procket has pocketed a multimillion-dollar contract to supply 12 of its high-performance Pro/8000 series core routers for the Australian universities and scientific research network

Australian government users of Linux are ignoring SCO's offer of licences to protect them from possible legal action over the company's claim to intellectual property used in the open source operating system. Government users, while generally cautious about legal risks, are taking a wait-and-see approach to SCO's controversial claims

27 January 2004

Yellowstone National Park's riverside cottonwoods stopped growing in the mid-1920s and 1930s. Same with willows and aspen. Shoots sprang up, lingered awhile, but never matured. Park officials suspected elk were eating the new growth, but culling the herd did not help. Beginning in the late 1990s, however, things suddenly began to change. The elk moved away from the streams, and trees and willows began to grow. Researchers wondered why. They ruled out drought, flood, fire or climate change. Only one answer remained. Wolves

In a victory for animal rights advocates, the state Court of Appeals in Tacoma has established for the first time just how much pain is needed to convict someone of animal cruelty: not much

Philips is preparing to mass-produce a slim, book-sized display panel onto which consumers could download newspapers and magazines — then roll up and put away. The 127mm display, which can show detailed images, can be rolled up into a pen-sized holder. If connected to a mobile phone, it can also be used to download web pages, a book or e-mail

26 January 2004

Morgan Spurlock, a documentary maker, decided to subsist on McDonalds food three meals per day for 30 days and film the journey. Within a few days of beginning his drive-through diet, Spurlock, 33, was vomiting out the window of his car, and doctors who examined him were shocked at how rapidly Spurlock's entire body deteriorated. His liver became toxic, his cholesterol shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and depression

In a move unprecedented in US history, the retarded monkey boy's Justice Department has indicted an entire organisation — Greenpeace — for the peaceful protest activities of its members. For years, Greenpeace have been working to halt environmental destruction and human rights abuses by criminal enterprises in Brazil's Amazon rainforest. In April 2002, miles off the coast of Florida, two Greenpeace activists boarded a ship that was carrying wood illegally exported from the Brazilian Amazon. Their goal was to hang a banner that said President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging. But instead of intercepting the contraband and prosecuting the smugglers, the Government now has charged Greenpeace with crimes for boarding the ship

25 January 2004

Google has quietly released its own version of Friendster, called Orkut. About three months ago, Google entered into talks to acquire Friendster, but was turned down. Named after one of its engineers, Orkut Buyukkokten, the new social network looks even tougher to get into than Friendster. An initial 12,000 invitations were sent out, and new users can only join through an existing user, which is all well and good, but you can't give it a write up if you can't get invited first

The latest phishing scam uses a homeland security hook to try and reel in personal and financial information from victims, according to the US bank insurance body, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp

24 January 2004

John Pilger: I am a reporter, who values bearing witness. That is to say, I place paramount importance in the evidence of what I see, and hear, and sense to be the truth, or as close to the truth as possible. By comparing this evidence with the statements, and actions of those with power, I believe it's possible to assess fairly how our world is controlled and divided, and manipulated — and how language and debate are distorted and a false consciousness developed

Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee have spied on confidential Democratic files for a year, studying their strategies and passing on the juicy bits to the media

Telstra has established a branded IT hub in the Indian city of Bangalore — part of its move to cut its $1.5 billion information technology budget in half

23 January 2004

AOL is testing an antispam filter intended to accurately trace the origin of e-mail messages, a move that could bring new accountability to the net

AA Milne's granddaughter has had her bid to recapture the licensing rights to Winnie the Pooh denied by a UK court. The Milne heirs licensed the rights to Pooh to Disney, only to discover that Milne had previously sold them to his literary agent, who is now suing Disney for all they're worth. The UK court ruling is the latest setback on the way to what could be the Disney company's financial ruination for trademark infringement

22 January 2004

The guys at 2CoolTek handed a case over to frustrated PC user for some extreme case ventilation that involved a mattock and a shotgun

Start-up PolyFuel has commercially released a membrane for creating fuel cells for laptops and mobile phones, a milestone in the budding fuel cell industry

Telstra's decision to spend up to $100 million overhauling its troubled BigPond e-mail platform has been delayed by company infighting

Telstra subsidiary Sensis has snapped up a range of assets from embattled search company LookSmart and its wholly-owned Australian subsidiary, LookSmart International

21 January 2004

Mike Rowe is a 17-year-old Canadian who started a web design company called mikerowesoft.com. His cheekiness got him a lengthy legal letter from the other, slightly larger, Microsoft, who were less than amused at his idea of humour via Darren Barefoot

The next release of the Linux kernel will be named after an Australian animal following a frenzied bidding war at Linux.conf.au 2004 in Adelaide

Virus writers are going beyond click to infect programs by merging a trio of techniques to bypass security and compromise computers with malicious code

The US Military wants to be excused from duty. That is, it's duty to obey the environmental laws of the United States of America. Last year the Defence Department won exemptions from three major environmental laws — the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty. Now, the military wants to ignore the Clean Air Act and toxic waste laws. To its credit, Congress has already refused to allow these additional exemptions, but the Defence Department is preparing to join the battle once more

20 January 2004

What does the Star Wars geek do when thought turn to modifying his four wheeled conveyance? Turn it into an X-Wing, of course

One of Australia's key beef customers, South Korea, has confirmed that some United States beef is being illegally labelled and sold as Australian product. South Korea banned imports of US beef when a case of mad cow disease was discovered in Washington State before Christmas, leaving Korean wholesalers with product still to sell. Mike Heywood from Meat and Livestock Australia says as a result Australian beef is in high demand, leading to the labelling scam

More than three years after launching consumer-grade ADSL, Telstra will extend the reach of the broadband service from 3.5 to more than four kilometres from enabled telephone exchanges. The move will extend ADSL coverage to an additional 400,000 homes, increasing from about 75% to 90% of households

The head of the Prison Service the number of inmates serving short-term prison sentences had soared and called for minor offenders to be given non-custodial punishment

19 January 2004

More than five million aerial photographs of World War II are to be made publicly available on the internet at Evidence in Camera. The pictures will go online on Monday. Taken by the RAF, they were used by Allied commanders to help devise their strategy during the six-year conflict

Oracle is ready to extend its Linux Everywhere campaign to client systems. At next week's LinuxWorld in New York, Oracle will announce that it will enable the Mozilla browser to run Oracle applications in the coming year

The Israeli soldier accused of killing Tom Hurndall, the British peace activist who died last week, tried to cover up his crime by asking for his commander's permission to shoot an armed man moments after he had already fired the fatal shot

18 January 2004

In an event that most Doctor Who fans thought couldn't happen, another lost episode of Doctor Who has turned up. It's Episode Two of the 1965 William Hartnell serial, The Daleks' Master Plan. No word yet as to how it will be released, this news is just breaking today apparently. This is great news for fans, as the last time a lost episode was turned up was in 1999, and most folks had given up hope there were any others left to be discovered. For those who don't know, in the '70s the BBC routinely junked old stories. Not just Dr Who, but all their shows. Repeats and sales weren't an issue then. There's something like 115 or so lost Doctor Who episodes total

Troy Javaher and Frank Weyer, operating under the newly formed company Nizza Group, are suing Network Solutions and Register.com for infringing on its e-mail and domain naming patent, which covers assigning each member of a group an URL of the form name.subdomain.domain and an e-mail address of the form name@subdomain.domain

17 January 2004

David Cogswell has an interesting article at Online Journal following the dodgy policies of BushCo's anything goes attitude to holding absolute power and ponders that they are not above assassinating political rivals when smear tactics and legal battles fail

Warp Records, an independent label for electronic music (featuring artists such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Boards of Canada), has made their entire back catalog available thru Bleep, a new digital download service. To quote from the FAQ: We are at present the only store to offer very high quality MP3 files and Bleep music has no DRM or copy protection built in. We believe that most people like to be treated as customers and not potential criminals

Comedienne Margaret Cho was recently speaking at a MoveOn event. Matt Drudge subsequently posted excerpts from her speech, and she was innundated with hate-mail for being overweight, Chinese, gay and a Democrat. Cho's publicist then posted all of this hate mail, complete with names and email addresses, on her web site — via Darren Barefoot

16 January 2004

A group of international telecom providers, ISPs and software companies plan to form a neighbourhood watch to oust junk e-mail from their collective networks

Does the amount of time it takes your PC to boot up drive you mad? Well for those using multimedia PCs as the heart of their home entertainment system, the following will be music to your ears. InterVideo of California has launched the INstantOn PC which boots up in less than 10 seconds, giving all but instant access to TV, CDs or DVDs and internet radio. The trick is running all the entertainment functions on a pared-down version of the open-source Linux operating system, which is small enough to be held in a read-only memory chip

Optus has released new plans for its cable broadband and dial-up Internet products, but OptusNet DSL customers will have to wait until March for new pricing

The estate of JRR Tolkien won a cybersquatting case against Alberta Hot Rods, a Canadian-based operator which registered jrrtolkien.com and linked it to its commercial celebrity Web site. The group — which has already lost domain name cases brought by actors Pierce Brosnan and Pamela Anderson, and author Michael Crichton — was found to have no legitimate rights

15 January 2004

Almost 500 Australian information technology jobs could shift to India under a new deal between Telstra and IBM worth up to $200 million and will save the telco about $75 million

In an important victory for Italian consumer rights, an Italian court has rejected the seizure of Sony Playstation game consoles that use modified chips to permit unauthorised uses of the game systems. The case is one of the first to be brought in Italy under the new European Union Copyright Directive, which is modeled on the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act — via The Importance Of

If you need discounted inkjet or laser-printer cartridges, Wisconsin's LaserMonks say they'll give you a doozy of a deal while you 'support prayer for the world'. The Cistercian priests — yes, they're actual Catholic monks — oversee a novel e-commerce enterprise out of their rural abbey. Proceeds go to maintain the monastery and finance charitable works around the world

14 January 2004

A US Federal Court last week imposed an order prohibiting two alleged ID fraudsters from taking part in Internet auctions. The duo was also ordered to pay more than $93,000 in compensation to consumers at the end of a civil case brought by US consumer watchdogs

Researchers from Purdue University working under an award from the National Science Foundation have discovered that common blue mussels are using iron found in seawater to create their own super glue

A federal judge rejects a company's legal attempt to assail BadBusinessBureau.com, which features negative reviews from consumers who claim to have been ripped off by retailers

Hewlett-Packard's invention, due in drives soon, lets users burn labels directly onto discs

13 January 2004

The controversial winner of last year's Esat BT Young Scientist competition, 7-year-old Sheffield University computer engineering student, Adnan Osmani, says his mega-browser will be ready for commercialisation soon. Patents for the Xwebs mega browser should be filed and the software will be primed for commercialisation. Osmani said that he hopes to sell the technology to an interested company, holding on to the proceeds as a nest egg

Foxtel announced today it had secured a $550 million bank facility which would fund its full digital conversion and launch of new digital services, expected in the first half of this calendar year

The expiration of some of VeriSign's certificate-authority certificates last week appears to have caused problems beyond harmless error messages generated when users tried to access secure areas of Web sites. Security-software firm Symantec on Friday blamed VeriSign for problems with its security products that left users' PCs unresponsive and unstable

12 January 2004

These latest security measures have merely confirmed the suspicion of the US detractors that the country is making a slide towards authoritarianism, with its government showing decidedly fascistic proclivities

Muschi, a small cat that formed an unlikely friendship with a half-ton bear called mouse in Berlin Zoo, has been reunited with her companion after pining outside the bear's cage for months

11 January 2004

The war on terror is being used as cover for a sustained assault on the independence and progressive agenda of NGOs

As most self-respecting geeks know, Lego is currently searching for a new Master Builder to hold the enviable position of building with Lego all day and getting paid for the privilege. One applicant describes the nerve-wracking experience of going through the first-round interview. In the end Lego surprised everyone and selected three new Master Builders, including Nathan Sawaya, creator of the Han Solo Lego sculpture

Using a machine launching aluminium disks Lyderic Bocquet, a physics professor at the University of Lyon, and his colleagues discovered the magic angle of 20° as that required to maximise stone skipping. Jerdone Coleman McGhee of Wimberley, Texas, holds the current Guinness Book of World Records title for a 1992 toss that yielded an impressive 38 bounces across the Blanco River in central Texas

10 January 2004

The retarded monkey boy and his cronies have enlisted the aide of the FBI to harass members of opposing political parties

Customers of the nation's five leading banks are unwittingly being siphoned of their savings online, after logging on to official internet banking web sites. Federal police are investigating the latest international banking scam involving the use of online trojans to steal personal account details via computers, which don't have anti-virus protection

The US Treasury Department plans to publish nearly 10,000 e-mail addresses on the web, violating its privacy promise to Americans who used e-mail to comment on a government proceeding

09 January 2004

A quarter of known land animals and plants, more than a million species, will eventually die out because of the global warming that will take place over the next 50 years. International scientists from eight countries have warned that, based even on the most conservative estimates, rising temperatures will trigger a global mass extinction of unprecedented proportions — unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced

Bell Labs is now part of Lucent Technologies, and can be found at www.bell-labs.com, having apparently missed its chance to claim the belllabs.com domain, which now belongs to Bell Laboratories, the world leader in rodent control technology. So much for its reputation for anticipating future technologies

A rare feathered visitor to Britain survived a grueling 15-hour journey from Norway, only to be eaten by a birdwatcher's cat on arrival

08 January 2004

The so-called Patriot Act II was discovered last year and the public outcry that ensued was enough to get the bill tossed out the window. One of the goals of that act, however, has made it into law under the radar of the community at large. The retarded monkey boy has Intelligence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (the relevant section is 374) into law, which among other things, grants the FBI the power to obtain financial information without a court order from a judge. It also expands the definition of financial information to include business such as car dealerships, jewellery stores and insurance companies. The law prevents the business that hands over the information to the FBI from telling their customer about the request

Bucking recent trends in portable devices that include web access and camera-enabled mobile phones, a study finds that more people are opting for simplicity

A federal judge in Philadelphia is hearing a challenge to a controversial state law that has led to more than 1 million innocuous web sites being accidentally blocked

SecurityFocus has published a hack that can be used to unlock Microsoft Word documents that have been password protected. The secure file can easily be edited and the original password re-inserted, removing any trace of the modification. Dell uses password protected Word files to send quotes, which could make for a messy legal battle. This feature, known as Password to Modify, is not the password protection on the document itself, just the protection that restricts unauthorized editing of the file. This hack allows someone to download such a file, edit it, and restore the password... effectively allowing changes to the file to go potentially unnoticed

07 January 2004

A tiny flexible fibre invented by Australian scientists from the University of Sydney's Optical Fibre Technology Centre could change the way the human body is seen, and lead to the development of personal computers that run on light

James Glassman and TCS have given birth to something quite new in Washington: journo-lobbying. It's an innovation driven primarily by the influence industry. Lobbying firms that once specialized in gaining person-to-person access to key decision-makers have branched out. The new game is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which officials make policy decisions, which means funding everything from think tanks to issue ads to phony grassroots pressure groups

Test-Aankoop, a European consumer watchdog body, is suing the world's largest music companies for selling copy protected compact discs that won't play in car stereos and on computers — via Die Puny Humans

06 January 2004

Forget the industry spin — the numbers prove that, for Australia, CD-Rs and MP3s are not hurting record sales in the slightest — based on a recent Australian Record Industry Association survey. It would be interesting to see what the numbers for the US or UK say

Microsoft was sued again this week. Game developer Mythic Entertainment has accused the Beast of Redmond of infringing its trademark and engaging in unfair competition. It claims that Microsoft's up-coming online multiplayer role-playing game Mythica infringes on its name and trademark

The Cobalt community was handed a lifeline when Sun Microsystems released the Cobalt code under an open-source licence

05 January 2004

Everyone's seen the media fall over themselves with a stream of unsubstantiated video game equals violence drivel, but Penny Arcade decided to do something to counter the claims that all gamers are violent miscreants with no sense social responsibility. Penny Arcade delivered over US$200,000 worth of donated toys and games, plus a cheque for US$27,000, to the Seattle Children's Hospital. The media response was barely a blip and the single television account got every detail wrong — via Wil Wheaton Dot Net

A New Mexico couple returned home from a week-long vacation to find the legs of a dead man dangling from their ceiling. Carl Smith, 81, the former husband of the woman who lived in the home, was stuck in an air conditioner duct, cause of death has yet to be determined

04 January 2004

AOL blocked more than 500 billion spam messages for its users in 2003. That comes to 40 messages a day per user. The company regularly blocks 75-80% of all incoming mail as spam. The top 10 spam phrases for the year include such come-ons as: Viagra online, Online pharmacy, Get out of debt and Get bigger

03 January 2004

Sasem has shipped OnAir USB HDTV, a USB-based HDTV decoder — that is, a box you plug into your PC's USB port and use to receive high-definition TV signals

Robert Cringely offers up his predictions for 2004, but also takes a look back at how well he did in 2003

Australians travelling to the US are being told to be honest about any past crimes or misdemeanours, no matter how trivial or how long ago, or face deportation, and even fraud charges, on their arrival. In tandem with the anti-terrorism crackdown in the US, existing visa conditions are being more strictly enforced. Anyone with a record of offences such as drink-driving or shoplifting, even as long as decades ago, is compelled to reveal his or her personal history in a visa application. From Monday, in further measures, visitors to the US who have a visa to enter the country will be digitally fingerprinted and photographed. In a backlash against US government xenophobia, Brazilian police have begun fingerprinting and photographing US visitors on orders of a judge who compared planned US security controls on travellers from Brazil and other nations to Nazi horrors

02 January 2004

Hardly looking metrosexual, a shocked and awed Lake Superior State University Word Banishment selection committee emerged from its spider hole with its annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness

Tim Berners-Lee has been promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for coming up with the world wide web that we all use. Characteristically modest, he said that he was an ordinary person who created something that just happened to work out

01 January 2004

Each year less light reaches the surface of the Earth. No one is sure what's causing global dimming — or what it means for the future. In fact most scientists have never heard of it

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