February 2004 Archive

29 February 2004

A biologist has confirmed the sighting of a real Michigan wolverine, about 200 years after the species was last seen in the state that uses the small but ferocious animal as its unofficial nickname

A Labrador Retriever has been found alive on an isolated cove of a Southeast Alaska island more than a month after its owner was given up for dead when his boat sank in rough seas

28 February 2004

Xor'Arch at the CaseJunkies forums has made a case mod of a Borg Cube based on a Via EPIA-M platform. The project took nine months and used about 60m of steel wire, and 1.5m² cardboard

Britain faced deep international embarrassment last night after the former cabinet minister Clare Short claimed that its security services spied on Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, in the run-up to last year's Iraq war

Microsoft's Tokyo office was raided by Japan's Fair Trade Commission, which is investigating whether the world's largest software maker violated the country's anti-monopoly law

Twenty-one gay couples exchanged wedding vows on the steps of village hall Friday in a spirited ceremony that opened another front on the growing national debate over gay marriage. Mayor Jason West, 26, elected on the Green Party ticket last year in this village north of New York City, joined Gavin Newsom of San Francisco as the country's only mayors to marry same-sex couples

27 February 2004

Cunningham MP Michael Organ has released an exposure draft of a Bill of Rights [PDF] which will be introduced as a Private Member's Bill in the Federal Parliament this year. The Bill aims to confer certain rights and responsibilities on the people and Parliament of Australia. It entrenches within the law the basic rights and freedoms we all hold dear; rights including freedom of speech, public assembly, freedom of religion and legal rights such as the presumption of innocence and equality under the law

An elderly Illinois couple, saying they are unable to pay as much as $1,000 each month for prescriptions, plans to venture into the war over drug imports today by filing a lawsuit against the government, arguing it is unconstitutional to prevent them from purchasing life-saving drugs at a lower price in Canada

Disney and Microsoft are joining an industry group in Japan to help decide which next-generation DVD format should be used in the home video market. DVD Forum, said that Disney and Microsoft would join 18 other members on its steering committee. Membership, now dominated by Sony and other companies that support the Blu-ray Disc format, gives the companies a vote on how data should be stored on the new discs, thus enabling them to set a standard for the industry

Oral sex can lead to oral cancers. Researchers have shown that the human papilloma virus, an extremely common sexually transmitted infection long been known to cause cervical cancers, can also cause mouth cancers. Fortunately, the risk of developing oral cancer is tiny. Only around 1 in 10,000 people develop tumours each year, and most cases are probably caused by smoking and drinking. The findings could help improve treatments of oral cancers, and vaccines that protect against HPV are already being developed

26 February 2004

Modern-day slavery is alive and well in Florida, the Centre for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University said as it released a report on people forced to work as prostitutes, farm workers and maids across the state

The Australian consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, has issued Telstra with an advisory notice over concerns that the communications giant has breached competition laws by dropping broadband retail prices below their wholesale charges

An Anti-Felon Identification system is used so criminal use of the Advanced Taser can be traced from evidence dispersed by the device itself to provide the exact identification of the Air Cartridge purchaser. No other self-protection device in the world — guns, chemical and pepper sprays, touch-stun devices or batons — can be traced from evidence at the scene of the crime directly to the registration of the user

25 February 2004

Two polar bears at the Singapore zoo — Sheba and her 13-year-old son, Inuka — have started turning green. The green colouring is apparently the work of a harmless algae, the result of Singapore's warm and humid climate, which has found a new home in the bears' translucent hair shafts. Got to love rainbow polar bears, Pelusa from Argentina turned purple last year

NEC is working on a concept PC, called P-ISM, that uses five different pens to make a computer. One pen is a CPU, another a camera, one creates a virtual keyboard, another projects the visual output and thus the display and another a communicator or phone. All five pens can rest in a holding block which recharges the batteries and holds the mass storage. Each pen communicates wirelessly with the others

Aspects of the controversial Total Information Awareness DARPA program, officially shut down by the US Congress in September 2003 after a public outcry, seem to have survived. Some projects from Poindexter's TIA effort were transferred to US intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials. In addition, Congress left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million research program run by a little-known office called the Advanced Research and Development Activity, or ARDA, that has used some of the same researchers as Poindexter's program

Chemical companies Bayer and Monsanto are prepared to risk farmers' GM-free contracts overseas to ensure a stockpile of GM canola seed is ready for sale after the next growing season

24 February 2004

Two women in the poor farming village of Aji Bai Nazar have emerged as heroines after they witnessed the horror of two small boys being killed as they played with little cluster bombs from an American jet. The two cleared dozens of the bombs with their bare hands and detonated them, protecting the village

The Enigma-E is a kit that enables you to build your own electronic variant of the famous Enigma coding machine that was used by the German army during WWII. It works just like a real Enigma and is compatible with an M3 and M4 Enigma as well as the standard Service Machines. A message encrypted on, say, a real Enigma M4 can be read on the Enigma-E and vice versa

In a ruling released Friday, Judge Susan Illston granted Hollywood studios' request for an injunction against 321 Studios, saying the small software company has seven days to stop distributing its DVD-copying products on the grounds that they are illegal

23 February 2004

William Gibson discusses his tech life, the ad that inspired Neuromancer, and his latest book, Pattern Recognition. He says, Between my wife and daughter who still lives at home, I'm always the one with the slowest computer. I don't find that being really up on all the latest tech ever does me any good

The mysterious dark energy that is pushing apart the universe appears to be the constant force that Albert Einstein once predicted, according to measurements made by the Hubble Space Telescope

Pupils in the UK as young as 14 will be allowed to leave the classroom for two days a week to learn a trade under plans to tackle skill shortages and motivate disillusioned children

22 February 2004

Clumsy Britons risk life and limb keeping up with the latest trends such as wooden flooring and micro-scooters — providing they survive putting their trousers on in the morning

A man and his wife ducked behind a refrigerator when bullets began exploding in their oven. It seems the rocket scientist in question had put the ammunition and three handguns in the oven for safekeeping before leaving on vacation. After returning from their trip Tuesday, the wife turned on the oven to prepare dinner and the bullets ignited

Andre Gainey found out the hard way that in the state of New York it's illegal to drive while watching porn. Police said the 35-year old man from Clifton Park, New York, was watching a adult movie called Chocolate Foam on Tuesday night while driving his Mercedes Benz in the town of Schenectady when he was spotted by an officer at a stop light

21 February 2004

British doctors will be able to prescribe maggots to National Health Service patients with infected wounds from Friday onwards, because the NHS had realised maggots were a cheaper and more beneficial way of treating wounds than using conventional medicine. Patients would be able to treat themselves at home and avoid the possibility of picking up a hospital infection. Maggots have been used for centuries to rid wounds of decaying flesh, but after the discovery of antibiotics their use went into decline

Peace protesters won a landmark ruling that police acted unlawfully by forcing them to return home as they made their way to an anti-Iraq war demonstration. About 120 demonstrators are expected to claim hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages after the High Court ruled in a test case that the human rights of activist Jane Laporte had been breached

Drugs based on CSIRO's research into the influenza virus have been shown to be effective, in laboratory tests, against a sample of an H5N1 influenza virus currently infecting chickens in Asia

20 February 2004

The Australia-US Free Trade Agreement has become the expensive trade agreement as sugar growers claim $600 million from taxpayers in compensation, because the Howard government buckled to the retarded monkey boy over sugar

Lindows, the company that provides a Linux OS for the desktop, has changed its name to Lin---s — pronounced Lindash — in compliance with court orders in Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg

The federal Government has moved to give greater powers to spy agencies to intercept people's e-mails. The Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Bill 2004 also allows warrants to be sought in connection with the investigation of a wider range of serious offences, including terrorism. The bill, if passed by parliament, will allow recording of calls to ASIO public lines

19 February 2004

Perl, a high-level programming language that was critical in the initial construction of the Internet, is undergoing major renovations from author Larry Wall with the help of the Perl development community. The general release is about 18 months away. Although Wall still is designing Perl 6, there is a good sense of what it will include. One thing is certain: Perl 6 will look vastly different from its predecessor

A University of Pennsylvania researcher seeking ways to treat illness said studies in rats show muscle mass, strength and endurance can be increased by injections of a gene-manipulated virus that goes to muscle tissue and causes a rapid growth of cells, raising concerns that the virtually undetectable technology could be used illegally to build super athletes. None of which will bother Angle-grinder Man and his other non-powered superhero mates as they go about their daily crime fighting duties

The music industry considers Michele Scimeca a pirate. The Morris County mom has her own term for record executives: Racketeers. In what legal experts described as a novel strategy, Scimeca is citing federal racketeering laws like the one that jailed mob boss John Gotti to counter-sue record labels that accused her in December of sharing some 1,400 copyrighted songs over the Internet

18 February 2004

The Brightmail Reputation Service, monitors hundreds of thousands of e-mail sources to determine how much mail sent from these addresses is legitimate and how much is spam. The company gathers information from user reports and from its Probe Network — a collection of decoy e-mail in-boxes designed to catch spam — to determine whether a given IP address sends valid or junk messages. The service creates a profile of each e-mail source from which administrators can decide whether to block mail from these sources or allow it into the company. Brightmail also will make available a safe list of e-mail addresses that have never sent spam to users of the Reputation Service free of charge

HMS Beagle, the ship Darwin travelled on during his famous voyage, may have been found. Marine archaeologists believe they have found the ship, which has been resting at the bottom of some Essex marshes for the last century

The Australian Communications Authority has introduced a new method of penalising telecommunications companies that breach the law, in a move designed to reduce the number of court cases

Advertising writers in Florida were planning to pitch haemorrhoid-relief products with a commercial featuring the Johnny Cash classic Ring of Fire, but Cash's family said there's no way they will let it happen

17 February 2004

Librarians have warned that the free trade deal will lead to huge increases in copyright licence fees paid by Australians for use of intellectual property, including novels, poems, films and songs. And a legal expert said it was literally a Mickey Mouse deal, as the Disney Corporation had been among its most powerful backers. The 20-year extension of copyright terms brings Australia into line with US restrictions — via Lessig Blog

Researchers were surprised to discover that M&Ms randomly dumped into a bowl pack together much more densely than spheres. Why? Asymmetric ellipsoids like M&Ms can touch eleven neighbours when dumped together while spheres only saddle up to six. Understanding how particles pack together can help scientists develop new and denser materials, like ceramics for heat shields

Telstra has announced its new budget prices for ADSL, beating out the fledgling Optus residential DSL service a day before its launch. The price cuts encompass the telecommunications heavyweight's DSL and cable modem broadband offerings. Telstra said it would begin charging BigPond customers $29.95 a month for entry-level high-speed ADSL and cable products — the same price as some dial-up offerings — undercutting Optus's cheapest DSL service price by $20

16 February 2004

Dan Geer lost his job, but gained his audience. The very idea that got the computer security expert fired has sparked serious debate in information technology. The idea, borrowed from biology, is that Microsoft has nurtured a software monoculture that threatens global computer security. Geer and others believe Microsoft's software is so dangerously pervasive that a virus capable of exploiting even a single flaw in its operating systems could wreak havoc

Teachers in a German school were treated in hospital after gobbling up an anonymously donated chocolate cake, unaware it was laced with hashish

15 February 2004

Australian Paul Cochrane mods expired Mazda rotary engines into fish tanks for a very reasonable price

Google has banned the ads of environmental group Oceana protesting Royal Caribbean's sewage treatment methods, casting a spotlight on the editorial policies that control the popular web site's lucrative marketing program

There is strong interest in using DSL to deliver pay TV to more Australians, as both Telstra and Optus say that there will be no further extensions to their cable networks, says Alcatel's new local chief

US regulators have exempted from government rules the Voice over IP technology that allows phone calls to be made over the internet. The Federal Communications Commission voted 4-1 in a case involving Free World Dialup, a service that allows users to make phone calls for free over computers. Still, FCC policymakers left open the possibility that Internet calling could be regulated in the future, especially for services that charge fees to customers

14 February 2004

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had urged the county clerk's office this week to begin issuing marriage certificates for same-sex partners [BugMeNot], asserting that the state Constitution prohibits discrimination in such matters. The office has been inundated with happy couples wanting to tie the knot. Seth Schoen took a walk down to the San Francisco city hall and watched the hundreds of lesbian and gay couple in various states of marriage

Microsoft says parts of the source code, or software blueprint, for its closely-guarded Windows programs has leaked onto the Internet, possibly exposing its products to hackers and illicit copying. Microsoft said that copies of the source code from its Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems were being traded over the Internet, but that the copies comprised a tiny portion of the millions of lines of code used to create its cash cow products — via The Importance Of

Germany's local and city councils have been pioneering the migration from Windows to Linux. Now, one of the IT staff behind one move has revealed how they persuaded workers to accept the changes. Stuffed toy penguins and Linux t-shirts helped to create an open-source love-in at the council offices, and they got a senior chairwoman to demonstrate the new system to the troops. Male ego stopped anyone claiming that Linux was difficult to use, once they'd seen that the weaker sex could master it

13 February 2004

Doc Searls and David Weinberger, co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, have put together a 10-part guide for how to stop mistaking the Internet for something it isn't. It contains some painfully obvious and often overlooked characteristics of the world of ends we call the Internet

Greens MP Ian Cohen is reporting that the independent NSW Advisory Council on Gene Technology has become nothing more than a rubber stamp for companies seeking to grow commercial-sized GM crops, despite legislation enforcing a three-year ban

Comcast's hostile bid for Disney this week has created turmoil on three pivotal fronts — and the outcome of each skirmish could have a direct impact on what most Americans see on their television screens and when they use a high-speed cable Internet connection. On the business front, Disney won't take things lying down. Wall Street aren't too impressed with the spectre of the AOL-Time Warner deal still in recent memory. And consumer advocates have signaled they're going to fight the merger

Telstra has been accused of fuelling massive profits by charging consumers too much in telephone line rental fees, after it announced a half-year profit of almost $2.3 billion

12 February 2004

Sharman Networks threw down the legal challenge Tuesday in Australia's Federal Court in Sydney. Sharman was raided by Music Industry Piracy Investigations, a private investigations unit established by the Australian Recording Industry Association to crack down on copyright infringement, including illegal Internet file sharing. MIPI successfully applied to the federal court for a number of private search warrants, known as Anton Piller orders, which were executed at 12 locations, including Sharman's offices in Sydney. The order allowed MIPI to seize data and documents from all 12 sites, including the private residence of Sharman chief executive Nikki Hemming. The raids are a prelude to a copyright infringement suit, which will argue that Sharman has the ability to block the transfer of copyrighted works through its software but refuses to do so. Sharman vehemently denies the claim. Telstra is attempting to have the Anton Pillar orders overturned

The practice of releasing movies and DVDs at different times around the world is one of the major reasons for piracy. Even scissor-happy Blockbuster are calling for it to be ended, but their interest is more in carving out a share of the parallel importation market for themselves

US-based Primus Telecom Group announced its pending acquisition of ISP AOL|7, expanding the group's customer base to a nearly half-million strong

11 February 2004

Kids who spend their first year of life around dogs may have a lower risk of developing allergies, Dr James E Gern has found. Having a cat, however, appears to have no effect on allergy risk

A South African farmer and three others have been charged with murder, accused of feeding an ex-worker to lions, after police found a human skull and pieces of a leg in a lion enclosure — via Die Puny Humans

10 February 2004

Chea Vichea [BugMeNot], popular leader of Cambodia's independent trade union movement and outspoken activist for the rights of textile workers in his country, was murdered recently by three bullets at point blank range, while he was reading a newspaper at a café in a Phomn Penh street. Vichea was responsible for the placement of a complaint with the ILO's Committee of Freedom of Association in the wake of the sacking of more than 30 textile factory workers, including Vichea himself, who were also union members. Vichea claimed that the workers were fired because of their union membership. The report was scheduled to be made public the day after the murder

The Union Network International, representing 15 million workers worldwide, has hit out at US-based security multinational Chubb over its actions in East Timor [BugMeNot]. The public condemnation of the company follows the sacking of 32 local workers who were employed in cleaning and security areas for Chubb's client in Dili, the World Bank. The union claims that the workers were removed after they took strike action as a means of disputing a company attempt to cut wages by 30%. The union also claims that the company has sought to re-hire the workers but only if they eschew union membership and sign individual contracts accepting a significant wage cut. These measures are believed to be in contravention of East Timor law and fall short of complying with international labour laws

A British-based company is selling MP3 players which can be attached to an assault rifle. The AK-MP3 player is built into the ammunition clip of a Kalashnikov. It can be swapped with the real magazine carrying bullets and inserted into the weapon. The device is being advertised on the internet by a Buckinghamshire-based company set up by a group of Russian businessmen who sell audio books. It comes with enough storage space to hold 3,000 audio books or 9,000 songs — via Die Puny Humans

09 February 2004

Hundreds of intellectuals and administrators have been assassinated [BugMeNot] since May in a widening campaign against Iraq's professional class

When a 40-year old British woman set off a metal detector alarm at Athens airport, bemused security staff found that it was caused by a chastity belt she was wearing

08 February 2004

Professor Jim Barber, from Imperial College London's department of biological sciences has claimed that artificial photosynthesis could turn the world's oceans into an almost limitless source of fuel. He made the prediction after shedding new light on the mechanism plants use to split water into hydrogen and oxygen — via Die Puny Humans

A team from the University of Michigan is proposing an economic solution to spam. Instead of relying on technical solutions or government regulations, they use a sender warranty system. In some cases, they argue, it can even be superior to a perfect filter with zero cost, and no errors. With the caveat that some infrastructure is necessary, they also claim their approach restores control to the recipient, halts spam, and creates a marketplace for valuable information exchange

07 February 2004

Some people may be aware that a scene they are looking at has changed without being able to identify what that change is. This could be a newly discovered mode of conscious visual perception, according to psychologist Ronald Rensink, based at the University of British Columbia, who discovered it. He has dubbed the phenomenon mindsight

A paint that soaks up some of the most noxious gases from vehicle exhausts will goes on sale in Europe in March. Its makers hope it will give architects and town planners a new weapon in the fight against pollution. Called Ecopaint, the substance is designed to reduce levels of the nitrogen oxides, collectively known as the NOx gases, which cause respiratory problems and trigger smog production

Three livestock exhibitors at last year's Ohio State Fair have been disqualified for allegedly outfitting their Holstein cows with hairpieces. State Fair inspectors said the three glued or painted hair from another part of the animal or from another animal to create straighter backs on the cows and enhance their appearance in the show ring

06 February 2004

Web surfers battling spyware face a new problem: so-called spyware-killing programs that install the same kind of unwanted advertising software they promise to erase. SpyBan is one of the offending programs

Some web developers are complaining that an Internet Explorer patch that's meant to foil Net scams is disabling some applications that didn't put a premium on security

A Thai man was mauled when he drunkenly tried to sexually attack a dog that fiercely resisted his advances. The bloodied man was questioned by police after residents notified local authorities when they saw him walking along a road. He told police he noticed a brown female stray dog wagging its tail and acting sexy and pulled it into some tall grass by the roadside. But the dog resisted, biting him on his face, chest and arms before he gave up his attempt and tried to stagger home. Under further questioning he admitted to raping three dogs previously while he was under the influence of alcohol. He told police he always became aroused when he drank heavily but did not have enough money to pay a prostitute — via Die Puny Humans

05 February 2004

Australia will have its own top-level internet name server from next week, bringing it in line with New Zealand

Former Utah Governor Mike Leavitt signed Utah's 2.4 million residents up for a pilot program — MATRIX, Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange — that gathers dossiers on every single man, woman and child and didn't bother to tell anyone. The Utah legislature is trying to figure out how to get the state out of the program but the question is how was the Governor able to enroll the whole state without anyone knowing

A vinyl fan stumbled on an amazing find at a flea market — a collection of about 35 or 40 hand-drawn and hand-painted album covers made between 1969 and 1976, some complete with fake cardboard records inside them. Mingering Mike [BugMeNot] put together all of these albums as if he were the musician. The covers are complete with hand-drawn barcodes, track listings, lyrics, drawings of the band(s), and in some cases, liner notes. He did soul and funk albums and blaxploitation soundtracks (for movies that never existed), and even a christmas album

04 February 2004

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle today endorsed the comments of World Bank president James Wolfensohn who has criticised the pursuit of bilateral trade deals such as the US/Australia Free Trade Agreement as bad for the world economy

MoveOn.org organised the BushIn30Seconds campaign to raise the money to air a 30-second spot during the SuperBowl detailing the problems with the Bush administration. CBS baulked at airing the winning ad, claiming that it would be too topical for them and is getting criticised for its blatant censorship of political discourse

Australia has established a new sugar research body, Co-operative Research Centre for Sugar Industry Innovation through Biotechnology, that will study using sugar for biodegradable plastics, medical drugs and biofuels

03 February 2004

Protesters remain locked on to bulldozers in Mission State Forest, near Moree, after contractors broke a moratorium on logging in important forest areas of the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion in western NSW. The Premier's silence on this issue is deafening. Update: The state government backed down

British and American intelligence services look set to share the blame for the spectacular failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The retarded monkey boy is set to order a whitewash campaign aimed at passing the buck to the CIA, while Blair is blaming MI6

A computer virus that targeted the noxious SCO Group, performed as its perpetrators promised yesterday, bringing down company's web site. The massive denial-of-service attack is expected to continue until 12 February

Coca-Cola has stated that it is to end the practice of product advertising [BugMeNot] on vending machines in schools in the UK. The move follows a similar statement covering Scotland, and is seen as a response to the growing mood against product promotions aimed at children during a period of growing childhood obesity

02 February 2004

The BBC made a unique deal with Real Networks which disposes of their spyware tactics. If a user clicks on a link to download Real Player from a BBC web site, the referrer script sends them to a page where they can download an expiry-free, spyware-free and nuisance-free version of the player. It's because the BBC have such a stringent public service remit, that it was offensive to charge people a licence fee for BBC content, then make them pay all over again for the facility to view/listen to it

The decomposing remains of a 60-tonne sperm whale exploded on a busy street in Taiwan, showering cars and shops with blood and organs and stopping traffic for hours

01 February 2004

In Cambodia, motorbikes act as routers [BugMeNot] for a store-and-forward email system. They have a system that allow remote villages in Cambodia to send and receive email via Wi-Fi-equipped motorbikes. The Motoman system converges in the provincial capital where a satellite-enabled school uploads and downloads email for the remote recipients. The system is funded in part through US benefactors who aren't just sending money; they're spending time there as well, and helping to improve the quality of medicine and people's livelihoods

Pixar has announced that it will end its distribution agreement with Disney. This comes after much bitterness at Pixar over the terms of their current deal with Disney, where Disney took a sizable (and some would say unfair) portion of the $2.5 billion in revenue generated by Pixar's films

NSW Commerce Minister John Della Bosca says the state wanted to dismantle its reliance on a near monopoly software by pursuing an open source strategy. Mr Della Bosca conceded the decision was controversial, but said an open source strategy would ultimately provide greater business opportunities to local SMEs

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