March 2004 Archive

31 March 2004

Alistair Cooke, the urbane and erudite journalist who was a peerless observer of the American scene for almost 70 years, died at his home in New York. He was 95. A veteran foreign correspondent and a successful and productive author, he was celebrated for his Letter From America, which was broadcast weekly by the BBC to more than 50 countries

Pipe Networks is providing dedicated fibre links for networks, bucking the trend towards bundling network connectivity with services. The Brisbane company says its method is cheaper than 100Mbps Ethernet. Dark fibre, a term often used to refer to unused network capacity, also describes dedicated fibre connections for large organisations — something Pipe needed for its own core business of internet exchanges

The federal Government's second push to fully privatise Telstra has been quashed by the Senate

A German man who decapitated his mother with a Samurai sword after she told him to move out was convicted of murder Tuesday and sentenced to life in jail. He chopped off her head in the kitchen of their flat while she was reading a newspaper. They added he first planned to kill his father

30 March 2004

Google's Labs has cooked up two new search offerings, introducing a Personalised Web Search and Web Alerts, as part of the company's plans to continue to heat up the market

Microsoft plans to introduce a news aggregation service for weblogs and to develop a social networking product

29 March 2004

If you're using Microsoft Office and considering a switch to the free OpenOffice.org, Microsoft would like you to read their Open Office Competitive Guide first, in which they tell you how much better / faster / cheaper MS Office is than OpenOffice. Taran Rampepersad, an IT consultant in Trinidad, believes this Competitive Guide is nothing but FUD, so he wrote a detailed rebuttal to it

28 March 2004

Congress appears to be preparing assaults against peer-to-peer technology on multiple fronts. A draft bill recently circulated among members of the House judiciary committee would make it much easier for the Justice Department to pursue criminal prosecutions against file sharers by lowering the burden of proof and would also would seek penalties of fines and prison time of up to ten years for file sharing. They dubbed the bill Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004, or the Pirate Act

27 March 2004

Pet owners in the US city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, may soon be required to provide seat belts for pets if the city council approves new rules. Under the proposed regulations, animals travelling in the open beds of cars and trucks would have to be tethered

Development One Australia is shipping prebuilt mythtv-based PVRs. These are souped-up TiVo-like boxen built out of commodity hardware with all the features that I want, not just the ones that make the Luddites who run the movie studios comfortable

That's what Picsel is promising... Picsel Browser runs on BREW V2.1 and beyond, and will allow users to display Flash, video, Microsoft Office, and even Adobe Acrobat files. And Picsel reckons the breakthrough will be for the benefit of network operators

GreyMagic Software has detected a serious security flaw in Yahoo's Web e-mail service and Microsoft's Hotmail service, which could allow hackers to run malicious scripts on users' computers

26 March 2004

Despite President Bush's pledge that homosexuals ought to have the same rights as all other people, his Administration this week ruled that homosexuals can now be fired from the federal workforce because of their sexual orientation

Jumping electric charges could waft breezes of ionised air through microchips, replacing the bulky, noisy fans that cool down today's computers. Researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana say their patent-pending technology could be built directly into a computer chip's heat sink to provide a faster, quieter and lighter cooling system than the alternatives

The European Union on Wednesday issued its ruling in the long-running case against Microsoft, fining the American software giant US$613 million, the heaviest punishment in any European competition case to date. European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti ruled that Microsoft had failed to provide to rivals information that they needed to compete fairly in the market for server software and that the company has been offering Windows on the condition that it come bundled with Windows Media Player, stifling competition

25 March 2004

The New Zealand government is about to define a small part of the rights assumed by the fair use clause in the Copyright Act 1994. Essentially they are going to protect the consumers' rights to convert media from one format to another for personal use, making it clearly legal to transfer tracks from a commercial CD to a mix-CD, MP3 player, PDA, PC, 8-track, or tuned array of hummingbirds. NZ law already makes it clear that gifting or reselling items includes a transfer all of rights, including copyright, warrantee, and licencing agreements, so providing your original is the genuine article you're not a criminal

In the latest sign that a standards war is petering out, Toshiba has introduced dual-format DVD recordable drives. Toshiba's Storage Device Division announced on Monday drives for notebook computers and desktop systems that support the -R/RW and +R/RW technologies. The so-called dash and plus formats have been at odds when it comes to DVD recording, but more and more manufacturers are building both technologies into their machines to make things simpler for consumers

Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane's dismissal of renewable energy and energy efficiency as neither practical nor affordable at the Coal Plan launch demonstrates a government badly out of touch with modern clean energy technologies around the world

24 March 2004

Mohammed Bah Abba of Nigeria won a Rolex award for his pot-in-pot refrigerator. It consists of a smaller clay pot inside a larger clay pot. The gap is filled with damp sand. As the water evaporates, the inner pot cools. Food that used to spoil in a few days now stays fresh for weeks. Second-order effects are already being noticed — for one thing, girls who had to skip school to sell food at markets can now attend classes

Joel Zahn has case modded an Underwood No 5 typewriter into a rather spiffy computer. I'm torn between the sacrilege of destroying an Underwood and the coolness of the finished article. Andy France decided that he needed to build a small Windows XP machine and the perfect case would be Windows XP box. To avoid confusion on a dual boot system, he has a toggle switch to boot from a Red Hat Linux box when Linux is needed

New dual-layer DVD-burning drives will be released very soon by Philips and Sony that will double the capacity of DVD drives, making a complete copy of your dual-layer DVDs theoretically possible. It will use dual layer technology that will hold up to 8.5GB, and will cost around $230 for an internal and $330 for external, burning all 8.5GB in approximately 45 minutes

23 March 2004

Mark Maughan, an accountant and professional moron, Googled his name and found some alarming, false, misleading and injurious information about himself and his firm. Therefore, he is now suing Google, Yahoo (which used Google as its search engine at the time), AOL (for using Google to enhance its search results) and Time Warner (because they're the same company as AOL) for libel. Specifically, his lawyer John Girardi believes that Google's PageRank algorithm takes known good information and twists its context when displaying search results

Innocents with the temerity to run the William Gibson monikered Black Ice firewall are catching it big-time. Some wicked person hand-coded an amazingly teensy 900-byte Black Ice specific worm that burrows through a flaw in Black Ice and whacks PCs hard enough to ruin them and despoil their contents. Virus guys used to just write viruses. Now they're bold enough to try to wreck corporations. Life gets a little more Gibsonian ever day — via Beyond the Beyond

Telstra faces a fine of $10 million — rising by $1 million a day — and possible legal action from rivals unless it cuts the price it charges competitors for its wholesale broadband internet service as a matter of urgency

Some people living in some of the most inaccessible areas of India are enjoying an improved postal service — thanks to the combining of e-mail with traditional snail mail

22 March 2004

A British theatre group is to hold an unprecedented casting call for its next production. The experimental company requires a dead body to take a leading role in its latest show. The consent of the donor of the body is being sought beforehand and the production team aim to treat the subject of death with absolute seriousness, challenging modern taboos about a condition that comes to everybody at some point. Called Dead: You Will Be, the play requires a dead body to lie in state throughout the proceedings

Western Australian Premier Geoff Gallop has defended the State's new cannabis laws which come into effect today. People caught with a small amount of cannabis, or with no more than two plants, will either be fined or will have to complete a counseling session, rather than incur a criminal record

AOL has decided to take a fresh approach to fighting spam and is now blocking the spammer's web address. The philosophy is, if the customers can't visit spammers sites, spammers will not be able to make any money

21 March 2004

ARIA have released figures that show for 2003, album sales have reached an all time high. In fact, according to Peter Martin, who recently went on Australian radio, before file sharing and CD burning they were selling 10 million less. Total unit sales were also at an all time high at 65.6 million. CD single sales declined 1.9 million over the year, but as Peter said file downloading is doing a better job. Should help Kazaa's legal problems. Some independent music stores are thriving despite the competition from illegal downloads on the Internet. The stores are finding that file sharing can help create a buzz online that can lead to more sales, according to a panel of independent music store owners who spoke at the South by Southwest Music Conference & Festival

The Panasonic ruggedised Toughbook, a laptop that, in its most extreme configuration, can survive being run over by a truck. Those boxes cost $5000, but a semi-ruggedised version, which is speced with spill-resistant keyboards, hard casings, and gel-encased disk drives is only 10% more costly to build than a standard machine. Analysts say 20% of mainstream laptops fail in the first year, usually because of accidental damage. That rises to 35% once a notebook leaves its docking station and to more than 50% for machines that are used outdoors or on shop floors. But the failure rate of rugged or semi-rugged machines is just 5%

Shallow Grave actor Christopher Eccleston has been named as the ninth Doctor Who to front the cult BBC sci-fi show when it returns next year — via Die Puny Humans

20 March 2004

Vocera Communications have an internal communication system working at their office that functions like the badge communicators from ST:TNG. The employees wear the system as a badge and touch it to start the connection. Then they speak the name of the person they want to talk to and the system connects them using VOIP for one-on-one communication

A handful of Bagle worm variants are attacking Windows users with an insidious new twist: They can infect computers without tricking them into opening a file attachment — opening an e-mail is all it takes

At 22mm, Toshiba's prototype of its latest multi-gigabyte hard disk drive is the smallest in the world — at least as of this moment

19 March 2004

Telstra will be forced to change its wholesale ADSL pricing or face fines worth millions of dollars for anti-competitive behaviour

NASA has developed a computer program that comes close to reading thoughts not yet spoken by analysing nerve commands to the throat. It says the breakthrough holds promise for astronauts and the handicapped. A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal cords do receive speech signals from the brain. Developer Chuck Jorgensen's team at NASA's Ames Research Centre, Moffett Field, California, found that sensors under the chin and one each side of the Adam's apple pick up the brain's commands to the speech organs, allowing the subauditory, or silent speech to be captured

Why won't John Howard admit that our participation in the invasion of Iraq increased the risk that Australia will be targeted for a terrorist attack? Pretty simple really. If he admits the obvious, as the AFP chief Mick Keelty did, then he's back to square one in explaining his decision to go to war

18 March 2004

Wanted: old socks, ripped, without partners, and of any size or colour. Offered: a telephone pole. Wanted: a chicken coop, a doghouse, a barn. Offered: Excellent quality landscaping rocks. Organic lemons will be given away to those who take the rocks as an extra bonus. Freecycle is using the Internet as a way to make connections and fall into riches at the same time. In this case, the treasure comes in the form of someone else's trash. Freecycle is now available in Australia

The city of Aliso Viejo, California nearly banned foam cups when they learned they are produced from a substance known as dihydrogen monoxide. A paralegal working for the city apparently found a professionally designed web site put up to describe the dangerous properties of this chemical. Apparently, the report about Dihydrogen Monoxide was written by a then 14-year-old Nathan Zohner who was researching the gullibility of fifty ninth graders

An air passenger was stunned to find a handgun in his luggage after a flight with Israel's national carrier El Al. Security officers sometimes put replica guns in luggage to keep bag checkers on their toes. In theory, the weapon would be discovered during checks and removed, leaving passengers none the wiser. This handgun, however, appears to have slipped through the net — via Darren Barefoot

Greens MP and transport spokesperson Lee Rhiannon said that the final report from the Unsworth Review of Bus Services in NSW opens the door to privatisation of the public bus network

17 March 2004

An Australian Navy tanker has been daubed with the words John Howard — US boot licker while berthed at Wellington's Overseas Passenger Terminal. The graffiti attack coincided with two high-level meetings of New Zealand and Australian police and anti-terrorism chiefs after last week's terror attacks in Spain

The bare-bones chassis of the Xoxide X-UFO Ultimate Aluminium Cube Case includes three large acrylic windows, cut-outs for a mind-numbing eleven fans, chrome front-panel switches, and a set of medium-duty casters. You can remove the drive bays, the motherboard tray, and the backplane, and Xoxide plans to offer interchangeable drive bay modules for buyers who prefer different configurations. All three acrylic panes are fitted into the case's U-shaped wraparound cover, which removes them from harm's way whenever you work inside

Federal welfare agency Centrelink has paid more than $5.3 million for a web content engine and two relatively simple web applications

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University have built electronic circuits which exhibit a rubbery behaviour. The flexible circuits, built by using gold springs, can stretch like rubber. And Nature says that these stretchy wires can be used to create artificial nerves bending inside our bodies or wearable electronics. Wiring like this could be woven into stretchy sports clothing and used to connect up sensors that monitor athletic performance. Rubbery electrodes made from biocompatible materials might be attached to a beating heart and used to sense impending problems

16 March 2004

A significant portion of people who use Hotmail and other internet-based products had trouble accessing the services for more than 24 hours on the weekend

The new planet, dubbed Sedna after the Inuit goddess of the sea, is 3 billion km further from the sun than Pluto, and is slightly smaller at 2000km in diameter. This discovery has apparently reignited the debate as to how big a solar object must be in order to qualify as a planet, but it is significant nonetheless — via The Soulful Blogger

15 March 2004

The UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone has barred its president, Geoffrey Robertson QC, from judging cases involving rebels because of the appearance of bias against them. The ruling at the weekend defied calls to dump the London-based human rights lawyer but it sidelined him from the court's most important cases because of a book he wrote lambasting rebel atrocities in the west African nation's decade-long civil war

Scientists have found the cells that are the source of follicles and hair growth, a discovery that will energise research into treatments for thinning hair and baldness. An American team reported yesterday that it had become the first to isolate parent cells — stem cells — in mouse hair follicles that can regenerate hair, skin and follicles after being implanted into the skin of mice

Telstra's worst fears are about to be realised, with rival Vodafone planning to unleash a price war in the $10 billion a year Australian mobile phone market which will see the cost of mobile calls fall to the same level as local calls

14 March 2004

Professor Alan Windle has spun nanotube yarn by twisting nanotubes onto spinning rods as they come out of the furnace from which they are made. Do not get your hopes up yet, the yarn has a strength comparable to that of most modern textiles but the group does state that there is room for improvement. And there is mention of a space elevator

The waste you flush down the toilet could one day power the lights in your home. So say researchers at Pennsylvania State University who last week revealed they have developed an electricity generator fuelled by sewage

The Swiss government approved draft legislation to end a ban on absinthe, the mythical herbal liqueur beloved of turn-of-the-century artists and blamed for driving some of them mad

13 March 2004

California's Supreme Court has ordered San Francisco officials to immediately suspend same-sex marriages. The move was made pending a legal review on the issue later this year and comes amid conservative outrage and calls for a constitutional ban. More than 3,000 ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples have been performed in San Francisco since the city began issuing marriage licences last month. The court has yet to rule on the legality of these existing marriages — via Die Puny Humans

With 21 million items listed on its Web site every day, it is easy to tell why eBay has become a favourite target for organised e-scams in Australia

Two Mexican peasant farmers, cousins age 70 and 85, argued for years over water rights and finally faced off in an old-fashioned pistol duel that killed both

ClearPC's Secret Agent PC case is a transparent acrylic PC case shaped like a briefcase. Great for LAN parties and airport security

12 March 2004

Powerful explosions rocked three Madrid railway stations today just days before Spain's general elections, killing at least 190 rush-hour commuters and injuring more 1,200. The government blamed the armed Basque separatist group ETA. Arnold Otegi, leader of Batasuna, an outlawed Basque party linked to the armed separatist group, denied it was behind the blasts and suggested Arab resistance elements were responsible

Pork products processed and distributed from the farm of accused Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton may have contained human remains. Pickton raised and slaughtered pigs at the Port Coquitlam farm as a part-time occupation until his arrest at the property in February 2002, and police believe he gave or sold processed meat products to friends and acquaintances — via Die Puny Humans

Telstra will signal the most radical change to its national networks in 100 years as early as today with the start of a trial of fibre optic technology into Queensland homes. A national rollout would cost billions of dollars but Telstra would first use the technology in new housing developments as it evaluates the gradual replacement of its copper network. The replacement of its entire copper network is likely to take decades

In a sign that the wireless Internet is coming of age, Nokia, Vodafone, Microsoft and six other technology and telecommunications companies joined to propose a new top level domain name to identify web sites designed specifically for use on mobile devices, such as .mobile Internet address

11 March 2004

Raccoons released by Hermann Goering in Germany in 1934 to enrich the Reich's fauna are threatening to succeed where their Nazi benefactors failed by conquering Europe. They have become so successful that German authorities revealed this week that raccoon numbers are now at record levels — with more than a million in Germany alone — via Darren Barefoot

An Electronics Frontiers Australia board member has critically assessed the proposed Free-Trade Agreement between the United States and Australia released on 1 March, concluding that the document presents absolutely no benefit to Australia in the IP sections

The four largest US internet firms, AOL, EarthLink, Microsoft and Yahoo, have jointly announced a series of lawsuits under a new federal anti-spam law seeking to shut down the biggest and baddest email marketers

Hitachi is set to announce a 400GB drive to be used in the corporate market and in digital video recorders, a fast-growing arena for hard drives

10 March 2004

A really stupid woman was caught trying to use a fake $1 million bill to buy $1,675 worth of merchandise at a Wal-Mart, and was later found with two more of the bills in her purse

09 March 2004

The spineless Prime Minister has been accused of taking his electoral cues straight from Washington following his announced intention to overturn new ACT laws that allow homosexuals to adopt children

An Australian handyman admitted he was stupid to shoot himself in the head with a nail gun in a misguided prank that left him with a nail lodged in his brain

08 March 2004

Cunningham MP Michael Organ has written to the board of directors of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation seeking an assurance that its Radio National network won't be closed down

Jean-Bertrand Aristide's move to raise Haiti's minimum wage was the last straw for American corporations and elitist US

A dispute at the salad bar turned into a food fracas at an upscale retirement home, with a man taking a bite out of another's arm and other residents suffering minor injuries

07 March 2004

A disposable paperboard computer has been developed and is already in use in Sweden. Developed by Cypak AB, the paperboard computer can collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data. Impressive, given that they say it has a mere 32K of memory

A three-headed, six-legged frog has been discovered by children in Weston-super-Mare. Environmental problems are suspected. It later escaped from the jar in which it had been kept — via Pagan Prattle

06 March 2004

On the eve of Mardi Gras, Cunningham MP Michael Organ has declared he will introduce a Private Member's Bill recognising same sex marriage within the next 3 weeks of Federal Parliament. Legal recognition for same sex marriage is long overdue. For our legal system to have any credibility, people must be treated equally, regardless of sexuality or anything else, Michael Organ said

The former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has declared that the war in Iraq was illegal, dealing another devastating blow to Tony Blair

HIV patients who are also infected by a second, mysterious virus are less likely to develop AIDS and die of the disease, suggests a new study. Up to six years after their initial HIV-infection, men whose blood contained the second virus — known simply as GB virus C (GBV-C) — were nearly three times less likely to die than HIV-positive men who did not have the secondary infection

Under the Free Trade Agreement, Australia has agreed to the US takedown notice regime where copyright owners can force an ISP to remove material such as music, video or text files by serving written notice

05 March 2004

A chance discovery has transformed an engine intended for speedboats into a powerful firefighting tool that douses flames with jets of water mist. During tests, a technician at Pursuit Dynamics squirted water into it with a garden hose purely out of curiosity. To everyone's surprise, the water emerged as a jet of fine droplets that drenched anyone standing within 20m of it

The coming Australian food revolution is all about one-stop, guilt-free indulgence, according to the researchers who are already hard at work designing it. Health, convenience and enjoyment are the main consumer drivers behind sweeping changes in the healthiness, composition, flavour and quality of foods grown and produced in Australia

St George Bank customers can monitor their accounts on their mobile phones, using an SMS facility

04 March 2004

The Criminal Code Amendment (Terrorist Organisations) Bill 2003 passed the Senate today, backed by Labor, hands the Attorney-General an unnecessary and dangerous new power to ban organisations in Australia. For the first time in Australian history people and organisations can be criminalised by the Attorney-General labelling them terrorists

Portland, Oregon is about to begin issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples. Oregon law states that marriage is between consenting males and females aged at least 17, but does not state that a marriage requires one of each — via HogBlog

US forces in Iraq have a new non-lethal, but really annoying, weapon in their arsenal. According to American Technology Corporation's press release, the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) is a hailing and warning, directed acoustic device that is designed to determine intent, change behaviour, and support various rules of engagement. With LRAD, a sentry can issue a focused verbal challenge with instructions in excess of 300 hundred yards, and follow up with a warning tone to cause behaviour change

After repeatedly setting off RFID scanners in a truck stop, Dave and Denise discovered the culprit was a wad of $20s in Dave's back pocket. In a paranoid attempt to keep the government from tracking him, they attempted to fry the embedded chips in their microwave, with interesting results

03 March 2004

Plasma-torch technology, which can heat and melt virtually any type of waste, could serve as a bridge between fossil fuels and renewable energy in producing hydrogen gas

Telstra has defended its decision not to automatically upgrade existing customers on unlimited download cable Internet plans to newly-released cheaper prices, claiming the option exists for them to migrate to the new deal if they ask

02 March 2004

In an analysis of junk e-mails received over two days in mid-February, Sophos created a list of the dirty dozen spam-producing countries. Taking the undisputed helm on its list of spam-producing countries is the United States, which accounted for more than half of the world's unsolicited e-mail at 56.7% during the period of study. Canada accounted for 6.8%; China, 6.2%; South Korea, 5.8%; and the Netherlands, 2.1%. The other top 12 countries were Brazil, German, France, United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico and Spain. However, those seven countries in total accounted for just more than 10% of all spam. All other countries in the world created an additional 12.2% of the globe's spam

California's Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a 1999 injunction favouring the DVD Copy Control Association, which had filed a lawsuit against California resident Andrew Bunner, accusing him of violating its intellectual property rights by posting DeCSS (De-Content Scrambling System) software on his web site

Disputing a speed-camera fine could soon be a thing of the past. Toyota's Sportivo Coupe concept car takes away the guesswork when it comes to identifying the leadfoot in the family. Finding the rightful recipient of the ticket could be as simple as sliding in a mobile phone-style SIM-card instead of a key. The card would contain details of the driver's licence and address. Wireless technology would allow the car to communicate with the speed camera, and the fine could be deducted from the driver's credit card before he or she even made it home. But would anyone buy such a car?

Borders is the latest traditional bookseller or publisher to branch into self-publishing using print-on-demand technology

01 March 2004

The village of Tenkawa generates 1,500 tons of human waste a year. They used to use a tanker to carry that waste to the sea and dump it, but can't do that any more. They needed to come up with a new method of treating human waste, so decided to treat effluent biotechnologically and to turn it into drinking water — via Die Puny Humans

Three Engineering students from Simon Fraser University have developed a laptop alarm complete with remote pager that detects if your laptop is being moved and sounds an alarm

Search


Archives