April 2004 Archive

30 April 2004

A few political sketches took a 15-year-old Prosser boy from his art class to questioning by the Secret Service — and thrust him into a debate over free speech

The headteacher of a leading Scottish prep school has banned his teachers from setting homework because he thinks meddling parents are harming children's education

Friends of a champion Irish clay pigeon shooter have fulfilled his dying wish by packing his ashes into shotgun cartridges and blasting his remains over firing ranges around the world

29 April 2004

A long-awaited review into digital copyright laws has been released, but recommendations for ISPs who may be hosting copyright-breaching material have been clouded by the new Free Trade Agreement between Australia and the US

Domain Names Australia Pty Ltd and its director Chesley Paul Rafferty have been found guilty by the Federal Court of breaching the Trade Practices Act, following the company's re-registration mailout scam in 2003

The Singapore government is spending $5.1 billion buying the Australian assets of Texas Utilities so it is time to once again fire up Crikey's great lists of energy sector deals over the past decade which now includes the investment bankers who advised on each sale

The state of Missouri is using pizza delivery lists to track down people that owe court-imposed fines

28 April 2004

David Bowie has asked bedroom DJs to create a new track for an internet competition by bootlegging his songs. The British music star has given fans the right to create a new song by using computer music software to blend or mash up two existing tracks. The winning song will be released as an MP3 and its creator will win a car

A start-up called Stretch says that its new software-configurable design allows processors to add instructions while they're operating

Airplanes, whether manned or unmanned, need to travel at various speeds. For example, a surveillance plane needs to fly fast to reach its destination point. Then, it needs to reduce its speed to achieve its surveillance mission. But with its fixed wings, it doesn't offer the same level of efficiency during these two phases. That's why Penn State engineers have devised airplane wings that change shape like a bird and have scales like a fish. Right now, the team has only built a tabletop model

Thousands of demonstrators banged pots and pans, blew whistles and beat drums on Saturday in a Latin American-style protest of World Bank and IMF policies in poor countries. Some carried signs reading people over profits and debt relief now to underscore their message to international lenders holding their spring meetings

27 April 2004

With Google reportedly on the verge of going public, more and more people want to know what makes Google tick. The Observer, serves up the answers to our questions

A system that projects light beams directly into the eye could change the way we see the world. US firm Microvision has developed a system that projects lasers onto the retina, allowing users to view images on top of their normal field of vision. It could allow surgeons to get a bird's eye view of the innards of a patient, offer military units in the field a view of the entire battlefield and provide mechanics with a simulation of the inside of a car's engine — via Die Puny Humans

Professor Paulo Galluci and his team have built a working model of Leonard Da Vinci's clockwork powered car, designed in 1478. Previous attempts have been made to create the vehicle, but they failed to work properly. This is thought to be due to a misunderstanding of the original design, which is corrected in the new model. Apart from the 1/3 scale replica, the team have also made a full size model but have not dared to test it. Professor Galluzzi explained; It is a very powerful machine. It could run into something and do serious damage

26 April 2004

Americans have seen their first pictures of flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq after the Pentagon briefly lost control of images it had long sought to keep out of the public eye

The US Army Research Laboratory has developed a new liquid body armour. According to Dr Eric Wetzel, the project coordinator: The key component of liquid armour is a shear thickening fluid. STF is composed of hard particles suspended in a liquid. The liquid, polyethylene glycol, is non-toxic, and can withstand a wide range of temperatures. Hard, nano-particles of silica are the other components of STF. This combination of flowable and hard components results in a material with unusual properties

It was the mysterious rattling sound from the 18-month-old German Shepherd's stomach which first alerted the British vet to what might be wrong. A subsequent operation removed no fewer than 28 golf balls from the dog's belly and — unsurprisingly — the mystery ailment which made her stop eating has been cured

25 April 2004

An international effort to dismantle major internet piracy groups has identified more than 100 people in the US and abroad involved in the theft of more than $US50 million in music, movies, games and computer software — nice to see they live in a little fantasy world where they believe this will make a difference

Many customers looking for mobile phone retreads [BugMeNot] are more interested in price tags than multimedia messaging or games; they just want to make a phone call. But there is also the mobile equivalent of the preowned BMW. ReCellular resells about four million handsets in bulk worldwide each year. Of the 1.5 million it resells in the US, mostly for use on prepaid plans, plenty are higher-end with cameras and bells and whistles

Despite claims of advanced proprietary technology, Google's opt-in porn filter proves no better than the primitive tools of the last decade, blocking many harmless sites

24 April 2004

Despite the infinite climb data speeds seem to be making, scientists at Stanford say we'll eventually hit a barrier due to the inability to keep the data stable after a certain transfer speed. But no worries just yet; the watermark they've set is still 1,000 times faster than what we have now. Apparently the scientists confirmed this problem by firing up the particle accelerator at Stanford University and blasting electrons at a piece of the magnetic material used to store computer data

The FBI is trying to convince the government to mandate that providers of broadband, Internet telephony, and instant-messaging services build in backdoors for easy wiretapping. That would constitute a sweeping expansion of police surveillance powers. Instead of asking Congress to approve the request, the FBI (along with the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration) are pressing the FCC to move forward with minimal public input

Toshiba has developed a hard drive for notebook computers that can hold 100GB of data. The new hard drive offers a quarter more storage space than the company's current highest capacity notebook drive and is the first 2.5-inch drive from any manufacturer to store 100GB. The company expects to begin selling it later this year

Language experts believe that text messages, e-mails and the push for faster and more efficient communications are taking their toll on grammar. Queensland University of Technology sociolinguistics lecturer Jo Carr said people using e-mail and SMS text messaging were unconcerned about grammar and punctuation

23 April 2004

Clever geometry is the basis of a new material that is said to be ideal for secure data encryption and dense optical information storage. The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres in which the particle core and its layers each contain a different dye. The material can hold four or more pieces of information in one spot—not just two as in binary optical data storage. And it opens a door to high-density three-dimensional optical data storage

A mammal that is the daughter of two female parents has been created for the first time. Until now such a feat had been considered biologically impossible. But the mouse, called Kaguya, was born without the involvement of any sperm or male cell — only female eggs were needed — via GeneWeb

Carlos Machuca, a tamale-maker, killed his drinking buddy, cut up his body and boiled him in herbs, according to police who fear he may have been turning him into tamales. Officers found a man's mutilated corpse in the living room and body parts simmering in saucepans on the patio

22 April 2004

Researchers have set a new data transmission record over the Internet2's high-speed backbone. The new record announced Tuesday at the Spring 2004 Internet2 member meeting in Arlington, was for transmitting data over nearly 11,000 km at an average speed of 6.25 Gb/s. This is nearly 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection. The network link used to set the record spans from Los Angeles to Geneva, Switzerland

Russia may be about to perform a dramatic policy U-turn in ratifying the Kyoto climate change protocol despite months of saying that it would cause irreparable damage to its booming economy. Such a decision would allow the United Nations treaty to finally become legally binding and leave America isolated on the world stage as an environmental sinner

Yahoo has fixed a bug in its Web based e-mail system that would have allowed attackers to seize control of users' e-mail accounts

21 April 2004

A flaw in TCP, the most popular communications protocol for sending data on the Net, could let attackers shut down connections between servers and routers, according to an advisory released Tuesday by Britain's national emergency response team

An AOL job listing indicates intentions to recharge its neglected portal and Web browser, and take Netscape in a dramatically different direction

John Howard had the bone pointed at him as part of a warning by embattled ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark yesterday that he was not welcome in western Victoria. Moorap, an Aboriginal woman from the Tjapwuurrong people, from Mortlake, performed the traditional ceremony yesterday morning as the Prime Minister arrived in Colac

Allowing a big-budget Hollywood movie team to film in sensitive areas of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area is evidence the Carr Government is prepared to sacrifice irreplaceable areas of wilderness to commercial operators. The Carr Government has established many new wilderness areas but now appears to want a return on its investment and is opening the door to more commercial operations. Greens MLC Ian Cohen said it is unacceptable that the production team of the movie Stealth will use explosives in sensitive wilderness areas in the Blue Mountains and called on Environment Minister Bob Debus to intervene

20 April 2004

Public Patent Foundation, a little-known public interest group, last week asked the US government to revoke a Microsoft patent that covers the company's Windows file system

The Australian Greens have renewed their call for the voting age to be reduced from 18 to 16 but with non-compulsory voting for those under 18 years

Telstra's appetite for acquisitions appears unsated by last week's boardroom bloodletting, with the company in talks with rival Hutchison Telecommunications to buy its Orange mobile phone business for about $250 million

19 April 2004

The recent US-Australia Free Trade Agreement Chapter 17 (IP) locks Australia into our existing DMCA-style laws and extends them further: banning access control circumvention, extending copyright, guaranteeing penalties greater than actual damages for deliberate copyright infringement, committing us to recognising patents whether a product or process, in all fields of technology, etc. Linux Australia has produced a draft position paper (rough HTML version), has a how to help page, and started a petition

How hard would it be to swing an election by hacking computerised voting machines? How valuable would it be? Counterpane.com's Bruce Schneier did the math, and the results are even scarier than he expected them to be

18 April 2004

An Austrian man cut off his toes, fried them up and ate them between two slices of bread after getting high sniffing butane gas. When ambulance men arrived he offered to share his meal with them, passing over a toe and saying: It tastes like chicken, do you want some, there's a few still left over. A police spokesman added: He told the ambulance men that he had more toes than he needed and didn't think he would notice if he got rid of a few

17 April 2004

Tim Berners-Lee, British inventor of the World Wide Web, has won Finland's first Millennium Technology Prize. Berners-Lee, who heads the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, revolutionised the Internet in 1991 when he devised a way to organise, link and browse Net pages

Amazon has entered the search engine fray with the beta launch of its A9 portal, enabling broad-based Web inquiries, as well as delivering results from the company site and a host of personalised services

The DVD Forum, which oversees the DVD format, approved a blue laser-based format, to be called HD-DVD. Unlike Blu-ray, the Toshiba/NEC system retains backwards compatibility with today's DVD specification. While Sony and Toppan Printing have been working for about a year on printing data onto Blu-ray discs made mostly of paper. The companies are aiming to produce lower-cost discs and expand the use of the technology. The 25GB discs will be able to store more than two hours of high-definition video

He can't quite make money grow from trees, but Christopher Anderson, an environmental geologist from Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, has devised a way to harvest gold from plants. The idea: Use common crops to soak up contaminants in soil from gold-mining sites and return the areas to productive agriculture. The gold harvested from the process pays for the cleanup — with money left over for training in sustainable agriculture

16 April 2004

Film subtitles that can be tailored to suit small sections of an audience could go on general release at the end of 2004

Dotcom entrepreneur Karl Suleman will spend at least 12 months behind bars after NSW District Court Judge Peter Berman sentenced him to 21 months in jail for fraud

German police have detained a man and confiscated an axe he was throwing for his dog to retrieve. Passers-by spotted the barefoot 36-year-old enjoying his dangerous game of go fetch in a park and alerted police

15 April 2004

A month ago, a trial version of a little-known Linux application called CoLinux was released that is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. It's the work of a 21-year-old Israeli computer science student and some Japanese open source programmers; in Israel, analysts are already saying it could help transform the software world

The Onion's deadpan satirical news-stories, much-forwarded and chuckled over, have frequently been reported as fact by various news agencies, law-enforcement departments, and pressure groups

A University of Illinois research team is working on turning pig manure into a form of crude oil that could be refined to heat homes or generate electricity. Years of research and fine-tuning lie ahead before the idea could be commercially viable, but results so far indicate there might be big benefits for farmers and consumers

BBC's opening up its radio broadcasts, by making some of its radio shows available as MP3 files [BugMeNot] for the first time

14 April 2004

A family garage and most of its contents have been saved in the Victorian town of Sunshine, thanks to the efforts of the family dog. Hudson, a short-haired German pointer, started barking just before 3:00am AEST and alerted his owners to a fire burning in their Hall Street garage

You are engaged in a chat session with some friends and colleagues, when one of them makes a witty remark or imparts a pithy bit of information. You hit CTRL-A and select the conversation, then copy it to a document that you save. Under a little-noticed decision in a New Hampshire Superior Court in late February, these actions may just land you in jail

The National Australia Bank is shedding its tarnished image from such IT disasters as the integrated systems implementation, with the aim of becoming a world-class technology leader by 2007. In the midst of major upheavals at the bank following its $360 million foreign exchange scandal, NAB is working to wipe away past disasters, and experimenting with new technologies that for the first time will involve sharing innovation across the group

13 April 2004

E-mail provider Everyone.net says it has a new program to protect e-mail users from one by-product of the spam plague: bounced messages. The firm is announcing an enhanced e-mail protection service called Total Protection 2.0 at the ISPCon conference in Washington, DC this week. The new service includes a technology called Email Fingerprint that can stop bounce storms, in which e-mail users who have had their e-mail address stolen by spammers or e-mail worms receive a flood of returned e-mail messages

Sun Microsystems has discontinued development of two planned chips as it retrenches in a difficult era for the company. Santa Clara, California-based Sun has stopped work on the UltraSparc V, a server chip that was supposed to come out late next year, and Gemini, a dual-core chip for Web servers

Remember how online music stores were going to route around the music industry? The pigopolists have barely got their feet under the table and already demanding more. The Wall Street Journal reports that the major five labels think that 99 cents per song is too cheap, and are discussing a price hike that would increase the tariff to $1.25 up to $2.99 per song

12 April 2004

By the year 2010, file-sharers could be swapping news rather than music, eliminating censorship of any kind. This is the view of the man who helped kickstart the concept of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, Cambridge University's Professor Ross Anderson. In his vision, people around the world would post stories via anonymous P2P services like those used to swap songs. They would cover issues currently ignored by the major news services

Do you want to create your own crater on the moon? Orbital Development is putting a personalised moon crash for sale on eBay. The bid opens with $6 million which will enable the highest bidder to stuff up to 10kg worth of stuff on a space craft and lob it to the moon. The condition of the cargo is not guaranteed as it crashes on the moon at 4000mph

Scotland's adoption laws are set to be radically overhauled in a bid to cut the record numbers of children currently in foster care who need a permanent home. Ministers are poised to introduce measures next year which will, for the first time, allow unmarried and same-sex couples to adopt. They are also expected to make major changes to the law in the hope of streamlining the tortuous adoption process, which is blamed for deterring many parents from signing up

11 April 2004

Those clever folks at RCA have apparently designed a DVD player that automatically scans movies and censors them to make them kosher, as it were. That means none of the naughty bits and none of those bad words either. It will be sold by Walmart for the price of $79, and what with the recent Janet Jackson 'wardrobe malfunction' this product will likely be lauded by the FCC and moralists everywhere, though Hollywood is already complaining

The video of a man who shot himself after his girlfriend broke up with him has appeared online under the heading of Introducing: The Self-Cleansing Housing Projects. The report mentions that the police officers receive no training to deal with privacy issues

10 April 2004

For less than 5% of the price of a real Steadycam (the ones made for small video cameras go for about $900), you can apparently build your own SteadyCam for $14 with parts from a hardware store. The sample video makes it look pretty good. Great gift for the amateur videographer in your life who refuses to use a tripod, the bastard

Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology are refining a method that uses the current generation of chip-making tools to produce smaller chips than previously thought possible with those tools. The key ingredient happens to be one of the most commonly available substances on the planet. By running a small stream of water across a silicon wafer as the circuit lines are being etched into the chip, the current generation of lithography tools can produce circuits down to the 45nm level due to the refractive properties of water

A proposed California law that would have significantly broadened the scope of an existing state identity theft law has been quietly amended in what appears to be a concession to groups opposing it

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has unexpectedly suspended plans for a massive dam system on the Nu River in western China that scientists had warned could ruin one of the country's last unspoiled places. Wen's intervention signals that China's top leaders have not approved a plan that most opponents had considered a fait accompli. However, environmentalists cautioned that the dam project could still eventually go forward in some form

09 April 2004

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader called Tuesday for the retarded monkey boy to be impeached [BugMeNot] for deceiving the American people night after night after night about US involvement in Iraq. When you plunge our country into war on a platform of fabrications and deceptions, and you bring back thousands of American soldiers who are sick, injured or dead, and that war is unconstitutionally authorised to begin with, Mr Bush's behaviour qualifies for the high crimes and misdemeanour impeachment clause of the Constitution, the 2000 Green Party presidential nominee said to applause from about 200 students at Columbia College Chicago. Nader said President Clinton was impeached for far less of an offence

Scientists have detected the first signs that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) may have crossed into sheep in a study that is likely to rekindle anxieties over the safety of lamb and mutton

A pregnant woman in Mexico gave birth to a healthy baby boy after performing a caesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife. It is thought to be the first known case of a self-inflicted caesarean in which both the mother and baby survived. The unidentified 40-year-old, who lived in a rural area without electricity, running water or sanitation that was an eight-hour drive from the nearest hospital, performed the operation when she could not deliver the baby naturally

08 April 2004

NEC has developed a battery that can be recharged only in 30 seconds. Called an organic radical battery, it can be recharged to the same level of power as that stored in nickel-hydrogen cells, which are widely used in digital cameras, portable MD players and other electronic devices. It takes only about 30 seconds to recharge the battery enough to allow 80 hours of continuous operation of an MD player, compared with around an hour needed by conventional rechargeables — via Meta-Roj Blog

The latest fashion trend to hit the Netherlands is eyeball jewellery. Dutch eye surgeons have implanted tiny pieces of jewellery in the mucous membranes of the eyes of six women and one man. Called Jewel Eye, the cosmetic surgery procedure has been pioneered by an ophthalmic surgery research and development institute in Rotterdam. The procedure involves inserting a 3.5mm wide piece of specially developed jewellery into the eye's mucous membrane. The technique is performed under local anaesthetic at a cost of about $800 to $1,600 — via Die Puny Humans

Regular doses of worms really do rid people of inflammatory bowel disease. The first trials of the treatment have been a success, and a drinkable concoction containing thousands of pig whipworm eggs could soon be launched in Europe. At the moment the concoction cannot be stored for long, so doctors or hospitals would have to prepare fresh batches of the eggs for their patients. But a new German company called BioCure, whose sister company BioMonde sells leeches and maggots for treating wounds, hopes it will soon solve the storage problem

The film industry is fighting rampant piracy in Russia with a new tactic: cutting prices. To fight piracy in Russia, where 9 out of 10 DVDs are illegal copies, Columbia TriStar, a division of Sony, will price discs at no more than 299 rubles, or just over US$10, less than half of the current price. Warner Home Video, a division of Time Warner, has already cut its prices in Russia to the equivalent of US$15

07 April 2004

Pioneer Electronics just announced that they will introduce an electron-beam recorder for next-generation optical data storage. The electron beam is much finer than that of a typical laser so they are able to achieve densities of 50GB or more with a standard 12cm disc

The Teletubbies and Tweenies are to be banned from promoting unhealthy children's food, the BBC announced yesterday. The change follows intense pressure from food campaigners concerned that pre-school television characters are used to sell foods high in salt, sugar and fat

The Government will split amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception) Act, holding off changes that could have blocked employers from monitoring staff e-mail for viruses and offensive content. The decision came after a senate committee examining the amendments was most concerned about a dispute between the Australian Federal Police and the Attorney-General's Department over how police had been interpreting the existing Act. The AFP has been using search warrants to access suspects' e-mail accounts and download messages, a practice the department said was not permitted under the legislation

06 April 2004

An Ohio teen whose mobile phone was ripped off called the number, found herself speaking to the thief's girlfriend, and social-engineered the bimbo into giving up the crooks' address, busting a notorious mobile-stealing ring in the process

An interesting story got posted on the Irish Linux Users group. It involves the arrest of a scammer/spammer working in an internet cafe. It even includes the attempt to eat a USB pen drive, several cops and a ten minute struggle to subdue the man

DIY fan Kevin Brunie built a guillotine — then beheaded himself in his back garden. The keen carpenter spent weeks making the device out of wood with a metal blade. He told relatives it was a toy car. Dad-of-two Kevin, 42, was said to have been in good spirits and was laughing and joking with his mum Lynda Nelson, 62, days before he died. She said: He had not talked to me about killing himself. I have no idea why he died. He was always good with his hands — via Die Puny Humans

Hundreds of area technophiles wired their computers together in an attempt to generate computing power on a par with the world's strongest supercomputers. Organizers hoped to break into the ranks of the world's top 500 supercomputers through the event, which they called Flashmob I

05 April 2004

Rabies-carrying vampire bats killed at least 13 people in a remote Amazon town in Brazil's northern state of Para last month. The state health care department said the thumb-sized creatures had attacked about 300 people — an unusually high number — since 2 March in the riverside Portel area, next to the world's biggest estuarine archipelago of Marajo. Government scientists suspect the attacks are linked to a change in the bats' migration pattern caused by deforestation — via Oft Quoted

Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad flies economy class but has reportedly dislodged Microsoft's Bill Gates as the world's richest man

04 April 2004

At the Tokyo Motorcycle Show, the official licensed model of the Akira motorcycle is displayed. This Kaneda bike is not a mere replica, but a full working model. On its cockpit is DVD-navi-system + trackball & ten-key + custom computer-controlled LED meters — all licenced by the author and the publisher of Akira. Though at the show only miniature figures are sold and real price or release date is unclear, you can check out the manufacturer for later info

03 April 2004

Researchers have found new colonies of endangered species in a wildlife survey in Sydney's water catchment area. Thirty species not previously recorded in the area were found as part of the survey, which aims to help the Department of Environment manage the area better

During the Cold War, British researchers developed a nuclear landmine, kept operational during cold conditions by packing it full of live chickens. The bomb is supposedly on display at the National Archives in Kew, so if you live in London you can go and see for yourselves

02 April 2004

Canada's Federal Court has delivered a blow to the recording industry's bid to crack down on web sites which offer free music on the internet for users to download. A Federal Court judge ruled in Toronto that ISPs could not be forced to name 29 people who had allowed their music files to be uploaded by other enthusiasts

01 April 2004

Internet search company Google has announced plans to enter the free web-based e-mail market which is currently dominated by online giants Yahoo and Microsoft's Hotmail. Google says it is testing a preview release of its product, named Gmail, which it says will allow every user to store up to 1GB of information, or about 500,000 pages of e-mail

Greens MP and justice spokesperson Lee Rhiannon has called for a review of the use of capsicum spray by police after a group of up to 20 students were sprayed today while protesting against fee increases at Sydney's University of Technology. People have a right to protest in our society and the use of capsicum spray by police today on students should be condemned, said Ms Rhiannon

NSW will outlaw unauthorised cybersnooping on employees using technology including video cameras, email and tracking devices. The new laws would make it a criminal offence to undertake any form of covert surveillance unless an employer could show a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing by an employee

Telstra has caved in to pressure from the ACCC over the wholesale pricing of its broadband Internet service. The competition regulator had accused Telstra of cutting its retail prices to a point where some of its wholesale customers could no longer compete. Telstra announced discounted wholesale packages offering a 40 per cent discount compared to retail prices

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