July 2004 Archive

31 July 2004

Lukas Grunwald, a senior consultant with DN-Systems Enterprise Solutions GmbH, is warning retailers that the RFID technology that they are quickly adopting can easily be hacked with the appropriate tools

Can you live without a pulse? Yes, now you can. The reason why we have a pulse is because it's hard for evolution to result in turbines or continuously spinning things. The next generation of artificial hearts may have no pulse. They also have no bearings, so they should last much longer than previous attempts. In fact, engineers don't give a predicted lifespan on these models

US researchers have unearthed what they say may be the oldest known brewery in the Andes, a pre-Incan plant at least 1000 years old that could produce drinks for hundreds of people at one sitting. The University of Florida said its archaeologists and researchers from the Field Museum in Chicago found the brewery at Cerro Baul, a mountaintop religious centre of the Wari empire that ruled what is now Peru hundreds of years before the Incas

30 July 2004

Human rights organisation Reporters sans Frontières has accused Yahoo! and Google of deliberately conspiring to censor the Web. RSF called the pair irresponsible for blocking some content labelled as subversive by the Chinese government — sites relating to Tibet's independence, for example. Such sites disappear from the Chinese language version of Yahoo and a Yahoo-parented search engine, Yisou, while a local search engine that Google now owns a share of, Baidu, also censors its results

Karlheinz Brandenburg, director of Germany's prestigious Fraunhofer Institute for Media Technology, known for his contribution to the invention of the MP3 codec, has demonstrated a new technology that could create super-realistic sound for theatres, theme parks and home-entertainment systems. Iosono is described as true three dimensional audio, which can give the impression that a noise occurring in a movie sounds exactly like someone shouting from outside the theatre walls. The best surround sound speakers on the market today can approximate this for a sweet spot of only a few feet wide, but Iosono would create the same realistic illusion for all the people sitting in a theatre

While studying ground squirrels, researchers noticed that some of them made faint whispering sounds, as if they had lost their voices. But when these silent screams were processed by a bat detector, an abundance of ultrasound was detected. The researchers believe the whispers might be secret alarm calls — that the squirrels' predators cannot hear — via meta-roj blog

A new-born baby rhinoceros in a Berlin zoo is in plaster after his mother carelessly trod on his foot one day after his birth. Patna, born last week to mother Betty and father Belur, will have to wear a plaster cast on his left lower leg for up to five weeks to heal a broken leg

29 July 2004

An ICANN arbitration panel has rejected Google's challenge of a Web site named Froogles.com, meaning that the Froogles.com name will remain with the current owner. Also, the current owner is opposing Google's attempt to register Froogle with the US Patent and Trademark Office, contending the mark would be an infringement of his Froogles.com mark. Google has filed 18 domain name disputes at the ICANN panel, challenging names like googlesex.com, google.biz and googleme.com. It has won every challenge but Froogles.com

Major Internet search engines were crippled Monday morning in the US by a variant of the MyDoom worm, rendering Google inaccessible to many users and slowing results from Yahoo

Three founders of Australia's largest and crappest Web hosting company, WebCentral, will walk away with AU$18 million in cash when they sell their shares to listed tech company FTR Holdings

The Kalashnikov, like vodka, seems quintessentially Russian. But, as with vodka, plenty of other countries make versions of the assault rifle, and Russia's arms export agency isn't flattered. It doesn't help that the foreign versions come cheaper

28 July 2004

A spam taskforce operating under the auspices of the Australian Internet Industry Association has released a draft industry code of practice designed to block the spam epidemic

Revelations on the ABC-TV program Media Watch last night that the national broadcaster has taken a policy decision to require documentary makers to seek permission from politicians who feature in news reports prior to selling or licensing the clips reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the laws of copyright

Nearly 100 Australian towns have moved a step closer to broadband Internet access today, as Telstra announced it would make more local exchanges ADSL-capable under a Government subsidy scheme. Funny how the lazy bastards don't do jack until the Government handout appears

Japanese parents have been given government permission to name their children Buttocks or Prostitute if they wish after a bizarre row over expanding the list of officially acceptable names

26 July 2004

Microsoft is in early discussions with five or six media companies over a potential sale of MSN's online magazine Slate. This comes mere weeks after Slate recommended Firefox over Internet Explorer

The BladeRunner Dual Mode Transport is novel approach that could revolutionise the transportation industry. The innovative vehicle will run on road as well as rail. It is as applicable to freight as to passenger transport. Branch-line infrastructure costs could be at least halved because signalling and points could be largely, if not totally, made redundant

25 July 2004

A Texas man, Richard Swift, was charged with animal cruelty in the death of a young dog whose snout was taped shut to prevent it from barking and disturbing his afternoon nap. The prick then booted it outside for several hours in 35°C heat, the dog could not cool down by panting and had to be euthanised after suffering from heat stroke

24 July 2004

Fairfax's literary editor Malcolm Knox has accused Norma Khouri, the author of Forbidden Love, of fraud. Ms Khouri's book, Forbidden Love, tells the story of her best friend, a Jordanian woman, who was murdered by her father for falling in love with a Christian man. Ms Khouri says she fled Jordan after the incident, writing the story and making her way to Australia. Mr Knox claims he has proof she lived in America for most of her life and only lived in Jordan until she was three

John Howard is threatening to take his bat and ball and go home. The whiny little prick wants to suspend talks [BugMeNot] with East Timor over billions of dollars of oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea until after the election, after Labor leader Mark Latham said he could restart negotiations

23 July 2004

Justin Spence doesn't take lightly being scammed out of $1155 for a laptop he never received. The seller, Salvatore Wise, Jr of Philadelphia, is growing openly more hostile over the webpage Justin produced exposing his and his wife Michelle Heinlein's scams to the world. So far Justin has documented $6841.00 total lost to this crook, but the total is more likely in the tens of thousands

Food scientists have developed a dried food ration that military troops can rehydrate by adding the filthiest of muddy swamp water, or even by peeing in it. The idea is to reduce the amount of water soldiers trekking for miles have to carry. Developed by the same organisation that created the indestructible sandwich, the new rations can lessen a soldier's load by 3.1 kilograms

Two Britons, Gregory Graham and Kaye Chapman, were found guilty on Wednesday of an elaborate plot to smuggle cocaine into the country by surgically implanting packets of the drug inside two Labradors. The scum managed to murder one of the dogs when a packet burst in transit

Pilgrim, a supplier for Kentucky Fried Chicken, suspended a worker without pay and is investigating three others after an animal rights group released video of workers kicking, stomping and throwing birds against walls at a West Virginia plant

22 July 2004

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to drop Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the eastern United States, despite the fact that the removal of protections would likely preclude the return of wolves to their historical range in the Northeast. Although wolves in the upper-Midwest have made many gains, and now number more than 3,000 in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, wolf experts believe that the Northeast has prime wolf habitat and could support a population of the canines. The new plan would make it difficult to either reintroduce wolves in the Northeast, or protect those that naturally migrate from Canada

A number of start-ups are tinkering with technology that could enhance or replace hard drives, flash memory cards and other storage devices. The new technology will benefit consumers, but, just as important, reduce the onerous capital budgets facing manufacturers. The only question is which approach will work best — using molten silicon, designer molecules, or maybe protein globules?

Five big US power companies were sued for creating a public nuisance on Wednesday, accused by eight states and the city of New York of being the largest global-warming polluters in the country

21 July 2004

Charleston City Council apologised to two protesters who were arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts to the president's 4 July rally at the West Virginia Capital — via Meta-Roj Blog

The directors of escrow services provider Trade Secure are considering closing down the company after discovering that several fake Web sites are using the company logo and address and deceiving customers all over the world

Law enforcement agencies that have been using a reverse white pages directory found to breach Telstra's copyright will face a more cumbersome and expensive procedure each time they search for details of phone number owners. Melbourne-based Desktop Marketing Systems, publisher of a reverse-white-pages CD-ROM, is winding up after losing a legal battle with Telstra

70-year-old Aldo Busato, a retired Italian farmer, died on Saturday when a World War One bomb, part of his collection of military memorabilia, exploded while he was showing it to a friend in his garden

20 July 2004

Police in the Florida Keys are mystified by a bizarre new pastime, young people dangling themselves from meat hooks on a popular sandbar. For mystified, read can't figure out what to charge them with yet, but their definitely up to something. Photos should be up soon on BMEzine

Apple Computer has created a fourth-generation iPod that offers a slimmer case, click-wheel navigation and significantly improved battery life

19 July 2004

Britain's Science Museum says it is considering a radical way of paying its hefty energy bills by using visitors' excrement. The central London museum said it was considering taking the waste from its 14 toilet blocks and converting it into electricity

Noticing that the typical meat packing plant produces 7 tons of blood a day, Russian at the Voronezh State Technological Academy have come up with a process to convert the proteins in the blood into the basic ingredients for milk, yogurt, chocolate, and coffee — via BoingBoing

18 July 2004

A Sydney public relations firm, led by a former Labor staffer, has taken responsibility for a contentious web site critical of John Howard. But despite howls of protest from the Government, johnhowardlies.com appears to be gathering momentum, with its subscribers now numbering in the thousands

A sophisticated skimming device designed to steal the personal details of ATM users has been uncovered in Sydney

Bitoogle is a front-end for Google that finds BitTorrent files

17 July 2004

Goldfish could be banned as prizes at fairs and children prohibited from buying pets under a new UK draft animal welfare bill. Ministers believe children under 16 are not mature enough to have pets

A Russian taxi driver got a rude shock when he discovered his blind ex-wife, who thought he had died in an explosion, had him buried in a Moscow cemetery. Oleg Lunkov learned of his apparent death when he applied for a passport and was told he died in a bomb blast on Moscow's metro on February 6. His ex-wife thought he was on the train, but being blind, she got her mother to identify the remains — via Rogue Sun

16 July 2004

The aerial spraying (using helicopters) of plantation timbers appears to be responsible for large-scale losses of commercial oyster following heavy rainfall events. The normal environmental protection methods do not appear to be in place and no policing of the State's own Forestry Code of Practice appears to be occurring. More disturbingly, the problems associated with oysters also correlate with tumours and mortality in Tasmanian Devils. Further there appears to be a risk to human health as contamination of local drinking water supplies is also possible

It seems that multimedia search engines are making a comeback, and Google is likely to add audio and video clips to its search service, according to some plans the co-founders revealed at a conference last week. The idea has led to some speculation within the community that Google would go beyond multimedia clips and enter the online music business

After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking now says he was wrong. The about-turn might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox — and cost the physicist an encyclopaedia

ANZ Banking Group has made changing banks easier with the launch of an online account switching service that allows customers to simply enter all their relevant details once and it automatically generate the necessary written advice to third parties telling them to switch accounts to ANZ

15 July 2004

A group of media and technology companies, including Microsoft, Disney, IBM, Intel, a Warner Bros, have agreed in principle to allow consumers to make legal backup copies of next-generation video discs and share their content on portable devices

Toshiba plans to announce a new laptop model next week that allows users to watch TV on it without having to boot up the computer's Windows operating system — the first in what analysts say will be a new crop of multimedia notebooks to come

Loony fundie US conservatives have failed in their bid to change the American Constitution to ban gay marriage. The retarded monkey boy had urged Congress to support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage after several states moved to make it legal. But the proposal failed to win enough support in the Senate. The head of the human rights campaign, Cheryl Jacques, said: Today we saw President Bush and the Republican leadership attempt to divide America and it backfired. Michael Organ gave the finger to the fundies who are trying to same stunt locally

The rights and wrongs of using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on humans have been debated since the tracking tags reached the technological mainstream. Now, school authorities in the Japanese city of Osaka have decided the benefits outweigh the disadvantages and will now be chipping children in one primary school. The tags will be read by readers installed in school gates and other key locations to track the kids' movements. The chips will be put onto kids' schoolbags, name tags or clothing in one Wakayama prefecture school. Denmark's Legoland introduced a similar scheme last month to stop young children going astray

14 July 2004

Sony are planning to officially reveal the PlayStation 3 at the E3 Expo in May 2005. They're obviously not wanting to be outdone by Nintendo, who announced the same plans for the GameCube successor, as well as Xbox 2's rumoured debut around that time

Richard Buckminster Fuller was always considered to be 50 years ahead of his time. Ever in sync with the zeitgeist, a half century after Fuller received the patent on his famous geodesic dome, the US Postal Service issues a stamp in his honour — via Rogue Sun

13 July 2004

Telstra unit Sensis is to launch a new search engine as part of a move to make the White and Yellow Pages more attractive to advertisers. The search engine will look not only for web sites, but will also rely upon listings in Sensis' White and Yellow Pages and its online site Whereis and CitySearch. Analysts say it's a move to prevent advertisers switching from Sensis to rivals such as Google or Yahoo, where advertisers pay for higher listings in searches

Yahoo has acquired Oddpost, a San Francisco startup that provides an innovative, Web-based e-mail service, and plans to use its technology to spruce up Yahoo Mail and other Yahoo services

12 July 2004

Charles Green, a would-be novelist, was doing a crossword puzzle during his flight, and scribbled a line of dialogue in the margin: I know this is kind of a bomb. It seems his terminally stupid seatmate panicked and dobbed him in. When they landed, Mr Green was accosted by police, and now is on Homeland Security's watch list — via HogBlog

A pilot project in Africa that aims to provide a single computer that can be used by four students simultaneously has stumbled across one of the business world's basic facts of life. Why make a cheap machine when customers in the developed world will pay good money for a more expensive one?

11 July 2004

Paul Khlebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, walked out of his office late on Friday in northeastern Moscow when a car pulled up and several shots were fired at him. Khlebnikov, a US citizen of Russian origin, died on his way to hospital. He was the latest victim of post-Soviet city-center killings which have struck down officials, businessmen and journalists

10 July 2004

A Kirkland man arrested last week on allegations that he stole proprietary technology from the AltaVista search engine two years ago is a Microsoft employee who has been working on the MSN Search initiative

San Francisco talk show host, Katherine Fettke, has filed a lawsuit against McDonald's, accusing the world's largest fast-food restaurant company of failing to switch to healthier lower-fat cooking oil as it had pledged

The movie industry, in yet another illustration of just how much damage the Internet is doing to the long-suffering members of the MPAA, has just endured a record breaking $1 billion dollar takings for the single month of June. Clearly there is a desperate need to tighten up copyright laws in the face of this huge mountain of cash that is literally being metaphorically siphoned into the studios' pockets. How will they survive? — via Slashdot

Australia's most successful band, AC/DC, looks set to have a city lane named after it. Melbourne City Council is tonight expected to approve a recommendation to rename Corporation Lane, a narrow alley off Flinders Lane, ACDC Lane — not AC/DC Lane, as street names in the CBD are not permitted to have slashes — in honour of the band's global success. There is already a street named Calle de AC/DC on the outskirts of Madrid

09 July 2004

Developers at the open-source Mozilla Foundation have confirmed that the latest version of their Web browsers have a security flaw that could theoretically allow attackers to crash computers or launch unauthorised programs. The flaw was publicised Wednesday on a security mailing list, along with a link to a fix for the problem. Updated versions of the affected software programs, which include the Mozilla, Firefox and Thunderbird browsers, have been released

Italy is finally cracking down on the many fickle pet owners who dump their cat or dog on the roadside as they head to the beach for their summer vacation

Miners once used canaries to judge whether a mine was safe from poisonous gases and now Australian scientists at the University of Melbourne are using insects found in your garden to measure carcinogenic arsenic levels in old gold mines

08 July 2004

A computer science researcher has highlighted the shortcomings of Microsoft's latest patch for its Internet Explorer browser by identifying another way that online vandals could run malicious programs on a Web surfer's computer. Download Mozilla now

A recent scientific study that indicate marijuana consumption can improve night vision. The results backed up claims by the Observer columnist Sue Arnold, who suffers from retinitis pigmentosa and is officially registered blind. She noticed several years ago that drawing on strong Jamaican skunk suddenly and temporarily enabled her to see things clearly. But Ms Arnold has since warned of side-effects that could impede night-time navigation. Only trouble was, she said, I couldn't stand up — via Pagan Prattle

A new technique might allow surgeons to operate on internal organs without making any cuts in the skin. The Johns Hopkins University team says a mini-telescope could go down the throat and make a cut in the stomach wall to reach abdominal organs. The technique, tested in pigs, could mean faster recovery times say the authors in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy — via Die Puny Humans

A woman with the words HELP ME carved on her stomach was killed after she fell off the scooter she was driving on the 79th Street Causeway. The victim — Desiree Lee Campasano, 36, of Miami Beach — appeared to have lost control of her scooter, hit a curb and then fell off it and hit her head. She was not wearing a helmet. She died at the scene — via Die Puny Humans

07 July 2004

A federal appellate court on Tuesday said a lower court erred in invalidating two patents for ergonomic computer keyboards, dealing a blow to Microsoft, which fought to have them voided after being sued by the holder of those patents

eBay is taking the unusual step of removing the option of setting a reserve price for users of its Australian site

Researchers have moved a little bit closer to the day when new teeth can be grown to replace damaged or missing teeth. One set of researchers has succeeded in growing teeth tissue on bio-degradable scaffolding in rats. Another group has been able to coax stem cells to form tooth structures in mice. Both reports appear in the July issue of the Journal of Dental Research

A one-year-old Pakistani boy saw the world for the first time through an eye donated [BugMeNot] by an Indian. Mohammed Ahmed gained partial vision after a difficult operation at the Agarwal Eye Institute in the southern city of Madras. Doctors said Ahmed, who was born blind, would get near-normal sight by the time he heads back to Karachi next week

06 July 2004

Microsoft has issued a security update which changes settings in Internet Explorer to protect users of its Internet Explorer browsers from a new virus risk, although it has not actually patched the flaw. Download Mozilla now

The Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement gives corporations the power to sue government, in either domestic courts or through international arbitration, riding over democracy

RadarVision has developed a radar system that uses ultra-wideband technology to produce three-dimensional pictures of the space behind a wall from a distance of up to 20 metres. The pictures, which reportedly resemble those produced by ultrasound, are relatively high-resolution and are produced in real time. It sounds like the potential benefits of this device are huge, saving lives of soldiers, firemen, or police; the potential for privacy invasion, however, is similarly large

Ever want to silence the urban assault vehicle beside you at the stop light, pounding out gangster angst at orthodontia-rattling volumes? Now you can courtesy of Engadget

05 July 2004

Two mines thought to date from the Second World War were found off the Spanish coast after a swimmer spotted one device nestling on the seabed. Bomb disposal experts cordoned off the beach to deactivate the first mine which measured some 20 inches in diameter

04 July 2004

Michael Moore has welcomed the appearance on the internet of pirated copies of his anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 and claimed he is happy for anybody to download it free of charge — via BoingBoing

03 July 2004

Canada's Supreme Court ruled that ISPs do not have to pay royalties to composers and artists for music downloaded by web customers. Companies providing wide access to the web are merely intermediaries who are not bound by Canadian copyright legislation, the court said in a 9-0 ruling

Google changed its Gmail membership policy this week to prevent people from profiting on the sale of popular e-mail names

Professor Terry Davidson and associate professor Susan Swithers, both in the Department of Psychological Sciences, found that artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body's natural ability to count calories based on foods' sweetness. This finding may explain why increasing numbers of people in the United States lack the natural ability to regulate food intake and body weight. The researchers also found that thick liquids aren't as satisfying — calorie for calorie — as are more solid foods — via BoingBoing

02 July 2004

Security weaknesses in Microsoft's server and browser software are taking their toll on Australian Internet banking sites. According to St George Bank, AusCERT and the Australian High Tech Crime Centre are helping local financial institutions track down the origins of a new Trojan that's helping online criminals defraud consumers of their savings. BHODemon is a free tool that will list all Browser Helper Objects that are installed on a Windows system by scanning the registry and give you the ability to disable them. This will also list good BHOs as well, but nevertheless is a useful tool in detecting and disabling malicious software. Download Mozilla now

An Australian music activist has posted what he claims to be a draft position paper from the country's peak music industry body that rejects proposals to introduce a blank media levy paid to copyright owners as compensation for the copying of music for private and domestic purposes

Utah-based artist Tom Forsythe, who won a five-year legal battle with Mattel over his photographs of Barbie dolls sometimes naked and paired with kitchen appliances on Tuesday said the court decision cleared the way for other parodies of iconic American brands. The ruling late last week by a federal judge in Los Angeles was the second major blow in two years to a bid by toy maker Mattel to defend Barbie's image from use by artists and singers

Distiller and beverage manufacturer Suntory has developed the world's first blue roses with Australian firm Florigene. Suntory officials said researchers extracted the gene that produces blue pigment in pansies and activated it inside the roses — via BoingBoing

01 July 2004

Professor Lessig will be flown in at the 11th-hour to testify on the intellectual property provisions of Australia's pending Free Trade Agreement. The IP section of the FTA is modeled after the DMCA — via Lessig News

The first Australian patients to be cured from type one diabetes have spoken about their treatment. Doctors from Sydney's Westmead Hospital transplanted cells from a donated pancreas into the patients and they are now producing their own insulin. Barbara Dunn and Julie Mudd are among the first Australian patients to undergo the ground-breaking transplant. After being diabetic for 37 years, Ms Dunne is now free of daily injections

A million hectares of land with the most significant areas wilderness outside of the national parks system will be sold off at only three percent of its market value to current leaseholders, after the Carr Government successfully passed legislation it had fought to prevent in 1993

Australia hosts more porn pages than any other country in the region despite strict laws designed to restrict adult content

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