August 2004 Archive

31 August 2004

What do you call a man with too much time, a jet engine and his mother-in-law's wheelchair? An embarrassing headline waiting to happen

Australia is two years behind comparable developed countries in broadband services despite an accelerated uptake that doubled subscribers in the past year. The advent of less expensive entry-level products drove demand. However, the uptake of broadband services still lags countries such as the US, Canada and Sweden by a wide margin

30 August 2004

A new federal law could allow authorities easy access to private, stored e-mails without a warrant, according to civil libertarians

29 August 2004

The American Library Association recently published the new 100 most frequently banned books list of 2003. Of the banned books, Harry Potter was in the number 7th place in the most frequently banned. Also included were Where's Waldo and The Giver along with Goosebumps and How to Eat Fried Worms. These books were banned from various public institutions. This means that they were banned from various public libraries and public schools around the United States

The Royal College of General Practitioners has accused pharmaceutical companies of disease-mongering in order to boost sales, bringing the NHS to the brink of collapse

28 August 2004

A jawbone, grown on his shoulder, using a titanium mold, bone marrow, and recombinant bone morphogenic protein, enabled a man to chew for the first time since he lost his lower jaw in radical surgery for cancer. Since then he was able to eat only soup and soft foods. But just four weeks after a pioneering jaw-creation and transplantation procedure, he tucked into a meal of sausages and bread

Photos supposedly taken in a Paris airport elevator hit the Web on Thursday, fuelling rumours that the new machine will be similar to Apple's new line of flat-panel displays, with the guts of the computer behind the LCD screen. The photos — which have not been verified as authentic — show a slim all-in-one computer inside the familiar Apple packaging, down to the signature black-and-white box

Though Skippy the Hamster powers this night light by running on his exercise wheel, the same concepts and low-rpm alternator design could be applied to a school science project using different energy sources. A small wind or hydro turbine could easily power this alternator. He's a Syrian Hamster, and we chose that breed since they are nocturnal and like to run on the exercise wheel

A Church of England bishop has adopted a non-traditional approach to tempt his disappearing flock to return to the fold: chocolate. Some consider it a sin to indulge but the Church of England is holding up chocolate as a potential savior for its diocese in Manchester, which has been threatened by falling attendances — via Pagan Prattle

27 August 2004

Labor has called for an investigation into John Howard's use of unsolicited email. Mr Howard has hired his son Tim's company, Net Harbour, to spam voters in the prime minister's blue ribbon Sydney seat of Bennelong. Labor's technology spokeswoman Kate Lundy said the government's own laws, which came into effect four months ago, banned commercial spamming. But the laws exempt political parties and charities from using spam, which has become a crucial tool in communicating with voters. The prime minister has breached the spirit, if not the letter of anti-spam laws, Senator Lundy said

26 August 2004

Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, an ex-race car driver whose business career has been dogged by accusations of questionable arms deals and shady ventures, was charged with helping finance a foiled coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea

A new kind of planet has been discovered in a star system 50 light years away. It is the smallest world to be found outside our Solar System, and probably the first rocky planet found so far. The planet orbits the star mu Arae, which has been monitored by a European team of astronomers using an instrument called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), attached to the 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile

25 August 2004

RIKEN, an anglicised acronym for Japan's Research Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, described in the US overnight the MDGrape 3, a processor it thinks will become the cornerstone of future supercomputing efforts

Glenmorangie was at the centre of a furious bidding war last night as the Macdonald family's decision to sell its controlling share sent ripples of interest through the City, catapulting its shares up over 25%. The company has been valued at £250 million, but analysts say it could reach £300m if a bidding war ensues. Although no formal bids have come to the table, two front runners in Brown Foreman, (makers of Jack Daniel's) and Bacardi have emerged

24 August 2004

Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in Minnesota used a flame-spray technique to alloy alumina (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce strong glass with good optical properties. The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to other oxides. Scotty would be pleased

Lonely sheep, like lonely people, are much happier when they see pictures of friends and family. A group at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge has found that the sight of a friendly face reduces stress in sheep

The Tories provoked a barrage of criticism yesterday after they signalled that the Human Rights Act would be scrapped or overhauled by a government led by Michael Howard

23 August 2004

Edvard Munch's paintings have been targeted again by thieves after an armed gang yesterday stole one of several known versions of The Scream along with Madonna from the Munch Museum in Oslo

Following a deal with software developer CodeWeavers in June, Lycoris has released PowerPak 1.4 which incorporates Window PCs emulation into its Linux desktop software

Swiftbroadband and Exetel have announced that they will offer wireless broadband services via the Unwired network, which, according to the provider, covers 90% of Sydney's population equating to 1.2 million homes and 240,000 small-to-medium enterprises

22 August 2004

Senator Edward Kennedy was turned down for a flight from Washington, DC to Boston because his name turned up on the TSA No-Fly list. He eventually got on a flight, but was again denied on his way back to DC. It took three weeks of calls to Tom Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security for the ordeal to get straightened out. But what are ordinary citizens supposed to do if the Secretary of Homeland Security won't take their calls?

21 August 2004

Bugmenot, the incredibly useful site that helps bypass compulsory web registration, got yanked after its spineless web hosting company caved to external pressure. Fortunately, they are back on the air with a shiny new host that has a vested interest in free speech

The makers of two leading file-sharing programs are not legally liable for the songs, movies and other copyright works swapped online by their users. Among other reasons, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said Grokster and StreamCast Networks, unlike the original Napster, were not responsible because they don't have central servers pointing users to copyright material

The official launch of Unwired's wireless broadband service has prompted Ozemail to break its silence about its deal with rival broadband provider, Personal Broadband Australia

20 August 2004

UK ISPs are targeting ecommerce web sites run by spammers in a new get tough policy on junk mail. ISPs belonging to the London Internet Exchange (LINX) have voted through a code of practice which gives them the mandate to shut down web sites promoted through spam, even if junk mail messages are sent through a third-party or over a different network. The move is intended to remove the financial incentive to send spam

A technique originally designed to analyse DNA sequences is the latest weapon in the war against spam. An algorithm named Chung-Kwei (after a feng-shui talisman that protects the home against evil spirits) can catch nearly 97% of spam. Chung-Kwei is based on the Teiresias algorithm, developed by the bioinformatics research group at IBM's Thomas J Watson Research Centre in New York

Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 2 was scheduled to be delivered to users of the company's automatic update system Monday. But Microsoft warned that the patch could cause conflicts with many programs. And while the MS monkeys are still tooling around, hackers and IT security professionals are picking apart the new update in search of vulnerabilities they can exploit

19 August 2004

When state Fish and Wildlife agents recently found a black bear passed out on the lawn of Baker Lake Resort, there were some clues scattered nearby — around three dozen empty cans of Rainier Beer. It seems he tried the Busch beer, that was also in the cache, but didn't like it — via Rogue Sun

18 August 2004

Optus now uses Telstra's phone lines for its DSL service, but wants to offer services on its own DSL network by next year. A new network would cost between $60 million and $70 million

17 August 2004

RSSCalendar, a free tool for sharing calendar data on the net, is one of the first nonblogging uses of RSS

16 August 2004

We are close to being able to record our entire lives on a single 3.5" optical disc that uses ultraviolet light, since focused laser beam is smaller in diameter than other frequencies of light. The expected cost per drive upon production is $570-$750 with discs costing $45

15 August 2004

The California Supreme Court voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages sanctioned in San Francisco this year and ruled unanimously Thursday that the mayor overstepped his authority by issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Proving that homophobic fundie scum aren't just an American phenomenon, the sheep in the Australian Parliament happily introduced a ban on same-sex marriages in Australia [BugMeNot] that went over like a bucket of day old fish

The NSW Government is on the verge of putting its government-wide Linux plans into action, preparing to go to tender for a raft of enterprise Linux products to be used across state agencies in a project worth up to $50 million. The tender will cover the provision of enterprise level Linux system software, application software and associated services for desktop and server environments on a whole-of-government basis, according to the NSW Department of Commerce, which runs both the state's procurement and IT policy — via Triode Internet

A giant colony of ants stretching 100km has been discovered in Melbourne, threatening local insect species. The ants, which were imported from Argentina, are ranked among the world's 100 worst animal invaders. Although they exist in their usual smaller group size in their homeland, the colonies have merged in Australia to create one massive super colony

14 August 2004

Telstra's ADSL broadband service has been hit with a massive outage, leaving thousands of customers of Telstra's BigPond service and eleven other service providers unable to log on. Unfortunately the article implies the problem was a one off when it is really a series of long outages over a periods of two weeks that the scum at Telstra take forever to fix

Moronic Trade Minister Mark Vaile, a man up to his neck in dodgy deals with big business, has opened the door to Federal Government departments offshoring IT services work, telling a Sydney function that a vibrant economy and flexible workplace arrangements would keep Australia competitive

DVD Jon has just announced that he cracked the encryption in Apple's AirPort Express. I've released JustePort, a tool which lets you stream MPEG4 Apple Lossless files to your AirPort Express. The stream is encrypted with AES and the AES key is encrypted with RSA

13 August 2004

IBM is developing a new technology that researchers say is one step closer to autonomic computing, by enabling chips to sense their own flaws and reconfigure themselves without outside intervention. The eFuse technology replaces laser fuses, used to heal chips while they are still in the fabrication process, with electrical fuses that can reroute traffic around inactive or poorly functioning areas on a chip

Sharp are introducing a 3D monitor that doesn't require special glasses. The technology was devised for high end medical instuments and such but this could be the gamers new dream toy

A senior Microsoft Australia manager has warned customers the newly-released Windows XP Service Pack 2 is not a silver bullet for security problems as the software heavyweight plans another national security roadshow. Meanwhile the the monkeys at MS got the hump over a group who were distributing the dodgy upgrade via BitTorrent and threatened them with legal action — via Pagan Prattle

12 August 2004

IBM is preparing to launch enterprise database technologies that can more effectively link together related information from multiple data sources, potentially eliminating some of the quality problems which can plague large data warehousing projects. The technology, codenamed mineLink and developed at the company's research centre in Almaden, uses heuristic techniques to identify data fields which contain related information even though they may be labelled differently

MSK is producing transparent solar panels. The panels can generate 3.8 watts of electricity per square foot, an above-average level of efficiency. They come in a thick version that can be used for glazing buildings. As an interesting aside, they can also be used as screens for projection TV units

11 August 2004

Iraq's interim government ordered Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television network to close its Baghdad office for one month Saturday, a move criticised as unjustifiable by the channel. Iraqi police officers arrived in the early evening at the Baghdad office to implement the closure decision. The station's lawyers said police officers did not carry an order from a court as the country's law requires in such a case

There're so many Prozac-takers in the UK that urine-borne traces of unmetabolised antidepressent have contaminated the drinking-water supply. The exact amount of Prozac in the nation's drinking water is not known — via Rogue Sun

10 August 2004

A major upgrade for Microsoft Internet Explorer may be imminent. Apparently in response to the recent mass migration away from MSIE, top Microsoft developers have been soliciting for improvements in the old browser at a weblog and at Channel 9. InternetNews.com speculates that improvements could possibly include support for tabbed browsing, better security, more PNG and CSS compliance, and RSS integration — which Firefox and Opera Mail already support

A German court ruled excessive use of meta-keywords in HTML unlawful. Meta-tag keywords may still be used if they are in strong relation to the page. The decision does not address more popular search engine spamming methods of today — as meta-keywords are ignored by Google, they are rarely used as core strategy for Search Engine Optimisation

09 August 2004

The International Electrotechnical Commission has formed a working group to draw up standards that will ensure compatibility between micro fuel-cells. Toshiba is among several that are developing such devices as alternative power sources for handheld electronic devices. Development of a standard could mean the micro fuel cell could be launched in music players, digital cameras, and other devices as early as next year

Telstra is eyeing its 33,000 public payphones for new wireless base stations as part of a plan to create a national high-speed wireless data network

08 August 2004

In response to a 24 year old prize challenge from the American Helicopter Society, a number of engineering students at the University of British Columbia have designed a human powered helicopter. The prize requirements are three minutes flight at three metres, with only human power, and the team, led by UBC's Mike Georgallis, plans a test flight next Tuesday. Unfortunately, before the rotors were able to produce enough buoyant force they hit each other and the attempt failed

The FBI have questioned Benjamin Vanderford, a San Francisco computer expert, who duped international media into believing Islamist kidnappers had executed an American hostage in Iraq, by staging his own mock beheading on the Internet. The video showed a hand with a large knife apparently slicing the neck of a limp body. But the blood was dye, the setting was a friend's garage, the Koran reading was a tape and the knife was held by a friend. Mutilated bodies and sound effects were edited in from photos on web sites and the video was purposefully blurred to make it seem even more amateur, Mr Vanderford said. A major motivation for his action, an unrepentant Mr Vanderford told Reuters, was to see how the world media would react and to see if they would be fooled — via Rogue Sun

The legendary island nation Atlantis, the existence of which has sparked debate for thousands of years, was actually Ireland, according to a new theory by Swedish geographer Ulf Erlingsson

07 August 2004

MySQL has created a version of its popular open-source database software for Linux on IBM's Power processors

Sony have announced that the PlayStation 3 will use Blu-Ray technology, a next-generation optical disc format which can hold 25GB on a single layer and 50GB on the dual-layer discs, as many people have been speculating. What Sony hasn't said for sure is whether the PS3 will be backwards compatible with DVD movies and PS2 games

British citizens who want a new passport are told to look straight at the camera and keep their mouths shut

06 August 2004

The BBC's Dr Who revival has been saved: the Beeb has reached an agreement with the estate of Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks, who will be making an appearance in the new Who episodes after all — via BoingBoing

321 Studios, the maker of software that enabled users to copy DVDs and computer games, folded Tuesday under the mounting weight of lawsuits by deep-pocketed movie studios and video game producers

A Mowgli-like wild boy who appears to have been raised by a dog since he was three months old has been discovered living in a remote part of Siberia seven years after he was abandoned by his parents

05 August 2004

Simple queries using Google can turn up a handful of sites that have posted credit card information to the web

mozilla.org today released minor upgrades to three of its major products. Firefox 0.9.3, Thunderbird 0.7.3 and Mozilla 1.7.2 are all now available. These three new releases were created to correct four possible security vulnerabilities in past versions of each product

A British man was being treated for shock on Wednesday after he fell from a ladder while pruning trees, accidentally killing his wife with his chainsaw

Markus Miller, an Oklahoma ice cream man, opened fire on a customer after a summer ice cream sale degenerated into a heated argument. It is not a normal or legal thing, anywhere in the country to carry a handgun without a permit while selling ice cream, said Sgt Eric Holtzclaw, a spokesman with the Enid Police Department — via Die Puny Humans

04 August 2004

Anyone who has copied songs from a CD onto an iPod or computer hard drive has fallen foul of Australian copyright laws, which critics argue are failing to keep pace with technological change. Copying music for personal use is generally okay in the US and Europe. But not in Australia — via BoingBoing

Though iTunes and Linux have been pursuing solo careers, CodeWeavers hopes to get them to make music together. I wish it better luck than the appalling Windows version of iTunes, just try getting that piece of shit off your PC without a crash

A string of high-profile flaws in browser software prompted the Mozilla Foundation to announce that it would offer a US$500 bounty for every serious bug found by security researchers

03 August 2004

Telstra has signed a deal with Microsoft that appears to add further credibility to the theory that the best way to negotiate with Microsoft is to explore moving to Linux

02 August 2004

Five types of memory cards were dipped into cola, put through a washing machine, dunked in coffee, trampled by a skateboard, run over by a child's toy car and given to a six-year-old boy to destroy. All came through with flying colours. They didn't survive the extra tests of being smashed by a sledgehammer and nailed to a tree, but it was still possible to retrieve photos from the xD and Smartmedia cards

01 August 2004

There's a new fad sweeping the underground: guerrilla drive-ins [BugMeNot]. Essentially, someone sets up a DVD player, LCD projector, and wireless transmitter next to any blank wall (preferably on someone else's property — to make it more fun), and people come to watch movies. As you would expect, the movie studios aren't too thrilled

Two years after Microsoft executives began urging managers to outsource software development work to India, a Washington state technology union says the company has sent increasingly high-level jobs overseas, including some related to Longhorn, the next version of Windows — via Triode Internet

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