October 2004 Archive

31 October 2004

UK experts believe that a vaccine that prevents infections known to cause cervical cancer could be available to women within three years. By guarding against human papilloma virus, it could save thousands of lives and may end the need for smears tests. The vaccine would be given to girls before they are sexually active. Trials have shown a jab can offer 100% protection against strains of HPV linked to about 70% of cervical cancers

30 October 2004

Scientists at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have developed contact lenses that deliver eye medication to treat diseases like glaucoma. If the drug is water-soluble, it will be trapped within a network of tiny inter-connected, water-filled channels in the material. If it's water-insoluble, it will be trapped within nano-spaces in the polymer matrix, and slowly leach out into the channels. In contact with fluid on the eyeball, these channels open up and release the drug

Bob Cringley was a great write up on Ken Schaffer's TV2ME, an amazing piece of technology that has managed to pull off streaming television via the internet where so many have failed

Google has acquired 3D mapping company Keyhole for an undisclosed sum, and announced that it's cutting the price of the consumer edition from US$69.95 to US$29.95. Keyhole's EarthViewer mapping service is a technical tour de force, making use of the 3D capabilities of modern PC graphics cards to do the heavy lifting, or rendering in this case

A small bushy-tailed animal was at the centre of a fresh Commons row after penetrating right to the heart of the Palace of Westminster. A fox was discovered padding past MPs' offices on the fifth floor of Portcullis House. The animal had somehow eluded tightened Westminster security to get to the top of the building. It was unclear as to whether the fox could have been smuggled in as part of a pro- or anti-hunting protest. It was later removed by the RSPCA to a wildlife centre in Essex after it was established that it was not a local fox

29 October 2004

Aquatic training product manufacturer Finis has just released a waterproof digital music portable for swimmers and surfers that claims to solve a problem with such devices in the water. Regular earphones don't work well because they need an uninterrupted air channel to function. What makes the SwiMP3 unique is that it uses bone conduction to stimulate the inner ear and deliver sound — via Slashdot

Firefox, the much-anticipated open-source browser, reaches a major development milestone, as an official test version debuts

After two days of silence on the hundreds of tons of missing plastic explosives in Iraq,the retarded monkey boy defended himself by stating that the explosives might have been removed before the US invasion. The photos seem to suggest otherwise — via BoingBoing

28 October 2004

Australian anthropologists have discovered a new human species that could rewrite the history of human evolution. They unearthed the skeleton of what is believed to be a fully-grown female, barely a metre tall, on the Indonesian island of Flores

The retarded monkey boy's web site [via anonymous IP] now blocks all non-US traffic. I'm sure the US citizens who live or work abroad are thrilled — via BoingBoing

Two Google site vulnerabilities that could be used to mount phishing attacks have been reported, says the Internet search giant. It already has fixed one, and expects to patch the second shortly

Canadian company, iFire Technology, is near to commercialising a flat-panel TV technology that will provide TVs with pictures comparable in quality to those of LCD TVs, but at a lower cost

27 October 2004

A US federal judge has ordered Stanford Wallace, otherwise known as the Spam King, to disable spyware programs that infiltrate computers, track internet use and flood users with pop-up advertising

Proposals by the Security Service to place CCTV cameras in Westminster's corridors of power have outraged MPs who fear that the proposals for protecting the Commons will enable MI5 to pry into their affairs

A federal appeals court this week struck a blow against Lexmark's attempt to protect its share of the lucrative market for refill printer cartridges. The court vacated a preliminary injunction that barred Static Control Components from selling computer chips enabling third-party manufacturers to clone Lexmark's cartridges

In a decision aimed to response to the retarded monkey boy's tighter sanctions, Cuba's President Fidel Castro announced the end of the circulation of the US dollar within the territory of the island acting from 8 November

26 October 2004

When Georgia woman, Beverly Mitchell, returned home from a 2 1/2 week holiday to Greece, she found that a total stranger had moved into her house, ripped up the carpet, changed the photos on the walls, and was wearing clothes from her closet. The squatter, Beverly Valentine, also switched the utilities over to her own name and installed a washer and dryer — via BoingBoing

A 73-year-old farmer who shot a burglar after being broken into three times could not be criticised for the way he defended his property, a judge has said

A phone that lets you see through clothes is the stuff of teenage boys' dreams — and now a Japanese developer claims it's a reality

25 October 2004

Scientists from the Australian National University have proved what many have thought for years — platypuses are really weird. Professor Jennifer Graves says platypus have five X and five Y chromosomes, determining sex, not one, and when sperm are made it gets even stranger. What we've discovered is that these five Xs and five Ys line up in a great big long chain, that go XY XY XY XY XY XY, and then all the X chromosomes move to one pole, and all the Y chromosomes move to the other, she said. Professor Graves says there is another unexpected finding. One end of the chain looks like human sex chromosomes but the other end of the chain looks like bird sex chromosomes, so the chain is actually linking a very ancient system of sex determination in birds and probably reptiles too. The unique status of the Australian mammal is now unassailable

24 October 2004

London started charging people to take their cars into central London, and guess what? It worked. Fewer cars now enter the charging zone, public transport use is up, travel time is quicker for all road users and the money made from charging drivers is going towards improving public transport even more. What is wrong with this picture? Nothing, which is why other countries are looking at the London experience as a way forward for car-choked cities — via journoz

23 October 2004

University of Florida scientist, Thomas DeMarse, has grown a living brain that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network. The brain — a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat's brain and cultured inside a glass dish — gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene — via BoingBoing

The UK government has broken its silence on the Indymedia server raid and is claiming that there no UK law enforcement agencies were involved. It seems that servers nobody seized the servers

22 October 2004

Nigeria's Ogoni tribe has threatened mass action against the local unit of Royal Dutch Shell if the oil giant fails to withdraw troops from the area within seven days

Australians are among the biggest offenders of using the world's resources faster than it can regenerate them. Conservation group the World Wide Fund for Nature says in its regular Living Planet Report [PDF] that humans currently consume 20% more natural resources than the earth can produce

21 October 2004

According to research published by security firm CipherTrust, all phishing attacks launched across the Internet come from one of just five networks of zombie PCs

At least 300 software development jobs at IT services giant EDS Australia are expected to be lost after customer Telstra agreed to a proposal to have the work performed overseas

An Italian criminal famed for his multiple prison escapes has done it once again. The 45-year-old professional thief broke out of a jail in northern Italy under cover of nightfall. It was the fourth in a string of escapes pulled off by Max Leitner from prisons in both Italy and Austria. On checking the cell of Leitner and another prisoner who escaped with him, guards discovered cloth puppets tucked up in their beds

20 October 2004

Babies could be born with a third biological parent under planned research by British scientists to prevent mothers passing degenerative genetic diseases to their children. Newcastle University experts want to implant part of an embryo taken from an affected mother in an egg from another woman to ensure the child is free from such conditions

Australian journalist kidnapped by Iraqi militants, John Martinkus, never thought that the search engine Google would one day save his life. Martinkus was freed by his captors on Sunday after they Googled his name on the Internet to check if he was telling the truth about his affiliation with public broadcaster SBS. His captors investigated his background on the internet to make sure he was not a contractor for the US or a CIA agent

An Oregon college student's flat-screen Toshiba TV which was releasing the 121.5 MHz international distress signal. He was unaware of the issue until local police, search and rescue and civil air patrol members showed up at his apartment's door. Apparently the signal was strong enough to be picked up by satellite and then routed to the Air Force Rescue Centre in Virginia. Quite impressive — luckily Toshiba is offering him a free replacement

19 October 2004

On a shelf in a locked basement room underneath the British Museum, are kept 11 wooden tablets; they are covered in purple velvet. And no one among the museum's staff — including Neil MacGregor, the director — is permitted to enter the room. The tablets — or tabots — are sacred objects in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and are regarded as representing the original Ark of the Covenant, which housed the Ten Commandments and the Orthodox Church has been lobbying for their return — or at least easy access to them — for more than 50 years — via Pagan Prattle

According to an advisory by security web site Secunia, Norton AntiVirus contains a security flaw that could allow a malicious user to disable the software’s auto-protect feature

The British Library is creating an archive to store the e-mails of the nation's top authors and scientists, as the written word is replaced by electronic messages. A spokeswoman says it welcomes e-mails from prominent people in all walks of life

Google's free e-mail service, Gmail, has begun using antispam technology supported heavily by archrival Yahoo. Messages from Gmail sent Monday indicated that they were encoded with DomainKeys technology, as evidenced by logs in the message headers. When an e-mail header from a Gmail message was opened, a code reading DomainKey-Signature appeared. DomainKeys is a technology backed by Yahoo that tries to cross-check e-mail messages to verify their origination. The idea is to thwart e-mail spoofers, which are spam messages that pretend to be from legitimate Internet addresses

18 October 2004

Google watchers abuzz about the new desktop tool are already betting on its next product: instant chat. Code uncovered in the Google Desktop Search tool suggests that the company may have broader plans to integrate IM into its growing list of products

The British High Court has ordered ISPs to hand over the names and addresses of 28 alleged music pirates to Britain's trade body for the recording industry

17 October 2004

Fears of a terrorist attack are not sufficient reason for authorities to search people at a protest, a federal appeals court has ruled, saying 11 September 2001, cannot be the day liberty perished. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously Friday that protesters may not be required to pass through metal detectors when they gather next month for a rally against a US training academy for Latin American soldiers

Former TIA personnel are moving their data mining [BugMeNot] operations offshore, to the Bahamas, to escape US privacy rules and make a buck. I'm waiting for somebody to publish the private data (financial, medical, legal) of federal officials and their families on an open internet web server out of the Bahamas. Is this what it will take for the US to enact stringent privacy rules? — via Slashdot

16 October 2004

The owners of a German shepherd were celebrating yesterday after winning a £60,000 legal battle to prevent him from being put down

A Croatian armed robber abandoned a bank hold up after the cashier, safe behind behind bulletproof glass, laughed at his order to stick 'em up, rang her boss to say she was being robbed and asked him to call the police

15 October 2004

Google Desktop is a new desktop program that allows users to search the web as well as their own computer files in a move analysts said could be a challenge to Microsoft

An international study has found a rapid decline in the world's amphibians with the extinction of more than 120 species over the past 24 years

All you need to do to get off a do-not-fly-list is modify your name in some way by adding a middle initial or a suffix. In other words, the folks responsible for the list are too stupid to figure out how to prevent false positives, but a true terrorist can get off the list by adding a middle initial

14 October 2004

The European Patent office in Munich had granted a patent to Monsanto on 21 May 2003. The patent covered wheat exhibiting a special baking quality that Monsanto claimed to be its invention. However, Greenpeace proved in its opposition that the wheat variety was bred by Indian farmers for improving its baking quality and it was not a genetically-engineered invention as claimed by Monsanto

Plans to fully privatise Telstra could be jeopardised by a Coalition revolt after the Queensland National Party president declared that MPs would not rubber-stamp the sale

Australian and British scientists have achieved a technical breakthrough to help control insects that have developed resistance to common agricultural pesticides. Developed by the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Rothamsted Research in the UK, the technique relies on the use of naturally occurring enzyme inhibitors to disarm an insect's defence system. The enzyme inhibitor acts first to shut down an insect's resistance mechanisms. A few hours later, while the bug's defences are still low, the pesticide kicks in

13 October 2004

Sony's latest DVD Burner can be connected directly to your VCR or Camcorder to record or back up your home movies, TV shows, whatever. It can also be hooked up to a PC via a USB 2.0 connection. The device effectively removes the PC from the equation, giving users an easier way to make their own DVDs. No word yet if it will record straight from your television, or from your DVD Player to circumvent copy-protection

Segway, the people who brought you the two-wheeled wonder called the IT, have a new concept vehicle. Called Centaur, it's a four-wheeled version of the IT that pulls stable wheelies by acting like a two-wheeled IT

12 October 2004

The FBI has issued an order to hosting provider Rackspace in the US, ordering it to turn over two of the servers [BugMeNot] hosting the Independent Media Centre's web sites in the UK. Rackspace complied with the FBI order, without first notifying Indymedia, and turned over Indymedia's server in the UK. This affects over 20 Indymedia sites worldwide. The servers have since been returned, but are being treated as compromised

An elusive giant ape [BugMeNot] has been spotted in remote forests in central Africa, sparking theories that it could be a new species of primate — a finding that would be the most astonishing wildlife discovery in decades. The mysterious creatures have been seen in forests around the towns of Bondo and Bili, in the far north of the Democratic Republic of Congo

Scientists are warning that the earth's climate could be changing more rapidly than anyone thought because of a sudden and unexplained rise in the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide

11 October 2004

The wags at Fairfax have sent out a job ad for Prime Minister: Having previously advertised elsewhere, and after receiving only two mediocre applications, our client is now undergoing an urgent nationwide search for the position of Leader of Our Great Country. Somehow, I can't see Murdoch's press monkeys doing the same thing

10 October 2004

As if I needed any more proof that the vast number of my countrymen are deeply stupid people, John Howard was re-elected as moron in chief. Not that Latham's any better, but it seems Australians are far too apathetic to kick the arses of two of the country's biggest idiots. At least there is some satire on the matter around: You have betrayed the lord our Gough and his only begotten political son, Latho. Fie, FIE! I predict there will be seven plagues of regret: the sale of Telstra, the destruction of Medicare, more damaging Americanisations, higher interest rates, further embarrassing human rights abuses against immigrants and indigenous people, Christian fundamentalists, and Tony Abbott

Two Presidential candidates — for the Green and Libertarian parties — attempted to serve papers on the Commission on Presidential Debates, demanding the right to participate. As they attempted to approach the CPD officials, they were arrested. Makes the behaviour of the Australian pollies look tame by comparison — via BoingBoing

09 October 2004

Voting is under way across the country, as 13 million Australians choose their next leader. Oh joy, the time has come around again where we get to choose to keep the lying mongrel we have or swap him for an almost indistinguishable lying mongrel. I don't see why we can't have them both taken out the back and beaten with a stick

08 October 2004

Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan who created a women's movement which has planted more than 30 million trees in 20 countries, became the first African woman to win the Nobel peace prize

Three teenagers who complained about leaflets that named them as part of a gang which terrorised an area of north-west London were told by the High Court yesterday that the publicity had not breached their human rights

07 October 2004

Business e-mail security provider, MessageLabs, has issued a warning to Internet users not click on the opt-out link on spam e-mails, as the company said it had discovered yesterday a number of messages using this function to open a spam distribution point on the recipient's computer

The House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at making spyware illegal, and the bill could be made law as soon as this week

Hitachi and Toshiba unveiled new fuel cell prototypes for a range of applications that could be commercialised as early as next year. The prototypes on display at Ceatec Japan 2004 show that fuel cells could become a widely adopted supplementary power source to conventional lithium ion batteries, and could start replacing them in some applications after 2007

06 October 2004

The Western Australian Internet Association has slammed the Internet censorship policy created by the Family First Party in the wake of Australia's biggest ever child porn bust. The group said it shares the public's outrage over the child pornography racket but it is concerned that the actions of a small minority could be used as a justification for unwarranted restrictions on the rights of ordinary Internet users to access material freely online

The Liberal Party today defended its use of pre-recorded phone messages from John Howard, with which it is bombarding households across Australia in the lead-up to polling day. Labor has lodged an official complaint saying the spam contravenes the electoral act

05 October 2004

Red the lurcher astonished staff at Battersea Dogs' Home in south London by learning not only to how to unbolt his kennel door, but then to liberate his favourite canine companions to join the fun

Constantin Mocanu, an elderly Romanian man, mistook his penis for a chicken's neck, cut it off and his dog rushed up and ate it. Doctors said the man, who was brought in by an ambulance bleeding heavily, was now out of danger

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has cast doubt on whether there was ever a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The alleged link was used as a reason by President Bush for invading Iraq

04 October 2004

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — known as MRSA — an antibiotic-resistant germ is increasingly causing skin infections and pneumonia in otherwise healthy children and adults. What's particularly worrisome is that these infections are being acquired in the community — not the hospital, as has been the usual case until now. Michael Levey's team at Pharmaceutica in Worcestershire, UK, claims to have discovered a compound that renders the MRSA superbug vulnerable to the antibiotic it normally resists

A paralysed man in Aspen, Colorado lay helplessly in bed for two hours while a black bear known as Fat Albert went through his kitchen breaking dishes and looking for a tasty snack

Bruce Sterling is guest-posting on the global-eco-tech blog Worldchanging and thinks we ought to marry the Internet and the United Nations. The UN has cumbersome rules, no popular participation, and can't get anything useful done about the darkly rising tide of stateless terror and military adventurism. The UN was invented to unite nations rather than people. The Internet unites people, but it's politically illegitimate. Vigilante lawfare outfits like RIAA and MPAA can torment users and ISPs at will. The dominant OS is a hole-riddled monopoly. Its business models collapsed in a welter of stock-kiting corruption. The Net is a lawless mess of cross-border spam and fraud. Logically, there ought to be some inventive way to cross-breed the grass-rootsy cheapness, energy and immediacy of the Net with the magisterial though cumbersome, crotchety, crooked and opaque United Nations. It's obviously part tongue in cheek, but it does make you think

03 October 2004

Spaso Ivosevic, a hunter in central Croatia since 1957, cleaned and loaded his double-barreled shotgun as usual, before briefly leaned the gun against a wall near his house. That's when his 2-year-old dog Lero, chasing chickens through the yard, stormed past and tripped over the shotgun. It hit the ground and fired, showering Ivosevic with pellets. The hunter was treated for a fractured leg bone, while the fate of Lero was not known

A randy ram-raider smashed into a car showroom in the town of Moville, County Donegal, Ireland, after letting his animal instincts get the better of him. The intruder — a stray ram belonging to a local farmer — broke windows, soiled the garage and dented three doors of a new Mitsubishi Colt before he was apprehended by police officers

Ten Kenyan prisoners broke out of a police cell by singing hymns and chanting prayers to drown the sound of their escape. The singing prisoners sawed through the iron bars of the cell window before scrambling to freedom in Machakos, a town south of Kenyan capital Nairobi

02 October 2004

The Ig Nobel awards for 2004 were presented at Harvard University. Medicine: the scientists from Michigan and Alabama, for their published report the effect of country music on suicide Physics: the scientists who explored and explained the dynamics of hula-hooping Public Health: the investigation of the scientific validity of the Five-Second Rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor Chemistry: the Coca-Cola Company of Great Britain, for using advanced technology to convert tap water into Dasani, a transparent form of water, which for precautionary reasons has been made unavailable to consumers Engineering: the guys who patented the combover Literature: the library that is preserving nudist history so that everyone can see it Psychology: the scientists who demonstrated that when people pay close attention to something, it's all too easy to overlook anything else — even a man in a gorilla suit Economics: the Vatican, for outsourcing prayers to India Peace: Daisuke Inoue, for inventing karaoke Biology: the scientists who discovered that herrings apparently communicate by farting

A US District Judge rejected the government's arguments to keep the secret records of John Lennon sealed. The FBI argued that releasing the last ten pages would pose a risk to national security as a foreign government secretly gave information to the US Government. Looks like another big step in the Freedom of Information Act

01 October 2004

A novel method of optical data storage could soon be used to hold a terabyte of data on a disk the size of a normal DVD, according to an international team of researchers

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