November 2004 Archive

30 November 2004

Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail. Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out. Unfortunately, the download site was targeted by spammers in a DDoS attack hours after going live

A database of badger DNA is being created to snare criminals who set dogs on the animals and dig-up setts. The RSPCA project, which will cover England and Wales, is the first of its kind for a wild species. It is hoped the database will help bring successful prosecutions against people who dig and bait the animals — via Paul Mellen

The CIA is quietly funding federal research into surveillance of Internet chat rooms as part of an effort to identify possible terrorists, newly released documents reveal. In April 2003, the CIA agreed to fund a series of research projects that the documents indicate were intended to create new capabilities to combat terrorism through advanced technology. One of those projects is research at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, devoted to automated monitoring and profiling of the behaviour of chat-room users

29 November 2004

Tasmania has become a signatory to an International Seed Conservation Program. The Millennium Seed Bank project aims to collect and conserve 10% of the world's seed-bearing plants by 2010. So far 16 countries are involved in the project, with 7,000 species of plants already stored in a seed bank in England. The manager of the Tasmanian project, Steve Harris, says seeds from 800 species of native plants will be collected from around the state

Computer engineers were at a loss to explain why the Government had been hit by arguably the worst electronic meltdown in the history of Whitehall. Senior sources said that the specialist troubleshooters called in to deal with the crisis at the Department for Work and Pensions had failed to get to the bottom of the problem which blanked out up to 40,000 desktop screens. While it has been established that the crash was provoked by an attempt to upgrade the screens, there was still no precise idea why it happened

28 November 2004

Sarah West, a Southern Cross University researcher, says technology to recycle water is available in Australia but is hardly being used. She has spent eight months studying water recycling and decentralised sewerage systems overseas. In parts of the United States, commercial laundries and car washes are using recycled water. It is also being used for flushing toilets, garden irrigation and growing vegetables

A man has been arrested outside a Swedish high-security prison after shooting mobile phones into the prison yard with a bow and arrow. The man arrested outside the Norrtaelje prison is believed to have shot as many as five mobile phones over the prison wall. Three arrows were found in the yard, with two phones and a battery charger taped to the arrows

27 November 2004

Bruce Sterling ponders the future direction of desktop fabricators and heads off the current printer consumables extortion racket, by suggesting the goop they run on be made from readily available waste products

Why is a TV executive so agitated about online pirates? Because he, like most media honchos, has seen the scary numbers indicating that the next big craze in illegal file-sharing is not music, not movies, but television. Frankly I'm amazed that movies caught on before TV since there's so much more TV, and they tend to be smaller files than movies — via Slashdot

26 November 2004

Downhill Battle has released the first public preview of Blog Torrent a simplified BitTorrent package that they developed because, Making it easy to blog large video files means that people can share their home movies the same way they share their photos or writings. Features include: integrated torrent creation and upload, simple non-MySQL installation, and an RSS feed for every tracker. Currently Windows only on the client side, but Mac and Linux versions are in the works

Google has filed a lawsuit against Internet marketing firm, Auctions Expert International, claiming the company defrauded Google's advertising network with false ad clicks

25 November 2004

DNA profiling has enabled us to link a suspect to a sample of blood, hair or saliva found at a crime scene. But until now, there was no way of knowing when the suspect was there — giving the guilty room to wriggle free. Now a team in America has developed a test that can reveal when a sample was deposited by measuring how quickly certain genetic material breaks down. The test measures two forms of RNA and works with as little as one microlitre of blood. The technique may even be sensitive enough to tell investigators when a fingerprint was left

A plant dubbed the suicide tree kills many more people in Indian communities than was previously thought. The warning comes from forensic toxicologists in India and France who have conducted a review of deaths caused by plant-derived poisons. Cerbera odollam, which grows across India and south-east Asia, is used by more people to commit suicide than any other plant, the toxicologists say. But they also warn that doctors, pathologists and coroners are failing to detect how often it is used to murder people

A unique combination of drugs has made a 15-year-old girl the first known human to survive rabies without vaccination. A team of physicians gambled on an experimental treatment and induced a coma in Jeanna Giese to stave off the usually fatal infection, said Dr Rodney Willoughby, a pediatric disease infection specialist at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin

Anti-war protesters made a mockery of Tony Blair's key election pledge of security by bursting into a government building just minutes after the Queen had announced new measures to tackle terrorism. As the whole of Whitehall bristled with armed police, three women and a man by-passed supposedly impenetrable security to gain access to the Cabinet Office, which has a direct underground link to No 10 Downing Street

24 November 2004

A man-made flood is roaring through the Grand Canyon in a bold experiment to restore the sandbanks of the Colorado river and to save fish and plants that have been disappearing over the past 40 years. The water is being channelled into the river and down the canyon through four giant steel pipes, carrying badly needed natural sediment with it. The US$3.7m venture, supported by more than a dozen US government agencies and groups, ends tomorrow, but how well it works will not be known for months

It ain't cheap, but Hiroshi Shimizu has finally shown off his latest electric car; Eliica. It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and will cruise for 200 miles on a one hour charge. Interestingly, Shimizu believes that the Japanese motor industry is deliberately ignoring his invention and instead focusing on complex hybrids, as a simple electric engine dramatically lowers the cost of manufacturing, and will lead to a flood of cheap, mass produced cars from Chinese factories

Lee Harvey Oswald-wannabes will be able to simulate the assassination of President John F Kennedy when Traffic Games releases the $9.99 JFK Reloaded to coincide with the 41st anniversary of Kennedy's murder in Dallas. It is despicable, said a spokesman for Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother

An amateur palaeontologist has unearthed the biggest dinosaur to be discovered in the British Isles — and possibly Europe — from a cliff overlooking an Isle of Wight beach. Scientists who have just finished analysing the dinosaur's two neck bones believe it grew to about 66 feet long and weighed up to 50 tons. It lived around 130 million years ago when Britain was subtropical and still connected to Europe and North America

23 November 2004

Newspaper advertisements congratulating Australian Idol winner Casey Donovan have mistakenly directed fans to a gay porn web site. Telstra indulged in an overenthusiastic display of censorship by redirecting all Bigpond subscribers through to the Australian address

Primus Telecom has launched a new DSL broadband Internet service claimed to deliver high speed services at up to 6Mbps. The new high-speed Internet service is available to Primus customers in major cities around Australia who are in access range of upgraded facilities installed by Primus Telecom

Scientists are trying to use nanotechnology to cure diseases, ameliorate the energy crisis and reduce golf scores. Buffalo, New York-based NanoDynamics has come up with a golf ball that can correct its own flight path so it flies straighter than conventional balls. The ball won't shift 45° in midair, but the design of the ball — and the materials it's made of — serve to better channel the energy received from the club head and thus correct a wobble or slight drift

Instead of screaming Jump, David Lee Roth will be yelling clear! The former Van Halen frontman is taking up a new trade — paramedic [BugMeNot]. Roth, 50, has been riding for several weeks with a New York ambulance crew in training to become a paramedic. I have been on over 200 individual rides now, said Roth. "Not once has anyone recognised me, which is perfect for me

22 November 2004

Proving yet again that little Johnny Coward's cult of loony fundies are firmly pushing the agenda, the Government has quietly backed a conservative push inside the UN to adopt a treaty banning all human cloning, including the replication of embryos for research into cures for Alzheimer's and spinal cord damage. The global ban was proposed by Costa Rica and, aside from Australia, has been supported by the US and 59 predominantly Catholic and developing countries

Nineteen countries, including Australia, have agreed to cancel 80% of the debt Iraq owes them. The deal secured for the Paris Club of creditor nations ends a trans-Atlantic dispute and probably sets the framework for debt pardons from other creditors

21 November 2004

The parliamentary motion to impeach Tony Blair for gross misconduct over the war against Iraq will be published next Wednesday, the day after the Queen's speech. It will be the first to be tabled in 198 years, since Lord Melville, a close friend of the then prime minister, William Pitt the younger, faced impeachment for misusing public money in running the Admiralty. Senior parliamentary officials, including legal advisers to the Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, on Wednesday night approved the wording of the text as meeting parliamentary rules, allowing the motion to be tabled on the first day of the new session

Where there's muck, there's gas. Scientists have created genetically modified yeasts and fungi that can turn agricultural waste into fuel for cars and trucks. In future we may take to the roads in vehicles powered by left over plant remains. The technology — created with European Union money — uses corn stubble and other farm waste as basic ingredients for making ethanol. This can then be used as a substitute for petrol

20 November 2004

A Brazilian woman who suffered a brain haemorrhage that left her paralysed on one side has regained her ability to walk and talk after undergoing a stem cell transplant. Doctors injected the stem cells into the brain of Maria da Graca Pomeceno, 54, five days after a brain haemorrhage left her a hemiplegic. The cells had been extracted from bone marrow in her pelvis. The new therapy is being tested for the first time in Brazil

A low-cost antibiotic which has performed well in tests should be given to all HIV children in developing countries to prevent infections such as pneumonia and reduce deaths. Dr Diana Gibb of Britain's Medical Research Council said a trial involving HIV-infected children in Zambia was stopped early because it was so successful

Fuji, a 34-year-old mother dolphin that lost 75% of her tail due to a necrotic disease, is jumping once again with the help of what is believed to be the world's first artificial fin

19 November 2004

That is called 'sensitive security information'. She's not allowed to see it, nor is anyone else, he said. Thus, in a qualitatively new development in US governance, Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know. This is not some dismal Eastern European allegory — via meta-roj blog

Microsoft has been accused of developing policies stressing the systematic destruction of internal e-mail and other documents crucial to lawsuits it has faced in recent years

Starbucks will begin using paper coffee cups made partially from recycled material by the end of 2005. The move comes as the Seattle-based company is in the midst of an aggressive plan to ensure coffee sold in its stores comes from environmentally friendly farms that pay workers a fair wage

18 November 2004

Despite media reports and industry pundits over the years relegating Netscape to Internet history books, AOL has restarted the browser's development. The company plans to bring back a refreshed Netscape browser based on Firefox

California's budget problem has led the state to consider desperate measures: taxing you based on how much you drive. The only problem is the way they propose to do it. California is now proposing to put GPS devices on all new cars to track how far people drive and tax them accordingly

Not content with simply outsourcing their call centre, Optus plans to offshore it to India, claiming the move will supplement its domestic call centre operations. Considering how poor Optus customer service is at the moment, I doubt this move could make it any worse, but it's still a bad PR exercise from Optus

17 November 2004

First Samsung and now LG.Philips have worked out a way to create thin CRT displays. Thin CRTs offer the best of both worlds — superior picture quality with a slim size. Thin CRTs are expected to be more expensive than current CRTs, however they are also expected to drop in price rapidly. Both companies plan on releasing Thin CRTs in late 2005

Speaking to an audience of technology entrepreneurs in Sydney last week, Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia revealed he will shortly unleash a new product to liberate in-boxes of unsolicited offers of sex, drugs, and scams

Both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis have been renewed for another season, ninth and second respectively. All of the key cast members are coming back for Atlantis, where as SG-1 stars are in negotiations, with Amanda Tapping expecting a baby in March right as filming begins. Also Richard Dean Anderson might look for an even further reduced role in the show

Police in Peru have seized about 700kg of cocaine hidden in frozen giant squid bound for Mexico and the US. The drugs — worth about $17.5m — were sealed in several layers of plastic and other wrapping material and covered in pepper to divert sniffer dogs

16 November 2004

The US Marine Corps launched an investigation into possible war crimes after video footage taken inside a mosque in Fallujah showed a Marine shooting dead an unarmed Iraqi insurgent who had been taken prisoner

Microsoft alum Nathan Myhrvold so strongly believes intellectual property is the next software that he's studying for the patent bar exam. His company, Intellectual Ventures, doesn't actually make anything — only patent attorneys roam the hallways. Myhrvold isn't the only true believer. Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Nokia, Apple, Google, and eBay have contributed to a $350M bankroll which the firm is using to buy up existing patents that can be rented to companies who want to produce real products — via Slashdot

Scientists have discovered evidence of a second black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. The Institute of Astrophysics in Paris has announced it has discovered an object which appears to be an intermediate-sized black hole, with the mass of about 1,300 suns

American researchers claim to have found convincing evidence that locates the site of the lost kingdom of Atlantis off the coast of Cyprus

15 November 2004

According to Security firm Finjan, the flaws mean that attackers can silently and remotely take over an SP2 machine when the user simply browses a web page, Microsoft has rubbished the claims

The US Interior Department on Friday gave final approval to a plan by ConocoPhillips and partner Anadarko Petroleum to develop five tracts around the oil-rich Alpine field on Alaska's North Slope

14 November 2004

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Tennessee, the US Naval Research Laboratory and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency have found a way to harness the energy that plants use during photosynthesis to convert light to energy. They are using the process to extend the life of batteries in mobile phones, laptop computers and other portable electronic devices

A Boeing-led team has successfully fired for the first time a powerful laser meant to fly aboard a modified 747 as part of a US ballistic missile defence shield. The test called First Light has a budget of $474.3 million in the fiscal year 2005 and is part of a larger $10 billion dollar missile defence system

13 November 2004

Jason Dowdell over at WebProNews has written a piece questioning a tactic Microsoft might be using to beef up its new search engine. He thinks they might be dipping into Google's results to supplement its own. Dowdell likens it to leaving your garbage on the curb — anyone could conceivably go through it and take whatever is there for their own

Mango growers in northern Australia are being urged to consider using green ants as an environmentally friendly alternative to chemical pesticides. A three-year study funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research has found the ferocious predators are a cost-efficient way to keep most pests away from the fruit

12 November 2004

At a security roundtable discussion in Sydney on Thursday, Ben English, Microsoft's security and management product manager, told attendees that IE undergoes rigorous code reviews and is no less secure than any other browser. Because IE is ubiquitous, you hear a lot more about it, but I don't think that Internet Explorer is any less secure than any other browser out there, English said. Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia's managing director, agreed, saying he does not believe IE's market share is under attack following the recent high-profile debut of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser — via Darren Barefoot

Pioneer is developing an ultraviolet laser for data storage. Since the wavelength of ultraviolet lasers is shorter than the wavelength of blue lasers, the beams are finer and they can pack more data into per square inch. This gives a data rate 20 times more than the blue laser Blue-ray disk

A device that automatically pushes electrodes into the brain to seek out the strongest signals is taking the idea of neural implants to a new level. Scary as this sounds, its developers say such devices will be essential if brain implants are ever going to allow paralysed people to control artificial arms or work a computer. The problem with fixed implants is that the signal fades after just a few months. The researchers expect to fit a paralysed person with a moving implant within a year

A worldwide roaming agreement among four of the world's biggest wireless operators has given the Wi-Fi hotspot market a shot in the arm and users access to more than 20,000 hotspots. UK-based BT Group; StarHub of Singapore; T-Mobile International, which operates in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US; Australia's Telstra; and Telecom Italia, under the auspices of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), all agreed to share hotspots — meaning that any of their customers should have instant access to the thousands of hotspots in 11 countries across the globe

11 November 2004

Yasser Arafat, the Nobel Peace Prize winner revered as the Palestinians' greatest champion by some and reviled as an opportunistic terrorist by others, died in a Paris hospital today. His passing marked the end of an era in modern Middle East history, and some hoped it could spur new efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. As can be expected, John Howard committed his usual bumbling faux pas on Arafat's passing

Indymedia has video of two tanks (well, LAV-25s, but who's gonna quibble with an armoured cannon on Wilshire Boulevard?) at an anti-war protest outside the Federal Building in Westwood, California

In a response to EFF's motion to unseal, the US government claims that Indymedia hard drives were seized as part of an international criminal terrorism investigation, and thus the US District Court's gag order should be upheld

Gmail is rolling out POP3 services to their free e-mail accounts. This would allow someone to use Gmail without ever seeing any of their advertisements. They are also providing SMTP, both POP3 and SMTP are forcing the use of SSL/TLS

10 November 2004

The wireless replacement for USB, ultra wide-band (UWB), will be ready by late December and without the formal approval of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a leading group promoting the revolutionary technology has promised

A Sydney man, Nick Marinellis, has been sentenced to more than five years in jail for defrauding millions of dollars in an international e-mail scam. The Sydney District Court was told Marinellis was the mastermind of an operation which defrauded people around the world by promising lucrative business contracts, lottery wins or inheritance payouts if people first sent money for expenses

09 November 2004

Firefox, the finest, most secure Web browser ever created for average-user applications, went 1.0 today. You can download it, toss out Internet Explorer, and be relatively assured that you computer won't be compromised due to Microsoft's bad design decisions and lax security maintenance. The Mozilla site was brought to a near standstill as it suffered what one analyst called a success crisis following the launch

The BBC is on the point of releasing an Internet video viewer for its content, and its CIO has told other companies to stop making excuses and use the bandwidth available to deliver better services online. Media companies must now keep their side of the bargain and deliver content which justifies consumers' switch to broadband, according to Keith Little, head of IT at the BBC

A UK startup called Dataslide aims to develop hard drives made of oscillating sheets of LCD-screen-like material with piezo-electronic actuators and many, many read:write heads. A hard drive could be the same size and shape as an LCD screen

Symantec has admitted its flagship consumer security application, Norton AntiVirus 2005, has a security vulnerability that allows certain types of malicious script to infect a user's PC with a virus

08 November 2004

Queen have decided to tackle musical piracy by offering fans the chance to legally download up to 100 pirate recordings currently in circulation. Using expert advice, the band has selected the best illegal Queen recordings and will make them available to download on their official web site. The downloads will be available at the rate of three tracks each month, at a fixed cost of £5 per recording. All proceeds will be donated to the Mercury Phoenix Trust, to combat Aids — via meta-roj blog

Eight eBay sellers were ordered to pay nearly US$90,000 in restitution and fines after admitting they had bid on products to inflate the prices

The first human trial of an artificial bio kidney has shown encouraging results, offering hope of a working implant for patients. Ten kidney patients at the University of Michigan tested the device, which works in the same way as dialysis but is partly made of human cells. Eventually, scientists hope the device will become an implantable long-term replacement for failing kidneys

Coyotes, the rangy animals associated with the American West, have been spotted in the US capital for the first time, sparking gossip in precincts where talk usually turns on politics

07 November 2004

The morons at Warner Bros (the same people who canned Angel and now want it back) have passed on Warren Ellis' Global Frequency, a wonderfully twisted modern-day SF TV series which may yet air, but the company that owns the series will now have to shop it around to other networks

A careless mistake by someone dropping a case of CDs allegedly containing forged documents used to create fake identities has led police to crack one of the largest and most sophisticated identity fraud rings in Australia

06 November 2004

Robert Andrew Street, a Melbourne financial adviser, caught up in a Nigerian investment scam has been sentenced to five years and three months' jail after he used AU$1 million of his clients' money to pay the fees required by the scammer

The very citizen journalists who very nearly pushed John Kerry into the White House have continued with their stellar work, uncovering an interesting photo naming policy on a shared Netscape/CNN site. The photo showed a lovable Laura Bush holding her ape-faced hubby. Until late last night, the photo was appropriately called asshole.jpg. It has now been changed to the more innocuous, but less amusing, georgelaura135.jpg

The retarded monkey boy has caused uproar in Greece with his decision to recognise the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as Macedonia

05 November 2004

A brother and sister, Jeremy Jaynes and Jessica DeGroot, who sent unsolicited junk email to millions of AOL customers were convicted in the US's first felony prosecution of distributors of spam. Each could receive jail terms

Telstra is to trial an extension of its ADSL broadband services, hoping to increase their reach beyond the current limit of approximately 4km from exchanges. Telstra will increase transmission limits from 56dB to 80dB on lines to approximately 1000 subscribers participating in the three-month trial. How far beyond present reach such a change could extend ADSL services had yet to be determined and no mention of distance was made in information provided to potential subscribers

Software patents could be used for anti-competitive practices, as large IT players form a cartel to pool or cross license patents in order to keep out smaller players

04 November 2004

Anti-spyware vendor Aluria Software has partnered with WhenU of WhenUSave and SaveNow infamy. They've removed WhenU from their spyware/malware definition lists, certified their applications as safe, and they deny that money was involved

Google has fixed a security flaw in its Gmail Web-based e-mail service that allowed attackers to hijack users' e-mail accounts

The Cleveland Clinic says it is the first institution to receive review board approval of human facial transplant for someone severely disfigured by burns or disease. Several independent medical teams around the world also are pursuing the procedure. The Cleveland Clinic said its approval on 15 October followed ten months of debate on medical, ethical and psychological issues. It has no current patients or donors for the procedure — via meta-roj blog

03 November 2004

Regional player SP Telemedia has bolstered its presence in the city with the acquisition of failed telco Comindico

The broadband battle is intensifying as dial-up Internet dies in Australia. The past few weeks has seen Internet providers deliver a raft of intensely competitive broadband deals — albeit conditional — as research compiled on behalf of Ericsson reveals that the number of broadband subscribers in Australia is likely to overtake dial-up by mid-2006

Starbucks has launched an aggressive plan to ensure coffee sold in its stores comes from environmentally friendly farms paying workers a fair wage. By 2007, Starbucks expects that 60% of its coffee will come from farmers following strict rules on everything from forestation to pesticides to labor practices. About 10% of Starbucks' coffee is bought from suppliers following such rules now

02 November 2004

You think your new car is festooned with information-seeking sensors? Imagine this: sensor modules, each the size of a speck of dust, that are networked together wirelessly to relay information. In this array, the tiny Smart Dust devices can sense your presence when you enter your office, for example, and will adjust the light, heat, and other comforts to your preferences. Kris Pister, founder and CTO of Dust Networks, has already shown working sensors in an academic lab

Earlier this year Microsoft released a major security update for Windows XP, which was designed to strengthen the operating system's defences against attack from viruses and hackers. One major part of the update was an improved version of its firewall software, which the latest Bagle variants are designed to attack and disable

01 November 2004

The colour LCD screens on mobile phones and PDAs can get badly scratched in pockets stuffed with loose change and keys. And CDs and DVDs become unplayable in no time when children use them as indoor frisbees. Now a tough, transparent polymer coating developed by chemists from TDK in Japan is set to make scratched phone screens and scuffed discs a thing of the past

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