December 2004 Archive

31 December 2004

A red wolf that escaped earlier this month from the Binghamton zoo has been found dead. Officials at the Ross Park Zoo say the wolf's body was found late yesterday afternoon in a ravine on private property behind the zoo. It will come as no surprise to anyone that the wolf was shot by a moron

Netcraft has released an Anti-Phishing Toolbar that provides detailed information about the web site you are visiting (sites' hosting location, country, longevity and popularity) at all times to help users to validate fraudulent URLs

eBay has announced that its users no longer will be able to sign in to its Web sites using Passport, Microsoft's identity-management technology. Earlier this year, online job site Monster.com dropped Passport. The defections raise doubts about the technology's future

30 December 2004

A week after San Francisco's Genetic Savings and Clone revealed the sale of their first cat to a customer, GS&C acknowledges it has been hired by anonymous buyers in Hollywood to bank genes of show business animals

Russia has announced that it will no longer ferry US astronauts to space for free as it has been doing for two years. From 2006 the US will be expected to pay

Transparent electronics is an emerging technology which aims to produce invisible electronic circuits. Now, researchers from Oregon report they made a major advance in transparent electronics. Their zinc-tin-oxide thin-film materials are amorphous, physically robust, chemically stable and cheap to produce at just above room temperature. These new materials and transistors offer many new possibilities for consumer electronics, transportation, business and the military

29 December 2004

There's a trailer for Sin City on Apple's preview site. The film is being co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller himself. The video is dinky in size but it is gorgeous, it really looks like they somehow took Miller's comic style and made it into a movie. High contrast, sometimes looks like line art, cool sparse use of colour — via Slashdot

Consumers will spend billions this holiday season on CDs, DVDs and machines to record and play the ubiquitous silver discs. But the inventor of the underlying technology won't make a cent. Today, Jim Russell does consulting from a lab in the basement of his Bellevue home to keep in the game and supplement a modest pension from Battelle

British design engineer Glynne Bowsher and his team, the British Steam Car Challenge, have almost finished building a super-fast steam-powered vehicle reminiscent of the Batmobile. And this car puts a new technological breath of life into what is regarded as a traditional means of power

28 December 2004

An all IPv6 backbone was launched this weekend in China. CERNET2 is the biggest next-generation Internet network in operation in the world and connects 25 universities in 20 cities. The speed in the backbone network reaches 2.5 to 10 gigabits per second and connects the universities at a speed of 1 to 10 gigabits per second

This week CleanSoftware.org was launched, a resource site with a unique goal: listing free, daily-use software that is free from spyware, adware, and other malicious/intrusive components

27 December 2004

Authorities in New Zealand's South Island say thieves have dismantled and carried off most of a 30-metre long bridge. Large sections of the aluminium bridge were taken from a wetland reserve south-west of Dunedin. It had been installed with the aid of a helicopter. Authorities say the bridge pieces will probably be sold for scrap

Dropping its daily diet of stories on crime, corruption and evil wrongdoing, Germany's top-selling Bild newspaper printed only good news in its Christmas issue. No parking tickets today — traffic wardens have day off! the newspaper with 12 million readers wrote. The paper turned a scandal involving the opposition Christian Democrats on its head, cheering a generous severance payment of 52,000 euros that the disgraced general secretary, Laurenz Meyer, received after quitting under pressure on Wednesday

26 December 2004

Ben Browder, best known as Farscape's John Crichton, will become a Stargate SG-1 regular starting from season nine, joining the SG-1 team although is role is unclear. He will fill the gap left by Anderson who's unlikely to return except for small appearances. Claudia Black, Farscape's Aeryn Sun, is also going to play in a fair number of episodes

A 16-foot wide asteroid has passed the Earth in a phenomenally close call. The Asteroid, named 2004 YD5, passed just below the 22,300 mile range where geostationary satellites sit. What makes the incident most interesting is that the asteroid was not seen until after it passed the Earth, due to the well-known Cosmic Blind Spot caused by the Sun

The Metropolitan Police will no longer describe black people as black, as part of a new attempt to counter charges of racism in the force. Both black and Asian people will in future be referred to as visible minority ethnics. The term, which replaces the phrase black and Asian minority ethnics, is expected to be adopted officially in January

25 December 2004

A course of injections in childhood might help protect people from heart disease later in life. And for those whose arteries are already clogged up, a dose of antibodies could provide immediate benefits. That is the enticing vision raised by animal studies

An image-scanner built into a light and bendy sheet of plastic that you can keep in your wallet has been developed in Japan. The credit-card-sized device will be powered by plugging it into a mobile phone, which also displays and stores the scanned images. It's so flexible it can even scan curved surfaces such as wine bottle labels. With no moving parts or lights needed, its developers hope it could be on the market in three years' time for just $10

24 December 2004

Hundreds of thousands of secret Whitehall files are being shredded before the public gains the right to see them under the Freedom of Information Act on 1 January. Figures obtained by The Independent show a dramatic escalation in the destruction of confidential papers before the new rights of access come into force. Whitehall departments, including the Department of Trade and Industry, have almost doubled the number of files they have destroyed since the Freedom of Information Act became law

A European court on Wednesday dealt a blow to Microsoft, ordering the company to start offering a version of Windows without a bundled-in media player. Bo Vesterdorf, president of the European Court of First Instance, said that Microsoft must comply with penalties imposed by the European Commission in March even as the company's appeal wends its way through the system

23 December 2004

Telstra has failed a test on the prices it charges rivals to access its phone lines for their broadband customers. In the first such test on the issue, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that telcos weren't able to generate sufficient margins to recover costs if they tried to sell broadband — or a combination of broadband and voice — to their customers over Telstra's phone lines

Sydney wireless ISP Unwired has signed an agreement with AAPT that will see the telco reselling its wireless broadband service from next year. The deal represents Unwired's first wholesale agreement with a major carrier, although it has previously cemented relationships with a number of smaller resellers, including Exetel, Veritel and People Telecom

Carlos Owens, an Alaska ironworker, is building an 18-foot-tall manned Mecha to fight at the local racetrack — and for the military, if they want it

22 December 2004

A US civil liberties group has obtained documents detailing fresh claims of abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and claims the White House authorised the use of inhumane interrogation techniques

Bank robbers in Northern Ireland have stolen at least £20m in what could be Britain's biggest ever bank heist

21 December 2004

A US federal judge has awarded an ISP more than $1.32 billion in what is believed to be the largest judgement ever against spammers

Optus has been asked to pay up to $17 million in alleged unpaid commissions to its former business partner in the international porn trade

20 December 2004

The Bad Science Awards are out. These should put a smile on any science geek's face. Prize gems include: shrinking water molecules, anesthetic condoms, and a plan to send homeopathic AIDS remedies to Botswana

The retarded monkey boy is drawing up plans to disable sections of the GPS network in the event of a terrorist attack, it seems the retarded monkey boy is of the opinion that terrorists don't use maps and street directories. The rationale seems to be that it would prevent said terrorists from using the GPS system to direct some sort of attack. The plan would shut down access not only to the GPS satellite network, but projects like the EU's Galileo. Ironically, this comes alongside the President's plan to strengthen the GPS network against deliberate jamming

19 December 2004

Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have developed thin, flexible, photovoltaic cells. The thin and bendy solar panels can be stuck to fabrics, sheets or backpacks and promise a cheap, go-anywhere electricity supply

A survey carried out by PC Pro magazine looked at which of 100 home photo printers offered a better deal than handing your snaps to a photo lab. The tests found that images from top PC printers kept their colour longer than professionally produced photographs. In the report at the BBC it claims that the new generation of printers produced images with brighter colours and that were less likely to fade than many High Street developers or even some professional wedding photographers

18 December 2004

Scientists have cultured small pieces of heart tissue which beat in the same way as the whole organ. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology team hope the work will lead to new ways of repairing heart damage — via Die Puny Humans

I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe scored the winning entry in this year's Literary Review Bad Sex Award with the appalling: Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns — oh god, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest — no, the hand was cupping her entire right — Now! She must say "No, Hoyt" and talk to him like a dog...

A beer-thirsty Australian gentleman, inpatient with gravity, employed a mechanical contraption to rapidly deliver beer into his gullet using a pump powered by an electric drill. The device proved so effective that the high-pressure jet of beer shooting down his throat ripped a hole in his stomach. Authorities responded by warning people not to use high-pressure machines to drink beer this Christmas — via BoingBoing

17 December 2004

The NSW Labor Government has approved the use of offshore computer programmers by the public service, in conflict with ALP policy. But NSW unions yesterday condemned any move by the Carr Government that would mean the development of its online licensing system or other departmental work being shifted offshore

American Indians are poised to take a step back into history when they begin managing portions of the nearly 100-year-old National Bison Range in Montana. The range is one of about 540 wildlife refuges in a 38 million-hectare National Wildlife Refuge system from Alaska to the Caribbean

Researchers from the University of South Australia have developed software which identifies specific bird species by their calls and then randomly chooses noises known to scare them, a development that could potentially save the fruit and wine industries millions of dollars

16 December 2004

Researchers in the top end say they may have discovered the first natural predator to the cane toad, according to experiments conducted in captivity, a local frog species, Litoria dahlii eats infant cane toads as well as the tadpoles without any apparent side effects from the cane toads' poison. Whether the same occurs in the wild is still to be seen, but researchers believe the frog could play a large part in slowing the spread of the cane toad into the Northern Territory and into fragile eco systems like Kakadu's National Park

The tiny western African nation of São Tomé and Principe claims it has unwittingly become the continent's electronic porn publishing capital after a Swedish company and its local partner sold the country's internet identity without government approval. The government is demanding a share of the income earned from selling addresses using São Tomé's .st suffix, after a US survey found they accounted for more than three-quarters of the porn pages generated from web sites that use African nations' identities

Fed up with paying some €100,000 a year to cut the grass on its out-of-town roads with tractor-mowers, the local government of Treviso, near Venice, bought six donkeys to do the work instead

15 December 2004

Google will expand its ability for searching books by working with five major libraries, including those at the University of Michigan and Oxford University, as well as the New York Public Library, to digitise out-of-print and copyrighted works

Finally, a miniature hard drive you can drop on the sidewalk. Mini-drive specialist Cornice will unfurl a new 3GB, 25mm diameter hard drive at next month's Consumer Electronics Show that offers more shock resistance and uses less battery life than its predecessors. The drive is due out in 2005

14 December 2004

The contentious Surveillance Devices Act has been passed. The act will allow Federal Police to obtain warrants to secretly install spyware onto users computers enabling them to monitor e-mail, online chats, word processor and spreadsheets entries and even bank personal identification numbers and passwords

Alek's Christmas Lights Webcam is back again which allows you to: pan/zoom the webcam and control the 17,000 christmas lights — yep, turn 'em on and off and annoy my understanding neighbours! You've got to laugh, because it's all a hoax. The lights are real, the web control system isn't

A Chilean judge has formally charged former dictator Augusto Pinochet with homicide and kidnapping in one of many pending cases related to human rights abuses committed during his 17-year rule. Special Judge Juan Guzman says General Pinochet has been declared mentally fit to stand trial in Chile

13 December 2004

Purdue University researchers are devising a way to fabricate better artificial bones using carbon nanotubes to mimic the natural fibre-like structure of real bone

Three gun-wielding brain donors tried to rob a woman who was minding her grandsons. The kids happened to be playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The random police soundbites from the game were saying, Stop, we have you surrounded. This is the police. The burglars, unknowingly, thought this was the actual police, panicked and ran away. The silly buggers were all caught

Australia's spies are to have their intelligence gathering capacity boosted by a new highly classified IT and communications project being run by the Defence Signals Directorate, which includes database and storage, real time processing and intriguingly, a variety of radio interface technologies. It's a safe bet that any data gathered will be happily passed on the US and vast bulk will be corporate espionage for a fee and not actual security work

12 December 2004

Former CIA Director George Tenet has suggested that access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously. The national press were excluded from the event, at Mr Tenet's request

About 80,000 students and staff are being told to use an alternate browser. The Penn State ITS department sent the alert because the threats are real and alternatives exist to mitigate Web browser vulnerabilities

Eric Harshbarger has built a seven foot tall grandfather clock exclusively from Lego. It keeps accurate time and needs no electricity; it needs to be weight reset every thirteen hours

11 December 2004

The first theatrical Babylon 5 movie, The Memory of the Shadows starts filming in April. The story was written by series creator J Michael Straczynski

A cheap modification to supertankers could help prevent devastating oil pollution if the vessels sink. The new system makes it quick and easy to empty the tanks if the ship ends up on the seabed

If it walks like a flamingo and looks like a flamingo, it is not necessarily a flamingo — or even a close relative. A controversial genetic study suggests we have completely misunderstood how the majority of birds are related, and that some species that look almost identical are not related at all. The discovery comes from an analysis of the evolution of the bird gene beta-fibrinogen. It suggests that the Neoaves, a group that includes all modern bird species except waterfowl, landfowl and flightless birds, actually comprises two distinct lineages called the Metaves and Coronaves, and that many birds which look alike are not in the same lineage

The all free dictionaries project focuses on maintaining free dictionaries (now more than 90 with more than 3,300,000 translations). They are designing a new system which will unite them all into one universal dictionary for all languages. The universal dictionary will be soon available for free under GPL

10 December 2004

Scientists working in South Africa say they have identified a gene that controls the human body's response to HIV. The researchers say the gene determines the body's response to infections

A coalition of American internet and finance firms and law enforcement agencies has been launched in a bid to halt the growing number of online phishing scams. The group called Digital PhishNet is a collaborative operation of technology, banking, financial services and online auction firms with law enforcement to tackle phishing, a scheme based on use of faked or spoofed web sites

A lone whale with a voice unlike any other has been wandering the Pacific for the past twelve years. Marine biologist Mary Ann Daher of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and her colleagues used signals recorded by the US navy's submarine-tracking hydrophones to trace the movements of whales in the north Pacific. The partially declassified records show that a lone whale singing at around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean every autumn and winter since 1992. Its calls do not match those of any known species, although they are clearly those of a baleen whale, a group that includes blue, fin and humpback whales

09 December 2004

Seiko Epson is on schedule to commercialise OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) screen technology for televisions in 2007 but some significant research issues remain. OLED screens produce pictures that proponents say are extremely bright and crisp compared to those shown on PDP (plasma display panels) and LCDs. Another advantage is that OLEDs should be cheaper. However, at present OLED panels don't last long

Corporate business is discovering that e-mail within professional circles is showing that millions of highly educated people are functionally illiterate. Shame the morons are blaming e-mail rather than the political interference that has destroyed the educational system

True to the saying no honour among thieves, adware company, Avenue Media, is finding that competing adware company, DirectRevenue, is detecting and deleting their software. Now Avenue Media is crying foul and have filed a lawsuit against DirectRevenue stating that DirectRevenue knowingly and with intent to defraud, exceeded its authorized access to users' computers — via Slashdot

08 December 2004

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 has been released. Virtual folders and RSS integration, coupled with the recent hype surrounding Firefox, might give the product some serious momentum

Powell spoke before congress, detailing that complaints to the FCC are up from 14,000 in 2002, to nearly 240,000 in 2003. There were only 350 complaints during 2000 and 2001. Powell failed to mention however that 99.8% of those complaints came from PTC (Parents Television Council). It means that really a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio

Designers say that the Cell processor that will power the next version of the PlayStation game console will also be adaptable for advanced scientific research, but you won't have to be a rocket scientist to program it

Australian Consumers' Association health spokeswoman Nicola Ballenden says that E-Health initiatives intended to improve public health outcomes while cutting costs are being hijacked by greedy software makers, drug marketers and pharmacists

07 December 2004

FairUCE, which stands for Fair use of Unsolicited Commercial Email, is an SMTP proxy, running between multiple instances of Postfix, that verifies e-mail by attempting to verify the sender through lookups, a user customised challenge/response. It claims to be able to stop a vast majority of spam without the need for content filters, and virtually eliminates spoofed addresses, phishing, and even many viruses with a few cached DNS look-ups and a couple of if/then statements

The passage of the US Free Trade Agreement enabling legislation has been thrown into doubt after the government agreed to an eleventh hour review of key concerns outlined by the Internet Industry Association. The IIA claims the legislative changes would make possession of pirated materials a criminal offence, and could make ISPs criminally liable for pirated material that exists on their systems. The IIA also believes the system of take-down orders proposed through the legislation would put an onerous administrative burden on its members

A study by US researchers, Pew Internet, suggests musicians do not agree with the tactics adopted by the music industry against file-sharing. While most considered file-sharing as illegal, many disagreed with the lawsuits launched against downloaders. Independent musicians, in particular, saw the internet as a way to get around the need to land a record contract and reach fans directly

A group of gamblers who won more than £1m at the Ritz Casino by using laser technology have been told by police they can keep their winnings. A laser scanner linked to a computer was allegedly used to gauge numbers likely to come up on the roulette wheel

06 December 2004

If you have a laptop, desktop and work PC keeping the information from Firefox and Thunderbird synced with each other is hard, not to mention the extensions. John Haller has packaged both Firefox and Thunderbird into Flash drive friendly executables which can be run directly from a USB flash drive — Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird

Australia architects Stutchbury and Pape have created a house out of recycled cardboard, Velcro, nylon wing nuts and tape. It can be built in six hours by two people and can be transportable in a light commercial vehicle

The UK's most senior police officer says that householders should be able to use whatever force is necessary to defend their homes against criminals

05 December 2004

Looking for a place to toss your old inkjet printers? A team of scientists working to create human tissue may have a good use for them. Inkjets that are ten years old are perfectly suited to create sheets of human skin and other tissue that one day may help burn victims and even manufacture organs

A brain, grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single rat embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator by scientists

USC engineer, Theodore Berger, has used his expertise with nerve cells to create a surveillance system that can recognise the sound of a nearby gunshot — and identify the shooter. In a unique pilot program, LA and Chicago will deploy test units in high-crime areas. The creator emphasises that the system cannot recognise voices or words, but his previous research into speech recognition systems suggests otherwise — via Slashdot

Ben Edelman recently waded through Gator's license agreement via Kazaa — all 5,936 words and 63 on-screen pages of it — and found some interesting things. It seems that once you install the hideous program, it is illegal for you to removal it

04 December 2004

The Federal Government had rejected mandatory filtering of the internet to stop child pornography and has opted instead to undertake an education and information campaign to teach parents about the perils of the internet

Camera phones will soon have liquid lenses made from nothing more substantial than a couple of drops of oil and water, but will still be capable of auto focusing, and even zooming in on subjects

Exeem is a new file-sharing application being developed by the folks at SuprNova.org. Exeem is a decentralised BitTorrent network that basically makes everyone a Tracker. Individuals will share Torrents, and seed shared files to the network. At this time, details and the full potential of this project are being kept very quiet. However it appears this P2P application will completely replace SuprNova.org; no more web mirrors, no more bottle necks and no more slow downs. Exeem will marry the best features of a decentralized network, the easy searchability of an indexing server and the swarming powers of the BitTorrent network into one program. Once this program goes public, its potential is enormous — via Slashdot

Beijing had received criticism for choosing Microsoft for the three-year, $3.6m deal instead of homegrown software providers, with an official from the Chinese Science and Technology Ministry calling the deal a threat to national security. Chinese law stipulates that domestic software should be favoured in such deals. Nearly two weeks after the contract was signed, the Chinese government's procurement office announced that it has changed its mind

03 December 2004

There's a new vaccine which has had an incredible effect in clinical trials. The vaccine, composed of human dendrites holding dead HIV viruses, has dropped test patients' viral load by up to 90% in one year

Brazil says it intends to break patents on commercial anti-AIDS drugs as part of its battle against the disease. The head of Brazil's AIDS programme, Pedro Chequer, told the BBC it was the only way it could afford to keep up its anti-AIDS strategy. Mr Chequer said Brazil would make copies of up to five drugs next year. Brazil currently makes eight of the 15 drugs it offers in its anti-AIDS cocktail, which is free to those with the disease — via BoingBoing

According to State Department documents, the retarded monkey boy has opposed security measures for new microchip-equipped passports that privacy advocates contended were needed to prevent identity theft

Laws abolishing 800 years of feudal property rights have come into force in Scotland. The legislation — brought in by the Scottish Parliament — is intended to make land ownership simpler and fairer. However, there have been fears that thousands of Scottish households could face unexpected bills as a result. Experts believe some people are unprepared for the introduction of the new legislation and could end up paying up to £400 in compensation — via Paul Mellen

02 December 2004

British scientists seeking to protect the environment have designed a biodegradable mobile phone cover that breaks down in soil when discarded and sprouts a flower from a seed embedded inside the case. Researchers at the University of Warwick in central England said the novel device, made from a specially designed polymer, is a boon for the environmentally sensitive

Oragenics, has received permission from the FDA to conduct the first clinical trial in which genetically modified bacteria will be put into people's mouths. The new bacteria, which are genetically neutered so they do not make the acid that eats away at teeth, would be designed to replace the acid-producing bacteria present in most mouths

Optus has a dirty little secret — a highly lucrative business based on internet phone pornography lines that has been exposed in a Supreme Court judgment against the nation's second-biggest telecommunications company

01 December 2004

The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) is stepping up its anti-spam campaign by deploying forensic technology to collect and examine suspect e-mails to obtain evidence that may be used in court action against spammers. The ACA — which administers Australia's anti-spam legislation — has signed an agreement to extend use of Australian-developed forensic technology beyond a current closed trial with Pacific Internet to an open trial with all of the Internet service provider's 20,000-odd users. If the one-month trial is successful, the ACA is expected to deploy the technology to the broader Australian public from early in 2005

The release of Band Aid's revamped version of the appalling Do They Know It's Christmas has put many charitable souls in a bit of a quandary. The fact is, you want to help the Sudanese refugees by supporting this excellent cause, but the single is, well, crap. Technically, this is known as the Band Aid Dilemma — a disturbing condition in which the natural instinct to help those less fortunate than yourself battles the primordial desire to avoid dreadful pop like the plague. There is a solution. Buy as many copies as you can afford. Destroy them in amusing ways, on camera. Send the pictures of to the Band Aid Dilemma

Sony is broadening support for the MP3 file format in its portable music player range. It will introduce a new hard drive-based MP3 player in December, and will offer software upgrades for earlier players with hard drive storage so they can play MP3s too

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