October 2005 Archive

31 October 2005

Oracle intends to release a free version of its database, a reaction to the growing competitive pressure from low-end open-source databases. Oracle 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE), which will be generally available by the end of the year. It is targeted at students, small organisations and software vendors that could embed the Oracle database with an application. The new low-end edition is aimed squarely at free and open-source alternatives to Oracle's namesake database

Dresden's rebuilt Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, was consecrated on Sunday sixty years after it was destroyed by Allied bombs in World War Two. The painstakingly restored baroque church and its spectacular dome, originally built in 1743, is a symbol both of the wartime suffering of German civilians and of reconciliation between former enemies. The service of consecration was the culmination of an 11-year, 180 million euro (A$290 million) project that saw the church reborn after lying in ruins for almost half a century

Just in time for everyone's Halloween fantasy, a horde of undead minions to collect candy for you; How Stuff Works has just put up a new article about How Zombies Work. From Haitian zombies, to Dawn of the Dead it's more fun with corpses than you've ever had, hopefully. It happens in just about every zombie movie — a throng of reanimated corpses lumbers toward the farmhouse, shopping mall, pub or army base where the heroes have barricaded themselves. The zombies aren't dead, but they should be. They're relentless and oblivious to pain, and they continue to attack even after losing limbs. Usually, anyone the zombies kill returns as a zombie, so they quickly evolve from a nuisance to a plague

30 October 2005

It sounds like an open-and-shut-case. A clear DNA match is made between semen from a serious sexual assault and a blood sample from a man known to police. But he did not commit the assault. Years earlier he had received a bone marrow transplant from the real perpetrator, and in doing so, inherited some of his DNA. Cases such as this are rare, but as forensic DNA databases grow and more people undergo bone marrow transplants, the risk of a miscarriage of justice increases

According to research done by Dr Stephen O'Brien, a mutated gene known as delta 32 found in Black Death survivor descendants, stops HIV in its tracks. In order to be immune both parents have to have the delta 32 gene. In 1996, research showed that delta 32 prevents HIV from entering human cells and infecting the body. O'Brien thought this principle could be applied to the plague bacteria, which affects the body in a similar manner. To determine whether the Eyam plague survivors may have carried delta 32, O'Brien tested the DNA of their modern-day descendents

With iTunes selling a couple of popular TV shows now there has been significant hesitation from other television producers to follow suit and put their content on the Web. It has also sparked activity from the actors unions who want additional compensation for what appears online. But there is also existing content that stands to be revived in this new context, older television shows from the 50s and 60s that have been squeezed out of the traditional broadcast by popular shows of more recent vintage. It was suggested to a producer who is presently digitising 27 episodes of a 1950s show called Captain Zero to offer it up on iTunes for a dollar an episode. Purveyors of old radio programmes have enjoyed a significant revival by embracing web-based technology

29 October 2005

The NSA appears to be having its patent applications increasingly blocked by the Pentagon. The fact that the Pentagon is classifying things that the NSA believes should be public is an indication of how much secrecy has crept into government over the past few years

Austar has confirmed it will commence rollout of a broadband network, planning to have broadband in two regional markets by the first half of 2006, with 15 more areas online by the end of 2007

Taiwanese airline EVA has repainted one of its jets with giant Hello Kittys. The plane's interior features Hello Kitty-related items as well, ranging from boarding passes, baggage tags, dining utensils, and loo paper to attendant uniforms — via PopGadget

28 October 2005

Google is testing a database service that would put it into competition with one of its big advertisers: eBay. Blogs had buzzed with word of Google's motives after some internet users a day earlier found a test service called Google Base that handled online classified advertising. The site was later taken down. Google Base would allow people to list items wanted or offered for sale in an online-classified forum similar to those provided by eBay and Craigslist, according to feedback in blogs

A 93-year-old driver in St Petersburg, Florida hit and killed a pedestrian last week. Then, he drove three miles with the body hanging out of his windshield. After he was stopped by police, the driver apparently said that the body fell from the sky. Obviously, he was confused, police officer Mike Jockers said. Incredibly confused — via BoingBoing

A Hong Kong computer user was Monday convicted of copyright infringement in what is believed to be the world's first piracy case involving the use of BitTorrent software

27 October 2005

A new generation of spam has emerged lately in the form of automatically-created spam blogs, or splogs. One wily programmer manipulated Blogger's API to create a spamalanche of thousands of blogs whose sole purpose was to increase their real sites' pagerank. This clogged search engine results while filling RSS feed services with useless listings. Though Google, Blogger's owner, is doing its best to fix the problem, in the meantime several services have stopped listing any site they host. So far nobody has found a solution

Britain's Deputy PM has proposed a law that would allow local councils to move families into any building that had sat empty for a year or more, and to keep the buildings in use as council housing for seven years. Some depressed UK cities have tens of thousands of buildings sitting empty, used as shooting galleries or flophouses. The objective is to persuade owners in these circumstances to pass the responsibility for bringing the property back into housing use to the local authority. Of course, we want this to be with their consent, but where that consent is not forthcoming we do not apologise for granting local authorities powers to secure occupation without the need to obtain consent — via Boingboing

A unique system that can produce Hydrogen inside a car using common metals such as Magnesium and Aluminum was recently developed by an Israeli company. The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars. And it's completely emission free

26 October 2005

The computer industry is fast-tracking a system called e-mail authentication, which will attempt to do for e-mail what caller ID does for telephone calls

DeLaval, a 122-year-old dairy equipment company, has used embedded Linux in a robotic cow-milking system (the system is robotic, not the cows). The Voluntary Milking System allows cows to decide when to be milked, and gives dairy farmers a more independent lifestyle, free from regular milkings

Berkeley Lab researchers in the US have developed ultra-thin solar cells made entirely of inorganic nano-crystals. The team says it is the first time something like this has been accomplished, and hints that it is the first step towards cheap and efficient solar paneling

25 October 2005

After a number of false starts Apple has finally made its iTunes music download service available in Australia

The Taiwanese government has announced that it will violate patent laws to manufacture a drug that can help fight bird flu virus. In doing so, they have spelled out their reasoning very clearly: We have tried our best to negotiate with Roche, it means we have shown our goodwill to Roche and we appreciate their patent. But to protect our people is the utmost important thing

The likely eventual replacement of common light bulbs by LEDs may come quicker thanks to an accidental discovery announced this week. Michael Bowers, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, was just trying to make really small quantum dots, which are crystals generally only a few nanometers big... When you shine a light on quantum dots or apply electricity to them, they react by producing their own light, normally a bright, vibrant colour. But when Bowers shined a laser on his batch of dots, something unexpected happened. I was surprised when a white glow covered the table, Bowers said. The quantum dots were supposed to emit blue light, but instead they were giving off a beautiful white glow

24 October 2005

The Federal Opposition says it is concerned that a parent could be jailed for five years if they tell their partner their child is being held under the Government's proposed anti-terrorism legislation. While John Howard denies that his dodgy terrorism laws are unconstitutional and just like those in use in the UK, Australian-born human rights barrister Dr Angela Ward points out that the key difference in the laws lies in the fact that the UK terrorism legislation is subject to review against its Human Rights Act

A working reconstruction of an ancient Greek computer, the Antikythera mechanism, which was found at the bottom of the ocean in 1900 has been unveiled and is on display at the Technopolis museum, in Athens. The device is believed to have been used to calculate the positions of various celestial bodies including the sun and the moon on any given date. While some guesswork was required in the reconstruction, the bulk of the design is based on updated X-ray photographs of the device

The US Navy is flouting federal law by conducting sonar training exercises like the 2003 incident in the San Juan Islands that spooked orcas and may have killed porpoises, environmentalists charged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups said they have been trying for years to get the Navy to talk about ways to decrease harm to marine mammals and other sea life, but the service has refused to deal with the issue head-on

23 October 2005

A recently foiled botnet operation, controlled by a crime ring, has turned out to have put about 1.5 million computers and servers under its control, the largest botnet ever detected, 15 times larger that police initially thought

Ryuji Sakamoto was so enraged by Takayuki Niimi's failure to address him with an honorific that he stabbed the man to death with an umbrella. It was the second killing with an umbrella in Japan in less than a month — via Laridian

22 October 2005

E Ink has just announced a breakthrough in flexible electronic paper displays. The new display which has a 100dpi resolution and is only 300 microns thick has the potential of truely changing the way we read our information

A new species of marine worm that lives off whale bones on the sea floor has been described by scientists. The creature was found on a minke carcass in relatively shallow water close to Tjarno Marine Laboratory on the Swedish coast. Such zombie worms, as they are often called, are known from the deep waters of the Pacific but their presence in the North Sea is a major surprise. The new species has been named Osedax mucofloris, which literally means bone-eating snot-flower — via The Register

21 October 2005

The CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, has announced a strategic development agreement with SkyBuilt Power. The CIA seems to be interested in SkyBuilt's new Mobile Power Station, which can be parachuted into remote locations and be up and running in a few hours with only two people needed to set it up. The MPS harnesses both solar and wind power and is capable of up to 150 kilowatts of electricity. The devices uses off-the-shelf components and easily swappable parts to be cost-effective

A cunning rat released on a deserted island off New Zealand to find out why rats are so difficult to eradicate, outsmarted scientists and evaded traps, baits and sniffer dogs before being captured four months later on a neighbouring island

Promession is a process where corpses are freeze-dried, shaken into a powder, and then put in a biodegradable coffin. Developed in Sweden, the process was apparently created as a response to limited burial space and to reduce the pollution emitted from burning dental fillings during traditional cremation — via Boingboing

20 October 2005

After more than a year of speculation and false starts, Apple is finally expected to announce the iTunes Australia music store on Tuesday

It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn't. The pages coming out of your colour printer may contain hidden information that could be used to track you down if you ever cross the US government

15 years ago today, Col Needham posted some shell scripts to rec.arts.movies which allowed anyone to search lists of actors, actresses, directors, and biographies. From this humble beginning — which predates Yahoo, Google, and even the web itself — the IMDb has wrangled the collective wisdom of millions of submitters to become not only a top 100 web site but also a standard hollywood tool for film making. IMDb is celebrating with a retrospective of the last 15 years of IMDb and movies

19 October 2005

Many of us remember the scene from Star Trek IV where Scotty barters the formula for transparent aluminium for a small run. It now appears that we can now add transparent aluminium to the science fact column

Sweeping new anti-terror laws include a plan to jail people for up to seven years for promoting feelings of ill will or hostility between different groups that would threaten the peace

Britain's spy agency the Secret Intelligence Service, known popularly as MI6, has opened its first web site. While much about the agency is still not public, the web site has information on service history and career opportunities for would-be spies. This rare peek at the real group popularised by the James Bond series brought over 3.5 million visits in its first few opening hours

18 October 2005

OpenOffice.org had hoped to celebrate its fifth birthday today by launching the next generation of its office software suite, but a glitch has delayed release of the product for one week

Mounir Laroussi, a researcher at Old Dominion University has invented a hand-held device that is dubbed a plasma pencil. The pencil generates a cold plasma, which can be used to kill germs that contaminate surfaces, infect wounds and rot your teeth. In the future, it might be used to destroy tumours without damaging surrounding tissue. When he turns the pencil on, it blows a high pitched whistle as a glowing, blue-violet beam about 50mm long instantly appears at one end. Stick your finger in its path and you only feel a cool breeze, but the beam is powerful enough to blast apart bacteria that's crawling on your skin

A German architect has filed an application for a new type of cement made of dog poo. Friedrich Lentze, 57, from Berlin, applied for a patent for his odourless heating and building material made from the dog poo cleaned from the streets of the German capital every day. Dung has for centuries been used as building material and he had combined it with modern materials to come up with a new type of insulating cement — via Warren Ellis

17 October 2005

The BBC has commissioned the Doctor Who scriptwriter Russell T Davies to make an adult spin-off of its most famous sci-fi show. The new programme will be called Torchwood (an anagram of Doctor Who) and will follow a crack team investigating alien activities and crime in modern-day Britain. It will feature in its starring role John Barrowman, who played Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and who will play the same character in Torchwood

A one-celled creature found on a sandy beach may be in the process of kidnapping and incorporating an even tinier plant to use as a living energy source. They said the newly discovered organism seems to be in the process of endosymbiosis — in which one creature incorporates another, creating a new form of life

The remains of the world's oldest noodles have been unearthed in China. The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood. Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old. The discovery goes a long way to settling the old argument over who first created the string-like food

16 October 2005

A Chicago Tribune obit for a veteran called Theodore Roosevelt Heller contains the best admonition to mourners I've ever seen: In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans — via Boingboing

The people of Belgium have been left reeling by the first adult-only episode of the Smurfs, in which the blue-skinned cartoon characters' village is annihilated by warplanes. The short but chilling film is the work of Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund. The short film pulls no punches. It opens with the Smurfs dancing, hand-in-hand, around a campfire and singing the Smurf song. Bluebirds flutter past and rabbits gambol around their familiar village of mushroom-shaped houses until, without warning, bombs begin to rain from the sky. Tiny Smurfs scatter and run in vain from the whistling bombs, before being felled by blast waves and fiery explosions. The final scene shows a scorched and tattered Baby Smurf sobbing inconsolably, surrounded by prone Smurfs. The final frame bears the message: Don't let war affect the lives of children

15 October 2005

Authorities in Queensland, Australia are investigating a Brisbane pathology lab employee who allegedly stole bits of brains from corpses. Apparently, the hormones found in the pituitary glands that he reportedly nicked can be injected into race horses as a stimulant — via Boingboing

Scientific understanding of what makes a flea jump and what makes a fruit fly tick has led to the creation of a new rubber-like material. Scientists in Queensland have developed a polymer-based on an elastic protein called resilin, which may eventually have medical and industrial applications. It is the first time the substance has been reproduced in a laboratory and it is hoped it could one day be used to replace spinal discs in people

14 October 2005

Dutch police has nabbed three men, aged 19, 22 and 27, who used the toxbot trojan to create a botnet of over 100,000 machines. The trio conducted a DDoS attack against an unnamed US company in an extortion attempt, as well as using phishing tactics to hijack PayPal and eBay accounts

Black magic may have driven a Cambodian couple, Chheng Chhorn, 46, and Srun Yoeung, 37, to attack their 12-year-old child before dawn on Thursday while she was still asleep, biting off her thumb nails and a small part of her nose to drink her blood, said Keo Norea Phy, a police official in Kampong Cham province where the incident occurred — via Warren Ellis

A Chinese man who raised bears to tap them for their bile, prized as a traditional medicine in Asia, has been killed and eaten by his animals

13 October 2005

Apple has unveiled its long-rumoured video iPod, as well as a new iMac and an updated version of iTunes that lets users buy music videos, TV shows and movies

A startup called Splashpower hopes to be able to wirelessly recharge all of our handheld devices. They have a working prototype that already recharges an iPod Mini and a cell phone. Now we can look forward to yet another way to get brain cancer — via Slashdot

Google produced a Cheat Sheet to help people use the various operators and commands, such as ~ and site:. This has inspired Nancy Blachman, author of the independent Google Guide, to create an Advanced Operators Cheat Sheet — via Onlineblog

12 October 2005

A Melbourne man believes he has proof that a long-standing myth about the existence of big cats in the Victorian countryside is true. Kurt Engel of Noble Park shot dead what is believed to be a black puma near Sale in East Gippsland in June. Experts are conducting tests to confirm the identity of the big cat. Interesting that he kept quiet about it for so long and only has a dogy photograph and a tail as his supposed evidence

The Bush administration pledged to veto legislation banning the torture of prisoners by US troops after an overwhelming and almost unprecedented revolt by loyalist congressmen. The mutiny was the latest setback for an administration facing an increasingly independent and bloody-minded legislature. But it also marked a key moment in Congress's campaign to curtail the huge powers it has granted the White House since 2001 in its war against terrorism

11 October 2005

Aardman Animations, the company behind Wallace and Gromit, has lost 30 years of its history after its Victorian warehouse in Bristol went up in flames

The retarded monkey boy has claimed he was told by god to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians. The President made the assertion during his first meeting with Palestinian leaders in June 2003, according to a BBC series which will be broadcast this month

Fairtrade coffee, which up to now has mostly been marketed by small groups trying to give impoverished farmers a bigger cut of the pie than food giants like Nestle, lands in British supermarkets with a Nestle brand in two weeks' time

A great white shark has astounded scientists by swimming from South Africa to Australia and back in a journey that sheds new light on the murky world of the ocean's most feared predator

10 October 2005

The British Library has made available 14 great books on its web site. One of them is a 1508 notebook by Leonardo Da Vinci containing short treatises, notes and drawings of a wide range of subjects from mechanics to the moon. The site allows you to view the original manuscript written in Leonardo's own handwriting

Mark Latham's offer of $800 million compensation to Tasmania to protect Tasmania's old growth forests was trumped by a secret $4 million to a forestry union outfit 3 days before the last election

Micro-organisms commonly found floating in oceans might someday be reborn as components in incredibly complex computer circuits. The single-celled algae, called diatoms, live in water and assemble a shell, or frustule, of silica by converting nutrients and light. They can adopt an incredible diversity of shapes — from simple geometric structures like triangles and squares to extremely complex 3D constructs with thousands of individual pores

A village council in eastern India has fined two brothers for keeping a pet ghost. Iswar and Haripada Murmu, of Akshaypur in West Bengal, were accused of owning a ghost after one of their wives died. An exorcist summoned by villagers claimed the brothers' pet ghost was responsible for a recent outbreak of disease in the locality. Village elders said they were bringing evil to the village and fined them the equivalent of £360 — via Warren Ellis

09 October 2005

Cultural monopolists desperately want us to believe that without copyright we would have no artistic creations and therefore no entertainment. That is nonsense. We would have more, and more diverse ones. A world without copyright is easy to imagine. The level playing field of cultural production — a market accessible for everyone — would once again be restored. A world without copyright would offer the guarantee of a good income to many artists, and would protect the public domain of knowledge and creativity. And members of the public would get what they are entitled to: a surprisingly rich and varied menu of artistic alternatives

A decades-long mystery surrounding the rumoured existence of a Maya city has reportedly ended with the discovery of the city in the jungles of Guatemala

08 October 2005

The Ig Nobel awards for 2005 were presented at Harvard University Agricultural History: James Watson of Massey University, New Zealand, for his scholarly study, The Significance of Mr Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers Physics: John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland, Australia, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927 — in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years Medicine: Gregg A Miller of Oak Grove, Missouri, for inventing Neuticles — artificial replacement testicles for dogs, which are available in three sizes, and three degrees of firmness Literature: The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters — General Sani Abacha, Mrs Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq, and others — each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them Peace: Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University, in the UK, for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie Star Wars Economics: Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people do get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday Chemistry: Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, for conducting a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water? Biology: Benjamin Smith of the University of Adelaide, Australia and the University of Toronto, Canada and the Firmenich perfume company, Geneva, Switzerland, and ChemComm Enterprises, Archamps, France; Craig Williams of James Cook University and the University of South Australia; Michael Tyler of the University of Adelaide; Brian Williams of the University of Adelaide; and Yoji Hayasaka of the Australian Wine Research Institute; for painstakingly smelling and cataloguing the peculiar odours produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed Nutrition: Dr Yoshiro Nakamats of Tokyo, Japan, for photographing and retrospectively analysing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting) Fluid Dynamics: Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University Bremen, Germany and the University of Oulu, Finland; and Jozsef Gal of Loránd Eötvös University, Hungary, for using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin, as detailed in their report Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh — Calculations on Avian Defaecation

The High Court of Australia has unanimously ruled that mod-chips are legal, but the implications of the case for game manufacturers are not clear

07 October 2005

A major international trial has confirmed the effectiveness of a cervical cancer vaccine developed in Australia. The vaccine was created by Professor Ian Frazer, who is from Brisbane's Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research. Trials on 12,000 women from 13 countries, which have been sponsored by US drug company Merck, show the treatment is 100 per cent effective in preventing the most common form of cervical cancer. It would be much more impressive if the research hadn't been tainted by the stench of PharmaCorp involvement

University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists say they are developing a new lithium battery technology capable of making batteries smaller, last longer and, soon, accept a charge from outside the body without the need for surgery. These organosilicon batteries are projected to power tiny implantable devices for more than 12 years

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant by means other than sexual intercourse. According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilisation, sperm donation, and egg donation, must first file for a petition for parentage in their local county probate court — via JetAmI

Senator Christine Milne gave a interesting adjournment speech about the culture of fear, intimidation and menace that currently exists in Tasmania as a means of maintaining the power of the forest industry in Tasmania, particularly by Gunns Ltd which, in fact, has become the de facto government of Tasmania and the puppet-master of the Labor Lennon government. She specifically talks about how their conniving screwed over a young journalist, Wes Young

06 October 2005

The retarded monkey boy has asked Congress to consider giving him powers to use the military to enforce quarantines in case of an avian influenza epidemic. He said the military, and perhaps the National Guard, might be needed to take such a role if the feared H5N1 bird flu virus changes enough to cause widespread human infection

SpreadFirefox, the community marketing site for the Mozilla Foundation's open-source browser Firefox has been hacked, just months after a similar breach occurred — via Kramut Kennels

Sony has an odd response to complaints from fans who have discovered they cannot import their CD content to an iPod. Individuals who complain to Sony BMG about iPod incompatibility are being directed to a web site that provides information on how to work around the technology. In short, some labels appear to have been instructing customers how to defeat DRM — which is a violation of DMCA

05 October 2005

Ronnie Barker, who became one of the country's most popular entertainers through appearances in The Two Ronnies, Open All Hours and Porridge, has died aged 76 after a long period of heart trouble

The Pentagon approved more than $2 billion in possible weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, including combat vehicles, aircraft parts and battlefield communications systems. The Defence Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of three potential deals. It said the sales would help the US by contributing to the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East

Google today continues its march toward dominating computer desktops. Google is teaming with Sun in what Sun called a collaborative effort

04 October 2005

Two Australian scientists, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall, have been awarded the Nobel prize for medicine for their discovery that stomach ulcers can be caused by a bacterial infection. Thanks to their work these ulcers are often no longer a long-term, frequently disabling problem. They can now be cured with a short-term course of drugs and antibiotics

The Australian Medical Association is backing calls for the Federal Government to consider making a drug used as an alternative to surgical abortion more readily available. The Australian Democrats are seeking to overturn a government decision to ban the use of the drug

The tenth planet in the solar system has a moon at least a tenth of its size. The discovery will allow astronomers to pin down the mass of both objects. The planet was nicknamed Xena after the television warrior princess, and the moon has been dubbed Gabrielle, after the princess's companion

03 October 2005

Centrelink has barred staff from accessing a union web site as the agency's 25,000 workers in Victoria today start three weeks of rolling national stoppages. The Community and Public Sector Union claims the agency blocked access to its web site on Friday just as it started an online survey on the latest wage offer

It appears that the Hollywood monkeys have finally realised what the rest of us have known for years. Poor box office receipts over the summer weren't caused by surging fuel costs, changes in audience preferences, or anything else. They were caused by mind-numbingly bad movies

After seven years of production, Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning, the Finnish Star Trek / Babylon 5 parody movie, was finally released on DVD a month ago and is now available for download. In spite of its practically zero budget, the film has a hilariously captivating story, top notch CGI and even a couple of performances from professional actors

02 October 2005

MIT is showing off a prototype of a $100 laptop. It uses a 500MHz AMD processor, stores everything on flash memory, and runs Linux. The AC adapter acts as the carrying strap, and there is a hand crank so if you can't find a source of electricity you can charge it kinetically. The prototype laptop is also much more flexible and durable than your average notebook. In addition the unit has a screen that has a special daylight-friendly black and white mode that makes a great ebook

BitTorrent just got a massive infusion of cash from venture capital firm DCM Doll. Neither BitTorrent nor DCM have publicly stated how a legitimate service would work, but industry insiders have been busy speculating on how the distributed peer-to-peer service could help movie studios and filmmakers make for-pay content available

Leon Holliman Jr of Jacksonville, Florida was reported missing from the River Region Human Services facility last month. On Sunday, he was found in North Carolina dressed like a doctor and driving a stolen ambulance with a dead deer in the back. The police had to shoot out the ambulance's tyres to catch him. He's now undergoing psychiatric evaluation — via BoingBoing

01 October 2005

New Scientist has found a patent for a microphone that clips on your tooth, meaning you can stay in radio contact even the noisiest situations — like warzones. You use your tongue to flip it on and off

British palaeontologist, Dr David Penney from the University of Manchester, has revealed he has discovered a prehistoric spider preserved in amber, possibly meaning its DNA could be extracted — just as in the film Jurassic Park. The spider, four centimetres long by two centimetres wide, was trapped in resin 20 million years ago but has been perfectly preserved. It is believed to be the first time spider blood has been discovered in amber and could lead to its DNA being extracted

A new research report suggests that those who download music online are also likely to cheat at schools/universities and to shoplift. Not only does music file-swapping harm artists, but it also points to an erosion of respect for intellectual property that threatens Canada's economy and values at the core of our society, said Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, which commissioned the polls. I'm sure paying for your own research project makes for wonderfully objective data

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