November 2005 Archive

30 November 2005

Holographic Versatile Discs (HVDs) have been in the works for some time now by various companies, including InPhase Technologies (formerly part of Lucent) and Japan's Optware. InPhase's HVDs, scheduled for release in 2006, are said to hold 300GB of data, 60 times that of a conventional DVD with only a slight increase in size. That translates to more than a day's worth of HD-quality video. Not to mention the drives themselves can read and write at ten times the speed a normal DVD drive. One of InPhase's partners in HVD research, Maxell, is working towards even more storage on a 1.6TB disc

A highly dexterous, bio-inspired artificial hand and sensory system that could provide patients with active feeling, is being developed by a European project called cyberhand. The final prototype includes sensors for tension, force, joint angle, end stroke and contact

29 November 2005

Delays in securing local council approvals have pushed back the planned launch of a trial of a new fibre to the home service in Tasmania by almost four months

Google is testing a service to get advertisers and consumers talking on the phone. The system works by putting a phone icon next to some search results. Clicking on the graphic lets you enter your phone number — Google will then connect you, for free, to the advertiser. Your phone will ring and when you pick it up you will hear it ringing at the advertiser's office. The advertiser won't get your phone number — Google keeps that encrypted

28 November 2005

Google doesn't like to do things traditionally. Right from their IPO, when they dumped Goldman Sachs for secretly trying to deal with their big investor, Kleiner Perkins. Business Week covers the Google Caste System: in which business types are second-class citizens to Google's valued code jockeys... They deem the corporate development team as underpowered in the company, with engineers and product managers tending to carry more clout than salesmen and dealmakers. At last a company is shouting at the top of it's voice, engineers make the world — via Slashdot

Junk-food vending machines would be banned in Victorian schools under State Government plans to tackle childhood obesity. This comes as health groups continue to pressure the Government into banning fatty foods at school canteens

27 November 2005

Google commissioned a research on the amount of dead time spent by passengers at airports. An average airline passenger spends over 9 hours a year waiting for flights. On the basis of the survey, Google launched Google Space at London's Heathrow Terminal One, it is scheduled to run until 17 December. Google Space is a laboratory with Google pods, which travelers can access free-of-cost, log onto the Internet, check their mail, and find out more about their destination using Google tools

The federal government wants to peer into your computer communications, forcing companies to design, or redesign, their networks to accommodate surveillance. The FCC gave broadband Internet service and voice-over-Internet Protocol services 18 months to ensure that their networks are wiretap-ready — via digg

26 November 2005

Microsoft asked for references to free software to be removed from a document presented at last week's UN World Summit on the Information Society conference, the software giant admitted on Friday. The Free Software Foundation Europe is unhappy that the document was changed and claims that even though it was on the panel discussing the document, it was not made aware of Microsoft's changes. The document [PDF], known as the Vienna Conclusions, discusses issues around IT and creativity. The original draft of the document discussed how the free software model is changing the way people do business

The recording industry is trying to hijack the EU's data retention directive, which is being brought in to fight terrorism, to try and get their copyright battles fought for them. The EU may be making copyright infringement a criminal offence, and the Creative Media Business Alliance is lobbying hard to stop the European laws on data retention being restricted to cover terrorism and organised crime. In essence, they want to be able to get police to search through newly extended records from ISPs to look for evidence of illegal filesharing. In the words of the executive director of the Open Rights Group, the music industry's attempt to hijack this legislation is a travesty and a gross affront to civil liberties and human rights

25 November 2005

The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is to host the world's largest WLAN. The wireless mesh network will cover the entire country. Within a year more than 90 per cent of the population will be able to go online and make telephone calls via the WLAN from their home

Telstra's recently-announced plans to extend fibre-optic cables to street-side cabinets in order to provide faster ADSL services could be the kickstart broadband over powerline technology needs in Australia

A New Scientist investigation has revealed that finding gunshot residue on a suspect doesn't necessarily mean they fired a gun. Gunshot residue analysis is used by forensic scientists around the world. It is based on identifying combinations of heavy metals in microscopic particles that are formed when the primer in a cartridge ignites. However, recent research shows that someone who has never fired a gun can be contaminated by someone who has. What is more, it is even possible to pick up incriminating particles from entirely innocent sources

24 November 2005

The census will take its first step into cyberspace next year, in a move the Australian Bureau of Statistics says is the future of the national head count

The science fiction spoof Star Wreck: in the Pirkinning has become Finland's most viewed movie. Relying on free distribution over the Internet to reach more than 3 million viewers in less than two months

Microsoft is proposing extending the popular RSS 2.0 Web syndication format to make it multidirectional, allowing it to be used for synchronizing information such as contacts and calendar entries across different applications

23 November 2005

The web monkeys at Domain have added an interesting new property with some innovative features: Recently renovated, then remodeled again by specialist tunnel engineers, Views to China and back, Easy access to the tunnel and freeway, Icon of the northern beaches, Free flowing air ducts, Building manager (several) on site, High fences for extra security, Floating floorboards (inc floating bedroom), Entertainment room flowing onto 10 metre concrete balcony, 360 degree views (down), 1000 cubic metres of high grade quick drying concrete (ideal for a future pool or decking) and huge underground storage room — via lucie

Faced with increasing pressure from the public and private sector regarding long-term access to information, Microsoft is pushing its Office file formats toward international standardisation

Distributed computing experiment SETI@home will be switched off on 15 December as it becomes part of the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). The BOINC site will allow boffins to build other volunteer computing projects in areas like molecular biology, high-energy physics, and climate change study — via digg

22 November 2005

For the first time, a genetically modified plant has been shown to  cause inflammation in animals — the 10-year project to develop pest-resistant peas is dropped

A compact welding torch enhancement and a novel power supply have made some cracks in the age-old problem of how to weld in magnetic fields. A team of researchers from CSIRO has come up with a superior welding system that should also improve worker safety and save time, energy and money

The Austrian town of Rattenberg, a ten minute walk from sunlight during the winter, plans to install a mirror on a mountain to redirect sunlight towards the town. The town was built in the winter shadow of Rat Mountain. The plan is to place heliostat mirrors to shine light in several locations around town, where villagers could congregate and get sunned up. The EU is ponying up half the $2.4 million costs. The company installing the mirrors, Bartenbach Lichtlabor GmbH, is contributing $600,000, and hopes other communities will use their technology

21 November 2005

There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data centre. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fibre, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid. While Google could put these containers anywhere, it makes the most sense to place them at Internet peering points, of which there are about 300 worldwide

The case for identity cards has been branded bogus after an ex-MI5 chief said they might not help fight terror. Dame Stella Rimington has said most documents could be forged and this would render ID cards useless. The Conservatives said her comments showed the cards could be counter-productive. The Lib Dems said plans should be abandoned — via Boing Boing

Chemical burns, ruined clothes, eleven years, half a million dollars — it's not easy to improve the world's most popular toy. Yet the success of Tim Kehoe's quest to dye a simple soap bubble may change the way the world uses colour

20 November 2005

The United States will start regular bomber aircraft training in northern Australia in the new year. At the annual ministerial talks between the US and Australia it was announced that the strategic bomber training program would involve B-52 and B-1 bombers and the B-2 stealth aircraft

A British cyber conman who used the online nickname weaselboy was convicted of running a £1.6 million e-mail scam from a bedroom in his father's house. Computer whizz-kid Peter Francis-Macrae was found guilty by a jury of fraudulent trading and concealing criminal property through his dealings selling internet and e-mail domain names when he had no right. The 23-year-old was also convicted of threatening to destroy or damage property, making threats to kill, and one count of blackmail

A new species of wooly lemur has been named in honour of John Cleese in recognition of his work to protect lemurs in general. The avahi cleesei, which weights less than two pounds and eats leaves, was discovered in Western Madagascar in 1990 by a team led by anthropologist Urs Thalmann and his colleague Thomas Geissman of Zurich University

19 November 2005

Steve Jobs offered Mac OS X free of charge to the $100 laptop effort by the One Laptop Per Child project. However, his offer was declined because the project was looking for a 100% open source solution. The laptops will now be running on Red Hat Linux on AMD chips

Greens Health spokesperson Senator Kerry Nettle said that Tony Abbott had failed as Health Minister by prioritising his own loony fundie views above his responsibility as Health Minster to ensure that all women in Australia have access to the full range of reproductive health services. Mr Abbott's decision to deny Australian women access to RU486 is a dereliction of his duty especially to women in rural and regional Australia, said Senator Nettle

A group of investment firms is putting their shareholder weight behind asking high-tech companies that deal with repressive regimes to pay more attention to rights violations

18 November 2005

Scientists caught eleven fish off the coast of Southern California that have ovary tissue in their testes. Usually, mutant fish like this are only found in freshwater that has been tainted with pollution from industrial facilities — via Boing Boing

AOL is diving deeper in the TV business, announcing that it will begin distributing episodes of more than 300 television series starting in January. The episodes will be available at AOL.com's new In2TV broadband network, and they will be free. Yes, that's right, free, with very limited advertising. Among the initial offerings are shows from the Warner Bros. library, currently out of syndication, such as Welcome Back Kotter and Wonder Woman and the cult favorite La Femme Nikita

Boingboing has a great roundup of Sony's blustering and arrogance in the face of the backlash against their campaign of technological terrorism — Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V

17 November 2005

The Brazilian man shot dead by police in the mistaken belief that he was a suicide bomber was killed with a type of bullet banned in warfare under international convention. The firing of hollow point ammunition into the head of Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, is believed to be the first use of the bullets by British police

A team at CSIRO Manufacturing and Infrastructure Technology has developed a small device that can extract enough hydrogen per day from water to power a family car for up to 150kms

16 November 2005

Spanish police have traced up to 42 suspected CIA operatives believed to have taken part in secret flights carrying detained or kidnapped Islamist terror suspects to interrogation centres and jails in Afghanistan, Egypt and elsewhere

Sony BMG has decided to stop making CDs with technology designed to protect its music against illegal copying treat all its customers like thieves that, in reality, have been compromising the security of PCs

The US Army is developing a new chewing gum to help soldiers fight dental problems in the field. The gum takes the place of brushing teeth, which the soldier in a combat situation might not have time or means to do

15 November 2005

Fungi native to East Africa could be used as a new tool in the fight against malaria. An international team of scientists from the Netherlands, Tanzania and the UK say their technique could significantly reduce malaria cases. When fungi infect certain insects, including malaria-carrying mosquitoes, they grow and quickly kill the animal

Scientists have genetically modified bacteria living in the human body to produce chemicals that block HIV infection. Most HIV transmission occurs on the surfaces of the gut and reproductive areas which are normally coated with a layer of bacteria. The researchers modified one of these bacteria — a form of E.coli — so that it began to secrete proteins that block HIV from infecting its target cells — via Warren Ellis

A US Court has shut down three companies for secretly bundling spyware. The assets of Enternet Media and Conspy, based in California, and Iwebtunes, based in Ohio, have been frozen pending further court action. The court also ordered all three firms to halt downloads of the software

14 November 2005

Forbes has a free service that lets you send an e-mail to yourself and have it arrive in 1, 3, 5, 10 or 20 years. FutureMe has a similiar service, but does it better — via Boing Boing

A study at MIT has found that aluminium foil headwear — Among a fringe community of paranoids... the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals — actually amplifies certain frequency bands allocated to the US government, as well as a mobile phone range, and is largely ineffective through the rest of the radio spectrum

You might think it would be difficult for a terrorist to obtain genes from the smallpox virus, or a similarly vicious pathogen. Well, it's not. Armed with a fake email address, a would-be terrorist could probably order the building blocks of a deadly biological weapon online, and receive them by post within weeks

13 November 2005

Big guns in the software industry are massing behind OpenDocument as government customers show more interest in open-source alternatives to Microsoft's desktop software. IBM and Sun recently convened a meeting in New York to discuss how to boost adoption of the standardised document format for office applications. The ODF Summit brought together representatives from a handful of industry groups and from at least 13 technology companies, including Oracle, Google and Novell

Sony BMG has been hit with a class-action lawsuit by consumers claiming their computers have been harmed by anti-piracy software on music CDs

The Earth just got one step closer to true global broadband through satellite based communications. With the launch of the Zenit-3SL rocket the Inmarsat-4 F2 satellite brings 3G high speed mobile technology to North America. Their onboard technology is designed to allow people to set up virtual offices anywhere around the world via high-speed broadband connections and new 3G phone technology

12 November 2005

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has suffered his first parliamentary defeat during his eight years in power as MPs voted down a core aspect of his anti-terrorist legislation

The crew of a luxury cruise ship used a sonic weapon that blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam while being attacked by a gang of pirates off Somalia. The Seabourn Spirit had a Long Range Acoustic Device installed as a part of its defence systems

CBS and NBC have announced deals to offer replays of prime-time programmes for 99 cents per episode, shifting television toward a sales model that gained popularity with downloaded music. But the shows will only be available over Comcast on Demand, not for download

11 November 2005

A man who decapitated 17-year-old Morgan Jay Shepherd with a tomahawk in a suburban back yard later was said to have played with the teenager's head, rolling it in a paddock as if it were a bowling ball. Christopher Clark Jones, 22, told detectives in the interview recorded in April that his co-accused, James Patrick Roughan, 25, stomped on Shepherd's head several times before stabbing him with a kitchen knife, then decapitating him. We'd all had quite a bit to drink, he said — Warren Ellis

The Department of Immigration confirmed that it has not monitored the $1 per hour labour market operating in privatised detention centres, while the contract holder Global Solutions Limited expects to make a profit of $6 million this year

A South African woman was killed by hundreds of thousands of enraged bees after her vehicle hit an electricity substation in Johannesburg that contained their hive ‚ via Boing Boing

10 November 2005

Grokster has agreed to shut down its service under a settlement with the RIAA

Sony is likely to abandon its practice of region coding games for its PlayStation 3 console. Sony's current crop of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles contains technology that blocks the use of illegal copied games. It also prevents the use of game and DVD discs that have been region coded for other markets. However, Sony Computer Entertainment Australia managing director, Michael Ephraim, said the company was unlikely to continue the policy as international television standards emerge

09 November 2005

The nation's third-largest ISP has stopped accepting ADSL customers in regional areas in protest over claims of unrealistic pricing by Telstra

A Trojan horse discovered on Tuesday includes a fully working — but pirate — copy of an anti-virus application called ExoVirusStop by exoSyphen Studios. Mobile phone malware is often disguised as a security application in order to dupe the user into installing it. However, the latest version of Doomboot, which attacks the Symbian platform, is the first to contain a fully working copy of an anti-virus application

08 November 2005

Physicists at the Australian National University have successfully used bright lasers to prevent transmitted data from being hacked. Their breakthrough was based on work done by Einstein and his colleagues in 1935 who uncovered a phenomenon known as entanglement, a theory which described the way particles of energy interacted predictably with each other

Five ISPs have been recruited by the government to hunt down virus-infected computers used to send spam or launch DDoS attacks from Australia

There is a draft proposal for law in Westchester County in New York state that would outlaw unsecured wi-fi connections. Public internet access would require a network gateway server with a firewall and also require home/business office users to install firewalls to protect personal info, even if their connection is encrypted. Violations would carry fines of $250-$500

07 November 2005

Tony Abbott, Federal Health Minister and professional loony fundie, has announced $300,000 worth of funding for three lunatic fringe pro-life organisations providing counselling services for women with unintended pregnancies. The Australian Federation of Pregnancy Support Services, The Caroline Chisolm Society and the Foundation for Human Development will receive $100,000 each. Greens Senator Kerry Nettle says the groups are biased, religious organisations and will not refer a woman for an abortion, even if that is what she has asked for

Carnegie Mellon University is fighting back against a requirement that taps on campus internet access must be quickly obtainable. The technology that would allow the FBI to monitor internet access, after a court order, at the flip of a switch would cost at least $450 per student

Federal prosecutors have indicted a 20-year-old California man for installing adware on 400,000 Windows machines he compromised with a variant of RxBot. Jeanson Ancheta allegedly pulled in $60,000 in affiliate fees from porn pop-up company Gammacash, and 180solutions subsidiary ZangoCash. The feds hope to seize his BMW.

06 November 2005

Sony has issued a patch to purportedly kill the rootkit, in which they lie about the danger it posed. But it seems that the patch does not remove the rootkit, it just gets rid of the $sys$ cloaking. A lot of the chatter about the Sony rootkit has been about other malware authors using files/processes/reg keys starting $sys$, which would then be invisible on machines with the Sony rootkit installed. It might be worth checking to see if you own any of the corrupted CDs — via Boing Boing

As Google put thousands of public domain books online Thursday, Amazon.com responded by announcing plans to allow people to read books on the Web. Meanwhile, Random House, the world's largest publisher of trade books, said it had come up with a business model for allowing people to pay to view its books on the Internet

05 November 2005

The Online Freedom of Speech Act was defeated in the House of Representatives yesterday. The Act would have immunised political bloggers from having to comply with hundreds of pages of FEC rules

A number of mobile phones and SIM cards were seized during a surprise search at Bang Kwang prison in Nonthaburi province. The search was part of the prison's attempts to prevent inmates from running illicit drug operations from behind prison walls. We have found a mobile phone hidden in food, in pork leg stew. SIM cards were found inside a dried squid. One was found stuffed inside a dead toad which was thrown over the prison wall — via Boing Boing

04 November 2005

Mark Russinovich was doing a routine test this week of computer security software he'd co-written, when he made a surprising discovery: Something new was hiding itself deep inside his PC's guts. A SonyBMG CD had used a sophisticated cloaking technique that involves a rootkit — something not dangerous in itself, but a tool often used by virus writers to hide all traces of their work on a computer

Oxford University student Kostydin Yankov, 19, died when he was sent flying through the air by a trebuchet and missed the safety net. He was part of an extreme sports club at the university — via Darren Barefoot

03 November 2005

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says a key national counter-terrorism body was not informed of the latest terrorism threat. Perhaps because the supposed threat is yet another fantasy from John Howard in his campaign to force his dodgy police state powers through the Senate with an unhealthy dose of fear attached. Mr Stanhope says the ACT was excluded from a telephone hook-up this week in which the matter was discussed by the Prime Minister and state premiers

Excavations at a hill site above the town of Visoko, just north of Sarajevo, have been going on for several months and initial analyses have confirmed the original claim that this is Europe's first pyramid and a monumental building, similar in dimensions to the Egyptian pyramids — via Unjournaled

The Hippo Water Roller is a simple tool for transporting water from water-holes to homes, an alternative to the traditional barrels-on-heads. The Hippo Water Roller is like a barrel with a handle that you push ahead of you like a steamroller's drum — via Boing Boing

02 November 2005

Jon Stanhope, Chief Minister of the ACT, had his web site hijacked. Stanhope was the brave soul who recently posted the Government's draft, but draconian, anti-terrorism legislation on his web site — via journoz

A worm found spreading via AIM is carrying a nastier punch than usual. The unnamed worm delivers a cocktail of unwanted software, including a so-called rootkit. A rootkit is a tool designed to go undetected by the security software used to lock down control of a computer after an initial hack

Google plans to hire programmers to improve OpenOffice.org, a demonstration of its affinity for open source initiatives and one the company believes also shows sound practical sense. Google believes it can help OpenOffice — perhaps working to pare down the software's memory requirements or its mammoth 80MB download size

01 November 2005

A subterranean bunker-city under a UK military base is for sale. The city is 100 hectares in area and has 100km of underground roads. It even includes a pub called the Rose and Crown. It was intended to house a Tory PM and 4,000 bureaucrats in the event of a nuclear attack. Already two uses are being considered: a massive data store for City firms or the biggest wine cellar in Europe. More outlandish ideas put forward include a nightclub for rave parties, a 1950s theme park or a reception centre for asylum seekers. The Ministry of Defence has ruled out any suggestion of using it to store nuclear waste or providing open public access because of the dangers that still lurk below — via Boing Boing

Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks say they have uncovered evidence supporting claims that the South Australian may have been the subject of organised torture by American troops. Hicks's father Terry has detailed allegations of physical and sexual abuse of his son by American soldiers

After more than a year in development, two Sydney-based developers have launched their online solution to the paper-based to-do list using advanced web development techniques. Dubbed Remember the Milk, it lets users create and manage tasks on the web, and even share lists with others. In addition, it's possible to send reminders via SMS, e-mail or instant message, and view the lists themselves via RSS

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