March 2006 Archive

31 March 2006

Movie studios want to punish legitimate customers for legally purchasing content, while the real pirates go right on stealing. ZDNet's George Ou writes: There seems to be a persistent myth floating around the board rooms of the movie companies and Congress that analog content is the boogie man of music and video piracy. In fact, they're so paranoid about it that they're considering a mechanism called ICT (Image Constraint Token) that punishes law-abiding customers for content that they legally purchased. But ironically, the real content pirates who make millions of bootleg movies have no intention of ever taking advantage of the so called 'analog hole' because that is the slowest and lowest quality method of stealing content — via Slashdot

The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed neuro-chips in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together

Australian ISPs could face huge fines if they do not provide spam filtering or impose e-mail sending limits under new rules set down by a communications watchdog

30 March 2006

Optus will open its long-awaited, $150 million DSL broadband network to new customers from Saturday, offering downloads speeds of up to 20Mbps

Apple has introduced an iPod software update that lets users set maximum volume limits on the device

Microsoft plans to release a special compatibility patch that will temporarily undo some upcoming changes to Internet Explorer

Intel wants to make laptops more accessible to users and would like to make devices more akin to their desktop counterparts. With the company's new Interchangeability Initiative, components including the optical drive, LCD screen, battery, power adapter and keyboard would all be upgradeable and can be swapped between notebooks. Hard drives are already for the most part interchangeable as long as you decide on PATA or SATA — via digg

29 March 2006

eBay helped to shut down a Russian Web site last week that was offering to sell stolen customer account information for as little as $5 each. Armed with an eBay customer's login and password, a fraudster could post items for sale, collect payments, and then never deliver the goods. The site was also offering to sell a handful of PayPal accounts

Fujitsu expects to begin shipping a 200GB hard drive suitable for use in laptop computers in the third quarter of this year. Based on that schedule the drive could be available in computers for end-users within the year. That's earlier than Fujitsu predicted last year when it said such drives wouldn't be available until 2007

A team of German and Japanese scientists have collaborated to shatter the world record for data transmission speed. By transmitting a data signal at 2.56 terabits per second over a 160-kilometer link (equivalent to 2,560,000,000,000 bits per second or the contents of 60 DVDs) the researchers bettered the old record of 1.28 terabits per second held by a Japanese group. By comparison, the fastest high-speed links currently carry data at a maximum 40Gb/s, or around 50 times slower

28 March 2006

Microsoft is for the first time encouraging people to give public feedback on Internet Explorer, with the creation of a bug database for the next version of its browser, IE 7 beta

Scientists in northeastern Ethiopia recently discovered a skull that they think may be evidence of the missing link between Homo erectus and modern man. The hominid cranium — found in two pieces and believed to be between 500,000 and 250,000 years old — comes from a very significant period and is very close to the appearance of the anatomically modern human, said Sileshi Semaw, director of the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project in Ethiopia

del.icio.us now supports private bookmarks. To try it out, go to settings and click on private saving to activate; you'll then see the new option whenever you save a page — via digg

27 March 2006

Reports from Redmond are that Microsoft Employees are not happy with the double delay of Windows and Office being pushed back into 2007. EETimes is reporting that some Microsoft employees are calling for the termination of several top managers Including Brian Valentine, Jim Allchin, and Steve Ballmer for the delay debacle. The report references a blog by Who da'Punk, an anonymous Microsoft employee who asks, where's the accountability for failure? So far the blog entry has generated over 350 comments from Microsoft insiders and outsiders

Scientists have developed artificial, super-strength muscles which are powered by alcohol and hydrogen. And they could eventually be used to make more advanced prosthetic limbs, say researchers at University of Texas

New York workers have discovered a trove of Cold War-era supplies within the masonry of the Brooklyn Bridge, a cache meant to aid in survival efforts in the event of nuclear attack. City Department of Transportation employees were conducting maintenance on the structure when they found the cache on the top floor of a three-floor space inside the bridge's base — via Warren Ellis

26 March 2006

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed (by the signing into law of HB 1215, effectively banning all abortions in the state, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli). A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women. To me, it is now a question of sovereignty, she said... I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction — via Warren Ellis

Interpol has called on politicians to help law enforcement officers bring cybercriminals to justice by making it easier for evidence to be transferred between countries

25 March 2006

The FBI's office in New York is supposed to be on the front line of America's defences against terrorism, but it is so strapped for cash it cannot afford e-mail accounts for its agents — via Aine MacDermot

With up to 60% of the code in the new consumer version of Vista set to be rewritten as the company scrambles to fix internal problems, Microsoft has announced a delay of Windows Vista, that will mean PCs with the new operating system won't go on sale in Australia until January.

ISPs will be forced to block violent and pornographic material before it reaches home computers if Labor wins the next federal election. Under the policy, announced by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley, international web sites would be banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority if they contained graphic sexual or violent material, rated R or higher. The proposal has been dismissed by the Internet Industry Association as unnecessary

24 March 2006

Another 26 episodes of Futurama will shortly go into production. This news comes from none other than Billy West (voice of Fry) himself, in a short post to his own message board. No further details are available, except that it's likely to be on TV, not straight to DVD

A coyote that came to New York to dine on duck in Central Park was caught on Wednesday after leading police and park rangers on a two-day chase. The coyote, a year-old, tawny-coloured male, which is thought to have made its way to the city from the countryside to the north, was tracked down near 79th Street inside the 341 hectare park. Unfortunately, Hal didn't make it, due to an infestation of heartworms — via Rogue Sun

StopBadware.org, a corporate-backed watchdog group that monitors software for deceptive and abusive practices, named Kazaa and three other applications as violators of its guidelines

23 March 2006

Australian libraries are likely to continue resisting calls from Google to have their collections digitised and made available for search until the Web giant settles disputes with bodies representing copyright holders in the United States

Samsung has developed a 32GB Solid State Disk based on NAND flash memory technology that the company claims might eventually replace conventional hard drives in laptops

PayPal, the online payment company owned by eBay, appears to be gearing up to let customers send money or order and pay for products by text message from a mobile phone

22 March 2006

Thirty-five years ago, a group of anonymous activists broke into the small, two-man office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole more than 1,000 FBI documents that revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress dissent — via digg

A federal judged issued a ruling Friday in the spat between Google and the Department of Justice over a government request that the company turn over search-query data. US District Court Judge James Ware's decision mandates that Google turn over 50,000 random URLs from its database. Google, which had cited user privacy as its chief argument for its refusal to comply with the subpoena, has praised the ruling because of its requirement to release only a limited set of data

As part of its ongoing enforcement actions against phishers, Microsoft has created a global initiative designed to thwart large-volume scam artists, no matter where they are in the world. A year ago, Microsoft filed 117 lawsuits against phishers and found that many of the perpetrators were overseas. That finding led the company to launch the Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative and to file 53 new suits against alleged phishers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Like its US antiphishing activity, Microsoft's new campaign will bring together law-enforcement agencies in other countries to pursue forensic evidence, network shutdowns, and eventual prosecution

21 March 2006

Marvel Comics is continuing in its bid to steal the word super-hero from the public domain and put it in a lock-box to which it will control the key. Marvel and DC comics jointly filed a trademark on the word super-hero. They use this mark to legally harass indie comic companies that make competing comic books

The UK government has threatened to cancel an order for US-built Joint Strike Fighter jets unless America turns over the source-code for the jets' firmware. Britain is worried that the jets could contain back-doors that let the US remotely disable them. Australia has made the same demands — via Boingboing

Playing DRM-crippled music will shorten the battery life of your music-player. Listening to DRMed iTunes songs on an iPod shortens the battery life by eight percent; playing back WMA-crippled files on a device from Creative Labs can knock 25 percent off the life of your device's battery. The extra battery-drain is attributed to the computation necessary to decrypt the files and verify their licences — via Boingboing

20 March 2006

The Canadian Record Industry Association's own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders' computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services — via Boingboing

An Israeli company says it has developed a system for managing traffic by tracking drivers' mobile phone signals. Based on the idea that most people keep their mobile phones on while driving, Israel-based Cellint created the TrafficSense system to detect the cellular signals and use them to create a real-time moving picture of what's happening on the roads — via Warren Ellis

The teddy bear's fluffy, cream coloured fur looks like that of a typical stuffed animal. But this teddy's fur has something more in common with health foods than children's toys — it comes from soy. Tofu Bear is part of Biltmore World Trade's line of SoySilk Pals, stuffed animals whose fur is made out of soy fibre that is extruded from soybean cake, or tofu

19 March 2006

Jakub Fik, 33, cut off his own penis during a Northwest Side rampage. When confronted by police, Fik hurled several knives and his severed organ at the officers. Officers stunned him with a Taser and took him into custody — via The Cult of Father Darwin

The Australian Government has shut down a parody web site that mocked Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The web site featured a satirical speech that apologised for the Iraq war. The site was down for two days before a phone call from Melbourne IT advised the owner that it had been shut down on the advice from the Australian Government. A mirrored PDF copy of the apology speech is available

The controversial American fundamentalist missionary organisation the New Tribes Mission is making weekly visits to a group of isolated Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians first contacted in 2004 — via Warren Ellis

18 March 2006

Booster jabs could soon become obsolete following the discovery by a British scientist of the world's first effective way to control the speed at which vaccines are released in the body

In a legal win for Google, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a writer who claimed the search giant infringed on his copyright by archiving a Usenet posting of his and providing excerpts from his Web site in search results. Thankfully, we can all still read Usenet articles on Google as well as other archive services

US and Japanese researchers have announced results of a study showing that capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers hot, can cause prostate cancer cells to kill themselves

17 March 2006

The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions

Reporters who write about government surveillance could be prosecuted under proposed legislation that would solidify the administration's eavesdropping authority, according to some legal analysts who are concerned about dramatic changes in US law

Internet copyright pirates in France will face prison and large fines after French MPs pushed through laws to curb illegal music and film downloads

16 March 2006

Cheap radio chips that are replacing barcodes are a threat to privacy and susceptible to computer viruses. Researchers at the Amsterdam's Free University created a radio frequency identity (RFID) chip infected with a virus to prove that RFID systems are vulnerable despite the extremely low memory capacity on the cheap chips

Online codebreaking enthusiasts working to solve a series of German World War II ciphers have cracked the second of three codes. Thousands of users around the world have joined the M4 Project, using spare computing power to crack the codes — via Aine MacDermot

European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx criticised governments' fondness for biometrics to identify citizens and warned that greater interoperability of databases may have serious implications for people

15 March 2006

Telstra yesterday officially launched a free blogging service to broadband customers of its retail BigPond arm

Nanotechnology has restored the sight of blind rodents, a new study shows. After injecting the hamsters with a solution containing nanoparticles, the nerves re-grew and sight returned — via Aine MacDermot

Up to one million litres of oil have leaked from a damaged pipeline in Alaska's North Slope, the worst spill in the region's history. The leak, apparently caused by metal corrosion, was detected March 2 in the United States' largest oil field in Prudhoe Bay, which lies about 1,040 kilometres north of Alaska's biggest city, Anchorage

14 March 2006

Rosuvastatin, a drug that reduces cholesterol, has been found to turn the clock back in narrowed arteries, a discovery that could prevent heart attacks and strokes in thousands of people

New versions of Ubuntu Linux have been released at a steady six-month cadence, but project founder Mark Shuttleworth is considering a six week delay to improve the reliability of an important new version

A recent virus-definition update from security firm McAfee incorrectly flagged several applications as viruses, even removing the core Microsoft Excel executable from some users' computers

13 March 2006

In another blow to the reputation of the agency that just can't seem to get anything right, the Chicago Tribune used web searches and various commercial online databases to uncover a treasure trove of information about the CIA. The Tribune found the identities of over 2600 CIA employees (including an undisclosed number of covert operatives) as well as the locations of over two dozen CIA facilities across the US, internal telephone numbers, and information on 17 aircraft

A family of animals known as Diatomyidae thought to have been dead for 11 million years has been discovered in Laos. Fossilised remnants of this group have been found throughout Asia with a distinctive jaw structure and molars. It represents a rare opportunity to compare assumptions derived from the fossil record and an actual living specimen to determine overall accuracy of the techniques involved. This discovery also provides a compelling argument for preservation efforts in Southeast Asia

12 March 2006

Automated phone system annoy the hell out of people, so it is a welcome relief to find GetHuman, which offers a list of hacks for getting to talk to a human faster. The Australian section is still in progress

Today, the possibility of being moved around by an outside force is more science than fiction, thanks to researchers at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in Japan

11 March 2006

iiNet will invest a further AU$15 million into expanding its ADSL2+ network which should increase its coverage to 90 percent of metropolitan Australia. The additional funding would allow the nation's third largest ISP to install another 150 DSLAMs (DSL Access Multiplexers) in exchanges around Australia by January 2007

Australian scientists have uncovered what they believe are the earliest examples of Buddhist literature. Carbon dating of rare manuscripts from a private collection dubbed the Dead Sea scrolls of Buddhism may reveal the religion's ancient origins

An upcoming version of Firefox will include protection against phishing scams, using technology that might come from Google

10 March 2006

Google's official blog tells us that Google has acquired Writely, a collaborative word processor. To be clear, Writely is still in beta, and it's far from perfect. Upholding our great user experience means everything to us, so we're not accepting new registrations until we've moved Writely to Google's software architecture. If you're interested in giving us a try, we hope you'll get on the waitlist so we can let you know when you'll be able to try out Writely

Google is preparing to offer online storage to web users, creating a mirror image of data stored on consumer hard drives, according to company documents that were mistakenly released on the web

Cops in Orange County, California, have recently been issuing citations to public transit users who listen to music on headphones while riding the bus — via Boingboing

09 March 2006

Scientists at the University of Dublin have found a way to break down styrofoam, the bane of recyclers/composters everywhere. This could be a great step towards sustainability, but it does require the styrofoam to be heated first

Walter Soehnge, a retired Texas schoolteacher, and his wife had a little run in with the Department of Homeland Security. The crime? Paying off their credit card

La La, a new online music service aims to offer CDs for $US1 by letting members trade used physical discs, in a new twist on online song swapping

08 March 2006

A US state has signed into law a bill banning most abortions, in a move aimed to force the US Supreme Court to reconsider its key ruling on the issue. The South Dakota law — approved by the governor on Monday — makes it a crime for doctors to perform terminations. Exceptions will be made if a woman's life is at risk, but not in cases of rape or incest. Harking back to the era of Jane, an organisation providing illegal abortions in the Chicago area in the 1960s and early 1970s, Molly has published a manual for setting up an abortion clinic

Robert Fisk says that in his three decades of reporting from the Middle East for British newspapers, he's never seen it more dangerous, and that he's certain another major crisis, possibly even another September 11, is coming. The veteran war reporter also says he remains baffled by just who is trying to generate civil war in Iraq

SMS 007, a Java application developed by Czech company CircleTech, can encrypt SMS messages on mobiles. The encryption used ensures that wiretapping entities cannot get to the plaintext version of the message. Data stored by the programme is also protected by encryption, so stealing the phone and examining it for data is useless

07 March 2006

About 50,000 opponents of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are holding a peaceful protest in Bangkok, vowing to stay in the streets until he steps down. Thai television has been notorious for remaining silent when historic events are happening. Instead of covering the protest they aired Backstreet Boys concerts, MTV shows, commercials and chat — via Warren Ellis

Missouri legislators in Jefferson City, unfamiliar with the separation of church and state, considered a bill that would name Christianity the state's official majority religion — via Warren Ellis

Fairfax has agreed to buy New Zealand internet auction site Trade Me for NZ$700 million dollars

06 March 2006

A church was blocking the only high speed signal in town, so Kevin Lavallée decided he needed to go higher. This is the story of one man's quest to build a 60-foot reception tower in his yard and retire his modem once and for all

Desmond Irvine, 74, was so heartbroken by the death of his wife Veronica on Valentine's Day that he put her in a nice dress and, with the help of his son, took her in a taxi from Edinburgh, Scotland to their holiday home in Berwick, England where they put her in the freezer. Two weeks later, police were tipped-off by concerned family members and discovered the body. Desmond was detained by police for nine hours. Apparently, Desmond and his son are now trying to bring Veronica back home — via Boingboing

05 March 2006

French consumers are not entitled to make personal copies of DVDs, even if they do not distribute them, France's highest court said Wednesday in a victory for film companies like Vivendi Universal

The Pentagon is funding research into neural implants with the ultimate hope of turning sharks into stealth spies capable of gliding undetected through the ocean — via NewsVine

04 March 2006

Prime Minister Tony Blair has told how he prayed to god spoke to his invisible friend when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq. Anti-war campaigners attacked Mr Blair's comments as a joke — via The Pagan Prattle

The US Senate has passed a renewal of the Patriot act, 89-10, after two extensions caused by months of negotiations. The only thing standing in the way of a full renewal is a House vote, expected to pass next week. The renewal comes with some privacy protections attached, however, some worry they are only cosmetic

NaturalNano is developing a new nanotube paint that is able to block mobile phone signals on demand. The nanotubes are filled with copper, suspended in paint, and can be applied to the walls and ceiling of places such as concert halls, churches, and classrooms

03 March 2006

The Tax Office's $500 million IT Change Program is based on a decades-old Cobol design, raising questions about future flexibility even before the project is rolled out

A special Australian committee on copyright and DRM has published its findings, and has recommended a drastic scaling-back of the protections given to DRM in most countries — via Boingboing

The Bruichladdich distillery on the Isle of Islay, off Scotland's west coast, announced it was reviving a centuries-old recipe for whisky so strong that one 17th-century writer feared more than two spoonfuls could be lethal. Risk-taking whisky connoisseurs will have to wait, however — the spirit will not be ready for at least 10 years

02 March 2006

Perth's Edith Cowan University will seek to use its new mesh wireless network to cut down its fleet of mobile phones by replacing them with wireless handsets enabled for Voice over IP

One of the biggest and most complete giant squids ever found is on display at London's Natural History Museum. Measuring a monstrous 8.62m, the animal was caught off the coast of the Falkland Islands by a trawler

01 March 2006

Sony Ericsson has announced several new phones, including two that carry Sony's Cyber-shot brand and come with 3.2-megapixel cameras that are integrated with Google's Blogger application

The Mobile Antivirus Researchers Association is reporting what it says is the first virus that can pass from a PC to a mobile device and then erase files. The proof-of concept virus is not yet threatening users

Anti-virus companies are warning of new malicious software that can infect any mobile phone capable of running Java applications, not just feature-rich smart phones

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