July 2006 Archive

31 July 2006

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, which last week gave up on Germany, is reportedly looking at trying its luck in Australia and is sizing up our two biggest supermarket operators, Coles Myer and Woolworths

A substance found in crab shells called chitosan has very useful properties. For example, it has been used in bandages to stop bleeding. But now, researchers at the University of Maryland have used the chitosan from blue crabs living in Chesapeake Bay as a component of a nanoscale sensor system which could save many lives in the future. These blue crab nanosensors will be used to improve security in airports, hospitals and other public locations by detecting tiny amounts of explosives or chemicals in air and water — via Slashdot

AOL will test launch a new internet video service in an attempt to demonstrate how much it has learned from its mistakes. The new service, AOL Video, aims to be the one-stop shop for online videos and will let users search for videos across the web, upload their own, or buy or watch for free thousands of TV shows from any one of 45 video-on-demand channels on nearly any device

30 July 2006

A Melbourne shopping centre and tourist attraction have banned photographs, in order to prevent terrorism. Because all terrorism begins with the devilish capture of precious photons. Once these photons have been taken away to the terrorists' spider caves, they are converted into terrorist photons and re-released at the speed of light to attack their targets with relatavistic savageness — via Boingboing

29 July 2006

The House of Representatives voted on restricting access to social sites on public terminals. The bill, which passed the House in a 410-15 vote, would bar users from accessing sites like Amazon, MySpace, or Slashdot from terminals in libraries and schools. Adults would be able to ask permission to access such sites — via Slashdot

After a five month trial and two weeks of deliberation, a jury in Santa Ana has convicted two leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang of racketeering and murder. Barry The Baron Mills and Tyler and The Hulk Bingham were found guilty of ordering attacks on black inmates from maximum security cellblocks, and are now eligible for the death penalty. How did they order hits from within such high-security cells? With 400-year-old crypto, and invisible ink made from urine — via Boingboing

For years, the RIAA has claimed that having the IP address of a computer that has shared unauthorised files is the equivalent of having the evidence of who was actually sharing files. That, of course, is false. The IP address simply can help you know who paid for the internet access, but not who was using what computer on a network

28 July 2006

Samsung has developed a new PC memory technology that will allow PCs running Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista operating system to boot up much faster than is currently possible

In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet. Having been the internet's instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN, making the organization a more international body

File-sharing service Kazaa, a longtime thorn in the side of the recording industry, has buried the hatchet with major record companies in a $100 million out-of-court settlement

27 July 2006

Just one metre square of a new super-sticky material inspired by gecko feet could suspend the weight of an average family car, say its inventors. The plastic, known as Synthetic Gecko, has been developed by researchers at aerospace and defence firm BAE Systems. Like the reptile's foot, the polymer is covered in millions of tiny mushroom-like hairs that provide grip — via Warren Ellis

IE7 will be delivered in the fourth quarter as a high priority update via Automatic Updates in Windows XP, Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of IE product management, said in an interview Tuesday in the US. Automatic Updates is a Windows feature typically used for security updates, but Microsoft has also used it to push its antipiracy tool WGA Notifications

26 July 2006

Shawn Hogan, CEO of Digital Point Solutions, has found himself on the receiving end of an MPAA lawsuit claiming he downloaded a copy of Meet the Fockers on Bittorrent. Mr Hogan both denies the charges as well as claims he already owns the movie on DVD. After being asked to pay a $2500 extortion fee, Mr Hogan lawyered up and has vowed to challenge and help change the MPAA's tactics. They're completely abusing the system, Hogan says. Although expecting to pay well over $100,000 to defend himself, he claims I would spend well into the millions on this via Slashdot

Australians should not be experiencing problems accessing US Web sites despite network issues connecting the country to the USA, according to Southern Cross Cable Network. The owner of 30,000 kilometres of cable network linking Australia and New Zealand to the US, Southern Cross said a hardware failure in its network located in California — not the undersea cable itself — was the cause of the downtime. However, traffic was re-routed to its secondary line this morning as soon as the failure was detected

25 July 2006

New Zealanders will be able to watch video services such as internet protocol television as early as next year using a high-speed network developed by Telecom New Zealand. The likelihood of Australians using such services on a widespread basis soon are low, with news yesterday that Telstra's talks with the competition regulator over a $4 billion fibre-network have all but collapsed

In a transaction that will reshape the semiconductor industry, Advanced Micro Devices agreed to buy ATI Technologies for $5.4 billion in cash and stock, people involved in the deal said

24 July 2006

Babylon 5, one of the greatest sci-fi series of all time, will return in a series of direct-to-DVD mini movies. They will be written and directed by J Michael Straczynski and we can expect the first set to be released during the second quarter of 2007 via digg

A disc drive manufacturer has patented a process that may bring about computer hard drives and handheld devices that can store as much as a terabyte of information. Researchers at Seagate Technology acknowledge that such levels of storage on small, commercial products are still five years to a decade away, but they feel confident they've hit on a way to overcome a major limitation in disk manufacturing and capacity via digg

Over a million MySpace users have been exposed to spyware that exploits a Windows vulnerability through a banner ad on the site. Those using Internet Explorer that has not been patched against the Windows Meta File vulnerability could be exposed to spyware and adware

Internode is planning a trial of a new flavour of ADSL it says will provide a major lift to upstream data speeds. An adjunct to the ADSL2+ standard, the Annex M protocol has the potential to lift data upload speeds to 2.5 Mbps, compared to the 1Mbps available under the current Annex A already in use. Download speeds remain the same, at 24Mbps

23 July 2006

Several large studios will start letting people create DVDs of movies in their homes using a new feature of CinemaNow, an online movie-downloading site

The Federal Emergency Management Agency prohibits journalists from having unsupervised interviews with Hurricane Katrina victims who have been relocated to FEMA trailer parks, according to a report in the Baton Rouge Advocate

22 July 2006

A plane made almost entirely out of printed parts flew last weekend at an airshow in Britain. It was made by Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works and is a 28m unmanned vehicle made of radar-absorbing composites via Boingboing

For five years, Oxana Malaya lived with dogs and survived on raw meat and scraps. When she was found she was running around on all fours barking via Warren Ellis

21 July 2006

A Calgary biotech firm has developed a process to turn genetically modified safflower oil into human insulin in commercial quantities. The process reduces capital costs by 70% and product cost by 40%. SemBioSys says it can make more than one kilogram of human insulin per acre of safflower production. That amount could treat 2,500 diabetic patients for one year and, in turn, meet the world's total projected insulin demand in 2010 with less than 16,000 acres of safflower production via Slashdot

Nobody's Watching, a pilot made for last year's upfronts that was never picked up, is being put back into development by NBC after gaining attention on YouTube

Google Earth, the satellite imaging site that brought us hovering cars, is now the source of a mysterious new find — this time an unusual man-made landscape in a remote part of China. The Chinese site based in the very remote Huangyangtan region, appears to be a small-scale model of a piece of territory complete with snow-topped mountains, streams and valleys via Warren Ellis

20 July 2006

Scientists have managed to regrow nerve fibres after a spinal injury. Using an enzyme called sialidase, isolated from bacteria, researchers were able to stimulate nerve fibre growth in rats

Troubled telco iiNet has started looking for a buyer for its iHug-branded New Zealand business

19 July 2006

A Net neutrality law isn't needed because the US already has antitrust laws that would keep broadband carriers from acting in an uncompetitive manner, Internet pioneer David Farber said Monday in a debate against TCP/IP co-creator Vinton Cerf

Microsoft has filed 26 lawsuits against alleged dealers of pirated software in seven US states. Microsoft claims the companies sold pirated software or computers loaded with pirated software

18 July 2006

Giant office equipment maker Ricoh will next year supply an optical component that reads both HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs. The move could take the heat out of the battle between rivals Toshiba and Sony over next-generation DVD formats

The Australian domain name regulator will seek to expand its powers beyond basic domain administration in an extraordinary general meeting of its members to be held in mid-August

On the directions of the government of India, Indian ISPs have started censoring and blocking web properties. This was first noticed by Indian bloggers and upon inquiring with their respective ISPs, the actions are confirmed. Unfortunately, Blogspot and TypePad are the targets until now — via Slashdot

17 July 2006

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard have developed a tiny wireless memory spot chip that can store up to 100 pages of text. Developed over four years by HP Labs in Bristol, the chip is about the size of the head of a match and could potentially store a patient's medical chart on a hospital band

Indian Scientists have succeeded in developing a vaccine against the bird flu disease that has affected poultry business in many parts of the world. This was formally announced, and ICAR Director-General Mangala Rai described this as a big step forward in tackling the highly pathogenic avian influenza

A research group in China has reportedly developed a third-party application that allows users to communicate with Skype Voice-over-Internet (VoIP) phone calls. Skype has issued a statement that there is no evidence of such reverse-engineering and that, even if true, such a clone would not have the feature set and reliability of Skype

16 July 2006

Demand for interoperability will pressure vendors like Apple to bring down technology barriers — or face consequences — via digg

A little-known capability in Google's search engine has helped security vendor Websense uncover thousands of malicious Web sites, as well as several legitimate sites that have been hacked. By taking advantage Google's binary search capability, Websense has created new software tools that can sniff out malware using the popular search engine. Websense researchers Googled for strings that were used in known malware like the Bagel and Mytob worms and have uncovered about 2,000 malicious Web sites over the past month

Researchers at Microsoft this week released a new report and tool aimed at preventing Web spammers from exploiting Internet search engines to drive traffic to spam URLs. The tool, called the Strider Search Defender, identifies spam URLs that are being distributed through social networking, forum and blog-hosting Web sites, and can prevent those URLs from being indexed by search engines, said Yi-Min Wang, group manager of the Cybersecurity and Systems Management Research Group in Microsoft Research

Suspended animation tests have been successfully carried out with pigs. The pig that was the subject of the article was kept in suspended animation for two hours, and Duggan and his team have successfully suspended hundreds of pigs for an hour at a time. It's still a far cry from a spaceship filled with sleep pods, but would be just the ticket for doctors who need to buy extra time to save lives — via Slashdot

15 July 2006

According to the World Conservation Union, the West African black rhinoceros has likely gone extinct and Africa's northern white rhino could soon follow

People stopping to smell the roses can now take that sweet floral fragrance home with them or even send it to a faraway grandmother thanks to a new gadget in Japan that records and replicates the world's odours. Creator Takamichi Nakamoto says the technology will have applications in food and fragrance industries where companies want to replicate odours — via Warren Ellis

Australian scientists have found the strongest evidence so far that bacteria play a key role in forming gold grains and nuggets. They have found bacteria that remove gold from the soil and deposit pure grains of it around them

Northrop Grumman forecasting development of a laser shield bubble for airports and other installations in the United States within 18 months. The system will be called Skyguard — a joint venture with Israel and the US Army. It will have the capability to generate a shield five kilometres in radius

14 July 2006

The Australian government has announced it wants cross media ownership laws and restrictions on foreign ownership removed by 2007

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered that under certain conditions, some very common bacteria can form nanowires. These bacteria were able to produce nanowires as small as 10 nanometers in diameter, but which can reach hundreds of microns in length. What is interesting here is that these nanowires are electrically conductive ones. This means that bacteria could be used to build microbial fuel cells or bacteria-powered batteries. As one researcher said, Earth appears to be hard-wired

European regulators have hit Microsoft with a $357.3 million fine, citing the software giant's continued noncompliance with its landmark 2004 antitrust ruling

The British music industry has stepped up its campaign against illegal file-sharing, demanding that two ISPs suspend 59 accounts it believes are being used to swap copyrighted songs

13 July 2006

Vodaphone has quietly disabled the DRM on the mobile episodes of 24 it sells; now those videos can be copied to iPods and PCs — via Boingboing

Citing irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies, an appeals judge has ruled that producing, selling or renting edited versions of motion pictures violates US copyright law — via Boingboing

Microsoft will no longer issue security updates or provide support for Windows 98 and Windows ME, which could lead users to trying alternative operating systems such as Linux. Especially with Microsoft's plan to release software that turns older PCs into more modern and secure systems, but in the process also makes them less than full-fledged computers

Ah, the delightful, if terrifying Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is upon us again. This year's winner, Jim Guigli, cited his sixty sumissions to this year's contest as a constructive outlet for his dementia. Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean

12 July 2006

Tony Blair's flagship identity cards scheme is set to fail and may not be introduced for a generation, according to leaked Whitehall e-mails from the senior officials responsible for the multi-billion-pound project — via Charlie's Diary

A Swiss scientist says magnets may one day drag genes around the body in a novel form of gene therapy. The magnets would be attracted to iron oxide nanoparticles attached to the genes, a concept that has been tested in sheep

China launched a Web site, www.linese.com, offering free Chinese lessons and materials to promote the study and use of the language abroad

11 July 2006

Kyle MacDonald, the guy trying to trade a red paperclip for a house, has succeeded in his quest. His recently traded a KISS Snowglobe in exchange for one afternoon with Alice Cooper. He in turn traded the snowglobe to an enthusiastic snowglobe collector, for a role in a movie. Now, the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan in Canada, located about two hours east of Regina with a population of 1,100, has offered MacDonald a farmhouse in exchange for the role in the movie

Claims that China harvests organs from live Falun Gong prisoners without consent — then destroys their remains — are real, according to a report from a human rights lawyer and a former MP in Canada. The document cites an organ price published online for a transplant centre in Shenyang City, China. Corneas are $30,000 US, kidneys $62,000 US, livers $130,000 US and lungs up to $170,000 US, which would make this a most profitable trade — via Boingboing

Ricoh claims they have developed an optical component that reads and writes all disk formats — Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD, as well as DVD and CD — with one pickup and one objective lens. The component is a 3.5-mm diameter, 1-mm thick round diffraction plate with minute concentric groves on both sides which function as a diffraction grating. Based on disc information the drive can identify which format disk is loaded, Ricoh's optical diffraction component adjusts the laser beam with its diffraction grating for each format and passes it to the objective lens

10 July 2006

For the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, Hollywood implemented a complete copy protection scheme; almost everything has to be encrypted and authenticated. Despite the crypto-stuff in Advanced Access Content System and High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection, they left the backdoor wide open — they forgot about the PrintScreen button. Using this function you can create exact digital copies of a film picture-by-picture and reassemble them into a stream

Microsoft announced Wednesday the creation of the Open XML Translator project, so its Office suite will support the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard. The move comes in response to government requests for Microsoft products to be compatible with ODF, such as the national governments of Belgium and Denmark, and the state government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Dr Patrick Power SC, a NSW deputy senior crown prosecutor, has stood down after being charged with child pornography offences

A few Mac users are concerned about a feature in the latest update to Mac OS that directs their computers to check in with Apple Computer's servers on a regular basis without the user's knowledge or permission

09 July 2006

Toronto researchers have discovered a method to utilise bone marrow cells in the repair of a damaged heart after a heart attack. While it has long been known that bone marrow cells have the ability to clear the dead tissue after a heart attack, what has not been known until now is the critically important role of bone marrow adult stem cells in repairing a damaged heart, restoring its function and enhancing the growth of new blood vessels

Paris wants blanket wireless internet cover by the end of 2007, helping to make it the most connected capital city in the world. Under a new plan, the city hopes to set up 400 free Wi-Fi access points next year and allow internet service providers to install antennae on strategically-located public property

eBay has added Google Checkout to the list of payment options banned on eBay. A recent update to the Accepted Payments Policy includes Google Checkout: click on 'Show' next to 'Some Examples' to reveal the list

08 July 2006

Australian scientists have developed a super-drug with potential to cure various illnesses including cancers, age-related blindness, heart disease and arthritis

Scott Adams cuts to the heart of the recent stupidity over flag burning: I was delighted to learn that American politicians are trying to make it illegal to burn the American flag. That can only mean that my dedicated public servants have finally solved the problems of crime, drugs, war, poverty, terrorism, healthcare, immigration, and the mystery of why our children are such idiots compared to Norwegians. Evidently those issues are now under control. I was starting to worry that Congress was wasting my tax dollars doing stupid shit

New landmines will soon communicate via a radio network, and move from place to place in order to be most effective. Termed the self-healing minefield, the individual mines are capable of detecting an enemy breach and then moving to seal the gap

07 July 2006

Sticking a needle with a flaming plasma tip into your mouth may not at first strike you as much of an improvement on conventional dentistry. However, the plasma needle, which is cold and painless to the touch, could be just the panacea we have been waiting for

Recently, the FDA approved Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer in women. The approval wasn't without a fight, and even now it's still being fought, primarily by the KKK-linked hate group, the Family Research Council. Cervical cancer kills 4,000 women a year, and yet these people will still fight a vaccine that stops the virus that causes it. Why, you ask?

The Queensland police force has begun using the first phase of a $35 million technology system that will grow into a one-stop access point for officers

06 July 2006

Award-winning photojournalist Martin Adler was killed in Mogadishu this week while filming a political demonstration. He was shot at close range by a single, hooded gunman. Mr Adler often covered conflict zones alone, filling the multiple roles roles of writer, cameraman, producer and correspondent — via Boingboing

Freedb, the free music database used by tons of CD ripping software, has been shut down due to a disagreement among its developers. One of its developers used a data dump from the original freedb.org and is providing the service at freedb2.org, though, and will be adding features and posting them at his site as they become available. Unfortunately, a database dump or source code for freedb2.org is yet nowhere to be found — via Slashdot

In an attempt to explain his reasons for voting against a Net Neutrality bill recently, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens delivered a jaw-dropping attempt to explain how the Internet works. Said Stevens: They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material

05 July 2006

Microsoft has denied that WGA will kill pirated copies of Windows. According to Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft anti-piracy technologies cannot and will not turn off your computer. Microsoft also says that WGA is a necessary part of its campaign to catch those illegally using Windows XP which leads one to think what WGA really does then — via Slashdot

The morning after lotion is called Dimericine, which is basically an enzyme cream that repairs the skin's damaged DNA. The body does this process naturally, but this cream would significantly speed it up — via digg

The next generation of naturalistic and touch-sensitive artificial limbs are being worn by US soldiers. Instead of the old velcro strap and cup these new models are fused directly to the bone and are controlled by controlled by the wearer's brain. Future prosthetic arms will fuse to existing bone, eliminating the need for awkward attachment systems. These more naturalistic limbs will use bionic nerves attached to natural nerves to send and receive signals from the brain. Chips embedded in the user's brain will help command artificial-muscle-activated, touch-sensitive, fully articulating hands

04 July 2006

Some Apple MacBook owners are plagued with what seems to be a defective trackpad button. The button, when pushed, seems squishy and sometimes even unresponsive. While these MacBook owners are getting turned away at the Apple Genius Bars, they have come up with a custom and unique solution to the problem. A piece of paper, placed strategically under the battery pack where the trackpad is located, seems to fix this problem for most users — via Slashdot

Los Angeles, car capital of the country, is notorious for its epic police chases. OJ-style pursuits may make for exciting TV, but the fatality statistics are sobering: Police chases kill, on average, one Californian every week. Now the Virginia-based company StarChase has proposed a safer way to catch fast-moving crooks — shoot GPS homing devices like darts and stick them to the back of fleeing vehicles. Instead of a frantic pursuit, an officer eases off the chase and lets police headquarters track the suspect by computer. Police can then move in for a calmer arrest

03 July 2006

Desert ants have an internal system — like a pedometer — that keeps track of how many steps they take, according to a new study. The insects seem to rely on this system to find their way back to the nest after foraging. Other insects may also possess this pedometer-like system

Imagine being able to record any smell you encounter — fragrant or foul — so you can play it back later for others to experience. Engineers in Japan are building an odour recorder capable of doing just that. The device uses electronic noses to analyse an odour, then reproduces it by combining an array of non-toxic chemicals. The system has already recorded and reproduced the smell of orange, banana and melon — and can even distinguish red and green apples

02 July 2006

Canadian Scientists have created the first device able to regrow teeth and bones. The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada

Under the name Checkout, the venture offers an incorporated manner to search, advertise and pay. If you buy something on Checkout, 2% and $0.20 go to Google. Paypal, the biggest competitor uses 1.9% and $0.30. Analysts compare Google/Paypal to for example Visa/Mastercard living peacefully together, while others predict the end of Paypal — via Slashdot

Ever wonder what it would be like to see Yoda fly by your head or hear Chewbacca buzz instead of roar? Now you can find out thanks to entomologists Arnold Menke and David Vincent. These bug experts named new wasp species discovered in 1983 after their favorite Star Wars characters: Polemistus chewbacca, Polemistus vaderi, and Polemistus yoda — via Boingboing

01 July 2006

Two new security flaws have been discovered in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, one of which could be replicated in Mozilla's Firefox

Attack code that exploits a flaw in Apple Computer's Mac OS X was publicly released Wednesday in the US, increasing the urgency to patch. The code's arrival comes just a day after Apple made an update available for its operating system. The malicious program takes advantage of a locally exploitable vulnerability in an operating system component called launchd

Microsoft said that it is making another slight delay to the planned arrival time for Office 2007, citing performance concerns with recent test versions

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