September 2006 Archive

30 September 2006

The British Library has called for a serious updating of current copyright law to unambiguously include digital content and take technological advances into account

Amcom Telecommunications said it would start selling high-speed ADSL2+ broadband services in the final quarter of this year, at least 15 months after the telco first started talking about the technology

LiveScience is reporting out of NextFest on a Japanese-built power suit that amplifies the strength of its wearer. The onboard computer is hooked up to sensors that monitor natural movements, then it inflates cuffs to boost lifting power. The Power Assist Suit could be used by hospital workers to move heavy patients

29 September 2006

Paypal settled a suit with Maryland and 27 states. Among other things, they'll conspicuously advertise a contact phone number and staff it 14 hours a day and be much more forthcoming about when they will debit your bank account. For those of you who think Paypal Sucks, well, starting soon it sucks just a little less

It seems the alien invasion of the Earth has just started! A 50m insect has been spotted roaming the German countryside! Let the I, for one, welcome our new giant insectoid overlords joke contest begin! A moderator at a Keyhole forum identifies the bug as a thrip, about 1mm long, squished under a glass plate during scanning — via Slashdot

A gay couple flying from Paris to JFK on American Airlines were told by the crew and purser that they weren't allowed to touch or kiss each other. When they questioned this, the captain came out of the cockpit and threatened to divert the plane. American Airlines says this was all according to procedure, because kissing of any kind isn't allowed on AA flights — via Boingboing

Symantec claimed this week that Microsoft is withholding information about its new Vista operating system in an attempt to create an unfair advantage for its own security software

28 September 2006

Google has launched an Australian version of its video hosting site, Google Video, which will feature a range of content from local media groups

Yahoo has acquired Jumpcut, a site that provides simple-to-use online video-editing tools, its latest bid to enhance its web video services

A new product called MojoPac from RingCube Technologies lets iPod users take control of any desktop computer running Microsoft's Windows XP operating system

The pharmaceutical industry won a victory Wednesday, defeating efforts by EU regulators to encourage more trade in lower- priced medicines

27 September 2006

Sir Richard Branson is to invest $3 billion to fight global warming. The Virgin boss said he would commit all profits from his travel firms, such as airline Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains, over the next 10 years

A messaging service called VaporStream announced today at DEMOfall will allow any two parties to communicate electronically without leaving any record of their interaction on any computer or server. Messages cannot be forwarded, edited, printed or saved. After they're read, they're gone — via Slashdot

26 September 2006

The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the program

A new report from the Housing and Urban Development Inspector General found that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson instructed staff to award HUD contracts to President Bush's political allies and withhold them from his political opponents — via digg

A section of a fortress constructed during the 1670s has been found in Norway, giving experts a rare look at something previously only seen in sketches. The find is a casemate — a vaulted chamber in a fortress. The space was created by the supports for the outside wall, which at the same time is holding up a 400mm thick layer of timber that served as the floor for a cannon site

25 September 2006

After three years of being laughed out of meetings, the US Marine Corps' futuristic plans to deploy through space may finally be getting some traction. The Marine Corps calls the concept the Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion Capability (Sustain). This plan, a growing group of Marine supporters say, is the natural evolution of the service's proclivity for expeditionary warfare that began decades ago with amphibious landings. The concept is to deliver strategic equipment or a small squad of soldiers to any point on the globe — even the most hard-to-reach location — within hours of need. Once on the ground, those soldiers can carry out strategically critical missions like reconnaissance or destroying a specific target. At least, that's their pitch — via Defense Tech

EEStor is working on a revolutionary new kind of battery. The most significant benefit would be its efficiency: a car powered by the EEStor unit could run on the equivalent of 45 cents per gallon, driving 500 miles on $9 worth of electricity after just five minutes to charge

In UMG v Lindor, the defendant Marie Lindor has made a motion to preclude the RIAA from introducing into the case songs as to which it has failed to produce the song files. Ms Lindor's lawyers submitted to the Court the RIAA's interrogatory responses where the record companies had stated under oath that their case was based upon (a) Media Sentry's detection of song files being distributed and (b) Media Sentry's allegedly making perfect digital copies of those files. Ms Lindor's attorneys argued that the RIAA cannot prove that it made perfect digital copies of the songs if it doesn't have the song files — via Boingboing

24 September 2006

Former President Bill Clinton has announced the creation of a $1 Billion investment fund devoted to renewable energy. This will be an investment fund as opposed to charity, and Clinton has said that; The Green Fund would focus on reducing dependence on fossil fuels, creating jobs, lessening pollution and helping to reduce global warming, all while making a profit. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn will be managing the fund

Microreactors have already been used for on-site reforming of fuels, such as methanol or propane, to produce hydrogen to be used in fuel cells. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have designed very efficient ceramic microreactors to do this task. The scientists say that their microreactors are much better than other fuel reformer systems. They are now trying to reform gasoline and diesel, which are more widely distributed than propane — via Slashdot

A robot that glides along a layer of mucus inside the human intestine could make medical examinations like colonoscopies less painful for patients, say Dutch scientists. They are working on a snail-inspired robot that should be far gentler on the gut's delicate lining

It seems Wal-Mart is threatening retaliation against studios who decide to offer movies on iTunes. The retailer seems a bit miffed that someone would dare to undercut their prices. This wouldn't be the first time they've turned on a supplier for dealing with Apple — via Slashdot

23 September 2006

Richard Branson, the British magnate and adventurer, said Thursday that all future profits from his five airlines and train company, estimated at $3 billion through the next 10 years, would be invested in developing energy sources that do not contribute to global warming

Time Warner said Thursday that it had agreed to sell AOL France's Internet access business to Neuf Cegetel, a French telecommunications network operator, for about $365 million in cash

A copyright dispute between Google and a group of publishers in Belgium escalated Friday as the Internet search engine defied a court order to publish an earlier decision in the case on its Belgian web sites

22 September 2006

It looks like Microsoft is once again looking to save a few bucks at the expense of minimising piracy, as the company has reportedly confirmed to IDG News Service that every version of Vista — from Home Basic to Ultimate — will ship on a single DVD when the OS is finally released. Of course the downside to this strategy is that somehow, somewhere, some clever hacker is going to figure out a way to get Ultimate onto his/her machine without the upgrade fee (after disabling WGA of course), and people the world over will gleefully follow suit

Torpark is a modified version of Firefox that automatically routes you through the EFF's TOR servers, thereby anonymising everything you do online

21 September 2006

The head of an organisation that fights unwanted bulk e-mail said Friday that an Illinois company will remain on its block list despite a court order and a steep monetary judgment. Spamhaus suggested it did not defend the case because it did not believe a court in Illinois had jurisdiction over the UK-based organisation. Steve Linford, the head of the UK-based Spamhaus, insisted the company sends spam that is illegal in the United Kingdom and said Spamhaus will continue to list the Illinois company on its block list

Hackers are taking advantage of a newly discovered vulnerability in Internet Explorer to install spyware on PCs that visit any of a number of Russian porn sites. The malware, first reported yesterday by researchers at Sunbelt Software, takes advantage of an unpatched flaw in the way IE processes Vector Markup Language (VML) code. VML is a language used to display graphic information on the Web. The attack appears to work on all versions of Windows running the IE 6 browser

Hackers using computer worms sneakily implanted via AOL instant messages were building a potentially evil botnet, a Silicon Valley Internet security firm said on Tuesday

A burning laptop that frightened passengers at Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend was a ThinkPad, Lenovo confirmed Wednesday, and that notebook ships with Sony's battery technology

20 September 2006

All Scotland's electricity needs could be met from renewable energy sources by 2050 under a bold vision for a greener future unveiled yesterday by Nicol Stephen, the deputy first minister. In an hugely ambitious pledge, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats vowed to go further than the Executive's existing commitment to meet 40 per cent of the country's electricity requirements through renewable sources by 2020

Yahoo's gotten Hollywood Records, owned by Disney, to release the new Jesse McCartney's album Right Where You Want Me, as unrestricted MP3 files. Apparently hell has frozen over — via Boingboing

Researchers from Intel and the University of California at Santa Barbara have found a way to build low-cost laser chips that could eventually shuttle data around PCs at much higher speeds than today's copper wire interconnects. The researchers combined the properties of a compound semiconductor material called indium phosphide, which emits light constantly, and silicon, which can be used to amplify and direct that light. They sandwiched the materials together to create a single device that can be manufactured using standard chip-making techniques

UK-based online trading site Betfair was granted a licence to operate in Australia this January; it built a new data centre and flew the whole thing from the UK to Tasmania on two chartered aeroplanes; in the first three weeks of going live, the company has achieved 100 percent uptime

19 September 2006

An MIT researcher has a vision: Four hundred huge offshore wind turbines are providing onshore customers with enough electricity to power several hundred thousand homes, and nobody standing onshore can see them. The trick? The wind turbines are floating on platforms a hundred miles out to sea, where the winds are strong and steady

BAE Systems, one of the world's biggest arms manufacturers, is designing a new generation of green munitions, including lead-free bullets and rockets with reduced toxins. It also wants to cut the dangerous compounds in its jets, fighting vehicles and artillery, which it warns can harm the environment and pose a risk to people

Toshiba will replace about 340,000 laptop computer batteries made by Sony worldwide, the latest in a string of Sony battery woes. The batteries, used in Dynabook and Dynabook Satellite laptops manufactured between March and May this year, could fail on the road because of problems with storing and transmitting power

18 September 2006

Most studios have already picked a side in the HD-DVD / Blu-ray war, but for the few still contemplating a near suicidal attempt at a simultaneous DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray release, there's help on the way. A pair of Warner engineers have been working on a way to get all three formats to hold hands on a single disc, and have recently filed a patent to that effect

The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a standard key that is widely available on the Internet

The airline has become the third to impose restrictions on laptops, following the recall of millions of exploding batteries. The airline has banned the in-flight use of most Dell and Apple laptops, following recalls of thousands of batteries by both computer makers. The decision follows similar moves by Qantas and Korean Air

A Taiwan-based maker of DVDs and CDs for major studios is about to begin putting RFID chips in disks. The eventual aim is for DVD and CD players equipped with an RFID reader to prevent copied or out-of-region disks from being played

17 September 2006

Users of modchipped gaming consoles could face fines of thousands of dollars when new copyright protection laws are introduced this year by the Federal Government. Until now, it has only been illegal to distribute or sell services or devices seeking to disable or override copy control technologies, but now users of such tools will also fall foul of the law once the legislation is introduced later this year

A Florida appeals court ruled that Fox and the media in general have no obligation to tell the truth after Fox fired members of its investigative journalist team for exposing the truth

Engineers at Brown University have built a prototype of a hybrid plastic battery that uses a conductive polymer. The system, which marries the power of a capacitor with the storage capacity of a battery, can store and deliver power efficiently. For example, during performance testing, it delivered more than 100 times the power of a standard alkaline battery. Still, it's unlikely that such a device can appear on the market before several years

By studying how beetles can trap air to keep from drowning, researchers suggest artificial gills that mimic such a trick could help people breathe underwater

16 September 2006

In his latest newsletter, security author Bruce Schneier delivered a scathing critique of politicians and the media for promoting fear and ultimately doing exactly what the terrorists want. Citing several cases of false alarms, Schneier writes: Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat... Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership

Zune's highly touted wireless file sharing will infect otherwise unprotected audio files with proprietary DRM. In cases where users are sharing songs covered by any of the Creative Commons licenses, this would be a clear violation of those license. From the CC FAQ: If a person uses DRM tools to restrict any of the rights granted in the license, that person violates the license

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new campaign in an effort to shed light on the US government's electronic surveillance programmes

A new nano-optical device can focus laser light tighter than traditional optics, which could lead to higher-density data storage

15 September 2006

American airport staff almost stopped Harry Potter author JK Rowling boarding a flight because she would not part with the manuscript for the final book. Rowling was not prepared to stow her top secret notes for book number seven in her check-in baggage when she flew back from a book festival in August. Eventually she was allowed to take them on the flight, bound in elastic bands — via Franz Josef

Google Book Search and the American Library Association have teamed up to offer searchable indices and library links to banned books, in celebration of Banned Books Week

A US Department of Justice official has joined the debate surrounding Apple's proprietary digital music technology by criticising European antitrust activities, but groups attacking Apple are defending their actions — via winsomecowboy

After over a year of hanging in maybe-planet limbo, newly-classified 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena, now has a permanent name: Eris, goddess of strife. Its moon will be named Dysnomia, after the goddess of lawlessness, in Greek mythology, Eris's daughter

14 September 2006

Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne on new non-lethal weapons such as the Active Denial System, which fires ultra-painful bursts of microwave energy: If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation. (Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press — via Boingboing

Neanderthals were thought to have died out as modern humans arrived in Europe. Now, artefacts found in a cave in Gibraltar reveal that the two groups coexisted for millenia before Neanderthals finally dwindled out of existence

Greg Palast and Matt Pascarella, a journalist and a TV producer working on a piece about Katrina refugees, have been charged with the crime of videotaping a critical national security structure in Louisiana

Bill says: Sometimes I waste time on the Net by putting in interesting searches into Google. Today's was quite interesting — Google this: Confidential do not distribute. I just can't believe in this day and age that anyone would think, let's keep it confidential, but put on our web site. I found some VERY interesting info I probably wasn't supposed to see — via Boingboing

13 September 2006

Apple overhauled its digital music and video offerings on Tuesday, introducing new iPods in three categories, an update on iTunes and announcing plans to make movies available for purchase through the iTunes store. Apple also plans to introduce a product in the first quarter of 2007 that lets consumers stream their movies or music to televisions. The new device, code-named iTV, has 802.11 wireless built in. It will sell for US$299 and works with PCs and Macs

In the next 12 months, starting with a major push this month, Wal-Mart wants to sell every one of its regular customers — 100 million in all — one swirl bulb. In the process, Wal-Mart wants to change energy consumption in the United States, and energy consciousness, too. It also aims to change its own reputation, to use swirls to make clear how seriously Wal-Mart takes its new positioning as an environmental activist — via meta-roj blog

Police have launched a frantic search for three bottles of potentially deadly poison lost after a Shimonoseki Mitsui Chemicals official who had been carrying them went out for a night on the town and got so drunk he can't remember what he did with them — via Improbable Research

12 September 2006

A life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been placed in Disneyland by guerrilla artist Banksy. The hooded figure was placed inside the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at the California theme park last weekend. It is understood to have remained in place for 90 minutes before the ride was closed down and the figure removed

Jimmy Wales has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive Wikipedia entries. He challenges other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing. Wikipedia has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia. We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information — via Slashdot

Scientists have discovered a tumour suppressing gene which also leads to ageing in stem cells. The gene also known as p16INK4a when removed from knockout mice resulted in older mice having organs as healthy as younger ones. However they didn't live any longer than normal mice. The new study was confirmed by three independent researchers from Harvard, UNC Chapel Hill and University of Michigan

11 September 2006

Servers participating in the TOR anonymising network have been seized by public prosecutors during a child porn crackdown in Germany. TOR provides anonymity for clients and servers by redirecting traffic through a network of volunteer-operated relays; the German prosecutors may have been trying to locate an anonymous server by examining the logs of the captured relays — via Slashdot

Samsung has developed a new super chip with enough capacity to store 36,000 high-resolution photographs or 40 movie files

A British scientist's recent announcement that he had found a way to develop a drug that mimics the happy effects of alcohol — sociability and relaxation — without producing next-day headaches or ravaging the body sparked an immediate controversy — via digg

Australian researchers developing a Bionic Eye say early tests have succeeded in stimulating limited visual sensation in people suffering a rare form of genetic blindness

10 September 2006

It turns out that to use UnBox, the user has to download software from Amazon that contains a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe). Tom Merritt over at C|Net reports that the service tries to connect to the internet quite frequently. Even tweaking msconfig could not prevent it. So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can't burn to DVD and can't watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service. Try again — via Slashdot

An incredibly diverse coalition of high-powered public interest groups, industry associations, and corporations have signed an open letter to the US Patent and Trademark Office rejecting the Broadcast Treaty, a US-led UN initiative that could do untold harm to artists, tech and telecoms companies, scholars, and people with disabilities

Geoplasma is planning to build a power plant in St Lucie County, Florida that will generate electricity by vaporising landfill trash and sewage treatment plant sludge with plasma arcs. It will be the first plant of its kind in the USA and the largest in the world. The power plant is expected to destroy 3000 tons of garbage, generating about 120 megawatts of electricity per day. The plant will also supply steam to a nearby Tropicana juice plant. The landfill is expected to be depleted in about 18 years. In addition, up to 600 tons of melted, hardened sludge will be produced each day and will be sold for road construction

09 September 2006

Samsung's US Web site is hosting a Trojan horse that logs keystrokes, disables antivirus applications and steals online banking access codes, according to Internet security firm Websense

New Zealand's lead state sector agency yesterday responded to criticism of its new digital rights management guidelines, saying the policy does not alter its support for open source software in government agencies

A humiliated Tony Blair was forced to announce yesterday that he will stand down as Prime Minister within a year as he launched a desperate attempt to cling to power

France issued an implicit criticism of US foreign policy on Thursday, rejecting talk of a war on terror

08 September 2006

Xerox has lifted the veil from some of its research and development work in the field of printing. They demoed the very intriguing transient documents. These offer the prospect of reusable paper in the sense that the content is automatically erased after a period of time, ready for fresh printing. Inspired by the fact that many print outs have a life-span of a few hours (think of the emails you may print out just to read, or the content you proof read on the train journey back home), the specially prepared paper will preserve its content for up to 16 hours

Australian motor sport legend Peter Brock has died after his car hit a tree during a rally in Western Australia

The NSW Police Force has invested in a biometric tracking system that is capable of combining information from numerous video cameras to monitor people, vehicles and even packages or briefcases

Amazon.com has launched it's Amazon Unbox video store. Looks like about 1300 movies and 350 tv series, at US$9.99 and up for movies and US$1.99 per TV episode. Downloads come with a DVD quality version and a version more appropriate for portable players (using Windows DRM). Also, videos can be re-downloaded from your Amazon media library — via Slashdot

07 September 2006

Google has launched a free news archive service enabling internet users to search for printed articles dating back to the 1700s

In an effort to track down the source of information leaks by Hewlett-Packard insiders, private investigators working for the company obtained reporters' telephone records without permission. The reporters' records were accessed as part of a private investigation into news leaks that was initiated by company Chairwoman Patricia Dunn

Sony will delay the launch of its PlayStation 3 Australia and Europe giving rivals Microsoft and Nintendo a free run at the Christmas shopping season

FreeDOS 1.0 has been released only a little bit later than planned. The 1.0 milestone is considered to be a stable and viable MS-DOS replacement and features long filename support, HIMEM and EMM386 management, and CD-ROM support

06 September 2006

Apple may soon launch a service that allows users to download feature-length films, boosting its presence in the digital home

Bush said that 14 of the most notorious terrorism suspects had been transferred to the Guantánamo Bay detention center to face eventual trial

Matsushita Electric Industrial said Tuesday it has begun recalling 6,000 lithium-ion batteries used in Panasonic-brand notebook computers on concerns they might overheat

Google is asking surfers with time on their hands to help it categorise and label the images indexed by its search engine, building a database of knowledge about the contents of the images

05 September 2006

Google, which refused in the past year to hand over user search data to US authorities fighting children's access to pornography, said yesterday that it was complying with a Brazilian court's orders to turn over data that could help identify users accused of taking part in online communities that encourage racism, pedophilia and homophobia. The difference, it says, is scale and purpose. The Justice Department wanted Google's entire search index, billions of pages and two months' worth of queries, for a broad civil case. Brazil, by contrast, is looking for information in specific cases involving Google's social networking site, Orkut

Canadian Ministers of Education are pushing a copyright proposal that will harm Internet access and a copyright group is seeking to create a new license for Internet content. Access Copyright, a copyright collective, wants to use a new international text standard to license everything from books to blogs. Geist outlines in his blog how Canadians can fight back against these proposals — via Slashdot

There's a new video codec out there that claims to offer up to 40 percent better video quality but that resets your computer's DNS settings — opening the way for Trojans, rootkits or whatever. Techworld warns that zCodec looks professional enough, is widely available, and comes in at 100KB — via Slashdot

Researchers at Microsoft have completed work on a prototype framework called BrowserShield that promises to intercept and remove, on the fly, malicious code hidden on Web pages, instead showing users safe equivalents of those pages. The BrowserShield project, an outgrowth of the company's Shield initiative, could one day even become Microsoft's answer to zero-day browser exploits such as the WMF (Windows Metafile) attack that spread like wildfire in December 2005

04 September 2006

The naturalist and television star Steve Irwin has died in a diving accident in far north Queensland. He was 44. Police say he was stung through the heart by a stingray while diving off Port Douglas. He was filming a documentary when the accident occurred around midday AEST near the Low Isles

The recently released Browzar web browser, based on the Internet Explorer core, is designed to protect a user's privacy whilst surfing the Internet and be an effective throw-away browser. However many who deal with the removal of malware have flagged this software as malware. The application Browzar has been branded adware by many because it directs web searches to online adverts. Some technical experts also say Browzar, which claims to leave no trail of web pages visited, does not work. Browzar's developers say they are examining the feedback but strongly deny that it is adware

Brazilian authorities have given Google Brazil 15 days to turn over user information from web sites that promote criminal activity, threatening the company with $US23,000 in daily fines if it does not comply

03 September 2006

UK graffiti virtuoso Banksy has smuggled 500 doctored versions of Paris Hilton's new CD into stores across the country. The CD contain Banksy's remixes and have titles like Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For? — via Boingboing

After walking the Great Wall of China and making plans for a trip to Russia, Shirley Greening-Jackson thought signing up for a new internet service would be a doddle. But the young man behind the counter had other ideas. He said she was barred — because she was too old

New Orleans resident Mark Morice is credited with having rescued over 200 people from the flood immediately following Hurricane Katrina, using an idle boat he comandeered. The owner of that boat is now suing Morice for using the craft to save fellow citizens' lives without receiving permission, and claims grief, mental anguish, embarrassment and suffering... due to the removal of the boat — via Boingboing

02 September 2006

The American Astronomical Unions Division of Planetary Scientists recognises the IAU's authority to make a new planet defintion but expects it to be altered. Separately, 300 astronomers have signed a petition saying they won't use the definition. All this stems from the discontent over how only 424 astronomers voted on the proposal that demoted Pluto — via Slashdot

The state of California is embarking on a ground-breaking effort to curb global warming, following an agreement between Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's movie star Republican Governor, and the Democrat-dominated state legislature, to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020

The iPod manufacturer at the heart of a recent sweat shop allegation has been ordered by the Chinese government to allow workers to set up a union. This is not necessarily a wonderful thing for the workers, as the unions have a nasty habit of allying themselves with the managers

01 September 2006

Endangered red wolves are living in areas that the Navy has earmarked for a landing strip for jets, according to an environmental group that opposes plans for the airfield

The engine is on fire, the nose is pointing straight down and, wouldn't you know it, the canopy is covered in glue: after 54 years, Airfix was crashing and burning yesterday. In a moment poignant to several generations of paint-covered schoolboys and their long-suffering mothers, the company responsible for more arguments over the proper use of a kitchen table than any other has gone into administration — via Feòrag

Gene therapy has eradicated cancer from two dying men using genetically modified versions of their own cells. Both were suffering from advanced melanoma but the technique could be customised to attack other common cancers

Apple Computer's announcement that Google CEO Eric Schmidt would be joining its board of directors has thrown new light on a longstanding partnership

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