April 2007 Archive

30 April 2007

Dead Like Me, the popular Showtime television series starring Mandy Patinkin and Ellen Muth, is returning as a made-for-DVD movie. Stephen Herek will direct the new film. There's no word yet on who'll be starring in the film — but hopefully they'll revive the original cast

Mental stimulation and drug treatment could help people with degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's recover their memories. A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found two methods — brain stimulation and drugs — both worked

BBC shows such as Doctor Who and EastEnders are to be made available on-demand after the BBC's iPlayer service was given the green light. The service — which will launch later this year — allows viewers to watch programmes online for seven days after their first TV broadcast. Episodes can also be downloaded and stored for up to 30 days

29 April 2007

The Ontario government has given approval for a California company to construct a massive solar farm near Sarnia that will blanket an area larger than all three Toronto islands with hundreds of thousands of sun-soaking panels. It will be the largest solar power station in North America and among the most expansive in the world to use photovoltaic cells that produce electricity when exposed to sunlight. Once complete, the 40-megawatt Sarnia project will be able to supply enough emission-free electricity to power between 10,000 and 15,000 homes on sunny days

Steve McQueen's 1963 Ferrari is expected to fetch US$800,000 to US$1.2m at auction in August. Christie's auctioneers unveiled the metallic-brown Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso on Friday. McQueen bought the car, with beige leather interior, in 1963 and used it as his everyday runaround for 10 years. It's probably the best example of a Ferrari Lusso that's out there on the marketplace, said Christie's Christopher Sanger. The car will be sold at auction on 16 August at Monterey Jet Centre in California

Mozilla has unveiled new details of its schedule for Firefox 3, the next major upgrade to the popular open-source browser. Alpha editions of Firefox 3 will be released monthly, said Mike Schroepfer, the company's vice president of engineering, in a posting to the mozilla.dev.planning forum. The new schedule shows three more previews — Alphas 4, 5 and 6 — be released near the end of April, May, and June, respectively, with a feature-complete Beta 1 dropping into testers' hands 31 July

28 April 2007

Two security experts have discovered a way to inject false messages — some amusing and others potentially frightening — into car satellite navigation systems. Andrea Barisani, chief security engineer for Inverse Path and Daniele Bianco, a hardware hacker at Inverse Path, used off the shelf equipment to transmit messages to their car satellite navigation system warning of conditions ranging from foggy weather to terrorist attacks. They presented their findings on Friday at CanSecWest a security conference taking place this week in Vancouver

Spinal Tap is back, and this time the band wants to help save the world from global warming. The mock heavy metal group immortalised in the 1984 mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, will reunite for a performance at Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Live Earth concerts scheduled worldwide for 7 July

27 April 2007

Your next eBay purchase could arrive at your door in a brown Amazon box. Amazon is expanding a program designed to allow independent sellers to use its network of distribution centres to store and ship their products, according to Jeffrey Bezos, Amazon's founder and chief executive. Since last fall, the program, Fulfillment by Amazon, has allowed independent sellers who list their goods on Amazon to use its network of more than 20 distribution centers around the world to fill orders. Now Amazon, which is based in Seattle, is opening the program to vendors who list their items elsewhere on the Web — on their own site, through Google, or even on Amazon's e-commerce rival, eBay

The $100 laptop introduced by Nicholas Negroponte as part of the One Laptop Per Child program will end up costing $175. The demand for the program is apparent as seven nations have expressed interest in being in the initial wave to buy the little green-and-white XO computers — Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya — but it remains unclear which ones will be first to pony up the cash

An anti-spam organisation filed a federal lawsuit Thursday targeting so-called spam harvesters, who facilitate the mass distribution of junk e-mail by trolling the Internet and collecting millions of e-mail addresses. The lawsuit was filed in US District Court in Alexandria by a Utah company called Unspam Technologies. The company runs a Web site called Project Honey Pot dedicated to tracking spam harvesters worldwide. Project Honey Pot has collected thousands of Internet addresses that it has linked to spam harvesters, but it so far has been unable to link those addresses to an actual person. The lawsuit names a variety of John Does as defendants, and the plaintiffs hope that the legal process will allow them to track the actual people who are harvesting the e-mail addresses, said lead attorney Jon Praed with the Arlington-based Internet Law Group

26 April 2007

European astronomers have spotted what they say is the most Earth-like planet yet outside our solar system, with balmy temperatures that could support water and potentially life. They have not directly seen the planet, orbiting a red dwarf star called Gliese 581, but measurements of the star suggest that a planet not much larger than the Earth is pulling on it, the researchers say in a letter to the editor of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky, like our Earth, or covered with oceans, study leader Stephane Udry, of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, said. It appears to have a mass five times that of Earth

Ty Roberts, CTO of Gracenote, made the claim this week that the music industry was about to cave in the next six months on the issue of DRM, at least when it comes to downloads

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs indicated on Wednesday he is unlikely to give in to calls from the music industry to add a subscription-based model to Apple's wildly popular iTunes online music store

Kodak has decided to attempt to buck the trend set by HP by offering low cost printers and reasonably priced ink cartridges. Three of their new printers start at US$149, with ink cartridges costing US$9.99 for a black cartridge and US$14.99 for a five color cartridge. To counter, HP has announced a release of lower-priced cartridges, though with less ink and they are still more expensive than Kodak's. It will be a matter of time to see whether Kodak can upset the practice of ink cartridge extortion

25 April 2007

The tyranny of two-dimensional computer and TV displays could soon be over. A team of MIT researchers has proposed a way to make a holographic video system that works with computer hardware for consumers, such as PCs with graphics cards and gaming consoles. The display, the researchers say, will be small enough to add to an entertainment center, provide resolution as good as a standard analog television, and cost only a couple hundred dollars

A pregnant cow being chased by police and firefighters caused more than $41,000 of damage on a three-hour rampage through the German city of Hanover. The cow, Uschi, escaped from a farm late on Monday and became increasingly violent as she encountered shocked drivers and pedestrians in the city. Pursued by the farmer, television camera crews and 30 police and firefighters, the Charolais cow lashed out at cars, benches, garden fences and whatever else got in her way during the five-kilometre chase. After more than three hours on the loose, Uschi was brought down by tranquilliser darts, without harming her unborn calf

A man cut off his penis with a knife in a packed London restaurant. Police were forced to use CS gas to restrain the man when they entered the Zizzi restaurant in The Strand on Sunday evening. The man was then taken to hospital in south London where his condition is stable. It is understood surgeons were unable to reattach his penis

24 April 2007

Indian police discovered a human bones factory in an eastern state on Monday and arrested six people for illegally trading in skeletons, a senior officer said. The arrested men told police the bones were sold to medical students and used in traditional medicine. Investigators found dozens of skeletons — treated with chemicals — laid out to dry in the sun when they reached a river bank in Keshia, 200 kilometres north of Kolkata

A super-hard material that is tough enough to scratch diamond could be made cheaply and easily, a new study suggests. The material is made from the metal rhenium and the element boron and resembles both a metal and a crystal in structure

23 April 2007

Free online encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the Web, and Jimmy Wales has operated the multilingual virtual encyclopedia for 6 years without the first ad. Wikipedia have announced that they may add some trivia games and quiz programs in an effort to boost funds in support of the site. Wales has said that the firm will hold off on advertising for now, but turning down millions of dollars in ad revenue that could be applied to humanitarian causes had caused Wales to take pause to consider the lesser of evils

Amazon wants to launch an online music store next month to challenge Apple and is working on plans to sell music with reduced protection against copyright infringement. The internet giant has approached all the music majors in the past fortnight and said that it wanted to sell unprotected MP3 songs in May as it tries to follow Apple in shaking up the music industry. However, it remains unclear if Amazon will meet its deadline. The internet retailer has been trying, unsuccessfully, over 18 months to break into the market dominated by Apple iTunes, which has a share of about 80 per cent

The US Department of Veterans Affiars have added the Wiccan pentacle to its list of emblems of belief allowed on the government-issued headstones of veterans. The new policy apparently settles two lawsuits against the VA, including one filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union representing Wiccan churches and individuals

22 April 2007

German scientists at the University of Ulm have identified a natural ingredient of human blood that prevents the HIV-1 virus from from infecting immune cells and multiplying. The molecule, which they call virus-inhibitory peptide (VIRIP), promises new types of effective treatment for HIV in the future

Free internet access will be available throughout all 17 Auckland City Libraries from Thursday 26 April. The service will be funded as part of $25 million being spent by Auckland City Council over the next decade to enhance community facilities. Auckland City Council said providing free internet access will meet the expectation that everyone should be able to access information from any source, using computers, at their local library

Officials in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, are taking to the air in an attempt to make the city safer. The council has bought three mini remote-controlled airships which are soon to be launched to look down on the city monitoring criminal activity. Each has a camera mounted on it, which beams back pictures to a control room

21 April 2007

Those of you as fond of Ubuntu as we are likely won't need much convincing, but those that have yet to go 'bu now have one of the most compelling reasons yet to consider the OS, as version 7.04 (otherwise known as Feisty Fawn) has now been officially released into the wild. Among the improvements this time around are improved wireless and multimedia support, and a new Windows migration tool that should make things a bit easier for those going for a dual-boot system

The active compound in marijuana, THC, can slow the growth of lung tumours and reduce the spread of the cancer in mice, a preliminary study reveals. Human lung cancer tumours grew less than half as fast in mice that received moderate doses of the compound, the researchers reveal. They hope that drugs mimicking the apparent anti-cancer effects of tetrahydrocanabinol (THC) could one day help treat patients. The team strongly discourage people from self-medicating by smoking marijuana, noting that doing so could potentially encourage tumour growth

A desktop printer loaded with a silver salt solution and vitamin C has been used to produce electronic circuits. The UK researchers behind the feat say their experimental device could pave the way for safer and cheaper electronics manufacturing. Being able to print out electronic components and whole circuit boards could provide an alternative to current manufacturing techniques, which are energy intensive and environmentally unfriendly

20 April 2007

With all the new features Mozilla added to Thunderbird 2.0, Thunderbird's target is clearly Microsoft's Outlook e-mail program. In the business community, Thunderbird's ability to make inroads on Outlook has been hampered by Outlook's integration with Microsoft Exchange, but Thunderbird has had a great deal of success for home users

An inquiry into one of Canada's leading pathologists has revealed he was responsible for wrongful diagnoses, which resulted in a number of innocent people going to jail. The investigation looked at 45 cases where Dr Charles Smith had determined children had been murdered. They found that in at least 20 cases the children had in fact not been murdered. One man spent 12 years in prison after Dr Smith said he had raped and killed his niece, but the girl had not been raped and was not murdered

Google has announced a new Ajax Feed API makes it possible to extract information from multiple RSS feeds with only a few simple lines of JavaScript. The API--which allows web developers to retrieve RSS data as either XML or JSON--can be used to build mashups, unique web applications that leverage multiple sources of data and display the results in a useful or innovative manner

A 17-year-old rookie plumber has burned down a £5 million ($12 million) waterside mansion in southwest England, after a soldering task during his first day on the job went horribly wrong

19 April 2007

Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Google took the stage this week at the Web 2.0 expo and in addition to discussing pressing issues have declared their intent to avoid another browser war. All the panelists agreed that security was the largest concern currently facing browser developers

MySpace.com has launched a beta of a news site it hopes will bring more advertising revenue to the popular social networking site. MySpace News is a hybrid between standard news-aggregation sites, such as Google News, and a news-rating site such as Digg. Like Google and other news sites from portals such as Yahoo and AOL, MySpace News brings in content from a variety of news outlets. But the site also has a Digg-like feature that lets MySpace users rate stories they see on the site, and share stories with other site users

Magnetic deflector shields could one day guard astronauts against dangerous space radiation, if experiments now underway pay off

For the members of the iGen, the infinitely connected teens and twenty-somethings who cannot remember a time when the Web didn't exist, the ritual of mourning is now a social-networking phenomenon

18 April 2007

A Japanese temple building company goes out of business after 1428 years. Kongo Gumi was founded in 578 and was the world's oldest continuously operating family business — via kottke.org

The BBC is to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving more than 20,000 people in the UK. Full-length programmes, as well as scripts and notes, will be available for download from the BBC's website. The pilot is part of the BBC's plans to eventually offer more than a million hours of TV and radio from its archive

Irish rocker and Live Aid founder Bob Geldof is to team up with the BBC on a project to digitally catalogue all known human existence. The London-based public service broadcaster, its commercial arm BBC Worldwide and Geldof's Ten Alps media group are to collaborate on the Dictionary of Man. In a statement, the BBC says the scale and ambition of the anthropological project, which will have an accompanying television series The Human Planet, will be unprecedented. It would use every available medium to create the largest ever living record of films, photographs, anthropological histories, philosophies, theologies, economies, language, art as well as people's personal stories

Tiny smart devices that can be borne on the wind like dust particles could be carried in space probes to explore other planets, UK engineers say. The devices would consist of a computer chip covered by a plastic sheath that can change shape when a voltage is applied, enabling it to be steered

17 April 2007

Within a few weeks, Australia may introduce new laws to censor films and literature deemed by the government to be supportive of terrorism. This is not the first time material has been censored in Australia, which has previously censored films and banned publications, including one titled Defence of the Muslim Lands (censored in mid 2006 by Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock). The proposed laws are aimed to target material such as a DVD by Feiz Mohammad containing some of his past controversial sermons calling for jihad and comparing Jews with pigs. The Office of Film and Literature Classification previously classified this DVD as PG, suitable for viewing by anyone under 15 years of age with parental guidance

The Canadian government is reportedly ready to introduce copyright reform legislation this spring, provided that no election is called. The new bill would move Canada far closer to the US on copyright, with DMCA-style anti-circumvention legislation that prohibits circumvention of DRM systems and bans software and mod chips that can be used to circumvent such systems

It was just a bit of text advocating open data formats that was slipped into a Florida State Senate bill at the last minute with no fanfare, but within 24 hours three Microsoft-paid lobbyists, all wearing black suits, were pressuring members of the Senate Committee on Governmental Operations (COGO) to remove the words they didn't like

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has confirmed there will be a presentation layer for Google Docs & Spreadsheets. While Google has web-based applications for word processing and spreadsheet management, the addition of a Power Point-style presentation application could be the final step in turning Google's online office suite into a serious Microsoft Office

16 April 2007

Reports continue to filter in about DVDs that refuse to play on standard players from Toshiba, LG, Pioneer, Sony and others. The culprit is titles that utilise Sony's ARccOS copy protection scheme, such as Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Weinstein Company's Lucky Number Slevin, and Sony's Casino Royale, The Holiday, and Stranger Than Fiction. ARccOS artificially scrambles sectors on the disc in an attempt to keep users from ripping the disc to a drive. Many older (or less sophisticated) players simply skip these corrupted areas as unreadable and continue on. Computers — and unfortunately, some newer players — try to perform error correction on these areas and fail playback

The smoking ban in Ireland has cut air pollution in pubs and improved bar-workers' health, a study has found. Researchers said the ban, which came in at the end of March 2004, had led to an 83% reduction in air pollution and an 80% cut in cancer-causing agents. Smoking bans are already in place in Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland will follow suit on 30 April, with England's ban coming into force on 1 July

15 April 2007

Microsoft, a veteran defendant of epic antitrust battles in the United States and Europe, is urging antitrust officials to consider scuttling Google's plan to buy DoubleClick

Want a video removed from YouTube? Send along a fake takedown notice pretending to be from the copyright holder. At least, it's a prank that worked for a 15 year old from Perth, who sent a signed form to YouTube pretending to be from the Australian Broadcasting Company. The form requested the takedown of hundreds of clips from The Chaser's War on Everything, which the ABC has made freely available. The head of ABC-TV comedy, Courtney Gibson, says it is not clear why the boy impersonated an ABC employee and had the clips removed, but she is glad he has now apologised

The Tamil Tigers Liberation Front a separatist group in Sri Lanka, which has been classified as a terrorist group in 32 countries has moved up from routine sea piracy to a space-based one. They have been accused of illegally using Intelsat satellites to beam radio and television broadcasts internationally. Intelsat says that they will end the transmissions within days. Intelsat has been accused of having business links with Hezbollah before, but claim that they are blameless this time and LTTE was using an empty transponder

14 April 2007

Google reached an agreement today to acquire DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies announced, an amount that was almost double the $1.65 billion in stock that Google paid for YouTube late last year. The sale offers Google access to DoubleClick's advertisement software and, more importantly, its relationships with Web publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies

Computer makers have been told they'll no longer be able to get Windows XP OEM by the end of this year, despite strong ongoing demand for the OS. Analysts and computer makers are wondering if the move is premature given Vista's ongoing performance and compatibility issues. Dell recently said it would reintroduce XP on a range of machines due to customer demand but Microsoft will only allow this until the end of the year

The Tokyo Institute of Technology has announced a process for creating an inexpensive, nearly transparent, electrically conductive alumina cement. The conductivity is comparable to metal, and the transparency should be adequate for use in display panels. The process relies upon commonplace and inexpensive metals compared to the rare metals such as iridium currently used in display panels

13 April 2007

One of the outstanding figures of modern US literature, Kurt Vonnegut, has died aged 84 in New York. He became a cult figure among students in the 1960s and 1970s with his classics of US counterculture. The pivotal moment of his life was the bombing of Dresden by allied forces in 1945. The experience informed his best-known work, Slaughterhouse Five. He suffered brain injuries after a fall at his home in Manhattan and died on Wednesday, said his wife Jill Krementz

While Apple is promising several new features in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac fans won't be able to get their hands on the Leopard OS until later this year as a result of Apple diverting Leopard engineering and testing resources to the launch of the highly anticipated iPhone, which couples iPod-like functionality with smartphone capabilities

Fast food chain McDonald's has pleaded guilty to five charges of employing children under the age of 15 at its Rockingham outlet south-west of Perth. The Department for Consumer Protection says McDonald's was fined $8,000 for employing the children without written permission from their parents and having them working outside restricted hours

12 April 2007

Company officials announced Tuesday that Palm will move to a new Linux-based platform to help the company compete better. The move was announced during a meeting with analysts in New York, where they also discussed the company's business strategy and refused to talk about recent rumours of a possible buyout

The discovery of the LED is usually credited to four US groups in 1962, but an unrecognised Russian genius got there forty years before. Oleg Losev even filed a patent on using his device for long range communications, and wrote to Einstein to ask for help with the theory — but got no reply — via Slashdot

An anteater attacked a young zookeeper in Argentina, ripping open the woman's abdomen and legs with its long claws and leaving her in critical condition. This female anteater apparently attacked her keeper at a Buenos Aires-area zoo to protect her offspring. The unusual attack damaged the zookeeper's stomach, liver and lungs, Jose Potito, the director of the hospital where the woman was being treated, said

11 April 2007

Ecuador's famous Galapagos Islands could be off-limits for tourists after the country's President declared them at risk and in the midst of an environmental crisis. Most famous for inspiring Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the Galapagos Islands attract thousand of visitors annually, making them Ecuador's top tourist destination. But introduced species, illegal fishing and a rapidly growing human population have placed pressure on the archipelago. President Rafael Correa has promised to urgently address the threats. Signing an emergency decree to prevent further harm to the islands, he has left open the possibility of suspending tourism permits temporarily

Up to 5.9 million children face having their fingerprints taken by schools in another move towards a Big Brother society. Pupils will have to hand over their biometric details simply to borrow library books or gain access to school dinners. A million children's fingerprints are believed to have been taken already, some without parental approval and even by con tricks such as pretend spy games. Freedom of Information data obtained by the Tories reveals a further 4.9 million sets of prints could now be added to school computers after the vast majority of local education authorities sanctioned the practice

The Chinese government is requiring game houses to modify MMOG's to restrict under 18 users to three hours productive gameplay per day. This anti-addiction software must be in place within four months, with games not compliant by 15 July liable to be shut down in China. Net9, Shanda and NetEase will be moving to comply with the government regulations. Users will have to register with their real names and Chinese identity card numbers to be allowed access to the games

10 April 2007

A claim by South Korean scientists to have created the first cloned wolves is being investigated by officials at the team's university. The team is led by a former colleague of disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk. The wolf cloning team is suspected of using erroneous data to inflate their claims of having created two cloned wolves, a university statement said. Lee Byeong-chun, a veterinary professor, announced last month that his team had succeeded in cloning the two wolves, named Snuwolf and Snuwolffy. The wolf clones were both born in October 2005.

The internet industry has been plunged into uncertainty as the looming federal election makes Australia's broadband future a political hot potato. Both Labor and the Coalition have been playing politics on proposals to build the broadband backbone expected to carry the bulk of the nation's data for years to come. Picking a winner has become too risky for internet service providers, many of which are holding off on infrastructure investments until the smoke clears

Scottish scientists have developed a computer the size of a matchstick head, thousands of which can be sprayed onto patients to give a comprehensive analysis of their condition

09 April 2007

Researchers from the Nanomaterials Research Centre at Massey University in New Zealand have developed synthetic dyes that can be used to generate electricity at one tenth of the cost of current silicon-based solar panels. These photosynthesis-like compounds work in low-light conditions and can be cheaply incorporated into window-panes and building materials, thereby turning them into generators of electricity

Microsoft says that it's dropping DRM from some of the catalog in the Zune store. This is the other shoe-drop we've all been waiting for since Apple announced last week that it would sell the entire EMI catalog (albeit at a 30% higher price) without DRM through the iTunes Music Store. Interestingly, Microsoft seems to be implying that it's going to sell DRM-free tracks from labels other than EMI

08 April 2007

The day when you can charge your cell phone or iPod just by going for a stroll around the block could be a step closer, thanks to a nano-generator. About a year ago, Zhong Lin Wang of Georgia Tech in the US discovered that, when he disturbed zinc oxide nanowires, they gave off a tiny electrical current, a phenomenon called piezoelectricity. At the time, he had to use the tip of an atomic force microscope — a $250,000 instrument — to create about one-billionth of a watt of power. Not exactly energy efficiency. But with his latest experiment, Wang has improved his design at least a thousand-fold

At least one legal expert is shocked that Hells Angels motorcycle club members may have had as much as 11 days notice about police raids on their clubhouse and homes. An Internet weblog revealed the confidential court documents that gave authorities the power to seize the Hells Angels clubhouse on Eastern Avenue, the Toronto Star reported. The blogger reportedly posted a digital copy of the secret court order on 25 March. That order transferred control of the clubhouse, a home in east Toronto and another in Barrie from the motorcycle club to the federal government

07 April 2007

The Gaim project is being renamed. This follows a lengthy and, unfortunately, secret legal process with AOL, which also prevented any code releases except betas. The project will now be known as Pidgin IM. Development is being migrated off of sourceforge.net as well and is now being hosted on developer.pidgin.im

Mozilla's research group has developed a set of content sharing tools that will allow users to swap links and more efficiently track personal content like blog posts, movies, and photos

Michigan is spending $38 million to distribute an iPod to every child, for learning purposes. The plan included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services to pay for it, among other things, to raise funds. If you recall, Duke University tried something like this with mixed results. How financially strained will Michigan residents feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod?

06 April 2007

Although antivirus companies will probably create a hype saying that iPods are prone to infections, a virus called Podloso is a newly found virus that is just a proof of concept code that can infect iPods running Linux. Once launched, the virus scans the device's hard disk and infects all executable .elf format files. Any attempt to launch these files will cause the virus to display a message on the screen which says, You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus

Azureus has announced the beta release of Vuze, a reinvention of the one of Internet's most popular peer-to-peer file sharing applications as a commercial distribution platform for HD content. The Vuze application, formerly called Zudeo, represents a marked change from Azureus' older P-to-P software, which required some technical proficiency to get running

Hitachi has started to ship its 1TB hard disk drives introduced early this year commercially. But the hard drive that represents a milestone in desktop data storage costs a little less than two times higher compared to slightly less capacious one, which makes it not very affordable

Despite the huge variation in body size and shape, Great Danes and Chihuahuas are both members of the same species: Canis lupus familiaris. Now, a new study conducted by an international team of scientists led by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has identified the gene responsible for this great range of dog sizes. The answer, it seems involve a number of different versions of the gene that encodes for insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1). The gene, IGF1, was identified following genetic analysis that began with screening 463 Portuguese water dogs, a breed that has a lot of diversity in size

05 April 2007

Telstra has dusted off its project to build a residential broadband network worth at least $4 billion, laying out a proposal for competitor access at a closed industry meeting in Sydney. The updated network plan for a fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network features the latest copper-wire-based broadband technology, VDSL2, which offers speeds of up to 100Mb per second, five times faster than currently available ADSL2+. The plan is also likely to strand up to $500 million worth of investment in ADSL2+ technology by Telstra's rivals, including Optus, iiNet, Primus and Internode

Microsoft has released an emergency security patch to plug a hole in several versions of Windows — including Vista, which the software maker has touted as its most secure operating system ever. Microsoft was so worried about the hole — which allowed hackers to break into personal computers and install malicious software — that it pushed out the critical security fix a week ahead of a regularly scheduled update

The military-appointed government of Thailand has blocked access to YouTube and several other Internet sites in a crackdown on material seen as denigrating the country's monarch. We have blocked YouTube because it contains a video insulting to our king, Winai Yoosabai, head of the censorship unit at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, said

04 April 2007

Scientists have developed a way of converting one blood group into another. The technique potentially enables blood from groups A, B and AB to be converted into group O negative, which can be safely transplanted into any patient. The method, which makes use of newly discovered enzymes, may help relieve shortages of blood for transfusions

Along with James Doohan's cremated remains will also travel the ashes of one of NASA's first space travelers, Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, aboard a privately-built rocket set to launch from New Mexico this month. The launch of a SpaceLoft XL rocket built by the private firm UP Aerospace is scheduled for 28 April. SL-2, as it has been dubbed, will lift off from Spaceport America, a state-funded launch site near Upham, New Mexico and about 72km north of the city of Las Cruces

Google has thrown its hat into the ring against Microsoft and (reportedly) Yahoo and AOL over the sale of DoubleClick. Google's entry into the bidding may boost the price for the remaining pieces of DoubleClick (parts of the company having already been sold off) to $2 billion, twice what its current owners paid for the whole thing

Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury is awesome, he's turning down endorsement deals and bring a $15 basketball shoe to market. If you've ever wondered why basketball shoes were so expensive, the answer is — because they can be. It's an interesting culture hack, and parents/kids who can't afford $150+ for pricey shoes can still hit the court

03 April 2007

Behold, the world's first open-source car. Cumbersomely dubbed c,mm,n (say common), the vehicle was introduced at AutoRAI in Amsterdam. The project is a product of the Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment, better known as the Stichting Natuur en Milieu, along with a trio of universities: Eindhoven, Enschede, and Delft. So how is the c,mm,n open-source? The entire vehicle's genetic makeup (specifications, technical drawings, etc.) are available online to anyone, and the car's creators hope that people will adapt it to their needs and wants, with the caveat that they must share their modifications with the rest of the community

A ban on smoking in enclosed public places has begun across Wales. Pubs, restaurants, offices and public transport are all covered by the ban, which came into force at 0600 BST. Those found smoking can face on-the-spot fines of £50, while those in charge of premises could also be fined for allowing smoking. A similar ban is already in force in Scotland. Northern Ireland will follow suit on 30 April, and England will follow on 1 July

Pulp mill protesters have waved placards and screamed no pulp mill at a rally in Launceston's Albert Hall. Police say about 3,000 people attended the rally. The protesters called on federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull to reject Gunns Limited's plans for a pulp mill at Bell Bay in northern Tasmania

Artist Nadine Jarvis can fabricate pencils from carbon left over by incinerating human remains — it's part of a larger research project into post mortem. She notes that 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash — a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind — via Boingboing

02 April 2007

EMI's entire digital music catalogue will be available in premium DRM-free form via iTunes in May, the music label said Monday at a press conference in London. Beatles tunes under EMI's control, however, are not part of the plan. Major music label EMI Group plans to sell a premium level of digital downloads through Apple's iTunes Store. For $1.29 per song, consumers will be able to buy higher-quality digital music lacking digital rights management. Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. Rather, they will complement the standard 99-cent iTunes downloads and will be sold at a premium: $1.29 per song. Consumers who have already purchased EMI tracks containing Apple's FairPlay copy protection will be able to upgrade them to the premium version for 30 cents, EMI said. Full albums in DRM-free form can be bought at the same price as standard iTunes albums

SonyBMG, the world's second-biggest music company, will no longer accept hard copy demos from bands. Instead, budding musicians will be asked to sign up to a record label website such as www.columbiademos.co.uk or www.rcademos.co.uk to blog their music, photos and videos

IBM is soon to launch a multimedia browser to make audio and video content accessible to people with vision impairments. Codenamed the Accessibility Browser — or A-Browser — the software was created by a blind employee in Japan. The A-Browser will give blind and partially-sighted people the same control over multimedia content that sighted people have using a mouse. IBM says it will be available later this year and hopes it will be free

01 April 2007

Thirty years ago, Luke Skywalker beheld something that scientists are just now realizing is likely quite common in the universe: double sunsets. Astronomers have long known that binary star systems are common. And models suggested that planets could form in these systems, even though there's a double-tug of gravity on the material that would have to form a planet. Observations from NASA's Spitzer telescope, show that binary systems are just as likely to be surrounded by planet-forming debris disks are are lone stars

The European parliament's Commitee for Legal Affairs approved an amendment presented by EMP Nicola Zingaretti, that makes piracy a felony — but only if a monetary profit is made

A California judge handed a victory to Kaleidescape, which manufactures home media servers, ruling that the company's products do not violate the DVD industry's CSS license. The company was sued by the DVD Copy Control Association, which said that Kaleidescape's media servers violate its standard licensing contract

Europe's biggest drug company has announced it is taking the first steps towards marketing a vaccine in Africa from which it never expects to make money. GlaxoSmithKline says it has begun filing documents with the regulatory authorities concerning its meningitis vaccine called Globorix

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