December 2007 Archive

31 December 2007

PC World has released their year in review statistics and 2007 was not kind to Microsoft. IE 6 users are equally likely to move to Firefox as they are to IE7 and no one wants Vista

Scientists believe they have found the underlying reasons why knots are so common in the universe. This research helps us understand how knotty arrangements in various molecules lead to biological patterns, as in certain proteins — via Slashdot

30 December 2007

Randy Steel is no detective, but he may have solved a peculiar holiday mystery. More than 500 bulbs have gone missing this month from the City Park light display in Twin Falls. Officials say they're not sure who is taking the lights, or why. Steel says he's a victim, too. The culprits have struck his house, unscrewing light bulbs and dashing away, sometimes in broad daylight. So far, police have done nothing. But that doesn't surprise Steel. I know who is taking 'em, he said. It's squirrels

For months, users of Adobe Creative Suite 3 have been wondering why some of the applications regularly connect to what looks like a private IP address but is actually a public domain address belonging to the web analytics company Omniture. Now allegations of user spying are getting louder, prompting Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack to respond, though many remain unsatisfied with his explanation — via Slashdot

29 December 2007

The Annals of Improbable Research, a scientific publication that hosts the annual Ig Nobel awards, has decided to offer its publication free online. According to the journal Web site, visitors can view HTML articles with low-res images or download low-res PDFs for free. High-resolution PDFs and traditional on-the-toilet-readable paper-and-ink issues are still available for a subscription fee

The browser that helped kick-start the commercial web is to cease development because of lack of users. Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 February 2008, the company has said. In the mid-1990s the browser was used by more than 90% of the web population, but numbers have slipped to just 0.6%. In particular, the browser has faced competition from Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), which is now used by nearly 80% of all web users

Complaints about online directory assistance sites that reveal extensive personal data have prompted Governor M Jodi Rell to start developing a legislative package to help. In a news release, Rell said Monday that she's received complaints about online search engines that list not only names, addresses, and telephone numbers but also people's ages, places of work, and other personal information. Rell said she plans to propose restrictions that would likely be in the form of an opt-out registry that's an electronic version of the state and federal Do Not Call list, which blocks telemarketing calls to citizens whose phone numbers are on the list

28 December 2007

Warner Music Group is making its music available for US downloads from Amazon in MP3 format without copy protection. Warner had been holding out against using the format because MP3 tracks are easier to share between users and may be freely burned onto CDs

A new book claims to have definitive evidence of a long-suspected technological crime — that Alexander Graham Bell stole ideas for the telephone from a rival, Elisha Gray. In The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret, journalist Seth Shulman argues that Bell — aided by aggressive lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner — got an improper peek at patent documents Gray had filed, and that Bell was erroneously credited with filing first

The WTO's recent ruling on Antigua's complaint against the US over the banning of online gambling resulted in a payment to the island nation much less than they asked for. It appears, though, that this payment was just part of the WTO's compensation package for Antigua/Barbuda. Via Kotaku, the Hollywood Reporter notes that the Caribbean country can now freely ignore US copyright laws — legally. This dispensation is apparently limited to some $21 million a year — via Slashdot

27 December 2007

It appears that Google's Android, criticised by Microsoft as vaporware, has sprung to life. Prototype devices are circulating, software developers are experimenting with the SDK and PC-based Android emulator, and there are rumours of a show-stopping debut at February's Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. Numerous examples of the Android GUI are also starting to leak out — via Slashdot

Russia successfully launched a rocket on Tuesday carrying the last three satellites to complete a navigation system to rival America's GPS. The military-run GLONASS mapping system works over most of Russia and is expected to cover the globe by the end of 2009, once all its 24 navigational satellites are operating

26 December 2007

Google Reader Begins Sharing Private Data One week ago Google Reader's team decided to begin showing your private data to all your GMail contacts. No need to opt-in, no way to opt-out. Complaints haven't been answered. Some users share their problems, including one family who says they won't be able to enjoy this Christmas because of this feature. You can check a summary of complaints or browse the whole thread in Google Groups — via Slashdot

25 December 2007

Shareaza.com, the home of the hugely popular Shareaza multi-network sharing application, has been hijacked by scammers. Unsuspected visitors to the site will be completely unaware that they will be tricked into downloading something that isn't Shareaza at all, but subscription-based malware infected software instead

24 December 2007

From 20 January 2008 new content laws introduced by the Federal Government will force sites to verify the age of users before accessing content intended for mature audiences. The laws bring internet classification into line with Film and Book classification laws and completely prohibits X18+ and RC content from the internet. ACMA (The Australian Communications and Media Authority) claims that adults will not be affected by the new laws, yet user-generated and even chatrooms are required to be assessed for classification and powers are granted to ACMA to send take down notices to offending sites — via Slashdot

Former FBI director J Edgar Hoover had a plan to arrest 12,000 Americans he deemed a possible threat to national security, declassified papers reveal. The FBI chief sent his proposal to US President Harry Truman just after the start of the Korean War in 1950. He asked the president to declare the mass arrest necessary to counter treason, espionage and sabotage. There is no evidence any part of the plan was ever approved

The web site of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention (NBCP) crashed on Tuesday, just hours after its launch, as droves of people logged on to complain about corruption among officials. The web site (yfj.mos.gov.cn) was closed for most of the afternoon

23 December 2007

First-tier notebook manufacturers are increasing the standard installed memory from the current 1 GB to 4GB. They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market. The glut is supposedly due to increased manufacturing capacity and the slow adoption of Microsoft's Vista operating system. The proposed move is especially interesting, given that 32-bit Vista and XP cannot access 4 GB of memory. They have a practical 3.1 -- 3.3 GB limit. With Vista SP1 it seems that Microsoft has decided to fix the problem by reporting the installed memory rather than the available memory — via Slashdot

22 December 2007

Given Apple's marketing toward the young and the trendy, you wouldn't expect the US Army to be much of a customer. Lieutenant Colonel CJ Wallington is hoping hackers won't expect it either. Wallington, a division chief in the Army's office of enterprise information systems, says the military is quietly working to integrate Macintosh computers into its systems to make them harder to hack. That's because fewer attacks have been designed to infiltrate Mac computers, and adding more Macs to the military's computer mix makes it tougher to destabilise a group of military computers with a single attack, Wallington says

The application security researcher Jeremiah Grossman described to CSO magazine how he takes extreme measure to stay safe online. The simplest tip he uses: two separate browsers: One, which he calls the promiscuous browser, is the one he uses for ordinary browsing. A second browser is used only for security-critical tasks such as online banking. When Grossman wants to do online banking, he closes his promiscous browser, opens the more prudish one, and does only what he has to do before closing it and going back to his insecure browser — via Slashdot

The popular BitTorrent site Mininova officially launched its Content Distribution service, an easy way for indie publishers to share their content with a wide audience, for free of course. All the files published with the new Content Distribution (CD) service will be placed on the frontpage as featured content. The publishers don't need to have any knowledge about BitTorrent because Mininova will create the torrent and make sure it is seeded

21 December 2007

Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones and countless other devices. The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travellers

20 December 2007

MIT scientists have found a way to induce cells to form parallel tube-like structures that could one day serve as tiny engineered blood vessels. The researchers found that they can control the cells' development by growing them on a surface with nano-scale patterning

Channel9 is reporting that Internet Explorer 8 has correctly rendered the Acid2 page in standards mode

19 December 2007

All Australian televisions will have to be digital within five years under the new federal government's plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says he has taken the first firm steps to ensure the switchover to digital TV is completed by the end of 2013

A 4,000-year-old clay tablet authorities suspect was smuggled illegally from Iraq was pulled from eBay just minutes before the close of the online auction. Criminal proceedings have been launched against the seller, identified only as a resident of Zurich

18 December 2007

Researchers in a remote Indonesian jungle have discovered a giant rat that is about five times the size of a typical city rat and a tiny possum

Optus has responded to criticism of the move, saying that if a customer wants to avoid paying excess fees they can choose to limit their usage. Optus provides a set of tools to help customers manage their data usage including data usage alerts via SMS to their mobile phone free of charge, email notifications and access via the web any time, said an Optus spokesperson.New Optus Fusion customers could be stung by up to $300 in excess usage fees from today, and Optus subsidiary Virgin Broadband has also increased its Broadband at Home pricing. Optus Fusion plans were previously a no more to pay broadband deal, as they were shaped to slower speeds once the allowance of 2GB, 7GB or 20GB was reached

17 December 2007

The Organisation for Transformative Works has just launched. It's a fascinating new proto-nonprofit determined to defend media fandom from the excesses of copyright and to help fanfic writers and vidders maintain control of their remixed works — via BoingBoing

Optus is now offering increased cable broadband speed of up to 20Mbit/s, but only those on the latest MyHome and Fusion plans can get it. The speed is double the up to 10Mbit/s that was previously offered, and matches Optus' advertised ADSL2+ speed. But users on old plans will not be able to get the higher speed unless they switch to new, less attractive offers

They're coming and it will be difficult to get away without having one. Google Profiles will be integrated in most Google services so you have a coherent identity and a simple way to manage your contacts

16 December 2007

Recent breakthroughs in scramjet engines could mean two-hour flights from New York to Tokyo. This technology, decades in the making, could redefine our understanding of air travel and military encounters. To put things in context, the world's fastest jet, the Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, set a speed record of Mach 3.3 in 1990 when it flew from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, in just over an hour. That's about the limit for jet engines; the fastest fighter planes barely crack Mach 1.6. Scramjets, on the other hand, can theoretically fly as fast as Mach 15 — nearly 10,000 mph — via Slashdot

The malware economy is turning into a recognisable traditional IT economy. Leasing botnets? Malware support? Welcome to the new age of computing. One indication of the maturity of the black economy, according to Telafici, was the recent case of a hacker who wrote a packer [software used to bypass antivirus protection], threw in the towel recently as it wasn't profitable enough -- there's too much competition. They opened the source code and walked away — via Slashdot

15 December 2007

Terry Pratchett, has announced that he has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. The OBE-winning author of the Discworld fantasy series made the original announcement on the web site of Discworld illustrator Paul Kidby. Pratchett remains optimistic: I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as 'I am not dead'. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think — it's too soon to tell — via Slashdot

It doesn't seem like an ideal place to promote solar energy, but foggy San Francisco has come up with an ambitious plan to encourage businesses and homeowners to tap the sun's power for their energy needs. The program announced Tuesday would offer companies and residents government-funded loans and rebates to offset the costs of installing solar panels

Google appears to be reinventing Wikipedia with their new product that they call knol (not yet publicly available). In an attempt to gather human knowledge, Google will accept articles from users who will be credited with the article by name. If they want, they can allow ads to appear alongside the content and they will be getting a share of the profits if that's the case. Other users will be allowed to rate, edit or comment on the articles. The content does not have to be exclusive to Google but no mention is made on any license for it — via Slashdot

14 December 2007

Movable Type is open source. This means you can freely modify, redistribute and use Movable Type for any purpose you choose

A Tasmanian cat has used up at least one life learning that it's not all right to attack native wildlife. Usually, Jelly the cat kills birds. But when Jelly bit a snake, the snake bit back, twisting itself around the cat's neck like a necklace

Opera Software has filed a complaint in Europe against Microsoft, alleging that the software giant is unfairly abusing its dominant market position by tying Windows to Internet Explorer

13 December 2007

KnitML: Standards-Defined Knitting Patterns KnitML is a community standards effort aimed at defining a universal, machine- and human-readable system for describing knitting patterns

12 December 2007

Voters at Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2007 poll have chosen w00t as 2007's most iconic word. Merriam-Webster says that the word is a gamer's acronym for we own the other team, but I'd have to agree with Cory Doctorow that it's a backronym, a back-formed acronym created to explain a word already in use #&8212; via BoingBoing

A screen shot posted to the web over the weekend seems to show that Canada's largest provider of high-speed internet access is exploring a controversial data substitution technique that lets it add its own content to the web pages customers visit. Expect this development to become Exhibit A in the case for net neutrality legislation. Lauren Weinstein, a technology consultant in Los Angeles and a long-time Internet activist, posted a screen-shot of a Rogers-modified Google search page this past Saturday on his blog. Rogers vice president of communications Taanta Gupta confirmed that Rogers is experimenting with this technique as a way to communicate with its customers

Litroenergy is a new type of material that emits light for 12 years without needing electricity or sun exposure. The self-luminous micro-particles are called Litrospheres and are said to be non-toxic, inexpensive and equivalent to a 20 watt incandescent bulb. The Litrospheres give off a continuous illumination, and can be designed to glow in any colour. In addition, they are not affected by heat or cold and are 5,000-pound crush resistant. They can be injection molded or added to paint. The fill rate of Litroenergy micro particles in plastic injection molding material or paint is about 20%

11 December 2007

New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman's voice right in her ear asking, Who's there? Who's there? She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, It's not your imagination. Indeed it isn't. It's an ad for Paranormal State, a ghost-themed series premiering on A&E this week. The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an audio spotlight from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For random passersby and residents who have to walk unwittingly through the area where the voice will penetrate their inner peace, it's another story — via Warren Ellis

One of the potentially useful things that a living cell can do is pump ions across its membrane. Simon Levinson, a biophysicist at the University of Colorado Medical School in Denver, US, says this generates a potential difference and so could be exploited to make a biobattery. Levinson believes that kidney cells, which are particularly good at transporting ions, could be well suited to making a miniature battery. This would be formed by stacking up large numbers of cell layers to boost the voltage and current they can produce

10 December 2007

IBM says it has made a breakthrough in converting electrical signals into light pulses that brings closer the day when supercomputing, which now requires huge machines, will be done on a single chip. In research published on Thursday in the journal Optics Express, IBM said it had produced electro-optic modulators 100 to 1,000 times smaller than comparable silicon photonics modulators and small enough to fit on a processor chip. By connecting processing cores on a chip by light instead of with wires, the problems of high energy consumption and heat generated by multi-core chips could be bypassed, enabling leaps in computing power

09 December 2007

Every year about 1,500 people in the US have surgical objects accidentally left inside them after surgery, according to medical studies. To prevent this potentially deadly problem, Loyola University Medical Centre is utilising a new technology that is helping its surgical teams keep track of all sponges used during a surgical procedure. Each sponge has a unique bar code affixed to it that is scanned by a high-tech device to obtain a count. Before a procedure begins, the identification number of the patient and the badge of the surgical team member maintaining the count are scanned into the counter. When a sponge is removed from a patient, it is scanned back into the system. A surgical procedure cannot end until all sponges are accounted for — via Slashdot

08 December 2007

Two engineers at the University of California, Riverside are part of a binational team that has found semiconducting nanotubes produced by living bacteria — a discovery that could help in the creation of a new generation of nanoelectronic devices. The research team believes this is the first time nanotubes have been shown to be produced by biological rather than chemical means. It opens the door to the possibility of cheaper and more environmentally friendly manufacture of electronic materials

An English court has banned a teenage boy from posting abusive or insulting comments on a social networking web site after judging his participation in the network to be anti-social. Norwich Youth Court in eastern England issued an Anti-Social Behavior Order (Asbo) against a local 17-year-old implicated in petty criminal boasting on the online community Bebo

07 December 2007

You know you've really made it as an online entity when an entire country bans your site. In terms of a rite of passage, it's just after the wide-spread adoption and critical mass stages (which of course is followed by random companies banning you, and mainstream newspapers writing about studies on how inefficient the economy has become since your company's existence). Twitter now joins the lauded halls of the sites banned for presumably speaking too freely; the United Arab Emirates has decided that its residents shall tweet no more

The Seven Network is putting its digital house in order with plans to beef up its high-definition channel next week and early testing under way for its TiVo personal video recorder. Seven is expected to start broadcasting at least 50 hours of programming on its high-definition digital channel, Seven HD, from Monday and has advertising booked to begin the following Saturday

Facebook is allowing its 55 million users to permanently turn off its Beacon advertising program, which tracks their activities

06 December 2007

The Hunter's rapidly-growing boutique brewery, Bluetongue, has been snapped up by the giant global drinks company Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA). The Bluetongue brewery was launched in 2003, with assistance from the New South Wales Government's Hunter Advantage Fund. The Cameron Park facility now employs 47 people. CCA spokeswoman Sally Loane says the local workforce can be assured there are only plans to grow the business

Flickr members now can edit pictures online using Picnik's online tools, a significant change in the ability and focus of the photo-sharing site. A new edit this option on each photo's page takes Flickr members to a powered by Picnik screen that permits them to change exposure, colors, sharpness, and other attributes, as well as add text, whiten teeth, fix red-eye, crop, and resize. The features duplicate those already available on Picnik's site

05 December 2007

Microsoft is pulling back from a system that disables programs on users' computers if it suspects the software is pirated, opting instead for a gentler approach based on nagging alerts. Microsoft said Monday it will roll out the new version of Windows Genuine Advantage with the first service pack for Windows Vista, due in the first quarter of 2008

04 December 2007

Google is making changes to its European launch of Street View to protect the privacy of those it photographs, may do the same for US version

Britain's domestic intelligence agency is warning that cybercrime perpetrated by China is on the rise following hacking attacks against Rolls-Royce PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC. MI5 recently sent letters to some 300 banks and accounting and legal firms warning that state organisations of China were plying their networks for information. The UK government refused to confirm the letters

03 December 2007

SixApart tonight announced the sale of journal/blogging service Livejournal to Russia-based SUP. Original LJ founder Brad Fitzpatrick has chimed in on the situation: This is pretty cool because — They're ridiculously excited about LiveJournal, and have been for awhile (they previous purchased advertising rights in Russia, but ended up doing a bunch of Russia-specific LJ development as well). They want to throw a lot of resources at LiveJournal in terms of product development and engineers. 'LiveJournal.com, Inc' now stands alone again, focusing on nothing but LJ. Sounds like I'll have more LJ influence (via new role as advisory board member) than I've had recently — via Slashdot

Ageing may be as important to electronics as it is to good wine. A plastic transistor doubles its performance if simply left to sit at room temperature for a week. Cheap to mould, pentacene transistors are a promising candidate for organic electronics. However, when they are being built, molecules can misalign to form defects, which trap electrons and slow the transistors down

As if DRM needed more of a hint to get its coat and leave, Amazon is set to announce a promotional giveaway of one billion MP3s during next year's Super Bowl. Billboard was first to note that this announcement signals an all-out offensive on DRM, which is made even more powerful by parallel pressures brought by Wal-Mart. In a bid for more of the digital download space, the brick-and-mortar retailer heavyweight has reportedly given an ultimatum to some of the largest record labels, including Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, to provide more of their respective music catalogues in MP3 format (that is, without DRM) next year

02 December 2007

Scientists from Korea and the Czech Republic have discovered new drugs that can counteract the chemical overload caused by nerve gas. All of the experimental medications belong to a family of chemicals called oximes. Those molecules reactivate the enzyme that is damaged by the chemical weapons. Last year, the FDA approved the first combined atropine and oxime auto-injector for use by emergency personnel. Israel has been providing them to their citizens since the first Gulf War — via Slashdot

Jimmy Wales made an announcement yesterday night at a Wikipedia party in San Francisco: Creative Commons, Wikimedia and the FSF just agreed to make the current Wikipedia license compatible with Creative Commons (CC BY-SA). As Jimbo puts it, This is the party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia — via Slashdot

As part of its ongoing effort to keep a clean index Google is soliciting the help of web browsers to let them know when we find malware in the index. Celebrated Google hacker Johnny Long thinks it's a good idea, though he doesn't think it'll stop real hackers. Most in search of malware for offensive use know the good stuff — it ain't distributed through public Web ... It's distributed through dark Web servers, peer-to-peer networks, IRC channels, torrents and the like. Google's efforts will not affect how skilled hackers get access to malware — via Slashdot

Long-time users of Perl for their public web sites, and having successfully used Ruby on Rails for internal websites, the BBC have fused the two by creating a Perl on Rails that has the advantages of rapid development that Rails brings, while performing well enough to be used for the Beeb's high-traffic public websites. This is already powering one of their web sites, and is set to be used in the controversial iPlayer project as well — via Slashdot

01 December 2007

This week, Deutsche Grammophon, the classical music recording giant that's owned by Universal Music Group, launched its own DRM-free online music store

The Million Book Project, an international venture led by Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, Zhejiang University in China, the Indian Institute of Science in India and the Library at Alexandria in Egypt, has completed the digitisation of more than 1.5 million books, which are now available online

Micron Technology, maker of DRAM and flash memory, this week unveiled its plans to come out with solid-state drives. The drives function like regular hard drives, but instead of storing data on spinning disks, the data gets stored on NAND memory chips — the kind found in cameras and MP3 players

Via the Web 2.0 Journal, a worthy link to Yahoo! Architect and JSON inventor Douglas Crockford's latest ideas to fix HTML. He's categorically not a fan of HTML 5, which is still just an Editor's Draft and not endorsed by W3C yet. Crock puts forward ten ideas that in his view would provide extensibility without complexity, adding that the simplification of HTML he is proposing would reduce the cost of training of web developers and incorporates the best practices of AJAX development. From the article: The problems with HTML will not be solved by making it bigger and more complicated. I think instead we should generalise what it does well, while excising features that are problematic. HTML can be made into a general application delivery format without disrupting its original role as a document format — via Slashdot

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