February 2008 Archive

29 February 2008

Irish researchers have developed ultra tiny light emitting diodes (LEDs) that consume less than a nanoamp of power, allowing such LEDs that produce light for more than 80 years on a watch size battery

28 February 2008

Mozilla has been working hard at making Firefox 3 faster than its predecessor, and it looks like they might be succeeding. They've recently added some significant JavaScript performance improvements that beat out all of the competition, including Opera 9.5 Beta. And it comes out to be about ten times faster than Internet Explorer 7. Things are really starting to fall into place for Firefox 3 Beta 4 which should be available in the next week or two — via Slashdot

While the RIAA sues its customers, and blames filesharing for the decrease in record sales, a coalition of seven independent Swedish record labels explores alternatives that make use of the Internet and filesharing technology

Websense Security Labs has discovered that Google's popular web mail service Gmail is being targeted in recent spammer tactics. Spammers in these attacks managed to created bots that are capable of signing up and creating random Gmail accounts for spamming purposes

The constant pokes, friend requests and incessant invitations to play poker or write on each other's Fun Wall have taken the cyber-shine off Facebook. Even as the social networking site careers through the 64 million member mark, disgruntled and grumpy early users (many of whom only joined 18 months ago but already feel nostalgic for the old Facebook) are bundling up their online personal lives. They're off to find something more relevant

27 February 2008

The Encyclopedia of Life opened up to the public today with its first 30,000 pages in place — and promptly crumbled in the face of public interest. Only 25 exemplar pages on the site are fully fleshed out to the extent scientists hope eventually to attain for all species; the other few tens of thousands are expanded placeholders. The project hopes to begin taking input from citizen-scientists late this year — via Slashdot

Dell, long dinged for using proprietary hardware in its gaming PCs, has seen the light. The company said such annoying traits such as proprietary motherboards and power supplies is now a thing of the past. The change is a long overdue

Google has agreed to build an undersea cable with five telecoms operators that will link the United States to Japan, and provide the capacity to sustain a surge in internet traffic between the continents

A company trying to pass itself off as vendors of the open-source file-sharing software Shareaza, has set the legal dogs on the real Shareaza forum. Discordia Ltd, who earlier turned Bearshare and iMesh into pay services, demanded action after a member of the real Shareaza forum suggested a DOS attack on the site

26 February 2008

European regulators are considering whether to categorise IP addresses as personal property. Their decision could throw a monkey wrench into tracking by search-engine operators

The Cult of the Dead Cow hacker group has released an open-source web auditing tool called the Goolag Scanner that aims to let owners check their web sites for widespread security vulnerabilities

Ranger, the most powerful supercomputing system in the world for open science research, will be dedicated by the National Science Foundation and the Texas Advanced Computing Centre at The University of Texas at Austin. Ranger's deployment marks the beginning of the Petascale Era in high-performance computing where systems will approach a thousand trillion floating point operations per second and manage a thousand trillion bytes of data

25 February 2008

Over the past week, some servers used for updating the anti-virus software NOD32 were labeled as anti-p2p by a popular list maker for PeerGuardian. In response, NOD32's company, ESET, has categorised PG2 as malware in some of its latest updates

Former Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra has torn into the RIAA, likening them to the mafia, threatening to leave a horse's head in the beds of old women and children alike, whilst destroying the education of student file-sharers. Don't even get him started on the media: Goebbels would be proud, he said

Reporters Without Borders condemns the decision by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block access YouTube. Claiming that the proportion of non-Islamic objectionable video had increased on YouTube, the PTA, the official Internet regulatory body, ordered all Pakistani ISPs to block access to the web site until further notice

It has been three months since the popular (semi)private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid went offline. Since then, there has been a lot of speculation about its future, and many feared that the site would never return. Totally out of the blue, however, the tracker is now responding again

24 February 2008

Apple just issued a cease and desist order to the ISP hosting the Hymn-inspired Requiem software. DrmBytes, a hymn moderator, posted that hymn-project.org will no longer allow links to DRM-stripping software, writing We've complied with the C&D and removed all DRM breaking software from the site — via The Unofficial Apple Weblog

A new silicon chip, dubbed the Gi-Fi, developed in Melbourne is predicted to revolutionise the way household gadgets like televisions, phones and DVD players talk to each other. The tiny five-millimetre-a-side chip can transmit data through a wireless connection at a breakthrough five gigabits per second over distances of up to 10 metres. An entire high-definition movie from a video shop kiosk could be transmitted to a mobile phone in a few seconds, and the phone could then upload the movie to a home computer or screen at the same speed

Research shows that a savvy attacker with a can of compressed air and good timing can access encryption keys used by Vista's BitLocker, the Mac's FileVault, and other well-known encryption tools

23 February 2008

A bronze statue of Bon Scott, the former lead singer of rock band AC/DC, will be erected at Fremantle's fishing boat harbour

Yahoo search has resumed linking to file-sharing web site The Pirate Bay without explaining why the site disappeared from its search results

Mel Gibson's company Icon Film Distribution has bought the Dendy cinema and film distribution businesses for $21 million

22 February 2008

The British Government is considering a proposal to end the automatic right of Commonwealth nationals to live in the UK using ancestry visas

Google will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that's likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the internet search leader

olice in the Czech republic are trying to find out who stole a 4 tonne railway bridge from the border town of Cheb. The company which was responsible for looking after the bridge raised the alarm when, ever alert, they noticed that the bridge wasn't there any more

21 February 2008

A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers. The as-yet-unnamed material — a form of artificial rubber — is made from vegetable oil and a component of urine

Sticky bandages inspired by geckos' feet could soon be used to seal wounds and close surgeon's cuts. Since the bandages would dissolve harmlessly within the body, they could also replace stitches and sutures. Geckos can walk on walls thanks to nanoscopic bristles, called setae, on the bottom of each foot. Setae produce an intermolecular attraction allowing the gecko's foot to stick to almost any surface

The Church of Scientology can delete auctions from eBay with no supervision under the VeRO program, and has used this to delete all resale of the e-meters Scientologists use. This is to stop members from buying used units from ex-members instead of buying from the official (and very expensive) source. Given Scientology's record of fraud and abuse, should eBay give them this level of trust? Will this set a precedent for other companies that want to stop the aftermarket resale of their products? — via Slashdot

20 February 2008

The Mozilla Foundation has opened Mozilla Messaging, a new subsidiary focused on developing its free, open-source Thunderbird e-mail software. Mozilla Messaging will initially focus on developing Thunderbird 3, which aims at improving several aspects of the software, including integrated calendaring, better search, as well as enhancements to the overall user experience

Jon DVD Jon Johansen and friends launched doubleTwist today — a project that removes DRM from music and allows it to be synched to a variety of devices — via BoingBoing

A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works

Over the past four weeks, the City of Sydney Council has been trialling the provision of free Wi-Fi services in its libraries. With only a fortnight to go before the hotspots are switched off, a spokesperson has said that users won't have long to wait before access becomes a permanent fixture

19 February 2008

As the internet threatens to kill the established music industry, the Rudd Government is considering a three-strikes policy against computer users who download songs illegally. The Government will examine new legislative proposals being unveiled in Britain this week to target people who download films and music illegally. ISPs there might be legally required to take action against users who access pirated material. Under the three-strikes policy, a warning would be first issued to offenders who illegally share files using peer-to-peer technology to access music, TV shows and movies free of charge. The second strike would lead to the offender's internet access being suspended; the third would cancel the offender's internet access

Panasonic has designed a plasma TV which it reckons will withstand the force of a fiercely flung Wii Remote. The TV's display surface can absorb a hit packing up to four Joules of kinetic energy, thanks to a special transparent coating sprayed on the screen

For years, ISPs have watched with envy as the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft sliced up the online advertising pie. Selling Internet access has been a decent business, but selling Web advertising has been an even better one. Now three ISPs in Britain have gotten together to try to grab a plump piece of online advertising for themselves. Last week, BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media announced a deal with a company called Phorm, whose technology tracks Web users and serves them ads related to their interests

BBC is bringing its shows to iTunes UK, with some already appearing on the store. Shows initially showing up include Torchwood, Spooks, The Mighty Boosh, Life on Mars, The Catherine Tate Show, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and finally Little Britain. All the episodes cost the regular UK pricing of £1.89 will be available to download and buy 8 days after broadcast

18 February 2008

Toshiba is planning to stop production of equipment compatible with the HD DVD format for high-definition video, allowing the competing Blu-Ray camp a free run. Toshiba is expected to suffer losses amounting to tens of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of dollars) to scrap production of HD DVD players and recorders and other steps to exit the business. No one at Toshiba could be reached for comment

The entire Yahoo Design Innovation Team, aka yHaus, has been axed en masse. The team had been working on next generation design projects. This week, more than 1,000 Yahoo employees have been let go as the troubled Web portal struggles to cope with operating costs that are rising much faster than revenue is growing. The layoffs mean the end of a font of design innovation at the beleaguered web giant, which is currently trying to fend off a hostile takeover bid by Microsoft

17 February 2008

Scientists have found a way to boost an organism's natural anti-virus defences — effectively making its cells immune to flu and other potential killers. The process cannot be carried out in human cells — but it could potentially aid the development of effective new anti-viral therapies. It works by stimulating production of the protein interferon, the cell's first line of defence against viruses

Firefox 3.0's memory consumption is dramatically improved, claimed Mozilla's chief engineer, because developers have aggressively attacked the open-source browser's notorious memory leaks

16 February 2008

When you're dealing with a flooding emergency in the middle of the worst drought for many years, the last thing you need is barriers to the sharing of geographical and meteorological information. Yet that's the situation faced by Australia. The authorities' response is to consider the widespread adoption of Creative Commons licences for public-sector information

The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years. He also wishes to investigate options for new levies on blank discs, data storage and music and video players to compensate artists and copyright holders for legal copying when listeners burn an extra version of an album to play one at home and one in the car — via Slashdot

The communications regulator, ACMA, has cracked down on ISP Dodo, saying it must comply with industry codes of practice relating to complaints handling and billing, or face penalties. The Ombudsman referred Dodo to ACMA after the small ISP racked up almost double the number of customer complaints made against Telstra BigPond — via Lifehacker

15 February 2008

What do you get when you combine the innovation of MagLev technology with solar power, hydrogen fuel, and a futuristic aesthetic? The Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Super Highway, a ground-breaking solar powered, hydrogen-fueled, zero emission mass transit system that would carry everything from people to cars in sustainable style and carbon neutral function. The construction is set to begin this year, and would connect Ann Arbor and Detroit

ISPs are calling on the record industry to put its money where its mouth is on illegal file-sharing, by underwriting the cost of lawsuits brought by people who are wrongly accused of downloading or uploading music

SCO Group, which for years has claimed that Linux infringes on its Unix intellectual property, has received new funding and seems set to continue its battle against the open source operating system

14 February 2008

Last week a Danish court ordered the ISP Tele2 to block its customers access to The Pirate Bay. The decision heated the debate on ISPs Internet filtering, and it now turns out that filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay is actually illegal according to European law

Channel 7 has finally got it finger out of its arse and signed an agreement for Foxtel to retransmit the Channel 7 signal to its cable subscribers in the major capital cities within a matter of weeks. Satellite subscriers aren't as lucky, having to wait until 2009 for the launch of the new Optus D3 satellite before they can receive the free-to-air channel. It also means that Channel 7's EPG information will be made available to Foxtel, giving the Pay TV operator the most comprehensive EPG on the Australian market

Sun Microsystems has signed a stock purchase agreement to acquire Innotek, a Weinstadt, Germany-based supplier of VirtualBox virtualisation software

13 February 2008

Google already made it easy to search for the current time anywhere in the world, or to track incoming flights, and now they're helping us search for local Australian movie times too. You just need to type the name of the movie and your city

Undeterred by the threat of a hostile takeover, slumping Internet pioneer Yahoo completed an acquisition of its own Tuesday by buying online video service Maven Networks for $160 million. The deal marks Yahoo's latest attempt to expand its online advertising network and snap out of a two-year financial funk that has culminated in unsolicited takeover offer from Microsoft

Yahoo has announced a new mobile phone service that integrates e-mail, instant messaging and social networks. Called oneConnect, the service is expected to launch this spring at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona. Its open architecture means users and other companies can eventually add many other applications to it

12 February 2008

Online video rental company Netflix said on Monday it would exclusively stock Blu-ray high-definition DVDs after a decision by some the world's biggest movie studios in favor of the Sony Corp developed format. Netflix has stocked DVDs using both Blu-ray and the competing HD DVD format developed by Toshiba since they first came on the market in early 2006

There's a new gun in town, and some of the Internet's most powerful companies — including Yahoo, Google, PayPal and AOL — are brandishing it in the ongoing battle against e-mail fraud. The new weapon is called DKIM, an emerging e-mail authentication standard developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. DKIM, which stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail, allows an organization to cryptographically sign outgoing e-mail to verify that it sent the message

The DataPortability Workgroup announced this morning that representatives from both Google and Facebook are joining its ranks. The group is working on a variety of projects to foster an era of Data Portability — where users can take their data from the web sites they use to reuse elsewhere and where vendors can leverage safe cross-site data exchange for a whole new level of innovation. Good bye customer lock-in, hello to new privacy challenges. If things go right, today could be a very important day in the history of the internet

eBay bowed to pressure Monday from some of its high-volume sellers, saying it will further cut listing fees for books, music, movies and video games sold through the online auction site. Monday's move amends a fee structure announced last month and could mean savings for merchants who sell those goods in high volume. Those sellers had expected to lose money from the new plan, slated to take effect 20 February. Some had threatened to stop selling on eBay

11 February 2008

The American actor Roy Scheider, best known as the hero in the blockbuster Jaws, has died aged 75. The two-time Oscar nominee died yesterday in hospital in Little Rock Arkansas after being treated for cancer

Yahoo's board plans to reject Microsoft's unsolicited $US44.6 billion offer to acquire the web giant. After a series of meetings over the past week, Yahoo's board determined that the $US31 per share offer massively undervalues Yahoo. It also doesn't account for the risks Yahoo would be taking by entering into an agreement that might be overturned by regulators. The board plans to send a letter to Microsoft Monday in the US, spelling out its position

Office may fall under Microsoft's own definition of adware. It links to third-party commercial add-ons, includes up-selling promos, requires cookies for certain functions, and collects technical information. While this is like a normal day on the web, should the commercial office suite be held to a different standard and possibly be considered adware? The article also notes that clicking advertising links in Office will bring up Internet Explorer, regardless of whether or not it is the default browser — via Slashdot

10 February 2008

Repairs on two out of three broken undersea cables providing data services to parts of the Middle East and Asia should be completed by Sunday, while the third should be fixed by Saturday

A deal has been struck between the major media companies and the Writers Guild of America to end the writers' strike, former Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner revealed on CNBC

Documents dating from the Civil War and others to and from Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt are among hundreds of stolen documents sold online that eBay is agreeing to buy back and return to New York's archives. The online auction giant has no liability in the sale of the stolen artifacts, but agreed voluntarily to offer buyers the amount that they paid, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because not all details of the investigation have been announced

09 February 2008

Polaroid is dropping the technology it pioneered long before digital photography rendered instant film obsolete to all but a few nostalgia buffs. Polaroid is closing factories in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands and cutting 450 jobs as the brand synonymous with instant images focuses on ventures such as a portable printer for images from mobile phones and Polaroid-branded digital cameras, televisions and DVD players

Google is introducing an online business software package designed to make it easier for people in the same organisation to share documents and information. The free Team Edition software represents the internet search leader's latest attempt to attract more users to free applications, which poses a potential threat to rival Microsoft's highly profitable word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and calendar programs

Two Victorian real estate agents have launched a defamation action against Google. Counsel for agents Mark Forytarz and Paul Castran of Castran Gilbert, appeared in the Supreme Court today for a directions hearing, alleging their clients have been defamed by articles found via Google searches

For ten years, skeptic magician James Randi has offered a million dollars to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. He's just announced that the James Randi Educational Foundation is discontinuing the Million-Dollar Challenge two years from now. The money will be freed, he says, to generally add to our flexibility and enable the group to do many more projects — via BoingBoing

08 February 2008

Yahoo this week introduced a new monthly Web Hosting service for small and medium sized businesses, which provides unlimited hosted storage capacity and bandwidth. Subscribers to the new service, priced at $11.95 a month, are free to take up as much disk space on Yahoo's servers as they need to transfer data, store information or secure e-mail without fear of shrinking capacity restrictions

The tattoo of the future may be good for your health rather than just your image. German scientists say that work on mice showed that tattooing was a more effective way to deliver a new generation of experimental DNA vaccines than standard injections into muscle. Using fragments of DNA to stimulate an immune response is seen as a promising way of making better vaccines for everything from flu to cancer

This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community. Today's announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had

Pentagon-backed researchers want the prosthetics to feel like real limbs, so they're creating patches of synthetic skin that'll provide direct feedback to the brain

07 February 2008

After two years of waiting, Australian and New Zealand residents can now officially order Photobooks, calendars, postcards and prints directly from iPhoto. Pricing is reasonably competitive too, given the convenience of publishing directly from iPhoto. Picture Books start from $39.99, calendars are $26.99, postcards and greeting cards range from $1.99 to $2.69 while individual prints start at 29c. More detailed pricing is available from Apple

An estimated 1.7 million Internet users in the UAE have been affected by the recent undersea cable damage. Internet data was majorly affected as it is the biggest capacity carried by the undersea cables. However, all voice calls, corporate data and video traffic were also affected. A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each

TPG and SP Telemedia (SOUL) and have announced a merger in a deal worth $250 million

An open wireless network led to a Danish police investigation of a stolen credit card. The police wanted to confiscate the author's computer. When the author's roommate agreed to also let the police look at her first generation iMac, they were frustrated because they thought the iMac was just the screen. They wanted to know where the actual computer was and got rather heated about finding it, according to the author of Rottin' in Denmark

06 February 2008

The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and communications minister Stephen Conroy this morning announced Telstra would turn on the ADSL2+ broadband capability it has at 900 exchanges around the country. Telstra reversed its decision of keeping the ADSL2+ DSLAMs in cold storage because the new Labor government gave it an assurance it would not have to provide ADSL2+ wholesale access to other ISPs

Indiana University researchers are studying a ground-breaking theory that young children are able to learn large groups of words rapidly by data-mining

05 February 2008

Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient's upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen. Researchers said on Friday the breakthrough opened up new ways to treat severe tissue damage and made the prospect of custom-made living spares parts for humans a step closer to reality

Google is adding more e-mail security and storage products for businesses, sharpening its aim on a Microsoft stronghold while the competition between the two rivals also heats up in Internet search and advertising

A new chip uses so little power, it could enable sensors, communication devices and other gadgets that run on body heat and movement alone. The chip uses 70 percent less voltage than current chip technologies. It could lead to an order-of-magnitude increase in energy efficiency for electronics in the next five years

04 February 2008

The first big steps on the road to overhauling the net's core addressing system have been taken. On Monday the master address books for the net are being updated to include records prepared in a new format known as IPv6. Widespread use of this format will end the shortage of addresses that sites can be given. The net's current addressing scheme is expected to exhaust the pool of unallocated addresses by 2011

The final resting place of three German U-boats, nicknamed Hitler's lost fleet, has been found at the bottom of the Black Sea. The submarines had been carried 2,000 miles overland from Germany to attack Russian shipping during the Second World War, but were scuttled as the war neared its end. Now, more than 60 years on, explorers have located the flotilla of three submarines off the coast of Turkey

Yahoo would consider a business alliance with Google as one way to rebuff a $US44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft. Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft's bid

03 February 2008

Another Middle East undersea internet cable has been damaged, adding to disruption in Indian online services caused when several lines were cut earlier this week. The Falcon cable was cut 56 kilometres from Dubai, between Oman and the United Arab Emirates, according to its owner FLAG Telecom, part of India's Reliance Communications

A journalism student in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death by a Sharia court for downloading and sharing a report criticising the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. The student was accused of blasphemy and tried without representation — via Slashdot

The Italian parliament may have unwittingly legalised sharing music over P2P networks. A new copyright law, passed by both houses of parliament, would allow Italians to freely share music over the Internet as long as it was noncommercial and the music degraded

02 February 2008

Remarkable new footage of Canada's Arctic wolves has been caught on camera by a BBC crew. The team managed to film the wolves taking to the water to hunt waterfowl — behaviour that has never been seen before

A new species of mammal has been discovered in the mountains of Tanzania. The bizarre-looking creature, dubbed Rhynochocyon udzungwensis, is a type of giant elephant shrew, or sengi. The cat-sized animal looks like a cross between a miniature antelope and a small anteater

TechCrunch reports that News Corp is also frantically trying to put together a competing bid for Yahoo, with the help of private equity firms. This makes sense, given News Corp's previous interest in trading MySpace for a big Yahoo equity stake

01 February 2008

Amazon's just bought audiobook provider Audible, the exclusive provider of audiobooks to iTunes, Amazon's rival for audio downloads. Even though Apple says it prefers that its suppliers deliver non-DRM media (and even though Audible's DRM does nothing to prevent piracy), Audible has a mandatory DRM policy for the books it sells. That is to say, even if they author doesn't want DRM on his or her books, Audible will only deliver those books with DRM on them. As part of the deal, an Amazon spokesman said: Audible's audio books are wrapped in a layer of DRM, which Amazon does not plan to remove unless customers start to complain — via BoingBoing

Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6bn in cash and shares. The offer, contained in a letter to Yahoo's board, is 62% above Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday. Yahoo cut its revenue forecasts earlier this week and said it would have to spend an additional $300m this year trying to revive the company. It has been struggling in recent years to compete with Google, which has also been a competitor to Microsoft

A team of scientists at Stanford University has tracked the movement of carbon nanotubes through the digestive systems of mice. They've determined that the nanotubes do not exhibit any toxicity in the mice, and are safely expelled after delivering their payload. As a result, the study paves the way toward future applications of nanotubes in the treatment of illnesses — via Slashdot

LAN technology recently passed a milestone — it has been around for 30 years, some of them tumultuous. But while the LAN seems ubiquitous now, there are those who think its future may be more troubled than its past

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