Along with today’s iPod Shuffle line additions, Apple has released the promised 802.11n Enabler for compatible Macs. The software is available via a software download from the Apple Store for $2.99 (US$1.99) unless you buy the Airport Extreme base station which includes the software at no additional cost
One of the main challenges in developing microscale robots lies in miniaturising their power and propulsion. Now, researchers in the US may have found a solution to this problem, by exploiting the natural movement of bacteria to propel micro-objects through water
Adobe Systems intends to submit its ubiquitous PDF format to ISO as part of its ongoing format war with Microsoft and Vista. The announcement comes the day before Microsoft’s competing format XPS (XML Paper Specification) ships with the new Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 software suite. Formally known as Metro, XPS has been described as a PDF killer
intended to break PDF’s decade-long role as the de facto standard for printable documents
Because the new 45-nanometer transistors from IBM and Intel are smaller, they can switch on and off more quickly, roughly 300 billion times per second in Intel’s case. Intel has code-named its new 45-nanometer chips Penryn and plans to produce next-gen Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and Xeon chips this year, all with Penryn designs
Security researcher Alex Ionescu claims to have successfully bypassed the much discussed DRM protection in Windows Vista, called Protected Media Path
, which is designed to seriously degrade the playback quality of any video and audio running on systems with hardware components not explicitly approved by Microsoft. The bypass of the DRM protection was in turn performed by breaking the Driver Signing / PatchGuard protection in the new operating system. Alex is now quite nervous about what an army of lawyers backed by draconian copyright laws could do to him if he released the details, but he claims to be currently looking into the details of safely releasing his details about this at the moment though
Wolves in the northern Rockies will be removed from the endangered species list within the next year a move that would open the population up to trophy hunting. Federal officials are expected to announce the plan Monday. The agency also will finalise removal from the list of a separate population of wolves in the Great Lakes region
Alex Ionescu has found a way of fooling Vista into believing DRM is working when it’s not. It allows premium content such as HD-DVDs to be played on an uncertified computer
. This is quite different from the method used by muslix64 to circumvent DRM by locating the DRM key in the binary image of a DVD player program such as WinDVD
More than 300 cases of the highly infectious disease, which is spread by airborne droplets and kills 98% of those infected within about two weeks, have been identified in South Africa — via Bruce Sterling
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department restyles their recruitment page in the mode of Frank Miller’s Sin City — via Warren Ellis
Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, said that the wildly successful site will start sharing revenue with its millions of users
A data cable made from stretched nerve cells could someday help connect computers to the human nervous system. The modified cells should form better connections with human tissue than the metal electrodes currently used for purposes such as remotely controlling prosthetics — via Warren Ellis
Microsoft acknowledged offering to pay a blogger to correct what it said were errors in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia
Scientists have built a tiny memory chip that uses new technology to pack a relatively large amount of information into a square about one-2,000th of an inch on a side. Although the chip is modest in capacity — with 160,000 bits of information — the bits are crammed together so tightly that it is the densest chip ever made. The achievement points to a possible path toward continuing the exponential growth of computing power even after current silicon chip-making technology hits fundamental limits in 10 to 20 years
Maine overwhelmingly rejected federal requirements for national identification cards, marking the first formal state opposition to controversial legislation scheduled to go in effect for Americans next year. Both chambers of the Maine legislature approved a resolution saying the state flatly refuses
to force its citizens to use driver’s licenses that comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real ID Act. It asks the US Congress to repeal the law
Bird flu hasn’t gone away. The discovery, announced last week, that the H5N1 bird flu virus is widespread in cats in locations across Indonesia has refocused attention on the danger that the deadly virus could be mutating into a form that can infect humans far more easily
Computer experts have traced a $1 million online bank heist in Sweden to a Russian hacker known only by his colourful sobriquet — the Corpse — in one of the more brazen Internet banking crimes of recent memory
A New Jersey state appellate court yesterday affirmed that any personal information given to ISPs must remain private. Yes, this indicates that New Jersey, like a lot of states, is ahead of the curve on Internet privacy,
said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights group
Synthetic spider silk, like lycra in many ways, has a number of unique properties. The MIT lab that created it is being monitored by military elements, keenly interested in applications of this material to front-line technologies. The secret of spider silk’s combined strength and flexibility, according to scientists, has to do with the arrangement of the nano-crystalline reinforcement of the silk as it is being produced — in other words, the way these tiny crystals are oriented towards and adhere to the stretchy protein. Emulating this process in a synthetic polymer, the MIT team focused on reinforcing solutions of commercial rubbery substance known as polyurethane elastomer with nano-sized clay platelets instead of simply heating and mixing the molten plastics with reinforcing agents
Google’s German web site was waylaid for two hours because its address was mistakenly reassigned. The temporary takeover of the site just after midnight was not the result of a hacker attack. Rather, it appears that the German organisation that assigns domain names, the DeNIC, made an error and registered www.google.de as available and immediately gave it away
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