German police are unable to decipher the encryption used in the internet telephone software Skype to monitor calls by suspected criminals and terrorists, Germany’s top police officer, Joerg Ziercke, said. The encryption with Skype telephone software … creates grave difficulties for us… We can’t decipher it. That’s why we’re talking about source telecommunication surveillance — that is, getting to the source before encryption or after it’s been decrypted
New Zealand scientists have found a bacterium, named Methylokorus infernorum
, that eats a key global warming chemical. Found in a hot spring, the bug lives off of methane emissions from geothermically active areas. A scientist quoted in the article stated that a cubic meter of liquid containing the bacterium would consume about 11kg of methane each year. But Dr Stott cautioned that such an application was probably some years into the future. He said it was unlikely the micro-organism, which prefers acidic conditions of about 60°C, could ever be added to sheep or cows’ food to stop the animals releasing methane — via Slashdot
PayPal has unveiled Mobile Checkout, allowing people in Australia to buy movie tickets, flowers and other goods on-the-fly. The internet has already brought the world’s shopping malls into the bedroom but now shopaholics can satisfy their impulses with a few button presses while walking home or riding a bus — as long as they have a PayPal account
An unconfirmed rumour claims that LinkedIn is in talks with media giant News Corporation over a possible buyout in January 2008
Hot on the heels of online retail giant Amazon, book chain Dymocks is preparing to launch an electronic book reader in Australia before Christmas. Dymocks chief executive Don Grover said he was in final
negotiations with a European e-book reader manufacturer and planned to make an announcement within the next 10 days. Update: the iLiad has been launched at an obscenely overpriced AU$899
Paleontologists discovered a giant fossilised claw that once belonged to an 2.5m long sea scorpion. The University of Bristol scientists uncovered the claw near Prum, Germany. It’s approximately 400 million years old
Registered Google users in the US, Australia, and New Zealand can move incorrect markers for their homes or businesses to the correct locations. Access to some listings is restricted — hospitals, government buildings, and businesses whose listings have been claimed through Google’s Local Business Center. In addition, moving a place marker more than 200 yards (or 200 meters) from its original location requires a moderator’s approval before the change shows up on the map. Once a marker has been moved, a Show Original
link will direct users to the original location — via Slashdot
Consumer demand for bandwidth could see the internet running out of capacity as early as 2010, a new study warns. US analyst firm Nemertes Research predicted a drastic slowdown as the network struggles to cope with the amount of data being carried on it. Such gridlock would drastically affect how people use the web and could mean the next Google or YouTube simply doesn’t get off the ground, it said. The report said billions needed to be spent upgrading broadband networks
The Georgia Institute of Technology is working on the theory that honeybees can give us hints about how to improve the speed and efficiency of Internet servers. Honeybees somehow manage to efficiently collect a lot of nectar with limited resources and no central command. Such swarm intelligence of these amazingly organized bees can also be used to improve the efficiency of Internet servers faced with similar challenges — via Slashdot
According to a thread on the forums of AnimeSuki, a popular anime bittorent index site, Comcast has begun sending DCMA letters to customers downloading unlicensed fan-subtitled anime shows via bittorrent. By unlicensed
, they mean that no english language company has the rights to it
iiNet has thrown down the gauntlet to Telstra and Optus with a set of aggressively priced broadband and phone bundles, but has joined the top two telcos in counting uploads on its new plans
When it comes to internet speeds, we’ve long-since consigned the humble kilobit-class connection to the dustbin, so a mathematics-based breakthrough has us wondering if megabit- and even gigabit-level connections will one day sound as quaintly archaic. Researchers at Japan’s Tohoku University have tweaked existing protocols to enable standard fibre-optic cables to carry data at hundreds of terabits per second. At that speed, full movies could be downloaded almost instantaneously in their hundreds
Rupert Murdoch’s announcement this week that he expects to stop charging for access to the Wall Street Journal’s Web site is the latest example of a publisher giving up on the subscription-based business model — a significant shift in the evolution of online content. In recent months, the Economist, the New York Times and the Financial Times have all moved content out from behind the wall
, an industry metaphor for the location of paid online content
Several companies have announced solid state hard drives in excess of one terabyte in size
A paleontologist has discovered a 110 million-year-old dinosaur that had a mouth that worked like a vacuum cleaner, hundreds of tiny teeth and nearly translucent skull
Five Australian-based journalists were deliberately killed by Indonesian troops in East Timor in 1975, an Australian coroner’s court has ruled. Dorelle Pinch, deputy coroner of New South Wales, said the killings could constitute a war crime. The two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander, known as the Balibo Five, were killed to stop them exposing the invasion of East Timor
The Telegraph is running a story about a new Unified Theory of Physics. Garrett Lisi has presented a paper called An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
which unifies the Standard Model with gravity — without using string theory. The trick was to use E8 geometry which you may remember from an earlier Slashdot article. Lisi’s theory predicts 20 new particles which he hopes might turn up in the Large Hadron Collider — via Slashdot
Microsoft is now working on a system that will back up the contents of your brain. The pilot project lacks a direct brain interface, but MyLifeBits
will provide a simulacrum of actual memories. No mention is made as to whether Microsoft will claim to own the digital rights to the content of your life, or what license fees you will have to pay to access your own memories — via Slashdot
For the first time in more than 60 years a Colossus computer is cracking codes at Bletchley Park. The machine is being put through its paces to mark the end of a project to rebuild the pioneering computer. It is being used to crack messages enciphered using the same system employed by the German high command during World War II. The Colossus is pitted against modern PC technology which will also try to read the scrambled messages
The Kremlin is using Russia’s new anti-software-piracy laws to target dissident media outlets and shut them down. This is an eerie echo of the Soviet era, when black marketeering and other universal activities were used as the excuse for arresting dissidents and other inconvenient people. The difference is that this time, the anti-piracy laws were enacted at the behest of the US trade representative, who made stringent patent and copyright enforcement a condition of the recent US-Russia free trade agreement, forcing Russia to take on board stricter laws than those in place in the US. This includes laws that would never pass Constitutional muster stateside, like a scheme for police licensing and inspection of CD and DVD presses — via Boing Boing
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