Legal action has been dropped against a 15-year-old who faced prosecution for branding Scientology a cult
. The teenager held up a sign which read, Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult
, in May outside its headquarters in the City of London
A group in Santa Fe says the city is discriminating against them because they say that they’re allergic to the wireless Internet signal. And now they want Wi-Fi banned from public buildings. Arthur Firstenberg says he is highly sensitive to certain types of electric fields, including wireless Internet and cell phones. Firstenberg and dozens of other electro-sensitive people in Santa Fe claim that putting up Wi-Fi in public places is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act
A Waterloo teenager has found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster — in three months, he figures. Daniel Burd’s project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. He came back with a long list of awards, including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment. He knew plastic does eventually degrade, and figured microorganisms must be behind it. His goal was to isolate the microorganisms that can break down plastic — not an easy task because they don’t exist in high numbers in nature
One blogger has started an outcry about harassment as it applies to Twitter. While their written stance appears to support the safeguarding of abuse, Twitter appears to be waffling on the issue when it comes to the hard line of enforcement — via Slashdot
A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word cult
to describe the Church of Scientology. The unnamed 15-year-old was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion. Officers confiscated a placard with the word cult
on it from the youth, who is under 18, and a case file has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service
Tired of the United States and the other 190-odd nations on Earth? If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters. With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The Seasteading Institute, an organisation dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities with diverse social, political, and legal systems
Microsoft has announced Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will add support for the Open Document Format (ODF), Portable Document Format (PDF), and XML Paper Specification (XPS). ODF, a rival document format to Office’s native format, has become popular with governments and schools. Microsoft, acknowledging requests for compatibility with ODF, released a converter to allow Word users to open documents saved in the OpenDocument format
First it was mobiles for nothing, now it’s laptops for free, as telcos try to lure customers into their often-expensive 3G mobile data plans. Telstra is offering a zero-dollar laptop to the value of $700 to business customers signing up for a three-year contract on the telco’s Next G mobile data service. But as with $0 phones, there is a catch. The plan costs $99 a month and includes a one-gigabyte data download allowance a month. Go over that limit and you are in for some hefty excess data charges
Russell T Davies is to step down as executive producer of Doctor Who, the BBC has announced. Davies is credited with breathing new life into the show he brought back to television screens in 2005. Bafta-winning writer Steven Moffat will succeed Davies as lead writer and executive producer of the fifth series of Doctor Who
Carbon nanotubes, the poster child of the burgeoning nanotechnology industry, could trigger diseases similar to those caused by asbestos, a study suggests. Specific lengths of the tiny fibres were found to cause asbestos-like
inflammation and lesions in mice. Use of asbestos triggered a pandemic of lung disease
in the 20th Century
A massive UK government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials. The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts
In a world first, scientists have extracted a gene from the extinct Tasmanian tiger and successfully inserted it into a mouse embryo. It is the first time a gene from any extinct animal has been brought back to life inside another living creature. However, the researchers, from the University of Melbourne and the University of Texas, say the technology will not lead to the cloning of an entire Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine
Two research groups working independently have come up with what they say are cheap processes for growing nanowires to be used with solar cells. The hairy
cells provide a direct path for electrons collected at the panel face to reach an electrode, something which has the potential to dramatically improve system efficiency — via Slashdot
Microsoft has said it is considering a deal with Yahoo which would not involve a full buyout of the company. Microsoft’s previous offer to buy Yahoo for $33 a share — a figure which valued the company at $47.5bn — was turned down. Last week Yahoo rebuffed billionaire investor Carl Icahn’s plan to oust the current board over the failed merger. Now Microsoft says it is discussing with Yahoo an alternative transaction, but did not provide any detail
ASUS is to embed a lightweight, instant-on version of Linux called Splashtop
into all its motherboards, following good feedback from customers. On Wednesday, DeviceVM, the company behind the distribution, said the hardware manufacturer would be putting Splashtop — which ASUS calls Express Gate
— into a million motherboards a month. Splashtop includes a Firefox-derived browser and the Skype Internet-telephony application
Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is out now
A Minnesota woman ordered to pay $222,000 in the first music download trial in the United States may get another chance with a jury. The issue is whether record companies have to prove anyone else actually downloaded their copyrighted songs, or whether it is enough to argue that a defendant made copyrighted music available for copying
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