If you’re into keeping tabs on irony, check this out. Amazon apparently sent out its robotic droogs last night, deleting copies of the George Orwell novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four from Kindles without explanation, then refunding the purchase price. As you can imagine, a lot of people caught in the thick of Winston and Julia’s love story aren’t very happy — and rightfully so — the idea that we own
the things we buy is pretty fundamental to… ownership. We’re not sure exactly what happened, but it seems that the publisher of said novels, MobileReference, has changed its mind about selling content on the Kindle, and poof! Amazon remotely deleted all previously purchased copies. It’s all a bit Orwellian, is it not?
On 1 September, Millenniata, a start-up company based in Springville, will release a new archive disk technology to preserve data at room temperature for 1,000 years. It’s like writing onto gold plates or chiselling information into stone. Dubbed the Millennial Disc, it looks virtually identical to a regular DVD, but it’s special. Layers of hard, persistent
materials (the exact composition is a trade secret) are laid down on a plastic carrier, and digital information is literally carved in with an enhanced laser using the company’s Millennial Writer, a sort of beefed-up DVD burner. Once cut, the disk can be read by an ordinary DVD reader on your computer
It is an axiom that on the Internet nobody knows that you are a dog
. By the same token, it is all but impossible to know whether you are from North Korea or South Korea. That puzzle is plaguing law enforcement investigators in several nations who are now hunting for the authors of a small but highly publicised Internet denial-of-service attack that briefly knocked offline the Web sites of some United States and South Korean government agencies and companies
The Queensland Police plans to conduct a wardriving
mission around select Queensland towns in an effort to educate its citizens to secure their wireless networks. Wardriving
refers to the technique of searching for unsecured wireless networks by driving the streets armed simply with a laptop or smartphone seeking network connections. When unsecured networks are found, the Queensland Police will pay a friendly visit to the household or small business, informing them of the risks they are exposing themselves to
Discovered 13 years ago, and officially added to the periodic table just weeks ago, element 112 finally has a name. It will be called copernicium
, with the symbol Cp, in honour of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus deduced that the planets revolved around the Sun, and finally refuted the belief that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. The team of scientists who discovered the element chose the name to honour the man who changed our world view
Popular social networking site Facebook is breaching Canadian law by holding on to users’ personal information indefinitely, a report has concluded. An investigation by Canada’s privacy commission found the US-based website also gave confusing or incomplete
information to subscribers. Facebook says it is aiming to safeguard users’ privacy without compromising their experience of the site
Cash machines offer an ever-growing menu of services beyond merely dispensing money. For tampering criminals, this now includes a squirt of pepper spray in the face. The extreme measure is the latest in South Africa’s escalating war against armed robbers who target banks and cash delivery vans. The number of cash machines blown up with explosives has risen from 54 in 2006 to 387 in 2007 and nearly 500 last year. The technology uses cameras to detect people tampering with the card slots. Another machine then ejects pepper spray to stun the culprit while police response teams race to the scene. But the mechanism backfired in one incident last week when pepper spray was inadvertently inhaled by three technicians who required treatment from paramedics
Senator Stephen Conroy is a man on a mission. Undeterred that his absurd plans to filter the Internet have earned him the dubious title of Internet Villain of the Year, he is now promising to find a solution to the file-sharing problem
by bringing parties together who are already at war, or have little respect for him and his plans
On Tuesday evening more than 300 confidential Twitter documents and screenshots landed in TechCrunch’s inbox. The documents include employment agreements, calendars of the founders, new employee interview schedules, phone logs and bills, alarm settings, a financial forecast, a pitch for a Twitter TV show, confidentiality agreements with companies such as AOL, Dell, Ericsson, and Nokia, a list of employee dietary restrictions, credit card numbers, Paypal and Gmail screen shots, and much more
Lifestyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company, has reached a settlement with the State of New York over its attempts to fake positive consumer reviews on the Web. The company had ordered employees to pretend they were satisfied customers and write glowing reviews of its face-lift procedure on Web sites, according to the attorney general’s statement. Lifestyle Lift also created its own sites of face-lift reviews to appear as independent sources
Our brains can rewire themselves in just seconds to compensate for a break in incoming data, suggesting they are even more flexible than previously thought
Tough new laws aimed at clamping down on identity fraud are being drafted by the NSW government. Almost half a million Australians lost a combined $997 million to personal identity fraud in the last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The ABS attributed the crime wave to the rapid expansion of internet technology, and electronic data sharing and storage
The mobile phone company Nokia is being hit by a growing economic boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement begin targeting a string of companies deemed to be collaborating with the regime. Wholesale vendors in the capital report that demand for Nokia handsets has fallen by as much as half in the wake of calls to boycott Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for selling communications monitoring systems to Iran
Shortened URLs, a service on many sites that turns lengthy Web addresses into shorter URLs, is rapidly becoming a popular way for spammers to reach unsuspecting readers. New analysis from Symantec’s MessageLabs finds shortened URLs now account for 2 percent of all spam in inboxes
A food thickener used in yoghurts and jellies could be used to help make artificial muscle. Nanotechnology graduate Cameron Ferris, and supervisor Dr Marc in het Panhuis, of the University of Wollongong report on their work developing tissue scaffolds in the journal Soft Matter. Tissue engineers use scaffolds to help get cells to grow into the right kind of tissues
An in-depth investigation by an Australian retiree has revealed that fake bids are running rampant
on eBay, forcing users to pay inflated prices for items on the auction site. Philip Cohen, 69, from Brighton-Le-Sands in Sydney, found several instances of shill bidding – where phoney eBay accounts are used to bid up the price of items on the auction site to inflate the final price paid by buyers. He places the blame squarely on eBay, saying that its anti-shill security systems are flawed or non-existent. He says that shill bidding has been encouraged by a new policy from eBay to hide from other users the usernames of people bidding on items
Power sockets can be used to eavesdrop on what people type on a computer. Security researchers found that poor shielding on some keyboard cables means useful data can be leaked about each character typed. By analysing the information leaking onto power circuits, the researchers could see what a target was typing. The attack has been demonstrated to work at a distance of up to 15m, but refinement may mean it could work over much longer distances
University of Wollongong researcher Willy Susilo has been awarded a grant to develop cryptographic algorithms that will remain secure from quantum computer attacks. Researchers say quantum computers will be able to crack all encryption systems in use today. The enormous computing power promised by quantum computers is expected to present critical cyber-security threats that can only be removed by new cryptographic algorithms. Professor Susilo said the algorithms, used to secure transactions over the internet, were based mainly on public key infrastructure, but when quantum computers emerged, they would be under real threat
The French Senate has once again approved a reworked version of the country’s controversial three strikes
bill designed to appease the Constitutional Council. Instead of a state-appointed agency cutting off those accused of being repeat offenders, judges will have the final say over punishment. Meanwhile, New Zealand is ready to reintroduce the three-strikes
rule that says that everyone in your household will be denied Internet access (and all that goes with it, from education to civic engagement to health information) if one person is accused of infringing on copyright
Adobe has discontinued HomeSite. Nick Bradbury, HomeSite’s creator, has some parting thoughts — via kottke.org
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