The full magnitude of the world’s largest ever rodent has been revealed — the now-extinct monster was the size of a cow. The creature weighed in at 700 kilograms and lived eight million years ago, roaming the lush banks of the ancient Orinoco delta in north-western Venezuela. But the 3m long, 1.3m tall behemoth was an evolutionary cousin of today’s humble guinea pig
The UK has introduced legislation banning British firms from spamming personal e-mail and mobile phone accounts from the end of this year, although business addresses will remain unprotected
BBCi and Vodafone have new projects that reflect a broad mission to build digital interactivity into public spaces
Scientists have discovered that when it comes to detecting if you’ve been swindled out of a fair deal, monkeys can be just as sharp as humans
A widespread belief among physicists nowadays is that modern science requires squadrons of scientists and wildly expensive equipment. Craig Wallace, fresh out of Spanish Fork High School, had almost the entire physics faculty of Utah State University hovering (and arguing) over an apparatus he had cobbled together from parts salvaged from junk yards and charity drops. The apparatus is nothing less than the sine qua non of modern science: a nuclear fusion reactor, based on the plans of Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television
A permanent ban on taxes unique to the Internet has taken another step toward reality, with House approval of legislation that next goes to the Senate
Criticism is growing over VeriSign’s surprise decision to take control of all unassigned .com and .net domain names, a move that’s wreaking havoc on some filtering tools
Lindows promises free goods for California residents who qualify for benefits from a settlement in Microsoft’s antitrust case
Unmarried and homosexual partners of Armed Forces personnel are to be given the same rights of compensation and pensions as widows
Telstra BigPond, which is Australia’s leading ISP with 1.43 million dial-up and broadband customers, has launched a new user-pays anti-virus and spam protection service for customers. If they’re making you pay for this, they are condoning, if not actively encouraging, spam
With Hurricane Isabel churning in the west Atlantic on Sunday, a 70-year-old woman hurled a knife at her husband because he chose to watch football instead of preparing for the storm
A desperate American recording industry is waging a fierce fight against digital copyright infringement seemingly oblivious to the fact that, for practical purposes, it lost the digital music sharing fight over five years ago… in Canada
A large number of people who walk into libraries don’t borrow a thing; they come in to use the space and read the newspapers or sit there. So what would a library of the future look like to cater for all of the people in the community? Julie Rae, Chief Executive of the Central Highlands Regional Library, thinks that parts of it would look like your lounge room, parts of it would look like the Qantas club… and that would include a bar as well, parts of it would look like a library with shelves of books and parts of it would look like a café… there might be virtual reality rooms
People wearing headphones could easily hunt down a virtual insect, using only the echolocation sounds, in what is apparently a very intuitive process. Dean Waters, a bat expert at the University of Leeds, hopes that a similar system in the cockpit of fighter planes could allow pilots to track some controls using their hearing, freeing up their eyes for other tasks
In a move aimed squarely at rival Microsoft, Sun Microsystems has unveiled a suite of desktop software aimed at businesses that want to dump — or just can’t afford — the Windows operating system on their companies’ personal computers. The Sun Java Desktop system, which was previously code-named Mad Hatter, runs on the open-source Linux operating system and includes a variety of programs that replace Microsoft’s internet browser, productivity suite, and other parts of the Windows package
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Jamie Zawinski has written a perl script to convert blocks of normal text into text where letters excluding the first and last are scrambled, to prove the point that legibility is only marginally affected by altering spelling of words, provided that first and last letters are left intact.
VOA Special English is a simplified English language used by Voice of America in propaganda broadcasts into foreign territory. The news is read slowly and using a limited wordlist of about 1500 words. Charles Kay Ogden recommended radio news be given in Basic English with the appropriate Basic special radio vocabulary add-on. VOA Special English, although intended for telling news around the world, has the additional benefit of allowing English to be learned and for pronunciation to be polished.
Those windows that allow glare onto your computer screen can be useful, soon they will provide power to your computer, air conditioning and other useful necessities
Ever wanted a ball of Silly Putty as big as your head? Now you can make it at home. The University of Minnesota‘s Chemistry Department has instructions on how to make it, as well as other fun things like Slime
Lost or stolen mobile phones will be useless to anyone who tries to make calls on them, as a result of new federal regulations. They will be blocked on all mobile phone networks, rendering them virtually worthless because they can no longer be used
Westpac customers had millions of dollars removed from their accounts during the weekend because of a computer glitch
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