The Court of Appeal in The Hague rejected all of Scientology’s claims in appeal in Scientology’s action against XS4ALL, Karin Spaink and ten other internet providers. As a result, Karin Spaink’s web site, which Scientology sought to remove from the Internet based on copyright claims, is entirely legal in the Netherlands. The court also overturned two lower court rulings, one of which said that linking to material that infringed a copyright was itself actionable. The other ruling said that ISPs that failed to act on credible notification of a copyright violation could be held liable for that. The Appeals Court felt that this was too vague a standard, and thus posed a threat to free speech
People searching for art that was stolen by the Nazis have a new tool: a web site that allows US museum collections to be checked for long-lost pieces
Oracle has lifted the covers off long awaited plans to offer a utility-style grid computing architecture, unveiling its 10g database flagship and putting the Linux open source operating system squarely at the centre of its corporate future
There’s a new test aircraft that can travel at supersonic speeds without triggering a sonic boom. The technology works by modifying the shape of the plane
There are plans in India to use GPS technology to alert train drivers of obstructions on the tracks, automatically stopping the train if the driver fails to take action. This sounds like a good use of cheaply-available technology to provide a safer train network
Intel Labs is prototyping a potentially revolutionary new personal server. The tiny device comprises a hard disk, BlueTooth, a Web-DAV enabled HTTP daemon, and other technologies enabling the user to access and modify their files from any enabled PC within their ‘Personal Area Network’. In theory, this would allow the worker to access their own data — essentially to have their own PC — at any suitable workstation as long as the personal server were nearby
At thousands of Bookcrossing zones, people have discreetly left free books in hopes that a stranger will pick them up, enjoy them, register them on the Internet, then pass them on
Users of the Lycos web portal have been unable to access their e-mail this week following a glitch during an upgrade
An ISP in Tennessee, whose main facility was completely levelled by a tornado, recovered in 72 hours. The story is a great recounting of how they executed their disaster recovery plan, what they found they had left out of that plan, data recovery from destroyed hard drives, and perhaps the best argument ever for offsite backups
Aquada have just tested a fully amphibious car on the Thames. It can travel at up to 100 miles an hour on land, and its wheels fold up to allow it to speed across water at 30mph, propelled by a jet
Meowmory: the Kitten Memory game. Match the adorable kitties.
Skippy the Goth Kangaroo will bring back memories of what a truly bad and repetitive show this was, but the Brit voiceovers are hilarious.
Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, mushroom, mushroom…
Don Park puts the semantic back into the semantic web — mark things up willy-nilly and make sense of them afterwards
A new line of corn-based plastics, called polylactides or PLA, has begun to land on US supermarket shelves. Its strongest selling points are that it fully degrades in 47 days, doesn’t emit toxic fumes when incinerated, and requires 20 to 50 percent less fossil fuel to manufacture than regular plastics
A French court has ruled that music compact discs which include functions to prevent copying amount to faulty goods and that buyers must be reimbursed
Toshiba and NEC will incorporate fuel cells into the laptops by 2004. Sony, Hitachi and Casio are expected to follow the suit. The tests show a fuel cell lasting 10 hours. With the form-factor of a Bic lighter, it allows the laptop user to carry a few extra cells in the laptop bag all the time. Battery prices are expected to run at about US$200
I quite often play with translation software and have enough of a rudimentary grasp of languages to know that machine translations will only give you the gist of the text and not the original feel and depth that the author conveyed in their native tongue.
The authors of the Systran translation software probably never intended their program to be subject to an electronic version of ‘Chinese Whispers’. But Carl Tashian had other ideas, and created a bridging application with Babelfish that will translate an English phrase back and forth between multiple different languages. The resulting half-English, half-foreign, and totally non sequitur response bears almost no resemblance to the original.
I ran a paragraph of text through Lost in Translation which shunted it from English to Japanese to English to Chinese to English to Korean to English to French to English to German and back to English. The result is a surreal chunk of prose that looks alarmingly like William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch:
Regarding one this danger of the evil of the method of time vainly, which sleeps her, and moving of the situation of the momentary condition, which wakes up inward inward, it is at the same time broad and it had the difficulty, which hoped it. Regarding its thing the saw of this, but the merry direction of the situation was it it. It followed this hotel in the danger and all the same which the degree, which eat is, that those surpasses a warranty, inward multi of London, which is that, of this place and of the method is, which is not probably everything, for which profit and the loss, it to write which everything is not it did not criticise. But of this place however of it was believed and he was not.
Original text before babelisation:
The man’s dreams were troubled as he floated in that transition state between sleeping and waking. He had the feeling that he was being watched, but that was ridiculous. Nobody knew he was in London, the security in this hotel was beyond reproach and there was no way that anybody could have gotten in without him knowing. But the feeling was still there none the less.
The random name generator uses data from the US Census to randomly generate male and female names. Use it for screenplays, fake IDs, car rentals, pick-up lines, books, prank calls, movies. Give a random name to that special someone you meet at the bar
The wide spread of unsolicited e-mails is leading publishers and site owners towards subscription-based RSS. People just do not subscribe to free e-mail newsletters any more, making a broad assumption that anyone offering them would be a spammer
Poachers who have hunted some rhino species to the verge of extinction could soon be tracked down by genetic tests being developed in Britain and Taiwan
Soon, the way you use your mouse could help prove who you are. Scientists have found a way for people to sign their name online using a mouse instead of a pen. The technology, based on the research from Queen Mary College, University of London by Peter McOwan, uses a neural network to pick out the unique features of the way that someone uses a mouse
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