A test done by the Dutch PC-Active magazine showed that among 30 different CD-R brands tested, a lot of them were already unreadable after twenty months
Australian companies have long prided themselves on their highly inventive nature and global reputation as early adopters of new technology. But Australia’s track record in commercialising technical know-how on the global stage is lamentable. Australia is yet to produce a globally significant technology company, and risks falling behind rivals in Europe and Asia as a centre of technical development
A black woman in Britain has won the right to be given an artificial foot which matches her skin colour, after first being told to make do with a white one
The BBC has gone public with its intention to find a way to put the entire content of its radio and TV archives online
When police find a skull and want to know what its owner looked like, they generally use artists who reconstruct the face by building up layers of clay over the skull. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Germany have advanced efforts to computerise the process. The method could speed forensic work and could also be used to reconstruct long-extinct animal species
Experts say administrators can’t control the information transferred between these devices and a corporate network, unlike e-mail and other network traffic
You can never have too much e-mail of the news variety and, as I’m very slack about checking my favourite sites for updates, I’ve found BlogStreet‘s Info Aggregator to be quite the nifty tool.
It’s an RSS-to-IMAP service that lets you receive and read RSS feeds in your favourite mail client, delivering all the latest news and blog posts directly to your mailbox.
There’s also a handy RSS Generator for those sites that don’t have an RSS feed available.
Scientists from Bell Laboratories have identified an ocean sponge, living in the darkness of the deep sea, that grows thin glass fibres capable of transmitting light better than industrial fibre optic cables used for telecommunication. You can tie a knot in these natural biological fibres and they will not break
Qantas has effectively ruled out the installation of anti-missile technology on-board its aircraft due to doubts over cost and effectiveness
In an action scene during the filming of a low-budget movie, The Scorpion’s Vengeance, Flavio Peniche was apparently handed a gun with real bullets rather than blanks, causing him to shoot and kill another actor, Antonio Velasco. The film’s producer, Eduardo Martinez Sanchez, and the props manager have scarpered for parts unknown
A power outage struck a Qwest Communications facility that hosts many of eBay’s servers, rendering its services inaccessible for far longer than the reported three hours
This amusing chunk of software claims to be able to pick the gender of an author of a piece of text with an accuracy of 80%. However, the stats for the site reveal an accuracy of only 50% and my tests on the system found that it got it wrong more often than not. It kept dithering on my gender, so I think it just takes a pot shot rather than using any real science
Nokia has manoeuvred to the cutting edge of the video-game industry by agreeing to acquire Japanese gamemaker Sega’s online gaming subsidiary, Sega.com. Nokia plans to integrate Sega’s technology, enabling groups of gamers to compete against one another, into its N-Gage gaming phone
US Trade officials have backed off from a tough line on music, movie and software piracy, admitting that shoehorning Australia into a copyright regime based on criminal law may be a bridge too far
The Xenoturbella, an enigmatic worm that resides in the mud at the bottom of a Swedish fjord, is identified as mankind’s long-lost relative, after being written off for years as an obscure mollusc
Railway officials in Wakayama, a largely rural prefecture in western Japan, racked their brains for months for a way to keep wild deer from running onto train tracks and getting killed. Finally, inspiration struck: scare them off by spreading lion dung along the tracks
The Federal Government plans to outlaw using the internet for ‘offensive and menacing purposes’, proposing new laws that could mean two years in prison for activities like organising or advocating violent protests through the internet. However, the opposition aren’t amused, saying it could be used to crack down on legitimate protest
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is proposing a massive system of tracking for homeless people and others who are served by shelters and care centres. The system will track people by their social security number, and will collect general and mental health information. Secret Service and national security agents can gain access to the database by just asking for it
The movie industry is blaming poor sales of such movies as Gigli, The Hulk and Charlie’s Angels not on the fact that they were poor quality, but because people text message their mates telling them that the movie sucks
Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism is drawing up grandiose plans to upgrade the final stronghold of the Khmer Rouge into a million-dollar theme park
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