After having its funding cut off by Congress a decade ago, the SETI program has just received a NASA five-year grant to participate as a lead team in the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which investigates the origin and future of life in the universe
Interesting article on Declan McCullagh’s PoliTech mailing list, a member of an ad hoc group of urban infiltration enthusiasts has offered his opinion that civil infrastructure of most major cities is ridiculously easy to disrupt. He argues that terrorists aren’t serious about destroying said infrastructure, but neither are the governments interested when it comes to the mammoth task of safeguarding cities
Derek Wyatt MP, Chair of the All Party Internet Group, has set up a Web site to encourage consumers to fight back against spam email. EndSpam, includes advice about how consumers can complain to their ISP about unsolicited commercial email or complain to their MP about the issue of spam in general
The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced the first round of Wi-Fi Certified interoperable 802.11g products
Santana Kennels owner Ian McIver arrived at work in time to see the building ablaze, and immediately set out to free 51 dogs and 11 cats, the Winnipeg man is recovering from second degree burns. No animals died but one Pomeranian was singed. Foster homes are needed for the rescued animals
Reacting to the new federal surveillance systems which have been set up in the US, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have set up a web site that will let US citizens create dossiers on government officials
While the English version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has hit the shelves around the world, non-English-speaking fans of the series have been left high and dry — and some of them are getting desperate
PETA has filed a lawsuit against KFC, accusing the company of making misleading statements on its Web site regarding how the chickens it sells are treated
The Family Court dismissed an application by Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock to keep five children in a detention centre after a ruling they should be set free
George Gobel, 1996 winner of the Ig Nobel prize for chemistry for lighting a barbecue with liquid oxygen, has had his extended home page pulled by Purdue University. The site has even been removed from Google’s cache. Fortunately, the Wayback Machine still has a copy in its archives
Telstra’s latest Web hosting offering has come under fire from a competitor for its claims to target small to medium enterprises with low-cost Web hosting
A feature of the new web site of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre is an email crime reporting service that allows you to report an electronic crime such as hacking without ever having to take your eyes off the computer screen
A series of legal skirmishes over who owns the real estate on a computer user’s screen is turning into a war. With companies like Gator happy to facilitate serving ads on rival sites
The British Library is hoping that its range of downloadable natural
ringtones — featuring such aural delights as the song of a cuckoo or
squawk of a penguin — will replace current favourites such as the
Mission Impossible theme and Tubular Bells
Where an enlightened post-Soviet era government believes the Internet is essential for life in the 21st century and backs that up with legislation declaring Internet access is a human right. Estonia is a country where hot, running water was a luxury a decade ago. It’s now a place where farmers have broadband Internet, 80% of the people use online banking, Internet usage and broadband penetration rates are comparable to Western Europe, and the government conducts most business virtually through a system of networked computers. Not bad for a country that only ten years ago was a crumbling, bankrupt mess with a network infrastructure to match
Microsoft has killed off Windows NT, maybe it should now release its source code to the open-source community in order to fight off the challenge from Linux. If nothing else the open-source community will be laughing so hard they won’t be able to fight back
British transsexuals will have the legal right to marry and have their gender changed on their birth certificate under new laws. A move that should also enable intersex children to live a normal life
Adobe Systems has begun testing online activation of its Photoshop 7.0 application in Australia as a way of stemming the illegal use of its software
Speaking days after the case against a multiple sclerosis sufferer accused of supplying cannabis was abandoned, Lord Prosser, a former High Court judge in Scotland, said the current laws on the Class B drug were unenforceable and should be scrapped. He has called for cannabis to be legalised and the drug supplied in the same way as alcohol and tobacco
Serious doubts about whether Iraq was developing nuclear weapons were communicated to Australia months before John Howard repeated the claims in parliament, according to Greg Theilmann, a former senior United States official with the State Department
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