A court in Germany has ruled that circumcising young boys for religious reasons amounts to bodily harm.
In a decision that has caused outrage among Jewish and Muslim groups, the court said that a child’s right to physical integrity trumps religious and parental rights.
The case involved a doctor who carried out a circumcision on a four year-old that led to medical complications.
Thousands of Muslim and Jewish boys are circumcised in Germany every year — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Michael Curtiz’s best director Oscar for the movie classic Casablanca is going up for auction this week and is expected to fetch $US2.5 million ($A2.49 million) to $US3 million ($A2.99 million), according to auctioneers Nate D Sanders.
The Academy Award won in 1943 by the Hungarian-born Curtiz, who died in 1961, will be auctioned on June 28 by the Los Angeles-based company.
Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and set in the Moroccan city during World War II, is one of the most enduring romances in American cinema. In 2007, the Los Angeles-based American Film Institute named it as the third best film of the past 100 years — via redwolf.newsvine.com
NBN Co will only offer satellite services to residents in the regional town of Napoleons, after the Golden Plains Shire Council rejected the company’s plans for a tower to deliver fixed-wireless LTE services in the area.
NBN Co had eight proposals for 40-metre towers before the Golden Plains Shire Council in regional Victoria, and although the council has approved six so far, it was the first council to reject a National Broadband Network (NBN) tower on 21 May 2012, stating that the planned tower for Napoleons would have a big visual impact on the area.
An alternative arrangement could not be reached between NBN Co and the council, and, subsequently, NBN Co has said that the residents in Napoleons will get NBN Co’s satellite service instead. The news was first reported by The Courier — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Telstra has admitted to tracking the websites visited by Next G mobile customers, as part of the development of a voluntary internet filtering system.
The tracking was first picked up by members of the Australian Network Operators group, who noticed that requests made to a web server from port 80 on a Telstra mobile device, would immediately be followed by a request from an IP address in the US, hosted by Rackspace.
After inquiries on the anomaly by ZDNet Australia, Telstra today came clean and admitted that it is working on a new cybersafety tool called Smart Controls, that will block certain sites from appearing on Telstra mobiles that are signed up for the service — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Denver Zoo is celebrating the birth of a critically endangered Amur (ah-Moor) Leopard cub born on 25 April. The young male, named Makar (Mah-car), is the first birth of his species at Denver Zoo since 1996. Until now, Makar has been behind-the-scenes with his mother. He just received a clean bill of health from zoo veterinarians and guests can see him now inside the zoo’s Feline Building — via ZooBorns
According to the architect, the solidity and grandeur of Casa Kona was conceived over a dinner, and provided an opportunity to create a home for art for a perfectionist and discriminating client.
The American couple who commissioned it had fallen in love with the contemporary work of Mexican architecture firm Legorreta + Legorreta — via Home Design Find
MP3s are so natural to the Internet now that it’s almost hard to imagine a time before high-quality compressed music. But there was such a time — and even after MP3
entered the mainstream, organising, ripping, and playing back one’s music collection remained a clunky and frustrating experience.
Enter Winamp, the skin-able, customizable MP3 player that really whips the llama’s ass
” In the late 1990s, every music geek had a copy; llama-whipping had gone global, and the big-money acquisition offers quickly followed. AOL famously acquired the company in June 1999 for $80-$100 million — and Winamp almost immediately lost its innovative edge.
Winamp’s 15-year anniversary is now upon us, with little fanfare. It’s almost as if the Internet has forgotten about the upstart with the odd slogan that looked at one time like it would be the company to revolutionise digital music. It certainly had the opportunity.
There’s no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition,
Rob Lord, the first general manager of Winamp, and its first-ever hire, told Ars — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Carat is a research project that aims to detect energy bugs — app behaviour that is consuming energy unnecessarily — using data collected from a community of mobile devices. After running Carat for about a week, you will start to receive personalized recommendations for improving your battery life. We are based out of the AMP Lab in the EECS Department at UC Berkeley, collaborating with the University of Helsinki
Researchers Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo test a new theory that suggests how ancient Easter Islanders may have used ropes to “walk” the moai to their platforms — via National Geographic
This is what we’ve all been dreaming of folks! The tiniest glass octopus I could manage! Smaller than a penny they are the perfect size for earrings.
They are a little over a half inch wide and the metal hooks are made of surgical grade steel — via Etsy
Earlier this month Google developer advocate Tim Bray proposed a new HTTP Error status code aimed at shining a light on web censorship.
Bray’s new Error 451 would work somewhat like the Error 404 pages you’ve probably seen. But instead of telling you that the page could not be found, an Error 451 response would let you know that the page you were looking for had been censored.
The number is a tribute to author Ray Bradbury (commenters on a Slashdot thread independently suggested 451 as well).
As it stands, most web-blocking tools return a 403 error (which means access is forbidden) when denying access to censored pages. For instance, UK ISPs, which are now required to block The Pirate Bay, typically return a 403 error code when doing so — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The rumours were true: Microsoft has acquired business social networking firm Yammer in a 1.2bn cash deal announced on Monday.
The acquisition of Yammer adds best-in-class enterprise social networking to Microsoft’s growing portfolio of complementary cloud services; world-class talent that knows how to deliver rapid innovation in the cloud; and a unique adoption model that appeals directly to end users,
said Redmond in a statement.
Yammer, a messaging and microblog network with a lot of customers in the top end of enterprise, has a market Microsoft needs. Redmond has traditionally been shy of social networking, but Yammer could be a useful tool in to integrate into Windows 8 and other platforms — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Dublin Zoo has a new arrival! Born early on Tuesday, 5 June, this tiny male Tapir calf is off to a terrific start. This is mother Rio and father Marmaduke’s first calf together — via ZooBorns
This quilt, by Craftster member graverobbergirl, is a great tribute to this show, featuring a plethora of Daleks floating around the TARDIS — via Craftster
I really liked the woven gift-topper I made a few weeks ago and thought it looked really pixel-ly! Just perfect for space invaders… — via Mini-eco
This crocheted cat cave from Hanne at Eilen Tein is just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen! My two feline fur balls would definitely love to curl up their own cosy crocheted space. It’s the perfect place for all of their favourite activities: hiding, playing, and snoozing — via CRAFT
Near the medieval Slovenian town of Škofja Loka, a farm property was transformed by the replacement of an ancient farm building with this crisp, modern three-story home.
The home, built by Arhitetektura doo, sits in exactly the same location as the farm building it replaced, sharing the very same dimensions, with the same slope used as a prominent influence in the home’s shape — via Dornob
Before you can create Photoshop masterworks, you need to learn the basics. Even the most complex digital artworks are built on a foundation of simple actions. These 50 tutorials are aimed at the clever beginner who wants to master Photoshop from the roots — via Psdtuts+
Researchers have clocked light beams made of twisted
waves carrying 2.5 terabits of data — the capacity of more than 66 DVDs — per second.
The technique relies on manipulating what is known as the orbital angular momentum of the waves.
Recent work suggests that the trick could vastly boost the data-carrying capacity in wi-fi and optical fibres.
The striking demonstration of the approach, reported in Nature Photonics, is likely to lead to even higher rates — via redwolf.newsvine.com
This is a short documentary about the Lego Turing Machine built by Jeroen van den Bos and Davy Landman at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam (Netherlands). They built it for CWI’s exposition Turings Erfenis
in honour of the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth on 23 June 1912.
Alan Turing was a brilliant mathematician who helped define the theoretical model of the computer as we know it today. He was a visionary, one of the few people of his time who recognised the role the computer would play for humanity.
The Turing Machine (1936) is an adequate model of a computer. It can do anything the computers of today or tomorrow can do.
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