Australia is the only Western democracy where human rights are not formally protected, either by law or by the Constitution. Minorities, elderly, and disabled want a human rights charter. But a proposal for a charter has unleashed fierce opposition from church groups and opposition politicians
StatCounter Global Statistics shows that in the last few days Firefox 3.5 became the most used browser version worldwide, edging ahead of IE7. IE8 is rising fast (along with Windows 7), but over the last few months the slope of Firefox’s worldwide curve has been steeper. In the US, IE8 has always been ahead of Firefox 3.5; in Europe Firefox has led since late summer — via Slashdot
A small design company in America has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that it is unfairly using the Bing name for its search engine. Bing! Information Design, based in St Louis, Missouri, launched a legal action last week in a local court — alleging that the multibillion-dollar software corporation had knowledge of the mark
and intentionally interfered
when it relaunched its search engine with a new name earlier this year
The first three-dimensional carbon nanotube circuits, made by researchers at Stanford University, could be an important step in making nanotube computers that could be faster and use less power than today’s silicon chips. Such a computer is still at least 10 years off, but the Stanford work shows it is possible to make stacked circuits using carbon nanotubes. Stacked circuits cram more processing power in a given area, and also do a better job dissipating waste heat
Sonitus Medical of San Mateo in California has created a small device that wraps around the teeth. It picks up the sounds detected from a tiny microphone in the deaf ear and transforms them into vibrations. These then travel through the teeth and down the jawbone to the cochlea in the working ear, where they are transmitted to the brain providing stereo sound. The same process of bone conduction
explains how we hear our own voices, and why they sound different when they are recorded and played back to us. Some existing hearing aids also use bone conduction to transmit sounds to the cochlea, but these either require a titanium post to be drilled into the skull, or rely on cumbersome headsets. It also differs from conventional hearing aids, which employ air conduction to simply turn up the volume of sound travelling into the ear. The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio voted Sonitus’s device its top medical innovation for 2010
Scientists have identified a novel antifreeze molecule in a freeze-tolerant Alaska beetle able to survive temperatures below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Unlike all previously described biological antifreezes that contain protein, this new molecule, called xylomannan, has little or no protein. It is composed of a sugar and a fatty acid and may exist in new places within the cells of organisms
The Government’s nicely-timed announcement last week that they will proceed next year with their Internet censorship scheme has not only drawn widespread ire in Australia but has continued to raise eyebrows overseas. The filter has been covered around the world from the BBC to news outlets in Poland, Pakistan and even China. Unfortunately, it’s not a good look — despite any nuances the policy might have, we’re gaining a reputation as the Iran of the South Pacific
European authorities may soon approve a global standard for SIM cards designed to operate in harsh conditions that could open new enterprise markets for mobile carriers. France Telecom’s enterprise group Orange Business Services, said that the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) could ratify the standard as early as next year. Anne-Marie Thiollet, machine-to-machine (M2M) marketing vice president for Orange Business Services, said ETSI was close to achieving consensus between carriers, and modem and SIM card manufacturers
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief late Wednesday arguing that its lawsuit challenging an unconstitutional government spying law should be reinstated. The ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed the landmark lawsuit in July 2008 to stop the government from conducting surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the executive branch virtually unchecked power to collect Americans’ international e-mails and telephone calls by the millions, without a warrant and without suspicion of any kind
The Etherpad code has been released by Google under the Apache license. Google’s initial plan, after acquiring the service, was to use Etherpad’s tech with its new Wave collaboration platform and to shut down the original service entirely. Soon after the Etherpad code was released, the Swedish Pirate Party launched their instance of the service at piratepad.net. An announcement, which also mentions a new Tor node, is published on the party website (Google translation). The original Etherpad service had in a short time become a killer application for collaborative work within at least the Swedish, and according to my personal experience, in the Finnish Pirate Party as well. The Etherpad open source project is available at Google Code — Slashdot
Three library associations have asked the Justice Department to oversee Google’s plans to create a massive digital library, so as to prevent excessively high pricing for institutional subscriptions. They said that there was unlikely to be an effective competitor to Google’s massive project in the near term. They also asked for academic author representation on the Registry board — via Slashdot
George Lucas’s empire failed to strike back yesterday after he lost a legal battle with the British maker of Stormtrooper helmets for the film Star Wars. Andrew Ainsworth recently began selling replicas of helmets and armour made from his original mould, prompting a $20million lawsuit from Lucasfilm. But the Court of Appeal agreed that even though Mr Ainsworth did not own the design, he had not broken any British law because his creations were not art
Twitter went offline for a while Friday after hackers calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army apparently managed to change DNS records, redirecting traffic to another web page. Instead of the usual Twitter Web site design, visitors to the site instead saw a black screen with an image of a green flag and Arabic writing. The defaced site also included a message that said, This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army
, and an e-mail address. Whether or not Iranian hackers are responsible for the attack wasn’t immediately clear. However, Twitter and other Internet sites have been used by Iranian opposition groups and protestors to share details of anti-government protests in that country
A Paris court has found Google guilty of copyright infringement in a ruling which could have ramifications for its plans to digitise the world’s books. The search giant must pay 300,000 euros in damages and interest to French publisher La Martiniere. It was one of many to take Google to court for digitising its books without explicit permission. Google was also ordered to pay 10,000 euros a day until it removes extracts of the books from its database
Hungarian Parliament has made the use of open standards mandatory by law in the intercommunication between public administration offices, public utility companies, citizens and voluntarily joining private companies, conducted via the central governmental system
For 80 years, it has eluded the finest minds in science. But tonight it appeared that the hunt may be over for dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that accounts for three-quarters of the matter in the universe. In a series of coordinated announcements at several US laboratories, researchers said they believed they had captured dark matter in a defunct iron ore mine half a mile underground. The claim, if confirmed next year, will rank as one the most spectacular discoveries in physics in the past century
A Sunshine Coast man has admitted to being the mastermind behind the world’s biggest email scam and faces fines of up to $200,000 next week. In a separate action, a Queensland man and a company were fined $6.5 million for a mobile phone texting scam that targeted users of dating web sites. For that scam, fines have yielded the Federal Government’s anti-spam body, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, more than than $22 million in the past year.
Spam accounted for 87 percent of all email messages in 2009, says Symantec. According to the security vendor’s December State of Spam and Phishing report, spam peaked in May, when it accounted for 95 percent of all email messages sent and was at its lowest level (74 percent) at the beginning of the year, just months after US ISP McColo was shut down
The Federal Trade Commission announced Wednesday that it is suing Intel, claiming that the chip giant has illegally used its dominance to stymie competition and to strengthen its own monopoly. In so doing, says the FTC, the company has robbed consumers of both choice and innovation in microprocessors, including those that outshone Intel’s own: “Intel’s anticompetitive tactics were designed to put the brakes on superior competitive products that threatened its monopoly in the CPU microchip market
Google Australia posted a statement today on its official blog calling the government’s ISP filter heavy handed
and outlining the search giant’s concerns about the scope of filtered content. Google’s major concern is that the scope of filtered refused classification content is too wide, citing a recent report by Australian media academics, professors Catharine Lumby, Lelia Green and John Hartley
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