Australia’s peak internet industry group which represents Telstra and Optus has thrown its weight behind iiNet’s Federal Court bid to fend off a major copyright lawsuit. The Internet Industry Association wrote to all parties involved in the case last week informing them of its intention to lodge an application to be heard by the court under its amicus curiae (friend of the court) provisions
Wolves do better on some tests of logic than dogs, a new study found, revealing differences between the animals that scientists suspect result from dogs’ domestication. In experiments, dogs followed human cues to perform certain tasks despite evidence they could see suggesting a different strategy would be smarter, while wolves made the more logical choice based on their observations. In fact, dogs’ responses were similar to human infants, who also prioritise following the example of adult humans
The Federal Government is planning a radical overhaul of telecommunications interception rules, which has some concerned it may be used to force internet service providers to inspect customers’ online activities
NSW Premier Nathan Rees has announced a data feed for RailCorp information, which he hopes will signal the start of much more government information being made available
David Bowie has had a large, yellow, hairy spider from Malaysia named after him. A German spider specialist told the Observer newspaper he named the new species after Bowie — whose album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was a huge hit in 1972 — because he wanted to raise awareness about the discovery. Peter Jaeger, who has found 200 new species of arachnids in a decade, says he’s named it Heteropoda davidbowie. Jaeger says most of the species he’s uncovered are endangered
News Corporation is launching a global service that will make all its news stories and videos instantly available to its entire network of TV, print and online news outlets. The service, called NewsCore, will operate like a global wire service for all the company’s newspapers, TV networks and websites. News Corp is describing the venture as a 21st-century multi-media information service that will draw on the worldwide news and sports resources within News Corporation and make them available to other News properties everywhere
Older versions of WordPress are vulnerable to a subtle attack that hides itself while adding spam. Is this a turning point for the free product? WordPress blogs, one of the most prevalent among custom install blogs (and used by organisations including Downing Street and the Daily Telegraph) are vulnerable — and being hit — by a worm that affects any old (ie before 2.8.4) version
An injectable biogel
that may help wounded soldiers and car crash victims recover from brain injuries could be tested on patients in three years, it has been claimed. The material, containing a cocktail of synthetic and natural chemicals, spurs on the growth of neural stem cells which in turn repair damaged nerves. After promising studies on rats scientists in the US say the treatment could be ready for patient trials in as little as three years
A telepathy
chip that allows people to control computers, televisions and light switches by the power of thought is being developed by British scientists. The tiny sensor would sit on the surface of the brain, picking up the electrical activity of nerve cells and passing the signal wirelessly to a receiver on the skull. The signal would then be used to control a cursor on a computer screen, operate electronic gadgets or steer an electric wheelchair. The chip is the brainchild of Dr Jon Spratley, 28, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, who developed a prototype during his PhD at Birmingham University
The British government’s official figures on the level of illegal file sharing in the UK come from questionable research commissioned by the music industry. The Radio 4 show named More or Less examined the government’s claim that 7m people in Britain are engaged in illegal file sharing. The 7m figure actually came from a report written about music industry losses for Forrester subsidiary Jupiter Research. The report was privately commissioned by none other than the UK’s music trade body, the BPI. The 7m figure had been rounded up from an actual figure of 6.7m, gleaned from a 2008 survey of 1,176 net-connected households, 11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software — in other words, only 136 people. That 11.6% was adjusted upwards to 16.3% to reflect the assumption that fewer people admit to file sharing than actually do it
. The 6.7m figure was then calculated based on an estimated number of internet users that disagreed with the government’s own estimate. The wholly unsubstantiated 7m figure was then released as an official statistic — via Slashdot
Thousands of music videos pulled from YouTube in a royalties dispute will go back online after peace broke out today between the website and the music industry. A new licensing deal with PRS for Music, the trade body that collects music royalties, has brought the six-month dispute to an end. But while this conflict has been resolved, another dispute has erupted over the digital future of the music industry. A rift has opened between music’s creators and its record labels, with a broad alliance of musicians, songwriters and producers fiercely criticising the business secretary Lord Mandelson’s plans to cut off the broadband connections of internet users who illegally download music. In a statement seen by the Guardian, a coalition of bodies representing a range of stars including Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Damon Albarn attacks the proposals as expensive, illogical and extraordinarily negative
Google’s algorithm for ranking web pages can be adapted to determine which species are critical for sustaining ecosystems, say researchers. According to a paper in PLoS Computational Biology, PageRank
can be applied to the study of food webs. These are the complex networks of who eats whom in an ecosystem. The scientists say their version of PageRank could be a simple way of working out which extinctions would lead to ecosystem collapse
Britain’s oldest original computer, the Harwell, is being sent to the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley where it is to be restored to working order. The computer, which was designed in 1949, first ran in 1951 and was designed to perform mathematical calculations; it lasted until 1973. When first built the 2.4m x 5m computer was state-of-the-art, although it was superseded by transistor-based systems. The restoration project is expected to take a year
Researchers have devised a penny-sized silicon chip that uses photons to run Shor’s algorithm — a well-known quantum approach — to solve a maths problem. The algorithm computes the two numbers that multiply together to form a given figure, and has until now required laboratory-sized optical computers. This kind of factoring is the basis for a wide variety of encryption schemes
A triumph for Dutch police quickly turned out to be an embarrassing mistake after they destroyed what they thought was a field of cannabis plants. Police on Wednesday announced they had discovered a plantation of some 47,000 illicit cannabis plants with a street value of €4.4m. They had destroyed much of the crop when they were told the plants belonged to a respected school of agriculture. They were a type of hemp, being grown as a fibre for use in textiles
Talking to an attractive woman really can make a man lose his mind, according to a new study. The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive. Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or ‘cognitive resources’ trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks. The findings have implications for the performance of men who flirt with women in the workplace, or even exam results in mixed-sex schools. Women, however, were not affected by chatting to a handsome man
Telstra’s national internet network went down for an hour today, the company says. The outage affected all Telstra home and businesses broadband and mobile internet customers nationwide, between 7.50am and 8.50am, a spokesman said. The company formed a major incident response team to investigate the outage. It’s not yet known what caused it. Another spokesman told Sky News that customers could not access any international sites or Australian sites containing international links
Vodafone’s 3G network coverage in Perth has now been restored after an 11-hour outage caused by routine network maintenance
. Vodafone Hutchison Australia confirmed that its 3G coverage in Perth and surrounding suburbs experienced an outage between midnight and 11.00am today. Customers had earlier today complained that 3G and GSM/GPRS reception was intermittent
The federal government has launched its $15 million senior citizens internet education program. Federal Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin today unveiled the first 42 of 2000 internet kiosks
which will be placed in community sites exclusively for teaching senior citizens how to use the internet. The kiosks are essentially basic PCs with internet connections
Lung cancer is a brutal disease, often not caught until it’s too late for treatment to do much good. Now researchers are building an electronic nose that could help physicians detect the disease during its initial stages. Using gold nanoparticles, scientists at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have created sensors with an unprecedented sensitivity for sniffing out compounds present in the breath of lung-cancer patients
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