The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) today decided not to oppose the Vodafone/Hutchison merger — a move welcomed by the two companies. The competition watchdog concluded that the merger of the two telcos’ mobile networks was unlikely to substantially lessen competition in the relevant markets
, in part because the two would not have maintained the same level of competition they do today over the longer term
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now genetically engineered a strain of mice whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for the human version. Svante Paabo, in whose laboratory the mouse was engineered, promised several years ago that when the project was completed, We will speak to the mouse
. He did not promise that the mouse would say anything in reply, doubtless because a great many genes must have undergone evolutionary change to endow people with the faculty of language, and the new mouse was gaining only one of them. So it is perhaps surprising that possession of the human version of FOXP2 does in fact change the sounds that mice use to communicate with other mice, as well as other aspects of brain function
BitTorrent’s user base is growing month by month and has reached a level where reputable marketing research companies have started to look into the phenomenon. Over the years Nielsen Media has optimised their ratings system for television, radio and films — but on the other hand their BitTorrent traffic estimates are far from accurate
Besides Microsoft, Google and possibly AOL have also cut access to their instant messaging services to citizens of countries deemed hostile to the United States. But it’s unclear how effective those measures will be at preventing access. Microsoft confirmed late last week that it had stopped offering its Windows Live Messenger service to users in Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea. All five countries are subject to trade embargoes overseen by the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a division of the Department of the Treasury
Like most San Franciscans, Charles Pitts is wired. Mr Pitts, who is 37 years old, has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs an Internet forum on Yahoo, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. The tough part is managing this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge. You don’t need a TV. You don’t need a radio. You don’t even need a newspaper,
says Mr Pitts, an aspiring poet in a purple cap and yellow fleece jacket, who says he has been homeless for two years. But you need the Internet
Apple is planning a major East Coast data centre to boost the capacity of its online operations, and may invest as much as $1 billion in building and operating the huge server farm. The company is considering locations in North Carolina, where officials are rushing to pass enhanced tax breaks to woo Apple to their state rather than neighboring Virginia, which just passed its own incentives for data centre projects
In a small town just across the border from Germany, a small group of Dutch scientists and one irrepressible Austrian salesman have dedicated themselves to the task of reinventing one of the great inventions of the 20th century — Polaroid’s instant film. Digital cameras are ubiquitous, cheap and easy to use — the reasons Polaroid stopped making the film last year — so what this group in Enschede is attempting may seem hopelessly retrograde. But to them, that is exactly the point. They want to recast an outdated production process in an abandoned Polaroid factory for an age that has fallen for digital pictures because they think people still have room in their hearts for retro photography that eschews airbrushing or Photoshop
Hundreds of thousands more Australians have turned to illegal download sites in the past year to save money on movies, music, software and TV shows during the economic downturn, new figures show. Total visits by Australians to BitTorrent websites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, TorrentReactor and Torrentz grew from 785,000 in April last year to 1,049,000 in April this year, Nielsen says. This is a year-on-year increase of 33.6 per cent
Google has announced a new centralised collaboration tool called Google Wave that mashes together emails, instant messaging and wiki style communication into one service that will be open sourced and run on its own protocols. Developed in Google’s Sydney office by the same team of brothers that created Google Maps, Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the project originally dubbed Walkabout
has been in development for over two years
The EU passed the Data Retention Directive years ago, a law that demands ISPs and search engines hold onto data long enough to help the cops (but not long enough to cause privacy problems). But Sweden never passed it into national law, and the European Commission has now sued the country to make sure a bill appears
Victorian police are investigating a massive identity fraud involving the personal details of thousands of Australians that have been available on a blog site for more than a month. The data, discovered by The Australian, includes thousands of Visa, Mastercard and American Express numbers, including expiry dates, together with home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. The list was posted on a free blogging site, where it was copied by search engine Google as part of its routine cataloguing of internet sites on 21 April
A UK researcher has spent years interviewing people about whether DRM has affected their ability to use content in ways ordinarily protected by the law. Surprise! It has, even leading one sight-impaired woman to piracy
Australian scientists have found they can restore the sight of people with one damaged eye using contact lenses coated with stem cells from their healthy eye
Writing is one of the greatest inventions in human history. Perhaps the greatest, since it made history possible. Without writing, there could be no accumulation of knowledge, no historical record, no science — and of course no books, newspapers or internet. The first true writing we know of is Sumerian cuneiform — consisting mainly of wedge-shaped impressions on clay tablets — which was used more than 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards writing appeared in Egypt, and much later in Europe, China and Central America. Civilisations have invented hundreds of different writing systems. Some, such as the one you are reading now, have remained in use, but most have fallen into disuse. These dead scripts tantalise us. We can see that they are writing, but what do they say? That is the great challenge of decipherment: to reach deep into the past and hear the voices of the dead. When the Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered in 1823, they extended the span of recorded history by around 2000 years and allowed us to read the words of Ramses the Great. The decipherment of the Mayan glyphs revealed that the New World had a sophisticated, literate civilisation at the time of the Roman empire
Facebook has gotten $200 million from a Russian investment group in exchange for a small stake in the nation’s largest social networking company. The deal places the value of the site, known for allowing people to connect through SuperPokes
and virtual gifts, at $10 billion. Digital Sky Technologies, with headquarters in Moscow and London, will get a 1.96 percent stake in the company for its investment. It will not have a seat on Facebook’s board
France’s Church of Scientology today went on trial on charges of organised fraud in a case that could lead to the nationwide dissolution of the controversial organisation. The Church’s celebrity centre
spiritual association and its Scientology Freedom Space bookshop in Paris stand accused of targeting vulnerable people for commercial gain. Six leading members, including the celebrity centre’s director, Alain Rosenberg, also face charges of illegally distributing pharmaceuticals
HM Revenue and Customs has won a legal battle with Proctor and Gamble over the liability for value-added tax (VAT) purposes of its Pringles
potato chips. The Court of Appeal has ruled that Pringles are, in fact, a potato-based snack despite the fact that they are only 42% potato, and are therefore liable for VAT at the standard rate, currently 15%. Procter and Gamble had attempted to prove in a long-standing battle that their crisps should be allowed VAT-exemption — due to the fact that they are really more dough than potato. The argument was based around the fact that Pringles had been placed within the category of potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch,
by a VAT and Duties Tribunal in 2007
A commonly-used cancer drug can make patients’ fingerprints disappear, potentially causing problems for foreign travel, a doctor warns. One patient was held by US immigration officials for four hours before they allowed him to enter the country
The Ben Rose Home — site of the famous movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Cantilevered over the ravine, these two steel and glass buildings — which can never be duplicated — have incredible vistas of the surrounding woods. This is a unique property designed by A James Speyer and David Haid, both notable architects of the 20th Century
The Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory internet filtering plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code. Senator Conroy’s statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content. Responding to questions from shadow communications minister Nick Minchin on how the government may go about imposing the internet filtering scheme, Senator Conroy said that legislation may not be required and ISPs may adopt an industry consensus to block restricted content on a voluntary basis
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