Lyse has become the largest fibre-to-the-home provider in Norway thanks to an innovative business model that asks customers to preregister before any fibre is dug, then offers them a $400 savings if they dig their own trench from the street to the home. So far, 80 percent of Lyse’s customers have broken out the shovels
A new approach developed by Philips now offers fresh hope for colour e-paper displays that are so bright and clear that even traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) will pale in comparison. According to Kars-Michiel Lenssen, who headed the work at Philips Research, based in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, the new approach has the potential to create colour images that are three times brighter than displays that use colour filters, including LCDs. This is the closest an electronic-paper technology ever got to printed paper,
he says
Like patents and copyright, trademarks are a weapon that companies can use to battle each other and ultimately restrict the freedom of their customers. As such, I find it odd that while many people in the world of open source are campaigning for reforms in copyright and patents, most ignore trademarking. Trademarking is just as dangerous as its two intellectual property brothers
In Get Smart, the 1960s TV spy comedy, secret agents wanting a private conversation would deploy the cone of silence
, a clear plastic contraption lowered over the agents’ heads. It never worked — they couldn’t hear each other, while eavesdroppers could pick up every word. Now a modern cone of silence that we are assured will work is being patented by engineers Joe Paradiso and Yasuhiro Ono of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their idea, revealed in US patent application 2009/0097671 on 16 April, is to make confidential conversations possible in open-plan offices and canteens. It will even let a conversing group move around a room and still remain in a secure sound bubble
Solar company Konarka has developed a transparent solar cell that it hopes will be built onto electricity-generating windows. The company said it has reached an agreement with Arch Aluminum & Glass to use Konarka’s plastic solar cells in building materials, including windows. Under its Arch Active Solar Glass development, the company has built prototypes of windows with the solar cells between two panes of glass. The photovoltaic cells can be tinted different colours
Last week, we learned about Elsevier publishing a bogus journal for Merck. Now, several librarians say that they have uncovered an entire imprint of advertorial
publications. Excerpta Medica, a strategic medical communications agency
, is an Elsevier division. Along with the now infamous Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, it published a number of other journals
. Elsevier CEO Michael Hansen now admits that at least six fake journals were published for pharmaceutical companies — via Slashdot
The recent revelation that Intel’s consumer-class solid-state disk (SSD) drives suffer from fragmentation that can cause a significant performance degradation raises the question: Do all SSDs slow down with use over time? The answer is yes — and every drive manufacturer knows it
Austria is pulling out of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), Science Minister Johannes Hahn announced Thursday, citing budget concerns. The 20-million-euro (26.9-million-dollar) yearly membership in CERN — which is responsible for Europe’s Big Bang atom-smasher — makes up 70 percent of the money available in Austria for participation in international institutes and could be better used to fund other European projects, he said
The discovery of giant trilobites in northern Portugal reveals the once ubiquitous marine creature mated en masse and used its numbers for protection. The new find, published in the current issue of the journal Geology describes giants that grew to 90 centimetres in length, the largest ever found
Many companies restrict the use of colour printers because of high costs — up to eight cents a page, compared to a penny a page for black and white. Xerox hopes to loosen up the colour purse strings with a new $20,000 printer that is says will sharply cut those costs. Xerox says printing colour using the new machine, which uses a proprietary solid ink
technology, will be up to 62% cheaper than the price of current laser prints. The machine, called ColorQube, is expected to be unveiled Thursday. It’s a multi-function device that prints, copies, scans and faxes, and is designed to be shared over a computer network by several dozen people in an office
Highly sensitive details of a US military missile air defence system were found on a second-hand hard drive bought on eBay. The test launch procedures were found on a hard disk for the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) ground to air missile defence system, used to shoot down Scud missiles in Iraq. The disk also contained security policies, blueprints of facilities and personal information on employees including social security numbers, belonging to technology company Lockheed Martin — who designed and built the system
Just a few days before their court appearance, Mininova, the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, has started to filter content. The site is using a third party content recognition system that will detect and remove torrent files that link to copyright infringing files
Even before it’s officially adopted, France’s controversial anti-piracy law has already claimed its first victim. Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, head of web innovation at one of the largest TV-networks in France was fired recently because he criticised the law in a letter to his MP
Twelve million computers have been hijacked by cyber-criminals and detected by security vendor McAfee since January, the firm has said. It reports there has been a 50% increase in the number of detected so-called zombie
computers since 2008. The true number of newly hijacked PCs is likely to be higher than those detected by McAfee alone. The figures come as a report from Deloitte said a global approach to cyber-security was needed
Enterprise content management maker Open Text plans to acquire rival Vignette for approximately $US310 million ($414 million) in a cash and stock deal. Vignette shareholders will receive $US8 in cash plus 0.1447 of an Open Text common share for every Vignette common share. This equates to approximately US$12.70 at close of market on 5 May. According to Open Text, the offer represents a premium of around 74 per cent above the 30 trading day average closing price of Vignette’s shares and approximately 41 per cent above the most recent closing price. The Vignette buy is the latest in a string of acquisitions for Open Text that have included e-documents provider Captaris
Each April, the US releases the Special 301 Report, which examines the intellectual property laws of its main trading partners. The release generated international headlines last week as countries such as Canada and Israel found themselves on the “Priority Watch List” of countries that the US claims are the world’s worst piracy offenders. In all, the US targeted 46 countries. In addition to the usual suspects such as China and Russia, Europe came in for heavy criticism with Finland, Norway, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland all on the Watch list
It’s not quite as advanced as Terminator technology. But a new concrete that can heal its own wounds may soon bring futuristic protection to bridges and roads. Traditional concrete is brittle and is easily fractured during an earthquake or by overuse. By contrast, the new concrete composite can bend into a U-shape without breaking. When strained, the material forms hairline cracks, which auto-seal after a few days of light rain
Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state web site used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on more than 8 million patients and replaced the site’s homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records
A little over a decade ago, archaeologists experienced a collective nightmare — the emergence of eBay, the Internet auction site that, among other things, lets people sell looted artefacts. The black market for antiquities has existed for centuries, of course, with devastating consequences for the world’s cultural heritage. But we could at least take some comfort that it was largely confined to either high-end dealers on one end of the economic spectrum or rural flea markets on the other. The sheer physical constraints of transporting and selling illegal artefacts kept the market relatively small. But the rise of online auction sites promised to drastically alter the landscape. And so it did, just not in the dire way we had anticipated
Highlighting a vast underestimation
of Madagascar’s natural riches, up to 221 new species of amphibians have been found on the island country. The find nearly doubles the number of known amphibians in Madagascar. An international team of scientists discovered the new species after collecting 2,850 specimens from more than 170 sites, including the country’s most visited and studied national parks
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