Last week Google further expanded their Street View imagery in Australia so you can visit even more cities, towns and rural areas. In particular, they’ve included new imagery in parts of Sydney, around Port Lincoln in South Australia, in rural New South Wales, and in many parts of Queensland including wilderness areas around the Staaten River national park, and around Taylor’s Beach, Tweed Heads, and Cairns
Scientists in Britain plan to become the first in the world to produce unlimited amounts of synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells for emergency infection-free transfusions. A major research project is to be announced this week that will culminate in three years with the first transfusions into human volunteers of synthetic
blood made from the stem cells of spare IVF embryos. It could help to save the lives of anyone from victims of traffic accidents to soldiers on a battlefield by revolutionising the vital blood transfusion services, which have to rely on a network of human donors to provide a constant supply of fresh blood
The Federal Government will begin trawling blog sites as part of a new media monitoring strategy, with official documents singling out a web site critical of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy. Tender documents issued by the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy reveal it is looking for a monitoring service for print and electronic media
. The department later attached a clarification confirming this included blogs such as Whirlpool
. Whirlpool has strongly criticised Senator Conroy’s plan to filter internet content and his handling of the Government’s $15 billion national broadband network. It is a community-run forum devoted to discussing broadband internet access
Makers of fake anti-virus software are exploiting search engines to drive people to sites peddling scareware
. Using popular and mis-spelled search terms, the criminals divert people to sites that are seeded with fake warnings about virus infections. The pop-up warnings claim that a visitor’s PC is riddled with malicious programmes and spyware. Research suggests some criminals are making as much as $10,000 a day from fake security software
The entertainment industry managed to convince the French government to draft a law that will make it possible to disconnect people from the Internet, if they receive more than two copyright infringement warnings. Sadly, most of the politicians who plan to sign the law into action have no clue what they’re dealing with
Ray Baughman and his colleagues have produced a formulation that’s stronger than steel, as light as air and more flexible than rubber — a truly 21st century muscle. It could be used to make artificial limbs, smart
skins, shape-changing structures, ultra-strong robots and — in the immediate future — highly-efficient solar cells. We can generate about 30 times the force per unit area of natural muscle,
said Baughman, director of the NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas
Wikileaks claims it now has up to date ACMA blacklists of banned web sites dated 11 March and 18 March — only days old. The site’s leak yesterday of the supposed ACMA blacklist from August 2008 prompted ACMA and Senator Conroy to call it a fake. This is not the ACMA blacklist
, said Conroy. There are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist. However, ACMA advises that there are URLs on the published list that have never been the subject of a complaint or ACMA investigation, and have never been included on the ACMA blacklist.
But Wikileaks has pressed on, obtaining what it claims is an up-to-date blacklist. Between the 11th and yesterday, [ACMA] did an enormous cleanup of the list
, it said. Where the list previously contained over 2000 URLs, and Conroy and the ACMA claimed ‘See! Our ‘current list’ never contained that many URLs’, this new list is about the size the ACMA claimed it to be. ACMA/Conroy in a media release stated that there were 1061 URLs for August 6, 2008. The 18 Mar 2009 list, having apparently being cleaned up, now contains 1172
A defunct payment gateway has exposed as many as 19,000 credit card numbers, including up to 60 Australian numbers. The discovery by a local IT industry worker was made by mistake. Apart from being the result of poor security, it may also have been aided by a side-effect of the Google search engine, in which the pages of defunct web sites containing sensitive directories remain cached and available to anyone
Not only are CD sales still falling, but a whopping 17 million customers stopped buying CDs altogether in 2008. The economic downturn is cited as one reason for the sharp decline, but new services offer viable ways for the music industry to survive this rocky transition period
Three civil liberties groups have asked a US appeals court to strike down a US government request to obtain stored mobile phone location tracking information without showing probable cause. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have filed a brief asking the US 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to reject the US Department of Justice’s request that courts give permission for it to obtain historical mobile-phone tracking information without a court-ordered warrant showing probable cause
The Queensland dentist included on the Australian communications regulator’s blacklist of prohibited web sites has demanded that the list be cleaned up, as he is now being associated with child porn peddlers and sexual violence sites. Whistleblower site Wikileaks published the top-secret ACMA list today. Web sites contained on it will be blocked for all Australians once the government implements its mandatory internet filtering scheme — originally pitched as targeting only illegal
content — later this year. But, as experts have long warned the government, having a top-secret blacklist of banned sites is dangerous because there is a real danger that Australian businesses could be added to the list in error, with little recourse
So you finally told the boss what you think of him in a Gmail. Feels good. But wait, you actually hit the send button! Now Google will save you with its Undo Send feature in Gmail. But you only have five seconds to hit Gmail’s Undo Send button, and some users are telling Google that’s not long enough. It’s not a morning after
solution
Google has launched the UK version of its Street View service, which allows users to browse a selection of pictures taken along city streets. Street scenes in 25 UK cities from Aberdeen to Southampton can be viewed using the service. The Netherlands version of the service also launched on Thursday, bringing the number of countries covered to nine. The imagery available comprises video taken along 22,369 miles of UK streets by customised camera cars
Microsoft Launches Faster, Safer Internet Explorer, Chrome Is Like Teflon in Browser-Hacking Contest
Microsoft has released a new version of Internet Explorer, adding features meant to speed up common web surfing tasks and bringing the browser’s security measures in line with those of major competitors. The number of browsers has grown to a dizzying array, from Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, the two most popular, to Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, the Norwegian entrant Opera and others. Each is using speed, security enhancements and new features to fight for a share of web surfers’ growing time online. Microsoft remains the dominant player, but Firefox’s influence is growing. The Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest security conference aims to unearth browser flaws. This year, white-hat
hackers at Pwn2Own took down Safari on Mac OS X, IE8 and Firefox. Only Google’s Chrome remained impervious to hacks. Google wants to improve Chrome’s performance further via user feedback to its latest Chrome beta
ACMA’s secret list of banned web pages has reportedly been leaked to Wikileaks.org. The list, which contains hundreds of links to supposed banned content such as child pornography, also lists large online poker sites, YouTube pages and even some Wikipedia links. The Australian government plans to use this list as a basis for its mandatory ISP filtering scheme. According to Wikileaks, the list contains 2,395 webpages (dated 6 August 2008) and was taken from a government approved censorship software maker
The Home Office has admitted that it has been trying to force ISPs to subscribe to the Internet Watch Foundation’s (IWF) blacklist, even though it doesn’t know what the organisation does. Speaking exclusively to Computer Shopper, a Home Office spokesman thought the IWF deletes illegal websites and doesn’t look at the content they rate. He also revealed that the government’s measures to ensure that the IWF is blocking illegal content only consist of meeting with the IWF fairly regularly for updates on how they’re doing
Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions’ (formerly Diebold’s) electronic voting and tabulating systems — used in some 34 states across the nation — fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. That’s the shocking admission heard today from Justin Bales, Premier’s Western Region manager, at a State of California public hearing on the possible decertification of Diebold/Premier’s tabulator system, GEMS vs 1.18.19
Sun Microsystems surged the most ever in German trading after the Wall Street Journal reported IBM is in talks to buy the company for at least US$6.5 billion. Sun Microsystems jumped as much as 61 per cent to 6 euros in Frankfurt trading. The offer would value Sun’s stock at more than double the closing price of $US4.97 in the US yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the plan. An agreement may not be reached, the newspaper said. Officials at Sun and IBM declined to comment
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy
Mental powers start to dwindle at 27 after peaking at 22, marking the start of old age, US research suggests. Professor Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia found reasoning, spatial visualisation and speed of thought all decline in our late 20s. Therapies designed to stall or reverse the ageing process may need to start much earlier, he said. His seven-year study of 2,000 healthy people aged 18-60 is published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging
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