NSW Calls Conroy on Euro Filter Fudge

An analysis of ISP filtering schemes in Europe has shown that none have adopted mandatory filtering — a claim Senator Conroy has used to justify such a scheme in Australia. With the limited exceptions of Germany and Italy, mandatory ISP level filtering is not a feature of any of the countries reviewed, Tom Edwards and Gareth Griffith wrote in a special research note published by the NSW Parliamentary Library Service

Google May Offer Chrome Detailing on New PCs

Chrome, apparently, will not remain in an indefinite period of beta testing for the rest of its life. Speaking to The Times, Sundar Pichai, Google vice president, stated that the browser will exit beta in January. Google, meanwhile, is exploring its distribution options and examining the various ways it might improve its market share. We will probably do distribution deals, Pinchai told The Times. We could work with an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and have them ship computers with Chrome preinstalled

New Flavour of Old Worm Crawls into Defence Department Systems

Department of Defence computers have been hit with an old worm that the DoD won’t discuss other than to say it is taking steps to mitigate its effects. One report identified the virus as W32/SillyFCD-W, which spreads via thumb drives that move from machine to machine. Once the virus is on a machine, it may download other malware, according to Sophos. Protection against the worm has been available from Sophos since April 2007

Dead Network Provider Arms Rustock Botnet from the Hereafter

McColo, a network provider that was yanked offline following reports it enabled more than half the world’s spam, briefly returned from the dead over the weekend so it could hand-off command and control channels to a new source. The rogue network provider regained connectivity for about 12 hours on Saturday by making use of a backup arrangement it had with Swedish internet service provider TeliaSonera. During that time, McColo was observed pushing as much as 15MB of data per second to servers located in Russia, according to Paul Ferguson, a security researcher for anti-virus software maker Trend Micro

NASA Successfully Tests First Deep Space Internet

NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.
Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million miles from Earth. This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet, said Adrian Hooke, team lead and manager of space-networking architecture, technology and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington

Film Companies Sue iiNet ‘For Allowing Piracy’

The Australian film and television industry has launched a major legal action against one of Australia’s largest internet service providers for allegedly allowing its users to download pirated movies and TV shows. The action against iiNet was filed in the Federal Court today by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Disney and the Seven Network. Mark White, iiNet’s chief operating officer, said the company did not support piracy in any form but it could not disconnect customers just because the movie industry claimed they engaged in illegal downloading

LIFE Photo Archive available on Google Image Search

The Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; The Mansell Collection from London; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York and environs from the 1880s; and the entire works left to the collection from LIFE photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili, and Nina Leen. These are just some of the things you’ll see in Google Image Search today. Google have announced the availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This collection of newly-digitised images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s

Billions of Particles of Anti-Matter Created in Laboratory

Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter, also known as positrons, shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma jet. This new ability to create a large number of positrons in a small laboratory opens the door to several fresh avenues of anti-matter research, including an understanding of the physics underlying various astrophysical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts

Apple Brings HDCP to a New Aluminum MacBook Near You

High Definition Content Protection (HDCP) — you can’t live with it, but you practically can’t buy an HD-capable device anymore without it. While HDCP is typically used in devices like Blu-ray players, HDTVs, HDMI-enabled notebooks, and even the Apple TV in order to keep DRMed content encrypted between points A and B, it appears that Apple’s new aluminum MacBook (and presumably the MacBook Pro) are using it to protect iTunes Store media as well

Axia Commits to NBN Bid

Axia Netmedia has put down in black and white its intention to lodge a bid for the government’s $4.7 billion national broadband network. Although it was believed to have paid the $5 million bond and had put together a regulatory submission on the network, until now there was no certainty around whether the Canadian company actually intended on bidding

Super Surface To Withstand All Fluids

Materials under development at MIT could lead to coatings that repel both water and oil. A group of MIT researchers have created an improved set of design rules for making any surface impervious to any liquid, be it water or gasoline. Such materials could eventually have promise as fingerprint-repelling coatings, fuel filters, self-washing car paints, and stain-resistant clothing