The Cooperative Research Centre for Sugar Industry Innovation say it is close to commercialising an unusual by-product of sugar cane — biodegradable plastic
Inventor Mitch Altman explains why he open-sourced his TV-B-Gone kit, the original stealth keychain fob for defeating TVs in public places. The title of the article is Patent-B-Gone
and perhaps the most interesting fact is that Mitch’s brother is a patent attorney, but he still decided to release an open source hardware version of the TV-B-Gone, with pretty impressive results — via Slashdot
Ministers have been forced to order an emergency shutdown of a key Government computer system to protect millions of people’s private details. The action was taken after a memory stick was found in a pub car park containing confidential passcodes to the online Government Gateway system, which covers everything from tax returns to parking tickets. An urgent investigation is now under way into how the stick, belonging to the company which runs the flagship system, came to be lost
Any mad scientists planning to genetically engineer Dracula this Halloween should look to the vampire bat for inspiration. New research pinpoints some of the genetic changes that allowed them to evolve to subsist on a diet of pure blood. Key among those is a knack for keeping their meals from coagulating. They do so with the help of a gene found in other animals — plasminogen activator. In humans the gene protects against heart attack by producing proteins that bust up blood clots and clear vessels. Previous research had shown that vampire bats activate the gene in their saliva, too
As many as one third of the nearly 6,000 known amphibian species — frogs, toads, salamanders, even wormlike caecilians — are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. And no one knows why
Sometimes the greenest technology improvement is going back to the old low-tech option. Amazon.com announced Monday it’s working with retailers to cut back on the packaging you’ll need to open to get to your goods. The Seattle-based company plans to start shipping items in plain brown cardboard boxes, instead of putting a pre-boxed or plastically sealed item inside another Amazon box. The cardboard box will have Amazon, and in some cases the retailer’s name, on the front
A tree fungus could provide green fuel that can be pumped directly into vehicle tanks, US scientists say. The organism, found in the Patagonian rainforest, naturally produces a mixture of chemicals that is remarkably similar to diesel
Motorcyclists and scooter riders can park in Sydney’s CBD and inner-city suburbs for nothing from today, in a 12-month trial designed to encourage people to leave their cars at home
Last week, physicists announced that the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, has produced particles that they are unable to explain. Could it be a sign of new physics?
Open wireless networks have served as a successful defence strategy for several alleged filesharers, as it is often impossible for content owners to prove that the person they accuse, has actually distributed the files they claim they did. Unfortunately, for the customers of the UK ISP Karoo, running open WiFi might also get them disconnected — even if it’s unintentional
In a decision likely headed to the Supreme Court, the US Court of Appeals upholds a patent court ruling that software and business methods can be patented only if they are implemented by a machine or transform something into a new or different thing. The decision reverses a decade-long trend of expanded patent protection
Google and Telstra subsidiary Sensis has signed a deal to integrate the data from its Yellow Pages business listings into Google Maps Australia
During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn’t believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page. It’s called a flux transfer event or ‘FTE’,
says space physicist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Centre. Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn’t exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible
A recent compromise at a corporation led to a significant amount of data being stolen, underscoring that traditional software defenses are hard pressed to catch obfuscated attacks, security firm Finjan said in its monthly analysis of Internet threats. In the report, dubbed the Malicious Page of the Month, the company claims that a desktop PC at an unnamed firm had been infected with a data-stealing Trojan horse. The attack succeeded because the firms antivirus software and static Web filters could not identify the scrambled attack code as a threat, Finjan stated in the report. The result: The malicious software downloaded code from a server in Utah and sent files and transcripts of a number of corporate users to a second server in Texas
The leaders of three of Australia’s largest internet service providers — Telstra Media’s Justin Milne, iiNet’s Michael Malone and Internode’s Simon Hackett — have, in video interviews with ZDNet.com.au over the past few months, detailed technical, legal and ethical reasons why ISP-level filtering won’t work. Critics of the policy also say that users will have no way to know what’s being filtered — via Slashdot
Games firms are accusing innocent people of file-sharing as they crack down on pirates, a Which? Computing investigation has claimed. The magazine was contacted by Gill and Ken Murdoch, from Scotland, who had been accused of sharing the game Race07 by makers Atari. The couple told Which they had never played a computer game in their lives. The case was dropped, but Which estimates that hundreds of others are in a similar situation
A headline-grabbing election promise to crack down on internet nasties looks to be in trouble as Senate opposition grows. As part of its election-winning pitch, the Rudd Government promised families far-reaching measures to block prohibited content at the internet server level. It now faces a concerted backlash against the proposal by the internet industry. The Greens have added their voice to Coalition concerns about the plan, with the Greens’ communications spokesman calling the proposal daft
A small consumer electronics maker in Melbourne, which specialises in undercutting the big brands, has become the first in Australia to announce plans to launch a mobile phone based on Google’s Android platform. Ruslan Kogan, 25 — who has been selling cut-priced Kogan-branded TV sets, GPS systems, DVD players and other gadgets over the internet from his base in Elsternwick for the past 2½ years — says he will sell the phone from 15 December for $199
Google on Thursday made its version of communally constructed online encyclopedia Wikipedia multi-lingual, opening its Knol compendium to nuggets of knowledge shared in French, Italian or German. The internet search powerhouse is inviting people to submit written knols
, to indicate units of knowledge, in those languages as well as in English. Google’s free Knol service has floundered since its July launch and international contributors could help it better compete with Wikipedia, which is consistently ranked among the most visited websites on the internet
A bargain-hunting investment consortium named Manhattan Software Bidco has offered around $443 million plus options in a takeover bid for Australia’s leading accounting software brand, MYOB
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