One of the best-known Australian brand-names, Driza-Bone, is back under full local ownership
Lithographs that once belonged to a German duke and vanished when the Soviets occupied parts of Germany after World War II, have turned up at Sotheby’s in London
The Federal Government is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the internet, which experts say will break the internet while doing little to stop people from accessing illegal material such as child pornography. ISPs and the government’s own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable of adequately distinguishing between legal and illegal content and can degrade internet speeds by up to 86 per cent. Documents obtained by us show the office of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, tried to bully ISP staff into suppressing their criticisms of the plan
McGill University researchers have discovered a new state of matter, a quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal, in a material very much like those used in the fabrication of modern transistors. This discovery could have momentous implications for the development of new electronic devices. Currently, the number of transistors that can be inexpensively crammed onto a single computer chip increases exponentially, doubling approximately every two years, a trend known as Moore’s Law. But there are limits, experts say. As chips get smaller and smaller, scientists expect that the bizarre laws and behaviours of quantum physics will take over, making ever-smaller chips impossible
A US firm has unveiled plans to build a massive one-billion-dollar charging network to power electric cars in Australia as it seeks cleaner and cheaper options to petrol. Better Place, which has built plug-in stations for electric vehicles in Israel and Denmark, has joined forces with Australian power company AGL and finance group Macquarie Capital to create an Australian network. Under the agreement, Macquarie will raise one billion dollars to build electric-vehicle networks in the country’s largest cities — Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane — while AGL will power the system with renewable energy
UCLA physicists demonstrated that if you pull off a piece of Scotch tape inside a vacuum chamber, the tape releases enough X-rays to image bones through skin. Grad student Juan Escobar and his colleagues managed to make an X-ray of a thumb using the technique. Apparently, Russian scientists reported fifty years ago that the act of peeling sticking tape can emit X-rays, but the new research confirms the early results
One day before T-Mobile G1 goes on sale and one year after the first Android announcement, Google open sources Android. Android is not the first open source mobile OS, but it claims to be the first free, open source, and fully customisable mobile platform. Android offers a full stack: an operating system, middleware, and key mobile applications. It also contains a rich set of APIs that allows third-party developers to develop great applications
Owners of MacBooks with multi-touch trackpads can try out an experimental Firefox 3.1 build that supports finger gestures-swiping left and right for back and forward, pinch zooming, and twisting between tabs, amongst others. The gestures may or may not make it into the final 3.1 release, but at least one developer finds the tab-switching twist a big convenience — via lifehacker
Google may strive not to be evil, but the company works directly with typosquatters to help them — and Google — make money, according to a class action lawsuit. The suit, filed by Harvard Business School professor Benjamin G Edelman, says that Google and the companies that are engaging in typosquatting are taking advantage of existing trademarks and should be stopped
The Bernard O’Brien Institute announced a significant advance in tissue engineering when it revealed how scientists had created living heart muscle cells from human fat
McDonald’s has announced it will roll out the largest network of free wireless internet in Australia, in partnership with Telstra. It will offer free wi-fi in 720 restaurants across Australia by March next year, with Queensland internet hotspots launching from late December onwards
Cray has announced the CX1 desktop supercomputer. Cray teamed with Microsoft and Intel to build the new machine that supports up to 8 nodes, a total of 64 cores and 64Gb of memory per node. CX1 can be ordered online with starting prices of $25K, and a choice of Linux or Windows HPC. This should be a pretty big deal for smaller schools and scientists waiting in line for time on the world’s big computing centers, as well as 3D and VFX shops — via Slashdot
The iBurst wireless broadband network owned by failed Australian ICT products and services firm Commander would be shut down by 19 December, according to a failed bidder for the network
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has slapped telco company Dodo with a fine of $147,400 for allegedly engaging offshore call centres to make around 70 calls on its behalf to numbers on the Do Not Call Register. The penalty is the largest issued by ACMA since the Do Not Call Register legislation took effect in May 2007. The fines are set at $2,200 per call or up to a maximum of $110,000 per day
For the second time this year, eBay has forgotten to adjust its clocks for daylight saving, creating mass confusion around when auctions will actually end. Clocks published on eBay auction pages are one hour behind, meaning the auctions are listed as ending an hour before they actually do. This causes confusion among buyers and means sellers could miss out on the typical surge of last-minute bids
Now here’s a creative military operation: the British set up a fake Laundromat in Belfast, where they wanted to find IRA bomb-makers. They staffed the Laundromat with locals and sent out coupons to different neighbourhoods, with each neighbourhoods coupon a different colour. When people brought their clothes and coupons in, they got their clothes washed, but while their clothes were being washed, they were secretly being analysed for bomb-making chemical residue — via Gizmodo
Fans of Firefox get ready, because this version is simply an amazing feat of browser design. But you expected no less, right? The Test Center’s reviewers loaded Firefox 3.1 beta on a Vista desktop outfitted with 2GB RAM and Pentium dual-core at 1.80GHz
The Pirate Bay has always made it clear that they don’t obey takedown requests from content owners. That doesn’t stop Hollywood from going after the Pirate Bay’s users, however, and they do so on a large scale. The Pirate Bay is well aware of these pirate tracking outfits, and does what it can to give them a hard time. Reporting fake peers is one of the tricks they use
Interpol chiefs will propose the use of automated facial-recognition technology at borders to flag up internationally wanted suspects. The UK already has airport gates equipped with such technology, intended to remove the need for a human border guard to check that a passenger’s face matches the one recorded in his or her passport. Interpol database chief Mark Branchflower believes that his organisation should set up a database of facial-recognition records to operate alongside its existing photo, fingerprint and DNA files
Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance. Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society
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