Victoria Police has been refused access to a self-proclaimed terrorist’s personal Facebook details after the social networking web site demanded more information about an international counter-terrorism investigation into its member. Counter-terrorism agents were asked to supply more details about a death threat made via Facebook against a Melbourne Jewish woman and her family by an alleged member of the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah
A new form of cloning has been developed that is easier to carry out than the technique used to create Dolly the sheep, raising fears that it may one day be used on human embryos to produce designer
babies
The Federal Trade Commission has proposed self-regulatory guidelines for companies that do behavioural targeting. That’s good, but self-regulation is not enough. One idea starting to gain traction in Congress is a do-not-track list, similar to the federal do-not-call list, which would allow Internet users to opt out of being spied on
Researchers have found evidence during the last six months of the year that Internet fraudsters are adopting mainstream tactics, including hiring teams of hackers to create new viruses and offering volume discounts on stolen data to encourage larger orders. In some cases, stolen credit card numbers were sold in batches of 500 for a total of $200
Yesterday, TorrentFreak reported that the popular BitTorrent tracker Demonoid was to be resurrected, under a new administrator. Now, less that a day later the site has < href="http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-is-back-080411/">made its comeback after exactly 6 months of downtime
Mobile phones, iPods and other consumer devices may soon be able to hold a hundred times more information than they do at present thanks to a breakthrough in storage technology. Scientists at IBM say they have developed a new type of digital storage which would enable a device such as an MP3 player to store about half a million songs — or 3,500 films — and cost far less to produce
eBay is using Australia as a guinea pig to trial a new policy where all other modes of payment are barred except its own transaction gateway, PayPal. Direct deposits, personal cheques and money orders will no longer be payment options from 17 June. This is the first time these restrictions will be imposed by eBay anywhere in the world and could be enforced in other markets in the future
The European Parliament rejected attempts to criminalise the sharing of files by private individuals and threw out the idea of banning copyright abusers from the Internet. The vote was close, with 314 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) voting in favour of an amendment to scrap what many consider draconian and disproportionate measures to protect copyright over the internet, and 297 voting against the amendment
A rare and primitive frog living in a remote Borneo stream has no lungs and apparently absorbs oxygen through its skin. The aquatic frog has evolved backwards, re-acquiring a primordial trait, David Bickford of the National University of Singapore and colleagues reported. Studying the frog could help shed light on how lungs evolved in the first place, they wrote in the journal Current Biology, adding that illegal gold mining in the area may threaten the unique species
The United Nations refugee agency has unveiled a new partnership with Google to help track refugees from Iraq to Darfur and raise public awareness of its work. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched its new service using the Google Earth Outreach
programme, which allows organisations to add their own data and information as a layer
on top of the existing Google Earth service
For the first time, the amount of malicious software being released has outstripped that of legitimate software. Malware now makes up the majority of all new applications: 65 percent of the 54,609 applications developed and released to the public for Windows-based PCs in the past six months were malicious, according to Symantec’s latest threat report
Telstra says it has begun the process of laying down 9,000 kilometres of cable from Australia to Hawaii in a bid to improve internet speed
EMC reached a deal to buy data-storage firm Iomega for $US213 million ($228.84 million) in cash, scuttling a deal Iomega previously made with a group of Chinese companies. The two sides agreed to the deal after EMC sweetened its offer to $US3.85 a share
Yahoo has rejected Microsoft’s takeover bid a second time as too low. Microsoft’s initial offer was valued at $31 a share, but the declining price of Microsoft shares reduced the offer to just more than $29 a share
Hundreds of police officers across South Australia caught using their work computers to illegally copy movie DVDs will escape prosecution. The activity — strictly banned under federal copyright laws — was detected during an audit conducted by the information technology branch of SA Police
Chinese authorities appear to have lifted a block on the English-language version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, but politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square are still off limits. Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai confirmed on Saturday that they could access the English-language version of one of the world’s most popular websites, but the Chinese language version was still restricted
Northwestern University researchers have shown that a nano-engineered gel inhibits the formation of scar tissue at the injury site and enables the severed spinal cord fibres to regenerate and grow. The gel is injected as a liquid into the spinal cord and self-assembles into a scaffold that supports the new nerve fibers as they grow up and down the spinal cord, penetrating the site of the injury. When the gel was injected into mice with a spinal cord injury, after six weeks the animals had a greatly enhanced ability to use their hind legs and walk
Dell, the personal-computer maker that pioneered selling custom-made machines directly to clients, is moving away from its build-to-order model to reduce costs. Dell is limiting the degree to which buyers can dictate specifications while expanding its line of prepackaged models, operations chief Mike Cannon said Wednesday. Dell will also outsource more PC manufacturing to partners, he said
The internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds. At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, the grid
will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds. The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call
The next time your children get cavities, they might get tooth regeneration instead of fillings. That’s because materials scientists are beginning to find just the right solutions of chemicals to rebuild decayed teeth, rather than merely patching their holes. Enamel and dentin, the materials that make teeth the strongest pieces of the body, would replace the gold or ceramic fillings that currently return teeth to working order
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