Amnesty International has a new online campaign against governments which censor websites, monitor online communications, and persecute citizens who express dissent in blogs, emails, or chat-rooms. The website, Irrepressible.info contains a web-based petition (to be presented at a UN conference in November 2006) and also a downloadable web gadget which displays random excerpts of censored material on your own web site
Optus has removed line rental fees from new home phone offering as internet telephony and low-cost mobile services continue to place pressure carriers’ fixed-line revenue — via Australian IT
Apple has lost a legal bid to force two internet web sites to reveal sources behind two reports they published containing the technology company’s commercial secrets
France is contemplating legislation designed to to force compatibility between digital songs and the different machines that play them
. Known colloquially as the iPod bill, it is opposed by Apple, the Business Software Alliance, and others who refer to it as state-sponsored piracy
. Two versions of the bill have already passed France’s Senate and National Assembly. Under the proposed law companies could have to reveal trade secrets of their software so that their songs can play on competitors’ devices
Two exceedingly dim New York teenagers have been arrested after trying to extort $150,000 from the makers of MySpace, the popular online community site. MySpace discovered the intrusion earlier this year and blocked it. The Los Angeles-based company also reported the incident to authorities. During the course of the investigation, threats were made that unless $150,000 was paid, new exploit code would be released, according to the statement. By this time, the sting operation had been set up, so instead of meeting with MySpace late last week, the pair from New York met with undercover officers from the US Secret Service and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation
A new Spam defence mechanism called BlackFrog has appeared in response to the demise of Blue Security’s BlueFrog. The new service is based on a P2P network of clients, called the Frognet
, which allows the opt-out service to continue functioning even after a server has gone down, making a DDoS attack like that which crippled BlueFrog ineffective against the new service
A plan for a cloaking device has been unveiled. The design is pioneered by Professor Sir John Pendry’s team of scientists from the US and Britain. Proof of the ability of his invention could be ready in just 18 months time using radar testing. The method revolves around certain materials making light flow
around the given object like water
A new chapter in the story of computing has been written. Samsung has announced the world’s first commercial PCs sporting flash memory instead of traditional hard drives
Yahoo and eBay are joining hands in a broad-ranging partnership that combines the strengths of both companies and promises to provide users of the popular Web sites with better services
Water behaving like a thin liquid or a dense vapor has been found 2,990 metres under the sea. At 298 bar and 407°C, seawater becomes a supercritical fluid that can diffuse diffuse through solids like a gas, yet dissolve things like a liquid
Scientists are recreating the human body on a microchip — using clumps of cells from different organs linked by fluid-filled channels — to reduce the amount of animal testing for drugs. The human-on-a-chip
mimics the body’s physiology on a miniature scale, including how each organ reacts to drugs and other chemicals
ISPs are in the perfect position to kill vast armies of compromised computers — or bots — that are being used by cyber-criminals to launch the majority of spam and phishing attacks, according security specialists at the AusCERT 2006 conference
In a landmark development
researchers have created an artificial penis that has allowed rabbits with damaged penises to successfully mate. The urologists say that the procedure might one day help treat men with severe erectile dysfunction
In the wake of high-profile lawsuits involving BlackBerry and eBay, Congress is once again talking about fixing what the technology industry says is a thoroughly broken patent system
As Microsoft moves its internal desktop systems to Windows Vista, the company is contemplating whether to change a long running tradition and take away admin rights from its employees in order to improve security
The Department of Energy has filed a patent for hydrogen fuel balls. The proposed glass microspheres would each be a few millionths of a metre (microns) wide with a hollow centre containing specks of palladium. The walls of each sphere would also have pores just a few ten-billionths of a metre in diameter. They are supposedly safe and small enough to be pumped into a fuel tank in the same manner as petrol
Researchers at Stanford have developed a robot that mimics the extraordinary climbing skills of the Gecko. These creatures can climb sheer surfaces thanks to the intermolecular forces exerted by millions of tiny hairs their feet, called setae. The robot, Stickybot, has polymer pads on its feed with synthetic setae
John Howard’s junket to Ireland has allowed him to show the world his true colours. A talk at University College Dublin saw Howard out himself as rampant homophobe by claiming that it is not discrimination to deny gay men and lesbians equal marriage status with heterosexual couples and that most Australians do not want gay couples to have equivalent status. Howard’s warmongering, racism and dodgy dealings in East Timor have seen several TDs plan to boycott his address to the Dáil — via The Pagan Prattle Online
eBay-owned shopping portal Shopping.com believes the Australian e-commerce market is finally ripe for the picking, and will launch its Australian service this week with 200 local retail partners
With regional Australia soon to be the happy recipient of a $1.1 billion communications funding package, the tiny wireless broadband firms that have sprung up around the bush don’t know whether to laugh or cry
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