New York workers have discovered a trove of Cold War-era supplies within the masonry of the Brooklyn Bridge, a cache meant to aid in survival efforts in the event of nuclear attack. City Department of Transportation employees were conducting maintenance on the structure when they found the cache on the top floor of a three-floor space inside the bridge’s base — via Warren Ellis
The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed (by the signing into law of HB 1215, effectively banning all abortions in the state, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli). A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women. To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,
she said… I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction
— via Warren Ellis
Interpol has called on politicians to help law enforcement officers bring cybercriminals to justice by making it easier for evidence to be transferred between countries
The FBI’s office in New York is supposed to be on the front line of America’s defences against terrorism, but it is so strapped for cash it cannot afford e-mail accounts for its agents — via The Guardian
With up to 60% of the code in the new consumer version of Vista set to be rewritten as the company scrambles to fix internal problems, Microsoft has announced a delay of Windows Vista, that will mean PCs with the new operating system won’t go on sale in Australia until January.
ISPs will be forced to block violent and pornographic material before it reaches home computers if Labor wins the next federal election. Under the policy, announced by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley, international web sites would be banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority if they contained graphic sexual or violent material, rated R or higher. The proposal has been dismissed by the Internet Industry Association as unnecessary
Another 26 episodes of Futurama will shortly go into production. This news comes from none other than Billy West (voice of Fry) himself, in a short post to his own message board. No further details are available, except that it’s likely to be on TV, not straight to DVD
A coyote that came to New York to dine on duck in Central Park was caught on Wednesday after leading police and park rangers on a two-day chase. The coyote, a year-old, tawny-coloured male, which is thought to have made its way to the city from the countryside to the north, was tracked down near 79th Street inside the 341 hectare park. Unfortunately, Hal didn’t make it, due to an infestation of heartworms — via Rogue Sun
StopBadware.org, a corporate-backed watchdog group that monitors software for deceptive and abusive practices, named Kazaa and three other applications as violators of its guidelines
Australian libraries are likely to continue resisting calls from Google to have their collections digitised and made available for search until the Web giant settles disputes with bodies representing copyright holders in the United States
Samsung has developed a 32GB Solid State Disk based on NAND flash memory technology that the company claims might eventually replace conventional hard drives in laptops
PayPal, the online payment company owned by eBay, appears to be gearing up to let customers send money or order and pay for products by text message from a mobile phone
Thirty-five years ago, a group of anonymous activists broke into the small, two-man office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole more than 1,000 FBI documents that revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress dissent — via digg
A federal judged issued a ruling Friday in the spat between Google and the Department of Justice over a government request that the company turn over search-query data. US District Court Judge James Ware’s decision mandates that Google turn over 50,000 random URLs from its database. Google, which had cited user privacy as its chief argument for its refusal to comply with the subpoena, has praised the ruling because of its requirement to release only a limited set of data
As part of its ongoing enforcement actions against phishers, Microsoft has created a global initiative designed to thwart large-volume scam artists, no matter where they are in the world. A year ago, Microsoft filed 117 lawsuits against phishers and found that many of the perpetrators were overseas. That finding led the company to launch the Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative and to file 53 new suits against alleged phishers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Like its US antiphishing activity, Microsoft’s new campaign will bring together law-enforcement agencies in other countries to pursue forensic evidence, network shutdowns, and eventual prosecution
Marvel Comics is continuing in its bid to steal the word super-hero
from the public domain and put it in a lock-box to which it will control the key. Marvel and DC comics jointly filed a trademark on the word super-hero
. They use this mark to legally harass indie comic companies that make competing comic books
The UK government has threatened to cancel an order for US-built Joint Strike Fighter jets unless America turns over the source-code for the jets’ firmware. Britain is worried that the jets could contain back-doors that let the US remotely disable them. Australia has made the same demands — via Boing Boing
Playing DRM-crippled music will shorten the battery life of your music-player. Listening to DRMed iTunes songs on an iPod shortens the battery life by eight percent; playing back WMA-crippled files on a device from Creative Labs can knock 25 percent off the life of your device’s battery. The extra battery-drain is attributed to the computation necessary to decrypt the files and verify their licences — via Boing Boing
The Canadian Record Industry Association’s own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders’ computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services — via Boing Boing
An Israeli company says it has developed a system for managing traffic by tracking drivers’ mobile phone signals. Based on the idea that most people keep their mobile phones on while driving, Israel-based Cellint created the TrafficSense system to detect the cellular signals and use them to create a real-time moving picture of what’s happening on the roads — via Warren Ellis
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