A group called the Metamorphosis Foundation reports that 126 nongovernmental organisations in Macedonia have signed an open letter to that country’s president and parliament demanding prompt adoption of the Law on Free Access to Information
— via Boing Boing
The complete title of the Beastie Boys‘ forthcoming concert movie is in fact, Awesome! I Fuckin’ Shot That!
. They lent hand-held video cameras to 50 fans, told them to shoot at will and then presented the end result in in all its primitive, kaleidoscopic glory — via Boing Boing
Spiders, centipedes and scorpion-like critters are among the 27 new animal species that biologists have discovered in the dark, damp caves of two Central California national parks — via digg
Fridge magnets may one day be able to fix bad grammar and change the words to something they think is more appropriate. The idea is that each magnet is aware of the other magnets on the fridge and they transmit information between each other,
Australian digital artist Pierre Proske said. Mr Proske is working with researchers at the Future Applications Lab of the Viktoria Institute in Sweden to develop the intelligent fridge magnets
Premier Iemma has been embarrassed into cancelling government plans to put a new toll on the M4 following the public release of secret government documents obtained by the Greens. The government had planned to continue the M4 toll past
the 2010 date when it was due to become free for public use
eBay has scrapped all sellers’ transaction fees in China in an effort to compete with local outfits offering free services. The online auctioneer announced the changes on its China web site, saying transaction fees would be waived, but small fees would continue to be charged for listing products on the site’s webspace and for feature
products
Brian Krebs of the Washington Post has written about the recent spate of hijackings at LiveJournal. Hundreds of journals have now been taken over by a notorious group called Bantown
using a series of complicated cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities. It is unclear whether LiveJournal has managed to close the security holes that the hackers claim to have used. The company says it has, but the hackers insist there are still at least 16 other similar Javascript flaws on the LiveJournal site that could be used conduct the same attack. Bantown group members said they plan to turn their attention to looking for similar flaws at another large social-networking site — via Slashdot
In a recent literacy study it was found that more than half of students at four-year colleges — and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges — lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers. The literacy study took a look at three different type of literacy: analysing news stories and other prose, understanding documents, and having basic math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips
The European Space Agency, citing the fact that we don’t glue ourselves together when we cut ourselves, has funded a study toward creating a spacecraft that could fix itself. By replacing a few of the fibres in the resinous material that make up a spacecraft’s skin with hollow fibres containing adhesive, the material has a chance to fix itself when it encounters minor damage, much the way our skin does when blood wells up and clots. While admittedly years away, such material makes longer duration missions a possibility
The IEEE Task Group N
voted to confirm the proposal for the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard. Submitted by the Joint Proposal team, this specification was developed by the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC) and included several elements developed within the Joint Proposal team
After a burglar broke into caricaturist Bill Weg
Green’s Heathmont home, it took the 82-year-old just seconds to draw his attacker. Fifteen minutes later, patrolling police caught a suspect — and Mr Green’s drawing proved they had the right man
A 5m northern bottle-nosed whale that became stranded in the River Thames has died after a massive rescue attempt to save its life
A huge beached whale has been dumped outside the Japanese embassy in Berlin in a Greenpeace anti-whaling protest. The environmental activists hauled the fin whale to Berlin from the Baltic coast after finding it beached on a sandbank. The dead whale measured 17m long and weighed 20 tonnes. Activists are trying to demonstrate that there is no need to kill the mammals for research — as Japan does — because cadavers can be found — via Darren Barefoot
Google has been subpoenaed by the US Justice Department to turn over a database of search terms as part of a government probe of online pornography. Google is resisting the demand
William Shatner sold a kidney stone for $25,000 to GoldenPalace.com. Shatner’s donating the dough to Habitat For Humanity. GoldenPalace.com originally offered $15,000 for the stone but Shatner turned it down, noting that his Star Trek
tunics have commanded more than $100,000 — via Boing Boing
The first magnetic levitation elevators could hit the market as soon as 2008. The Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corporation has stated that the same technology used to develop high speed trains will soon be available in their elevators
The Mozilla Team has quietly enabled a new feature in Firefox that parses ping attributes to anchor tags in HTML. Now links can have a ping
attribute that contains a list of servers to notify when you click on a link. Although link tracking has been done using redirects and Javascript, this new feature
allows notification of an unlimited and uncontrollable number of servers for every click, and it is not noticeable without examining the source code for a link before clicking it
eBay plans to offer an instant-purchase service to supplement its bid-and-wait online auctions, pitting the company directly against conventional e-commerce retailers
Just days after Microsoft announced its online advertising entry, Google has announced their entry into the radio industry. Google has signed a deal to purchase dMarc Broadcasting for US$102 million. The deal will allow Google to enhance its presence in the advertising industry over to the radio industry. Google says it plans to integrate its highly successful AdSense programme with those from dMarc
A group of Papuans who arrived on Queensland’s Cape York yesterday have accused the Indonesian Government of genocide. The group of 30 Papuan men, six women and seven children displayed a banner on their 25-metre canoe, asking for help to save West Papua
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