In preparation for a possible legal challenge, the Electronic Frontiers Foundation is requesting your help in identifying which printers are embedding traceable information in the documents they produce. Printer manufactures added this technology under persuasion from the government inorder to help combat counterfeiting operations, however this technology defeats the presumed anonymity most people expect from the documents they print
The Queen has ordered a DVD box set of the latest Doctor Who series for her summer holiday. She has become a huge fan of the hit BBC show starring Christopher Ecclestone and has reportedly followed the show since it began in 1963 with William Hartnell as the first of nine actors to play the time-travelling hero. By tradition, broadcasters give members of the Royal family recordings of their favourite programmes before they are available in the shops on video or DVD. But a spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said last night: The Queen’s television viewing is a personal matter and we are unable to discuss it
Free web space services are increasingly being used to host spyware, with Internet security firm Websense claiming more of such dodgy material was found on free hosting services during the first two weeks of July than in May and June combined. These fraudulent, free personal Web sites have an average lifespan of two to four days, making them difficult to trace,
said an executive from the company
New South Wales Premier Bob Carr has announced his resignation from politics, effective from next Wednesday
Just when you thought reality telly couldn’t get any worse. ABC, which pimps itself as the family channel, is said to be exploring the possibility of a reality television show with adult film star Ron Jeremy — via Warren Ellis
Four adult Scout leaders from Alaska were killed at the National Scout Jamboree, held at Fort AP Hill near Richmond, Virginia, after a tent pole they were erecting came into contact with an overhead power line. Apparently they weren’t prepared — via The Cult of Father Darwin
Archaeologists have unearthed 2,400-year-old treasure in a Thracian tomb in eastern Bulgaria. Professor Daniela Agre, who led the team of 15 from the Bulgarian Archaeological Institute, said the finds, made on Saturday, provided enormous clues to understanding one of Europe’s most mysterious ancient people
Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head. As the lovely Feòrag notes; Looks like someone’s implementing the literal kill file!
It’s not a head exploding button, but it’s close enough
Why one species branches into two is a question that has haunted evolutionary biologists since Darwin. Given our planet’s rich biodiversity, speciation
clearly happens regularly, but scientists cannot quite pinpoint the driving forces behind it. Now, researchers studying a family of butterflies think they have witnessed a subtle process, which could be forcing a wedge between newly formed species
Using technology already available for self-cleaning windows and bathroom tiles, scientists hope to paint up cities with materials that dissolve and wash away pollutants when exposed to sun and rain. The idea: UV rays hitting the titanium dioxide coated cement and concrete trigger a catalytic reaction that destroys the molecules of pollutants, including nitrogen oxides
The first mirrors have been cast for the world’s largest telescope. The result of cooperation from some of the foremost institutions in education and science in the nation, the Giant Magellan Telescope stands to operate at a resolution 10 times larger than the Hubble. The project, set to be constructed in Chile, is slated for completion in 2016
Lance Armstrong has won an unprecedented seventh Tour de France, closing the curtain on one of the most extraordinary cycling careers ever. The American safely crossed the line in the peloton at the end of the 144.5-km final stage on the Champs Elysees
The Telecommunications Workers’ Union of Canada has been locked out by Telus, a large phone company and ISP. Two of TWU’s sites (including Voices for Change, a message board where union members can discuss issues such as being without a contract for 1666 days and last having received a general wage increase 2031 days ago). Telus is playing very dirty — they’re blocking access to the union’s web site so that their workers and the general public are cut off from legitimate debate about this action. This is inexcusable: imagine if this phone company chose to block all calls into union headquarters. OpenNet Initiative has done a report on the incident showing that by blocking the Union’s IP address Telus not only blocked access to the union’s sites, but also to an engineering company; a breast cancer fundraising site; an alternative medicine site based in Australia; and a Colorado based electronic recycling company
, as well as more than 760 other domains — via BoingBoing
In a continuation of their free software friendly activities the BBC has announced that they want to open up their TV listings to creative developers. They explain; Developers and designers are being encouraged to come up with innovative ways of using TV and radio schedules by taking part in a BBC competition. The competition, announced at the Open Tech conference in London, has been organised by the BBC’s backstage developer network. Backstage lets people remix the BBC’s content to make new applications. We want people to innovate and come up with prototypes to demonstrate new ways of exploring the BBC’s TV schedule
It is a work of art that truly represents the nadir of film making; a movie so bad that it’s good. It has been labelled The Worst Movie Ever
by the Golden Turkey Awards and is also the winner of two notable Razzies. Ed Wood’s classic movie Plan 9 from Outer Space is now in the public domain and available as a free download thanks to the fine folks over at Archive.org — via Slashdot
Roman Polanski, the Oscar-winning film director, has won £50,000 libel damage over a magazine article that accused him of seducing a model while on the way to the funeral of his murdered wife, the actress Sharon Tate
New Smyrna Beach, Florida police are on the lookout for the naked tickler. Investigators said they believe one man could be responsible for a series of bizarre break-ins in which a naked man enters victims’ rooms while they are sleeping and tries to tickle their feet. The naked tickler struck again in New Smyrna Beach over the weekend. Investigators have been working on five similar, unsolved cases since 2001. Most of the victims are women over age 60, said police Commander Wade Kirby. Kirby said no arrests have yet been made because they don’t have a lot to go on — via Warren Ellis
An Active Denial System
weapon that fires a 95GHz microwave beam at rioters to cause heating and intolerable pain in less than five seconds
is scheduled for service in Iraq in 2006. It was recently tested on people playing the part of rioters at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico where they asked the subjects to remove glass and contact lenses to protect their eyes. Hopefully real rioters will get the same courtesy. Police and the Marines are working on portable versions. Sandia Labs also has a writeup on this system with pictures of smaller versions of the weapon
Two recent Utah high school graduates won the first-ever Ricoh Sustainable Development Award for inventing a better car air conditioner based on the Peltier effect. The peltier chips used in the device are more energy-efficient, last between 20 and 30 years, are solid-state, and don’t harm the environment with ozone-depleting freon like today’s car air conditioners
Due to an increase in their funding the Australian Bureau of Statistics is making many of its publications free so that they can be accessed by anyone from any computer with internet access. There are no special requirements and no passwords. The free material will include electronic publications (pdf and html) and electronic tables in spreadsheet or data cube formats which contain publication tables
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