One of America’s most prominent journalists was jailed last night after she refused to testify about her confidential government sources. In a sensational climax to the nation’s biggest press freedom case in a generation, Judith Miller of the New York Times now faces imprisonment until a grand jury concludes its investigation in October into the leaking to the media in July 2003 of the identity of an undercover CIA agent
EU lawmakers overwhelmingly voted down a controversial bill on software patents Wednesday, ending what had become one of the biggest legislative battles in the EU for years
Apple has wasted little time establishing the groundwork for its forthcoming Intel-based Mac machines, already porting Firefox to the Mactel
platform
The United Church of Christ became the first mainline Christian denomination to support same-sex marriage officially when its general synod passed a resolution on Monday affirming equal marriage rights for couples regardless of gender
. The resolution was adopted in the face of efforts to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. It was both a theological statement and a protest against discrimination, said the Rev John H Thomas, the president and general minister of the denomination, which has 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members
Australia’s internet connections are relatively inefficient
in dealing with traffic from different time zones, according to new research. Scientists from the University of New England at Armidale in northern NSW, have concluded that Australia is basically out of phase with global traffic
, based on initial statistics from about 40 monitoring sites around the world, in countries such as the US, Britain, Switzerland and South America. The study has found Australia is performing no better than Kazakhstan for internet congestion
These people spent ten hours constructing their very own Imperial II-class Star Destroyer from Lego and capturing over 7000 frames of the process with their webcam
Broadband specialist Internode’s e-mail servers were brought to their knees last week in a spam attack that competitor iiNet says is routine for ISPs
The Nazis went to great lengths to encipher their secret messages, building mechanical scramblers. The most famous of these was the Enigma machine, which was secretly cracked by Alan Turing and his team of Bletchley Park codebreakers. Here is a functional papercraft Enigma Machine to print, fold and assemble — via boingboing
US space agency (Nasa) scientists are celebrating after seeing a probe crash into the heart of a comet. The washing machine-sized impactor
collided with Comet Tempel 1 at a relative speed of 37,000km/h, throwing up a huge plume of icy debris. The probe’s mothership, the Deep Impact spacecraft, watched the event from a safe distance, sending images to Earth
One of Australia’s best known natural landmarks, the Twelve Apostles rock formation, has been changed for ever after one of the giant pillars collapsed into the sea
Utah woman, Karolyne Smith, has become the latest asset in online gambling outfit GoldenPalace.com’s eBay preposterous purchase portfolio after accepting $15,000 dollars to have the casino’s name permanently tattooed on her forehead. To its credit, the tattoo parlour which did the dirty deed — Si Tattooing in Salt Lake City — reportedly spent seven hours trying to talk her out of it. Well, sort of to its credit, because it went ahead and tattooed the silly woman anyway, but it’s the thought that counts
Jonathan Huebner, a Naval Air Warfare Centre physicist, claims that the rate of technological innovation is actually decreasing, not increasing exponentially as some people believe. Huebner says that there are now fewer important technological developments per billion people
than at any time since the 17th century. He says the rate of technological innovation reached a peak a century ago and has been declining ever since. And like the lookout on the Titanic who spotted the fateful iceberg, Huebner sees the end of innovation looming dead ahead
Robots will be patrolling Japan’s streets, offices, shopping malls and other public places for the safety of the people. Guardrobo D1 is equipped with a camera and sensors to detect any signs of trouble. It will then alert the human guards via radio with camera footage of possible troubles. This is one of the technological advancement vital to the aging population of Japan, where 1 in 5 Japanese are over 65 years old
Apparently not all of the DVDs that sell for one or two dollars are crap — it seems that a lot of good movies never got copyrighted properly. But there’s no silent movies (not mass market
) or movies that aren’t family friendly
. None of the DVD companies mentioned in the article sell online — it’s all though discount bins in supermarkets
A collection of notes by the 17th century English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton, that scientists thought had been lost forever, have been found
The Spanish Parliament has given final approval to a law legalising gay marriage, overriding fierce opposition from the Catholic Church. Spain becomes only the fourth country after Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands to permit same-sex marriage. Applause broke out in the crowded public gallery as legislators voted to push through the law despite its rejection by the upper house, the Senate
According to security vendor Sophos, there’s a 50% chance your unprotected Windows PC will be compromised within 12 minutes of going online
Radio National’s podcasting experiment has been so successful that another raft of specialist programs will be made available online from 9 July
Amnesty International has launched a scathing criticism of Australia’s policy of indefinitely locking up asylum seekers who arrive in the country illegally calling it a violation of human rights
For the second time within the past year, an Indymedia server has been seized in the United Kingdom. This time it is the Bristol Indymedia server (currently redirected to the United Kollectives IMC site); this follows on from the Ahimsa seizure last October. The current seizure was carried out using a search warrant by the UK police at approximately 16:30GMT on 27 June 2005. This was despite being warned by lawyers that this server was considered an item of journalistic equipment and so subject to special provision under the law
(press release). Bristol Indymedia is currently being supported by the National Union of Journalists, Liberty and Privacy International. Other media organisations have declared their support — via Slashdot
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