The new version of the iPod plugin for Winamp allows you to copy music from your iPod to your computer
eBay have removed the MI5 bugging device from auction soon after a verified bid of $3000.00 was made. Sinn Fein are now selling it on their online bookshop via BoingBoing
I just upgraded my old Toshiba laptop to a new Toshiba laptop. Seeing as the factory install of Win98 on the old laptop was the most robust instance of Windows I’ve used, I opted to stick with the factory WinXP install on the new, the only drawback being that it’s XP Home.
The one problem I’d anticipated was a possible problem connecting to my wireless network. Aside from WinXP getting in the way with it’s bloody wireless network wizard and the time it took to find the MAC of the wireless card, it turned out to be simple.
What I didn’t expect was the lack of a web server. And it wasn’t just the lack of a web server, but the crippling of the operating system so you can’t even install Microsoft Personal Web Server:
Windows XP Home Edition does not include or support any versions (1.0, 2.0, 4.0) of Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS). Users that need Web server functionality in a desktop operating system should use Windows XP Professional
It seems that there used to be a workaround in the knowledge base, but the scum at Microsoft yanked it in an attempt to force punters into upgrading to XP Professional. Alas, this way of thinking just pisses people off and makes them look elsewhere. In my case, that was Apache and, thanks to Webifying XP, it was a simple and painless process.
Two Star Wars fans are in a critical condition in hospital after apparently trying to make light sabres by filling fluorescent light tubes with petrol via Charlie Stross
The FTC and more than 30 of its counterparts abroad, including Australia, are planning to contact ISPs and urge them to pay more attention to what their customers are doing online. Among the requests: identifying customers with suspicious e-mailing patterns, quarantining those computers and offering help in cleaning the zombie code off the hapless PCs
Hackers have found a way to lock up the electronic documents on your computer and then demand money over the Internet to get them back
Evidence is mounting that many Australians will miss out on next-generation ADSL services such as video-on-demand, unless Telstra upgrades its copper network
Australian government agencies have shut down more than a dozen local web sites that sought to solicit credit card details from unsuspecting consumers
The original 1922 film Nosferatu, the film that Bram Stoker’s estate almost succeeded in killing, has been digitised and placed online as a permanent fixture of the Internet Archive. Available as a stream or a download in various resolutions for various speeds. All free — via Warren Ellis
A particle accelerator is being used to reveal the long-lost writings of the Greek mathematician Archimedes, work hidden for centuries after a Christian monk wrote over it in the Middle Ages. Highly focused X-rays produced at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre were used last week to begin deciphering the parts of the 174-page text that have not yet been revealed
Jorge Cortell, a teacher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, was forced to resign after a talk about P2P networks — via BoingBoing. Jack eloquently points out, in the comments, that Jorge Cortell has lost all credibility in Spain thanks to him being a lying sack of shit with a resumé full of fake degrees
A new monkey species has been found in the highland forests of Tanzania. The monkey was discovered almost simultaneously by two research teams on separate mountain ranges and is the first new African monkey to be found in more than 20 years. It also instantly becomes one of the rarest and most critically endangered primates on Earth
Pedro Luna, an archeologist from the Instituto Nacional de Cultura in the southern city of Cuzco has announced that builders have found the fossil of a giant armadillo — which lived up to 2 million years ago and would have been the size of a Volkswagen Beetle — in southern Peru — via Beyond the Beyond
South Korean scientists say they have made stem cells tailored to match the individual for the first time. Each of the eleven new stem cell lines that they made were created by taking genetic material from the patient and putting it into a donated egg. The resultant cells were a perfect match for the individual and could mean treatments for diseases like diabetes without problems of rejection — via Warren Ellis
A man killed and skinned his mother then draped himself in her skin and stepped out to direct traffic. The 42-year-old, identified only as RZ, hit her head with a heavy blunt instrument. He then cut her throat and chopped off both her arms. Then, with a long‚Äìbladed meat knife used for filleting meat from bones, he spent eight hours skinning the 76-year-old. After the killing, the man dressed himself in his mother’s skin and took to the streets of Vlaardingen, Holland. He was seen directing traffic in her skin and dressed in one of her dresses as he recited texts from the Bible — via Warren Ellis
Finland has received what appears to be the first doctoral dissertation on traditional forest trolls. Master of Philosophy Camilla Asplund Ingemark, 30, has researched the subject for six years. She will defend her doctoral dissertation, which is classified as a work on folklore, at the Åbo Akademi University in Turku. The study describes the world of trolls according to the beliefs in the folklore of Swedish-speaking Finns — via Improbable Research
BitTorrent development is occurring at a furious pace. At the beginning of May, an Azureus update added distributed tracker and database features. A couple of days ago, Bram updated BitTorrent to include support for trackerless torrents in the new BitTorrent 4.10 beta
Foxtel is exploring the delivery of its digital pay-TV services using Telstra’s copper network in an effort to tap into 780,000 apartments nationwide
Donald Kendrick has been accused of breaking into a church and using the pastor’s computer to look at pr0n. He was arrested Tuesday night after a scuffle with Charleston police Constable George, who was responding to a report that a light was on inside the First Presbyterian Church — via Warren Ellis
Since the Plesetsk Space Centre began operations in northern Russia forty years ago, tonnes of man-made debris — first stages of rockets mainly — have fallen to earth, generating both a cash opportunity for local villagers, and a source of danger. Some villages survive only on this cosmic garbage, unable to find other ways to make ends meet — via BoingBoing
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