Foxtel has given rival Optus the unprecedented ability to compete for its entire customer base after inking a deal that ensures Optus upgrades its pay-TV service to digital signals. After months of fighting over the issue, Foxtel’s board yesterday unanimously agreed to changes to the companies’ content-sharing deal, which are expected to boost Foxtel’s pay-TV customer numbers
The United States remains the largest source of spam, but other countries are catching up, with Australia also named in security firm Sophos’ dirty dozen
PC World’s Andrew Brandt went to work tracking down a comment spammer, following a link from a single piece of comment spam blocked from their Movable Type-powered blog, and discovering a wanted criminal — Six Apart :: ProNet
Gary Stern is president and owner of Stern Pinball, which is the last remaining pinball manufacturer in the world. Yearly, his company produces 10,000 hand-built machines and designs about 3-4 different models via Shacknews
For the first time ever, those who have been blind since birth will have a chance to see the world. It’s still in the early stages, but this is a giant leap forward in medical science. The bionic eye comprises a computer chip that sits in the back of the individual’s eye, linked up to a mini video camera built into glasses that they wear. Images captured by the camera are beamed to the chip, which translates them into impulses that the brain can interpret
The Photo Card Bill that has passed through the NSW’s lower house represented the most fundamental attack on our personal freedoms since the failed Australia Card proposal of the 1980s
, Australian Privacy Foundation chair Anna Johnston said
Johannesburg seems to have something of a problem with building hijackers. They hold up an empty building’s rent-a-cops, then take over and fill the building with innocent tenants, collecting rent until the real cops show up to evict them — via BoingBoing
Professor Jaak Panksepp says that animals other than humans exhibit play sounds that resemble human laughs. These include the panting sounds made by chimps and dogs when they play and chirping sounds observed in rats. This suggests that the capacity for laughter may be a very ancient emotional response that predates the evolution of humankind. Research suggests the capacity for human laughter preceded the capacity for speech — via BoingBoing
Impatient TV viewers have discovered BitTorrent in Australia mainly because the local networks are so slow to broadcast content. Programs are at times behind by months and, in some cases, years. According to an independent study, it takes an average of four months to watch the latest episodes of top-rated shows like Lost
and Desperate Housewives
. There are now calls for TV networks to consider offering episodes for download at a small cost
A battle in the war against RFID beacons in US passports has been won. The State Department now admits that their previous RFID proposal would put Americans at risk and is now considering other options. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the State Department continues to blindly cling to the false promise of planting RFID chips in passports — via BoingBoing
Firefox already contains a pop-up blocker by default, but this does not handle pop-ups launched by plug-ins such as Flash and Java. Mozilla developers are responding to the increasing number of advertisers that are using plug-ins to launch pop-up ads. While you’re adding things, you may want to check out how to put Firefox into overdrive
An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq. According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq’s alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as crazy
by his intelligence handlers and a congenital liar
by his friends. I have to wonder how this guy missed a career in politics — via Warren Ellis
The grand finale of a wedding taking place near Felsted, Essex, UK was the release of dozens of Thai lanterns into the night sky. Shortly after, concerned citizens called the Stansted Airport and the police to warn authorities that aliens may be invading — via The Pagan Prattle
A report from the University of Pennsylvania claims that psychological therapy and counselling can be just as effective as drugs in the early stages of treating moderate to severe depression. The findings run counter to current practice in the United States
Kong has added a very cool piece of artwork to his gallery.
Go, check out The KLam Xperiment
The new Puma Beisser (or Bites
) have rubberised fangs on the soles, designed not to improve traction, but instead to look wicked. They are very limited edition, however, with just 500 pairs being released to retailers — via Gizmodo
Google’s indexing service dropped all Web sites with a .com.au extension for a few hours on Friday afternoon, effectively leaving millions of sites unattainable from the Net’s most popular search engine
Photo hosting services that allow users to publish their digital pictures online are being threatened by a vulnerability in the PHP scripting language that could be exploited by a malicious image file
BeOS, the operating system that could have been the foundation for Mac OS X, but almost died, instead has returned as Zeta OS — which is supposed to be fast, stable, media centric and boot within 15 seconds. Zeta is being released by yellowTAB of Germany and has applications such as an office suite and the Firefox browser bundled with it. Most BeOS applications will also run as-is. Screenshots are available — via Slashdot
US delegates to the US Commission on Human Rights say that body’s country membership must be reformed to prevent those who abuse human rights from using their positions on the committee to prevent criticism of their records
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