Telstra has failed a test on the prices it charges rivals to access its phone lines for their broadband customers. In the first such test on the issue, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that telcos weren’t able to generate sufficient margins to recover costs if they tried to sell broadband — or a combination of broadband and voice — to their customers over Telstra’s phone lines
Sydney wireless ISP Unwired has signed an agreement with AAPT that will see the telco reselling its wireless broadband service from next year. The deal represents Unwired’s first wholesale agreement with a major carrier, although it has previously cemented relationships with a number of smaller resellers, including Exetel, Veritel and People Telecom
Carlos Owens, an Alaska ironworker, is building an 18-foot-tall manned Mecha to fight at the local racetrack — and for the military, if they want it
A US civil liberties group has obtained documents detailing fresh claims of abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and claims the White House authorised the use of inhumane interrogation techniques
Bank robbers in Northern Ireland have stolen at least £20m in what could be Britain’s biggest ever bank heist
A US federal judge has awarded an ISP more than $1.32 billion in what is believed to be the largest judgement ever against spammers
Optus has been asked to pay up to $17 million in alleged unpaid commissions to its former business partner in the international porn trade
The Bad Science Awards are out. These should put a smile on any science geek’s face. Prize gems include: shrinking water molecules, anesthetic condoms, and a plan to send homeopathic AIDS remedies to Botswana
The retarded monkey boy is drawing up plans to disable sections of the GPS network in the event of a terrorist attack, it seems the retarded monkey boy is of the opinion that terrorists don’t use maps and street directories. The rationale seems to be that it would prevent said terrorists from using the GPS system to direct some sort of attack. The plan would shut down access not only to the GPS satellite network, but projects like the EU’s Galileo. Ironically, this comes alongside the President’s plan to strengthen the GPS network against deliberate jamming
Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have developed thin, flexible, photovoltaic cells. The thin and bendy solar panels can be stuck to fabrics, sheets or backpacks and promise a cheap, go-anywhere electricity supply
A survey carried out by PC Pro magazine looked at which of 100 home photo printers offered a better deal than handing your snaps to a photo lab. The tests found that images from top PC printers kept their colour longer than professionally produced photographs. In the report at the BBC it claims that the new generation of printers produced images with brighter colours and that were less likely to fade than many High Street developers or even some professional wedding photographers
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has hundreds of free MP3s of Sherlock Holmes radio plays from the 1930s — via boingboing
Scientists have cultured small pieces of heart tissue which beat in the same way as the whole organ. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology team hope the work will lead to new ways of repairing heart damage — via Die Puny Humans
I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe scored the winning entry in this year’s Literary Review Bad Sex Award with the appalling: Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns — oh god, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest — no, the hand was cupping her entire right — Now! She must say “No, Hoyt” and talk to him like a dog…
A beer-thirsty Australian gentleman, inpatient with gravity, employed a mechanical contraption to rapidly deliver beer into his gullet using a pump powered by an electric drill. The device proved so effective that the high-pressure jet of beer shooting down his throat ripped a hole in his stomach. Authorities responded by warning people not to use high-pressure machines to drink beer this Christmas — via BoingBoing
The NSW Labor Government has approved the use of offshore computer programmers by the public service, in conflict with ALP policy. But NSW unions yesterday condemned any move by the Carr Government that would mean the development of its online licensing system or other departmental work being shifted offshore
American Indians are poised to take a step back into history when they begin managing portions of the nearly 100-year-old National Bison Range in Montana. The range is one of about 540 wildlife refuges in a 38 million-hectare National Wildlife Refuge system from Alaska to the Caribbean
Researchers from the University of South Australia have developed software which identifies specific bird species by their calls and then randomly chooses noises known to scare them, a development that could potentially save the fruit and wine industries millions of dollars
Researchers in the top end say they may have discovered the first natural predator to the cane toad, according to experiments conducted in captivity, a local frog species, Litoria dahlii eats infant cane toads as well as the tadpoles without any apparent side effects from the cane toads’ poison. Whether the same occurs in the wild is still to be seen, but researchers believe the frog could play a large part in slowing the spread of the cane toad into the Northern Territory and into fragile eco systems like Kakadu’s National Park
The tiny western African nation of São Tomé and Principe claims it has unwittingly become the continent’s electronic porn publishing capital after a Swedish company and its local partner sold the country’s internet identity without government approval. The government is demanding a share of the income earned from selling addresses using São Tomé’s .st suffix, after a US survey found they accounted for more than three-quarters of the porn pages generated from web sites that use African nations’ identities
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