Labor has called for an investigation into John Howard‘s use of unsolicited email. Mr Howard has hired his son Tim’s company, Net Harbour, to spam voters in the prime minister’s blue ribbon Sydney seat of Bennelong. Labor’s technology spokeswoman Kate Lundy said the government’s own laws, which came into effect four months ago, banned commercial spamming. But the laws exempt political parties and charities from using spam, which has become a crucial tool in communicating with voters. The prime minister has breached the spirit, if not the letter of anti-spam laws,
Senator Lundy said
My Fishbone watch arrived from TokyoFlash today.
It’s all fishboney and has lovely blue lights to play with.
Mmm… blue LEDs. You can never have too many blue LEDs.
Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, an ex-race car driver whose business career has been dogged by accusations of questionable arms deals and shady ventures, was charged with helping finance a foiled coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea
A new kind of planet has been discovered in a star system 50 light years away. It is the smallest world to be found outside our Solar System, and probably the first rocky planet found so far. The planet orbits the star mu Arae, which has been monitored by a European team of astronomers using an instrument called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher), attached to the 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile
RIKEN, an anglicised acronym for Japan’s Research Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, described in the US overnight the MDGrape 3, a processor it thinks will become the cornerstone of future supercomputing efforts
Glenmorangie was at the centre of a furious bidding war last night as the Macdonald family’s decision to sell its controlling share sent ripples of interest through the City, catapulting its shares up over 25%. The company has been valued at £250 million, but analysts say it could reach £300m if a bidding war ensues. Although no formal bids have come to the table, two front runners in Brown Foreman, (makers of Jack Daniel’s) and Bacardi have emerged
Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in Minnesota used a flame-spray
technique to alloy alumina (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce strong glass with good optical properties. The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to other oxides. Scotty would be pleased
Lonely sheep, like lonely people, are much happier when they see pictures of friends and family. A group at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge has found that the sight of a friendly face reduces stress in sheep
The Tories provoked a barrage of criticism yesterday after they signalled that the Human Rights Act would be scrapped or overhauled by a government led by Michael Howard
Edvard Munch’s paintings have been targeted again by thieves after an armed gang yesterday stole one of several known versions of The Scream along with Madonna from the Munch Museum in Oslo
Following a deal with software developer CodeWeavers in June, Lycoris has released PowerPak 1.4 which incorporates Window PCs emulation into its Linux desktop software
Swiftbroadband and Exetel have announced that they will offer wireless broadband services via the Unwired network, which, according to the provider, covers 90% of Sydney’s population equating to 1.2 million homes and 240,000 small-to-medium enterprises
Senator Edward Kennedy was turned down for a flight from Washington, DC to Boston because his name turned up on the TSA No-Fly list. He eventually got on a flight, but was again denied on his way back to DC. It took three weeks of calls to Tom Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security for the ordeal to get straightened out. But what are ordinary citizens supposed to do if the Secretary of Homeland Security won’t take their calls?
Bugmenot, the incredibly useful site that helps bypass compulsory web registration, got yanked after its spineless web hosting company caved to external pressure. Fortunately, they are back on the air with a shiny new host that has a vested interest in free speech
The makers of two leading file-sharing programs are not legally liable for the songs, movies and other copyright works swapped online by their users. Among other reasons, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said Grokster and StreamCast Networks, unlike the original Napster, were not responsible because they don’t have central servers pointing users to copyright material
The official launch of Unwired‘s wireless broadband service has prompted Ozemail to break its silence about its deal with rival broadband provider, Personal Broadband Australia
UK ISPs are targeting ecommerce web sites run by spammers in a new get tough
policy on junk mail. ISPs belonging to the London Internet Exchange (LINX) have voted through a code of practice which gives them the mandate to shut down web sites promoted through spam, even if junk mail messages are sent through a third-party or over a different network. The move is intended to remove the financial incentive to send spam
A technique originally designed to analyse DNA sequences is the latest weapon in the war against spam. An algorithm named Chung-Kwei (after a feng-shui talisman that protects the home against evil spirits) can catch nearly 97% of spam. Chung-Kwei is based on the Teiresias algorithm, developed by the bioinformatics research group at IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Centre in New York
Microsoft’s Windows XP Service Pack 2 was scheduled to be delivered to users of the company’s automatic update system Monday. But Microsoft warned that the patch could cause conflicts with many programs. And while the MS monkeys are still tooling around, hackers and IT security professionals are picking apart the new update in search of vulnerabilities they can exploit
When state Fish and Wildlife agents recently found a black bear passed out on the lawn of Baker Lake Resort, there were some clues scattered nearby — around three dozen empty cans of Rainier Beer. It seems he tried the Busch beer, that was also in the cache, but didn’t like it — via Rogue Sun
RSS – Posts
