An ICANN arbitration panel has rejected Google’s challenge of a Web site named Froogles.com, meaning that the Froogles.com name will remain with the current owner. Also, the current owner is opposing Google’s attempt to register Froogle with the US Patent and Trademark Office, contending the mark would be an infringement of his Froogles.com mark. Google has filed 18 domain name disputes at the ICANN panel, challenging names like googlesex.com
, google.biz
and googleme.com
. It has won every challenge but Froogles.com
Major Internet search engines were crippled Monday morning in the US by a variant of the MyDoom worm, rendering Google inaccessible to many users and slowing results from Yahoo
Three founders of Australia’s largest and crappest Web hosting company, WebCentral, will walk away with AU$18 million in cash when they sell their shares to listed tech company FTR Holdings
The Kalashnikov, like vodka, seems quintessentially Russian. But, as with vodka, plenty of other countries make versions of the assault rifle, and Russia’s arms export agency isn’t flattered. It doesn’t help that the foreign versions come cheaper
ACLU have an excellent piece of short speculative fiction presented as a flash animation depicting pizza ordering in a near-future United States — via boingboing
The clever clogs over at engadget have figured out how to hack an iPod into a universal remote. Basically, we recorded
the sounds
an infrared remote makes on a PC and then put them on an iPod as songs. Adding a special sound-to-IR converter then turns those sounds back to IR and allows you to use your iPod as a remote control. As an added bonus, it works up to 100 feet. A very handy mod that certainly beats fumbling through a multitude of loose remote controls — via boingboing
A spam taskforce operating under the auspices of the Australian Internet Industry Association has released a draft industry code of practice designed to block the spam epidemic
Revelations on the ABC-TV program Media Watch last night that the national broadcaster has taken a policy decision to require documentary makers to seek permission from politicians who feature in news reports prior to selling or licensing the clips reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the laws of copyright
Nearly 100 Australian towns have moved a step closer to broadband Internet access today, as Telstra announced it would make more local exchanges ADSL-capable under a Government subsidy scheme. Funny how the lazy bastards don’t do jack until the Government handout appears
Japanese parents have been given government permission to name their children Buttocks
or Prostitute
if they wish after a bizarre row over expanding the list of officially acceptable names
Microsoft is in early discussions with five or six media companies over a potential sale of MSN’s online magazine Slate. This comes mere weeks after Slate recommended Firefox over Internet Explorer
The BladeRunner Dual Mode Transport is novel approach that could revolutionise the transportation industry. The innovative vehicle will run on road as well as rail. It is as applicable to freight as to passenger transport. Branch-line infrastructure costs could be at least halved because signalling and points could be largely, if not totally, made redundant
A Texas man, Richard Swift, was charged with animal cruelty in the death of a young dog whose snout was taped shut to prevent it from barking and disturbing his afternoon nap. The prick then booted it outside for several hours in 35°C heat, the dog could not cool down by panting and had to be euthanised after suffering from heat stroke
Faux company Geniecorp
makes creepy, icky, biogenetically engineered household appliances for happy mutant homes of the future. Lick-n-Span
, Alarm Cock
, and Lhasa Mopso
are but a few — it’s all a clever promotional tease for a self-published book — via boingboing
Fairfax’s literary editor Malcolm Knox has accused Norma Khouri, the author of Forbidden Love
, of fraud. Ms Khouri’s book, Forbidden Love
, tells the story of her best friend, a Jordanian woman, who was murdered by her father for falling in love with a Christian man. Ms Khouri says she fled Jordan after the incident, writing the story and making her way to Australia. Mr Knox claims he has proof she lived in America for most of her life and only lived in Jordan until she was three
John Howard is threatening to take his bat and ball and go home. The whiny little prick wants to suspend talks [BugMeNot] with East Timor over billions of dollars of oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea until after the election, after Labor leader Mark Latham said he could restart negotiations
Weebl has some more toony goodness. Meet Magical Trevor and his amazing vanishing cow. And the Badgers are back for Euro 2004
In its current incarnation for MovableType 2.66, Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist ranks as the best plugin I’ve run across. Without it, I’d be drowning in a sea of spam comments that are hitting the site at the rate of hundreds a day.
But MT-Blacklist, currently at version 1.64, doesn’t play well with MovableType 3.0. So Jay put in the hard yards and got an MT3 friendly version out just in time for the MT3 Developer’s Contest.
It looks like Jay took out the grand prize and a well deserved win it was too. I think the current version rocks, but the screen shots and snippets of the new version, that’s still in testing, will blow it out of the water. I can hardly wait.
Tripods are great for photography, but a pain in the ass to carry. Everyone these days seems to be carrying water bottles everywhere. So trust a Japanese company to combine the two to make a really useful thing: A mount that makes a bottle filled with water or soda a useful stable base for your digital camera — via boingboing
And if you’d rather not shell out US$15 for a bottle cap tripod, Adam has instructions for a DIY job that will cost about $1.50 in components — via boingboing
Justin Spence doesn’t take lightly being scammed out of $1155 for a laptop he never received. The seller, Salvatore Wise, Jr of Philadelphia, is growing openly more hostile over the webpage Justin produced exposing his and his wife Michelle Heinlein’s scams to the world. So far Justin has documented $6841.00 total lost to this crook, but the total is more likely in the tens of thousands
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