Ever want to silence the urban assault vehicle beside you at the stop light, pounding out gangster angst at orthodontia-rattling volumes? Now you can courtesy of Engadget
JK Rowling has silenced the rumour-mongers by confirming the new book in her series will be called Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. The author of the multi-million selling books revealed the title but gave no indication of when the book would come out. Rowling laughed at suggestions the new book was to be called Harry Potter and The Pillar of Storge
Body artists in Delaware who want to go beyond tattooing and piercing soon may risk a serious tongue lashing by a judge if they don’t consult with their doctors first. A bill approved by the state Senate on Tuesday prohibits the practice of tongue splitting unless it is done by a licensed doctor or dentist. Considering the complete cluelessness of doctors and dentists on body modification procedures, I shudder to think of the complete bollocks they’ll make of it — via boingboing
Two mines thought to date from the Second World War were found off the Spanish coast after a swimmer spotted one device nestling on the seabed. Bomb disposal experts cordoned off the beach to deactivate the first mine which measured some 20 inches in diameter
Michael Moore has welcomed the appearance on the internet of pirated copies of his anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 and claimed he is happy for anybody to download it free of charge — via BoingBoing
Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that ISPs do not have to pay royalties to composers and artists for music downloaded by web customers. Companies providing wide access to the web are merely intermediaries
who are not bound by Canadian copyright legislation, the court said in a 9-0 ruling
Google changed its Gmail membership policy this week to prevent people from profiting on the sale of popular e-mail names
Professor Terry Davidson and associate professor Susan Swithers, both in the Department of Psychological Sciences, found that artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body’s natural ability to count
calories based on foods’ sweetness. This finding may explain why increasing numbers of people in the United States lack the natural ability to regulate food intake and body weight. The researchers also found that thick liquids aren’t as satisfying — calorie for calorie — as are more solid foods — via BoingBoing
Security weaknesses in Microsoft’s server and browser software are taking their toll on Australian Internet banking sites. According to St George Bank, AusCERT and the Australian High Tech Crime Centre are helping local financial institutions track down the origins of a new Trojan that’s helping online criminals defraud consumers of their savings. BHODemon is a free tool that will list all Browser Helper Objects that are installed on a Windows system by scanning the registry and give you the ability to disable them. This will also list good
BHOs as well, but nevertheless is a useful tool in detecting and disabling malicious software. Download Mozilla now
An Australian music activist has posted what he claims to be a draft position paper from the country’s peak music industry body that rejects proposals to introduce a blank media levy paid to copyright owners as compensation for the copying of music for private and domestic purposes
Utah-based artist Tom Forsythe, who won a five-year legal battle with Mattel over his photographs of Barbie dolls sometimes naked and paired with kitchen appliances on Tuesday said the court decision cleared the way for other parodies of iconic American brands. The ruling late last week by a federal judge in Los Angeles was the second major blow in two years to a bid by toy maker Mattel to defend Barbie’s image from use by artists and singers
Distiller and beverage manufacturer Suntory has developed the world’s first blue roses with Australian firm Florigene. Suntory officials said researchers extracted the gene that produces blue pigment in pansies and activated it inside the roses — via BoingBoing
Professor Lessig will be flown in at the 11th-hour
to testify on the intellectual property provisions of Australia’s pending Free Trade Agreement. The IP section of the FTA is modeled after the DMCA — via Lessig News
The first Australian patients to be cured from type one diabetes have spoken about their treatment. Doctors from Sydney’s Westmead Hospital transplanted cells from a donated pancreas into the patients and they are now producing their own insulin. Barbara Dunn and Julie Mudd are among the first Australian patients to undergo the ground-breaking transplant. After being diabetic for 37 years, Ms Dunne is now free of daily injections
A million hectares of land with the most significant areas wilderness outside of the national parks system will be sold off at only three percent of its market value to current leaseholders, after the Carr Government successfully passed legislation it had fought to prevent in 1993
Australia hosts more porn pages than any other country in the region despite strict laws designed to restrict adult content
The President’s handlers foolishly granted a Presidential interview (Indymedia have an MP3 available or you can read the transcript) to a non-White House Press Corps journalist, Carole Coleman, the Washington correspondent for RTE, the Irish national television network. When she asked him pointed, pertinent questions, he became upset when his stock answers failed to satisfy her. An aide to the President later complained that Coleman had overstepped the bounds of politeness
— via BoingBoing
John Howard, showing his usual love of money over environment, has offered a $5 million bribe to the notorious eco-vandal Gunns for a proposed $1 billion pulp mill. The Greens are far from impressed
mozilla.org today released upgrades to both Firefox 0.9 (0.9.1) and Thunderbird 0.7 (0.7.1) to fix some minor bugs present in both releases. Both releases correct some flaws in the extension system that some users may have been experiencing, as well as a new icon set for the navigation toolbar on Windows and Linux in Firefox 0.9.1
A US motorist found a slithery surprise not covered in his rental car agreement when a ball python stuck its head out from between his legs. He was completely in shock,
said Madison, Wisconsin, police officer Laura Walker. I mean, he said he was lucky he didn’t crash the car
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