In an important victory for Italian consumer rights, an Italian court has rejected the seizure of Sony Playstation game consoles that use modified chips to permit unauthorised uses of the game systems. The case is one of the first to be brought in Italy under the new European Union Copyright Directive, which is modeled on the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act — via The Importance Of
If you need discounted inkjet or laser-printer cartridges, Wisconsin’s LaserMonks say they’ll give you a doozy of a deal while you ‘support prayer for the world’. The Cistercian priests — yes, they’re actual Catholic monks — oversee a novel e-commerce enterprise out of their rural abbey. Proceeds go to maintain the monastery and finance charitable works around the world
A US Federal Court last week imposed an order prohibiting two alleged ID fraudsters from taking part in Internet auctions. The duo was also ordered to pay more than $93,000 in compensation to consumers at the end of a civil case brought by US consumer watchdogs
Researchers from Purdue University working under an award from the National Science Foundation have discovered that common blue mussels are using iron found in seawater to create their own super glue
A federal judge rejects a company’s legal attempt to assail BadBusinessBureau.com, which features negative reviews from consumers who claim to have been ripped off by retailers
Hewlett-Packard’s invention, due in drives soon, lets users burn labels directly onto discs
FJ van Wingerde, the artisan who brought us the Pink Hello Kitty Laptop, has instructions for making a Yellow Zipper Pokemon Laptop. It’s worth taking a look at the White Moonbase Alpha Laptop project while you’re there
The controversial winner of last year’s Esat BT Young Scientist competition, 7-year-old Sheffield University computer engineering student, Adnan Osmani, says his mega-browser
will be ready for commercialisation soon. Patents for the Xwebs mega browser should be filed and the software will be primed for commercialisation. Osmani said that he hopes to sell the technology to an interested company, holding on to the proceeds as a nest egg
Foxtel announced today it had secured a $550 million bank facility which would fund its full digital conversion and launch of new digital services, expected in the first half of this calendar year
The expiration of some of VeriSign’s certificate-authority certificates last week appears to have caused problems beyond harmless error messages generated when users tried to access secure areas of Web sites. Security-software firm Symantec on Friday blamed VeriSign for problems with its security products that left users’ PCs unresponsive and unstable
A Washington man’s apartment-sitter wrapped everything he owned in aluminium foil while he was away:
A lone book titled Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends was untouched.
But nearly everything else in Chris Kirk’s downtown Olympia apartment was encased in aluminum foil when he returned home Monday night from a trip to Los Angeles.
The walls, ceiling, cabinets and everything in between now shimmer with a metallic glow, thanks to a prank by Kirk’s longtime friend, Olympia native Luke Trerice.
If that prank doesn’t float your boat there’s always the teenage pranksters who are hacking into the wireless frequency of a US Burger King drive-through speaker to tell potential customers they are too fat for fast food.
These latest security measures have merely confirmed the suspicion of the US detractors that the country is making a slide towards authoritarianism, with its government showing decidedly fascistic proclivities
Muschi, a small cat that formed an unlikely friendship with a half-ton bear called mouse
in Berlin Zoo, has been reunited with her companion after pining outside the bear’s cage for months
The war on terror
is being used as cover for a sustained assault on the independence and progressive agenda of NGOs
As most self-respecting geeks know, Lego is currently searching for a new Master Builder to hold the enviable position of building with Lego all day and getting paid for the privilege. One applicant describes the nerve-wracking experience of going through the first-round interview. In the end Lego surprised everyone and selected three new Master Builders, including Nathan Sawaya, creator of the Han Solo Lego sculpture
Using a machine launching aluminium disks Lyderic Bocquet, a physics professor at the University of Lyon, and his colleagues discovered the magic angle of 20° as that required to maximise stone skipping. Jerdone Coleman McGhee of Wimberley, Texas, holds the current Guinness Book of World Records title for a 1992 toss that yielded an impressive 38 bounces across the Blanco River in central Texas
The retarded monkey boy and his cronies have enlisted the aide of the FBI to harass members of opposing political parties
Customers of the nation’s five leading banks are unwittingly being siphoned of their savings online, after logging on to official internet banking web sites. Federal police are investigating the latest international banking scam involving the use of online trojans to steal personal account details via computers, which don’t have anti-virus protection
The US Treasury Department plans to publish nearly 10,000 e-mail addresses on the web, violating its privacy promise to Americans who used e-mail to comment on a government proceeding
A quarter of known land animals and plants, more than a million species, will eventually die out because of the global warming that will take place over the next 50 years. International scientists from eight countries have warned that, based even on the most conservative estimates, rising temperatures will trigger a global mass extinction of unprecedented proportions — unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced
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