Intel will release a $120 solid-state disk (SSD) drive positioned as a server boot drive
with only 40GB of capacity, but the drive could also be used in low-end laptops PCs and netbooks. Intel is also planning a new line of enterprise-class SSDs with 50GB, 100GB and 200GB capacities, which would more closely mimic the capacities of high-end hard disk drives used in servers today, an Intel representative said. Intel’s current line of enterprise-class drives, the X25-E series, have capacities of 32GB and 64GB
Rupert Murdoch has said he will try to block Google from using news content from his companies. The billionaire told Sky News Australia he will explore ways to remove stories from Google’s search indexes, including Google News. Mr Murdoch’s News Corp had previously said it would start charging online customers across all its web sites. He believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results
Plans to store information about every phone call, email and internet visit in the United Kingdom have in effect been abandoned by the Government. The Home Office confirmed the Big Brother
scheme had been delayed until after the election amid protests that it would be intrusive and open to abuse. Although ministers publicly insisted yesterday that they remained committed to the scheme, they have decided not to include the contentious measure in next week’s Queen’s Speech, the Government’s final legislative programme before the election
Australia’s largest electronic waste recycler warns of insufficient capacity to handle an expected avalanche of obsolete equipment as industry-run computer and TV recycling programs start to come onstream. Sims Recycling Solutions senior vice-president Kumar Radhakrishnan welcomed last week’s decision by state and federal environment ministers to adopt a product stewardship approach, but warned significant new investment
would be needed to ensure appropriate handling of collected material. Mr Radhakrishnan said the national capacity for e-waste recycling stood at about 30,000 tonnes per annum, with 20,000 tonnes of that supplied by Sims’ hi-tech plant at Villawood, in Sydney’s west. NSW alone generates some 20,000 tonnes of electronic waste each year
Censorship of the internet is open to challenge at the World Trade Organisation as it can restrict trade in services delivered online, a forthcoming study says. A censorship case at the WTO could raise sovereignty issues, given the clear right of member states to restrict trade on moral grounds — for example, by blocking access to child pornography websites. But a WTO ruling could set limits on blanket censorship and compel states instead to use more selective filtering, according to the study, to be published this week by think-tank the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography. Heinous pictures and videos can be deposited on computers by viruses — the malicious programs better known for swiping your credit card numbers. In this twist, it’s your reputation that’s stolen. Paedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they’ll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal web sites. Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on your computer — and might not realise it until police knock at your door
Mobile phones are likely to be automatically barred from accessing premium ring tones, games and information services after the consumer watchdog threw its support behind the move. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has backed a proposal in which users would need to make a specific request to enable their phones to receive high-priced premium text and multimedia messages
Michelle Khine couldn’t afford the $100,000 fabrication gear to make micro-fluidic chips needed for chip-based diagnostic tests. She turned to Shrinky Dinks and found a new way to solve the problem — via Boing Boing
An official with Brazil’s electricity regulator has confirmed that large scale blackouts in 2005 and 2007 were caused by people hacking into the computers that control the electricity grid
Norwegian ISP Telenor doesn’t have to block access to file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, according to a ruling from the district court for Asker and Bæ?¶rum on Friday. The entertainment industry has been trying to get Telenor to block The Pirate Bay since February, when it sent a warning letter to the operator. But Telenor has maintained that there is no legal basis for any ISP to act in the interests of digital intellectual-property rights holders by blocking individual web sites, and now the district court has sided with that notion
The technology relies on recognising a pheromone — or scent signal — produced in sweat when a person is scared. Researchers hope the fear detector will make it possible to identify individuals at check points who are up to no good. Terrorists with murder in mind, drug smugglers, or criminals on the run are likely to be very fearful of being discovered. However, calm they might appear on the surface, their bodies could give them away
It has been many weeks since the popular semi-private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid went offline. The site’s owner claimed the downtime was due to hardware issues and warned of the loss of both torrents and user data. Today, however, there is hope on the horizon, as Demonoid’s tracker is now up and running again
The newly formed Australian Pirate Party came out swinging yesterday with a release criticising the international discussions currently being held in Korea to cement an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. These discussions had their roots back in 2006 when the US and Japan floated the idea of a new treaty to help build joint intellectual property rules to fight counterfeiting and piracy. June 2008 saw Australia included along with other countries
For the last decade or so, Internet service providers have been dealing with requests to block access to pornographic or copyright-infringing Web sites, or in China, ones that dare to criticise the government. Now a US House of Representatives bill is taking the unusual step of requiring Internet providers to block access to online financial scams that fraudulently invoke the Securities Investor Protection Corporation — or face fines and federal court injunctions. The House Financial Services Committee approved the legislation on Wednesday by a 41 to 28 vote
European Internet users accused of illicit file-sharing will not be disconnected on the whims of the entertainment industries. After an all night session European Union lawmakers agreed on a compromise text. Those accused will be entitled to a fair and impartial
procedure, which will include the right to be heard
PayPal used its inaugural PayPal X Innovate 2009 conference in San Francisco to officially announce the PayPal X program to release APIs allowing developers to integrate PayPal seamlessly into third-party applications
Internet Explorer 6 has finally been surpassed by Firefox according to the latest worldwide market share numbers
Visa is a step closer to ending the signature scrawl for retail purchases, with all new credit cards to contain a computer chip designed for use with a PIN for greater security from January. Visa general manager Chris Clark said the aim was to move entirely to chip and PIN technology, with signatures no longer accepted from April 2013
NSW police uploaded their first video exclusive — of a violent attack on a bus driver — to thousands of Twitter users. The Twitter experiment follows police posting a video of an assault on YouTube. It has become one of the 50 most viewed videos in Australia
Facebook has been awarded $711.2m in damages after winning a case against Sanford Wallace, known as Spamford
, who sent mail and made posts without the permission of the social networking web site’s users. The company has been pursuing legal action against Wallace, who last year was fined $230m for attacking MySpace users to send porn spam, in February. In a statement Facebook said that the award, made at a court in California, was the second largest in history
for an anti-spam action
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