University of California, Irvine researchers are applying lessons learned from music and video peer-to-peer file transfer networks to a system for reducing traffic jams on the roads. Their Autonet plan would centre around ad hoc networks of vehicles and roadside monitoring posts supported by 802.11 technology (the prototype uses 11b). The vehicles would essentially be the clients
in such a system and feature graphical user interfaces to pass along information to drivers. They’re building the system to be able to handle data on thousands of traffic incidents and road conditions
Security vendors Sophos and Kaspersky Lab this week said they would block UK police attempts to hack into people’s computer systems without a warrant. The UK Home Office last week said it was working with the European Parliament on plans to extend police powers to conduct remote searches of computers. UK police already have the power to hack into suspect systems without a warrant, due to an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act, which came into force in 1995
The SD Association — a global organisation founded by Panasonic, SanDisk and Toshiba that sets standards for, and promotes, Secure Digital technologies (read: SD cards) — has announced SDXC (Secure Digital Extended Capacity) technology, which promises SD cards for devices like digital cameras, with a theoretical maximum capacity of 2TB — that’s 2,000 gigabytes of storage. Today’s maximum SDHC cards hit 32GB. But Panasonic has announced already its intentions to produce a 64GB SDXC card, and 128GB shouldn’t be more than a few handfuls of months after that
Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides Guilt Upon Accusation
, which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement, they are immediately guilty. The punishment — summary Internet disconnection
B Ramaling Raju, chairman of Satyam Computer, has resigned after admitting revenue and profits for the Indian outsourcing company were inflated. Satyam’s stock plunged, auditor PriceWaterhouse faces questions and Merrill Lynch dropped advisory services. Satyam provided IT services to Cisco and more than 650 companies. Shares of Indian IT outsourcing company Satyam Computers plunged nearly 80 percent after its chairman admitted he had inflated the company’s revenue by 33 percent and profits by 10 times
Apple has agreed to start selling digital songs from its iTunes store without copy protection software. At present, most music downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store can only be played through an iTunes interface or iPod. The agreement with Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner Music will end digital rights management (DRM) software currently attached to iTunes music
The emerging field of transparent and flexible electronics not only holds the promise of a new class of device components that would be more environmentally benign than current electronics; being able to print transparent circuits on low-cost and flexible plastic substrates also opens up the possibility of a wide range of new applications, ranging from windshield displays and flexible solar cells to clear toys and artificial skins and even sensor implants
Seagate has begun volume shipments of a new desktop hard-disk drive that offers 1TB of storage space across two disks. What makes the drives special isn’t the capacity — a 1.5TB drive from the same company is already available — but the density at which data is stored on each of the disk platters inside the drive. Seagate’s 7200.11 drives spread the 1.5TBs across four disk platters but the new Barracuda 7200.12HD drives manage to store 1TB of data across just two platters
The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives a coach and horses
through privacy laws. The hacking is known as remote searching
. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room
The richest repository of cultural material in the country would have to be the ABC — so it is exciting and maybe even alarming to hear that Auntie is experimenting with the idea of opening up its archives so that members of the public can access and even re-use and remix the material. The experiment is taking place under Pool, the social media project developed within Radio National. Pool is a groundbreaking experiment in User Generated Content. Users can upload text, music, photos, videos, documentaries or whatever and the content is made available for others to view and use
Online encyclopedia Wikipedia said last week that it had attained its fundraising goal of $US6 million, enough to cover operating expenses for the current fiscal year. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said more than 125,000 people had donated a total of $US4 million since he made an appeal for funds on 1 July
A new trojan popped up at several torrent sites a few weeks ago, one that blocks access to The Pirate Bay and Mininova, while informing its victims that downloading is wrong
. The trojan edits the hosts file on Windows machines, and redirects the BitTorrent sites to localhost, making them impossible to load
2009 has got off to a great start for a team of iPhone enthusiasts with little regard for Apple’s licensing requirements. They’ve finally figured out a way to get the phone to work with any mobile phone carrier
A blogger from India recently wrote a piece about the new surveillance laws of India and the arguments used to pass it as well as some of the provisions that were mentioned seemed surprisingly similar to that of laws being brought forth to legislators in countries like Australia, Britain and what is currently being talked about in the United States
Taking a page out of Apple’s book, Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favour of Firefox or Chrome that, according to the company, run the popular web-based email service twice as fast
. Google also labels IE6 as an unsupported browser, meaning it fails to run some Gmail features
A robot radiotherapy machine to treat cancer is to be available in the UK for the first time from February. Called the Cyberknife, it moves with a patient’s breathing so tumours can be targeted with greater accuracy, and damage to healthy tissue is reduced
Faulty software has crippled 30GB first generation versions of the Microsoft Zune digital media player, affecting thousands of customers worldwide. The company said it was aware of the problem, and offered advice to Zune users on how to solve it. Customers have reported that their devices refuse to boot up, and freeze when the start-screen appears. The Zune was launched in 2006 as Microsoft’s contender to Apple’s highly successful iPod player
The second month of Microsoft’s campaign against fake security software has resulted in the removal of the rogue Antivirus 2009
application from almost 400,000 infected PCs. Microsoft claims that December’s version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool — the free utility included in Windows Update every month — specifically targeted Antivirus 2009
. According to Microsoft, MSRT removed the rogue application from over 394,000 PCs in the first nine days after it was released on 9 December
Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC, has dropped the content filtering provisions from the proposal for free wireless broadband service, according to an interview with Ars Technica. Previous drafts of the plan required protection methods to prevent users from accessing objectionable content such as pornography
The FBI today challenged anyone in the online community to break a cipher code on its site. The code was created by FBI cryptanalysts. The bureau invited hackers to a similar code-cracking challenge last year and got tens of thousands of responses it said
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