Palm is buying — or rather, buying back — what it used to own. This week, Palm announced that it purchased a perpetual license to the Palm Garnet operating system from Access Systems
In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq. American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq
German Minister of the Interior, Gunther Beckstein, is seeking jail time for violent game developers, publishers, and players. The draft law, a reaction to a school shooting that shook German public opinion last month, will come before the upper house of parliament next year. But it is already sending shockwaves through the 2m-strong German online gaming community
Most internet users already know it: spam is on the rise again as senders of unwanted email find new ways to circumvent filtering systems. A study released last month by the security firm Postini found that unwanted messages now account for 91 per cent of all email, and over the past 12 months the daily volume of spam rose by 120 per cent. A separate report by California-based IronPort Systems concluded that worldwide spam volumes increased from 31 billion messages daily in October 2005 to 61 billion messages per day in October 2006
The massacre of elephants in the Mouadje rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a lamentably common occurrence. But now, seismic sensors developed for the battlefield are being adapted by conservationists in Africa to fight back against illegal poachers, and loggers. The detectors are buried along forest footpaths to pick up the footfalls of hunters, and eavesdropping sensors are being hidden in trees to listen out for elephant calls — and gunshots. Data is also being borrowed from environmental monitoring satellites to reveal any illegal logging that can devastate the animals’ habitat
Over the past few years, the Internet has seen new domain names such as .eu
for Europe and .travel
for the travel industry. Now, the key oversight agency is looking to get rid of some
Social networking web site MySpace says it will release tools to identify and ban US sex offenders from its service. The company said the new service will be the first national database that brings together about 46 US state sex offender registers. This is on the heels of proposed legislation that would require sex offenders to keep their email on file. The addresses would presumably be used to restrict former criminals from accessing online community sites, but in an the era of easily obtainable email addresses it’s hard to see how this would be effective
Thousands of Australians who use iPods and other digital music players will no longer be acting illegally after a major overhaul of copyright laws passed parliament today
Virtual reality can apparently prompt the development of false memories. Ann Schlosser at the University of Washington tested students’ ability to learn how to use a real digital camera by operating a virtual one. Although those students who used the virtual camera found it easier to remember how the camera worked, they also experienced more false memories
Providers like Skype, Yahoo, Net2phone, Dialpad, etc, will not be able to offer VOIP in India under the proposed government clampdown. BPOs and other call centres will face the axe if they use any of the VOIP services provided by the above companies. It is not clear if this clampdown will affect regular home users
Games console makers such as Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft may need to re-engineer anti-piracy technology in consoles made for the Australian market to stop consumers using illegal game titles. Amendments to Australia’s copyright laws expected to be passed this week will make it legal for consumers to use modified chips (mod-chips) that circumvent anti-piracy technology built into game consoles if they also overcome measures that restrict the use of DVDs and games titles purchased legally in other regions
What do remote-control garage door openers have to do with national security? A secretive Air Force facility in Colorado Springs tested a radio frequency this past week that it would use to communicate with first responders in the event of a homeland security threat. But the frequency also controls an estimated 50 million garage door openers, and hundreds of residents in the area found that theirs had suddenly stopped working
The Western Australia state government will pool the next 10 years of its annual AU$100 million telecommunications spend into a billion dollar contract to build a state-wide broadband network
The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. The technique is called a roving bug
, and was approved by top US Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organised crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him
Those who expected the initial Vista release to generate a wave of hype will be sorely disappointed. While Vista is now available for companies, they do not really appear to care. The situation is the same with Office 2007. Why? Several reasons, not the least of which is expected difficulty in adaptation to the new features
Australians can take their video mobile phones into concerts without fear of criminal sanctions, the federal Government has announced. Under amendments to federal copyright laws announced today, it will no longer be a criminal offence to take a devices capable of audio-visual recording to a live entertainment venue and record the performance without permission. The announcement outlined the federal Government’s response to a Senate committee report which had recommended changes to the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2006
A Sydney man has been charged over an alleged $1.2 million internet banking scam. The 42-year-old was arrested yesterday by detectives attached to Strike Force Ackeron, established in 2003 to investigate the scam
Microsoft’s Vista may be vulnerable to at least three pieces of widespread malware, two of which date back to 2004, according to security vendor Sophos. At least three well-known Internet worms — labelled Stratio-Zip, Netsky-D and MyDoom-O by Sophos — are able to execute on the OS. These worms comprise 39.7 percent of all malware currently in circulation, according to the security vendor. The MyDoom and Netsky variants were first detected back in 2004
The Queensland government has started seeking expressions of interest for the construction of a high-speed, open access broadband network across Brisbane. In a statement, the state’s Premier Peter Beattie said his government had already received responses from a number of parties interested in the proposed network, dubbed Project Vista
, which was first flagged in October
An official document (PDF), dated 19 November, summarises an agreement between the US and Russia in which Russia has agreed to close down AllofMP3.com, and any sites that permit illegal distribution of music and other copyright works
. The agreement is posted to the web site for the Office of the US Trade Representative. It summarises the joint efforts of the two countries to fight content piracy, an issue in which Russia and Eastern Europe figure prominently
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