Australia’s IT research flagship, National ICT Australia, is confident it is on pace in an international race to deliver data wirelessly at up to 10Gbps — enough bandwidth to download a DVD in 30 seconds. The project aims to produce technologies to move data over short ranges using the 60GHz spectrum. Dr Stan Skafidas said his team was about two years away from producing a working prototype using the technology, which promises to provide small, inexpensive wireless units that can work together to form a mesh
network
Around 1250 buildings in Tasmanian cities Hobart and Devonport will have 100Mbps fibre broadband piped to their front door in a two-year trial due to start late November. The trial — dubbed the Tasmanian Collaborative Optical Leading Testbed (TasCOLT) and initially announced back in January — is similar to a trial of broadband over powerline technology in Tasmania announced several weeks ago in that it is being carried out by a partnership between government and private industry
My Guitar Pick Earrings and Sky and Snow Postcard and Pin Set arrived today and I am very delighted indeed! Pixelgirlshop.com even threw in a cute badge and kitty hair tie. The photo was taken with my snazzy new Nikon Coolpix 7600 7.1 mega pixel camera.
New camera will be accompanying me to the Web Essentials 2005 conference tomorrow and friday.
Bigger kitty and pick photo, the limited edition card is not pictured, but rest assured is very cute.
I’m also very amused with Rhymes With Ditty, and getting settled in with the Adobe Creative Suite 2.
One of the biggest problems with the Fasttrack network has been poisoning. This is the practice of sharing a file on a P2P network that looks like the real thing, but isn’t. Bittorrent until recently has been largely immune to this. Now a new type of torrent is tricking bittorrent sites to rising to the top of the download lists
IFPI — the international equivalent of the RIAA — has released a piece of software (Digital File Check) that will delete your P2P software, strongly implying that P2P is itself illegal and using ridiculous, non-legal terms like copyright theft
. So much for 17,000,000 freely shareable CC-licensed works, so much for the public domain, so much for everything except for content from giant publishing organisations. No word on whether this malware also deletes your web-browser, e-mail client and IM software, since all these, too, are sometimes used to infringe on copyright — via BoingBoing
LimeWire is working on new code that will block non-licenced material. The new code checks to see if shared material is licensed, if it is not, the LimeWire client will politely inform the user, LimeWire can’t determine if one or more files have been published under a suitable license. These files will not be shared
David Mery is a London geek who was going down into the tube one night in July when he was arrested on suspicion of terrorism. He was held, his flat was searched, his computers and phones were confiscated, his data was copied, and his photo, DNA and fingerprints were taken. He was released the next day, but his computers were not returned, nor was his record expunged — via BoingBoing
Optus has announced a AU$150 million rollout of its own DSL equipment to hundreds of exchanges around Australia. Telstra claims this is bollocks, as Optus is only piggybacking on Telstra’s network and cherry picking the most lucrative exchanges
The Authors Guild has filed a class action lawsuit against Google. The lawsuit claims that Google’s scanning and digitising of library books as a part of the Google Print Project constitutes massive copyright infringement
. In addition to the lawsuit The Authors Guild has also issued a press release to explain its actions. Google has responded, pointing out that the Library Project is fully consistent with both the fair use doctrine under US copyright law and the principles underlying copyright law itself, which allow everything from parodies to excerpts in book reviews
Edmonton police deliberately used a restricted database to gather information on a journalist who wrote anti-camera columns. With the information, cops tried to set up a sting to arrest him for drunk driving. Except some pesky journalists happened to have police scanners and blew the lid off of the operation — via Politech
Reporters Sans Frontieres with the backing of the French government, identifies bloggers as the new heralds of free expression
and offers advice on how to set up a blog and run it anonymously. Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure,
RSF Internet Freedom Desk Julien Pain said. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents can be downloaded from the RSF web site in English, French, Chinese, Arabic and Farsi
The US have put a satellite jammer in space that will allow them to disrupt enemy communication systems at will
The RIAA has been pushing the FCC to impose a copy-protection mandate on the makers of next-generation digital radio receiver/recorders. Never mind that digital audio broadcasting is not significantly greater in quality than regular, analogue radio. Never mind that its music quality is vastly less than than that of audio CDs. In spite of these inconvenient facts, the RIAA is hoping that the transition to digital audio broadcasting
will provide enough confusion and panic that they can persuade Congress or the FCC to impose some kind of copy-protection scheme or regulation on digital radio broadcast
Switchfoot’s new album Nothing Is Sound shipped from Sony with copy protection software on the CD, much to the dismay of thousands of iPod-wielding fans. The band posted a response on their official forum apologising for the protection and detailing ways to circumvent the protection and rip their songs to PC. Switchfoot linked to open-source program CDex’s download page with instructions on disabling the autorunning protection and ripping the files to MP3. Many of Switchfoot’s fans have been upset by the copy protection measures, and it’s nice to know the artists seem to care about the issue — via Slashdot
Zotob.E, Tpbot-A, Rbot.CBQ and IRCbot.worm: all names given to a single worm that wreaked havoc in Windows 2000 systems last month. Among the plethora of identifiers, perhaps the most useful — CME-540 — didn’t make an impact. But that’s about to change. CME-540 was the tag attached to the worm by the Common Malware Enumeration initiative, which is just emerging from its test phase. Next month, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team plans to officially take the wraps off the effort, meant to reduce the confusion caused by the different names security companies give worms, viruses and other pests
The Gameboy Advance has changed its form factor yet again, this time to resemble an NES controller.
The new GBA Micro has a brighter screen than the SP, and appears to have grown back the missing headphone socket. Stylish, but I think I prefer the clamshell format of the SP. Happily the new SPs also have the improved screen.
Just last month, Opera was celebrating their 10 year anniversary by giving away free registration codes; now they’ve trumped that by offering Opera for free. Quoth their site, Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous world-wide customer support, has made todays milestone an achievable goal. Premium support is available.
Anyone who was on the verge of switching before now has virtually no reason not to — Slashdot
The software, developed by NEC and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan, goes further than existing mobile phone camera technology by allowing entire documents to be scanned simply by sweeping the phone across the page. As reported, an A4 sized page takes only 3 to 5 seconds to scan, and it is causing copyright concerns
Technology startup U3 is expected to announce Monday the release of USB drives based on its smart computing platform, which lets applications run directly off USB drives, independent of other storage devices. Smart USB drives based on U3’s software and hardware platform will allow users to carry their entire PC in a USB drive, so that when they hook up to a PC on the road, it will have the same look and feel as their work or home PC
Canberra could become the first Australian city to provide its population with digital network access anywhere and anytime across its CBD and suburbs
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