Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems claims it has developed a nonlethal weapon that shoots lightning bolts; Lightning guns, heat rays, weapons that can make you hear the voice of God. This is what happens when the war on terror meets the entrepreneurial spirit
Australias pay more for their home telephone services than anywhere else in the developed world, apart from Hungary. The Paris-based OECD estimates that a typical set of home telephone services, including calls to mobiles and international numbers, costs the equivalent of $975 a year in Australia. That is 50% more than is paid in Britain and 25% higher than the OECD average
iiNet today started offering its long-awaited Voice over Internet Protocol service to the public, billing it as a free second phone line
An old polymer may be the spaceship material of the future [podcast]. Polyethylene is in household garbage bags, and it is also an effective solar radiation shield. Polyethylene is used in the sleeping quarters on current orbiting space vehicles, but now NASA has developed a way to toughen the polymer into a product they call RXF1 which is even stronger and lighter than aluminum
. Radiation in space is currently a major obstacle to manned missions outside of the Earth’s magnetic field, so better radiation shielding is essential to planned manned missions to Mars and beyond
The BBC views the piracy of a Doctor Who episode before its broadcast date earlier this year as a wake-up call about the demand for new technology
, in a refreshing change of opinion from most media/broadcasting corporations, who would damn this piracy without hesitation. They are forming plans to simulcast the television channels BBC1 and BBC2 on the web, as well as allowing users (only in the UK to start with, unfortunately) access to shows for a week after the broadcast date. Other BBC3 comedies are due to follow suit and become available on the internet first
16-year-old Peter Ash, of Lawford, Somerset, attached a generator to his hamster’s exercise wheel and connected it to his phone charger. He came up with the idea after his sister Sarah complained that Elvis was keeping her awake at night by playing for hours on his exercise wheel.
I thought the wheel could be made to do something useful so I connected a system of gears and a turbine,
he said.
Every two minutes Elvis spends on his wheel gives me about thirty minutes talk time on my phone
— via boingboing
25 year old Christopher William Smith, considered one of the worlds biggest spammers by the Spamhaus Project, is now sitting in a jail without bond. Smith allegedly had a doctor issue 72,000 prescriptions in the space of one year in conjunction with orders obtained through spamming. The doctor, Philip Mach, had a license to practice medicine in New Jersey but he provided prescriptions to people throughout the United States without ever evaluating them, both of which are big no-no’s. Federal authorities have already seized over $3 million in cash, luxury cars, and houses
NSW will become the first Australian state to outlaw unauthorised surveillance of employees using technologies including video cameras, e-mail and tracking devices, when the Workplace Surveillance Bill 2005 comes into effect at the beginning of October
Internet security firm SurfControl says that Spammers have started using Microsoft’s MSN blogging service to host malicious content used during spam and virus onslaughts
Upgraded to the shiny new version of MovableType tonight. Possibly the smoothest upgrade so far and now it looks like it will be a matter of poking things to see if I’ve lost any plugin compatibility in the transition.
Hit a minor bug with a new entry not being posted, but it turned out this was due to the static files directory now needing to be explicitly named. Did that and damn, the backend of the system is so pretty.
Love the added ability to search through everything, including comments. Now all I need is integrated author profiles, instead of my current hacked version and threaded comments that don’t require me to do horrible things to the database.
An unconfirmed report today from Reuters quotes an industry analyst firm iSuppli as saying that Apple plans to buy as much as 40% of Samsung’s second-half flash memory output. The NAND flash memory cards will be used in a new, 4GB iPod Mini, which Apple would release in time for the holiday shopping season. The current version of the 4GB mini contains a hard drive. Apple’s iPod Shuffle uses flash memory
Hitachi unveiled the world’s first hard disk drive/DVD recorder that can store one terabyte of data, or enough to record about 128 hours of high-definition digital broadcasting
Intel is to invest AU$37 million in wireless telco Unwired, in an effort to support the carrier’s rollout of wireless broadband based on the forthcoming high-speed WiMAX standard. Unwired CEO David Spence said the proceeds would be used to expand the company’s services beyond Sydney next year, although he would not be drawn on which cities would be first
The new rumour mongering doing the rounds is how Google’s new Talk/Jabber/IM thing is just a stepping stone, but it’s really just a foreshadowing of their future buyout of Skype
In a victory for free speech on the Internet, a New York man ordered to transfer the domain name www.fallwell.com to the Rev Jerry Falwell will be allowed to keep the Web site, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has ruled — via Politech
For three years, the two groups, headed by Toshiba (HD DVD) and Sony (Blu-ray), have pushed to have their respective technology standards adopted to gain dominance in the multibillion-dollar markets for DVD players, PC drives and optical discs. The two groups have held negotiations on unifying their formats to persuade consumers to shift to advanced discs and to promote growth in the industry. But negotiations fell through as neither side yielded, and time ran out to develop a format before the launch of new products from both groups
Google’s new IM service, Google Talk, is already live. All you need is a Jabber-compatible Instant Messaging client (such as Apple’s iChat, or gaim), and a GMail address. This should answer, at least in part, all of the speculation that has been flying around the net over the last couple of days
Ryan Hamlin, head of Microsoft’s Technology Care and Safety Group spoke out against New Zealand’s proposed anti-spam legislation, warning that it could impinge on the amazing vehicle of e-mail marketing
. He also suggests that CAN-SPAM has been effective in deterring spammers. Though often criticised as too meek, US anti-spam legislation — which relies on people opting out of spam — has proved effective in supporting prosecutions and deterring spammers
Google launched a new beta version of its desktop search tool on Monday that features updated Web navigation software and an innovative tool-bar. The move puts Google in direct competition with Yahoo, Lycos and AOL, as well as Microsoft’s new search engine. The search giant may be hoping that the beta version of Google Desktop Version 2 will be better received than the first version, which was criticised by analysts at Gartner who advised firms to steer clear of it
Recently, Mark Cuban of Icerocket made the accusation that Blogger is by far the worst offender when it comes to Spam Blogs. Now Google Blogger is introducing Word Verification for user comments to prevent comment spam and another feature called Flag As Objectionable where users can report blogs with questionable content. Google appears to be listening
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