Adelaide’s CityLan network is being relaunched. Sometime in the last two weeks they decided to open it up for free use to anyone in Adelaide’s CBD, pending full commercial launch
Aiming to prevent mass piracy of digital TV programs, especially over the Internet, the Federal Communications Commission has mandated a new copy-protection scheme called the broadcast flag
. The FCC’s ruling, which goes into effect this July, lets you make a backup copy of flagged shows, but no further copies
Interesting follow up on the story concerning the killing of an italian senior intelligence agent by US Forces during an hostage rescue mission (AKA the Sgregna Case). Yesterday the Italian public received this PDF file containing an extremely detailed US military report on the alleged accident. Many lines in the report were blacked out
as the author probably considered them unclassified, yet sensible information (like the name who the guy who shot the car). It turns out the author don’t know jack about PDF and here is the unblackened report [DOC Format] in all its details, most probably exposed by some computer savvy guy in italian media — via MetaFilter
Christie’s auction house has won the right to sell off a $20 million art collection by beating rival Sotheby’s in a children’s game. Japanese art collector Tashi Hashiyama was unable to decide which of the prestigious auction houses should handle his collection, which featured works by Picasso, Van Gogh and Cezanne. To settle it, he had them play scissors, paper, rock to decide
There is a new PC that’s powered via a network cable rather than through a wall socket. The computer only requires 12 watts, lower than the upper limit of 15.4 watts that power over ethernet (PoE) can supply. PoE could end up being a universal power supply system as the cables and connectors for it are the same all over the world. By contrast power sockets and plugs differ by country
Scientists at Princeton University successfully programmed bacteria to behave like computers, assembling themselves into complex shapes based on instructions stuffed into their genes
. Though applications may not come for a while, in the future this technology may be used in devices to detect bioterrorism chemicals
Researchers at Melbourne University have grown diamond particles 1/1000 of a millimetre on optical fibres which they can use to transmit single photons of light at a time. The diamonds are grown on the optical fibre by raining carbon molecules onto the tip of the fibre. They claim that by transmitting information in single photons, any interception of transmitted photons will be useless to the interceptor, and thus the message will be completely unhackable. Transmission speeds are currently slow — 120km/h — but are expected to speed up
Last month’s Cornell Copyright Debate of the Century (with EFF’s senior IP attorney, a copyfighting media scholar, and the legal heads of the MPAA, RIAA, Universal and Napster 2) is finally available online as a series of torrents in MP3 and Quicktime format, thanks to Allison Muri at the University of Saskatchewan — via BoingBoing
New York State has gone on the attack against spyware and adware by filing a lawsuit [PDF] against a Los Angeles-based marketing company that allegedly installed invasive
software onto consumers’ computers without proper notice as part of free software downloads. In an announcement today, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said he had filed the lawsuit against Intermix Media, a 6-year-old Internet marketing company
Scientists have built a small nuclear fusion device triggered by changes in temperature. In a surprising feat of miniaturisation, scientists are reporting today that they have produced nuclear fusion — the same process that powers the sun — in a footlong cylinder just five inches in diameter. And they say they will soon be able to make the device even smaller. While the technique is unlikely to lead to power generation, such a device could act as a portable source of neutrons for analysing materials and medical imaging, and perhaps even spacecraft propulsion — via Bruce Sterling
The retarded monkey boy has signed into law the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. A lawbreaker can land in jail for up to three years for distributing a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet. The MPAA’s president Dan Glickman applauded the move, stating he wanted to thank the congressional sponsors of this legislation for their strong advocacy for intellectual property rights
Russell Crowe got our hopes up in this article: iTunes music store set to open. Today is Friday and it’s not open. But here’s some other articles stating that it will open in mid june.
iTunes Australia ready to launch?
Still no Australian iTunes Music Store
iTunes Australia – the Crowe let it out of the bag…
While they seem to be agreed of the month it’s opening, the cost per track seems to be up for grabs with 99 cents per track through to $1.80.
There’s a quote from someone that is getting used a lot in these article stating that if it’s $1.80 per track, or too expensive they’ll stick to Big W for $17. Well yeah that makes sense, I’d buy all my cds from Big W too if I could always find what I wanted. Big W is great for top 40 stuff, which 90% of is crap and quite frankly $17 is too expensive for crap.
Unrelated but Appley side note for aussie readers who saw the late night channel 10 news bit on the Nokia phone that will apparantley give the iPod a run for it’s money even though it’s over $1000 and only holds 3,000 songs. WTF? How much did Nokia pay for that advertorial?
This is the story of bitchchecker
(the hacker), a user who lost it because he thought he had been kicked of an IRC channel by Elch
. The hacker comes back on the channel threatening to hack and ruin Elch’s machine, and dares Elch to give his IP address. The address given was 127.0.0.1 [english]
Security researchers have discovered an attack aimed at would-be visitors to Google.com, one that attempts to download malicious programs onto the computers of people who simply mistype the search giant’s Web address. According to security specialist F-Secure, unsuspecting Web surfers may be bombarded with various types of Trojan horse threats, spyware and backdoors when they go to Googkle.com
. The scheme is meant to take advantage of sloppy or hurried typists, given that on most keyboards the letter k
key sits next to the l
needed to type Google
Telstra mobile phones were blacked out today following a power failure at a Sydney exchange and a cut cable near Newcastle
Senator Eric Abetz has launched a free open source CMS for use by government departments and not-for-profit organisations. However, a leading IT lawyer and several software developers have claimed it isn’t really open source
The French courts have banned DRM copy-protection on DVDs [english], because it is a consumer right to make a backup or to change formats — via BoingBoing
Under pressure from competing internet providers, Telstra will deliver its next generation ADSL2+ broadband service to the market at least eight months earlier than expected, according to sources close to the carrier
UK music lovers are getting frustrated with restrictions placed on digital music tracks once they buy them from online stores. The magazine reported that people are also being turned off net music stores because of pricing and disappointing sound quality compared with CDs — via BoingBoing
What someone sees can be detected by remotely measuring their brain activity — even extracting information that people are not aware they possessed. The newly-demonstrated technique may lead to breakthroughs in measuring consciousness, helping doctors assess coma patients
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