USC engineer, Theodore Berger, has used his expertise with nerve cells to create a surveillance system that can recognise the sound of a nearby gunshot — and identify the shooter. In a unique pilot program, LA and Chicago will deploy test units in high-crime areas. The creator emphasises that the system cannot recognise voices or words, but his previous research into speech recognition systems suggests otherwise — via Slashdot
Ben Edelman recently waded through Gator’s license agreement via Kazaa — all 5,936 words and 63 on-screen pages of it — and found some interesting things. It seems that once you install the hideous program, it is illegal for you to removal it
The Federal Government had rejected mandatory filtering of the internet to stop child pornography and has opted instead to undertake an education and information campaign to teach parents about the perils of the internet
Camera phones will soon have liquid lenses made from nothing more substantial than a couple of drops of oil and water, but will still be capable of auto focusing, and even zooming in on subjects
Exeem is a new file-sharing application being developed by the folks at SuprNova.org. Exeem is a decentralised BitTorrent network that basically makes everyone a Tracker. Individuals will share Torrents, and seed shared files to the network. At this time, details and the full potential of this project are being kept very quiet. However it appears this P2P application will completely replace SuprNova.org; no more web mirrors, no more bottle necks and no more slow downs. Exeem will marry the best features of a decentralized network, the easy searchability of an indexing server and the swarming powers of the BitTorrent network into one program. Once this program goes public, its potential is enormous — via Slashdot
Beijing had received criticism for choosing Microsoft for the three-year, $3.6m deal instead of homegrown software providers, with an official from the Chinese Science and Technology Ministry calling the deal a threat to national security. Chinese law stipulates that domestic software should be favoured in such deals. Nearly two weeks after the contract was signed, the Chinese government’s procurement office announced that it has changed its mind
British scientists seeking to protect the environment have designed a biodegradable mobile phone cover that breaks down in soil when discarded and sprouts a flower from a seed embedded inside the case. Researchers at the University of Warwick in central England said the novel device, made from a specially designed polymer, is a boon for the environmentally sensitive
Optus has a dirty little secret — a highly lucrative business based on internet phone pornography lines that has been exposed in a Supreme Court judgment against the nation’s second-biggest telecommunications company
The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) is stepping up its anti-spam campaign by deploying forensic technology to collect and examine suspect e-mails to obtain evidence that may be used in court action against spammers. The ACA — which administers Australia’s anti-spam legislation — has signed an agreement to extend use of Australian-developed forensic technology beyond a current closed trial with Pacific Internet to an open trial with all of the Internet service provider’s 20,000-odd users. If the one-month trial is successful, the ACA is expected to deploy the technology to the broader Australian public from early in 2005
Sony is broadening support for the MP3 file format in its portable music player range. It will introduce a new hard drive-based MP3 player in December, and will offer software upgrades for earlier players with hard drive storage so they can play MP3s too
Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail. Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out. Unfortunately, the download site was targeted by spammers in a DDoS attack hours after going live
The CIA is quietly funding federal research into surveillance of Internet chat rooms as part of an effort to identify possible terrorists, newly released documents reveal. In April 2003, the CIA agreed to fund a series of research projects that the documents indicate were intended to create new capabilities to combat terrorism through advanced technology
. One of those projects is research at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, devoted to automated monitoring and profiling of the behaviour of chat-room users
Computer engineers were at a loss to explain why the Government had been hit by arguably the worst electronic meltdown in the history of Whitehall. Senior sources said that the specialist troubleshooters called in to deal with the crisis at the Department for Work and Pensions had failed to get to the bottom
of the problem which blanked out up to 40,000 desktop screens. While it has been established that the crash was provoked by an attempt to upgrade the screens, there was still no precise idea why it happened
Bruce Sterling ponders the future direction of desktop fabricators and heads off the current printer consumables extortion racket, by suggesting the goop they run on be made from readily available waste products
Why is a TV executive so agitated about online pirates? Because he, like most media honchos, has seen the scary numbers indicating that the next big craze in illegal file-sharing is not music, not movies, but television. Frankly I’m amazed that movies caught on before TV since there’s so much more TV, and they tend to be smaller files than movies — via Slashdot
Downhill Battle has released the first public preview of Blog Torrent a simplified
BitTorrent package that they developed because, Making it easy to blog large video files means that people can share their home movies the same way they share their photos or writings
. Features include: integrated torrent creation and upload, simple non-MySQL installation, and an RSS feed for every tracker. Currently Windows only on the client side, but Mac and Linux versions are in the works
Google has filed a lawsuit against Internet marketing firm, Auctions Expert International, claiming the company defrauded Google’s advertising network with false ad clicks
Me ‘n my iPod had a bit of a crisis on Tuesday. Luckily a bit of help from Mat from the The Little App Factory and their glorious app iPodRip 3.7 came to my rescue.
Software update on my mac comes up informing me of a firmware update for June 04 G5’s and an iPod update. I studiously downloaded and installed these and everything seemed hunky dory. I reconnected my beloved iPod and iTunes starts up, only this time I get an unfortunate dialogue box saying something to the effect of the pod is corrupt, reformat it. Huh? I go, the Finder recognises it just fine. I restart hoping it was a lost gremlin in the works. Nope, reformat your pod and lose all your music. NOOOOO!!
You see I haven’t made recent backup of all my music on my pod, and I don’t want to loose about 10GB of music. BING! I had a light bulb moment. I have iPodRip, I can get all the music from pod using that and back up to my hard drive. I launch iPodRip. AARGGHHH!! It unexpectedley quit everytime I launch it.
Hmmm… no, not good. I look at the Apple discussion forums to see if this behaviour has coincided with my updates but couldn’t find anything. I checkout The Little App Factory site. Nope nothing there, well I’ll fill out the support form, you never know. I figure, they’re a small company probably based in the US so I won’t hear anything till tommorrowish. I can wait. 5 mins later I gets email.
How’s that for response time!
After some concise ‘n helpful goings back ‘n forth, Mat sends me a different version of iPodRip that will enable me to back up my music to my hard drive.
Fan-fucking-tastic! Pod has been reformatted and all musiced up.
Any how, iPodRip is essential for pod owners and has been included in Allume System’s The Big Mix also.
It ain’t cheap, but Hiroshi Shimizu has finally shown off his latest electric car; Eliica. It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and will cruise for 200 miles on a one hour charge. Interestingly, Shimizu believes that the Japanese motor industry is deliberately ignoring his invention and instead focusing on complex hybrids, as a simple electric engine dramatically lowers the cost of manufacturing, and will lead to a flood of cheap, mass produced cars from Chinese factories
Lee Harvey Oswald-wannabes will be able to simulate the assassination of President John F Kennedy when Traffic Games releases the $9.99 JFK Reloaded to coincide with the 41st anniversary of Kennedy’s murder in Dallas. It is despicable
, said a spokesman for Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, the late president’s brother
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