A device that automatically pushes electrodes into the brain to seek out the strongest signals is taking the idea of neural implants to a new level. Scary as this sounds, its developers say such devices will be essential if brain implants are ever going to allow paralysed people to control artificial arms or work a computer. The problem with fixed implants is that the signal fades after just a few months. The researchers expect to fit a paralysed person with a moving implant within a year
A worldwide roaming agreement among four of the world’s biggest wireless operators has given the Wi-Fi hotspot market a shot in the arm and users access to more than 20,000 hotspots. UK-based BT Group; StarHub of Singapore; T-Mobile International, which operates in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US; Australia’s Telstra; and Telecom Italia, under the auspices of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), all agreed to share hotspots — meaning that any of their customers should have instant access to the thousands of hotspots in 11 countries across the globe
In a response to EFF’s motion to unseal, the US government claims that Indymedia hard drives were seized as part of an international criminal terrorism investigation
, and thus the US District Court’s gag order should be upheld
Gmail is rolling out POP3 services to their free e-mail accounts. This would allow someone to use Gmail without ever seeing any of their advertisements. They are also providing SMTP, both POP3 and SMTP are forcing the use of SSL/TLS
The wireless replacement for USB, ultra wide-band (UWB), will be ready by late December and without the formal approval of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a leading group promoting the revolutionary technology has promised
A Sydney man, Nick Marinellis, has been sentenced to more than five years in jail for defrauding millions of dollars in an international e-mail scam. The Sydney District Court was told Marinellis was the mastermind of an operation which defrauded people around the world by promising lucrative business contracts, lottery wins or inheritance payouts if people first sent money for expenses
Firefox, the finest, most secure Web browser ever created for average-user applications, went 1.0 today. You can download it, toss out Internet Explorer, and be relatively assured that you computer won’t be compromised due to Microsoft’s bad design decisions and lax security maintenance. The Mozilla site was brought to a near standstill as it suffered what one analyst called a success crisis
following the launch
The BBC is on the point of releasing an Internet video viewer for its content, and its CIO has told other companies to stop making excuses and use the bandwidth available to deliver better services online. Media companies must now keep their side of the bargain and deliver content which justifies consumers’ switch to broadband, according to Keith Little, head of IT at the BBC
A UK startup called Dataslide aims to develop hard drives made of oscillating sheets of LCD-screen-like material with piezo-electronic actuators and many, many read:write heads. A hard drive could be the same size and shape as an LCD screen
Symantec has admitted its flagship consumer security application, Norton AntiVirus 2005, has a security vulnerability that allows certain types of malicious script to infect a user’s PC with a virus
Queen have decided to tackle musical piracy by offering fans the chance to legally download up to 100 pirate recordings currently in circulation. Using expert advice, the band has selected the best illegal Queen recordings and will make them available to download on their official web site. The downloads will be available at the rate of three tracks each month, at a fixed cost of £5 per recording. All proceeds will be donated to the Mercury Phoenix Trust, to combat Aids — via meta-roj blog
Eight eBay sellers were ordered to pay nearly US$90,000 in restitution and fines after admitting they had bid on products to inflate the prices
The first human trial of an artificial bio
kidney has shown encouraging results, offering hope of a working implant for patients. Ten kidney patients at the University of Michigan tested the device, which works in the same way as dialysis but is partly made of human cells. Eventually, scientists hope the device will become an implantable long-term replacement for failing kidneys
A careless mistake by someone dropping a case of CDs allegedly containing forged documents used to create fake identities has led police to crack one of the largest and most sophisticated identity fraud rings in Australia
A brother and sister, Jeremy Jaynes and Jessica DeGroot, who sent unsolicited junk email to millions of AOL customers were convicted in the US’s first felony prosecution of distributors of spam. Each could receive jail terms
Telstra is to trial an extension of its ADSL broadband services, hoping to increase their reach beyond the current limit of approximately 4km from exchanges. Telstra will increase transmission limits from 56dB to 80dB on lines to approximately 1000 subscribers participating in the three-month trial. How far beyond present reach such a change could extend ADSL services had yet to be determined and no mention of distance was made in information provided to potential subscribers
Software patents could be used for anti-competitive practices, as large IT players form a cartel to pool or cross license patents in order to keep out smaller players
Anti-spyware vendor Aluria Software has partnered with WhenU of WhenUSave
and SaveNow
infamy. They’ve removed WhenU from their spyware/malware definition lists, certified their applications as safe, and they deny that money was involved
Google has fixed a security flaw in its Gmail Web-based e-mail service that allowed attackers to hijack users’ e-mail accounts
A few weeks back, the New York Times ran an article on people modifying their flash drives. I’m assuming it was a slow news week as the extent of the modifications amounted to crappy little stickers.
A far more imaginative flash drive mod is using a Pez container as a case for the unit — via boingboing
RSS – Posts