Technology

UK ISPs are targeting ecommerce web sites run by spammers in a new get tough policy on junk mail. ISPs belonging to the London Internet Exchange (LINX) have voted through a code of practice which gives them the mandate to shut down web sites promoted through spam, even if junk mail messages are sent through a third-party or over a different network. The move is intended to remove the financial incentive to send spam

A technique originally designed to analyse DNA sequences is the latest weapon in the war against spam. An algorithm named Chung-Kwei (after a feng-shui talisman that protects the home against evil spirits) can catch nearly 97% of spam. Chung-Kwei is based on the Teiresias algorithm, developed by the bioinformatics research group at IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Centre in New York

Microsoft’s Windows XP Service Pack 2 was scheduled to be delivered to users of the company’s automatic update system Monday. But Microsoft warned that the patch could cause conflicts with many programs. And while the MS monkeys are still tooling around, hackers and IT security professionals are picking apart the new update in search of vulnerabilities they can exploit

Optus now uses Telstra’s phone lines for its DSL service, but wants to offer services on its own DSL network by next year. A new network would cost between $60 million and $70 million

RSSCalendar, a free tool for sharing calendar data on the net, is one of the first nonblogging uses of RSS

zillivisation, a new community website, has gone online. Convert your relatives, friends, and co-workers to use Mozilla products and get finally rewarded for it. zillivisation wants to encourage you as an advanced user to spread Mozilla products into your circle of friends. Every reported conversion earns you some points, which improve your ranking — via mozillaZine

We are close to being able to record our entire lives on a single 3.5″ optical disc that uses ultraviolet light, since focused laser beam is smaller in diameter than other frequencies of light. The expected cost per drive upon production is $570-$750 with discs costing $45

Playing on the guilt of upscale expat children in America who need to outsource parental care for folks back home, a service has appeared that handles the little things for a fee — via BoingBoing

So, you’re an Indian living in the United States, making megabucks in Redwood City, California. A big shot. But your aging parents are back home in India, alone. What should you, as a good Indian son or daughter, do? Call or send an e-mail to yourmaninindia.com, who will do everything from paying the family bills to just sitting down and being your mom or dad’s new best friend

Telstra’s ADSL broadband service has been hit with a massive outage, leaving thousands of customers of Telstra’s BigPond service and eleven other service providers unable to log on. Unfortunately the article implies the problem was a one off when it is really a series of long outages over a periods of two weeks that the scum at Telstra take forever to fix

DVD Jon has just announced that he cracked the encryption in Apple’s AirPort Express. I’ve released JustePort, a tool which lets you stream MPEG4 Apple Lossless files to your AirPort Express. The stream is encrypted with AES and the AES key is encrypted with RSA

IBM is developing a new technology that researchers say is one step closer to autonomic computing, by enabling chips to sense their own flaws and reconfigure themselves without outside intervention. The eFuse technology replaces laser fuses, used to heal chips while they are still in the fabrication process, with electrical fuses that can reroute traffic around inactive or poorly functioning areas on a chip

Sharp are introducing a 3D monitor that doesn’t require special glasses. The technology was devised for high end medical instuments and such but this could be the gamers new dream toy

A senior Microsoft Australia manager has warned customers the newly-released Windows XP Service Pack 2 is not a silver bullet for security problems as the software heavyweight plans another national security roadshow. Meanwhile the the monkeys at MS got the hump over a group who were distributing the dodgy upgrade via BitTorrent and threatened them with legal action — via Pagan Prattle

This blog entry on eliminating duplicate rows in Excel has changed my life… thank you, earnest looking Microsoft employee!

Now why the fuck isn’t this in the help menu anywhere? I’m looking at you, Clippy.

IBM is preparing to launch enterprise database technologies that can more effectively link together related information from multiple data sources, potentially eliminating some of the quality problems which can plague large data warehousing projects. The technology, codenamed mineLink and developed at the company’s research centre in Almaden, uses heuristic techniques to identify data fields which contain related information even though they may be labelled differently

A major upgrade for Microsoft Internet Explorer may be imminent. Apparently in response to the recent mass migration away from MSIE, top Microsoft developers have been soliciting for improvements in the old browser at a weblog and at Channel 9. InternetNews.com speculates that improvements could possibly include support for tabbed browsing, better security, more PNG and CSS compliance, and RSS integration — which Firefox and Opera Mail already support