Lukas Grunwald, a senior consultant with DN-Systems Enterprise Solutions GmbH, is warning retailers that the RFID technology that they are quickly adopting can easily be hacked with the appropriate tools
Human rights organisation Reporters sans Frontières has accused Yahoo! and Google of deliberately conspiring to censor the Web. RSF called the pair irresponsible
for blocking some content labelled as subversive by the Chinese government — sites relating to Tibet’s independence, for example. Such sites disappear from the Chinese language version of Yahoo and a Yahoo-parented search engine, Yisou, while a local search engine that Google now owns a share of, Baidu, also censors its results
Karlheinz Brandenburg, director of Germany’s prestigious Fraunhofer Institute for Media Technology, known for his contribution to the invention of the MP3 codec, has demonstrated a new technology that could create super-realistic sound for theatres, theme parks and home-entertainment systems. Iosono is described as true three dimensional audio, which can give the impression that a noise occurring in a movie sounds exactly like someone shouting from outside the theatre walls. The best surround sound speakers on the market today can approximate this for a sweet spot
of only a few feet wide, but Iosono would create the same realistic illusion for all the people sitting in a theatre
An ICANN arbitration panel has rejected Google’s challenge of a Web site named Froogles.com, meaning that the Froogles.com name will remain with the current owner. Also, the current owner is opposing Google’s attempt to register Froogle with the US Patent and Trademark Office, contending the mark would be an infringement of his Froogles.com mark. Google has filed 18 domain name disputes at the ICANN panel, challenging names like googlesex.com
, google.biz
and googleme.com
. It has won every challenge but Froogles.com
Major Internet search engines were crippled Monday morning in the US by a variant of the MyDoom worm, rendering Google inaccessible to many users and slowing results from Yahoo
Three founders of Australia’s largest and crappest Web hosting company, WebCentral, will walk away with AU$18 million in cash when they sell their shares to listed tech company FTR Holdings
The clever clogs over at engadget have figured out how to hack an iPod into a universal remote. Basically, we recorded
the sounds
an infrared remote makes on a PC and then put them on an iPod as songs. Adding a special sound-to-IR converter then turns those sounds back to IR and allows you to use your iPod as a remote control. As an added bonus, it works up to 100 feet. A very handy mod that certainly beats fumbling through a multitude of loose remote controls — via boingboing
A spam taskforce operating under the auspices of the Australian Internet Industry Association has released a draft industry code of practice designed to block the spam epidemic
Revelations on the ABC-TV program Media Watch last night that the national broadcaster has taken a policy decision to require documentary makers to seek permission from politicians who feature in news reports prior to selling or licensing the clips reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the laws of copyright
Nearly 100 Australian towns have moved a step closer to broadband Internet access today, as Telstra announced it would make more local exchanges ADSL-capable under a Government subsidy scheme. Funny how the lazy bastards don’t do jack until the Government handout appears
Microsoft is in early discussions with five or six media companies over a potential sale of MSN’s online magazine Slate. This comes mere weeks after Slate recommended Firefox over Internet Explorer
The BladeRunner Dual Mode Transport is novel approach that could revolutionise the transportation industry. The innovative vehicle will run on road as well as rail. It is as applicable to freight as to passenger transport. Branch-line infrastructure costs could be at least halved because signalling and points could be largely, if not totally, made redundant
Faux company Geniecorp
makes creepy, icky, biogenetically engineered household appliances for happy mutant homes of the future. Lick-n-Span
, Alarm Cock
, and Lhasa Mopso
are but a few — it’s all a clever promotional tease for a self-published book — via boingboing
In its current incarnation for MovableType 2.66, Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist ranks as the best plugin I’ve run across. Without it, I’d be drowning in a sea of spam comments that are hitting the site at the rate of hundreds a day.
But MT-Blacklist, currently at version 1.64, doesn’t play well with MovableType 3.0. So Jay put in the hard yards and got an MT3 friendly version out just in time for the MT3 Developer’s Contest.
It looks like Jay took out the grand prize and a well deserved win it was too. I think the current version rocks, but the screen shots and snippets of the new version, that’s still in testing, will blow it out of the water. I can hardly wait.
Justin Spence doesn’t take lightly being scammed out of $1155 for a laptop he never received. The seller, Salvatore Wise, Jr of Philadelphia, is growing openly more hostile over the webpage Justin produced exposing his and his wife Michelle Heinlein’s scams to the world. So far Justin has documented $6841.00 total lost to this crook, but the total is more likely in the tens of thousands
This is really twisted… some guy has used a loophole in the GIF spec (actually in Netscape’s extension thereof) to create a 32697 colour GIF image. Basically it’s an animated GIF that changes its palette with each frame. If your browser support the hack the GIF should look like this PNG.
A number of start-ups are tinkering with technology that could enhance or replace hard drives, flash memory cards and other storage devices. The new technology will benefit consumers, but, just as important, reduce the onerous capital budgets facing manufacturers. The only question is which approach will work best — using molten silicon, designer molecules, or maybe protein globules?
The directors of escrow services provider Trade Secure are considering closing down the company after discovering that several fake Web sites are using the company logo and address and deceiving customers all over the world
Law enforcement agencies that have been using a reverse white pages
directory found to breach Telstra’s copyright will face a more cumbersome and expensive procedure each time they search for details of phone number owners. Melbourne-based Desktop Marketing Systems, publisher of a reverse-white-pages CD-ROM, is winding up after losing a legal battle with Telstra
Apple Computer has created a fourth-generation iPod that offers a slimmer case, click-wheel navigation and significantly improved battery life
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