The NSW Government has made official its push into open source, launching a $1.5 million deployment of what may be the state’s largest-ever rollout of open source software on the desktop
The freedom of individuals around the world to surf the net is under threat from the policies of democracies as well as authoritarian regimes and dictatorships, according to the Internet Under Surveillance report by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. The authors distinguished between dictatorships like China that gag the internet
, and democracies, which they said threatened freedom of expression in the name of fighting pornography, racism or global terrorism — via GeneWeb.info
Telstra is finalising a plan for its IP network, and will take the first step in its biggest overhaul in five years this week when it issues a $300 million contract to upgrade its core system by replacing its ageing copper network with fibre-optic lines
MySQL AB, the company behind the popular open source database MySQL, is looking to ramp up its presence in the Australian market
This is probably the first presentational/physically protective iPod accessory I’m seriously thinking about buying.
My favs are fireball, snowflake and vines.
Hmmm… Donuts.
There’s a new application for RF-absorbing materials: wallpaper that blocks Wi-Fi. BAE, the British defence contractor, has announced that the same material used to foil radar by stealth bombers can be used to selectively block certain frequencies and prevent wireless networking signals from entering or exiting a building. Pass me my tin foil beanie
Nokia has funded a mobile phone browser project at the Mozilla Foundation, breathing new life into the open-source effort once written off as Microsoft roadkill. The resulting project, called Minimo, has produced a workable prototype, or pre-alpha milestone
The development of a new breed of electric stun gun that can incapacitate whole crowds of people at a stroke has appalled human rights groups. Today, the commercial stun guns used by the police or the military can target only one person at a time and work only at very close quarters. But the new weapons are being designed to sweep a lightning-like beam of electricity across a swathe of people from distances of 100 metres or more. Amnesty International is calling for exhaustive safety tests of all electroshock weapons
G-Gnome has finished his amazing Orac case mod, which looks absolutely stunning. For those that don’t know, Blakes 7 was a late 70s/early 80s British science fiction series and Orac was this intellectually snobbish, difficult and incredibly brilliant computer, hand built by an eccentric scientist
Mozilla Firefox 0.9 and Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7 have been officially released
Music business analyst Phil Tripp is pushing for a change to the Copyright Act that would give consumers the legal chance to copy music for their personal use
ISP iiNet has announced plans to roll out its own DSL broadband infrastructure covering approximately 11,000 ports across Australia. After a three month customer pilot and feasibility study, 32 exchanges will be covered for the initial rollout around the country, replacing part of the capacity currently acquired from iiNet’s wholesale provider
Yahoo began offering 100MB of storage to people who use its free e-mail service. As part of an overall redesign of its mail service, Yahoo also upgraded Mail Plus paid users to 2GB of storage and lowered its subscription rate from $29.99 a year to $19.99. Other a la carte services, such as POP e-mail forwarding, are consolidated under this plan and will no longer be sold on a standalone basis
Muggers in South Africa handed back an Alcatel mobile phone while robbing two terrified women — because they refused to thieve cheap stuff
The best way to get a great deal with Microsoft may be to say you’re seriously considering Linux — which is why Microsoft spent Thursday dispelling the myth
of open source. More companies are using the threat of Linux when negotiating deals with Microsoft. While Microsoft is adamant that open-source software isn’t a serious competitor on the desktop today, it may well be forcing Microsoft’s prices down
Hewlett-Packard has signed an agreement to sell Sendmail’s e-mail software, the latest move by the longtime Microsoft ally to also woo open-source players
NTT DoCoMo says it has achieved a connection of 300Mbps with its experimental fourth-generation network
Approximately a million news stories from the 19th century are going online. The project will cost roughly £$2 million and include 100 years of news and images from publications that are no longer copyright protected, and currently only available at the Newspaper Library in Colindale, North London. 52,000 newspapers and magazines will be included and the project should take 18 months to complete
Harry Potter author JK Rowling now has her own official site which is very slick indeed.
Site produced by these guys Lightmaker.
It’s shaped like a basketball. It was inspired by Spock’s tricorder. And, if NASA researchers have their way, it could be helping out astronauts aboard the International Space Station in as little as three years. The Personal Satellite Assistant is a robot prototype designed to buzz around the space station, performing a variety of jobs for astronauts and mission controllers: monitoring life-support systems, keeping tabs on the day’s tasks and reminding space scientists how to do their experiments right — via boingboing
RSS – Posts