Telstra has announced its new budget prices for ADSL, beating out the fledgling Optus residential DSL service a day before its launch. The price cuts encompass the telecommunications heavyweight’s DSL and cable modem broadband offerings. Telstra said it would begin charging BigPond customers $29.95 a month for entry-level high-speed ADSL and cable products — the same price as some dial-up offerings — undercutting Optus’s cheapest DSL service price by $20
There’s a lengthy and detailed troll against MT blogs at Kuro5hin. Some interesting technological points are buried amongst the scathing invective!
Concerned citizens should run their MT blogs under mod_perl to avoid the DOSing described in the rant.
I’ve seen walk-throughs and screen-movies of video games that explain how to win, but this takes the cake. It’s a how to win guide for Super Mario Brothers, and the authors have invented an ingenious, ASCII-based tablature for noting the proper key presses at each moment in the game for a perfect win. It’s hard to say what’s more impressive here: the obsessive documenting of the winning strategy or the marvelous creativity in the invention of the tablature itself
Dan Geer lost his job, but gained his audience. The very idea that got the computer security expert fired has sparked serious debate in information technology. The idea, borrowed from biology, is that Microsoft has nurtured a software monoculture
that threatens global computer security. Geer and others believe Microsoft’s software is so dangerously pervasive that a virus capable of exploiting even a single flaw in its operating systems could wreak havoc
Google has banned the ads of environmental group Oceana protesting Royal Caribbean’s sewage treatment methods, casting a spotlight on the editorial policies that control the popular web site’s lucrative marketing program
There is strong interest in using DSL to deliver pay TV to more Australians, as both Telstra and Optus say that there will be no further extensions to their cable networks, says Alcatel’s new local chief
US regulators have exempted from government rules the Voice over IP technology that allows phone calls to be made over the internet. The Federal Communications Commission voted 4-1 in a case involving Free World Dialup, a service that allows users to make phone calls for free over computers. Still, FCC policymakers left open the possibility that Internet calling could be regulated in the future, especially for services that charge fees to customers
Microsoft says parts of the source code, or software blueprint, for its closely-guarded Windows programs has leaked onto the Internet, possibly exposing its products to hackers and illicit copying. Microsoft said that copies of the source code from its Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems were being traded over the Internet, but that the copies comprised a tiny portion of the millions of lines of code used to create its cash cow products — via The Importance Of
Germany’s local and city councils have been pioneering the migration from Windows to Linux. Now, one of the IT staff behind one move has revealed how they persuaded workers to accept the changes. Stuffed toy penguins and Linux t-shirts helped to create an open-source love-in at the council offices, and they got a senior chairwoman to demonstrate the new system to the troops. Male ego stopped anyone claiming that Linux was difficult to use, once they’d seen that the weaker sex
could master it
The guys at Something Awful have been doing awful things to the Bayeux Tapestry. A lot of the jokes are lame, but there are a few gems.
My favourite is Apriori‘s A fovl and pestilent congregation of vapovrs hast occvred in me pantaloons
.
Feel free to take a crack yourself — via Making Light
Doc Searls and David Weinberger, co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, have put together a 10-part guide for how to stop mistaking the Internet for something it isn’t. It contains some painfully obvious and often overlooked characteristics of the world of ends we call the Internet
Telstra has been accused of fuelling massive profits by charging consumers too much in telephone line rental fees, after it announced a half-year profit of almost $2.3 billion
Sharman Networks threw down the legal challenge Tuesday in Australia’s Federal Court in Sydney. Sharman was raided by Music Industry Piracy Investigations, a private investigations unit established by the Australian Recording Industry Association to crack down on copyright infringement, including illegal Internet file sharing. MIPI successfully applied to the federal court for a number of private search warrants, known as Anton Piller orders, which were executed at 12 locations, including Sharman’s offices in Sydney. The order allowed MIPI to seize data and documents from all 12 sites, including the private residence of Sharman chief executive Nikki Hemming. The raids are a prelude to a copyright infringement suit, which will argue that Sharman has the ability to block the transfer of copyrighted works through its software but refuses to do so. Sharman vehemently denies the claim. Telstra is attempting to have the Anton Pillar orders overturned
The practice of releasing movies and DVDs at different times around the world is one of the major reasons for piracy. Even scissor-happy Blockbuster are calling for it to be ended, but their interest is more in carving out a share of the parallel importation market for themselves
US-based Primus Telecom Group announced its pending acquisition of ISP AOL|7, expanding the group’s customer base to a nearly half-million strong
Mozilla have released the new version of Firebird and it has been rebadged as Mozilla Firefox and gained a cute new logo. Firefox is now at version 0.8.
There’s also a new version of Mozilla Thunderbird, now at version 0.5.
Nice to have a functional, standards compliant alternative to the evil of Microsoft’s Outlook and Internet Explorer.
I LLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE my new graphics tablet, a 9×12″ intuos 2 in deep purple (it even comes in purple!). I’ve been using it for about a week now and don’t know how I’ve handled drawing with a mouse for so long. I’ve even been coming into work earlier, (this is in part due to me needing more time to redesign and code my website which I now don’t like too much), but also to work on some drawngs for a flash quiz.
It’s captured a bit of attention at work due in part to it’s size. “OOOOO!!! Did work pay for that?” They ask in awe and sly curiosity. “No”, I flatly reply, “They didn’t”, even though I will be primarily be using it for work. Company’s insurance will cover it incase something happens to it while it’s at work, all though they weren’t sure if that was possible for a couple of days because it’s not work’s property, i’t MINE! When I go, so does the tablet.
Our operations department did try to get the company to buy said tablet for me, but company said “Na!”, so I thought, “Fuck you! I’ve been creating vector illustrations for our new website, icons for other clients and am currently working on a flash quiz, I need something to help me get this work done faster and easier. I want one for myself at home any way, so fuck it, I’m buying one!”.
Worth every penny, and the bungled address saga which made the delivery of tablet far more annoying and lengthy on my end.
A team from the University of Michigan is proposing an economic solution to spam. Instead of relying on technical solutions or government regulations, they use a sender warranty system. In some cases, they argue, it can even be superior to a perfect filter with zero cost, and no errors. With the caveat that some infrastructure is necessary, they also claim their approach restores control to the recipient, halts spam, and creates a marketplace for valuable information exchange
Some people may be aware that a scene they are looking at has changed without being able to identify what that change is. This could be a newly discovered mode of conscious visual perception, according to psychologist Ronald Rensink, based at the University of British Columbia, who discovered it. He has dubbed the phenomenon mindsight
Web surfers battling spyware
face a new problem: so-called spyware-killing programs that install the same kind of unwanted advertising software they promise to erase. SpyBan is one of the offending programs
RSS – Posts