Australia’s drive to protect its own population from the horrors of the internet may be starting to have knock-on effects on the surfing habits of its neighbour, New Zealand — some web sites are no longer accessible in NZ via Aussie ISPs
Tired of waiting for the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement,
the Pentagon has decided to take matters into its own hands: military scientists will create synthetic organisms
that can live forever. But don’t fear — they can be killed with a molecular kill-switch. What could go wrong?
Online payments service PayPal says its suspension of certain transactions in India could last months. In a post on PayPal’s blog Tuesday, spokesman Anuj Nayar wrote that the company will keep blocking personal payments to and from India as it works out questions that Indian regulators have posed. The payments were initially suspended 28 January, after regulators questioned whether PayPal payments should be regulated like wire transfers of cash. However, local bank withdrawals, which had also been suspended, should be available within a few days, Nayar said
Google has a problem in China. But it may have bigger headaches in Europe. On issues as varied as privacy, copyright protection and the dominance of Google’s Internet search engine, the company is clashing with lawmakers, regulators and consumer advocates. And the fights are escalating across Western Europe. The stakes are high — potentially higher for Google than anything that happens in China — because Google’s operations in Europe are so much larger and more lucrative. In Britain alone, Google has roughly 10 times its estimated sales in China. Across most of the Continent, Google is by far the most popular search engine, with a substantially larger market share over its rivals than it has over those in the United States. Google’s border-straddling scale and its brash ambitions raise alarms with some European politicians
A coalition of Australia’s 12 largest media organisations says journalists and the public should have greater access to cabinet documents. The Right to Know Coalition has told a Senate committee inquiry into proposed new Freedom of Information (FOI) laws that Cabinet secrecy should not be used as a way of preventing access to documents
Speaking in the House of Lords, Lord Lucas took aim at ACS:Law solicitors, a firm that has been used by record companies in Britain to intimidate file-sharers, and that has apparently cause an enormous number of complaints to the Solicitors Regulation Authority
iiNet wins. Case dismissed. AFACT to pay. The Federal Court of Australia has dismissed the film industry’s case against iiNet, finding that Australia’s No.3 internet provider did not authorise copyright infringement on its network. The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft representing the film industry, has been ordered to pay iiNet’s costs. iiNet chief executive Michael Malone estimated that these costs add up to around $4 million. I find that iiNet simply can’t be seen as approving infringement,
said Justice Cowdroy
Libya must stop blocking access to opposition web sites and internet pages such as YouTube, US-based Human Rights Watch has warned. The activists say Tripoli began a crackdown on 24 January, blocking several foreign-based sites reporting on Libya, and the entire YouTube site. The government is returning to the dark days of total media control,
the group said in a statement
The South Australian Government passed a Bill late last year which makes it illegal during election time to post political views on a blog or comment without also including a name and address. The bill came into effect on 6 January, but only governs the weeks after a writ has been issued authorising an election, and only content affecting South Australian politicians. It attempts to stop people from not taking responsibility for posts which could sway public opinions on the election. And it lasted until Attorney-General Michael Atkinson moved to immediately repeal the controversial laws which sparked an outcry over censorship of the internet
The Lancet today finally retracted the paper that sparked a crisis in MMR vaccination across the UK, following the General Medical Council’s decision that its lead author, Andrew Wakefield, had been dishonest. The medical journal’s editor, Richard Horton, told the Guardian today that he realised as soon as he read the GMC findings that the paper, published in February 1998, had to be retracted. It was utterly clear, without any ambiguity at all, that the statements in the paper were utterly false,
he said. I feel I was deceived
An invasion of giant squid in Orange County has fishermen and women hitting the waters off Newport Beach, angling for an unusual catch. The squid, some up to 60 pounds and 4 feet long, were first caught Thursday afternoon, and anglers began making twilight expeditions Friday night to catch the nocturnal sea creatures, which spend daytime close to the ground and rise to the surface at night
Australians are leading the world when it comes to time spent on social media sites, with a new survey showing we spend on average almost seven hours a month on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The poll, which surveyed audience use in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy, has Australian users topping the stats at six hours and 52 minutes, followed by the US and the UK
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has signed up with iCopyright, the American copyright bounty hunters used by the Associated Press, to offer ridiculous licenses for the quotation of CBC articles on the web. These are the same jokers who sell you a license
to quote 5 words from the AP —via Boing Boing
3 Strikes
is a regime being introduced in various countries around the world to try to deal with illicit file-sharing. Already Taiwan, South Korea and France are putting their versions of the plan into action and other countries have similar proposals under discussion. In one form or another, could the same be coming to the United States?
Japanese scientists from the Tokyo University have invented a new material, which consists of water by 95 percent. The report said it’s safe for humans and environment and could, therefore, be used in medicine in a long-term perspective. The new material was obtained by adding about two grams of clay and a small quantity of appropriate organic matters into normal water. The new aqua substance is elastic and transparent and looks very much like jelly. Its characteristics make it possible to use it in medicine for sticking together tissues
For every 300 Muscovites, there’s a stray dog wandering the streets of Russia’s capital. And according to Andrei Poyarkov, a researcher at the AN Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, the fierce pressure of urban living has driven the dogs to evolve wolf-like traits, increased intelligence, and even the ability to navigate the subway
Five Web sites run by Chinese human rights activists were attacked by hackers over the weekend, as a separate row continued between Google and China over political cyberattacks. The Web site of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group, was hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that lasted 16 hours starting Saturday afternoon, the group said in an e-mailed statement on Monday. A DDoS attack involves the attacker ordering a legion of compromised computers all to visit a certain Web site at once, overwhelming its server with requests for communication and leaving the site inaccessible to normal visitors. The group said it could not confirm the origin of the attackers but called the Chinese government the most likely suspect
Australians are paying the highest prices in the world for text messages, which cost the mobile networks practically nothing but earn them millions in profit each year. Australians are expected to send 20 billion texts this year, more than 20 per cent higher than last year. While the cost of mobile phone calls has declined in the past five years, the standard flat rate for a text message at Telstra and Optus has remained unchanged at 25 cents. At Vodafone, a text is 28 cents. According to research done for Fairfax newspapers, that is more than 10 times what it costs in many parts of Asia and almost a third higher than in Europe and Canada
The BBC has been granted provisional approval for the BBC to introduce copy protection for content on the Freeview HD platform. With Freeview HD closing in on a commercial launch, focus has continued on what level of copy protection should be put in. The BBC believes that having no copy protection provides a barrier for getting content on to a platform, and believes that content makers will not be prepared to go the extra mile for Freeview HD unless they feel their intellectual property is protected
Biblical citations inscribed on US-manufactured weapon sights used by New Zealand’s troops in Afghanistan will be removed because they are inappropriate and could stoke religious tensions. The inscriptions on products from defence contractor Trijicon of Wixom, Michigan, came to light this week in the US where Army officials said Tuesday they would investigate whether the gun sights — also used by US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq — violate US procurement laws. Australia also said Thursday its military used the sights and was now assessing what to do
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