Bletchley Park, the wartime intelligence centre, has achieved a breakthrough which could mean that its historic wooden huts are saved from going to rot. There is now a high chance that the Enigma machines, which cracked the codes used by the Nazi high command, will be able to go back into the hut where they were first housed. The trust that runs the site has been awarded a grant by the National Lottery which is the first step towards a much larger award, totalling more than £4m
Chimpanzees ambushing and eating colobus monkeys, great white sharks leaping clean out of the ocean to catch their prey and the first footage of an entire snow leopard hunt are just some of the wonders of nature made available by the BBC as it opens up its vast archive of wildlife footage online today. Over 500 video clips have been made available to view on the BBC’s web site, along with audio and an introduction from Sir David Attenborough
The good news is that Illinois is no longer the most heavily spammed state in the country. According to a report released this week by a unit of anti-virus software maker Symantec, the Land of Lincoln dropped to No 5 from last year’s top ranking. The bad news is that Illinois residents are still receiving a huge amount of unwanted e-mails pitching prescription drugs, prospective suitors and international finance schemes. And most states are getting more spam than ever
The Finks Motorcycle Club has struck a major blow against new laws in South Australia aimed at targeting organised crime. The laws allow for control orders against recognised members of motorcycle clubs, to prevent them from associating with each another. The Supreme Court has ruled in a majority decision that part of the legislation governing control orders is invalid
Nokia has been on an acquisition tear lately, albeit mostly small deals (Plum, Cellity and Bit-Side all this year). A source close to the deal says that they’ve just made one more acquisition: boutique travel social network Dopplr, headquartered in London
Data centres in Sydney and Brisbane have shut off external ventilation systems, restricted loading dock access and attended false alarms after a major dust storm choked the cities today. Macquarie Telecom, Equinix, ac3, manageNET and AAPT outlined a number of preventative measures taken in their respective data centres to prevent dust ingress. At least two major firms — Optus and CBA — confirmed false alarms had been set off in Sydney facilities due to high winds and dust particles in the air. But all reported they had come out largely unscathed from the storm, one of the worst on record
The lack of SMS integration is a perennial complaint for Australian Twitter users. Chime goes a fair way to solving that problem, letting you update your Twitter status via an Australian phone account
Australia’s consumer watchdog is leading an international crackdown on internet scams, particularly those taking advantage of the global financial crisis to lure people in. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says the scams are costing Australian consumers $1 billion a year, and that criminals are using the global financial crisis to lure people in
Scientists are operating in an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty
because libel laws biased in favour of the plaintiff are making them wary of challenging bogus claims about health products, Richard Dawkins has claimed. Dawkins told the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth that scientists should settle their differences in the lab, not in court, and that libel laws that made it too easy for people to be sued could have disastrous consequences
for the public interest. He condemned the way London had become the libel capital of the world
and backed Liberal Democrat proposals that were approved by the conference for the libel laws to be reformed to provide a better balance
in favour of free speech
Telstra is believed to be planning to launch a personal video recorder and set-top box, likely to be called the T-box, as early as December, in a bid to shift the entertainment, news and sport content it offers under the BigPond brand from people’s computers to their televisions. The strategy, which puts Telstra into direct competition with Foxtel (which has its own iQ set-top box), enables the telco to retain a content play if it is forced to divest its 50 per cent shareholding in the pay-TV company
Will the world’s fastest land animal make a comeback in India, nearly half a century after it became extinct in the country? A serious initiative is afoot to bring the cheetah back to India and make it, as many wildlife experts say, the flagship species
of the country’s grasslands, which do not have a single prominent animal now. A similar effort in the 1970s — India was then talking to Iran, which had around 300 cheetahs at that time — flopped after the Shah of Iran was deposed and the negotiations never progressed
After an earlier decision failed to reach its objective, this week a Brazilian court made an unprecedented ruling against file-sharing clients. Following legal action by anti-piracy groups against a website offering a file-sharing client for download, the court decided that software which allows users to share music via P2P is illegal
After Australia’s Senator Stephen Conroy’s plans to filter the Internet earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year, today there is more chin-scratching over the plans. Speaking yesterday, the Senator Conroy said there has never been any suggestion that the government could or would block P2P traffic
Thousands of businesses and homes in Sydney’s CBD could be without phone, internet and mobile phone coverage for up to a week after a contractor accidentally severed crucial cables. Contractors working for Energy Australia cut through a bundle of 10,000 Telstra copper wires and some multiple-fibre optical cables near the corner of York and Erskine streets about 9.30pm yesterday
Male masturbation and extreme anal fisting are now PG, as far as the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) are concerned. However, mainstream films such as V for Vendetta and American Gangster are prohibited content — at least if they happen to be distributed through the iTunes Store Gift this movie
menu. This would appear to be the latest peculiar twist to the censorship debate in Australia, and is in part a direct consequence of the Australian government pressing ahead with plans for its super-hi-tech firewall — without first sorting out the law that the firewall is meant to embody
After its initial adoption in May, the original version of the 3 strikes
Hadopi anti-piracy legislation was struck down by France’s highest legal authority after declaring the proposals unconstitutional. A modified version of the bill was accepted in July by the Senate and today it was passed in the National Assembly
A Maori legend about a giant, man-eating bird has been confirmed by scientists. Te Hokioi was a huge black-and-white predator with a red crest and yellow-green tinged wingtips, in an account given to Sir George Gray, an early governor of New Zealand. It was said to be named after its cry and to have raced the hawk to the heavens
. Scientists now think the stories handed down by word of mouth and depicted in rock drawings refer to Haast’s eagle, a raptor that became extinct just 500 years ago
Australian internet users now consume twice as much data than they did a year ago, but figures by Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reveal there are still over 200,000 businesses and government agencies on a dial-up connection. Last June, over a three-month period, Australia downloaded around 55.4 terabytes (TB). This year the figure almost doubled to 99.9TB as more subscribers ditched dial-up for faster ADSL-style fixed line connections or wireless broadband
The Rudd government has announced a package of reforms to telecommunications regulations that will pave the way for a break-up of Telstra. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the reforms would address the telco’s high level of integration with the aim of promoting greater competition and consumer benefits
Pioneering Australian documentary filmmaker and one half of the Leyland Brothers, Mike Leyland, has died aged 68 from Parkinson’s disease-related complications. The Leyland Brothers rose to fame as explorers and documentary filmmakers, best known for their popular Channel Nine television show Ask The Leyland Brothers
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