Cameron Jones, a DJ and scientist in Melbourne whose research is in the area of communication through biological cells, serendipitously created an ‘optical biocomputer’ when he spilled beer on his CDs and left them over night. The resulting fungus that formed distorted the sound of the CDs in interesting and meaningful ways
Had a brief encounter with the state of mental health this week. Or, more appropriately, it had an encounter with me.
I’d dropped in to pick up my comics for the week and was the only customer in the store, when the escapee from the mad house arrived. Complete with little plastic hospital bracelet and a white gown that laced up the bag, the new arrival muttered something neither of us could understand. Jase just said; Nah, mate. Can’t help you.
And he happily toddled off again.
You’d think that someone somewhere would be missing this guy, but as we didn’t see anyone with large butterfly nuts, perhaps it was just an exercise in integrating the patients back into the community.
Just one more bloke doomed to wander the public transport system, eternally pestering passengers who are trying to read in peace.
Google-owned weblog creation site Blogger is eliminating its paid version, Blogger Pro, and folding premium functions into its free service, bucking a trend toward making people pay for web site extras
A senior police officer has argued that every single person in the UK should be compelled to have their DNA on the national database in an effort to prevent crime
After taking its anti-piracy campaign to court, the music industry is finding itself on the receiving end of a lawsuit that challenges its purported amnesty program as a fraudulent business practice
Enter yo’ bitch ass fav url’s into da Shizzolator to see the web according to Snoop Dogg, know what I’m sayin’? www.asksnoop.com n’ shit.
Sweden was in a state of shock after its Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh, died after being stabbed while shopping at an exclusive department store. It didn’t take long for the morons to crawl out of the woodwork and declare her assassin a patriot
Intelligent software that brings rough sketches to life in a virtual world is promising to revolutionise the way children learn and to help engineers visualise their designs
A report from Stanford University suggests that genetically-modified vaginal bacteria may be able to serve as a ‘living condom‘, secreting proteins that protect women against HIV
Had a not uneventful trip walking the beasties yesterday.
Just around the corner from home I spotted a black cat sitting in the gutter. It’s an odd place for a cat, but I’ve seen weirder and didn’t think much of it. There was a sudden flurry of activity and I assumed the cat has just spotted the dogs approaching and done a runner. Nope. It was laying in wait for a bird and proudly swaggered off home with its prize, a Noisy Miner by the feathers, in its jaws.
Up near the local shops a flock of nearly twenty Yellow Tail Black Cockatoos screeched into the pines, scaring even the nesting Magpies away, before heading off back into bushland. I’ve only ever seen one before in the distance, so a whole flock was impressive.
Malamute was disappointed that her fan club of small girls wasn’t around in their usual spot to worship her, but she cheered up when she scared a pair of Red Rumped Parrots. Cute little guys, they blend into the grass really well and are getting cockier around the dogs. If they don’t get some smarts soon, Husky has offered to give them some.
The Police are always saying that it’s dog walkers who find bodies, but it was just birds this time. I live in hope.
12-year-old New York girl, Brianna Lahara, was among the first to be sued by the record industry for sharing music over the internet is off the hook after her mother agreed to pay US$2,000 to settle the lawsuit. P2P United, a trade group representing six of the biggest file sharing web sites, offered to pay the fine her behalf
A company called BigChampagne sells regional P2P download statistics to most of the major record labels. When the labels know what people are downloading, they know what to put on the radio, and sales in the area increase. The record industry’s lawsuits against file sharing companies hang on their assertion that the programs have no use other than to help infringe copyrights. If the labels acknowledge a legitimate use for P2P programs, it would undercut their case as well as their zero-tolerance stance
After hours of travelling, Charles McKinley, 25, of New York City, pried open the crate with a crowbar Saturday morning. He popped up outside his parents’ doorstep in the south Dallas suburb of DeSoto, shook the hand of a shocked deliveryman and walked away
China, a haven for spammers, wakes up to the problem and blocks 127 servers identified as the sources of high volumes of unsolicited e-mail
Anti-spam legislation is being fast-forwarded by the Federal Government. The Bill is expected before parliament within weeks and will likely be in place before xmas
Disney is going to start offering DVDs that deteriorate within 48 hours after removing them from an oxygen-resistant envelope
The Court of Appeal in The Hague rejected all of Scientology’s claims in appeal in Scientology’s action against XS4ALL, Karin Spaink and ten other internet providers. As a result, Karin Spaink’s web site, which Scientology sought to remove from the Internet based on copyright claims, is entirely legal in the Netherlands. The court also overturned two lower court rulings, one of which said that linking to material that infringed a copyright was itself actionable. The other ruling said that ISPs that failed to act on credible notification of a copyright violation could be held liable for that. The Appeals Court felt that this was too vague a standard, and thus posed a threat to free speech
People searching for art that was stolen by the Nazis have a new tool: a web site that allows US museum collections to be checked for long-lost pieces
Oracle has lifted the covers off long awaited plans to offer a utility-style grid computing architecture, unveiling its 10g database flagship and putting the Linux open source operating system squarely at the centre of its corporate future
There’s a new test aircraft that can travel at supersonic speeds without triggering a sonic boom. The technology works by modifying the shape of the plane
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