Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, will have aggressive new powers from today to detain for an unlimited period citizens suspected of having information about terrorist offences, which raises the spectre of agency abuse
TechTV, a United States-based cable television channel, is in talks with Foxtel about bringing its geeky content to Australia. Foxtel will need about 50 new channels for the network after it converts to digital transmission next year
Web users will soon be surfing video and audio content as easily as text and images thanks to some innovative Web tools — Continuous Media Web — being developed by CSIRO
Allegations that Telstra sells email addresses of BigPond customers have been denied by the telco
Noam Chomsky discusses the recent US policies in Iraq and the real goal behind the war
Vint Cerf, in his foreword to the latest Reporters Without Borders report on the state of Internet censorship, The Internet Under Surveillance — Obstacles to the Free Flow of Information Online, decried Internet censorship by governments, and put the onus on citizens of the world to not only keep that censorship in check, but ensure the information that is on the Internet is truthful
Because of the debate about ever-more centralised mass media and changing FCC regulations in the United States, the question of whether the Web is also becoming centralised has become a hot potato. However, the Web is not a mass medium. It’s not broadcast. The Web is on-demand, driven by each customer’s specialised need in each moment
The dispute over genetically modified crops will intensify with news of the evolution of superweeds, which are resistant to the powerful weedkillers that GM crops were engineered to tolerate. While French small farmers’ leader and anti-globalisation campaigner, José Bové, was starting a 10-month jail sentence last night for destroying genetically modified crops, his third spell in prison in four years, after his highly melodramatic arrest
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos wants the Internet retailer to offer its customers anything, with a capital A
. Add to that list the technology for building a mini-Amazon.com of one’s own
The protest against music discs with copy-control technology has now reached the corridors of political power, with a resident of Manly writing to the Federal Member for the area, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott
The WWDC has delivered! Apple has officially released the new PowerMac G5’s. The G5’s are the result of Apple and IBM working together on the processors with the top model running dual 2Ghz processors. And because it’s designed by Apple, this baby has the looks to match! The G5’s sport a gorgeous sleek brushed metal finish while still keeping the handles and removable side door for easy access to the guts.
Apple also released iSight a web cam for their iChat AV application, and the gold master
of Safari 1.0 is now available.
Panther was also previewed at the conference, with updates to Mail, the finder and Preview. Panther will also incorporate other features such as Exposé for managing your open windows and Font Book for managing your fonts. Panther is expected to ship later this year for US$130.
Serial spammers Queensland Computer Company have been disconnected from the iPrimus, as the retailer continues to frustrate ISPs by spamming — a practice that has not yet been outlawed
Western Power, a West Australian power company, said its infrastructure had provided a viable option for piping commercial fibre-optic broadband to customer premises
GeoVector has come up with a system that lets you point out a location. They say it could be used to get info on buildings and objects, such as pointing your mobile device at a movie theatre could tell you what’s on. They’ve also developed a real world
version of Doom. So don’t be surprised if you’re in Japan early next year and see people running holding their mobile phone or PDA like a gun — via Slashdot
By the end of 2004, McDonald’s will require its direct suppliers, mostly of chicken, to stop giving antibiotics in low doses to speed animal growth. And McDonald’s will choose indirect suppliers that limit antibiotics over those that do not. This is the company’s response to growing alarm over the routine use of antibiotics in animal production, a practice that is diminishing the effectiveness of antibiotics in humans.
But don’t think the clown is doing this for the benefit of mankind. They do it because there is a direct benefit in it for them.
They keep a close eye on public opinion to see if the man on the street is worried about the contents of his hamburger. They also follow global trends, noting that in Europe there are better ways to raise animals without agricultural antibiotic use. This is much the same reason they switch from polystyrene packaging to paper. If they can make the change ahead of major public protest, they come out of it smelling like roses.
Never underestimate the power of public pressure used in the right places.
Esso could face legal action from hundreds of companies after the Victorian Supreme Court ordered it to pay more than $1 million in damages over the Longford gas explosion
Lunatic fringe Senator Orrin Hatch has suggested that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official web site, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes
Researchers at the Solid State Electronics Laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed the world’s smallest pinball game. And researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid — via Slashdot
NASA is putting money into Momentum-eXchange/Electrodynamic Reboost tether technology — MXER for short — an innovative concept that if implemented would station miles and miles of cart-wheeling cable in orbit around the Earth — via Slashdot
Less than two years after berating its rivals for over-charging customers, mobile phone company Vodafone has added a 25c connection charge — known as a flagfall — to its so-called No Plans service
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