A badger on the run from a wildlife sanctuary attacked and injured five people before being cornered by police and destroyed
Sony has surprised the gaming world by announcing it will launch a handheld game device called PlayStation Portable
Google has announced that it will begin a separate index for blogs
Queensland Computer Company has had its site hosting pulled by iExec, its provider, after being slated as ‘spammers’ by frustrated ISP administrators
Stopping spam can be a thankless task but Mary Youngblood, an investigator at EarthLink, refused to give up and finally nailed the Buffalo Spammer
IT security pioneer Professor Bill Caelli has warned that Hollywood and Bill Gates may be able to take control of our PCs via new digital rights management techniques that allow content providers to enforce their policies on our machines
Based on data provided by registries, only 4.7 million, or fewer than 4%, of the 130 million dogs and cats in the United States have microchip implants.
The resistance is even more striking given that so few lost pets are reunited with their owners — only 2% of lost cats and 15.8% of lost dogs, according to the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy, a consortium of humane societies and animal control groups. Pet experts agree that return rates can be significantly higher if a pet has a microchip — it could be at least four times as high.
Unfortunately the poor attitude of the majority pet owners does not help matters. Many see a microchip as an unnecessary expense for a pet that isn’t a pedigreed animal, a view that regards pets as both worthless and disposable if they came from a shelter. A great argument for licencing pet owners — if they’re unwilling to take the responsibility and expense of owning a pet seriously, they shouldn’t be allowed to own one.
And as for the excuse that micro chipping is too expensive, why not get it done next time the pet is at the vet. It’s worth looking around and comparing prices. There are services in Australia that will come to you, there are also free chip your pet
days run by local councils.
The real thing to be aware of is vets who try to gouge owners by demanding that an anaesthetic is used. The anaesthetic hurts more than the microchip needle. These also tend to be the places that hit you for premium prices for everything.
Many show dog owners fear the risk of infection or scarring. Another pointless argument when compared to the tattooing of dogs ears.
An interesting factoid on microchips. If your dog has a thick coat, like many of the Arctic breeds, the chips can sometimes go AWOL and won’t read only to mysteriously reappear at a later date. A scary prospect when the guy at the local pound is just going to wave a scanner over the dog and not try searching for 15 minutes. For this reason dogs should always wear collars when they are outside or home alone; with an ID tag and a microchip tag. They jingle a lot, but if they get lost, you know you’ve done your best to make sure your pet finds it’s way home.
An aeroplane that can diagnose and repair a faulty component while it is still in the air, or a spacecraft that can sense a cracked tile and repair itself without human intervention may be the kind of technology that comes out of a new area of CSIRO research
Richard Johnson, a gossip columnist, at the New York Post tabloid has run an article with rampant overtones of McCarthyism in an attempt to start a boycott against celebrities who have made their anti-war feelings known
Almost everything enterprises once found unique to Microsoft they can now find somewhere else — without some of the baggage that comes with Microsoft purchases, like ongoing security concerns and mystifying licensing practices. In a recent survey of CIOs, Forrester Research found that about 25 percent of them were already in the process of replacing Windows servers with Linux — via Slashdot
Google has launched an Australian version of its beta Google News service
Position Available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon. The language is one of about 55 that may be needed in the future by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County, Portland, Oregon
Recently, the RIAA has been trying to flood KaZaA with files that appear to be valid copyrighted material but are empty. The P2P networks are considering a possible move against the RIAA in response to this by using recently enacted anti-spam laws — via Slashdot
They say that an infinite amount of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually produce literature greater than Shakespeare. Well, it has been proven that six monkeys and one computer will produce a computer that has been smashed with a rock, urinated upon, and four pages worth of the letter s
. Scientifically this apparently does prove that monkeys are more complex than random generators — via Slashdot
St George Bank has been the target of a major internet banking fraud in which thousands of dollars were being laundered through a third party account and transferred offshore
The first national competition to promote the sensible use of English on product labelling has named and shamed Britain’s top 10 silliest packaging instructions
One newspaper that updates itself with the latest headlines every day — that’s the vision of US researchers who have unveiled an ultra-thin electronic-ink display screen
Complete plans and pictures to build a robot from a 3½” floppy drive without taking it apart. The floppy drive has all of the motors and electronics you need to get started and compete in a robot contest. With some old 5¼” drives, you can really get some power — via Slashdot
People For Internet Responsibility have released a white paper aimed at starting discussion and work to fundamentally revamp e-mail systems to control spam, forgeries, and a range of other problems, while empowering e-mail users rather than ISPs — via Slashdot
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