The Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards has announced that it has taken on the task of improving on the omnipresent URL, or Web address, to give developers a cleaner way to design and locate Web services
How do you print a light bulb? John Canny, an engineer at the University of California in Berkeley and his team are developing an ink-jet printing technology that will use polymers to print fully assembled electric and electronic gadgets in one go
Despite the benefits of modern medical technology, new evidence suggests that doctors should sometimes cede to the authority of the earth’s original healer, Mother Nature. A new study describes the benefits of using maggots to treat stubborn wounds that refuse to heal as a result of infection or other problems. Maggots digest dead tissue and destroy bacteria
A German family has kept a live eel in its bathtub for the last 33 years and even trained it to swim into a bucket when someone needs to wash
A Norwegian court has acquitted a teenager accused by US entertainment groups of creating tools for hackers. The court acquitted Jon Johansen on all charges and said he did not break the law when he created a system that could remove copy protection on DVDs
The web site of the Recording Industry Association of America, one of the most unpopular lobby groups on the Internet, was defaced last week for the fifth time in a year
Penn Jillette — the taller, louder half of the Penn and Teller team — had an airport security guard get a little too personal while inspecting his package
An anti-terrorism squad raided the home of a Danish family after mistaking a light-hearted message on their answering machine for a hostage alert
The Ethiopian wolf is the most endangered species in the canid group. The biggest threat comes from rabies and other diseases carried by dogs in the wolves’ mountainous habitat, but researchers now think it may be possible to develop a vaccine that could dramatically help the species’ survival
There have been developments in new plastics that exhibit magnetic fields of fractal dimensions. Whereas a simple bar magnet produces magnetic fields that go from the north pole to the south pole, the fields of the new hybrid plastic sprout like branches of a cactus lined with secondary fields that resemble needles. As these fields become increasingly interlocked, they exhibit a unique kind of order. This intensely ordered structure might one day be key to storing information with a very high density — via Slashdot
Star Wars Origami features about a dozen pieces of Star Wars vehicles and characters complete with diagrams on how to make them yourself
An environment activist, Rob Puddicombe, is drawing fire from National Park officials for his efforts to save a species of black rats on remote Anacapa Island, off the coast of southern California
A man wielding two axes went berserk in the crowded town centre of Waltham Abbey yesterday, leaving two people in hospital and a third in shock, before launching a frenzied attack inside an historic abbey
Hotmail and Yahoo are using Carnegie Mellon developed captcha technology — completely automated public Turing tests to tell computers and humans apart — to stop spammers from automating signups for accounts from which they can send spam. SpamArrest are using captcha too, but to stop incoming spam
The MIT AI Lab, the birth place of the free software movement, walked away from a US$404K study because the government wanted to restrict participation by foreign students — via Slashdot
It’s time for Bob Cringley’s predictions of what will happen in high-tech and high-tech business during 2003
After being administered by for-profit companies since its inception in 1995, the .org Internet domain for organisations and groups is now being overseen by the non-profit Public Interest Registry
An international group of scientists pooling more than 30 years of data has concluded that behavioural patterns among different orangutan populations show evidence of culture
Geeky college pranks are not just the purview of big name science and technology schools. Now that statutes of limitations have expired, Stealth Force Beta, a group of constructive vandals
who operated at New Mexico Tech, tell of their exploits — via Slashdot
Michael Robertson, CEO of software company Lindows, has revealed himself as the formerly anonymous donor of $200,000 in prize money in a contest to translate the Linux operating system to Microsoft’s Xbox video game console
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