Most consumers are aware that they’re entitled to have goods replaced if they prove faulty early in their life after purchase, but just how long does that period last? In the case of Vodafone and mobile phones, the answer now turns out to be more than two weeks
thanks to an ACCC court ruling that should help everyone who owns a mobile phone. The ACCC has sought and received court enforceable undertakings from Vodafone that it will not automatically tell consumers that they are entitled only to a repair on faulty phones any time two weeks after purchase, a policy apparently adopted by some 3 stores prior to its merger with Vodafone and one which violates the Trade Practices Act. The decision is interesting even if you’re not a Vodafone customer, as it essentially defines reasonable periods for demanding a replacement phone (as opposed to a repair) when things go wrong
Researchers have demonstrated a simple, cheap way to create self-assembling electronic devices using a property crucial to salad dressings. It uses the fact that oil- and water-based liquids do not mix, forming devices from components that align along the boundary between the two. The idea joins a raft of approaches toward self-assembly, but lends itself particularly well to small components. Crucially, it could allow the large-scale assembly of high-quality electronic components on materials of just about any type, in contrast to “inkjet printed” electronics or some previous self-assembly techniques
A new kind of glass can swell to absorb pollutants in water. This is the discovery that could put the College of Wooster on the map: glass that swells like a sponge. Put together like a nano-matrix, the new glass can unfold to hold up to eight times its weight. The glass binds with gasoline and other pollutants containing volatile organic compounds but it does not bind with water, so it acts like a smart
sponge, capable of picking and choosing from contaminated groundwater
A promising push toward a novel, biologically-inspired chemical computer
has begun as part of an international collaboration. The wet computer
incorporates several recently discovered properties of chemical systems that can be hijacked to engineer computing power. The team’s approach mimics some of the actions of neurons in the brain. The 1.8m-euro project will run for three years, funded by an EU emerging technologies programme
Privacy is no longer a social norm, according to the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg commenting on the rise of social networking
Macquarie University has revealed plans to ditch its inferior
Novell GroupWise staff email platform and replace it with Google’s Gmail offering, following an earlier successful roll-out among students
The December malware threat reports are trickling in from vendors — and they all appear to be different. Fortinet, Sunbelt Software, and Kaspersky all published their lists of the most prevalent malware strains for the last month of 2009, but they didn’t match up, leading to an admission that users will inevitably be confused by the results. For example, in its malware report for last month, Fortinet said that W32/PackBredolab.C!tr topped the charts of malware variants detected in December, accounting for two-thirds of malware activity in December. It was a new entry to the malware table, the company said. Kaspersky highlighted three versions of the Kido worm, known more popularly as Conficker, in the top three slots of its own malware threat report for December. Sunbelt listed Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT in the top malware slot as part of its own report, with almost 20% of the activity for December. A quick scan of the other top 10 malware entries for each company reveals few if any matches
Google executive Andy Rubin said on Friday that the next version of the Nexus One phone, which was made by handset manufacturer HTC, will be for enterprise users and might have a physical keyboard. Such a device could potentially pose a competitive threat to BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, which has a strong position in the enterprise mobile phone market
The Roads and Traffic Authority has begun using facial recognition technology designed to catch out licence cheats, the NSW government says. Anyone applying for a driver’s licence or photo card will now have their photo matched against the entire RTA photo database, Assistant Transport Minister David Borger says. The system is designed to prevent people who have had their licence taken away from applying for a second one
Every day, 7,000 times a day, Stanford Hospital staff turn to pneumatic tubes, cutting-edge technology in the 19th century, for a transport network that the Internet and all the latest Silicon Valley wizardry can’t match: A tubular system to transport a lab sample across the medical center in the blink of an eye. In four miles of tubing laced behind walls from basement to rooftop, the pneumatic tube system shuttles foot-long containers carrying everything from blood to medication. In a hospital the size of Stanford, where a quarter-mile’s distance might separate a tissue specimen from its destination lab, making good time means better medicine
Commonwealth Bank of Australia said that it intended to extend its network of contactless payment terminals by 15,000 before the end of the year. The bank said last year that it would implement 2000 readers by the end of the year, but just missed its target, only reaching 1900. The bank had not then known exactly how many terminals it intended on rolling out this year. The bank has around 160,000 terminals in total, meaning that only around 10 per cent would be equipped with the new technology, allowing holders of cards with relevant technology to pay bills quickly by card. Instead of swiping a card and then entering a PIN or providing a signature, those customers just tap their cards on the reader for purchases under $100
The Spanish cabinet has today passed legislation that will enable the authorities to shut down file-sharing sites more rapidly. The new legislation gives in to the demands of the US and local copyright lobby, who see Spain’s lenient copyright law as a thorn in their side
Microsoft has received a patent for a digital rights management scheme for an on-demand distributed streaming system
, or using a P2P network to distribute commercial media content. The patent, #7,639,805, covers a method of individually encrypting each packet with a separate key and allowing users to decrypt differing levels of quality depending on the license that has been purchased — via Slashdot
Sometime 2010
is when Vodafone Hutchison Australia has said it would commence selling Google’s new touchscreen handset, Nexus One. On the heels of an agreement between Vodafone Group and Google that was announced yesterday, the local arm, VHA, has confirmed it will be selling the device to Australians at some stage this year
This month, at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, physicists and engineers built tracks inside one of its fusion reactors and ran a toy train on them for three days. It was not an exercise in silliness, but in calibration. The modified model of a diesel train engine was carrying a small chunk of californium-252, a radioactive element that spews neutrons as it falls apart
A novel — and natural — way of creating new bones for humans could be just a few years away. Scientists in Italy have developed a way of turning rattan wood into bone that is almost identical to the human tissue. At the Istec laboratory of bioceramics in Faenza near Bologna, a herd of sheep have already been implanted with the bones
A $US2.2 billion ($US2.39bn) lawsuit that targets the Chinese government and several international computer makers is the latest twist in the saga of China’s controversial Green Dam software, which last year was introduced to filter internet content on individual computers. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by Cybersitter, a California maker of parental-control software, alleges that Green Dam uses copied code from its filtering software. The complaint also alleges that China-based sources attempted to gain access to the private servers that held its proprietary material
As the e-reader market heats up, Amazon is trying to stay ahead of the competition with the international launch of its bigger Kindle DX. Amazon will release the new model, with a 25-cm screen, on 19 January in more than 100 countries. It was launched in the US in May last year. The move follows the introduction of the latest 6-in Kindle in October last year — it ships to 130 countries
As Google launches its Nexus One phone, one call that the company hasn’t made is to the family members of science-fiction author Philip K Dick, who complain the device’s name infringes on one of Mr Dick’s most famous novels. We feel this is a clear infringement of our intellectual-property rights,
said Isa Dick Hackett, a daughter of Mr Dick and the chief executive of Electric Shepherd Productions, an arm of the Dick estate devoted to adapting the late author’s works
Search giant Google has left Australia off the list of countries whose residents will be able to order its self-branded mobile handset based on its Android platform. Announcing the product overnight, Google said it would ship Nexus One devices to buyers in the Singapore, Hong Kong, Britain and the US
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