Pressure is mounting on governments to resolve the internet address crisis amid fears the internet economy will stall as numbers run out in 2010-11. OECD telecommunications ministers, including Australia’s Senator Stephen Conroy, are gathering in Seoul this week and have been warned that only 16 per cent of the currently used IP address space remains unallocated
eBay has unveiled plans to let outside software programs work inside the world’s largest e-commerce site, joining a trend toward openness that fuelled the popularity of the social network website Facebook. At the online auction leader’s annual conference for software developers in Chicago, eBay is laying out Project Echo, a plan to give independent developers a path to having their software featured within eBay’s core site
Amazon, the online retailing giant with a fast-rising share of the consumer book market, has adopted the literary equivalent of a nuclear option for rebellious publishers who balk at its demands. In the latest in a series of disputes over the division of revenue from online sales, Amazon has disabled the buy now with 1 click
icon on its British Web site for hundreds of books published by Hachette Livre UK
Symantec chief executive John Thompson has warned the Government against trying to regulate the internet by filtering content at ISP level. Mr Thompson said governments should think carefully about whether profit-driven companies should be regulators
A recent study on the music consumption habits of today’s youth shows that most of them download music illegally. However, music is more popular than ever and 80 percent of the participants indicate that they would pay for a legal filesharing service, if only one was available
Using the HARPS instrument at the ESO La Silla Observatory, they have found a triple system of super-Earths around the star HD 40307. Looking at their entire sample studied with HARPS, the astronomers count a total of 45 candidate planets with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an orbital period shorter than 50 days. This implies that one solar-like star out of three harbours such planets
The key to coaxing cells to regenerate might be to make things a little rough for them. Thomas Webster, a bioengineer at Brown University, has been developing implantable materials with nanoscale textures to mimic the roughness of living tissues. Now, his team has found that cartilage cells can adhere to and grow more densely on a surface covered with carbon nanotubes, particularly when they are also exposed to electrical stimulation. Webster believes that surfaces incorporating carbon nanotubes, which are not only textured but are also electrically conductive, could be a promising strategy for designing cartilage implants
Most of the attention to the recent Google/Yahoo partnership has focused on the two companies’ search advertising plans, but the deal has implications for instant messaging, too. Yahoo and Google have agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services. So far, exactly what that means is anyone’s guess. But the IM market could certainly benefit from a little more interoperability. Despite the fact that IM use is on the rise among home users and businesses alike, each separate IM network remains a walled garden, independent of all the others. Getting them to work together — similar to how e-mail works — would benefit everyone
Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide renewable petroleum. For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant. The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South
Jamming the right two pieces of plastic together creates a thin but strongly conducting channel along the junction that acts like a metal, say Dutch researchers. The discovery could lead to a whole new way of making electronics from non-metallic materials, and even new superconductors
Google is now offering searchers a way around one of the worst aspects of the web — Flash intro movies. All those web sites still living in 1998 when Flash intro movies were, uh, still a really bad idea, even then, now have a skip intro
link beside their Google search result link — via webmonkey
Online auctioneer eBay says it will challenge the Australian competition watchdog’s ruling to block a plan to force its users onto a PayPal-only payments system. In a statement issued this afternoon, eBay said it was disappointed
with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission decision
Australian prisons are planning to block the use of mobile phones by inmates after the federal Government yesterday agreed to help remove a legislative ban on jamming devices
At the request of theatrical film makers, the FCC on Friday quietly launched a proceeding on whether to let video program distributors remotely block consumers from recording recently released movies on their DVRs. The technology that does this is called Selectable Output Control, but the FCC restricts its use. The MPAA wants a waiver on that restriction in the case of high-definition movies broadcast prior to their release as DVDs
Most USB 2.0 flash drives look the same, but that doesn’t mean they perform the same. Differences in the type of memory and, to a lesser extent, the type of I/O controllers used by USB drives can make one device perform two or three times faster and last (theoretically, at least) 10 times longer than another, even if both sport the USB 2.0 logo. Unfortunately for the average user, there are no accepted industry standards or certifications to judge what’s inside a USB 2.0 flash drive on a store shelf. Without checking reviews or running benchmarks, the only rule of thumb is that the more expensive drives (and those which post performance numbers on the packaging) will tend to be the fastest and, perhaps, last the longest
An appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling and has now said that mod chips do not violate copyright laws. The case involved a mod chip seller, who imported mod chips for the XBox from Hong Kong and would sell the chips or mod the Xbox’s himself. He was charged with copyright infringement and found guilty by a lower court. The appeals court has dismissed all charges, however — via Slashdot
A hacker who hijacked hundreds of PCs to create a botnet has been sentenced to 41 months in jail by a US court. Robert Matthew Bentley of Panama City, Florida also faces $65,000 (¬£33,000) in fines and will be under supervision for three years on his release. The hijacked PCs were used to attack other computers and install programs that plagued users with pop-up adverts. He was caught following an investigation by the Metropolitan Police’s Computer Crime Unit
Canada, one of the shining lights in the copyright and intellectual property world, has a shadow approaching that may dim that for all. The name of that shadow? Bill c-61, which was formally introduced by Industry minister Jim Prentice an hour or two ago. One of the highlights
is the abolition of court’s flexibility in statutory damages, fixing it at CA$500
An advanced satellite that will improve greatly the ability of UK military forces to communicate around the globe has been launched into space. The Skynet 5C platform rode into orbit atop an Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. It joins the 5A and 5B satellites lofted successfully last year and which are already handling secure traffic for UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days. Thirty-six Labour MPs joined forces with Conservatives and Lib Dems to vote against the proposals. But that was not enough to defeat them — although the government still faces a battle in the House of Lords
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