Adium have noticed that there seems to be quite a bit of censorship on MSN. Essentially, a number of suspicious strings result in silent failure of delivery. The strings are unsurprisingly things like .scr and .info. They’ve started maintaining a list if you’re interested
NEC and Hitachi are teaming up on a liquid cooling system for hard drives. The goal is to cut down on noise levels while providing more efficient cooling. ‘Hitachi and NEC are developing the water-cooled hard drive systems for desktop computers mainly to reduce noise levels to 25 decibels, 5 decibels quieter than a whisper. To do this, NEC and Hitachi actually wrap the hard drive in noise absorbing material and vibration insulation — via Slashdot
Amazon is announcing the launch of another web service that should appeal to developers. The previously rumoured Flexible Payments Service provides everything developers need to set up payments on their sites, far more so than the Paypal API — from one-time to recurring transactions, transactions limited by date, by the amount and much more
A gorgeously steampunk animated short from Blur
Elton John is whining that the internet is destroying good music and stopping people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff
. He laments the way that the internet and the emerging industry of digital music has created a cold and impersonal world for artists to create new music in. Poor Diddums
Microsoft has announced plans to pre-install an ad-laden version of Works on some manufacturers’ PCs in coming months. Works is Microsoft’s lightweight docs-and-spreadsheets software. The manufacturers involved were not disclosed. The adware Works will come with a pre-installed cache of ads that will be refreshed when the machine is online. Microsoft will decide by mid-2008 whether it can afford to forgo the $40 normally charged for Works
So, you get arrested for running an illegal online pharmacy and the judge orders you to stop selling medication over the Internet. Don’t sit around and do nothing before the trial. Run off to the Dominican Republic on a false passport, withdraw money from an account ordered frozen, and start up another online pharmacy
. It didn’t end well for 27-year old Christopher William Smith, also known as Rizler
. The world-reviled spammer and Internet drug dispenser received a 30-year sentence from a federal judge — Slashdot
Ask someone to name a website and it’s a virtual certainly they will say something ending with dot com
: Amazon.com, eBay.com, Facebook.com, it doesn’t matter what, it’s the same suffix. Dotcom is the internet for most people. But that may all change next year when the top level of the net — the part after the dot — is liberalised. From 2008, anyone wanting their own piece of the internet is welcome to apply for it. It won’t be cheap (there will an application fee of around $100,000) and it won’t be simple (you have to prove you are capable of running a complex piece of the net’s infrastructure) — but it could mean a change in the way the online world works
Dismissing a defamation suit brought by the inventor of DOS against a British writer, a judge has left unchallenged computer industry lore that holds the operating system Microsoft licensed to IBM in the 1980s — thereby launching Bill Gates’ multibillion dollar software empire — was a knock off. In a book on American innovation, author Sir Harold Evans wrote that DOS inventor Tim Paterson relied heavily on an existing OS called CP/M (Control Program/Monitor) created by a programmer, Gary Kildall, who has since died. Microsoft in 1980 struck a licensing deal with Paterson’s company — Seattle Computer Products — to obtain access to DOS and resell it to IBM
Researchers from the National University of Singapore, have recently developed a new way to make artificial bone from mineralised collagen. For some time scientists have tried to make nanosized artificial bone materials using various methods, And have recently turned their attention to mineralised collagen, a nanoapatite/collagen composite. This material is highly biocompatible and has the nanostructure of artificial bone. It could be used in bone grafts and bone-tissue engineering, among other applications — via Slashdot
Air New Zealand and airliner manufacturer Boeing are secretly working with Blenheim-based biofuel developer Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation to create the world’s first environmentally friendly aviation fuel, made of wild algae. The fuel is essentially derived from bacterial pond scum created through the photosynthesis of sunlight and carbon dioxide on nutrient-rich water sources such as sewage ponds
The New York Public Library has just installed an Espresso book-on-demand machine and they’ll print 20 public domain titles from the Open Content Alliance free of charge for any patron — via Boing Boing
Google Transit is a journey-planner for public transit systems in nine US cities and all of Japan. It works more or less like Google Maps’s driving directions, but for transit systems, and includes itineraries and maps. Weirdly, it doesn’t include the NYC subway/bus network, nor the London networks, though London is superbly served by the Transport for London journey planner — via Boing Boing
Federal law enforcement agents raided US Senator Ted Stevens’ Alaska home in Girdwood, hauling off undisclosed items from inside and taking extensive pictures and video. Officials wouldn’t say what they were looking for or what they found.All I can say is that agents from the FBI and IRS are currently conducting a search at that residence,
Dave Heller, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Anchorage office
The results of Australia’s only live commercial internet content filtering trial will never be known because the exercise, championed by the federal Government, was quietly abandoned. The trial was expected to go ahead in Tasmania last year but the major internet filtering technology supplier for the project, Internet Sheriff, has revealed that it was abandoned because Australia’s two largest ISPs, Telstra and Optus, refused to participate. Internet Sheriff chief executive David Ramsay said the project was commercially risky without support from the two carriers
A group from Northwestern University in Illinois has a new process for creating carbon-based paper that’s stronger than nanotubes, and incredibly easy to use to make sheets of any desired sizes. Huge implications for aircraft, automobiles and the ever-sought-after space elevator — via Slashdot
A new foam-like material that could be used to soak up heavy metals in run-off water from polluted industrial sites has been demonstrated by US scientists. The novel aerogel binds preferentially to heavy metals like lead, mercury and cadmium, allowing other metals like zinc and magnesium to pass through — via New Scientist
The BBC have made it official — they have been corrupted by Microsoft. With the launch of the iPlayer, the BBC Trust has failed in its most basic of duties and handed over to Microsoft sole control of the on-line distribution of BBC programming. You will now need to own a Microsoft operating system to view BBC programming on the web. And you must accept the DRM that the iPlayer imposes. Engadget commenters report that FairUse4WM strips DRM from BBC iplayer downloads so they can be watched in VLC on the MAC — via Boing Boing
Dell is working on getting better ATI drivers for Linux for use in its Linux offerings. While it is not known whether the end product will end up as open source, with big businesses like Google and Dell now behind the push for better Linux graphics drivers, hopefully ATI will make the smart business decision and give customers what they want
Brian May, the lead guitarist from rock band Queen, is close to earning his doctorate in astrophysics — more than 35 years after quitting his studies to become a rock star. May arrived on the island of La Palma in Spain’s Canary Islands several days ago to conduct astronomical observations in support of his thesis, according to a statement by the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands
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