Smokers across England have sparked up at work and in the pub for the last time as the ban on smoking in enclosed public places begins. The new law, which came into effect at 0600 BST, is intended to cut deaths from second-hand smoke. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already have similar bans in place
Once manufactured under an exclusive contract with the US government, the recently declassified window film is now available to the public. Currently, Signal Defense Film is only available directly from the manufacturer, CPFilms, at prices that will likely make it prohibitive for all but the wealthiest home owners. The coating, which in its thinnest incarnation is only two one thousandths of an inch thick, can block Wi-Fi signals, mobile phone transmissions, even the near-infrared, yet is almost transparent, making it no more intrusive than conventional window treatments. It can keep signals in (preventing attempts to spy on electronic communications) or out, minimising radio interference and even the fabled electronics-destroying electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generated by a nuclear blast
DARPA [Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency], the US military’s occasionally eccentric death-tech hothouse, is often lauded as having created the internet. Under its old name ARPA, the agency oversaw development of the so-called Arpanet, forerunner of today’s IP net. Now, however, DARPA reckons the internet needs to be reinvented. This week the Pentagon’s radical-boffinry specialists issued a request for revolutionary ideas
Despite goading from her co-hosts on the cable news channel MSNBC, including the former Republican congressman turned rightwing talkshow host Joe Scarborough, newsreader Mika Brzezinski stood her ground and refused to read her segment’s lead news item on Paris Hilton. Clips of her shredding the script were the lead item on the Technorati search, while the blogosphere was alight with praise. I have a new hero, and her name is Mika Brzezinski
, wrote one
Warner Music Group, Sony BMG and the billionaire Len Blavatnik on Thursday announced the creation of a digital music venture in Russia to sell products in one of the world’s biggest markets for pirated content
Manufacturers are being offered the world’s highest capacity optical storage technology to license, reportedly, leap-frogging 300GB holographic disks and offering 1TB in a DVD-size disk. But the technology has not been commercialised and product could be three to five years away
US company Global Resource Corporation (GRC) is taking plastics recycling to another level — turning them back into the oil they were made from, and gas. All that is needed, is a finely tuned microwave and a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers). Key to GRC’s process is a machine that uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas
The BBC has been accused of forcing people to use Microsoft operating systems and has been threatened with a complaint to the European Commission. The charge concerns the use of Microsoft technology in the corporation’s forthcoming DRM iPlayer. The BBC has said it does intend to allow access to its content from computers with other operating systems
The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers. One music store executive described the plan as madness
while others said it was a huge insult to an industry battling fierce competition from supermarkets and online stores. Prince’s label has cut its ties with the album in the UK to try to appease music stores
Brisbane City Council is trialling new solar powered public rubbish bins which compact rubbish and email the council when they are full. In the next few months, 10 bins will be trialled in the CBD and Fortitude Valley at a cost of $30,000. Lord Mayor Campbell Newman says they will help council officers respond quickly to overflowing rubbish
Westnet has admitted it has been employing traffic prioritisation on its network — but hadn’t mentioned it to its customers until now. The company made the announcement on its blog, revealing that it has been prioritising some latency sensitive
applications, such as gaming, Web browsing, e-mail and VoIP, ahead of peer-to-peer traffic for over a year
Mozilla and Google are collaborating on an effort to make web applications work offline. Firefox 3 will be the first internet browser to offer offline web application support when it launches at the end of this year. Mozilla is working with open-source messaging provider Zimbra, for example, to offer offline features for its email service — such as saving emails typed offline to a drafts
folder, ready to be sent when the user next connects
German Scientists have constructed a custom enzyme that reverses the process by which the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) inserts its genetic material into host DNA, suggesting that treatment with similar enzymes could potentially rid infected cells of the virus. In tests on cultured human tissue, the mutated enzyme, Tre recombinase, snipped HIV DNA out of chromosomes. Curing real infections by this or any other technique, however, would require mastering one of HIV’s sneakiest tricks–its ability to hide from the immune system by laying dormant for months or years in host cells
Scientists in the US say they have taken a major step towards producing life from scratch in the laboratory. Dr Craig Venter says in the journal Science that his team successfully transplanted an entire genome from one bacterium cell to another. He says he hopes eventually to use the technique to create designer microbes, which could produce artificial fuel or help clean up toxic waste. Dr Venter was a pioneer in mapping the human genome
Microsoft will begin selling PCs in India next month as part of its Unlimited Potential
program, an event that will mark the software giant’s first entry into the PC sales business. Dubbed the IQ PC, the machines will cost RS21,000 (about $525), are manufactured in partnership with Zenith, and will sport AMD Athlon CPUs. Aimed primarily at students, the desktop PCs will initially be made available in a limited number of retail outlets in Pune and Bangalore. After a three-month trial, the program will be expanded if sales are strong enough to warrant it
Banks in New Zealand are seeking access to customer PCs used for online banking transactions to verify whether they have enough security protection. Under the terms of a new banking Code of Practice, banks may request access in the event of a disputed transaction to see if security protection in is place and up to date. The code, issued by the Bankers’ Association last week after lengthy drafting and consultation, now has a new section dealing with Internet banking
Researchers at University of Maryland have developed a prototype of what may be the next generation of personal computers. The new technology is based on parallel processing on a single chip and is capable of computing speeds up to 100 times faster than current desktops
. The prototype ‘uses rich algorithmic theory to address the practical problem of building an easy-to-program multicore computer
Online auction site eBay has made public the details of a three-year long campaign to curb online fraud being perpetrated from criminals in Romania — an effort that has resulted in several hundred arrests
The United Nations (UN) has agreed to send a high-level delegation to Tasmania to assess the threat of logging on the World Heritage-listed forests. Twenty-one countries passed a vote supporting the resolution at today’s meeting of the UN’s World Heritage Committee in Christchurch, New Zealand. Wilderness Society spokesman Alec Marr says it is recognition that logging on the edge of the World Heritage area in Tasmania is a threat to old-growth forests
Seagate Technology is serving up its first 1-terabyte hard drives. The company announced today that it will offer 1TB hard drives for retail and enterprise, beginning in the third quarter of this year
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