A round of price increases over the past six months has left Australia’s download-hungry internet users scrambling to find affordable ways to feed their appetite for online videos and music, and is raising some bigger questions about the future of Australia’s broadband. Earlier this month Adelaide-based IP Internode raised prices for its broadband service by, in some cases, up to $40 a month. A week later, Sydney-based provider Exetel increased its prices
YouTube has announced international versions of its web video service. The video site, owned by Google, has launched nine versions across Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK. Each site is translated into local languages and has country-specific video rankings and comments
Science fiction writer Charlie Stross has written an excellent and comprehensive explanation of why, thousands of SF books, movies, and games notwithstanding, human colonisation of other star systems is impossible. Although interstellar colonisation seems common-sensical to many, Charlie makes a clear-headed and unarguable case, so far as I can see, that it ain’t gonna happen without a magic wand
or two
Another crack in the Windows Genuine Advantage wall. A user at UbuntuForums.org managed to validate an Ubuntu installation as a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows and get to the download page of Windows Defender, using IE4Linux and Wine. Along with the advancement of LiveCD technology, this could spell the end of Microsoft’s control over who gets their updates — via Slashdot
Want to know how much your boss earns? Or whether your daughter’s fiance is in debt? For Swedes, it takes just a few clicks on the Internet to find out. But many feel the Web has taken things too far, and proud though they are of Sweden’s unusual history of openness, they have pressured providers to put some limits on a service that allowed Swedes to snoop through each other’s finances anonymously and free of charge
Prime Minister John Howard is pledging fast coverage for 99 per cent of Australians as he prepares to unveil the Government’s new broadband strategy today. Mr Howard says prices in the cities and the regions will be comparable. But Opposition communications spokesman Stephen Conroy says Mr Howard will create a two-tier system
The Venezuelan Government announced the roll-out of four different models of Linux-powered consumer computers, three desktop models and one notebook. Branded Bolivarian Computers
, they will be will be produced by a joint venture of the Venezuelan Ministry of Light Industry and Commerce and a Chinese company named Lang Chao. The goal of the project is to jump-start a domestic IT industry and become an IT exporter to the rest of Latin America. At the ceremony introducing the program, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez claimed that the Bolivarian Computers cost 40% less than other commercially available models and come with a 3-year warranty
Google Video, the web-based service that provided almost the same functions as the popular YouTube, is not an online video sharing solution any more. The parent company Google upgraded the product and made it a search technology that allows users to find clips on the entire Internet. At this time, the official page of the service is exactly the same as before, but the searching abilities are 100 percent changed. For example, if you try searching for a certain video, Google Video returns you a list of clips from the entire Internet, allowing you to choose a result, just like any other Google search technology
Computers that control navigation and key life-support systems on the International Space Station were partially restored on Thursday after failing the day before. Flight controllers were able to re-establish some communication with the computers overnight, with Russian engineers working Thursday to restore the rest of the system, NASA space station flight director Holly Ridings said
eBay has pulled its US advertising from search engine giant and adversary Google. The move comes after Google angered eBay with a provocative decision to hold an event on the same evening as eBay’s annual merchants’ conference. Google’s party was aimed at attracting attention away from eBay’s payment system PayPal to its own card processing service, analysts say. eBay spends an estimated $25m a year advertising on Google in the US. This makes eBay potentially the biggest single user of AdWords, Google’s advertising system that shows adverts based on words in web searches and the biggest money-spinner for the internet search engine
London has taken the title of top wi-fi city according to a survey. The RSA Security report looked at the growth of wi-fi in three key financial centres: London, New York and Paris. According to the findings wireless access points in London grew by 160% in the last 12 month putting it ahead of the other two cities. The growth in London was not at the expense of security, found the survey, as the percentage of vulnerable access points fell
Lin Zhong and Michael Liebschner at Rice University in Houston, Texas, want to use the human skeleton to transmit commands reliably and securely to wearable gadgets and medical implants. Their research, funded by Microsoft and Texas Instruments, could also lead to new ways for people with disabilities to control devices such as computers and PDAs. Wireless radio signals are already used to control gadgets and implants, but these can suffer interference from Wi-Fi and other sources. This makes them unreliable and, in the case of medical implants, potentially dangerous. They can also be hacked by anyone with an antenna, Liebschner points out. So the Rice team decided to investigate using sound instead of radio waves. Bone is known to be a great conductor of sound, but so far it has only been used to transmit analogue signals in applications such as checking how bone is healing after a fracture, and in hearing aids that transmit sound from outside the skull to the auditory nerve
Bruce Schneier: The recently publicised terrorist plot to blow up John F Kennedy International Airport, like so many of the terrorist plots over the past few years, is a study in alarmism and incompetence: on the part of the terrorists, our government and the press
Corn and potato crops may soon provide information to farmers about when they need water and how much should be delivered, thanks to a University of Colorado at Boulder invention optioned to AgriHouse, a Berthoud, Colorado, high-tech company. The technology includes a tiny sensor that can be clipped to plant leaves charting their thickness, a key measure of water deficiency and accompanying stress, said Research Associate Hans-Dieter Seelig of CU-Boulder’s BioServe Space Technology Centre. Data from the leaves could be sent wirelessly over the Internet to computers linked to irrigation equipment, ensuring timely watering, cutting down on excessive water and energy use and potentially saving farmers in Colorado millions of dollars per year — via denverpost.com
A fragment of an exploding harpoon used by commercial whalers in the 1800s has been found in a whale caught off Alaska, suggesting the animal may be more than 100 years old. Local government officials say the fragment came from a bomb lance
, manufactured around 1880. Alaska’s Inupiat people found it lodged in a bowhead whale during a traditional subsistence hunt last month
Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt told the Examiner that the newspaper ad he took out last week offering a million-dollar bounty for evidence of illicit sexual activity with lawmakers has yielded about 200 tips so far. He said he’ll let them continue to trickle in over the next two weeks or so before his team begins to follow up on them.
Said Flynt: We’ll be lucky if we get 2 to 4 percent hard leads that could yield a payout
Apple is hoping for another crossover hit. After bringing iTunes over to Windows, the Mac maker announced on Monday that it is also making its Safari Web browser available for users of Microsoft’s operating system. The company released a public beta
version of Safari 3.0 that runs on Windows XP and Windows Vista, as well as on Mac OS X Tiger. When Apple first announced plans to bring iTunes to Windows PCs in October 2003, CEO Steve Jobs characterised the move as hell freezing over. These days, though, Apple does much of its work with the Windows world in mind
Flickr said on Monday it is moving to further internationalise its service by creating versions in seven major languages besides English. Flickr said it is set to introduce sites in French, German, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and traditional Chinese, with other languages to follow. A Japanese site remains in the works with independently operated Yahoo Japan
A leading international broadband expert says Australia will be left behind if its Internet infrastructure does not keep up with international standards. Professor Larry Smarr from the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology says the current political debate is critical to Australia’s global economic status. Professor Smarr told ABC Radio’s AM program that a full fibre optic network is needed, as the copper network is not fast enough
A Secure Digital memory card with built-in Wi-Fi networking will allow digital cameras to upload images automatically to home computers and photo-sharing web sites. This product of California-based company Eye-Fi is currently in beta and should be launched later this year
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