Google has another aquisition under its belt and this one is a little green. Not in the environment sense, but in a secure sense. GreenBorder has developed a way to isolate each internet session from the rest of a users PC. This way threats like viruses, spyware, trojans and malware can be secluded and tossed when users close down their browser window instead of potentially infecting machines. A green border displays around safe pages, and files that are downloaded from the internet can be opened in a virtual environment so as not to infect the rest of the user’s machine
Kudos to Dell, who over the weekend gathered up 35 tonnes of old computers in a free recycling day — their most successful to date
The VULTURE Air Vehicle Program is an exploratory development program with the overall goal to develop and demonstrate the ability to deliver and maintain an airborne payload on station for an uninterrupted period exceeding five years using a heavier-than-air platform system. The Government is not interested in approaches that use either radioactive energy sources or employs any form of buoyant flight for this application
Google is making excessive use of their GeoIP database these days to test new features in a limited area of their choice. Now they decided to only let users from the US use the street view option in Google Maps. If you live in another country, you’d actually have to wait until Google releases the feature worldwide or use a proxy from inside the states. There’s another way to avoid Google’s IP filter though: Add &gl=us at the end of the URL
Sydney faces more disruption from the APEC leaders meeting in September, with the Prime Minister announcing three major bilateral meetings will be held in the city either side of the summit. A public holiday has been declared on the opening day of the APEC meeting, Friday, 7 September, and large areas of central Sydney will be shut down during the three day meeting. The New South Wales Police Minister, David Campbell, says police will try to keep disruption to a minimum. He says Sydney residents will be advised of any security arrangements for the leaders’ extended stay. But he says no plans beyond the APEC summit days have yet been prepared
PSoftware has been wiped from thousands of school computers because of a row over Government funding. Microsoft Office programs have been ordered to be removed from about 25,000 Apple Macintosh computers in schools. The Ministry of Education did not renew its deal for the programs, meaning that students using the Apple computers will not have access to common programs such as Excel and Word unless the school buys the software independently. It is thought to affect around 30 per cent of all schools nationwide
A haul of 28 new planets beyond our solar system has been detected by the world’s most prolific planet hunters. The finds were among 37 objects seen orbiting distant stars by a US and Anglo-Australian team in the last year. The finds increase the total number of known exoplanets to 236, more than half of which were discovered by the team
A new health scare erupted over soft drinks last night amid evidence they may cause serious cell damage. Research from a British university suggests a common preservative found in drinks such as Fanta and Pepsi Max has the ability to switch off vital parts of DNA. The problem — more usually associated with ageing and alcohol abuse — can eventually lead to cirrhosis of the liver and degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s — via Warren Ellis
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to build cyberwarfare units and develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems as part of its information-warfare strategy, the US Department of Defense (DOD) warned in a report released on Friday. These capabilities are part of China’s ongoing military modernisation efforts, which have seen the country add dozens of high-tech fighters and ballistic missiles to its arsenal. China isn’t alone in building the capability to attack an enemy’s computer systems. The US and other countries have developed similar abilities
A startup plans to release a kind of holy software grail the third or fourth week of June. Lina said its dual-licensed Lina virtual Linux machine will run more or less normal Linux applications under Windows, Mac or Linux, with a look and feel native to each. The concept recalls Java, which has long promised write once, run anywhere
compatibility. As with Java, Lina users will first install a VM specific to their platform, after which they can run binaries compiled not for their particular OS, but for the VM, which aims to hide OS-specific characteristics from the application
For years now, newspapers have quietly watched Google index their headlines and offer users a synopsis of their stories without paying them a dime. Google is supposed to make it easier for newspaper readers to find content online. But some in the industry are questioning whether it makes business sense to allow Google to use their material for free
Turning off a gene that has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease made mice smarter in the lab, researchers said on Sunday in a finding that lends new insight on learning and may lead to new drugs for memory problems. They said these mice were far more adept at sensing changes in their environment than their mouse brethren
Ericsson and Telstra have claimed a world first by boosting the speed of live fibre optic links between two cities from 10Gbps to 40Gbps. The trial showed that the existing 1200km optical fibre links between Sydney and Melbourne can operate at 40Gbps without major changes
After years of negotiations, the Tasmanian Government has persuaded US entertainment company Warner Brothers to help raise funds for research into tasmanian devil facial tumour disease. The Government has long argued that Warner Brothers should help fund the research, because it has made millions of dollars from the cartoon character Taz Devil
Pakistani police say they have arrested nine people for abducting people, drugging them and stealing their kidneys for transplant operations. Selling kidneys from living donors is not illegal in Pakistan, which medical experts say has a reputation as the world’s kidney bazaar. But police say those arrested in the eastern city of Lahore tricked people then drugged them with tranquillisers before removing their kidneys. Hundreds of rich foreigners come to Pakistan every year and buy kidneys from live, impoverished donors, in a business thought to be worth millions of dollars
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit against psychic
Uri Geller after Geller filed a DMCA YouTube takedown notice over a video clip that lasted a few seconds. But there’s a second lawsuit afoot. Geller also sued a skeptic over the same video, claiming copyright infringement — via Declan McCullagh
An artist has offered to donate his own head to an Oxford museum — if a collection of shrunken heads has to be returned to South America. Children’s author and artist, Ted Dewan is offering to leave instructions in his will for his head to be shrunk and put on display, if the Oxford museum’s current collection of 10 heads from the Upper Amazon region has to be repatriated
In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is ineffective
. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of effective technological measures
. The legislation is based on EU Copyright Directive from 2001. According to both Finnish copyright law and the underlying directive, only such protection measure is effective, which achieves the protection objective
A team of American and Irish researchers have discovered that some female sharks can reproduce without having sex, the first time that scientists have found the unusual capacity in such an ancient vertebrate species. Their report that sharks can reproduce asexually through the process known as parthenogenesis is being published online today in the British journal Biology Letters. Researchers have observed parthenogenesis in certain species of birds, reptiles, amphibians and bony fishes, but the new finding suggests that vertebrates’ ability to reproduce without sex evolved much earlier than scientists had thought
Rumours about Google acquiring RSS management company Feedburner from last week, started by ex-TechCrunch UK editor Sam Sethi, are accurate and are now confirmed according to a source close to the deal. Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years
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