The military-appointed government of Thailand has blocked access to YouTube and several other Internet sites in a crackdown on material seen as denigrating the country’s monarch. We have blocked YouTube because it contains a video insulting to our king,
Winai Yoosabai, head of the censorship unit at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, said
Scientists have developed a way of converting one blood group into another. The technique potentially enables blood from groups A, B and AB to be converted into group O negative, which can be safely transplanted into any patient. The method, which makes use of newly discovered enzymes, may help relieve shortages of blood for transfusions
Along with James Doohan’s cremated remains will also travel the ashes of one of NASA’s first space travelers, Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, aboard a privately-built rocket set to launch from New Mexico this month. The launch of a SpaceLoft XL rocket built by the private firm UP Aerospace is scheduled for 28 April. SL-2, as it has been dubbed, will lift off from Spaceport America, a state-funded launch site near Upham, New Mexico and about 72km north of the city of Las Cruces
Google has thrown its hat into the ring against Microsoft and (reportedly) Yahoo and AOL over the sale of DoubleClick. Google’s entry into the bidding may boost the price for the remaining pieces of DoubleClick (parts of the company having already been sold off) to $2 billion, twice what its current owners paid for the whole thing
Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury is awesome, he’s turning down endorsement deals and bring a $15 basketball shoe to market. If you’ve ever wondered why basketball shoes were so expensive, the answer is — because they can be. It’s an interesting culture hack, and parents/kids who can’t afford $150+ for pricey shoes can still hit the court
Behold, the world’s first open-source car. Cumbersomely dubbed c,mm,n
(say common
), the vehicle was introduced at AutoRAI in Amsterdam. The project is a product of the Netherlands Society for Nature and Environment, better known as the Stichting Natuur en Milieu
, along with a trio of universities: Eindhoven, Enschede, and Delft. So how is the c,mm,n open-source? The entire vehicle’s genetic makeup (specifications, technical drawings, etc.) are available online to anyone, and the car’s creators hope that people will adapt it to their needs and wants, with the caveat that they must share their modifications with the rest of the community
A ban on smoking in enclosed public places has begun across Wales. Pubs, restaurants, offices and public transport are all covered by the ban, which came into force at 0600 BST. Those found smoking can face on-the-spot fines of £50, while those in charge of premises could also be fined for allowing smoking. A similar ban is already in force in Scotland. Northern Ireland will follow suit on 30 April, and England will follow on 1 July
Pulp mill protesters have waved placards and screamed no pulp mill
at a rally in Launceston’s Albert Hall. Police say about 3,000 people attended the rally. The protesters called on federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull to reject Gunns Limited’s plans for a pulp mill at Bell Bay in northern Tasmania
Artist Nadine Jarvis can fabricate pencils from carbon left over by incinerating human remains — it’s part of a larger research project into post mortem
. She notes that 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash — a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind
— via Boing Boing
EMI’s entire digital music catalogue will be available in premium DRM-free form via iTunes in May, the music label said Monday at a press conference in London. Beatles tunes under EMI’s control, however, are not part of the plan. Major music label EMI Group plans to sell a premium level of digital downloads through Apple’s iTunes Store. For $1.29 per song, consumers will be able to buy higher-quality digital music lacking digital rights management. Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. Rather, they will complement the standard 99-cent iTunes downloads and will be sold at a premium: $1.29 per song. Consumers who have already purchased EMI tracks containing Apple’s FairPlay copy protection will be able to upgrade them to the premium version for 30 cents, EMI said. Full albums in DRM-free form can be bought at the same price as standard iTunes albums
SonyBMG, the world’s second-biggest music company, will no longer accept hard copy demos from bands. Instead, budding musicians will be asked to sign up to a record label website such as www.columbiademos.co.uk or www.rcademos.co.uk to blog their music, photos and videos
IBM is soon to launch a multimedia browser to make audio and video content accessible to people with vision impairments. Codenamed the Accessibility Browser — or A-Browser — the software was created by a blind employee in Japan. The A-Browser will give blind and partially-sighted people the same control over multimedia content that sighted people have using a mouse. IBM says it will be available later this year and hopes it will be free
Thirty years ago, Luke Skywalker beheld something that scientists are just now realizing is likely quite common in the universe: double sunsets. Astronomers have long known that binary star systems are common. And models suggested that planets could form in these systems, even though there’s a double-tug of gravity on the material that would have to form a planet. Observations from NASA’s Spitzer telescope, show that binary systems are just as likely to be surrounded by planet-forming debris disks are are lone stars
The European parliament’s Commitee for Legal Affairs approved an amendment presented by EMP Nicola Zingaretti, that makes piracy a felony — but only if a monetary profit is made
A California judge handed a victory to Kaleidescape, which manufactures home media servers, ruling that the company’s products do not violate the DVD industry’s CSS license. The company was sued by the DVD Copy Control Association, which said that Kaleidescape’s media servers violate its standard licensing contract
Europe’s biggest drug company has announced it is taking the first steps towards marketing a vaccine in Africa from which it never expects to make money. GlaxoSmithKline says it has begun filing documents with the regulatory authorities concerning its meningitis vaccine called Globorix
The move to open up the application programming interfaces (APIs) to Yahoo Mail is meant to encourage Web developers to build applications that use the mail service. The company expects these third-party mashups
, hybrid software that combines content from more than one source, will bring in more customers
With at least 46 million consumer records accessed by hackers, the TJX case outranks the previous largest case tracked by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse: a June 2005 disclosure by credit card processor CardSystems that hackers accessed accounts of 40 million card holders
Ever feel as though you’re being followed? As if someone is behind you, shadowing your every move? It might be your shadow person
, created by unusual activity in a specific brain region, a new study shows. The paper, published in the British journal Nature, describes the case of a 22-year-old woman with no history of psychiatric problems who was being evaluated for treatment of epilepsy. When a region of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction was electrically stimulated, the woman described encounters with a shadow person
who mimicked her bodily movements — via Warren Ellis
Yahoo has announced that they will be offering unlimited email storage starting this coming May. The launch is all a part of Yahoo’s ten year anniversary. While not all users will see their storage caps disappear right away Yahoo is promising that this feature will eventually reach their entire population
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