Lauren Weinstein raises an alarm about a new Google service, Click-to-Call. The service seems ripe for abuse of several kinds. One red flag is that Google falsifies the caller-ID of calls it originates for the service. Up to now, the typical available avenue for manipulating caller-ID has been pay services that tended to limit the potential for large-scale abuse since users are charged for access. Google, by providing a free service that will place calls and manipulate caller-ID, vastly increases the scope of the problem. Scale matters
Nobel Prize winning scientist Paul Crutzen has suggested deliberately spreading a layer of particulate matter in the upper atmosphere to help reflect some of the sun’s energy in an effort to combat global warming. He reminds us that the eruption of the volcano Pinatubo in 1991 cooled the planet by as much as 0.9 degrees; he believes his computer simulations show a similar effect from deliberate injection of sulfur into the atmosphere by humans. Whatever the feasibility of the idea, as the president of the National Environmental Trust has said, We are already engaged in an uncontrolled experiment by injecting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
Researchers at Dresden University believe that sabres from Damascus dating back to 900 AD were formed with help from carbon nanotubes. Sabres from Damascus are made from a type of steel called wootz. But the secret of the swords’ manufacture was lost in the eighteenth century. At high temperatures, impurities in the metal could have catalysed the growth of nanotubes from carbon in the burning wood and leaves used to make the wootz,
Paufler suggests. These tubes could then have filled with cementite to produce the wires in the patterned blades,
he says
The MPAA has launched yet another defensive attack
, this time on a small business that is pre-loading movie DVDs onto iPods and reselling them. The original DVDs of the movies that are loaded are also given to the customer. The MPAA is claiming that the service Load ‘N Go Video offers is completely illegal because ripping a DVD is against the DMCA. The MPAA is also suing the company for copyright violation — via Slashdot
Steve Bracks has seized on a secret deal the Liberal Party has struck with fundamentalist hate preacher Danny Nalliah not to decriminalise abortion. The Premier said the Liberal action was odd and that party leader Ted Baillieu should not have his policy constructed behind the back door
by other groups
Three million Britons have been issued with the new hi-tech passport, designed to frustrate terrorists and fraudsters. So why did Steve Boggan and a friendly computer expert find it so easy to break the security codes? — via Bruce Sterling
Wikipedia has become accessible in China after being blocked for more than a year, attracting applause from free media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders
Mirrors in orbit around Mars could create Earth-like conditions on a small patch of the planet’s surface, according to a NASA-funded study. The extra sunlight would provide warmth and solar power for human explorers, but some experts say the mirrors may be hard to deploy — via Warren Ellis
Broadband internet access is becoming so vital for businesses that it can be seen as a new utility comparable to water and electricity, a new United Nations report has revealed
Deep in the most remote jungles of South America, Amazon Indians are using Google Earth, GPS and other technologies to protect their fast-dwindling home. Tribes in Suriname, Brazil and Colombia are combining their traditional knowledge of the rainforest with Western technology to conserve forests and maintain ties to their history and cultural traditions. Indians use Google Earth to remotely monitor their lands by checking for signs of miners and GPS to map their lands. Google Earth is used primarily for vigilance,
says Vasco van Roosmalen, program director of a nonprofit involved in the project
A group of Saitama used car salesmen whose idea of punishing a co-worker allegedly involved using him as a target for air rifle practice and as an ashtray are now being targeted themselves, but by crime fighters. At first, all three allegedly told the cops they tortured the man as a joke. But there wasn’t much funny about the fact that their co-worker had to be rescued by public health authorities and shunted away in a mental hospital for a couple of weeks — via Warren Ellis
The tangle of cables and plugs needed to recharge today’s electronic gadgets could soon be a thing of the past. Researchers at MIT have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power wirelessly to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players. In a nutshell, their solution entails installing special non-radiative
antennae with identical resonant frequencies on both the power transmitter and the receiving device. Any energy not diverted into a gadget or appliance is simply reabsorbed. The system currently under development is designed to operate at distances of 3 to 5 metres, but the researchers claim that it could be adapted to factory-scale applications, or miniaturized for use in the microscopic world
Junichiro Mine, 27, an unemployed man of Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, was arrested Wednesday for strangling a woman he had got acquainted with through a suicide web site — via Warren Ellis
CSIRO has had an important win in a court case in the US in its battle to be paid royalties for its Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology. CSIRO was granted a US patent for this technology in 1996. Yesterday, in the US Federal Court of the Eastern District of Texas, Judge Davis granted summary judgment in favour of CSIRO in regard to the patent’s validity. He also granted summary judgment that the defendant, Buffalo Technology, had infringed CSIRO’s patent
Sun is considering releasing its Solaris operating system under the General Public License, raising the possibility of cross-pollination with Linux. The server and software company previously made Solaris an open-source project called OpenSolaris in 2005, releasing source code under the Community Development and Distribution License (CDDL). However, Sun this week chose the GPL for its open-source Java effort
Scientists have found a new pain killer based on human saliva. Apparently 1 gram of the new drug provides as much pain blocking as 3 grams of morphine. The drug blocks the breakdown of the body’s natural pain killing mechanism. Scientists say the molecule is simple and synthesis is expected to be simple — via Slashdot
Google is adding a customised start page to its Google Apps for Your Domain program, a set of online tools that companies can privately brand for their users, free of charge
Sun Microsystems is releasing the code for the Java programming language, marking one of the biggest contributions to the open-source community under the GNU General Public License
Telco Internode will deploy some AU$3.5 million of broadband infrastructure through rural South Australia in a new project responding to the needs of a regional group of local councils
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