The music, movie and software cartels claim piracy
is a number one problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole and so successful are their continuing dis- and misinformation propaganda campaigns that they’ve been able to dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers. But far from being at the top of the pile, movie and music piracy rank 16th and 20th, respectively, on a global index of illicit markets. Software piracy ranks 7th. And even those positions are subject to considerable doubt
A Tower of Babel
device that gives the illusion of being bilingual is being developed by US scientists. Users simply have to silently mouth a word in their own language for it to be translated and read out in another. The researchers said the effect was like watching a television programme that had been dubbed
SpamThru, a horribly ingenious new piece of malware, downloads and installs its own anti-virus software, which it then uses to detect and remove competing malicious software installed by other hackers on the same system — via Boing Boing
Vodafone Australia is poised to turn its back on its 12-year mobile-only strategy, and planning to open a tender for a landline broadband partner, with the aim of earning $200 million in revenue from fixed-line services within three years
Microsoft has made its Sender ID Framework available to developers who want to create services or products that use the authentication technology for cutting back on spam
China is moving to require people to use their real names when blogging. The proposed solution, arrived at by the Internet Society of China (affiliated with the ministry of information) would allow bloggers to use a pseudonym when blogging as long as they used their real name when registering — via Slashdot
US customs officials have the authority to scrutinise the contents of travelers’ laptops and even confiscate laptops for a period of time, without giving a reason
Firefox 2.0 has officially been released on Mozilla.com. Here are the builds for all languages and Win/Linux/Mac and the release notes
Google has unveiled a free programme called Google Custom Search Engine that lets users tailor a search index to their content specifications. You can select keywords for the index, as well as which web sites will be included or excluded in the search. You also may customise the look and feel of the engine. The trade-off? When you implement the index on your web site or blog, it will be populated with Google text ads via Google’s lucrative AdSense Program. On the plus side, you do get paid for click-throughs — via Slashdot
Sun intends to begin open-sourcing Java by the end of this year and complete the process in 2007, according to the company’s executive vice president of software, Rich Green
Google has launched a new customisable search function for third parties that allows them to filter search results to suit their own purposes. Known as the Google Custom Search Engine, the search function will be provided free by Google for use on other web sites, with results displayed on the host’s web site, rather than on a Google page
Telecom New Zealand is making a further attempt to offload its struggling Australian business AAPT, opening talks with a number of junior telcos less than six months after failing to find a buyer for around $450 million. TNZ is now believed to be in talks with NSW-based Soul — which is controlled by WH Soul Pattison — about selling its retail fixed-line business, the fourth biggest in the country. AAPT is also in separate talks with infrastructure player Powertel — which holds a 19 per cent stake in Perth-based broadband company iiNet — to build a credible third force in broadband internet services
Chilli Internet is the latest iBurst wireless reseller to reveal it will block customers trying to use peer-to-peer file sharing
The US has banned Vegemite, even to the point of searching Australians for jars of the spread when they enter the country. The bizarre crackdown was prompted because Vegemite has been deemed illegal under US food laws. The great Aussie icon — faithfully carried around the world by travellers from downunder — contains folate, which under a technicality, America allows to be added only to breads and cereals
Boy Scouts in the Los Angeles area will now be able to earn a merit patch for learning about the evils of downloading pirated movies and music. Nothing like getting early brainwashing from corporate America
Bill Crozier, one of Oklahoma’s nominees for state superintendent of education has proposed a unique, if incredibly moronic idea for protecting students from outbreaks of violence. If elected, he said he would put thick used textbooks under every desk for students to use, not for the purposes of education, but as body armour — Pharyngula
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online has officially launched, bringing 50,000 pages of searchable text and 40,000 images to the public for free. Presented by the University of Cambridge and other collaborators, the site currently contains only half of what will be available by 2009 — via Boing Boing
A key oversight agency has approved a .asia
domain for Internet addresses, supplementing suffixes available for individual countries, such as .cn
for China and .jp
for Japan. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers earlier approved .eu
for the European Union. Made up of groups that run domain names for China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries, the DotAsia Organisation plans to explore permitting domain names in Asian languages under .asia
Union Products, the original manufacturer of the plastic pink flamingo, will close its doors by 1 Novemebr, according to the company’s president. Production of the flamingos stopped in June, along with the company’s other product lines, and the company is now in the process of liquidation, according to its president, Dennis Plante — via Improbable Research
Undersound is a new project to distribute music around the London Underground trains. Users can upload songs from their collections to centralised distribution points, and download tracks left by other users. The system keeps tack of which tracks came from what station — via Boing Boing
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