The federal government may tap the vast pool of social resources behind blogs and websites such as Flickr and Wikipedia to boost its online information services
Call centre and technology jobs have been the main target of offshoring to low-cost operations in places such as India and the Philippines, but journalism is in the sights of one of India’s largest offshorers
Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, which last week gave up on Germany, is reportedly looking at trying its luck in Australia and is sizing up our two biggest supermarket operators, Coles Myer and Woolworths
A substance found in crab shells called chitosan has very useful properties. For example, it has been used in bandages to stop bleeding. But now, researchers at the University of Maryland have used the chitosan from blue crabs living in Chesapeake Bay as a component of a nanoscale sensor system which could save many lives in the future. These blue crab nanosensors will be used to improve security in airports, hospitals and other public locations by detecting tiny amounts of explosives or chemicals in air and water — via Slashdot
AOL will test launch a new internet video service in an attempt to demonstrate how much it has learned from its mistakes. The new service, AOL Video, aims to be the one-stop shop for online videos and will let users search for videos across the web, upload their own, or buy or watch for free thousands of TV shows from any one of 45 video-on-demand channels on nearly any device
A Melbourne shopping centre and tourist attraction have banned photographs, in order to prevent terrorism. Because all terrorism begins with the devilish capture of precious photons. Once these photons have been taken away to the terrorists’ spider caves, they are converted into terrorist photons and re-released at the speed of light to attack their targets with relatavistic savageness — via Boing Boing
The House of Representatives voted on restricting access to social sites on public terminals. The bill, which passed the House in a 410-15 vote, would bar users from accessing sites like Amazon, MySpace, or Slashdot from terminals in libraries and schools. Adults would be able to ask permission
to access such sites — via Slashdot
After a five month trial and two weeks of deliberation, a jury in Santa Ana has convicted two leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang of racketeering and murder. Barry The Baron
Mills and Tyler and The Hulk
Bingham were found guilty of ordering attacks on black inmates from maximum security cellblocks, and are now eligible for the death penalty. How did they order hits from within such high-security cells? With 400-year-old crypto, and invisible ink made from urine — via Boing Boing
For years, the RIAA has claimed that having the IP address of a computer that has shared unauthorised files is the equivalent of having the evidence of who was actually sharing files. That, of course, is false. The IP address simply can help you know who paid for the internet access, but not who was using what computer on a network
Samsung has developed a new PC memory technology that will allow PCs running Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Vista operating system to boot up much faster than is currently possible
In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet. Having been the internet’s instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN, making the organization a more international body
File-sharing service Kazaa, a longtime thorn in the side of the recording industry, has buried the hatchet with major record companies in a $100 million out-of-court settlement
Just one metre square of a new super-sticky material inspired by gecko feet could suspend the weight of an average family car, say its inventors. The plastic, known as Synthetic Gecko, has been developed by researchers at aerospace and defence firm BAE Systems. Like the reptile’s foot, the polymer is covered in millions of tiny mushroom-like hairs that provide grip — via Warren Ellis
IE7 will be delivered in the fourth quarter as a high priority
update via Automatic Updates in Windows XP, Gary Schare, Microsoft’s director of IE product management, said in an interview Tuesday in the US. Automatic Updates is a Windows feature typically used for security updates, but Microsoft has also used it to push its antipiracy tool WGA Notifications
Shawn Hogan, CEO of Digital Point Solutions, has found himself on the receiving end of an MPAA lawsuit claiming he downloaded a copy of Meet the Fockers
on Bittorrent. Mr Hogan both denies the charges as well as claims he already owns the movie on DVD. After being asked to pay a $2500 extortion fee, Mr Hogan lawyered up and has vowed to challenge and help change the MPAA’s tactics. They’re completely abusing the system,
Hogan says. Although expecting to pay well over $100,000 to defend himself, he claims I would spend well into the millions on this
via Slashdot
Australians should not be experiencing problems accessing US Web sites despite network issues connecting the country to the USA, according to Southern Cross Cable Network. The owner of 30,000 kilometres of cable network linking Australia and New Zealand to the US, Southern Cross said a hardware failure
in its network located in California — not the undersea cable itself — was the cause of the downtime. However, traffic was re-routed to its secondary line this morning as soon as the failure was detected
New Zealanders will be able to watch video services such as internet protocol television as early as next year using a high-speed network developed by Telecom New Zealand. The likelihood of Australians using such services on a widespread basis soon are low, with news yesterday that Telstra’s talks with the competition regulator over a $4 billion fibre-network have all but collapsed
In a transaction that will reshape the semiconductor industry, Advanced Micro Devices agreed to buy ATI Technologies for $5.4 billion in cash and stock, people involved in the deal said
Babylon 5, one of the greatest sci-fi series of all time, will return in a series of direct-to-DVD mini movies. They will be written and directed by J Michael Straczynski and we can expect the first set to be released during the second quarter of 2007 via digg
A disc drive manufacturer has patented a process that may bring about computer hard drives and handheld devices that can store as much as a terabyte of information. Researchers at Seagate Technology acknowledge that such levels of storage on small, commercial products are still five years to a decade away, but they feel confident they’ve hit on a way to overcome a major limitation in disk manufacturing and capacity via digg
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