Police are using a network of amateur investigators as bounty hunters to deal with online fraud
A new mobile phone scam is sending missed call messages to unsuspecting users, urging them to dial premium rate phone lines, an industry watchdog has warned
A Pentagon document classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, decades after mental health experts abandoned that position. The document outlines retirement or other discharge policies for service members with physical disabilities, and in a section on defects lists homosexuality alongside mental retardation and personality disorders — via Boing Boing
The US Government is set to transition to IPv6 in June 2008. The CIO Council’s Architecture and Infrastructure Committee has provided a list of best practices and transition elements that agencies should use as they work to meet the deadline. The latest additions, released in May, are a compilation of existing recommendations and best practices gathered from the Defense Department, which has been testing and preparing for the transition for years, the private sector, and the Internet research and development community
A Florida-based company called Oragenics may have found a way to rid our mouths of a bacteria that thrives on sugars in the mouth, which it consumes while excreting lactic acid. On the surface it seems like an elegant solution, but clearly there is the potential to upset delicate systems in nature, resulting in possible larger-scale side effects — via digg
A major drug company, Genentech, is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive variant of the same product on the market
A form of solid carbon dioxide, named amorphous carbonia, that could be used to make ultra-hard glass or coatings for microelectronic devices has been discovered by scientists from the University of Florence in Italy. It was made by squeezing dry ice, a form of carbon dioxide used to create smoke in stage shows, at huge pressure
The 25 European Commission member states and nine accession countries have all signed up for a plan that could make e-accessibility mandatory — via digg
Google is now taking on that part of the Internet that has been notoriously difficult to navigate: US Government sites
On top of the tales of the appalling finish on the black Macbooks and discolouration of the white Macbooks that have been doing the rounds, here’s a remarkable thing that the Macworld team has turned up in its lab tests. The black Macbooks, when compared to the top-end white versions (the latter, you’ll recall, are AU$300 cheaper but have no other noticeable configuration differences), are actually slower at a number of tasks than the mid-config white ones. That is, if you leave the disk on the white model at 60GB, rather than upgrading to 80GB — via The Guardian
Bill Gates, the man who started Microsoft and has been its public face throughout its three decades of existence, plans to step away from daily work at the company. Gates announced on Thursday that he will gradually relinquish his current role, ceding the title of chief software architect immediately, while remaining a full-time employee for the next two years. In July 2008, he will become a part-time employee and chairman
Mac users can check off another box in the plus column for owning Intel-based Apple hardware. A start-up company that goes by the name of Parallels has just introduced software that lets Macs run Windows and Mac OS X simultaneously
Two butterfly species have been bred in the lab to make a third distinct species. In a species, individuals need to be capable of interbreeding to produce fertile offspring. The study demonstrates that two animal species can evolve to form one, instead of the more common scenario where one species diverges to form two. There is growing circumstantial evidence for hybrid speciation in Ragoletis fruit flies, swordtail fish and African cichlid fish. Some also suspect the American red wolf could be the product of hybridisation between coyotes and wolves
AOL is breathing new life into Netscape.com with a revamped design — still in beta — that takes a page from the strategy playbook of user-driven sites such as digg.com and del.icio.us
Several Australian newspapers are gearing up to follow the lead of British counterparts in putting exclusive breaking news online before it appears in print and devoting more newsroom resources to the internet
http://email.news.com.au/ct/click?q=44-9npfIZU5YwNkh7gEd8oaX9RR
Amazon.com has started selling groceries, a cautious step into a business that was one of the biggest casualties of the dot-com collapse
Google added a new online photo sharing feature to Picasa, the free software that lets users organise digital photos on their computers. The test Picasa Web Albums offering is available by invitation only and appears similar to popular photo sharing Web site Flickr
The Aymara, an indigenous group in the Andes highlands, have a concept of time that’s opposite our own spatial metaphor. A new study by cognitive scientists explains how the Aymara consider the past to be ahead and the future behind them — via Boing Boing
Millions of Windows users may unwittingly be test subjects for an unfinished Microsoft antipiracy tool. The software maker has been delivering a prerelease version of Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications software to PCs as a high priority
item in the built-in update feature in Windows. The tool, also known as WGA Notifications, is used to validate the authenticity of Windows software installed on a PC
Apple’s iPods are made by mainly female workers who earn as little as £27 per month, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday. The report claims Longhua’s workers live in dormitories that house 100 people, and that visitors from the outside world are not permitted. Workers toil for 15-hours a day to make the iconic music player and the iPod nano is made in a five-storey factory (E3) that is secured by police officers. Apple is currently investigating the sweatshop allegations. [Update: Apple has published their findings]
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