Derrick Hixson has submitted an amazing entry to the MacMod Mod Competition, a Millennium Falcon: complete with Mac mini and iSight. It even includes front USB ports. His modguide contains complete build instructions, and plenty of pictures
Samsung will next year release a DVD player capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD if backers of the rival standards fail to agree on a unified format
Lawrence Lessig predicts that the public domain will die a slow death at the hands of anti-piracy efforts. The danger remains invisible to most, hidden by the zeal of a war on piracy. And that is how the public domain may die a quiet death, extinguished by self-righteous extremism, long before many even recognise it is gone
Australian scientists have created mice which can regenerate absolutely any tissue except for the tissues of the brain. Heart, lungs, entire limbs, you name it. This is the first time this has been seen in mammals
The Australian record industry celebrated a win against online music-swapping service Kazaa. Future versions of Kazaa will need to include filters to prevent the trading of copyrighted music works, the federal court ruled. Kazaa’s owners would have to apply maximum pressure
on existing users to upgrade their software to the new, filtered version. Sharman Networks has announced it will appeal the ruling
Massachusetts has cited legal concerns over Microsoft’s software as a factor behind its decision to only use document formats based on open standards
A police box has been discovered embedded in a brick wall in Glasgow’s east end. The Mark Two cast-iron box dates back to 1912, and is the oldest known example in the city. Glasgow Police Museum plan to rescue it, restore it to its former glory and put it on display from next spring. Meanwhile, new hi-tech police boxes are being introduced to Glasgow — via Doctor Who News
There is a new plugin available for IE that can make Internet Explorer resemble Firefox by adding tabbed browsing capabilities and an integrated search box. Moreover, the plugin improves IE’s privacy and security by integrating a firewall designed to block out Internet exploits, phishing sites, spammers, spyware and worms, with a special HTTP filter that removes private data, and an anti-spyware tool that can identify and remove all pests in less then 10 seconds
One of the world’s largest and highly venomous centipedes has been found crawling up a living room wall in north London. The scolopendra gigantea, nine inches long and an inch wide, a native of Central and South America, was identified by the Natural History Museum. Experts believe that it could have found its way to Britain as a stowaway in electrical equipment or a large import of fruit
3700 Creative Zen Neeons
shipped with a virus. The virus in question was the W32.Wullik.B@mm worm. Creative released a statement today to help consumers pinpoint the possibly effected devices
Thousands of German Harry Potter fans who could not wait for the latest JK Rowling epic to be published in their own language have translated the book in less than two days. The hobby translators
were too impatient to wait the 77 days required by German translator Klaus Fritz to complete the task and logged on to Harry-auf-Deutsch.de to finish the job in 45 hours — via BoingBoing
According to the American Red Cross site: The state Homeland Security Department had requested — and continues to request — that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city. Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders
—via Warren Ellis
Some US libraries are using Microsoft Media DRM to automatically return audiobooks checked out of their catalogue. A patron with a valid library card visits a library Web site to borrow a title for, say, three weeks. When the audiobook is due, the patron must renew it or find it automatically returned
in a virtual sense: The file still sits on the patron’s computer, but encryption makes it unplayable beyond the borrowing period
Jan Erik Vangen’s Bender casemod is a life-sized version of the robot from Futurama. His eyes glow and he says Bite my shiny metal ass
on demand. He also has a terabyte of storage, WiFi, and a DVD burner — via BoingBoing
The police are looting. This has been confirmed by several independent sources. Some of the looting might be legitimate
in as much as that word has any meaning in this context. They have broken into ATMs and safes: confirmed. We have eyewitnesses to this. They have taken dozens of SUVs from dealerships ostensibly for official use. They have also looted gun stores and pawn shops for all the small arms, supposedly to prevent criminals
from doing so. But who knows their true intentions. We have an inside source in the NOPD who says that command and control is in chaos — via Warren Ellis
Diamond is no longer the hardest substance known to man. Scientists have created a new material, called aggregated diamond nanorods by compressing carbon-60 under high heat. The hardness of a material is measured by its isothermal bulk modulus. Aggregated diamond nanorods have a modulus of 491 gigapascals (GPa), compared with 442 GPa for conventional diamond
Roborior, a house-sitting robot armed with a digital camera, infrared sensors, and a videophone is on sale in select Japanese department stores. The house-sitting robot can detect break-ins with its infrared sensors and then call the owners cell phone and stream video to the tiny screen. At US$2600 each the Roborior is not cheap. For those that require something a little more substantial, Tmsuk, the manufacturer of Roborior, has produced a four legged version called Banryu. This one is the size of a large dog and sells for around US$18,000. It’s not supposed to shed hair or sleep on the furniture which could make it quite popular — via Slashdot
iiNet has revealed that it may expand its DSL network to at least 260 exchanges as part of a $34.5 million upgrade program next year. iiNet, Australia’s third largest internet provider, expects to have DSL equipment installed in 211 exchanges by January when it completes the third stage of its roll-out. The internet provider’s managing director Michael Malone said iiNet was planning a fourth stage which would involve a further 50 to 100 exchanges.
PWNtcha is a package that breaks various on-line captcha algorithms. The site provides numerous examples of easy (Paypal, and an older version of Slashdot make the list) and hard Captcha. It also links various sources explaining why Captcha is a bad idea
The Ministry of Reshelving is a collaborative political prank / game in which participants move copies of books, such as George Orwell’s 1984, to non-fiction sections, such as US History or True Crime — via BoingBoing
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