According to Foresight, a government think-tank, mind-altering drugs could be as common as coffee within a couple of decades
A Dutch court has rejected a request by an internet piracy watchdog group to force five internet service providers to hand over personal data on people downloading large amounts of music and films
Monaco’s Prince Albert II has formally ascended the throne of the tiny Mediterranean principality, taking the title of His Serene Highness three months after the death of his father Prince Rainier
A pair of suspected drug dealers were arrested after being caught with a rocket loaded with about $150,000 of methamphetamine in the trunk of their car. The suspects had rigged together a system that would pop open the car’s trunk and launch the drug-bearing rocket when they pushed the cigarette lighter on the dashboard — via Flex Your Rights
Thousands of United States military personnel based in Britain have been banned from visiting London until further notice after last week’s bombings. A US Air Force spokeswoman says military members are forbidden from going inside the M25 ring road around London. Thanks to some serious criticism from police, politicians and tourism officials the ban has been lifted — via Paul Mellen
Software giant Microsoft has moved to quash claims it gave preferential treatment to adware maker Claria, amid talks of a merger
Wireless broadband users in Australia could enjoy maximum surfing speeds of 75 megabits per second by mid-2006
The second series of The Mighty Boosh
will be available to stream from 19 July, a full week before starting its run on BBC 3. It is one of a number of pilots that BBC Television will be undertaking over the next few months, exploiting the opportunities that new technologies offer to look at how programmes might be delivered beyond the traditional linear broadcast
Popular Science has a how-to article up on turning a backpack into a portable, solar-powered Wi-Fi hotspot. Its secret ingredient: the Junxion Box. Plug a cellular-network card into the book-size open-source-based device and you have an instant Wi-Fi hotspot, with speeds averaging around 700 kilobits per second. Just the thing for sharing bandwidth with your mates on a roadtrip
A company that provides high-speed internet access over electrical power lines on has received a major investment from Google, Hearst and Goldman Sachs
Brian Paddick from the London Metropolitan Police says three bombs exploded in the Underground system and one on the bus in Tavistock Square. In one of the attacks a bomb destroyed a wall between two Underground tunnels and three trains were affected. Mobile and fixed-line telephone networks were severely congested as panicked Londoners called relatives in the city, but there were no initial reports of more widespread communications damage
A teenage sleepwalker was rescued after being found fast asleep 40 metres up on the arm of a crane in London. Emergency services were called to a building site in London after a passer-by spotted the 15-year-old girl curled up on top of a concrete counterweight high above the ground. The teenager, who has not been named, had climbed up the crane and walked across a narrow metal beam while fast asleep
Henry Warwick has been actively involved with the creation and performance of electronic music since the mid 1970s, when he first delved into musique concrète techniques in high school. Always experimenting with new ideas, sounds, and techniques, he works with a variety of materials ranging from the completely digital realm of computer music in Max/MSP to much more organic and acoustic practices, such as the Armenian duduk.
He has decided to release the bulk of his music to the public for free download.
Go. Listen. Enjoy — via S P A R K !
Reuters reports that a Russian astrologer is suing NASA for $300 million because Deep Impact’s impact will make it difficult for her to do her job — voa BoingBoing
Secure optical data storage could soon literally be at your fingertips thanks to work being carried out in Japan. Yoshio Hayasaki and his colleagues have discovered that data can be written into a human fingernail by irradiating it with femtosecond laser pulses. Capacities are said to be up to 5 mega bits and the stored data lasts for 6 months — the length of time it takes a fingernail to be completely replaced
One of America’s most prominent journalists was jailed last night after she refused to testify about her confidential government sources. In a sensational climax to the nation’s biggest press freedom case in a generation, Judith Miller of the New York Times now faces imprisonment until a grand jury concludes its investigation in October into the leaking to the media in July 2003 of the identity of an undercover CIA agent
EU lawmakers overwhelmingly voted down a controversial bill on software patents Wednesday, ending what had become one of the biggest legislative battles in the EU for years
Apple has wasted little time establishing the groundwork for its forthcoming Intel-based Mac machines, already porting Firefox to the Mactel
platform
The United Church of Christ became the first mainline Christian denomination to support same-sex marriage officially when its general synod passed a resolution on Monday affirming equal marriage rights for couples regardless of gender
. The resolution was adopted in the face of efforts to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. It was both a theological statement and a protest against discrimination, said the Rev John H Thomas, the president and general minister of the denomination, which has 6,000 congregations and 1.3 million members
Australia’s internet connections are relatively inefficient
in dealing with traffic from different time zones, according to new research. Scientists from the University of New England at Armidale in northern NSW, have concluded that Australia is basically out of phase with global traffic
, based on initial statistics from about 40 monitoring sites around the world, in countries such as the US, Britain, Switzerland and South America. The study has found Australia is performing no better than Kazakhstan for internet congestion
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