An Indian woman committed suicide so her two blind sons could receive her eyes and see. But doctors say the chances of success are bleak. Thirty-seven-year-old Tamizhselvi’s sons, Kumaran, 17, and Kumar, 15, have been blind since birth. Doctors in the southern city of Chennai say Kumar’s condition cannot be helped with a cornea transplant and also suspect his elder brother does not have a cornea defect. We had told the family earlier itself that a corneal transplant was not needed for the younger son,
said hospital official G Seethalakshmi. The family is insisting Tamizhselvi’s corneas can only be used for her sons and no one else — via Warren Ellis
Greek prison guards will go on strike next week demanding a change of their American-made weapons that date back to the US wars in central America almost a century ago. While antique shops would be eager to get their hands on them, prison guards just want to get rid of their obsolete 1911 US Cavalry revolvers. The guns do not scare inmates any more as safety experts have advised guards not to fire them — via Neil Gaiman
Adrian Bowyer, a researcher at the University of Bath, UK, is working on a 3D printer that can be used to print out all the parts necessary to make 3D printers.
Bowyer has already produced an electronic circuit by squirting the alloy inside a plastic autonomous robot, which itself was created using a commercial 3D printer. Because the heated syringe he used is very similar to the nozzle that deposits plastic layers in the printer, he envisions squirting both plastic and metal from the same nozzle in future self-replicating machines.
The machine need not be capable of assembling itself, he says, only producing all the necessary parts, with the exception of the microprocessors and the lubricating grease. These could later be added and the various parts clipped together, Bowyer says.
People are quite capable of assembling things if they want to,he adds.I am not interested in self-assembly, just self-copying.
OurMedia is a service that will host your open-licensed materials forever, for free, with unlimited bandwidth. They’re under high load right now, but I’m sure they’ll be running more smoothly as they throw more servers at the problem — via BoingBoing
Yet another nail was hammered into the coffin of the GM food industry in Britain yesterday when the final trial of a four-year series of experiments found, once more, that genetically modified crops can be harmful to wildlife
John Howard is showing his willingness to roll over for the loony fundies reviewing the cases of long time illegally jailed immigrants who have converted to Christianity. Local Muslim leaders are far from impressed at the rank hypocrisy
Would-be search king Ansearch has ruffled a few feathers among Australia’s top corporate brands by registering misspellings of well-known internet domain names in an attempt to drive traffic to the search engine
The State Library of NSW has launched the first stage of a project to put an AU$1.5 billion collection of Australian culture online
The Dutch Attorney-General advises against reversal of the last verdict in the Scientology vs Karin Spaink case (part of Scientology’s War on the Internet). A series of court battles between writer Spaink and the Church of Scientology has changed the copyright landscape of the internet in the Netherlands. In an early case, linking to infringing documents was considered infringement itself. Later this was reversed, although by then several unrelated cases (notably Deutsche Bahn vs Indymedia) had been decided on the basis of this judgement. On appeals, the court held that free speech sometimes trumps copyright: even though Spaink may have infringed on the Church’s copyright, she was allowed to do so to bring to light the doings of what she considers an evil sect. According to the XS4All document, not only did the Attorney-General uphold the decision that Free Speech can trump Copyright, but concluded also that there may not have been infringement. The Attorney-General feels a work can be considered published even if publication happened against the will of the author. In the Netherlands, the Supreme Court can only reverse previous decisions by lower courts. Before it renders a verdict, it asks the Attorney-General for advice — via Slashdot
Computer chips capable of speeding data around by rippling the electrons on the surface of metal wires just got a step closer. Mark Brongersma, at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, has found a new way to model the three-dimensional propagation of these ripples — called plasmons — in two dimensions. He says the new model is much simpler and more intuitive than existing simulations and will be crucial in the design of plasmonic components for computer chips — via Warren Ellis
A bunch of vodka-crazed bloggers (or ‘scienticians’, as they style themselves) have figured out that filtering the cheapest vodka available six times makes it taste better than the good stuff. If you use a stock Brita filter jug (like the one i have at home, hmmmm) the process takes about two hours.
Yahoo has bought Ludicorp Research and Development — the company behind popular photo sharing site Flickr. According to the company blog; Flickr is going to continue with business as usual — except it won’t have to draw straws to decide who gets paid. No financial terms were disclosed — via Warren Ellis
The head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency told the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, that the case for war in Iraq was being fixed
by Washington to suit US policy. Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, briefed Blair and a group of ministers on the United States’ determination to launch the invasion nine months before hostilities began in March 2003
Alice Springs’ council is poised to sign an agreement with Veridas Communications for city-wide wireless broadband, reducing its dependence for services on what one alderman claims is an uncooperative
Telstra
This is me with a South Park twist. There really isn’t any difference between this and me in the real world.
Anyone who has ever developed a web site knows that cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility is a nightmare, mainly due to Microsoft’s willful non-compliance with the CSS2 standard. It seems Microsoft will continue their poor support for CSS2 even in the IE7.0 release. This may have worked when IE was the only game in town, but now that Firefox is a serious player, it won’t help them keep market share as they think it will
News agency Agence France Presse has sued Google, alleging the Web search leader includes AFP’s photos, news headlines and stories on its news site without permission. The French news service is seeking damages of at least $17.5 million and an order barring Google News from displaying AFP photographs, news headlines or story leads, according to the suit filed Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Google is in the process of removing French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) from its Google News service, which aggregates links to online articles and accompanying photos from about 4500 news outlets
Computers deliberately left open to online attack are being used to place spies in the hacker-controlled networks of infected machines. The fake zombies are deployed by members of the German Honeynet Project
Jon Johansen has published a small program which allows the acquisition of DRM-free files from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. He explains that his program works by bypassing iTunes which adds the DRM itself at the end of the transfer. His program, pymusique, is Windows-only compliant but it’d be easy to port it to other platforms. Alas, Apple were far from amused and have blocked the security hole the hack exploited. Pymusique is, once again, functional
Canadian blogger Jeremy Wright was detained and interrogated by US Immigration when he arrived in New York last week for a meeting with a media company to discuss a business opportunity in the area of blogging. It appears that the immigration people simply did not believe that Jeremy could make a living as a blogger. As a result they gave him the third degree for several hours — including a strip search — and incorrectly informed him that he was banned him from entering the US — via NevOn
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