An influential congressional committee has dropped a political bombshell by suggesting that a tax originally created to pay for the Spanish American War could be extended to all Internet and data connections this year
The Norwegian government has decided to kill five of the country’s wolves — a quarter of the entire population. The Norwegian Directorate for Nature has granted licences to hundreds of farmers to kill the wolves as a measure to prevent the loss of domestic livestock, primarily sheep. Three of the wolves have already been shot
A new worm-like threat is spreading on the Internet and targeting computers running the MySQL open source database software. Thousands of Microsoft Windows machines running MySQL have been infected, according to one security expert
A 2,000 ton mound of cow manure in Nebraska has been burning continuously for three months, to the dismay of the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, which says the smoke is in violation of pollution laws. Apparently, the decomposing manure generated so much heat that it spontaneously combusted. And no one knows how to extinguish the fire. They don’t want to quench it with water because the manure will run off into nearby rivers — via BoingBoing
If you’ve ever had the urge to take up alchemy in the kitchen, as always, there’s a site with detailed instructions available for using your microwave to melt up to 250g of bronze, silver, white metal or iron:
Domestic microwave appliances are based on the magnatron; an electronic device which converts electrical energy to microwave energy, which is fed via a waveguide to the cooking chamber. Since the conversion is somewhat less than perfectly efficient, the magnatron has to be cooled by a stream of air from a fan. This air is then led to the oven to help remove steam produced during cooking. Once in the chamber, the microwaves are reflected by the metal walls until they are absorbed, (usually by water-containing food), their energy being converted to heat. Should absorption not take place — if, for example, the oven is activated when empty, some energy will re-enter the waveguide and cause over-heating of the magnetron. Usually a safety switch turns the machine off when this happens. Note that the reflecting walls and the constant frequency of the microwaves set up standing waves in the chamber. This results in some areas being much more active than others and is the reason why food must be rotated through the varying field to cook evenly.
To be of use for metal casting, a domestic microwave oven rated D or E (850W or 1000W) needs two slight modifications: the rotating glass plate must be removed and the holes which admit air to the cooking chamber must be taped over (masking tape works reasonably well). The air from the magnetron cooling will then be re-directed to the exterior. No other modifications should be made. Microwaves are potentially dangerous and the uninitiated should treat the oven with respect.
It’s worth noting that you shouldn’t be using your microwave for food once you’ve used it to melt metal
A Londonder made a tsnuami-relief donation using lynx — a text-based browser used by the blind, Unix-users and others — on Sun’s Solaris operating system. The site-operator decided that this unusual
event in the system log indicated a hack-attempt, and the police broke down the donor’s door and arrested him. He has pleaded not guilty — via BoingBoing
Australia’s fourth largest ISP, iiNet, confirmed it was in talks to acquire rival OzEmail
Microsoft plans to severely curtail the ways in which people running pirated copies of its dominant Windows operating system can receive software updates, including security fixes
Larry Green of Durham, North Carolina was sent to the morgue after he was hit by a car Monday night and declared dead. A few hours later, a medical examiner in the morgue unzipped the body bag and noticed that Green was breathing. He’s now in critical condition. The four paramedics who responded to the accident have been suspended with pay
Justice Virginia Bell, of the NSW Supreme Court, told a conference in Darwin of Supreme and Federal court judges from across the country yesterday that the ready availability of archived press reports on the internet could jeopardise the trial of an accused person and all information should be purged from the internet. But her call was branded silly and unworkable
by the media union, while the internet industry said it would be impossible to police offshore sites
The New York Times Link Generator creates a non-decaying link to New York Times stories. When readers click on one of these links, they don’t have to sign into the NYT site, and they won’t have to pay a fee to read the story, even if it’s in the archives — via BoingBoing
What does it say about the CIA that its agents can crack the secret codes of enemy nations but can’t unravel a coded sculpture sitting outside their cafeteria window? It says, perhaps, that artist Jim Sanborn, who created the cryptographic sculpture named Kryptos that sits on CIA grounds, could have a career in covert operations if he ever grows tired of stumping the experts — via MemoryBlog
Enter your height on Tall or Not and you can compare your height to a long list of famous people — via boingboing
An amusing way to pass the time, but I have to wonder about the accuracy of some of the heights. I can’t recall Henry VIII or Mary Queen of Scots being six foot tall
Everyone knows that falling into a black hole spells doom. Or does it? In the past few years, cracks have started to appear in the conventional picture. Researchers on the quest for a more complete understanding of our universe are finding that black holes are not so black, and perhaps not holes either — via Warren Ellis
Google has been quietly developing Google Video, an engine that lets people search the text of TV shows
Lost your mobile phone, pocket personal computer/personal digital assistant or laptop? There’s a good chance you’ve left it in a taxi. And you’re less likely to reclaim your property than for it to stay missing
Hey, if you’re in Sydney on Thursday, come and watch me blast out some evil tunes. It’s upstairs at the Australian Youth, for free, and I’m on at 9.30. Half price cocktails also : )
Developers are working to add protection against online fraud to the next version of the Thunderbird open-source e-mail application
Google may be preparing to offer free Voice Over IP telephone service in the UK, which sounds related to Google starting to buy dark fibre
The FBI is fighting in court to limit how hard it has to search for government documents requested by the public under the Freedom of Information Act, one of the main laws for ensuring openness in government. If the bureau prevails, people could have a diminished chance of getting documents from the nation’s most famous law enforcement agency — via MemoryBlog
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