The NSW Labor Government has approved the use of offshore computer programmers by the public service, in conflict with ALP policy. But NSW unions yesterday condemned any move by the Carr Government that would mean the development of its online licensing system or other departmental work being shifted offshore
American Indians are poised to take a step back into history when they begin managing portions of the nearly 100-year-old National Bison Range in Montana. The range is one of about 540 wildlife refuges in a 38 million-hectare National Wildlife Refuge system from Alaska to the Caribbean
Researchers from the University of South Australia have developed software which identifies specific bird species by their calls and then randomly chooses noises known to scare them, a development that could potentially save the fruit and wine industries millions of dollars
Researchers in the top end say they may have discovered the first natural predator to the cane toad, according to experiments conducted in captivity, a local frog species, Litoria dahlii eats infant cane toads as well as the tadpoles without any apparent side effects from the cane toads’ poison. Whether the same occurs in the wild is still to be seen, but researchers believe the frog could play a large part in slowing the spread of the cane toad into the Northern Territory and into fragile eco systems like Kakadu’s National Park
The tiny western African nation of São Tomé and Principe claims it has unwittingly become the continent’s electronic porn publishing capital after a Swedish company and its local partner sold the country’s internet identity without government approval. The government is demanding a share of the income earned from selling addresses using São Tomé’s .st suffix, after a US survey found they accounted for more than three-quarters of the porn pages generated from web sites that use African nations’ identities
Fed up with paying some €100,000 a year to cut the grass on its out-of-town roads with tractor-mowers, the local government of Treviso, near Venice, bought six donkeys to do the work instead
I’m writing a text adventure using Inform (the language the Zork series was written in), and I have a couple of rooms ready for playstesting. Here’s what you need to do:
- Using Firefox, install Gnusto, which is a runtime that lets you play these games in your browser.
- Download my little game and open it in Gnusto.
- Refresh your memory on how to play text adventures.
- Play through the game and post comments and suggestions here, e.g. if you find a bug or you the game wouldn’t let you do something reasonable.
Google will expand its ability for searching books by working with five major libraries, including those at the University of Michigan and Oxford University, as well as the New York Public Library, to digitise out-of-print and copyrighted works
Finally, a miniature hard drive you can drop on the sidewalk. Mini-drive specialist Cornice will unfurl a new 3GB, 25mm diameter hard drive at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show that offers more shock resistance and uses less battery life than its predecessors. The drive is due out in 2005
Yep you can buy a set of 6 socks for your iPod for 48 of your bucks. I suppose this seems like more value in comparison to iPod skins which are generally this amount and upwards. Oh and they’re colourful, the same colours that the iPod mini comes in, which kinda sucks if you bought a mini. I mean wouldn’t you want to deck your pod out in some other colour? Like purple or something? Although I suspect that’s what the colour on the end is suppose to be.
Link to one of those more expensive but cool iPod skins I was referring to: MacSkinz – Artist Series. They’d be even cooler if there was more variety in subject matter. Frank Kozik’s bunnies are cool though.
But if you did spend 48 bucks on 6 six socks you might not need to buy the iCleaner iPod Scratch Remover – Pro Kit.
Very unrelated aside: this is highly amusing.
The contentious Surveillance Devices Act has been passed. The act will allow Federal Police to obtain warrants to secretly install spyware onto users computers enabling them to monitor e-mail, online chats, word processor and spreadsheets entries and even bank personal identification numbers and passwords
Alek’s Christmas Lights Webcam is back again which allows you to: pan/zoom the webcam and control the 17,000 christmas lights — yep, turn ’em on and off and annoy my understanding neighbours!
You’ve got to laugh, because it’s all a hoax. The lights are real, the web control system isn’t
A Chilean judge has formally charged former dictator Augusto Pinochet with homicide and kidnapping in one of many pending cases related to human rights abuses committed during his 17-year rule. Special Judge Juan Guzman says General Pinochet has been declared mentally fit to stand trial in Chile
A Polish conceptual artist has come up with some clever but rather unsettling Lego concentration camp boxed sets. Our concerned American readers should note that these are handmade art objects and not official retail items (although plenty of people have expressed interest in buying a set, according to the site).
Blogging time has been non existent to scant of late, but here are some interesting links:
Web Design in 2005 is worth a look indeed. I’m not however looking forward to a wash of brown.
Donald Trump, Art Director: Not The Real Thing is a good read.
The 6 Myths Of Creativity. No one ever suspects the accountant!
And happy belated birthday to the Xplane Xblog.
Purdue University researchers are devising a way to fabricate better artificial bones using carbon nanotubes to mimic the natural fibre-like structure of real bone
Three gun-wielding brain donors tried to rob a woman who was minding her grandsons. The kids happened to be playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The random police soundbites from the game were saying, Stop, we have you surrounded. This is the police.
The burglars, unknowingly, thought this was the actual police, panicked and ran away. The silly buggers were all caught
Australia’s spies are to have their intelligence gathering capacity boosted by a new highly classified IT and communications project being run by the Defence Signals Directorate, which includes database and storage, real time processing and intriguingly, a variety of radio interface technologies. It’s a safe bet that any data gathered will be happily passed on the US and vast bulk will be corporate espionage for a fee and not actual security work
Former CIA Director George Tenet has suggested that access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously. The national press were excluded from the event, at Mr Tenet’s request
About 80,000 students and staff are being told to use an alternate browser. The Penn State ITS department sent the alert because the threats are real and alternatives exist to mitigate Web browser vulnerabilities
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