A paralysed man in Aspen, Colorado lay helplessly in bed for two hours while a black bear known as Fat Albert
went through his kitchen breaking dishes and looking for a tasty snack
Bruce Sterling is guest-posting on the global-eco-tech blog Worldchanging and thinks we ought to marry the Internet and the United Nations. The UN has cumbersome rules, no popular participation, and can’t get anything useful done about the darkly rising tide of stateless terror and military adventurism. The UN was invented to unite nations rather than people. The Internet unites people, but it’s politically illegitimate. Vigilante lawfare outfits like RIAA and MPAA can torment users and ISPs at will. The dominant OS is a hole-riddled monopoly. Its business models collapsed in a welter of stock-kiting corruption. The Net is a lawless mess of cross-border spam and fraud. Logically, there ought to be some inventive way to cross-breed the grass-rootsy cheapness, energy and immediacy of the Net with the magisterial though cumbersome, crotchety, crooked and opaque United Nations.
It’s obviously part tongue in cheek, but it does make you think
Spaso Ivosevic, a hunter in central Croatia since 1957, cleaned and loaded his double-barreled shotgun as usual, before briefly leaned the gun against a wall near his house. That’s when his 2-year-old dog Lero, chasing chickens through the yard, stormed past and tripped over the shotgun. It hit the ground and fired, showering Ivosevic with pellets. The hunter was treated for a fractured leg bone, while the fate of Lero was not known
A randy ram-raider smashed into a car showroom in the town of Moville, County Donegal, Ireland, after letting his animal instincts get the better of him. The intruder — a stray ram belonging to a local farmer — broke windows, soiled the garage and dented three doors of a new Mitsubishi Colt before he was apprehended by police officers
Ten Kenyan prisoners broke out of a police cell by singing hymns and chanting prayers to drown the sound of their escape. The singing prisoners sawed through the iron bars of the cell window before scrambling to freedom in Machakos, a town south of Kenyan capital Nairobi
The Ig Nobel awards for 2004 were presented at Harvard University.
A US District Judge rejected the government’s arguments to keep the secret records of John Lennon sealed. The FBI argued that releasing the last ten pages would pose a risk to national security as a foreign government secretly gave information to the US Government. Looks like another big step in the Freedom of Information Act
A novel method of optical data storage could soon be used to hold a terabyte of data on a disk the size of a normal DVD, according to an international team of researchers
The Russian government’s decision to approve the Kyoto climate change treaty has been hailed by the European Union and environmental groups. The cabinet has sent it to parliament to be ratified, where President Putin’s supporters hold a two-thirds majority
The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has released its broadband policy paper, encouraging whoever wins government to develop a strategy that will deliver true broadband services
to Australians. The ACS stated that the political parties have compromised strategy for broadband in Australia by diverting the attention towards ADSL, which the ACS believes is nothing more than an interim solution
. ADSL runs at 256 to 1024Kbps; the ACS defines true broadband as greater than 10Mbps
Researchers at UC Berkeley, along with scientists from the University of Oregon and the University of Illinois, say they can slow the speed of light in a way that could help speed the delivery of movies to your PC
The NSW Department of Commerce has released its eagerly anticipated Linux tender, calling for a panel of suppliers to provide enterprise-level software and services for government agencies. The contract, reportedly worth $40 million, is seen as a major step forward for open source lobbyists, as it requests suppliers to provide Linux software for both desktop and server environments
Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed an anti-spyware bill banning unauthorised installation of deceptive software that hides in personal computers and secretly monitors user activity. The bill clears the way for consumers to sue responsible parties for actual damages
Assault rifle designer Lieutenant General Mikhail Kalashnikov now brings us joy instead of pain, in the form of Kalashnikov Vodka. The beverage has been distilled with Mikhail’s precepts of simplicity and reliability firmly in mind. Nostrovya!
Toshiba announced that it’s increasing the song capacity of its Gigabeat line of hard drive-based digital audio players to 60GB. It will be available before the end of the year in Japan, along with 10GB and 20GB versions
Biological heart pacemakers made from human embryo cells have been successfully tested in pigs, raising the possibility that tissue transplants could replace electronic pacemakers. Because they would be natural, the cell implants would need no power source and, over time, would integrate naturally with the heart. They could even be genetically engineered or manipulated to enhance or alter their function
Liberal party stooges and professional religious loons, Family First, want an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level. And I’m sure that their idea of censorship would include a whole raft of things that wouldn’t be offensive to that vast bulk of society
Former President Jimmy Carter says that despite changes designed to eliminate voting problems in Florida — where the disputed 2000 presidential election was decided by only a few hundred votes — conditions for a fair election in that state still don’t exist
For those wanting their 2005 forecast fix here it is: 2005 Consumer Color Directions
Hmm… more neutrals and deep blue to replace black. Nice to see purple gets 2 noteable mentions in the form of thistle bloom and soulful grape.
So just whose predictions are these and how do they come about them? Check out the forecasting processing
eBay has come under the scrutiny of the Australian Taxation Office as part of its crackdown on evasion in the cash economy. The tax office believes unregistered micro-businesses
are a big source of untapped tax revenue and has made tracking them down one of its highest compliance priorities this year. The ATO has written to eBay asking for details of power sellers — eBay users with sales of at least $2000 a month
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