Domain Names Australia Pty Ltd and its director Chesley Paul Rafferty have been found guilty by the Federal Court of breaching the Trade Practices Act, following the company’s re-registration mailout scam in 2003
The Singapore government is spending $5.1 billion buying the Australian assets of Texas Utilities so it is time to once again fire up Crikey’s great lists of energy sector deals over the past decade which now includes the investment bankers who advised on each sale
The state of Missouri is using pizza delivery lists to track down people that owe court-imposed fines
David Bowie has asked bedroom DJs to create a new track for an internet competition by bootlegging his songs. The British music star has given fans the right to create a new song by using computer music software to blend or mash up
two existing tracks. The winning song will be released as an MP3 and its creator will win a car
A start-up called Stretch says that its new software-configurable design allows processors to add instructions while they’re operating
Airplanes, whether manned or unmanned, need to travel at various speeds. For example, a surveillance plane needs to fly fast to reach its destination point. Then, it needs to reduce its speed to achieve its surveillance mission. But with its fixed wings, it doesn’t offer the same level of efficiency during these two phases. That’s why Penn State engineers have devised airplane wings that change shape like a bird and have scales like a fish. Right now, the team has only built a tabletop model
Thousands of demonstrators banged pots and pans, blew whistles and beat drums on Saturday in a Latin American-style protest of World Bank and IMF policies in poor countries. Some carried signs reading people over profits
and debt relief now
to underscore their message to international lenders holding their spring meetings
Husky had a cut on his knee that I noticed last week that was no doubt caused, either directly or indirectly, by Malamute. This is nothing unusual. I grabbed the Betadine and sprayed the wound and that should have been the end of it.
Saturday night I noticed the shadow line in his fur where the cut was had gotten bigger. I had a closer look and it, while the wound had healed, there was a sizeable lump. My first thought is an abscess. So it’s a trip to the vet on Sunday morning.
The pods were well pleased with scoring a bonus car ride and they got to ingratiate themselves to a little girl in the waiting room.
They were fairly well behaved, until the little girl’s dog came out of the vet’s office and my pods decided to vocalise — they don’t really bark, but Huskies and Malamutes do have a surprisingly wide range of vocalisations. The little guy who came out was unfortunate enough to have a flea allergy and had gotten himself a rather tragic rear end shave job. Perhaps my pods were laughing at him. The vet sent Husky into her office, while Malamute went for a walk outside.
Husky was quite happy to investigate the office and more than happy to see the vet. However, he wasn’t too keen on getting his temperature taken and spent the rest of the visit trying to keep his rear end as far from the vet as possible.
It turns out the lump isn’t an abscess, it’s a hot spot, caused by the little bastard (or Malamute) licking the cut until it was inflamed. He now sports a sexy shaved spot on his knee and I get to rub ointment into it three times a day — which he tries to lick off, which is how this all started in the first place.
I was at the counter paying when a guy walks out with two cat boxes. Husky is on alert and starts making yummy faces at the boxed cats. Fortunately he didn’t bark at them and we got out there without an embarrassing incident.
A fun time was had by all.
Just back online after a two and a half hour blackout. Most annoying.
Means of commuication with the outside world were limited to phone, but it brought some interesting news.
Local electricity company is refusing to answer questions and relayed media reports are saying 11,000 homes were affected. I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that figure is short by a factor of ten.
While the electrical companies may not give a shit about me, they were definitely in suck up mode when it came to Westfield, who were running on emergency generators. Energy Australia admitted responsiblity to Westfield, but refused to say what happened, current rumour is that someone over at the M7 construction site at Casula stuck a bulldozer through a major supply line or accidentally killed the high tension powerlines.
Energy Australia were more than happy to keep Westfield in the loop, will nice little calls to check if the power was on yet. They’re a power utility and they don’t know? A little scary.
It took another twenty minutes for them to get my power back up after Westfield were placated.
Whatever they did, I’m betting they’re thanking their invisible friends it happened during the day and not when a heap of angry commuters got home. Idiots.
With Google reportedly on the verge of going public, more and more people want to know what makes Google tick. The Observer, serves up the answers to our questions
A system that projects light beams directly into the eye could change the way we see the world. US firm Microvision has developed a system that projects lasers onto the retina, allowing users to view images on top of their normal field of vision. It could allow surgeons to get a bird’s eye view of the innards of a patient, offer military units in the field a view of the entire battlefield and provide mechanics with a simulation of the inside of a car’s engine — via Die Puny Humans
Professor Paulo Galluci and his team have built a working model of Leonard Da Vinci’s clockwork powered car, designed in 1478. Previous attempts have been made to create the vehicle, but they failed to work properly. This is thought to be due to a misunderstanding of the original design, which is corrected in the new model. Apart from the 1/3 scale replica, the team have also made a full size model but have not dared to test it. Professor Galluzzi explained; It is a very powerful machine. It could run into something and do serious damage
Americans have seen their first pictures of flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq after the Pentagon briefly lost control of images it had long sought to keep out of the public eye
The US Army Research Laboratory has developed a new liquid body armour. According to Dr Eric Wetzel, the project coordinator: The key component of liquid armour is a shear thickening fluid. STF is composed of hard particles suspended in a liquid. The liquid, polyethylene glycol, is non-toxic, and can withstand a wide range of temperatures. Hard, nano-particles of silica are the other components of STF. This combination of flowable and hard components results in a material with unusual properties
It was the mysterious rattling sound from the 18-month-old German Shepherd’s stomach which first alerted the British vet to what might be wrong. A subsequent operation removed no fewer than 28 golf balls from the dog’s belly and — unsurprisingly — the mystery ailment which made her stop eating has been cured
An international effort to dismantle major internet piracy groups has identified more than 100 people in the US and abroad involved in the theft of more than $US50 million in music, movies, games and computer software — nice to see they live in a little fantasy world where they believe this will make a difference
Many customers looking for mobile phone retreads [BugMeNot] are more interested in price tags than multimedia messaging or games; they just want to make a phone call. But there is also the mobile equivalent of the preowned BMW. ReCellular resells about four million handsets in bulk worldwide each year. Of the 1.5 million it resells in the US, mostly for use on prepaid plans, plenty are higher-end with cameras and bells and whistles
Despite claims of advanced proprietary technology
, Google’s opt-in porn filter proves no better than the primitive tools of the last decade, blocking many harmless sites
Despite the infinite climb data speeds seem to be making, scientists at Stanford say we’ll eventually hit a barrier due to the inability to keep the data stable after a certain transfer speed. But no worries just yet; the watermark they’ve set is still 1,000 times faster than what we have now. Apparently the scientists confirmed this problem by firing up the particle accelerator at Stanford University and blasting electrons at a piece of the magnetic material used to store computer data
The FBI is trying to convince the government to mandate that providers of broadband, Internet telephony, and instant-messaging services build in backdoors for easy wiretapping. That would constitute a sweeping expansion of police surveillance powers. Instead of asking Congress to approve the request, the FBI (along with the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration) are pressing the FCC to move forward with minimal public input
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