Australian Government Censorship 'Worse Than Iran' 516

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 23, 2008 @11:20PM from the but-the-people-there-are-so-nice dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government's plan to Censor the Internet is producing problems for ISPs, with filters causing speeds to drop by up to 86% and falsely blocking 10% of safe sites. The Government Minister in charge of the censorship plan, Conservative Stephen Conroy, has been accused of bullying ISP employees critical of his plan: 'If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree.'" Read on for more, including an interesting approach to demonstrating the inevitable collision of automated censorship with common sense.

1324781 submission

Submission + - Memorial Reefs create marine habitats from ashes

Submitted by

The_AV8R

on Thursday October 23, 2008 @10:30AM

The_AV8R writes: "NPR features a story by the AP on a company from Georgia that mixes cremated remains into concrete to make "reef balls". The idea is to help create new habitats for marine life."

1322423 story

Afghan Student Gets 20 Years For Blasphemy 618

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 22, 2008 @03:17PM from the consider-this-a-warning dept.

Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "Despite nationwide public support for his initial death sentence, a three-judge appeals court has reduced the sentence of Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh to 20 years in prison. Kambakhsh was charged with circulating an article on women's rights that he found online. From the article: 'Family members have said Kambakhsh was beaten and threatened with death until he signed a confession and that local journalists who expressed support for him were warned they would be arrested if they persisted.'"

1167115 submission

Submission + - Correction : 2008-09-12 03:16:12 IPhone Takes

Submitted by

The_AV8R

on Saturday September 13, 2008 @06:27PM

The_AV8R writes: "Could "Jonathan Zdziarski showed that every time you press the Home button on your iPhone, a screen capture is taken in order to produce a visual effect. This image is then cached and later deleted. Zdziarski says that there have been cases of law enforcement looking up sex offenders' old data and checking recovered screenshots." ...please be changed to... "From Wired's Gadget Lab: Jonathan Zdziarski showed that every time you press the Home button on your iPhone, a screen capture is taken in order to produce a visual effect. This image is then cached and later deleted. Zdziarski says that there have been cases of law enforcement looking up sex offenders' old data and checking recovered screenshots." Thank you!"

1162083 submission

Submission + - IPhone Takes Screenshots of Everything You Do (wired.com)

Submitted by

The_AV8R

on Thursday September 11, 2008 @11:16PM

The_AV8R writes: "Jonathan Zdziarski showed that every time you press the Home button on your iPhone, a screencap is taken in order to produce a visual effect. This image is then cached and deleted. He says that there have been cases of law enforcement looking up sex offender's old data and checking recovered screenshots."

622294 submission

Submission + - Laptops: To glare or not to glare? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 13, 2008 @12:06PM

An anonymous reader writes: This weekend I spent half a day surfing the web looking for a new laptop. I just want (to be able to switch to) 1650x1280, or at least ...x1024, and a *non*-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossy_display . To my surprise I found out that many vendors leave me not that much choice: ...x800, and glossy, i.e., higher-reflective type screens seem to have become the promoted defaults. Should I give up on my non-glossy wishes, or should I start flaming vendors ? IYHO is TrueLife, whatever-View or -Brite, etc., an acceptable solution during a 1 hour commute by train, for near-the-window office work, etc.? What do you think?

612708 story

Solar System Look-Alike Found 114

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday April 07, 2008 @05:44PM from the evil-twin dept.

SpuriousLogic writes "Astronomers have discovered a planetary system orbiting a distant star which looks much like our own. They found two planets that were close matches for Jupiter and Saturn orbiting a star about half the size of our Sun. Martin Dominik, from St Andrews University in the UK, said the finding suggested systems like our own could be much more common than we thought."

611236 story

Meteorites May Have Delivered Seeds of Life On Earth 277

Posted by Zonk on Sunday April 06, 2008 @11:33PM from the thanks-for-the-lift dept.

esocid writes "At the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, scientists presented evidence today that desert heat, a little water, and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the first prerequisites for life. The result of that brew could be the dominance of "left-handed" amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet. Chains of amino acids make up the protein found in people, plants, and all other forms of life on Earth. There are two orientations of amino acids, left and right, which mirror each other in the same way your hands do. These amino acids "seeds" formed in interstellar space, possibly on asteroids as they careened through space. At the outset, they have equal amounts of left and right-handed amino acids. But as these rocks soar past neutron stars, their light rays trigger the selective destruction of one form of amino acid."

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