26481538
submission
downundarob writes
"An Australian court has ruled against Apple, who have just lost their case against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia. Apple may also have to pay costs to its Tab rival, according to the ruling. However, Apple quickly sought to prolong the ban until Friday, when it will make a case for an appeal against the decision."Link to Original Source
25011842
submission
downundarob writes
"According to The register Apple have been granted patent 8,046,721 “A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display. The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device. The device displays one or more unlock images with respect to which the predefined gesture is to be performed in order to unlock the device. The performance of the predefined gesture with respect to the unlock image may include moving the unlock image to a predefined location and/or moving the unlock image along a predefined path. The device may also display visual cues of the predefined gesture on the touch screen to remind a user of the gesture.”"Link to Original Source
24448250
submission
downundarob writes
"The Sydney Morning Herald (amongst others by now) are confirming the death of Apple's Steve Jobs."Link to Original Source
18946122
submission
downundarob writes
"According to APNIC two of the last available /8s have been allocated to them this month which will trigger the automatic allocation of the last 5 remaining /8s to the RIRs.
The time frame for exhaustion of these /8s is approximately three to six months"Link to Original Source
5282219
submission
downundarob writes
"The Australian Democrats have announced a new Technology Policy Coordinator, Anti-Clean Feed Campaigner Geordie Guy.
Currently a board member of Electronic Frontiers Australia, Mr Guy has been an active figure in the fight against internet censorship — the so-called 'Clean Feed' — proposed by the Rudd Government. He is a computer systems architect with a decade of experience working with business and people in the IT industry itself as well as other markets and a qualified network engineer."
3143109
submission
downundarob writes
"Senator Nick Minchin , the Australian Shadow Minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, has written (or more likely a staffer has written) this interesting article on the Australian Federal Governments continued zeal to enforce ISP level filtering in Australia. In the article he posits "Underlying the Rudd Government's plan to screen the internet is an offensive message: that parents cannot be trusted to mind their children online.". Meanwhile, we wait for filtering trials to start, trials that have been delayed and which have next-to-no support among the industry. Telstra BigPond — Australia's largest ISP — has refused to take part, comparing internet filtering to "like trying to boil the ocean". The third largest, iiNet, is prepared to participate to highlight flaws."
551570
submission
downundarob writes
"In a story here Steve Wozniak has described the targeted data transmission speeds of Australia's national broadband network as "adequate... though not ultimate". One of the cornerstones of the Federal Government's election platform was its AU$4.7 billion (about US$4.39 trillion) pledge to rollout a fibre-to-the-node national broadband network. This would bring speeds of at least 12 megabits per second (Mbps) to 98 per cent of the population."
64504
submission
downundarob writes
"From a story at el reg (home of BOFH) comes this article:
If you read just one thing over the holiday break, make sure it's Peter Gutmann's cost analysis of Windows Vista, here. It's an eye opening 20 minutes. Gutmann describes in great detail the various measures Microsoft has taken to lock down Windows on behalf of Hollywood. This isn't a comprehensive look at all of Vista's DRM — Gutmann barely touches on Microsoft's new activation framework; (this is beyond the scope of his enquiry.)
In order to playback HD-DVD and BluRay content, Microsoft agreed to degrade video and audio functionality in Windows. Gutmann points out that when "premium" content is being played, component video — YPbPr — and S/PDIF interfaces are disabled. Third party hardware that fails to obey these orders may have it's "certified" status revoked by Microsoft — leaving the user with minimal (eg VGA) functionality.
With the introduction of tilt bits, all of the designed-in resilience is gone. Every little (normally unnoticeable) glitch is suddenly surfaced because it could be a sign of a hack attack. The effect that this will have on system reliability should require no further explanation. In short, the Vista specifications explicitly cripple the PC."
64080
submission
downundarob writes
"The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history, says Peter Guttman from Auckland University in New Zealand in this article. Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources.These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server)."
60214
submission
downundarob writes
"The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a court ruling has given the recording industry the green light to go after individuals who link to material from their websites, blogs or MySpace pages that is protected by copyright.
A full bench of the Federal Court of Australia yesterday upheld an earlier ruling that Stephen Cooper, the operator of mp3s4free.net, as well as the internet service provider that hosted the website, were guilty of authorising copyright infringement because they provided a search engine through which a user could illegally download MP3 files.
The website did not directly host any copyright-protected music, but the court held that simply providing links to the material effectively authorised copyright infringement.
Dale Clapperton, vice-chairman of the non-profit organisation Electronic Frontiers Australia, explained the ruling as follows: "If you give someone permission to do something that infringes copyright, that in itself is infringement as if you'd done it yourself. Even if you don't do the infringing act yourself, if you more or less condone someone else doing it, that's an infringing act.""
25270
submission
downundarob writes
"According to the story here Western Australia is to trial Daylight Savings for a three year period, commencing on December 1 this year. Lets hope all the OS vendors can get their TZ databases patched up before then."
