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The Internet

Submission + - Legal Group Says ISP Allowed 100K Illegal Dowloads (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by bennyboy64
bennyboy64 writes: iTnews reports that Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) investigators claim to have recorded almost 100,000 instances of Australian internet service provider iiNet users making available online unauthorised copies of films and TV programs, lawyers for the film industry said in the Federal Court in Sydney today. The lawyers for the film industry claimed iiNet had done "nothing" to discourage copyright infringement on its network. For background on the case see iTnews' background piece which has a pretty graph. The case will be heard for four weeks. Today was day one.
Science

Submission + - SPAM: Hydrogen fuel cell to charge your mobile phone

Submitted by
dreemteem
dreemteem writes: "Taiwanese researchers have built a new mobile-phone recharger based on fuel cell technology they say will cost little once manufacturing partners are on board.
The handset rechargers, which contains the fuel cell, will cost around £20, while the fuel itself will come in small blue plastic tubes for about 20p each, said Jerry Ku, a researcher at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, a government funded lab in Taiwan.
"The fuel canisters are inexpensive and small. They could be sold at 7-Eleven," he said."
Link to Original Source
Idle

Submission + - iSnack 2.0 gets Toasted (news.com.au) 3

Submitted by
hools1234
hools1234 writes: "Australian icon 'Vegemite' released a new product name on Saturday called 'iSnack 2.0'. It was poorly received, with Vegemite enduring a storm of consumer outrage over its tampering with the Vegemite brand. The new product is a combination of the traditional Vegemite sandwich spread mixed with Cream Cheese. Within hours fury was unleashed on Twitter, Facebook and Blogs labeling the name as an 'epic fail' or #vegefail. The Australian is now reporting that within only three days of launch, Kraft has announced it will hold a national vote to come up with a new name.

The iSnack 2.0 name was suggested in a competition that attracted over 40,000 entries to name the product, with the orginal Vegemite spread named in the same fashion. iSnack 2.0 is believed to have been chosen so as to resonate with the young and hip iProducts phenomenon such as iPod and iPhone. To make matters worse, the iSnack name is already under copyright to sandwich-press maker Breville. We just hope the new name isn't iSnack 3.0!

It seems iSnack 2.0 wasn't compatible. FAIL."

Comment use a hash/timestamp (Score 1) 283

by psy (#29536333) Attached to: Data Locking In a Web Application?

Create a timestamp/random hash and store it against each record, then include it in your update query.

UPDATE table SET
      data1 = @Data,
      hash = NewHash()
WHERE ID = @ID
AND Hash = @Hash

Every save, change the hash to a new value.

If someone has changed the record and another person goes to save it, the hash wont match and 0 records will be updated. This can then be captured in your web application.

If 0 records updated - display error saying "user has already changed record, please reload page"
If 1 records updated - display success.
Security

Submission + - World's first fully formally proven OS (theengineer.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Operating systems usually have bugs — the `blue screen of death', the amiga Hand, etc., are known by almost everyone. NICTA's team of researchers has managed to produce an OS kernel that can NEVER crash, and is guaranteed to meet its specification. It is fully formally verified — as such it exceeds the Common Criteria's highest level of assurance.

The researchers used an executable specification written in Haskell, C code that mapped to the Haskell, and the Isabelle theorem prover to generate a machine-checked proof that the C code in the kernel matches the executable and the formal specification of the system.

Comment Re:First post! (Score 1) 248

by psy (#28511053) Attached to: Licensing Issues Shut Down Pandora Outside US

...err, I mean. Isn't this old news?

I though Europe was blocked 2 years or so earlier. Didn't know that France was an exception. Or he was lucky with his IP block being considered American.

Being in Australia i was blocked off 1-2 years ago.

I think the OP was just in a lucky IP range which they finally fixed up.
Earth

Submission + - Amateur spies put North Korea on the map

Submitted by psy
psy writes: The Age is reporting "A group of amateur spies has used Google Earth to provide a rare glimpse inside North Korea, one of the world's most secretive countries. By default the Google Earth map of North Korea is completely bare, with no roads or landmarks labelled. Over two years, US doctoral student Curtis Melvin and other volunteers pored over news reports, images, accounts, books and maps painstakingly identifying and locating thousands of buildings, monuments, missile-storage facilities, mass graves, secret labour camps, palaces, restaurants, tourist sites, main roads and even the entrance to the country's subterranean nuclear test base. The result, North Korea Uncovered, is one of the most detailed maps of North Korea available to the public today. The small file, which can be installed on top of Google Earth, has been downloaded more than 47,000 times since an updated version was released last month.

Comment Re:No Case Under US Law (Score 1) 378

by psy (#27088693) Attached to: Timetable App Developer Gets Nastygram From Transit Sydney

Well I'm qualified as one ... but I don't currently practice law. I'm a university lecturer ... specifically, Information Technology Law and IP Law. So saying 'IAAL' is slightly naughty of me since I'm not actually representing clients et al. at this point, I just have the necessary qualifications.

He used et al - he must be a lawyer :P
Censorship

Submission + - Software companies sues popular Australian forum (whirlpool.net.au) 3

Submitted by Pugzly
Pugzly writes: In a recent announcement on the Whirlpool front page, it appears that accounting software maker 2clix is sueing the founder of the forums as the founder "allowed statements 'relating to the Plaintiff and its software product that are both false and malicious' to be published on the Whirlpool forums."
Hopefully sanity will prevail, but it is the legal system...
Music

Submission + - Aussie Nightclubs 1500% increase in copyright fees

Submitted by psy
psy writes: "Nightclub promoters are outraged at a 1500 percent increase in the cost [to APRA] of playing copyrighted music to large crowds, saying customers will suffer along with proprietors and staff. Clubs used to pay a copyrighted music licence fee of 7c a person per night, but from today the figure will soar to $1.05 a person. The figure is based on capacity, so a club that holds 500 will pay $510 — even if only 100 people turn up. Organisers of dance parties have also been hit with the new fees, with the original charge of 20c per person jumping to $3.07. When DJs are meant to be the people helping to sell music and increase CD sales through free advertising, this seems like a backwards move.
Data Storage

Submission + - Artificial neural network storage - a first? (jpost.com)

Submitted by GovCheese
GovCheese writes: Two scientists at the University of Tel Aviv, Professors Baruchi and Ben-Jacob, claim to have stored information in an medium of a network of neurons cultured outside the brain. The stored information, which they called "memories," persisted for a matter of days. The short article in the Jerusalem Post remarks, "They are apparently the first in the world to have actually stored information in a cultured neural network for an extended period." Of course it was the headline "cyberbrain" that caught my attention, and the phrase in the article "neuro-silico cyberchip" isn't too shabby either. Johnny Mnemonic anyone?
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Playstation 3 new firmware upscales DVD/PS2 games!

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Sony's official release of the V1.80 firmware, the PS3 is now capable of upconverting standard-def DVDs, non-HD Blu-ray disc content and all PlayStation games (including those for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2) to 1080p. Will this change your mind after all the much publicized failings of the PS3 into the most versatile optical disc player of all time?

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