23339492
submission
taucross writes:
What causes riots? That's not a question you would expect to have a simple answer. But today, Marco Lagi and buddies at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, say they've found a single factor that seems to trigger riots around the world. This single factor is the price of food. Lagi and co say that when it rises above a certain threshold, social unrest sweeps the planet.
17920012
submission
taucross writes:
Julian Assange has written an article for The Australian newspaper. In it he states that WikiLeaks "deserves protection, not threats" and requests support for his actions from the Australian government.
17838424
submission
taucross writes:
WIKILEAKS has been taken offline after its domain host EveryDNS.net terminated the whistleblower website's account.
10739686
submission
taucross writes:
A new site allows lonely XBOX360 gamers to pay a prescribed fee. This fee will net them a few minutes of game time with one of the "PlayDates", a girl who is paid to play video games. Gamers can choose to have a "flirty" or "dirty" experience with one of the PlayDates. Is this what we meant when we said we wanted "adult gaming"?
3917959
submission
taucross writes:
Australian ISP iiNet are making a very bold move. They are asking the court to accept that essentially, BitTorrent can not be used to distribute pirated content because a packet does not represent a substantial portion of the infringing material. They are also hedging their bets purely on the strength of the movie studios "forensic" evidence. This ruling will go straight to the heart of Australia's copyright law.
At last, an ISP willing to stand up for its customers! Let's hope we have a technically-informed judge.
3857595
submission
taucross writes:
ISP iiNet today confirmed it's exit from the Australian governments internet filtering trials. iiNet had originally taken part in the plan in order to prove the filter was flawed. Citing a number of concerns, their withdrawal leaves only five Australian ISPs continuing to test the filter. Does this spell the end of internet censorship in Australia?
2131949
submission
taucross writes:
An Australian man was raided by anti-paedophile Task Force Argos for redistributing a video clip of a "swinging baby" on Liveleak. Chris Illingworth, 60, is facing charges of "the exploitation and abuse of children by seeking to view, possess, make or distribute child-abuse or child exploitation material".
The baby in the video is reportedly part of a Russian circus family but Australian law provides the following definition of child-abuse material, which is "any material that shows a person under the age of 18 who is, or appears to be, a victim of torture, cruelty or physical abuse." Illingworth was subjected to forensic examination, mugshots and fingerprinting.
