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Domain: .au

Stories and comments across the archive that link to .au.

Stories · 8

  1. The Future of Android — Does It Belong To Bing and Baidu?

    Search · Google_Fb · · posted by timothy · from the jaws-of-victory dept. · 171 comments
    hype7 writes "Given the recent publicity about Android and Google, the Harvard Business Review are offering another interesting perspective. They argue that Google runs a serious risk of losing control of Android, as competitors such as Bing and Baidu move in. It certainly presents an interesting possibility — that Android could win but Google wouldn't see any benefit out of it."

  2. Möbius Strip Riddle Solved

    Science · Math · · posted by kdawson · from the that's-listing-strip-to-you dept. · 184 comments
    BigLug writes with news that two experts in non-linear dynamics, Gert van der Heijden and Eugene Starostin of University College London, have developed an algebraic equation that describes the Möbius strip — something that, you may be surprised to learn, had never been done since the form's discovery in 1858. ABC.net.au has an accessible short summary: "What determines the strip's shape is its differing areas of 'energy density,' they say. 'Energy density' means the stored, elastic energy that is contained in the strip as a result of the folding. Places where the strip is most bent have the highest energy density; conversely, places that are flat and unstressed by a fold have the least energy density."

  3. OED Science Fiction Database Updated

    Science · Scifi · · posted by simoniker · from the flash-wordgone dept. · 267 comments
    solferino writes "The Oxford English dictionary commenced a project back in 2001 (Slashdot report) to solicit reader citations of the earliest uses of science fiction words. The most recent OED newsletter covers the progress of the project, which has its own site hosted on a FreeBSD box running a MySQL database engine. An interesting graph on the site shows date of word origin by decade. Surprisingly recent words featured on the site are /avatar/ (1990 - in the VR sense) and /morph/ (1993) - unless the Slashdot readership can report earlier uses?"

  4. Australian Museum Exhibit Sports 3D Bees

    Science · Science · · posted by simoniker · from the skeleton-floats-from-balcony-at-you dept. · 12 comments
    BoogieChile writes "According to The Age, the Victorian Museum in Melbourne, Australia has opened a new display called The Virtual Room. In this display, visitors don polarizing 3D glasses to view a series of eight two-metre-wide screens arranged to form a seven-metre-wide octagon, enclosed in a 15-metre-wide darkened theatre. Not only are all the screen images in 3-D, but by walking from screen to screen you can see the same scene - dinosaurs at the edge of a lake, for example - from a different angle. I saw this on the news last night, and it looked really cool - there was a display of Phar Lap, 'Australia's wonder horse', displayed galloping around the track in 3-D, modelled from precise measurements taken from his stuffed body which also lives at the Victoria Museum. Programs on Tasmanian tigers, the ancient Devonian sea and the Cambodian city of Angkor Wat are set to follow, as are interactive programs. Run from screen to screen, for example, and a swarm of 3-D bees will follow you."

  5. New Stem Cell Source - Your Bone Marrow

    Science · Science · · posted by Hemos · from the tip-toe-around-the-ethics dept. · 230 comments
    BoogieChile writes "ABC News is reporting that a team of researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, lead by Dr John Yu, are aiming to extract renewable stem cells from bone marrow - extracted from the patient him/herself - for a source of neural stem cells for treatment of brain cancers, Alzheimers and other neurological disorders. Problem solved! Yipee! New spinal column, anyone?" 'Course the story has no details - post anything else you can find below.

  6. Italian Police Censor "Blasphemous" Websites

    Yro · Censorship · · posted by chrisd · from the one-nation-under-god dept. · 570 comments
    ross.w writes "Italian authorities have shut down five Internet sites which reportedly carried blasphemies against God and the Virgin Mary, following a complaint by the Vatican's newspaper. The story is in this item on Australia's ABC News."

  7. Java 1.3.1 Available for Mac OS X

    Apple · Java · · posted by pudge · from the java-for-smart-people dept. · 38 comments
    moofman and TheAJofOZ write in that Java 1.3.1 Update 1 is available for Mac OS X. The new release offers text, mouse, and printing improvements, as well as better overall stability and compatibility. Mac OS X 10.1.3 is a prerequisite. Get it via Software Update, or download it from Apple. For more information, check out the developer release notes.

  8. Reporting On IP Masquerading Usage?

    Ask · Linux · · posted by Cliff · from the knowing-your-traffic dept. · 6 comments
    C0sm1c asks: "I administer a Linux box on my company's LAN that provides all Internet connectivity to staff using Linux IP Masquerading (as well as squid, named etc...). What I need now is a means to report on the Internet usage of machines being masqueraded, and provide reports in both real time and periodic summaries of network usage. These reports will be available for anyone to view, to reduce the misuse of the Internet connection at work as well as usage stats. I've looked at MRTG but it doesn't appear to know about Masqueraded traffic, or provide a means to show the top ten users of the Internet etc... and a breakdown of the protocols used (like amount of ftp, telnet, ICQ traffic). This seems to me to be a fairly common ask, is there an open source package that can provide all this with HTML based reporting?"