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Domain: yahoo.com.au
Stories and comments across the archive that link to yahoo.com.au.
Stories · 14
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Army of Davids Beats Pentagon Procurement
chris-chittleborough writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that 'a Marine officer in Iraq, a small network-design company in California, a nonprofit troop-support group, a blogger and other undeterrable folk designed a handheld insurgent-identification device, built it, shipped it and deployed it in [Iraq] in 30 days.' Compare this to the Automated Biometric Identification System, a multi-megabuck Pentagon project now 2 years old. With bureaucracy increasingly strangling innovation, will agile smaller businesses be able to accomplish what once required a sprawling government project?" -
Formula For Procrastination Found
kandela writes "Science Daily reports that a University of Calgary academic has published a paper titled The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure in the Psychological Bulletin. The research reveals that most people's New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure, most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination, and procrastination can be explained by a single mathematical equation. The research is apparently the culmination of 10 years work. However, no indication was given of how much time was spent putting it off before it was begun." From the article: "Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task... Perfectionism is not the culprit. In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more." -
On Entangling and Testing Net Neutrality
P3titPrince writes "In an NYT op-ed today, Timothy B. Lee argues that legislation specifically guaranteeing Net Neutrality would in fact be less effective than just allowing the status quo." From the article: "It's tempting to believe that government regulation of the Internet would be more consumer-friendly; history and economics suggest otherwise. The reason is simple: a regulated industry has a far larger stake in regulatory decisions than any other group in society. As a result, regulated companies spend lavishly on lobbyists and lawyers and, over time, turn the regulatory process to their advantage. Economists have dubbed this process 'regulatory capture,' and they can point to plenty of examples. The airline industry was a cozy cartel before being deregulated in the 1970's. Today, government regulation of cable television is the primary obstacle to competition." Relatedly, winnabago writes "Computerworld reports on a potential method for testing a net connection for neutrality. Somewhat similar to Traceroute, the software uses spoof packets that appear to be from a potentially throttled source and compares the transmission time to that of neutral traffic." -
$5000 Award for Open Source CMS
The Citizen writes "Packt Publishing has released details of an award scheme for open source Content Management Systems to enter and win a $5,000 prize. From the article: 'The Packt Open Source Content Management System Award is designed to encourage, support, recognize and reward an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) that has been selected by a panel of judges and visitors to PacktPub.com.' They're asking for people to submit nominations for their favorite open source Content Management System now." -
Chinese Journalists Beat Censorship With Web
chris-chittleborough writes "When Beijing tried to make a journalist's pay at one newspaper depend on official reactions to their stories, a web-savvy reporter was able to create a groundswell of public opinion and reverse the move." From the article: "Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials. No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done." -
Penguin Not Taking Flight Down Under
Bill Bennett writes "New Zealand Reseller News reports that Linux adoption down under is three times lower than North America. From the article: 'Adoption of open source software is slow in the Australasian region according to a report from analyst firm Forrester. Only 18% of the businesses in Australia and New Zealand surveyed for the report were using Linux, while 11% were considering its use. Analyst Sam Higgins says the low rate - three times lower than North America - is because open source is caught between two worlds. He says customers have been conditioned to buy software from vendors and their approved partners.'" -
European Space Shuttle Prototype Lands Safely In Sweden
This Nick Is Taken writes "Yahoo! News reports the successful test of a German designed prototype of the European space shuttle, Phoenix , taking place in the north of Sweden, moving the first all European mission into space one step closer." -
Motion Controlled Smartphone Previewed
BoB writes "The folks at MobileBurn have had a chance to play in detail with a new motion controlled smartphone prototype by MyOrigo, called 'mydevice'. Surprisingly, it actually works quite well, and the writer claims it's fun to use, too. Is this the start of a whole range of motion controlled devices?" We covered a previous showing of MyOrigo's device a few months back. -
Magnetic Induction Technology Headset Reviewed
Semi-Anonymous Coward writes "The first review of a wireless headset using Magnetic Induction technolgy has been posted at mobile technology website MobileBurn. The reviewer mentions that the technology provides almost 'crystal clear' phone conversations, which is better than most Bluetooth headsets he has used. The magnetic induction technology creates a 'bubble' around the user which increases the security of their communications. Is this the replacement for Bluetooth in Audio applications? It certainly looks like it..." -
Build Your Own 10Mbit/sec Optical Data Link
redcliffe writes: "This website has complete plans to build a 10 megabit per second optical data link that can work over up to 1 kilometre. It uses fairly cheap components, such as standard LED's instead of laser diodes. This also makes it a lot safer to work with, i.e. you won't burn your eyes out if you accidently look into it." -
Apollo Program Multimedia Archive
David Findlay writes "Found this cool website that has heaps of RealAudio and MPEG clips of the Apollo missions. You can listen to Apollo 12 being hit by lightning and having to restart the computer, or Apollo 13's O2 tank blowing up. Some good pictures that would make great wallpapers for Enlightenment as well. Just follow the links to "Multimedia" and "Image Gallery"." -
First Thoughts On The Cybiko?
codepawn asks: "I saw an article in the Australian newspaper this morning that was about a handheld originally out of Russia that is apparently becoming BIG with kids in the USA. The article suggests it has potential to become BIG with bigger kids, too. The device, called Cybiko, communicates on its own network using short wave radio. Once enough people in an area have it they can communicate over a larger distance because their signals will make up to 10 hops over other people's cybikos(which in the USA appears to be about 1km radius but in Europe will be up to 10km radius because regulations allow a stronger signal). I've downloaded the free SDK for Linux (there is a Windows SDK also available) which is available from their Web site as an rpm but I haven't looked at it yet. Anyway, it sounds super cool and I was surprised that I hadn't heard about it on here. So what's the story? Does anyone have one? What is it like?" Last I checked, they were selling them for about $199 at the local Wal-Mart and I have seen commercials for these on American TV. I almost broke down and bought one and it looks like I may have to since I never mind playing with new toys (and the Linux SDK may make for some fun hacking...) -
Aussie Government: No License Needed For Streamers
David Waters writes: "The Australian Government has quickly decided on the future of digital streaming coming into Australia. Streamers will escape licencing laws." Here is the story, from Australian IT, which mentions in passing a fairly bald truth: "Had the Government decided to limit audio and video streaming, the development of Australia's high-speed internet industry [...] would have been severely curtailed." Errr ... yes. Yes, it would. -
Iris Scanning ATMs
Marcus Zozuk writes "It seems Sensar, a biometrics security firm, has snagged a deal with Citicorp and NCR (ATM Makers) to supply Iris Scanners for use on ATM's. No more worries about forgetting your PIN." Anyone see Demolition Man? Seriously though, I'm glad. Soon I won't even need to carry a wallet anymore. Course, soon I won't need to go outside anymore either.