Money talks - and in the very near future it will be talking through your mobile phone.

Fumbling for coins in your pocket will be a thing of the past as the latest technology lets you load up your phone with credit and pay by simply pointing it at the till.

It’s further proof that new technology is killing off hard cash.

In the coming year, even the smallest purchases will be paid for electronically after credit card giants Visa and Barclaycard struck a deal to create the next generation of “wave and pay” cards for purchases of less than £10.

Users will simply wave the card across a scanner to pay for small items for which they would normally use coins, such as their Daily Mirror or a pint of beer.

But the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona has taken the technology one step further by having tiny data chips implanted surgically under customers’ skin. (more…)

Landmark Sydney legal ruling sets precedent for wholesale devastation of Internet news websites and blogs

A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.

Following our report last month that an RIAA legal argument would, if the case was eventually won, criminalize simply making files available on the Internet, many readers scoffed at the serious implications of the case. Such a precedent would change the entire face of the Internet because “making files available” is so loosely defined it could criminalize simply placing links on ones website or blog to other websites. (more…)

A LANDMARK ruling down under means that if people link to a page with copyrighted material they could be sued for piracy.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, an Aussie Federal Court upheld a ruling against Stephen Cooper, who ran a site called pp3s4free.net for providing a search engine to enable the illegal downloading of music MP3s.

Also in the dock was his ISP, E-Talk, which had made no efforts to take the site down after it was requested to do so. The court decided that it was making money off the site by running advertisements.

Sabiene Heindl, general manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) said the decision meant that anyone who stuck a link on MySpace or on their bogs could now expect a knock on the door from its briefs. (more…)

The crunch of Martian soil underfoot and the feel of Martian wind against your cheek could one day be experienced by anyone with an internet connection as a result of a new collaboration between NASA and internet titan Google.

Google has already produced interactive maps of Mars and the Moon by combining their own software with NASA imagery (see NASA and Google bring Mars to PCs everywhere).

Now, NASA and Google have signed a Space Act Agreement that will see the two organisations cooperating to make more NASA data accessible to anyone on the internet. (more…)

New passports using radio frequency identification (RFID) chips to hold personal data can be cloned in less than five minutes, it has been claimed.

Two technology consultants have discovered that ePassports can be cloned using internet-bought software and put the owner “more at risk” from identity thieves, according to the BBC.

RFID chips on ePassports contain information about the owner via radio signals which can be read from a short distance.

However, Lukas Grunwald and Christian Bottger bought an RFID reader on eBay and developed software that provides a blank chip for the cloned details to be copied onto. (more…)

Computer scientists have used the power of thought to control a humanoid robot.

Wearing a special cap dotted with 32 scalp electrodes, an individual can “order” the robot to move about and pick up objects merely by generating brain waves that reflect the instructions.

Rajesh Rao, of the University of Washington, demonstrated the robot at the Current Trends in BrainComputer Interfacing meeting in Whistler, British Columbia.

“It suggests that one day we might be able to use semi-autonomous robots for helping disabled people,” he said. (more…)

WASHINGTON — An accident that occurred as a decades-old nuclear warhead was being dismantled at the government’s Pantex facility near Amarillo, Texas, could have caused the device to detonate, a nonprofit organization charged Thursday.

The Project on Government Oversight said the “near miss” event, which led the Energy Department to fine the plant’s operator $110,000, was due partly to requirements that technicians at the plant work up to 72 hours per week.

The Pantex plant, 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, is the country’s only factory for assembly and disassembly of nuclear weapons. (more…)

For a U.S. military increasingly dependent on sophisticated satellites for communicating, gathering intelligence and guiding missiles, the possibility that those space-based systems could come under attack has become a growing worry — and the perceived need to defend them ever more urgent. And that, in turn, is reviving fears in some quarters that humanity’s conflicts could soon spread beyond Earth’s boundaries.

In a speech last week, a senior Bush administration official warned that other nations, and possibly terrorist groups, are “acquiring capabilities to counter, attack and defeat U.S. space systems.” As a result, he said, the United States must increase its ability to protect vital space equipment with new technologies and policies. (more…)

India’s top nuclear scientists have repeated their fears that a landmark nuclear deal with the United States will place limitations on the country’s weapons programme, the media reported Saturday.

The deal allows the export of nuclear fuel and technology to energy-hungry India for the first time since it first tested a nuclear device in 1974. US President George W. Bush is expected to sign the accord on Monday.

But the scientists said the final version of the bill, which reconciled versions of the legislation approved by the US House of Representatives and Senate, contained clauses that India had previously objected to.

“The act makes it explicit that if India conducts such tests, the nuclear cooperation will be terminated,” the scientists said in a statement published by the Asian Age newspaper. (more…)

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday offered to share Iranian-made nuclear technology with Arab states in the Gulf after they expressed a desire to acquire it, Iranian media reported.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to provide its experience and valuable achievements in peaceful nuclear technology as a clean source of energy and as oil replacement to all regional countries,” Ahmadinejad told a visiting Kuwaiti envoy, Mohammed Zeyfullah Shirar.

Ahmadinejad’s offer comes a week after Gulf Cooperation Council leaders ended a two-day summit in Riyadh by announcing they planned to seek nuclear energy technology. (more…)

Russia will replace single nuclear warheads on some of its strategic missiles with multiple warheads, The Associated Press reported Friday citing Russian news agencies.

“In the near future we will begin to substitute the single warheads on Topol-M intercontinental missiles with multiple warheads,” the Interfax-Military News Agency quoted Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, as saying Friday.

Fitting multiple warheads to one-warhead Topol-Ms is a cheaper way for Russia to upgrade its nuclear arsenals and maintain nuclear parity with the United States. (more…)

Surveillance cameras are sprouting up in more and more places, forming an ever more powerful tool for solving crimes after they happen. But what about using them to prevent or stop criminal and terrorist acts? This requires that someone, or something, watch these rapidly multiplying video feeds 24-7.

And that’s the problem. Paying people to adequately monitor dozens, or even hundreds, of surveillance cameras can be highly expensive. Plus, humans tend to get bored and lose focus staring at security TV monitors hour after hour, day after day. Computerized monitoring would seem to be the obvious answer, but creating software programs that can recognize suspicious activities or suspect individuals has proven highly difficult.

However, Rama Chellappa, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering of the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, is developing a real-time computer monitoring system that provides some answers to this problem. Chellappa’s artificial intelligence system can reliably monitor surveillance images to detect certain suspicious movements or suspect individuals and alert human security personnel. (more…)

Some schools are removing wi-fi networks after complaints from parents that their children suffer headaches. In what sounds like a re-run of mobile phone radiation panic, is there evidence for harm?
Sitting too close to the TV. Standing in front of the microwave. Spending too long on the mobile. Living under a pylon, or next to a phone mast. We’ve always worried about what the technology around us might do to our bodies.

Now, wi-fi is rolling out from the humble coffee shop hotspot to create swathes of wireless networks in towns and cities.

But some are concerned that we don’t know enough about the health effects of electromagnetic radiation - the radio waves that allow the computer network to transmit (along with longwave, FM and TV and phone frequencies).

For others, headaches and skin rashes - that they feel are due to the radio waves - are prompting a big switch off. (more…)

Transferring some money? OK. First, what’s your favorite movie?

Customers of St. Paul-based Western Bank will soon have to jump through a few extra hoops to log into their accounts online.

In addition to their standard username and password, customers at the bank will be instructed to choose a picture from a list of pre-selected options — puppies, butterflies, sunsets, etc — and to make up a phrase, such as “How now brown cow.” They’ll also have to answer questions about their favorite movie or where they went to high school.

The extra steps are intended to make online banking more secure and guard against instances of identity theft and fraud. (more…)

Internet Search Yields Names Cited in U.N. Draft Resolution

When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement in a clandestine nuclear weapons program, the agency refused, citing a large workload and a desire to protect its sources and tradecraft.

Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer to find the names another way — by using Google. Those with the most hits under search terms such as “Iran and nuclear,” three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations. (more…)