John Lister

Computers can now recognise the work of different artists and even tell the differences between genuine paintings and fakes. Scientists at Israel's University of Haifa have developed a mathematical program that analyses paintings geometrically. The ... computer breaks down the picture into its component sections, then calculates the sines and cosines. (If you've forgotten your high school trigonometry, that means the relative size and shapes of triangles.) Once the computer learns the pattern of a particular artist, it can identify whether another painting is legitimately that person's work. ... (view more)

An ambitious scheme could see Russian spy planes provide broadband Internet services. The scheme would use Myasishchev M-55 planes to plug gaps in Russia's patchy satellite coverage. They would also be used in areas where the telecoms system has ... been damaged or destroyed. Because the planes are designed to fly at high altitude, they can provide coverage to a much wider ground area. The planes, which are equivalent to the American U-2s, were originally designed to intercept US spy balloons. They've since been transferred to scientific uses such as studying the arctic stratosphere. An existing ... (view more)

Google has confirmed it's entering the mobile market, but not with the much-rumored Gphone. Rather than launching a branded handset, Google is developing an open source software platform for all mobile devices. They'll be providing their 'Android' ... software free of charge to handset manufacturers, which could pave the way for cheaper phones. As part of the launch, Google has formed the Open Handset Alliance, bringing together 34 partners. This includes handset producers Motorola, HTC, Samsung and LG, plus carriers such as T-Mobile and Sprint. (Source: BBC ) The software should be with ... (view more)

An Indian man has spent 50 days in prison after his Internet service wrongly accused him of posting images that insulted a historical figure. Police swooped on the home of Lakshmana Kailash K, a 26 year old technology worker, after offensive ... pictures appeared on Orkut, a social networking site run by Google. The images depicted Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the 17th century founder of India's Maratha empire. Officials asked Google to hand over the IP address of the poster, then checked with ISP Airtel to find the person behind that address. Airtel incorrectly told them it belonged to Kailash. ... (view more)

Facebook appears to have decided not to fight Google's plans to bring social networking sites together. Jim Breyer, an investor and board member at Facebook, reportedly says the company would be willing to join Google's OpenSocial platform. That's a ... scheme by which programmers can more easily create applications that run on many different social networking sites. For example, a user could make a single blog post that is instantly viewable by their friends on both MySpace and Bebo. One of the main reasons for Facebook's success to date is that users can create their own applications such as ... (view more)

Spammers have recruited an unusual new ally in their battle against security checks: 'Melissa' the virtual stripper. She features in the Captcha Trojan, named because of its attempts to get 'round the 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell ... Computers and Humans Apart' technology. This is the system where users have to type in the letters they see in an image, designed to stop computers automatically completing a forum. The spammers behind this case are trying to automatically sign up for multiple Yahoo mail accounts. The Captcha Trojan replaces Yahoo pages with what appears to be a ... (view more)