australia

The first retail sales of Windows 7 will take place in New Zealand and Australia on 22 October, Microsoft confirmed this week.

Windows 7 will hit first New Zealand, then Australia, due to the countries' placement with respect to the International Date Line. Microsoft announced last week that its new operating system would hit retail shelves and start showing up on new PCs from October 22.

"Our understanding at this time is that the availability of Windows 7 will 'follow the sun' on Thursday October 22," a Microsoft spokesperson said late this week. "As such, we're … Read more

Australian film and music studios have claimed a victory in their war against copyright offenses, with a Sydney man convicted for selling pirated content last week.

Yong Hong Lin, owner of a music and movie store in Eastwood, Sydney, was found guilty of 15 copyright offenses in Sydney's District Court last week, the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) announced in a statement distributed Monday. Lin is scheduled to be sentenced on August 21.

The jury acquitted Lin of 16 of the 31 offenses he was initially charged with.

Police had raided Lin'… Read more

If you polled a group of iPhone owners on their biggest complaint about the handset, I'd guess that most would name the AT&T service. Yes, spotty coverage and the sometimes abysmal customer service are not to be ignored, but those issues are hardly unique to AT&T. On the other hand, one gripe is very legitimate: the fact that AT&T has a monopoly on Apple's device. It's aggravating and just not fair, they would say, and I have to agree.

A quick look abroad offers a much better model. I recently returned … Read more

The DS has a new add-on that includes a pedometer to help you measure your walking. We don't know if it will slim down the Mii that got fat ignoring Wii Fit. Australia is going on an all-fiber diet for their Internet needs, and the AP wants everyone to stop linking to them. OK! Careful what you wish for?

Healthcare records: Google gets pharmacies, MS hospitals http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10213205-92.html http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/04/healthcare-records-google-gets-pharmacies-ms-hospitals.ars

Australia to build a fiber network for all http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/technology/internet/08broadband.html?partner=rss&emc=rss… Read more

The Australian government has terminated the National Broadband Network tender process with no winner, instead flagging plans to invest billions of dollars in building its own fiber-to-the-home network to 90 percent of Australians over the next eight years.

Citing "deterioration of the economy," Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Treasurer Wayne Swan, along with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, said at a Canberra press conference on Tuesday morning that the government had not found any of the NBN bids, by players such as Acacia, Optus, Axia Netmedia, satisfactory.

Instead of accepting an NBN bid, Rudd said, the federal government would … Read more

The government of the Australian state of New South Wales has unveiled plans to give state police the power to hack into computers remotely, with owners potentially remaining in the dark about the searches for up to three years.

The new powers are part of a package introduced into parliament last week by Premier Nathan Rees. Broadly, they aim to give police the right to apply for covert search warrants from the Supreme Court to gather evidence in cases that could involve serious indictable offenses punishable by at least seven years' imprisonment.

Judges issuing the new warrants could authorize owners … Read more

Caroline McCarthy makes her triumphant return to The 404 and shows us her nerdy tattoo. It's way hot! Buzz Out Loud's Natali Del Conte and Justin Yu get back from their sweet honeymoon. Natali changed her name to Mrs. Natali Yu Conte. You'll see this change on her next appearance on the "CBS Early Show".

On today's show, we talk about Facebook's new redesign and how it will take over the Internet. Mark Zuckerberg apparently is not as awkward in person as he is on camera--though he's gotten nothing on Jimmy Fallon when it comes to nervousness. In addition, we've got some guilty pleasures including the "Mac Bong." Listen to today's show to find out why that has nothing to do with marijuana. And Best Buy tries to sell you busted cameras.

As always thank you for your voice mails and e-mails to the public. We're getting flooded with them, and we love it! 1-866-404-CNET (2638) or the404 [at] cnet [dot] com. Major props to brisbanelistener for putting up the Google Knol replacement for our Wikipedia page and for the greatest "Knol is Australian for beer" joke ever. Finally, today is the last day you can call in for our House of the Dead: Overload for the Nintendo Wii giveaway! We're still looking for a show motto, and the consensus is that we're either "The podcast of the future" or "The nerdy dirty." Entries welcomed.

So, in Florida they're taping magnets to crocodiles heads to keep them from moving back to suburbia. It's also last call for Vista, with SP2 released to developers. And we talk about good sex and how it shouldn't be filtered in Australia. Oh, and flying cars. Of course.

Nintendo needs help with piracy http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/26/1118217 http://kotaku.com/5160062/what-countries-made-nintendos-rampant-piracy-list-this-year

Australian Internet censorship plan torpedoed http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/26/1344207

U.S. antitrust judge … Read more

The refusal of the government in Victoria, Australia, to provide data for Google's bushfire map mashup limited its scope and highlighted glaring problems with Crown copyright provisions, the search giant's top Australian engineer said yesterday.

With over 1 million page views since Sunday, the Google Map overlay showing Victoria's bushfires has been invaluable for tracking the extent of the disaster.

Google Australia engineering director Alan Noble told the Broadband and Beyond conference in Melbourne yesterday that he became involved with the bushfire mapping effort after Google engineers woke in shock Sunday morning to read about the horrific … Read more