As people in Australia and New Zealand remember all those who fought for our countries in wars currently and in the past, technology continues to advance. These are the technology news stories that matter for this week.

The tubes are filling up

Checkout chics get a break

Ebay in hot water down under

New NAB ATM now

Farmers not wanting to move to new Telstra service

Phone calls can now be free to other countries

US Customs can find porn, legally

Lasers banned in New South Wales

Grand Theft Auto 4 leading on PS3

Monday 21 April - 25 April 2008

The tubes are filling up

The vice president of legislative affairs for American telecom company AT&T, said that by 2010 the internet will not cope without furthur investment in a talk at the eForum conference in the UK.

AT&T and other internet service providers are lobbying the US government to allow them to charge websites and users that download videos.

Jim Cicconi said "In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today." 

Source ZDNet  

Comment

While the infrastructure that was created for the internet originally could not cope with the influx of large files, it has been continuously updated. Like all necessities it should always be added to and expanded, after all that is why we pay for the connections. 

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Checkout chics get a break

After a successful in one store in Sydney and one store in Melbourne, Woolworths has announced plans to extend its self check out service in more than 70 stores.

Using the same technology as their Big W trails from Woolworths store will be given 4 new self service checkouts and one staff member will be on duty to make sure there are no problems using the checkout.

Source The Australian

Comment

When I first saw the self checkouts at Big W Tuggerah I was amazed at how simple hey are to use and how much faster it was paying for a small amount of items.

The screen walks you through each step and it accepts cards and cash making it simple quick and painless.

Hopefully this will see shorter lines for people who only have a small amount of groceries.

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Ebay in hot water down under

A couple of weeks ago Ebay Australia announced plans to force sellers on the online auction site to either use their own PayPal service or Cash On Delivery only. This was in an effort to help make the buying of items more safe for people on Ebay.

Some of the most prolific sellers are up in arms over the planned changes and the ACCC is now acking for submissions on the changes. You can have your say on the ACCC website by clicking here.

Source The Australian

Comment

While I have made purchases in the past off Ebay one of the first things I do is check to see what other people have said about the seller and I also carefully read the description so I know exactly what it is I am going to try and buy.

It is a little bit unfair by Ebay to force sellers to pay to sell their items on Ebay and then have to pay Pay Pal to handle the money but it is being done to make the purchasing procedure more safw for buyers. 

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New NAB ATM now

In a sign that maybe Windows XP is not going to die anytime soon, The National Australia Bank is rolling out Windows XP in all of it's ATMs in Australia.

While the move does open up the ATMs to more problems and threats than the current system, it will allow them to add functionality in the future to offer more services from the holes in the wall.

The overhaul started in March last year and is part of a seven year $100 million contract with ATM maker NCR.

Source ZDNet

Comment

The list of features the NAB can now add to their ATM's is massive, direct deposits, share trading, bill payment, virus infestation, blue screen of death errors, hackers.

While it does allow for more features it does open up their network of ATMs to the problems of the Windows world, especially seeing as they will be on the internet. NAB has said they are taking security seriously and will make sure the ATMs can restart themselves if there is a problem.

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Farmers not wanting to move to new Telstra service

On Monday the Telstra CDMA network will be truned off but the NSW farmers federation is still saying the Telstra Next G network is not up to scratch to replace it.

In some places of the state, where you can get a CDMA signal, there are black spots in the Next G GSM network.

There are also some farmers who only have a CDMA mobile phone which could see them in danger on Monday when their phone won't work.

Source ZDNet

Comment

CDMA was never the right choice for Telstra to install in Australia.

After spend millions of dollars on a network that was not a world wide standard and forcing farmers to use it they are now in the position where some farmers, who might get injured might not be able to call for help in a couple of days. 

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Phone calls can now be free to other countries

The internet telephone service, Skype this week announced plans to make its service more popular.

As long as you have an internet connection for a monthly fee starting at $4 you can call any land line in North America and Australia for free and for $2 more any land line in more than 30 other countries.

Skype has capped the amount of time you  can talk to 10,000 minutes per month or 5 hours pr day. You will have to be aware that you will be using your internet connection allocation which could lead to extra charges from your ISP or a slowing down of your internet connection.

Source The Australian

Comment

Skype, owned by Ebay, giving people a chance to make free phone calls. Yet one more reason for Ebay to sell it.

While you can use the speakers and microphone built in to your computer you can pick up actual phones that will allow you to easily call anyone with a home phone and not feel strange.

The only thing you will have to be aware about is you will have to dial country codes including sometimes the Australian one (61). 

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US Customs can find porn, legally

A search in 2005 of a laptop that found child pornography was found to be legal.

The search which uncovered child pornography and convicted Michael Arnold was not against the US constitution and in fact was no different from US Customs officers checking a passengers luggage.

Source Reuters

Comment 

Once again if you are going to download child pornography, you are going to get caught and sent to gaol. There is no defense.

You might think that just because you have the pictures stored on your computer they won't be seen, if you go somewhere that can check you computer for illegal activities you will get caught. 

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Lasers banned in New South Wales

After a spate of lasers being aimed in the eyes of pilots around Sydney, the New South Wales Government this week banned the possesion of lasers in the state.

The laser pointers will now need a permit and anyone caught with a laser pointer with out a valid reason will face a maximum gaol term of 14 years.

"It only takes a fraction of a second for a pilot to become temporarily blinded and that could have catastrophic consequences," Premier Morris Iemma said.

Source Reuters

Comment 

While it could end up being dangerous, a complete ban might be a little bit on the extreme side. While lasers can be still be used by some people legally, it will be a lot harder to get the low powered lasers that are often used to entertain children and cats.

Hopefully police will be able to distinguish between the high and low powered lasers. 

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Grand Theft Auto 4 leading on PS3

With the release in only a few days Grand Theft Auto 4 is the focus of the gaming world.

Earlier this week illegal copies of the game surfaced on the internet and some stores broke the world wide release date.

But doing things the right way is seeing a gap open up with pre orders of the game.

EB Games Australia and Gametraders have both said the Playstation 3 version of the game is leading the XBox 360 version in pre orders.

Source Gamespot

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The reason for the Playstation 3 lead could be many fold.

There is a bundle pack including a Playstation 3 and the game that can be preordered, Grand Theft Auto is looked at as being a Playstation series and people with XBox 360's are not bothering to preorder as many games after the large number of games that were supposed to be hard to get were in plentiful supplies.

It should be noted that if you get the XBox 360 version, and you have an XBox 360, you will be able, in the future, to download exclusive content that is rumored to be as big as the game itself. That content will not be coming out on the Playstation 3 at all. 

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