The Australian Domain Authority (auDA) has released the results of a ballot to find out what .au geographic domain people want the most. In the end, perth.com.au was the winner, with cairns.com.au and margaretriver.com.au following behind.

Overall, there was 10,000 applications sent in, covering a range of over 2700 commercial geographic domain names across Australia.

Top 20:

1. perth.com.au (138)
2. cairns.com.au (132)
3. margaretriver.com.au (127)
4. canberra.com.au (93)
5. byronbay.com.au (92)
6. bondi.com.au
7. surfersparadise.com.au
8. casino.com.au
9. portdouglas.com.au
10. manly.com.au
11. newcastle.com.au
12. geelong.com.au
13. hobart.com.au
14. darwin.com.au
15. coffsharbour.com.au
16. parramatta.com.au
17. broome.com.au
18. airliebeach.com.au
19. wollongong.com.au
20. alicesprings.com.au

The most popular domain in each state and territory:

ACT – canberra.com.au
NSW – byronbay.com.au
NT – darwin.com.au
QLD – cairns.com.au
SA – portadelaide.com.au
TAS – hobart.com.au
VIC – geelong.com.au
WA – perth.com.au

Update: After researching this further, origen is a spanish word for origin and in 37 days the Xbox 360 will be released in Japan, the origin of the Xbox 360.

A recently registered domain, origenxbox360.com, has been registered by what it looks like Microsoft. The WHOIS has all the same details as any other Microsoft owned site, plus it points to the Microsoft domain servers.

On the site it has a picture of a tree and what looks like a green rabbit. Behind these pictures is a faint flash countdown, currently at 37 days. Is this a countdown to the release of the Xbox 360? Or is it a countdown for another announcement Microsoft is going to make about the 360? Who knows, but we do know it is related to the Xbox 360.

One then begins to wonder what is with the origen part of the domain name. I guess all with be revealed once the countdown hits 0.

What is displayed so far:

What is displayed when countdown reaches 0:

The SHA-1 encryption, now widely used for most cryptology applications, has been broken by a faster method, with research done by Xiaoyun Wang, Andrew Yao and Frances Yao. The new method can crack the encryption in 2⁶³, just slightly better than their previous effort of 2⁶⁹, and better than the brute force method of 2⁸⁰. The researches said that over the coming month they will revise their work to possbily improve it.

I’m still surprised that most things (including the US govenment and SSL) still use SHA-1, and haven’t moved onto a variant of SHA-2 (eg: SHA-384, SHA-512, etc.).

Google has recently updated and added new data for over 100 cities in their Google Earth program. In this it includes the Washington DC area, and Google has forgotten to erase out the roof of the white-house (which they have done previously).

Click on the image for a full view.

A new worm, called Zotob, has hit the internet recently by exploiting a vulnerability affecting Windows users. The worm scans random machines for activity on port 445. If a venerable machine is found, the worm is then downloaded from the scanners machine and copied to the newly-found machine. The worm then sets up an FTP server on that computer and searches for other venerable computers.

Microsoft has recently released an update this month to patch this worm, so all users are highly recommended to upgrade immediately if they haven’t already.

Within 24 hours of the release of Microsoft’s new Windows Genuine Advantage tool, there was information on the internet to bypass it easily by pasting a javascript code into the address bar. About 11 days ago, Microsoft caught on to this method and blocked it. I was just retrying the method today and seems that it now works again!

The javascript code you have got to paste into your address bar when it asks you what method of updates you want (whether Express or Custom) at Windows Update is:

javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck=’all’)

Note: You need to have the Windows Genuine Advantage tool installed first for it to work, or it will prompt you to install it.

Update: It seems that the javascript method of bypassing the WGA does not work anymore. Disabling the Windows Genuine Advantage tool in Internet Explorer -> Manage ad-ons still works though.

Have you ever been caught speeding by a speeding camera? Well if you have, you needn’t have to, as a case in New South Wales, Australia yesterday was thrown out of court because the Roads and Traffic Authority admitted that it can’t prove the authenticity of the pictures they take.

Currently the way that it works is that an MD5 hash is printed onto each picture when they are taken to supposedly prove that it was taken at the time it was. The RTA could not get an expert to prove that the MD5 algorithm could not be tampered with.

This news brings an uncertainty to all future speeding cases - you just need to bring them to court and say that they can’t prove the authenticity of the pictures, and you’ve won.

Note: This may only work in Australia, I am not sure what other countries have in regard to speeding camera authentication.

A hardcore Japanese tech enthusiest has posted on a blog an article (with pictures) of how he overclocked his Intel P4-670 Prescott 3.80GHz computer to a whopping 7.1GHz (7132.82MHz). To cope with the heating, the CPU had to be cooled in liquid nitrogen and only stayed at that speed for 17 seconds.

Full specifications below:

Clock (MHz) /FSB/FID: 7132.82 (375.4x19.0 time)
CPU: Lot no. P4-670 (SL7Z3 / 3507A671T)
Cooling: ARC Pot Revc.12.1xe LN2
Vcore (V): 1.70v
M/B: ASUS P5WD2 Premium
Memory: CORSAIR PC2-5400UL 512mBx2
Vddr (V): 2.3v
FSB/RAM Ratio: 4:5
DRAM Timing: 4-3-3-4-4 (bios)
OS: Server 2003

Pictures below:

Guiness World Record I say.

Researches at George Mason University have discovered a way of tracking and then tapping into Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) conversations on the internet. Consequently, the National Science Foundation has given the researches a $307,436 grant to help them translate this new research into a tool to help the police use it to tap calls with VoIP. The researchers have only shown it to work on Skype conversations.

There a number of services on the internet to “anonymize” Skype calls using a middle-man proxy server, as it gives the illusion that the proxy server is talking the person on the other end, and not really the caller.

In a very surprising move, Microsoft has told the Sydney Morning Herald that it will lift the protection for people with illegal copies of Windows getting Windows updates, most likely because of the gaping flaws that stood out in it. But Microsoft won’t give up just yet, as they said that they are going back to the drawing boards to develop a new protection scheme. Maybe it would help if there wasn’t an obvious off button?

Apparently, the reason behind the WGA was: “to help innocent customers realise the full value of authentic Windows software while protecting investments made by our partners.” Hmm, sure? :p