Some enterprising researchers in Australia have decided to use GPS to update the old concept of electrified collars to control boundaries, according to the Guardian:

The system uses battery-powered collars that emit a sound to warn cattle when they are approaching a virtual boundary. If a cow wanders too near, the collar – which is fitted with a chip – emits a warning hum. If it continues, the cow gets a mild shock.

The key to the description is the “battery-powered” part. What century is this? Battery-powered? Come now, surely there is a renewable energy source like solar cells, or maybe even methane gas, to run these tags.

Commercial versions are up to 10 years away. The batteries currently last about a week and would need to have a life of several months to be practical.

Hmmm, as if batteries are going to be a relevant source of power ten years from today. And what is with the week to several months progress curve? Talk about low expectations.

Dr Fisher said that experiments, conducted in front of independent animal welfare experts, showed that cattle took less than an hour to learn to back off when they heard the warning hum. They were not stressed by wearing the collars, which give off a 250-milliwatts shock that has been described as not much more than the charge from static electricity.

Cow tipping may have to give way to cow humming. How long will it take humans to learn not to step past a point that gives them a static charge?

Congratulations to Apple for releasing a browser for Windows. If it is as bad as their iTunes for Windows product, it probably will make little or no progress into a new user base. However, it does give their existing users more options, which is still a good thing. Er, sort of a good thing, according to Apple Product Security:

A command injection vulnerability exists in the Windows
version of Safari 3 Public Beta. By enticing a user to visit a
maliciously crafted web page, an attacker can trigger the issue which
may lead to arbitrary code execution.

[…]

An out-of-bounds memory read issue in Safari 3 Public Beta for Windows may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution when visiting a malicious website.

[…]

A race condition in Safari 3 Public Beta for Windows may allow cross site scripting. Visiting a maliciously crafted web page may allow access to JavaScript objects or the execution of arbitrary JavaScript in the context of another web page.

The message from Apple points out that none of this has anything to do with OS X. Apple Product Security also emphasizes how much they look forward to hearing from the public about products that they release with flaws:

As with all our products, we encourage security researchers to report issues to product-security@apple.com.

It would be funny if the product security notes included a phrase like “Patch available…or click here for help on how to migrate from Windows”. That would be so Microsoft-like of them.

The BBC has the story. Zimbabwe sees it the other way around, of course:

Zimbabwe’s MPs have passed a law to allow the government to monitor e-mails, telephone calls, the internet and postal communications.

Opposition MP David Coltart called it a “fascist piece of legislation” aimed at cracking down on political dissent.

But Communications Minister Christopher Mushowe defended it, saying it was similar to anti-terror laws elsewhere such as in the UK, US and South Africa.

“These are countries which are regarded as the beacons of democracy,” he said.

Perhaps he meant “were regarded”? Wait, forget the US, who says South Africa and the UK are beacons of democracy?

The bill obliges internet service providers (ISPs) to install equipment, at their own expense, which will allow a monitoring service to intercept e-mails.

Since it is at their own expense, I wonder how the quality of the monitoring will be enforced. What if the system is unable to keep up with the throughput, for example, and starts dropping traffic?