An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has been scuttled, following an independent senator's decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation needed to start the scheme. Anti-Gambling Senator Nick Xenophon previously supported the filter because it could also block gambling web sites, but today withdrew support saying 'the more evidence that's come out, the more questions there are on this.' This week surveys found only less than 10% of Australians supported the censorship. Censorship Senator Stephen Conroy has consistently ignored advice from technical experts saying the filters would slow the internet, block legitimate sites, be easily bypassed and fall short of capturing all of the nasty content available online. Conroy expanded the list to block Adult R18+ and X18+ web sites, and this week said it would also block sites depicting drug use, crime, sex, cruelty, violence or 'revolting and abhorrent phenomena' that 'offend against the standards of morality.' Last week an anti-abortion website was added to the blacklist, and Conroy said he was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond."

JCWDenton writes "The Met Police got a short sharp rap over the knuckles yesterday, as the Office of the Information Commissioner questioned what looks very much like a blanket policy to force CCTV onto public houses in certain parts of London. The story begins with a letter to the Guardian last week, from Nick Gibson. He is currently renovating Islington pub The Drapers Arms, after its previous owners allowed it to go insolvent and then disappeared. In his letter, he argues that if he had merely taken over an existing licence, the police could not have imposed any additional conditions. However, because this was now a new licence, the police were able to make specific requests, including one particular request in respect of installing CCTV."

eldavojohn writes "The Linux Defenders Network is a new organization sponsored by the Open Invention Network, the Software Freedom Law Center, and The Linux Foundation to help the community defend itself against patent trolls. Three models, or 'IP rights management tools,' are offered: Peer to Patent, Post-Issue Peer to Patent, and Defensive Publications. Mich Kabay's article in NetworkWorld cites an all-too-familiar incident from December, when General Patent Corp. announced it was working on behalf of Worlds.com to sue everyone — this probably could have been avoided with a little prior art help from the community. From the organization's about page: 'We encourage contributions from anyone that is interested in ensuring that innovation is not stifled by poor quality patents and is interested in assisting the patent office in its goal of improving the overall quality of patents.' Are these guys saviors arriving in the nick of time, or just another hopeless community effort to rein in the failing patent system?"

Pilots in the RAF have fired upon unidentified objects without success since the 1980s, according to Nick Pope, who used to run the Ministry of Defence's UFO project. "There was a faction in the MoD who said 'We want to shoot down a UFO and that will resolve the issue one way or another. We know of cases where the order has been given to shoot down - with little effect to the UFO," he says. The MoD refused to comment. While not making the best first impression on our alien visitors, this policy assures that the British won't end up in a cookbook.

downundarob writes "Senator Nick Minchin, the Australian Shadow Minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, has written (or more likely a staffer has written) this interesting article on the Australian Federal Government's continued zeal to enforce ISP-level filtering in Australia. In the article he posits that 'Underlying the Rudd Government's plan to screen the internet is an offensive message: that parents cannot be trusted to mind their children online.' Meanwhile, we wait for filtering trials to start, trials that have been delayed and which have next-to-no support among the industry. Telstra BigPond — Australia's largest ISP — has refused to take part, comparing internet filtering to 'like trying to boil the ocean.' The third largest, iiNet, is prepared to participate to highlight flaws."

Nick Fletcher writes "Just a few short months after the initial release, Google has released a pre-beta version of Google Chrome 2.0. It sports a few new features including form auto-completion, full-page zoom, 'profiles,' and Greasemonkey support. It seems the only notable feature would be profiles, which allows users to separate out their homepage, history, and bookmarks on a per user or category basis. It seems Google is still playing catch-up but they're definitely moving at a pace unknown to some of their competition. The full list of new features is available in the release notes."

Harry writes "For well over a century, American inventors have been attempting to strike it rich with creations relating to Jolly Old St. Nick himself. I've rounded up 25 of their 'breakthroughs,' from the clever to the evocative to the just plain weird. Merry Christmas to all!"

ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine has a fantastic 'Connections'-style video called THE LED — The short documentary has the history of the LED to modern day applications. Starting with the work of Russian Oleg Vladimirovich Losev, which was largely ignored in the 1920s, to making your own 'Cat's Whisker' — a primitive LED made from a metal-semiconductor point-contact junction forming a Schottky barrier diode. The first practical visible-spectrum LED was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak Jr., while working at General Electric Company."

The much-anticipated first person non-shooter Mirror's Edge is being released today for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Reviews for the game, while not without complaints, are generally positive. 1Up praises the controls, saying, "It gets things very right very early, distilling its first-person platformer ambitions into a very manageable control scheme. ... Once you're familiar with Faith's abilities and their limitations — imparted through a much-needed tutorial — it's easy to see potential routes through the world." Ars Technica is more critical, noting that the main story's gameplay only clocks in at about six hours, and that the artistic style doesn't vary much between levels. Nick Channon, a producer for Mirror's Edge, sat down with Gamasutra and discussed the reasoning for some of their design choices. The PC version of Mirror's Edge and some additional downloadable content will be available in January.

Kotaku reports that Tiberium, EA's Command & Conquer flavored first-person shooter, has been canceled. An internal memo cited quality issues as a reason for the termination of the project, and an EA spokesperson confirmed it. "It is with a heavy heart that I announce an end to all work on Tiberium effective immediately. I've consulted with Nick Earl and Frank Gibeau at the EA Games Label and together we have reached the conclusion that given the time and resources remaining, we will not be able to deliver this product to an appropriate level of quality. The game had fundamental design challenges from the start. We fought to correct the issues, but we were not successful; the game just isn't coming together well enough to meet our own quality expectations as well as those of our consumers."