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Broadband providers have voiced alarm over an EU proposal to create a “Great Firewall of Europe” by blocking “illicit” web material at the borders of the bloc.

Anti-censorship campaigners compared the plan to China’s notorious system for controlling citizens’ access to blogs, news websites and social networking services.

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LONDON (Reuters) – WikiLeaks’ Australian founder Julian Assange, who enraged Washington by publishing thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, was given a peace award on Tuesday for “exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights.”

Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation’s gold medal in London, only the fourth to be handed out in its 14-year history. The not-for-profit organisation associated with the University of Sydney, is supported by the City of Sydney.

Currently fighting extradition from Britain to Sweden over alleged sex crimes, the computer expert was praised for “challenging centuries old practices of government secrecy and by championing people’s right to know.”

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In the wake of the dramatic Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound earlier this month, it was perhaps to be expected that some expansive soul would step forward to claim the prestige of a fabricated tour as a SEAL for himself. Such tall tales are not uncommon, after all, amid high-profile military actions.

This time the exposed fabricator was a preacher–though at least one person who monitors this brand of public lie notes that members of the clergy are often tempted into such misrepresentations.

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Google has officially launched its online service for storing your digital music on its servers, following closely in Amazon’s footsteps.

Apple, your move.

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A University of Missouri researcher has found that a compound in parsley and other plant products, including fruits and nuts, can stop certain breast cancer tumor cells from multiplying and growing. The study was published in Cancer Prevention Research.

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"First time I’ve ever seen the Millennium Falcon next to a taxidermied fox."

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A rarely seen white deep-sea octopus has been captured on camera in high definition by researchers from the University of Washington. The octopus features two “wings” which make it look just like the ghosts from Mario videogames, aka Boos.

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The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europe’s single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong?

Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

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[Dr. Dongarra's] research group has run the test on Apple’s new iPad 2, and it turns out that the legal-pad-size tablet would be a rival for a four-processor version of the Cray 2 supercomputer, which, with eight processors, was the world’s fastest computer in 1985.

These tests are approximate, of course. This probably makes no use of the iPad’s graphics acceleration, which is a big chunk of its compute power.

I’d be curious to see a comparison between the iPhone and historical Mac models, i.e. “The iPhone4 has the numerical CPU performance of a … (say, original iMac?), the RAM of a …, the storage of a … and the graphics performance of a ….

Anyway, whatever great compute cluster the NSA is using right now, you’ll get to carry that in your bag by 2036.

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An eastern Newfoundland woman delivered after Paul Simon invited her to play and sing at a concert in Toronto Saturday.

Kelligrews-native Rayna Ford called out to the legendary singer-songwriter to play the song Duncan – saying it was the first song she learned to play on guitar.

He heard her, and motioned for her to step on the stage and play it.

An astonished Ford took him up on his offer.

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Bin Laden, as medieval ideologist and global terrorist, had a record of accomplishment that was as vast as it was hideous. He did more to slash the fabric of American life than anyone since the Second World War. His capacity to arouse the fevered imaginations of young fundamentalists led to the murder of thousands of men, women, and children—among them Muslim men, women, and children—in Aden, Mogadishu, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Washington, New York, Shanksville, Bali, Madrid, London, Baghdad, Kabul, and Marrakech. He provoked wars. He forced the rise of expensive structures of security and surveillance. He incited a national politics of paranoia and retribution. He did as much as the economic rise of China and India has done to undermine America’s short-lived post-Cold War status as a singular, self-confident, seemingly omnipotent superpower. Bin Laden signed his last will and testament on December 14, 2001, while hiding in the caves of Tora Bora, instructing his children not to work for Al Qaeda: “If it is good, then we have had our share; if it is bad, then it is enough.”