Tired of the city and need some more greenery in your life? Real estate blog Movoto calculated the cost of buying a home similar to Bag End featured in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" movie sagas.
Movoto considered Worcestershire County, England, as a reasonable locale for estimating the value of a Hobbiton home since "Hobbit" author J.R.R. Tolkien supposedly favored the lush countryside area.… Read more
In a stunning repudiation of a United Nations summit, an alliance of Western democracies including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada today rejected a proposed treaty over concerns it hands repressive governments too much authority over the Internet.
"This conference was never meant to focus on Internet issues," said ambassador Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation to the Dubai summit. "The Internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years -- all without U.N. regulation."
Delegates from the Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, the Philippines, … Read more
In what looks like another blow in the U.S. case against MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom, New Zealand's spy agency is forced to turn over records of its illegal surveillance and raid of DotCom's home.
According to Reuters, New Zealand's high court ordered the agency to reveal the records to DotCom, which could possibly aid him in his battle to fight U.S. extradition. The court also ruled that DotCom and his company managers could seek damages from the government because of the agency's unlawful actions.
DotCom's saga has played out over the past year … Read more
With the world premiere of "The Hobbit" movie just a few weeks off, I've been thinking a lot about travel and Middle-earth, from here at the actual middle of the actual earth.
Turns out I'm not alone. These days, the New Zealand Tourism Board actively promotes tours of the 12-acre family farm that was spotted amid obscurity and lots of sheep in 1998 and transformed into The Shire of Tolkien lore.
In fact, the tourist board says at least 6 percent of visitors to the country cite "The Lord of the Rings" and upcoming "Hobbit" trilogies as the reason they came to New Zealand.… Read more
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said today he took up some issues important to his country in a private conversation with President Barack Obama and one of the topics may have been about the MegaUpload case.
The impromptu discussion occurred today prior to a meeting at the East Asia Summit in Cambodia, according to several New Zealand publications. Key confirmed that he brought up the fighting in Gaza but when asked whether he and Obama talked about MegaUpload, the cloud-storage service accused by the United States of criminal copyright violations, Key said he couldn't discuss it.New Zealand'… Read more
Did you miss out on the total solar eclipse yesterday?
Take a look at our breathtaking gallery that features pictures of the total (and partial) solar eclipse from the northern tip of Australia, various island countries in the South Pacific, and near Chile.… Read more
Did you know a total solar eclipse occurs tomorrow? Unfortunately, unless you live around certain areas in Australia or find yourself floating in the South Pacific Ocean, you won't really see the full effect -- unless you observe the phenomenon online.
If you want to catch the rare moment where the moon passes between Earth and the sun, Space.com recommends tuning in to the Slooh space camera Web site or a live feed by Tourism Tropical North Queensland on UStream. … Read more
I can relate to the energy woes of folks in the Pacific island nation of Tokelau (technically a territory of New Zealand), and I'm a bit jealous of their solution.
Tokelau and the roughly 1,500 residents of the coral atolls about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand have become the world's first completely energy-independent territory/nation/whatever, thanks to a solar energy project that's just been completed with funding from the New Zealand government.
"Until now, Tokelau has been 100 percent dependent upon diesel for electricity generation, with heavy economic and environmental costs," New … Read more
MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom has proven to be unstoppable. After the U.S. government's major takedown of the cloud-storage service, which came with charges of racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering, and more, DotCom has escaped extradition to the U.S. for now and was given a formal apology by New Zealand's prime minister.
Emboldened, DotCom has announced that he is building a new file-sharing site called Mega. According to Wired, this new site will work slightly different than MegaUpload but will still let users upload, store, and share data files. DotCom also intends to make it raid-proof.
"… Read more
Countless childhood dreams dissolved today upon the news that the calculated half-life of DNA figures out to around 521 years, all but invalidating the chances of a real-life "Jurassic Park."
The DNA fact-finding project involved a team of palaeogeneticists testing 158 leg bones belonging to three species of extinct giant moa birds ranging from 600 to 8,000 years old.
After running a series of comparisons between the age of the various bones and DNA degradation within each specimen, the researchers estimated that DNA's half-life works out to about 521 years after being kept in a swamp with an average temperature of 13.1 Celsius (55 Fahrenheit). Even a more ideal preservation temperature of minus 5 Celsius (23 Fahrenheit) would only result in readable DNA from specimens up to 1.5 million years old, meaning there is no possible way we can see a 65-million-year-old T-Rex waving its tiny arms about in this time frame. … Read more
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