IT News

SYDNEY scientists have built the world's tiniest transistor by precisely positioning a single phosphorus atom in a silicon crystal.

The nano device is an important step in the development of quantum computers – super-powerful devices that will use the weird quantum properties of atoms to perform calculations billions of times faster than today's computers.

Michelle Simmons, of the University of NSW, said single atom devices had only been made before by chance and their margin of error for placement of the atom was about 10 nanometres, which affected performance.

Her team was the first to be able to manipulate individual atoms with "exquisite precision".

Using a technique involving a scanning tunnelling microscope, they were able to replace one silicon atom from a group of six with one phosphorus atom, achieving a placement accuracy of better than half a nanometre. "This device is perfect," Professor Simmons, director of the Australian Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, said.

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Twitter is being sued for defamation for the first time under Australian law.

Joshua Meggitt, a Melbourne man wrongly named by writer and TV identity Marieke Hardy as the author of a hate blog dedicated to her, is now suing Twitter Inc itself.

Meggitt's lawyer, Stuart Gibson, served a legal notice yesterday on the San Francisco-based social media giant, a company valued last year at US$7 billion ($8.4 billion), as the publisher of a tweet by Hardy last November.

Her tweet read: ''I name and shame my 'anonymous' internet bully. Liberating business! Join me,'' with a link to her blog, where she incorrectly named Meggitt as the author of ''ranting, hateful'' articles about her.

It was a tweet seen around the world, and now that Hardy has already reached a confidential legal settlement with Meggitt, believed to be about A$15,000 ($19,000), and published an apology on her blog, his lawyers are seeking damages from the social media site where the original defamation had the greatest exposure.

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DARK NIGHT: Wikipedia has blacked out its English-language site for 24 hours to seek support against proposed US anti-piracy legislation that founder Jimmy Wales says threatens the future of the internet.

The internet blackout to protest against proposed US legislation on online piracy has failed to get the support of the biggest web players.

Despite calls for the participation of sites such as Facebook, Twitter and other big names, the biggest participants are the online dictionary Wikipedia and the social-news website Reddit.

The situation shows that, while technology companies are concerned about the legislation, the United States House of Representative's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), the companies are not prepared to sacrifice a day's worth of revenue and risk the ire of users for a protest whose impact on lawmakers is hard to gauge.

Wikipedia and Reddit will black out their pages so visitors will see only information about SOPA and PIPA.

Of the biggest tech sites that have voiced opposition to the legislation, only Google is planning any type of change to its site. It too will have information about the bills, although users will still be able to conduct Google searches.

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Efforts by the music industry to crack down on internet piracy have suffered a setback after it emerged that some copyright infringement notices issued to internet users under the controversial "Skynet" law may not be worth the paper they are written on.

The Recording Industry Association (Rianz) began asking internet providers to issue infringement notices to people it believed were illegally downloading music through peer-to-peer file sharing sites in November.

The law gives the Copyright Tribunal the power to fine internet pirates up to $15,000 after they have received three written warnings.

However, an infringement notice issued by state-owned internet provider Orcon that was posted online by lobby group Tech Liberty is missing information required by the act.

The legislation stipulates warnings must set out the time each infringement occurred, down to the second, and name the file-sharing application or network used to pirate the work, as well describe the nature of the work and type of breach alleged to have occurred.

None of that information was included in the notice issued by Orcon.

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Can you help make Stephen Hawking's voice heard?

The famed British physicist is seeking an assistant to help develop and maintain the electronic speech system that allows him to communicate his vision of the universe.

An informal job ad posted to the famed physicist's website said the assistant should be computer literate, ready to travel, and able to repair electronic devices "with no instruction manual or technical support."

Hawking has long struggled against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease which left him almost completely paralyzed.

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