Reuters is carrying a story on the latest reality TV gimmick.

Some critics say the endless stream of hugely popular reality television shows are as dull as watching paint dry -- Well, now they can test the theory with a live, eight-week round-the-clock Webcast of just that.

Billed as the "ultimate reality TV show", pay-channel UKTV Style promises a wall, some brushes and different types of paint in its programme "Watching Paint Dry".

Let's hope that people get the message :S

The Economic Times is carrying a story confirming reports of Intel's plans to set up a microchip manufacturing plant in Chennai.

The Chennai plant is expected to act as a manufacturing base to meet the growing demand in the south Asian market. The company already has a plant in Malaysia. Intel has identified 50 to 70 acres of land close to the site allotted to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) at the Siruseri IT Park, promoted by the state-owned State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Sipcot), on the IT highway.

A man who sent 850 million junk e-mails through accounts he opened with stolen identities was sentenced to up to seven years in prison by a United States court on Thursday.

Atlanta-based Internet service provider Earthlink Inc. said it hoped the sentence and an earlier $16.4 million civil judgment against Howard Carmack will deter other spammers.

''Before spammers send one more spam e-mail, we think they should remember that what happened to Howard Carmack can happen to them,'' said Karen Casion, Earthlink's assistant general counsel.

Now if Australia & Britain convict a few of their infamous spammers, we might actually be making some progress. The full article can be reached here. A related news article on new legislation to deter spammers operating through Maryland can be read here.

ZDNet is carrying a report confirming rumours of another (much needed) Flash MX2004 patch in the works at Macromedia.

Macromedia developers registered as beta testers were recently invited to sign up for the beta version of a product code-named Ellipsis.

A Macromedia representative said the package would be released late this summer as a free update for Flash MX 2004 and would consist largely of performance and stability enhancements, part of Macromedia's push to extend Flash as an environment for creating Web applications.

The full story can be accessed here.

The youngest planet ever detected -- a baby less than one million years old -- may have been discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists say. The possible infant planet was spotted circling a star known as CoKu Tau 4, some 420 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, according to astronomer Dan Watson of the University of Rochester, New York.

The discovery of the possible infant planet was one of three findings by the Spitzer spacecraft, which looks at the universe through infrared light as it trails Earth in its journey around the Sun.

Reuters is carrying this story.

San Francisco-based Macromedia today announces the immediate availability of Macromedia Flash Player 7 for Linux - a new version of Macromedia Flash Player offering improved performance and security and powerful new development capabilities. Engineers from Sun Microsystems and Macromedia have been working together to port the Flash 7 Player code to the Linux platform.

Linuxworld is carrying this story.

India's brand new Communications and information technology minister, Dayanidhi Maran, has unveiled a 10-point agenda for promotion of information technology in the country:

• Expedite Convergence of technologies
• Kick start the national e-governance plan
• Provide broadband connectivity
• Help migration to 4G mobile wireless technology
• Promote the Indian Internet domain name
• Implement Internet protocal IPv6
• Introduce security and digital Signatures
• Revive Media Lab Asia
• Promote language computing
• Focus on outsourcing skilled manpower and research and development

Calcutta's Telegraph has this article.

A robot that can make delicate paper models using the ancient Japanese art of origami has been developed by a US phD. student, Devin Balkcom, at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute.

"Our primary interest in origami is manipulation," Balkcom writes on his web page. "We are currently working on understanding more complicated origami skills - like reverse folding, squash folding, the rabbit ear, and prayer folding - that require the simultaneous manipulation of multiple non-colinear creases."

Devin's webpage has more information including photos and videos. The original article appeared in New Scientist.

CBSNews is carrying a report on the upcoming (June 8) transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. The entire six-hour event will be visible from Europe, the Middle East and most of Asia and Africa. Viewers won't need a telescope or binoculars, but scientists warn against looking at the sun without adequate eye protection, just as with a solar eclipse. This celestial event will occur on the 8th of June for the first time after 122 years.




India will be in a prime spot to view the event. For those not in India (or too lazy to get out), a webcast of the event (as seen in India) is being provided by the University of North Dakota.

Work has started to use optical fibres to link up the giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank with five others that are scattered across England. The interconnected array of radio telescopes called Merlin (Multi-Element Radio-Linked Interfometer Network) centred on Jodrell Bank in the north of England has been a remarkable scientific success.

The networked telescopes are currently linked by microwaves. Once upgraded to optical fibre, each telescope will be producing as much data as the entire UK public internet

The BBC is carrying this story.