Top Technology Stories

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Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:07:00 GMT

Ford brings connectivity to fourth screen - your dashboard

LAS VEGAS Whats got an operating system, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, USB and SD card ports, two LCD touchscreens, touch-sensitive buttons, MapQuest turn-by-turn directions, support for Pandora and Twitter, app stores, an SDK and a direct feed into
Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:07:00 GMT

Flaw In Emergency Response System May Have Killed Hundreds

Hugh Pickens writes 'The Telegraph reports that a flaw in the way emergency response software was set up to handle Category A responses in Great Britain may have cost hundreds of lives over the past ten years. Most ambulance services use an international
Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:02:00 GMT

Multicore Requires OS Rework, Windows Expert Says

alphadogg writes 'With chip makers continuing to increase the number of cores they include on each new generation of their processors, perhaps it's time to rethink the basic architecture of today's operating systems, suggested Dave Probert, a kernel
Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:02:00 GMT

Medical Professionals Aren't Leaping For E-Medicine

theodp writes 'Despite all the stimulus money being directed toward developing electronic medical records, surprisingly few doctors, hospitals and insurers are using Google Health and other sites like it. One reason, Newsweek suggests, may be that
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:18:00 GMT

If ET Calls, Who Speaks For Humanity?

EagleHasLanded writes 'Who speaks for humankind if ET calls on us? Paul Davies, chairman of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, is a likely ambassador. But Allen Tough founded the Invitation to ETI Web site, which encourages ET to make contact via email
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:46:00 GMT

India First To Build a Supersonic Cruise Missile

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: 'India successfully tested Sunday a 'maneuverable' version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile which it has jointly developed with Russia, news reports said. The vertical-launch version of the
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:54:00 GMT

What Is Holding Back the Paperless Office?

Drethon writes 'CNN has an article (are we up to the millionth article on this topic?) asking if the paperless office has arrived. This got me wondering, what are the main things holding back the paperless office? Just off the top of my head, the main
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:32:00 GMT

Russian ASCII Art Animated Cat From 1968

harrymcc writes 'Forty-two years ago, Russian scientists created an impressive sequence of a cat walking about and it was all the more impressive given that the 'CGI' involved rendering hundreds of images of the cat as ASCII art, then printing out the
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:47:00 GMT

Switzerland Passes Violent Games Ban

BanjoTed writes with a followup to news from February that the Swiss government was pursuing a ban on violent video games. He writes 'Sadly, Switzerland has now passed the law that paves the way for an outright ban on violent video games in the country.
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:17:00 GMT

Bad BitDefender Update Clobbers Windows PCs

alphadogg writes 'Users of the BitDefender antivirus software started flooding the company's support forums Saturday, apparently after a faulty antivirus update caused 64-bit Windows machines to stop working. The company acknowledged the issue in a note
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:18:00 GMT

Living in a Constant State of Red-Alert Security

Subscribing to lots of IT security vendor alert lists tends to numb one's brain almost to the point of complacency. It's a constant state of red-alert about one newly discovered threat or another, and most threats seem to be quite similar. Even when a
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:15:00 GMT

Google Hands Out Web Security Scanner

An anonymous reader writes 'Apparently feeling generous this week, Google has released for free another of their internally developed tools: this time, a nifty web security scanner dubbed skipfish. A vendor-sponsored study cited by InformationWeek
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:48:00 GMT

Chinese Researcher Says US Power Grid Is Vulnerable, Strategist Overreacts

An anonymous reader writes with a story about Wang Jianwei, a grad student in China who recently released a paper detailing a vulnerability in the US power grid. Despite the paper being rather typical for security research, its origin set off alarm bells
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:29:00 GMT

Need Help Salvaging Data From an Old Xenix System

Milo_Mindbender writes 'I've recently gotten ahold of an old Altos 586 Xenix system (a late '80s Microsoft flavor of Unix) that has one of the first multi-user BBS systems in the US on it, and I want to salvage the historical BBS posts off it. I'm
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:31:00 GMT

US Law Firms Targeted By Cyberscams

Hugh Pickens writes 'The San Francisco Chronicle reports that last year a Long Beach law firm received an e-mail from a Hong Kong businessman seeking help collecting debts from American customers. After a month of signing paperwork and exchanging
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:03:00 GMT

Server Room Smells Can Be an Early Warning

Barence writes 'As embarrassing as it may seem, an eggy smell in a server room needn't mean broaching the delicate subject of hygiene with a colleague. It can actually be a signal that something is about to go wrong with your server setup, as this
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:16:00 GMT

Anti-Gamer South Australian Attorney General Quits

dogbolter writes 'South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, infamous for the banning of R18+ rated games and the censoring of political comment in Australia, has quit. The recent South Australian election provided a massive swing against
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:17:00 GMT

Nintendo Developing DS Apps For School Systems

MojoKid writes 'Shigeru Miyamoto, who has had a hand in some of Nintendo's most popular titles, recently offered that he is working hard to turn Nintendo's DS line of handheld gaming machines into tools for schools. The DS already has a nice line of
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 06:16:00 GMT

Novell Rejects "Inadequate" $2B Takeover Bid

alphadogg writes 'Novell's CEO wrote to customers Saturday telling them that the software company has rejected a $2 billion bid by hedge fund Elliott Associates to take it private. He called the offer 'inadequate' and said Novell will review
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:30:00 GMT

They?re Not Waiting for an Invitation to Evite?s Party

EVEN before Google became a verb, Evite became a noun. Invitations from Paperless Post emphasize the look of paper stationery. For Evites challengers and there are many the most difficult task isnt surpassing its list of features, but overcoming the
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 02:23:00 GMT

Just Cause 2 | Game review

XBox 360, PS3, PC, cert 15 The majority of open-world games generally consist of driving and shooting. And sometimes, by happy chance, what really, really hits the spot is just driving things and shooting things. Which is exactly the playground Just
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 01:42:00 GMT

Autoscanning The Names People Choose For Their Wireless APs

MichaelSmith writes 'I code on the tram, going to and from work and I noticed that there are a lot of wifi access points along the way. So one week I made it my job to write an automatic scanner which runs from a cron job every minute during commuting
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:18:00 GMT

Volvo C30 R-Design | Martin Love

Close your eyes for a moment and think of Volvo. What's the first image that floats into your mind? Is it a slab-sided, square-shouldered estate? Can you see the driver? He's probably a grey-haired pensioner heading to the golf club for an 11 o'clock
Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:18:00 GMT

Every British Citizen To Have a Personal Webpage

Hugh Pickens writes 'The Telegraph reports that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is about to announce that within a year everyone in Great Britain will be given a personalized webpage for accessing Government services as part of a plan to save
Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:14:00 GMT

Mozilla Labs To Bring Address Book To Firefox

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: 'Mozilla has announced the availability of an experimental new add-on for Firefox that is designed to import information about the user's contacts from a variety of Web services and other sources. The
Sat, 20 Mar 2010 22:02:00 GMT

5 Reasons Tablets Suck, and You Won't Buy One

Crazzaper writes 'When the iPad launched, a lot of people who didn't care about tablets came out to bash Apple's new device. These same people said 'I would have bought it if it had a full OS,' but in reality full OS tablets existed before the iPad
Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:03:00 GMT

Memorizing Language / Spelling Techniques?

NotesSensei writes 'My kids are learning Chinese in school. While the grammar is drop-dead simple, writing is a challenge since there is no relation between sound and shape of the characters. I would like to know if there good techniques (using
Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:30:00 GMT

Sci-Fi Writer Peter Watts Convicted of Assault

SJrX writes 'CBC news is reporting that Peter Watts has indeed been convicted of Assaulting border guards, (discussed here). He will be sentenced April 26th.'
Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:15:00 GMT

Baffled By the Obsession With Pretend-Business Games

theodp writes 'Newsweek's Daniel Lyons confesses to being . Even stranger, he says, is their willingness to spend real money to buy virtual products, like pretend guns and fertilizer, to gain advantage in these Web-based games. Pretend products are a
Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:05:00 GMT

Canada's Top Court Quashes Child Porn Warrant

m.ducharme writes 'The CBC is reporting that the Supreme Court of Canada has handed down a decision quashing a search warrant used to obtain the computer of a man accused of possession of child porn. 'Urbain P. Morelli maintained his charter rights were
Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:16:00 GMT