967 Archived Topics
Remove Filter  | London taxi drivers have a reputation as being amongst the most opinionated and talkative in the world, and their grueling training and testing program ‘The Knowledge’ is equally well known. Now, it appears, the black cab driver has a new claim to fame: the place where more technology kit is … |
| | About five years ago the BBC carried a news story about a chap in Australia who had taken advantage of a new law which meant that patent applications only needed to innovation rather than invention. He registered a patent application for something known as a ‘circular transportation facilitation device’ or … |
| | [URL="http://www.kaspersky.com/"]Kaspersky Lab[/URL] has released its latest Malware Evolution [URL="http://www.viruslist.com/en/analysis?pubid=204791907"]report[/URL], covering the period between June and September 2006 and, as usual, it makes for interesting reading. Alexander Gostev, Senior Virus Analyst, Kaspersky Lab comments that the first six months of 2006 was “notable for the complexity of the technologies which antivirus …  |
| | [URL="http://www.rackspace.co.uk"]Rackspace Managed Hosting[/URL] has today sent me the formula to create the perfect website, and being a nice chap I felt I had to share it with you, so here goes: [B]Pwebsite = { ((14.14* EaseNav) + (13.56*Speed) + (13.11*CleanDes) + (10.89*Func) + (10.89*Up)) – ((12.63*Pops) + (10.32*Ads) +(5.21*MultiM)) } … |
| | For the longest time, the Children’s Online Protection Act, signed off by President Clinton way back in 1998, has been a contentious issue in the US. It was originally kicked out of town, well Philadelphia anyway, after a federal district court banned the enforcement of the law, and a federal … |
| | I hate it, you hate it, [B]everyone hates spam[/B]. Perhaps just as annoying as the fact that most of us have no interest in improving our sexual performance, enlarging our sexual organs or accepting a refinancing deal from a complete stranger, is the fact that we just do not know … |
| | You know when you are invited to the [URL="http://www.stjohns.co.uk/"]St John’s Innovation Centre[/URL], part of the Cambridge Enterprise Hub in the UK that supports early-stage knowledge-based businesses and research institutes, that you are going to be in for an interesting day. When it is a press day with a focus on … |
| | Google has provided WAP access to email for the longest time, an apt description seeing as that’s how long it takes to read your email via a WAP based mobile device. But all that has changed thanks to the availability of a brand new Java based version of [URL="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about_mobile.html"]Gmail for … |
| | Microsoft has issued an [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/927709.mspx"]advisory [/URL]warning about a Visual Studio 2005 vulnerability in the WMI Object Broker ActiveX control, part of WmiScriptUtils.dll which could allow remote arbitrary code execution. The WMI Object Broker ActiveX control will circumvent the ActiveX security model, because it is marked as being ‘safe for scripting’ … |
| | According to Symantec, 64% of small businesses have seen a surge in the volume of spam received during the previous six months. And it isn’t the only one: whether you talk to ISPs or security vendors, gateway mail filtering services or end users, the message is the same. Spam is … |
| | Tim Berners-Lee has a [URL="http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4"]blog [/URL]that is, more often than not, worth reading. Certainly that has been the case over the weekend as the inventor of the World Wide Web has been talking about reinventing HTML. Referring to the W3C HTML group Berners-Lee admits that it is important to have … |
| | I guess when you are a billionaire, finding somewhere new and exciting to go on vacation gets difficult after a while. No such problem for Charles Simonyi, who as part of the original Xerox PARC team helped developed the mouse, the GUI and even laser printing, and went on to … |
| | Ordinarily this headline would no longer come as any surprise, after all everyone is pretty much used to Microsoft keeping the competition at bay using whatever methods it can. However, this is no ordinary headline because what IO left out is the name of that competitor: Windows XP. In an … |
| | The [URL="http://www.acte.org"]Association of Corporate Travel Executives[/URL] (ACTE) has warned, during a conference in Barcelona this week, that the visitors to the United States risk having their laptops seized and searched on arrival and departure. The law applies equally to US and non-US passport holders, and following an appeal judgment in … |
| | Google has launched a new search engine, or rather has made the old one available with a few user configurable tweaks. The [URL="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/"]Google Custom Search Engine[/URL] (CSE) is now open for business and provides a brand new and tailored search experience, or at least that is what Google is saying. …  |
| | According to a survey by the [URL="http://www.ponemon.org"]Ponemon Institute[/URL], sponsored by [URL="http://www.pgp.com"]PGP Corporation[/URL] and [URL="http://www.vontu.com"]Vontu Inc[/URL], the true cost of data breaches in 2006 was $182 per compromised record on average, that is a 31% increase over the 2005 figures. Furthermore, the results of the report, published today, reveal that the … |
| | According to Oxford, UK based database security specialists [URL="http://www.secerno.com/"]Secerno [/URL]databases are open to attack from growing insider threats that give employees carte blanche to access confidential data. Naturally, the company has a product to plug, a database assurance platform called Secerno.SQL, but to be honest I am more interested in … |
| | You cannot fault the Japanese arm of Mc Donald’s for moving with the times and giving away Flash MP3 players as prizes in a competition to customers who bought large Coca-Cola drinks. But, to be honest, I would rather have had the usual tacky plastic movie tie-in toy because at …  |
| | Of course, it all depends who you are listening to when it comes to browser client market share statistics. The Seattle Times was listening to OneStat.com when it reported that Internet Explorer is on the rise for the first time in a couple of years (up 2.8 percent from July … |
| | More than 7 million Sony batteries have now been recalled since the middle of August when Dell made its big 4.1 million battery recall announcement, a figure which has risen to 4.2 million over the weekend interestingly enough. Toshiba has now joined the feeding frenzy by recalling 830,000 laptop batteries; … |
| | The much vaunted, overly hyped and hugely anticipated Apple iPhone, a handset merging mobile phone and iPod into one unit, looked like being a step closer to reality when a French magazine featured a ‘leaked’ image of the thing on its front cover. Unsurprisingly, this was picked up by [URL="http://www.pdafrance.com/news/2006-09-12/id7496/iPhone-ou-Macphone-sur-20minutes-ce-matin/"]PDA … |
| | Sometimes, I get wind of something that has all the makings of an April Fool’s Day prank: but not often in September. Which is why I took a second look at the story about an IBM supercomputer in the making, with ambitions to break the petaflop speed barrier, which will … |
| | AOL has announced its [URL="http://developers.aimphoneline.com/"]AIM Phoneline Developer Initiative[/URL] that will allow voice application developers and device manufacturers to create new tools to extend the functionality of the still relatively new AIM Phoneline service. Examples of the new APIs for call personalization (or ringtones as mere non-marketing mortals might say), untethered … |
| | AOL has announced its [URL="http://developers.aimphoneline.com/"]AIM Phoneline Developer Initiative[/URL] that will allow voice application developers and device manufacturers to create new tools to extend the functionality of the still relatively new AIM Phoneline service. Examples of the new APIs for call personalization (or ringtones as mere non-marketing mortals might say), untethered … |
| | Well, maybe for a week or three anyway. That is the theory being bandied around wherever more than three geeks assembly for longer than 10 minutes, or so it seems. Perhaps it is just the company I keep. However, is there any merit in the idea that Vista, and specifically … |
| | I was reading the [URL="http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com"]Google Code Blog [/URL]and noticed that Google software engineer Matthias Zenger happened to announce the availability of the updated Google Base Data API last week. This lets you develop applications that can dynamically interact with Google Base, obviously. Perhaps a little less obviously it also allows … |
| | Some press releases grab your attention for all the wrong reasons, although from the PR perspective if it has grabbed my attention it has obviously worked. One such scurried across my desktop the other day: [URL="http://www.logitech.com"]Logitech [/URL]rolls out its coolest mouse ever, the headline proclaimed. Oh crikey, thought I, here … |
| | I admit it; there are times when I have gone to Google (and Yahoo, MSN, Ask and even occasionally a decent Meta-Search such as Dogpile) for no other reason than to see what people are saying about me online. I like to think that I have an excuse, what with … |
| | Thursday 24th August could be a date for your diary if you happen to be in the market for compilers and development tools for the high-performance computing arena. Especially that which nods towards parallelization and optimization functionality in order to squeeze multi-core processors to the max. The [URL="http://www.pgroup.com/"]Portland Group[/URL] have … |
| | The news that [URL="http://www.boeing.com"]Boeing [/URL]is to scrap its [URL="http://www.connexionbyboeing.com"]Connexion [/URL]in-flight Internet access service will surprise many people. The fact that it had an in-flight Internet access service will surprise many more. Unless you were a business traveler, flying in Asia where the service was most prevalent, and then one who … |
| | It has been a busy week for both [URL="http://www.w3.org"]W3C [/URL]and anyone who is serious about XML. The [URL="http://www.w3.org/XML/Core/"]W3C XML Core Working Group[/URL] has published the fourth edition of XML 1.0, and second editions of XML 1.1 and Namespaces in XML 1.0 and 1.1. Forming, as they do, the bedrock for … |
| | I was born in London, and although I no longer live there (having swapped the rat race for a life of rural seclusion) I am a regular business visitor. Unsurprisingly then, I tend to travel a lot by the good old London Black Cab. While more expensive than taking the … |
| | When you are the world's biggest PC maker, your problems tend to be on the large scale when they hit. Such is the case of what the US Consumer Products Safety Commission is calling the biggest recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry. The problem is that a … |
| | OK, so that would just be silly, would it not? Nobody in their right minds would accept a job working in IT on Mars. Yet so far 70 people have applied to the [URL="http://www.imbp.ru/Mars500/Proj_M500-e.html"]Mars-500[/URL] project in Russia, for the unusual position (literally) of an IT Manager willing to be sealed … |
| | I was caught up in the travel nightmare that has been unraveling in the UK this week, the result of a major gambit in the ongoing ‘war on terror’ being foiled. Like many business travelers, I had been due to fly, short haul across into mainland Europe, when the news … |
| | Sometimes, the cleverest of folk say the dumbest things. Case in point, I am sure that Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack is very clever, as a clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts you would have to assume as much. So why has she claimed that as many as 40 percent … |
| | I am a writer by profession. Over the last two decades, I have been fortunate enough to have seen more than twenty of my books make it into print. Some have even sold enough copies for me to earn royalties over and above my advance. With publishing house marketing budgets … |
| | Rockstar Games is no stranger to controversy, after all the Grand Theft Auto series of hugely successful video games revolve around the concept of robbing and killing your way to victory. But with the confirmation that it will release the long delayed ‘Bully’ in October, originally slated for a PS2 …  |
| | More bad news from the Las Vegas Black Hat Convention, this time for the blogging community. Most RSS reader software is vulnerable to malicious JavaScript insertion attacks, and web based readers are not immune either. With typical JavaScript based attacks targeting passwords and personal data, it is something that should … |
| | No, it is not a trick question and, yes, your security could be compromised by the fact that you trust your printer almost implicitly. At the Black Hat Security conference this week, Brendan O’Connor proved just how insecure embedded software can be, by exploiting a vulnerability affecting Xerox printers and … |
| | If your neighbour was borrowing your wireless Internet connection, without your permission, and you wanted to teach them a lesson, what would you do? [URL="http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html"]Pete [/URL]decided to have some fun with a fairly simple Squid proxy and turned their online life upside down. Literally. What Pete did was split the … |
| | According to [URL="http://www.spreadfirefox.com"]Spread Firefox[/URL] the Internet Explorer alternative has been downloaded 200 million times. Which sounds impressive enough, until you factor in the small matter of downloads not being the same thing as actual users? Yet while Spread Firefox admits as much and reminds us that the 200 million figure … |
| | How can so many people be so wrong all at the same time? That is the question I am left asking myself following the 410 to 15 vote in favor of the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (also known as HR5319 or DOPA.) The answer is, of course, that … |
| | How much money does Microsoft need? As much as possible would appear to be the answer, considering that it has announced a $1.50 fee to download the Office 2007 Beta as from August 2nd. Claiming a requirement to cover server costs as a result of the 3 million people that … |
| | In what could be an important week for anyone with the slightest interest in online chat, Microsoft and Yahoo began a limited public Beta which sees users of the two IM systems being able to talk to each other for the first time. My inside man tells me that the … |
| | Microsoft's Cybersecurity and Systems Management Research Group have created an automated tool, as part of the larger [URL="http://research.microsoft.com/SearchDefender/"]Strider Search Defende[/URL]r project, to combat sources of comment spam that is the scourge of blogs across the web. Because sites can get high legitimate search rankings while at the same time serving … |
| | Who would have thunked it, the Sony PS3 has run into yet more trouble before it has even made it into the shops. Well I would have for a start, the project has been plagued with bad planning, bad marketing and bad luck since the get go. The decision to … |
| | Surveys, I often find, manage to arrive at the most unexpected of conclusions. This could be down to the questions that are asked being worded in such a way to solicit a politically or commercially acceptable result. It could be down to the fact that people do not tell the …  |
| | It all started late in 1998 when the European Commission received a complaint from Sun Microsystems arguing that Microsoft had refused, perhaps understandably, to provide the information they had requested that would enable the Solaris OS to interoperate with Windows PCs. In less than 2 years the EU had charged … |
| | American chip maker [URL="http://www.freescale.com"]Freescale Semiconductor[/URL] has today announced the development of a magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) chip which can maintain data using magnetic properties and not the traditional electrical charge methodology. Think of it in terms of storing data more like a hard drive, albeit a very small one indeed, …  |
The End.