Science
& Health...
- Sunday, March 02, 2008
December 2004 -
The Dream Factory - Any product, any shape, any size - manufactured on your desktop! By
Bruce Sterling, Wired Mag, Issue 12.12 - December 2004, When it comes to
coining terms of art, few can beat Neil Gershenfeld of MIT's Center for
Bits and Atoms. In the wake of such influential concepts as wearable
computing, things that think, and Internet Zero, Gershenfeld and his
intrepid grad students are cobbling together mobile manufacturing
systems they call fabrication laboratories, or fab labs...
May 4 2005 -
Spying on the spyware makers -
By Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com,
Published on ZDNet, SAN FRANCISCO--Ben
Edelman may be spyware's most dangerous
enemy. The 25-year-old researcher
has spent years analyzing how spyware
and adware programs work and disclosing
his findings publicly. That often
results in red faces and, occasionally,
lawsuit threats from companies like
WhenU and Claria, formerly known as
Gator. When testing spyware and adware,
Edelman isn't about to sacrifice his own
Windows XP computer. So he uses the
VMware utility to create a virtual
Windows box. "I infect the hell out of
it," he says. "It destroys the infected
machine." ...
January 20 2005 -
Spyware: IT's public enemy No. 1
- By Rick Broida, Special to ZDNet,
Published on ZDNet News, What's the
biggest threat to business networks in
2005? Front-line IT managers and
security firms increasingly peg spyware
as public enemy No. 1. "We now often
scan for spyware before we check for
viruses" -- Dave Higgins, Saturn
Electronics & Engineering At Saturn
Electronics & Engineering, a
Detroit-based provider of manufacturing
outsourcing services, the problems began
last summer. The company's 500 users
noticed that Web browsing was sometimes
slow. Very slow. IT Manager Dave Higgins
suspected virus activity, but manual
virus scans turned up nothing. He then
scoured the machines with Lavasoft's
Ad-Aware and found the culprit: spyware.
Once removed, the systems returned to
normal operation...
April 13 2005 -
Health care's the ticket - Craig Barrett saysBy Michael Kanellos, CNET News.com, Published on ZDNet
News, The future for the technology industry
lies under your skin, according to Intel CEO Craig Barrett.
Inefficiencies in the medical industry, along with advances in chip
manufacturing and design, will likely provide chipmakers with one of
their big opportunities for growth, Barrett said Tuesday in a brief
interview. The first phase of growth will likely involve creating
systems so that doctors can retrieve medical files and histories more
rapidly. "Amazon knows more about me than my doctor does," Barrett
said...
February 23 2005 -
Intruder alert: Paris Hilton, FBI, love
- Published on ZDNet News, Security threats Viruses and worms IDS (Intrusion
Detection Systems) Three sets of e-mails which promise either nude
pictures of Paris Hilton, a scary official-looking warning from the FBI,
or a secret admirer who says "I love you" have appeared in the last two
days. They all deliver a package that could grind networks to a halt.
Fortunately, none of these will reach "Anna Kornikova" worm or "Love"
bug proportions but they will take away hours of productive work time.
Be on the lookout! ...
November 29 2004 -
Gobble Gobble - Posted by Steve Gillmor, ZDNet, Perhaps
it was the tryptophan in all the turkey kicking in. Or maybe the 4-day
weekend. But whatever the reason, the Web seemed in for a bout of
self-introspection about business models. Suddenly the signs were
everywhere: Doug Kaye of IT Conversations asking for tips on how to
monetize his terrific audio site-cum-podcasting network, Adam Curry
talking about linking his favorite podcasts together to share OPML
information across the Podsquad network, and Dave Winer rolling up his
sleeves and going after the page-rank spam pirates...
December 08 2004 -
IBM sells PC group to Lenovo
- By John G. Spooner and Michael Kanellos CNET News.com, IBM will sell its PC division to
China-based Lenovo Group and
take a minority stake in the former rival in a deal valued at $1.75
billion, the companies announced Tuesday. The two companies plan to form
a complex joint venture that will make Lenovo the third-largest PC maker
in the world, behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard, but still give IBM a hand
in the PC business. The deal is expected to be completed in the second
quarter...
December 08 2004 -
Why Lenovo-IBM is a tough sell - By Michael Kanellos CNET
News.com, Commentary - Two years ago, I got an inside look at
operations at Lenovo Group, the Chinese computing giant that is forming
a joint venture with IBM to sell PCs worldwide. Military marching music
blared out of loudspeakers that ringed the corporate headquarters. It
was 2 p.m., the beginning of the mandatory afternoon exercise break for
the assembly line employees. "Here it is," I thought, "the legendary
willpower and unity of Chinese organizations." I expected to see
employees popping off jumping jacks while wielding soldering guns...
October 05 2004 -
SpaceShipOne wins $10 million X Prize -
Flight also bests X-15 altitude record
- Brian Binnie rides atop
SpaceShipOne, Laura Rauch / AP, Astronaut
Brian Binnie rides on SpaceShipOne after
his suborbital flight to win the Ansari X
Prize in Mojave, Calif. MSNBC, By Alan
Boyle, Science editor, MOJAVE, Calif.
- SpaceShipOne crossed the finish line in
an 8-year, $10 million space race Monday,
winning the Ansari X Prize with its second
spaceflight in less than a week. Along the
way, the world's first privately developed
spacecraft also broke a 41-year-old
altitude record and created a new
astronaut...
October 06 2004 -
2
Israelis, American split Nobel in chemistry - Work centers on
cells’ defense against unwanted proteins, Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences via AP, MSNBC News Services, STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Two
Israelis and an American won the 2004 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on
Wednesday for their work related to how the human body singles out
unwanted proteins for destruction to defend itself from disease...
October 19 2004 -
We're fifty years into the future - By Rupert Goodwins ZDNet
(UK), Ladies and gentlemen – please raise your glasses and toast the
Regency TR-1. On 18 October, 1954, this revolutionary device was
announced in America. Fifty years later, it has been blamed for rock and
roll, the death of the U.S. consumer electronics industry, the
relentless rise of IBM and the shocking state of modern manners. Not a
bad score for a transistor radio...
October 29 2004 -
Tech issues that'll give you the creeps
- By Jonathan Schwartz Special to
ZDNet, Commentary--I'm an optimist.
I can't help it. But that doesn't mean
there aren't a few goblins and ghouls
roaming in the shadows that bug me out.
So as jack o' lanterns light up across
North America this weekend, I'll let you
in on a few of the biggest issues that
send chills down my spine. Let's start
with phishing. For those that don't
know, phishing is replicating a
legitimate Web site and using it to
collect password or credit information.
(PayPal seems like a favorite target.)
The Anti-Phishing Working Group just
reported that the cumulative number of
phishing expeditions more than tripled
between May and July this year...
November 05 2004 -
IBM set to take supercomputing crown - By Stephen Shankland,
CNET News.com, IBM's Blue Gene/L became the top contender to the
supercomputing throne Thursday, when Big Blue announced that a new
incarnation of the machine can perform 70.7 trillion calculations per
second. The speed of 70.7 teraflops, as expected, puts Blue Gene/L
well ahead of the 42.7 teraflops Silicon Graphics Inc. announced in
October for its Columbia system, as well as the 51.9 teraflops that the
full Columbia configuration is expected to be able to reach. The
companies are vying for the top spot in a list of the world's 500
fastest supercomputers...
November 03 2004 -
Virus report points to profit-hungry hackers - By Dawn
Kawamoto, CNET News.com, Malicious software cases rose 22 percent in
October, with Trojan horses accounting for nearly half, according to a
newly released report by security company Trend Micro's TrendLabs. Those
results further validate a growing concern in the security industry that
hackers are more interested in turning a profit than gaining fame.
Trojan horses can be used to dupe computer users into running a bot
program, which in turn can help launch denial of service attacks for
financial gain...
December 21, 2004 -
Nuclear Fusion Plant: But Where? - Associated Press,
RESTON, Virginia -- International sponsors of a project to generate
energy by reproducing the sun's power source failed Saturday to agree on
whether to build the world's first large-scale nuclear fusion reactor in
France or Japan. Representatives from the European Union, the United
States, Russia, South Korea, China and Japan said in a statement after
meeting for more than three hours that they need additional time to pick
a site. Today's the Day. "We have two excellent sites ... so excellent,
in fact, that we need further evaluation before making our decisions
based on consensus," according to the statement...
November, 01 2004 -
Study: Firefox still gaining on Internet Explorer - By Jim Hu
CNET News.com, Alternative Web browsers Mozilla and Firefox experienced
another month of growth at the expense of Microsoft's dominant Internet
Explorer, according to an online study. The percentage of Americans
using Mozilla and Firefox, two open-source browsers funded by the
Mozilla Foundation, grew to 6 percent in October from 5.2 percent in
September and 3.5 percent in June. That 6 percent was split evenly
between the two browsers. While Microsoft's IE continued as the
overwhelming market leader, it witnessed another marginal decline, this
time a dip of 0.8 percent. IE claimed 95.5 percent of users in June,
93.7 percent in September, and 92.9 percent last month. The Opera
browser and Apple Computer's Safari combined reached just more than 1
percent of users...
September 09, 2004 -
Intel calls for Internet overhaul - By Stephen Shankland and
Ed Frauenheim, CNET News.com, SAN FRANCISCO--The Internet needs to
be upgraded with a new layer of abilities that will deal with imminent
problems of capacity, security and reliability...
August 17 2004 -
Study: Unpatched PCs compromised in 20 minutes - By Matt Loney and Robert Lemos, ZDNet
(UK), Don't connect that new PC to the
Internet before taking security precautions, researchers at the Internet
Storm Center warned. According to the researchers, an unpatched Windows
PC connected to the Internet will last for only about 20 minutes before
it's compromised by malware, on average. That figure is down from around
40 minutes, the group's estimate in 2003. The Internet Storm Center,
which is part of the SANS Institute, calculated the 20-minute "survival
time" by listening on vacant Internet Protocol addresses and timing the
frequency of reports received there...
March 25 2004 -
Hypersonic plane shoots for Mach 7
- ABC NEWS, NASA is set to test an experimental X-43A hypersonic
jet at speeds reaching Mach 7 over California. The jet is seen as part
aircraft and part spacecraft and NASA hopes to set a new world record
for flying objects propelled by an atmospheric engine. The unpiloted
3.6-metre-long vehicle will be dropped from the wing of a modified B-52
aircraft over the Pacific Ocean to briefly fly under its own power at
seven times the speed of sound. The flight is part of the Hyper-X
program, a research effort designed to demonstrate alternate propulsion
technologies for access to space and high-speed flight within the
atmosphere. No vehicle has ever flown at hypersonic speeds powered by an
air-breathing scramjet engine...
February 26 2004 -
Health care's paper tiger
- By Karen Southwick, Special to ZDNet, Dr. Thomas Sullivan,
president of the Massachusetts Medical Society and immediate past chair
of the American Medical Association's e-Medicine Advisory Committee, is
just the sort of physician technology companies drool over. An avid
proponent of information technology, Sullivan met recently with
Microsoft at its headquarters outside Seattle to tell the software giant
how it could better serve the $1.7 trillion health care industry. But
back at his own cardiology business in Danvers, Mass., Sullivan doesn't
exactly practice what he preaches: He still files claims on paper...
August 16 2004 -
Microsoft lists SP2 conflicts
- By Matt Hines, CNET News.com, August 16, 2004, 6:59 AM PT, Microsoft has
issued a list of nearly 50 software applications and games that may
encounter problems with its Windows XP Service Pack 2 update. In a
document published in the "Knowledge Base" section of the company's Web
site, Microsoft details the various issues that people may face when
they install the SP2 package, which was released to PC manufacturers
earlier this month. A range of applications are listed in the Microsoft
report, including several of the software maker's own products, along
with antivirus tools, Web server software and a handful of games...
July 30 2004 -
When biotech comes home - By Dan Farber, Tech Update, ZDNet.com, Freeman Dyson -- world renowned physicist and father of CNET editor at
large Esther Dyson -- envisions that the "domestication" of
biotechnology -- similar to the ways that computers moved into the
household and took root for everyday tasks like homework, games and
personal accounting -- will come to fruition in the coming decades.
Speaking at O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2004, along with his son
George, an historian of technology and author of Darwin Among the
Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence, Dyson called biotech the
"new art form of the 21st century." He predicted that the domestication
of biotechnology will open up creativity to millions of people, with
do-it-yourself kits for gardeners and snake breeders, for example. "Kids
will buy seeds or eggs and compete with friends on who can grow the
prickliest cactus or cutest dinosaur," Dyson said. He envisions low cost
DNA synthesizers that teenagers will buy like iPods and GarageBand to
exercise their creative genes...
July 28 2004 -
Group Warns DVRs Endangered
- By Katie Dean, WiredNews.com, Editor's note: This story
has been updated to include comments from the MPAA. Television fans who
like to choose when and where they watch their favorite programs are in
for a rude awakening next year when new copy controls encoded in digital
television streams will limit such freedoms. Broadcasters have been
steadily moving from broadcasting content in analog to digital format
over the past several years, as required by the Telecommunications Act
of 1996. To protect this digital content from piracy, the Federal
Communications Commission adopted a rule that digital television tuners
recognize copy controls, called the broadcast flag (PDF), encoded in
content streams. Digital video-recording devices would detect the
broadcast flag, and the flag would prevent users from making multiple
high-quality copies of the programs for illegal distribution. As of July
1, 2005, it would be illegal to manufacture or import devices that can
receive digital programming without responding to the broadcast flag...
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