New York Times Says Thin Clients Are Making a Comeback
1 hour, 44 minutes ago
One of the seemingly eternal questions in managing personal computers within organizations is whether to centralize computing power (making it easy to upgrade or secure The One True Computer, and its data), or push the power out toward the edges, where an individual user isn't crippled because a server at the other side of the network is down, or if the network itself is ... [read]
National Debt Clock Overflowed, Extended By a Digit
4 hours, 54 minutes ago
hackingbear writes "The National Debt Counter, erected in 1989 when the U.S. debt was 'merely' a tiny $2.7 trillion, has been moving so much that it recently ran out of digits to display the ballooning figure: $10,150,603,734,720, or roughly $10.2 trillion, as of Saturday afternoon. To accommodate the extra '1,' the clock was hacked: the '1' from "$10.2" has been moved left to the ... [read]
English Court Allows Patents For "Complex" Software
7 hours, 12 minutes ago
jonbryce writes "The court of appeal in England has ruled that companies should be granted patents for 'complex' software products. In this particular case, Symbian had written something that makes mobile phones run faster. The court case has received very little attention because of the bank crisis, but it can be appealed to the House of Lords and then the European Court of Justice."Read ... [read]
Fuel Efficiency and Slow Driving?
8 hours, 48 minutes ago
vile8 writes "With the high gas prices and ongoing gas gouging in my hometown many people are trying to find a reasonable way to save gas. One of the things I've noticed is people driving exceptionally slow, 30mph in 45mph zones, etc. So I had to take a quick look and find out if driving slow is helpful in getting better mileage. I know ... [read]
Microsoft Quietly Previews PC Advisor Repair Tool
10 hours, 4 minutes ago
notthatwillsmith writes "On Friday, Microsoft invited members of the Windows Feedback Program to try out a preview of a new application, the Microsoft PC Advisor. The new tool promises to 'continuously monitor your PC for problems and give you the solutions to fix them, in real time.' After testing on several Vista machines with a variety of problems, Maximum PC has written a full ... [read]
Baldness Gene Discovered — 1 In 7 Men "At Risk"
11 hours, 15 minutes ago
FiReaNGeL writes "Researchers conducted a genome-wide association study of 1,125 Caucasian men who had been assessed for male pattern baldness. They found two previously unknown genetic variants on chromosome 20 that substantially increased the risk of male pattern baldness. They then confirmed these findings in an additional 1,650 Caucasian men. 'If you have both the risk variants we discovered on chromosome 20 and the ... [read]
Court Rules That Palin Must Save Yahoo Emails
12 hours, 26 minutes ago
quarterbuck writes "An Anchorage judge has found that Governor Sarah Palin must save her emails . Last week a Tennessee man was arrested over hacking her email account. Washington post also reports that Sarah Palin, her husband and officials had set-up email accounts known only to each other."Read more of this story at Slashdot. [read]
Elcomsoft Claims WPA/WPA2 Cracking Breakthrough
13 hours, 33 minutes ago
secmartin writes "Russian security firm Elcomsoft has released software that uses Nvidia GPUs to speed up the cracking of WPA and WPA2 keys by a factor of 100. Since the software allows them to network thousands of PCs, this anouncement effectively signals the death of wireless networking in business networks; any network handling sensitive data should start using VPN encryption on machines connecting over ... [read]
"Black Silicon" Advances Imaging, Solar Energy
14 hours, 44 minutes ago
waderoush writes "Forcing sulfur atoms into silicon using femtosecond laser pulses creates a material called 'black silicon' that is 100 to 500 times more sensitive to light than conventional silicon, in both the visible and infrared spectrums, according to SiOnyx, a venture-funded Massachusetts start-up that just emerged from stealth mode. Today's New York Times has a piece about the serendipitous discovery of black silicon ... [read]
Feds Consider H-1B Changes After Uncovering Fraud
15 hours, 52 minutes ago
CWmike writes "A Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman said today that the agency is weighing a series of reforms to the H-1B application process, including the use of 'independent open-source data' to obtain information about visa seekers or the companies that file the petitions on their behalf. The move follows a report by the agency that found widespread problems and evidence of fraud in ... [read]