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A Minnesota man has plans to launch his own Macintosh-manufacturing business, building a low-cost, upgradeable Mac called the iBox. John Fraser, a 21-year-old engineer from Chanhassen, Minnesota, is finalizing the design for his flat "pizzabox" Mac and hopes to go into production in three to four months. If successful, Fraser will be the first third party to make a Mac since Apple shut down its three-year experiment in clone licensing in 1997. Unlike the world of Windows PCs, which has many hardware makers, Apple is the only company making Macs. Apple doesn't license its operating system to outside hardware manufacturers

Engineers Create World's First Transparent TransistorCORVALLIS - Engineers at Oregon State University have created the world's first transparent transistor, a see-through electronics component that could open the door to many new products. The advance has been reported in a professional journal, Applied Physics Letters, and a patent has been applied for. The university is already consulting with major electronics companies about the findings and their potential applications. The discovery "is a significant development in the context of transparent electronics," the scientists said in their publication, but pointed out it's too early to tell what applications may evolve. "This is a...

Ghosts, computers, and Chinese Whispers Toby Howard This article first appeared in Personal Computer World magazine, November 1996. "CLICK HERE to upload your soul" was one of the tamer headlines seen recently in reports describing the "new research direction" of British Telecom's research labs at Martlesham Heath. BT, it was reported by such authorities as The Guardian, Reuters, Time, and the Electronic Telegraph, is embarking on a huge new research project. Funded to the tune of 25 million pounds, an eight-man team is developing a "Soul Catcher" memory chip. The chip will be implanted behind a person's eye, and...

<p>Texas Instruments breaks new ground with its bundling of three technologies into a single chipset.</p> <p>Back in September, I wrote a column lauding Texas Instruments for its breakthrough designs that reduced from four to one the number of chips needed to operate a cell phone. Looks like the company is at it again.</p>

March 17 — A computer intruder armed with a secret, particularly effective attack tool recently took control of an Army Web server, MSNBC.com has learned. Both Microsoft and the CERT Coordination Center released hastily-prepared warnings about the vulnerability that led to the attack on Monday. But it was a disturbingly successful attack, experts say, because the intruder found and exploited a flaw that took security researchers completely by surprise. It’s unknown what Army computer was attacked, how significant a target it was, or what the intruder’s intentions were. But the exploit was sophisticated and well designed, and it was alarmingly...

<p>What is it about state institutions and computer systems? Why can't the state that is home to Silicon Valley get one to work on time, on budget and without reeking like a dead rat?</p> <p>The latest state entrant into the information technology hall of mishaps is the California State University system, which this week got hit with a state audit that revealed waste and worse. The audit says CSU's contract with PeopleSoft Inc., a Pleasanton company hired to coordinate a software system to track student, personnel and financial records among the system's headquarters and 23 campuses, has exceeded its original $400 million budget by -- this is not a misprint -- more than $250 million. A quarter-billion-dollar overrun would be bad news any time. This one, coming in the middle of an epic state budget crisis, couldn't possibly be any worse.</p>

<p>A massive new computer project under way at the California State University system might be the latest example of the state's inability to wisely fulfill its own technology needs.</p> <p>A new audit of the CSU's systemwide software says the project was never properly justified by university administrators, might not have been necessary and may not even be accomplishing much of what the university set out to achieve.</p>

A new worm that leaves behind two Trojan horse programs has begun spreading over the Internet and may be paving the way for a crippling distributed denial of service attack. Although the experts are not yet rating the Deloder worm as a high risk to PC users, the technical make-up of the Trojan horses it leaves behind is of concern. They consist of a commonly used piece of network administration software called Virtual Network Computing (VNC), and an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot, or remote-access Trojan horse. The VNC component allows attackers to connect to an infected system and control...

From "TransExodus: The Enduring Secular Reformation, Pluralist Transhumanism, and Posthuman Pilgrims", by George P. Dvorsky, February 16, 2003: A large community of genetically modified posthumans and fyborgs, fed up with antiquated and restrictive biolegislation, depart Earth to parts unknown. Similarly, a group of clones, hoping to flee religious persecution and threats from terrorists, build a spacecraft and head to Rigel Kentaurus. And unnerved by the revivalist turn taken by the World Government and its parliamentary human majority, an entire population of cyborgs permanently upload themselves into a secure and massive supercomputer on Titan and establish an isolationist polis of their...

Only nine of 112 search warrants executed over the last 14 months in Story County have been sealed from public disclosure - and one of those is the unexplained search of Iowa State University's men's basketball coaches offices. Court records show that Story County prosecutors obtained an order on Feb. 3 to seal a search warrant served on Iowa State assistant basketball coach Randy Brown. Prosecutors obtained the order by telling a judge that the investigation was in the preliminary stages and of a "highly sensitive" nature. The warrant only will be opened if charges are filed, according to the...

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ITHACA, N.Y. -- Available soon: You step into a booth where a 3-D body scanner sends more than 300,000 data points from your body to a computer. Then you select style, fabric and design features from a clothing manufacturer on the Internet and e-mail your body scan. Soon you receive a custom-fitted garment. Thanks to a major donation of software, worth as much as $600,000, from Lectra Systems, Inc., apparel students at Cornell University are the first in the country to produce automated custom patterns for garments. They use a sophisticated body scanner, which generates an individual's detailed measurements from...

I have a D-Link Airbus 650+ wireless network card, with 128-bit WEP encryption. I use the card in a Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop. The card works fine for the first hour or so. Then, the computer slows to a CRAWL. In fact, the system time starts lagging by a few hours. If I restart the computer, everything is fine again and the system clock is correct. What's going on, and how can I correct it? Their technical support has no idea of why it's happening. Thanks.

A campaign to reach out and touch the Iraqi people through e-mail apparently hasn't been as successful as the United States had hoped, because the Iraqi government censors all e-mail coming into the country. Over the past month, the U.S. military has periodically sent e-mail to Iraqi military and government officials urging them to protect their families by helping U.N. inspectors and turning away from Saddam Hussein. U.S. government officials won't comment on the campaign, but according to sources in Iraq and Iraqis living in the United States, each time the e-mails are sent, Internet access all over Iraq soon...

I need a new computer. FR is such a great source of competent, experience information - in my opinion, better than consumer reports. Could anyone tell me the best website or store to get a newer, top of the line (I want to add an extra modem and hard drive, or external hard drive for a backup) - and get a multi function machine that scans, copies, prints and faxes. Any advice?

A computer worm attack that shut down bank ATM terminals and disrupted Internet servers throughout the world may have been part of an al Qaeda terrorist threat to test the vulnerability of computer systems that serve U.S. financial interests, computer security experts say."Like the 9-11 attacks, the 'Slammer' worm was aimed at the heart of the U.S. financial community," says Leo Roth, a computer security analyst who advises the federal government. "For at least part of the weekend, a number of U.S. financial institutions were virtually shut down."Those affected include the giant Bank of America, whose nationwide ATM network went...

<p>Toshiba also had a monster booth, but it always does. While showing off its latest award-winning laptops and other gear, the company also made the most overlooked announcement at the show.</p> <p>Toshiba has teamed up with Unocal and Circle K to provide wireless Internet access points at Union Oil gas stations and Circle K mini-marts around the country.</p>

<p>Norwegian prosecutors will appeal the acquittal of a Norwegian teenager charged with digital burglary for creating and circulating a program online that cracks the security codes on DVDs.</p> <p>Rune Floisbonn, a prosecutor with Norway's economic crimes police, told the NTB news agency Monday that an appeal would be filed. He did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press.</p>

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 January 19 Fullerenes as Miniature Cosmic Time Capsules Credit & Copyright: Keith Beardmore (LANL) Explanation: Scientists have found, unexpectedly, tiny time capsules from billions of years in the past. The discovery involves small molecules that can apparently become trapped during the formation of large enclosed molecules known as fullerenes, or buckyballs. Luann Becker (UCSB) and collaborators recently found fullerenes in an ancient meteorite that fell to Earth...

    'Cleaned' hard drives reveal secrets   14:32 16 January 03 Will Knight   Discarded and recycled computer drives can reveal financial and personal information even when apparently wiped clean, MIT researchers have found. Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat, graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, analysed 158 second hand hard drives bought over the internet between November 2000 and August 2002. They were able to recover over 6000 credit card numbers, as well as email messages and pornographic images. The pair wrote a program to scour the disk drives for any trace of credit card information. They found card...