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Internet users at home are not nearly as safe online as they believe, according to a nationwide inspection by researchers. They found most consumers have no firewall protection, outdated antivirus software and dozens of spyware programs secretly running on their computers. One beleaguered home user in the government-backed study had more than 1,000 spyware programs running on his sluggish computer when researchers examined it. Bill Mines, a personal trainer in South Riding, Va., did not fare much better. His family's 3-year-old Dell computer was found infected with viruses and more than 600 pieces of spyware surreptitiously monitoring his online activities....

Strange start up program. Cannot delete. Chooses new "gobbledygook" name every time the computer is restarted. Have tried several adware/spyware programs. They do not flag it. Internet search reveals no info. Does anyone know what QNCTFQOE.EXE is?

The Golden State is generating the biggest share of new jobs in information technology, according to a study. California accounted for nearly 28 percent of employment openings in software and other IT fields in September, according to an analysis of technology jobs posted to major Internet job boards. That's an increase from the 21 percent share the state claimed in January, according to the study, conducted by job board service provider NimbleCat. Washington, D.C., ranked second to California, with 8 percent of new IT jobs in September. Then followed New York, with 7.1 percent; New Jersey with 6.4 percent; Texas...

Since the recent security warnings surrounding Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser were issued, more and more people around the world have been turning to a small Open Source alternative spawned from the developers of the Mozilla browser: Mozilla Firefox. Though it is small in download size, don't let it fool you. There's nothing small about this application. It's one hell of a contender for the Internet browser throne. Can it topple the software giants flagship product? Yes, I think it can. Sure, Internet Explorer dominates 90+ percent of the market, but I think people are starting to grow weary of...

SNIP At some point in their wardriving experience, Timmins and Botbyl came upon a Lowe's hardware store with an open wireless network. Timmins later admitted to Kevin Poulsen of Security Focus that what he did next was technically illegal: he used the Lowe's network to check his e-mail. When he realized it was Lowe's private network, however, he says, he disconnected. That in itself might have been the end of the story. However, Lowe's became aware of the breach and contacted the FBI, who, after its investigation, charged Timmins with one count of unauthorized computer access. And that by itself...

SEATTLE (AP) -- The U.S. information tech sector lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001 and this past April, and the market for tech workers remains bleak, according to a new report. Perhaps more surprising, just over half of those jobs -- 206,300 -- were lost after experts declared the recession over in November 2001, say the researchers from the University of Illinois-Chicago. In all, the researchers said, the job market for high-tech workers shrank by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500 over the period studied.

A couple of months ago, we rolled out G.O.P. Portal Interactive Wallpaper, powered by Deskpops. And the response was incredible. Thousands of news junkies realized they could keep up with the latest news from Newsmax, WorldNetDaily and more, right on their desktops...and we mean RIGHT ON THEIR DESKTOPS! But now, we've made a great service even better! Instead of 5 news sources, G.O.P. Portal Interactive Wallpaper now features over 70 sources, including Free Republic, Newsmax, WorldNetDaily, Steyn Online, The Christian Science Monitor and more. You can also find the latest news from the Bush-Cheney 04 Campaign and raw news feeds...

MSNBC seems to have a 5 second audio delay so that they look like a badly dubbed Japanese movie. Is it just my cable company (Time Warner Memphis - digital) or is it happening to everyone?

LANCASTER -Antelope Valley College played host to educators and a few NASA Dryden Flight Research Center employees as part of a two-day workshop to demonstrate to the educators how to teach composites technology to their students. Composites are known to many in the "Aerospace Valley" as those materials that make the stealth bomber stealthy and SpaceShipOne a contender for getting a featherweight rocket ship into space. Participants created B-2 bomber models out of shaped foam core and a carbon fiber outer skin. The resultant models measured about 16 inches tall and weighed less than a large apple. The workshop was...

AN FRANCISCO, June 28 - Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer, demonstrated on Monday his answer to one of computing's most pressing problems: searching for files and information stored on desktop computers. At a meeting here of some 3,500 software developers, Mr. Jobs showed off a coming feature for Apple computers, called Spotlight, that will allow users to search quickly for words and concepts stored on a hard drive by using search technology borrowed from the company's iTunes online music service. The feature will be part of the next version of the Macintosh operating system, called Tiger,...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO -- A small Idaho-based PC maker has turned the public backlash against outsourcing U.S. jobs into an unusual marketing campaign, urging customers to "Buy MPC, Support America."</p> <p>MPC Computers, unlike its much larger rivals, keeps all of its 1,000 employees in the United States. The company, owned by private investment firm Gores Technology Group, will turn down the chance to save money by moving staff to low-cost centers in Asia, MPC Chief Executive Michael Adkins said.</p>

To access her bank account online, Marie Jubran opens a Web browser and types in her Swedish national ID number along with a four-digit password. For additional security, she then pulls out a card that has 50 scratch-off codes. Jubran uses the codes, one by one, each time she logs on or performs a transaction. Her bank, Nordea PLC, automatically sends a new card when she's about to run out. As more Web sites demand passwords, scammers are getting more clever about stealing them. Hence the need for such "passwords-plus" systems. Scandinavian countries are among the leaders as many online...

<p>Even as his approval ratings dip in the wake of deepening turmoil in Iraq, George W. Bush continues to garner strong support from one deep-pocketed contingent: chief executives of major technology firms.</p> <p>From Microsoft's Steve Ballmer to Cisco Systems' John Chambers to IBM's Samuel Palmisano, chief executives of the nation's largest tech firms have written checks to the Bush campaign this election cycle.</p>

IBM's new Web-based software package aims to let corporations use as much or as little of Microsoft's software as they want -- or none at all If it stood on its own, IBM's $15 billion software group would be the world's second-largest software company, trailing only Microsoft (MSFT ). Yet, most of the software IBM (IBM ) makes runs on powerful server computers, and it figures only minimally in desktop computing. That's about to change. On Monday, May 10, Big Blue is set to roll out a major new advance in its software strategy -- an integrated group of products...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Microminiaturization has made possible swarms of autonomous robots using nothing more than off-the-shelf parts. But concentrating their wireless chatter and getting them to cooperate to solve problems may be five years away, the National Science Foundation cautions. It's putting $2.6 million into a five-year effort to turn multiple wireless robots into an emergency search-and-rescue team. "We want to help emergency response personnel by sending cooperative robots into an unknown site," said California Institute of Technology researcher Joel Burdick. "My team will be developing software that enables each of them to perform slightly different tasks that together accomplish...

Story last modified March 31, 2004, 2:47 PM PST California retains much of its allure as a tech center, but other states are chipping away at its technology edge, says a new report. Among the assets of the Golden State, home to Silicon Valley, are strong technology clusters, a venture-capital foundation and an excellent higher education system, while in the debit column is a declining ability to attract academic research funds, according to a study released Wednesday by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Milken Institute.A key setback for California was a drop in the number of business starts per capita. In...

Noah Johnson: Folding Proteins at Home By Barbara GibsonIn what is rapidly becoming a new world of democratic computing, Noah Johnson’s three Power Macs are humming quietly away, helping Stanford University scientists solve a complex problem that, one day, may help them fight disease. As part of a groundbreaking distributed computing experiment, Johnson and half a million other people are donating their spare computer capacity so Stanford can remotely simulate protein folding, an essential biochemical process that controls vital body functions. The project, called Folding@home, represents a sort of ad hoc democracy because anyone with an Internet connection can...

The entire functions of a radar system have been squeezed on to a single silicon chip about one fifteenth the size of a penny for the first time. The miniature system has been created by researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, US, who managed to fabricate all the sensing and communications components out of silicon. Their chip is capable of transmitting, receiving and directing high frequency microwaves. "Until now radar has been a very expensive very large bulky item," says Ian Gresham, an automotive radar engineer at M/A-Com in Lowell, Massachusetts. Gresham says the radar chip could...

The email has the following characteristics: From: (Spoofed) Subject: (One of the following) hi hello read it immediately something for you warning information stolen fake unknown Message: (One of the following) anything ok? what does it mean? ok i'm waiting read the details. here is the document. read it immediately! my hero [here is that true? is that your name? is that your account? i wait for a reply! is that from you? you are a bad writer I have your password! something about you! kill the writer of this document! i hope it is not true! your name is...

The world's first computer-assisted, minimally invasive hip replacement has been performed at Hadassah-University Hospital on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus. The hospital was chosen by two giant foreign companies, Zimmer and Medtronics, to be the pioneers in the use of its hardware and software because of its orthopedists' expertise in computer-assisted surgery, including the removal of shrapnel from the bodies of terror victims. In Zimmer's annual report to stockholders this week, the head of Zimmer specifically mentioned the first use of this advanced technology in Israel. Hadassah came out ahead of medical centers in England and Germany, but the technology will later...