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Paris, May 26: The European technology sector is under pressure from strict labour laws and a lack of start-up firms, and needs a major push if it wants to create another Nokia or SAP, executives said on Wednesday. Venture capitalists pump only one-fifth as much into start-up companies in Europe they do in the United States, and the founder and chief executive of unlisted, Luxembourg-based Skype said the reason for slow activity was tough conditions. "We want our vacations and our social luxuries. This is not the best environment to start a company. It is much more difficult here than...

A security update for the Firefox open-source browser has been released by the Mozilla Foundation, a move that follows the public disclosure of exploit code for two "extremely critical" vulnerabilities. Mozilla Firefox 1.0.4, released Wednesday, addresses vulnerabilities that surfaced earlier this week. The update includes several security fixes, as well as a fix to DHTML errors that were encountered at some Web sites, according to a posting on Mozilla's Web site. The update is designed to address the two flaws, which when combined could allow malicious attackers to engage in cross-site scripting and remote system access. Although the two vulnerabilities...

This is a call to tech minded Freepers (everyone from software engineers to hobbyists) to contribute in some way to make FR better than it already is from a technical standpoint. FR (i think) uses a from scratch proprietary system so any improvements to the system would have to first have to suggested then petitioned to JimRob to look at the code. Bandwidth and other issues could most likely addressed by updating the FR system with valid W3C code and implementing various caching tricks. THIS IS NOT A CRITICISM OF HOW FR IS RUN NOW. We all enjoy FR and...

Stress kills 6 IT geeks The Asianage (3/29/2005 12:15:05 AM) Chennai, March 28: Six software professionals under the age of 33 have died and two top executives from renowned software companies have become paralysed because of stress-related heart ailments in the last six months in Chennai, says a study by Mitran Foundation, a Bangalore-based voluntary association of practising doctors. "All the six who died, and the two who became invalid, had no family history of heart attacks or any pre-history of heart ailments or paralysis. They were all in their prime, between 27 and 33 years, and handled challenging projects...

IBM has one-upped itself. Big Blue has revealed that it has broken through the 100 teraflop mark and developed the world's fastest supercomputer for the United States National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The system is a derivative of IBM's BlueGene/L supercomputer, which won the supercomputing crown back from NEC's Earth Simulator. The NNSA machine is used to simulate nuclear tests as part of an ongoing maintenance program for the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

'Wrist Video' Gives Israeli Army an Edge Fri Mar 4, 7:39 AM ET By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer HOLON, Israel - Israeli troops are now sporting gear that Dick Tracy would be proud of: tiny video screens, worn on the wrist, which display video shot by unmanned airplanes. AP Photo Related Quotes UDIDJIANASDAQS&P 500 58.2610940.552070.611222.12 +1.25+107.52+12.21+11.65 Delayed DataProviders - Disclaimer   Similar screens have been in use for close to a year in the Israeli military's attack helicopters, helping pilots identify and strike Palestinian militants within seconds. The technology, which is also in use in tanks and armored vehicles, was...

Theory: Iceman Oetzi Wore High-Tech Shoes By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Feb. 23, 2005 — Ötzi, the copper ax-wielding iceman found frozen in the Alps where he had trekked over 5,300 years ago, wore high-tech snowshoes, according to a closer look at artifacts found with his remains. If the new theory holds, Ötzi's footwear would become the world's first known snowshoes, and in a landslide victory. The current likely record-holders are not even actual shoes, but rather carvings of what look to be snowshoes found within Iron Age petroglyphs that date to approximately 500 B.C. Ötzi's Moccasin? The Shoe from...

NEW DELHI -- For 12 years, Doug Bettinger was a senior finance executive at Intel Corp., working at the U.S. computer-chip maker's offices in Silicon Valley, Arizona and Malaysia. In November, the 37-year-old jumped ship, becoming chief financial officer of Bangalore-based call center operator 24/7 Customer. "The growth India is experiencing is crazy," says Mr. Bettinger, who now splits his time between 24/7 Customer's offices in Los Gatos, Calif., and Bangalore. "There are lots of opportunities there that you couldn't get at Intel." Mr. Bettinger is among a growing number of U.S. and Western executives being poached -- not to...

Microsoft to offer free anti-spyware, anti-virus software34 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AFP) - Microsoft Corp. will offer consumers who use its Windows operating system free software to battle so-called spyware and eventually antivirus software, chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites) said. Photo AFP/HO Photo Speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, the high-tech security industry's largest annual gathering, Gates said that Microsoft is on track to deliver a broad antivirus product to consumers by the end of the year following its acquisition of Sybari Software, announced last week. Gates, who also serves as chief software architect of the world's...

Alumna Pamela Hoffler-Riddick, a 1998 doctoral graduate, was arrested Monday in connection with a drug ring centered in Virginia.Erin Zlomek News Editor U.S. Customs officials arrested a Virginia Tech alumna Monday after an indictment charged her with five counts of money laundering in connection with a multimillion-dollar drug ring. An indictment names 1998 doctoral graduate Pamela Hoffler-Riddick in association with a drug trafficking project dubbed “Operation Blowfish” by authorities. Hoffler-Riddick is an assistant superintendent in charge of 35 schools in Prince George’s County. The Washington Post reported Hoffler-Riddick is accused of using drug proceeds to pay off loans for two...

A week before The Women’s Center will host the Vagina Monologues, Vaginia workshops are being held across campus. Andrew D. Mager News Assistant The annual V-Day drive is in full effect, and volunteers from the Women's Center are working hard to promote the Vagina Monologues, a production that celebrates women's sexuality and strength and exposes the violations that women endure throughout the world. The Women's Center will host the event at the Haymarket Theatre, Feb. 4 and 5 at 7 p.m. and Feb. 6 at 2 p.m. The Vagina Monologues is a theatrical performance featuring female students, faculty and women...

24 June 2004Mac OS X security myth exposedAnd thousands of other products and OSes given security rundown. By Matthew Broersma, Techworld Windows is more secure than you think, and Mac OS X is worse than you ever imagined. That is according to statistics published for the first time this week by Danish security firm Secunia. The stats, based on a database of security advisories for more than 3,500 products during 2003 and 2004 sheds light on the real security of enterprise applications and operating systems, according to the firm. Each product is broken down into pie charts demonstrating how...

Love him or hate him, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's upstart presidential campaign left the Democratic Party two important and lasting legacies: the empowerment of younger activists and the pioneering use of the Internet for fund-raising. Those new realities now are at play in the battle for Democratic National Committee chairman, which Democrats will vote on in February. While Dean announced his candidacy on Tuesday, two younger political operatives with strong connections to Silicon Valley also have joined the race: Simon Rosenberg of the New Democratic Network and Donnie Fowler, who recently headed political outreach for the high-tech lobby TechNet....

IPV6/INTERNET2 ARTICLE IGNITES INTERNET FIRESTORM An FMNN story pointing out privacy concerns related to IPv6 received emphatic responses & thousands of page views across the Internet. (See sample FMNN feedback and responses, below, following article.) FMNN Technology and New Media CorrespondentPeople should be alarmed when a fire starts. IPv6 with Internet2 is a firestorm waiting to happen. That was the thesis of my reporting in mid-December 2004 about IPv6 and Internet2 (apparently my effort was one of the first to truly grapple with the potentially troublesome nature of this new technology). The commentary I have received on the article –...

"What's really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits. Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are. ...The average Blockbuster carries fewer than 3,000 DVDs. Yet a fifth of Netflix...

I have decided to upgrade my 4 y/o comp, and am looking for a >$250 motherboard and a >$150 AGP graphics card (budget is $450, and I'll need new memory). It has to be an mini-ATX MB. C'mon Freeper Techies... give me the info I crave.

CHICAGO - Caleb Sima still marvels at how angry the people around him got when he fled high school for a computer job during the high-tech boom, thumbing his nose at the traditional career path. Skipping college, they warned, would be a foolish route to nowhere. "One day, I'm going to see you taking out my trash," his principal told him. Ha. Boasting a six-figure salary as chief technology officer of an online security company, Sima is one of a select group of young techies who hit it big without an academic pedigree after technology and Internet-related businesses exploded in...

Tech Ed Flourishes in Battle Zone 3rd Signal Brigade in Iraq establishes Baghdad Signal University. by Maj. Kenneth L. Cypher, USA The soldiers who are fighting to keep networks up and running in support of operation Iraqi Freedom have a new weapon in their arsenal: Baghdad Signal University. Established by the 3rd Signal Brigade at Camp Victory, Iraq, the Multinational Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) tactical data network training facility allows MNC-I soldiers and civilians to learn to operate and troubleshoot network devices in the face of a tactical data network and strategic network that rapidly changes. The first class at Baghdad Signal...

or will it be the year we realise it's not really an issue after all? E-mail to a friend Printer friendly Reader Comments Post your comment here How big a deal is offshoring? Depends who you ask. Research firm Gartner published a study Monday saying it "isn't as widespread as people think", with lower-cost locales accounting for less than three per cent of money spent on global information technology services this year. Gartner projects that figure to grow but remain a relatively small fraction of total spending. By 2008, spending on IT services delivered through "global sourcing" will reach about...

Have any other users had serious tech issues when going to the Drudge Report lately? I've long had a problem with aggressive popups there, but this weekend when I hit his site, it literally crashes my computer, blue screen of death and all. Anyone else have this problem?