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Two prescriptions for an invisibility cloak have been unveiled by physicists in the United Kingdom and the United States. The researchers say that in principle the technologies needed for building these devices already exist. "Invisibility is visibly close," says Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, one of the researchers behind the proposals. He and John Pendry of Imperial College London, UK, and their co-workers have independently described similar ways to create an invisible 'hole' in space, inside which objects can be hidden. They say it is possible to guide light around the hole, rather like water...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Nike Inc. said on Tuesday that its shoes will now be able to talk to Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod music players about how far anathlete has run with a new wireless system called Nike+iPod. Shares of Nike rose nearly 4 percent. Using a Nike+iPod Sports Kit, expected to retail for about $29, consumers will be able to access distance, time, pace and calories burned on the screen of a nano version of the iPod via a sensor inside the shoes that communicates with the digital music player. The kit will be available in stores within two...

Dell Inc. said Thursday it will begin using chips from Advanced Micro Devices rather than its rival Intel Corp., as the computer maker posted a first quarter drop in net income. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell had an exclusive agreement with Santa Clara-based Intel, but said in its second-quarter earnings press release that it will switch to Sunnyvale-based Advanced Micro Devices chips in some of its products by the end of the year. Dell, which had lowered its forecast last week, posted net income of $762 million, or 33 cents a share, compared with $934 million, or 37 cents a...

BANGALORE, India — After graduating from Northwestern University last year, Nate Linkon contemplated job offers in Chicago and New York. But he chose a less conventional path and started his career here, in India's booming tech capital. The 22-year-old Milwaukee native works in marketing at Infosys Technologies Ltd., India's second-largest software exporter. He's part of a small but growing number of young Americans moving to Bangalore and other Indian cities to beef up their resumes, launch businesses or study globalization in one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Despite the traffic-choked streets, unsteady electrical supply, occasional digestive troubles and other daily...

WASHINGTON, (UPI) -- Microsoft is the latest company to be subpoenaed by chip maker Advanced Micro Devices for its antitrust lawsuit against rival Intel Corp. AMD filed the suit Monday with the U.S. District Court in Delaware which instructs the PC company to produce unlimited documents necessary for its claim that Intel has bullied companies as part of its business practices. Microsoft has until May 15 to hand over the requested hardcopy and electronic documents which also includes e-mail, instant messages, shared network files, and databases dating as far back as January 2000.

25GB recordable and rewritable discs hit the shops in the US Matt Chapman, vnunet.com 11 Apr 2006 TDK has begun shipping 25GB recordable and rewritable Blu-ray discs to retailers in the US.  The 25GB BD-R recordable discs will sell for $19.99 (£11.50), while the 25GB BD-RE rewritable discs will retail at $24.99 (£14.35). TDK is one of the founding members of the Blu-ray Disc Association alongside companies such as Sony and 20th Century Fox. The company plans to expand on the offerings with discs that hold 50GB.  50GB recordable discs will cost $47.99 (£27.50) and rewritables will be $59.99 (£34.50)....

INTRODUCTION In a prior vanity about outsourcing Another Look at Outsourcing I argued that the phenomenon of offshoring as practiced by multinational corporations in the United States was the result of demographic trends, and the search for new markets, in addition to the opportunity for wage arbitrage. In a subsequent vanity A Falling Tide Grounds All Boats I extended the position to argue that the practice of offshoring risked undermining the United States as an economic power, and that the current trend was intrinsically unsustainable, due again to demographic trends. In this article, I consider the possibility that the offshoring...

At http://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/florian-mueller-blog/ballmer-linux/ we're reminded that Microsoft wants Linux dead. Ballmer is once again making noise about patents. Unfortunately, Microsoft likely does have patents it could use against Linux. IBM can probably be replied upon to fight back on the side of Linux with its own patents - supposedly they've called Microsoft patent bluffs in the past just by pointing out that they also have stacks of patents and idle lawyers ready to look for violations by Windows code. However, Microsoft might now be willing to risk the battle. Microsoft is not in a happy place right now. Vista is delayed,...

Michael Fister has come to India not to save money but to make money. He has seen opportunity budding at Beceem Communications, a young chip design company tucked into a few floors of a building in a bustling residential area of Bangalore. He has watched it surge at Wipro, one of India's outsourcing giants. And Fister has spotted a burst of opportunity at MindTree, an R&D and consulting firm that is building a 15-acre campus west of downtown Bangalore, a few kilometers away from streets choked with shanties. Fister runs Cadence Design Systems, a $1.3 billion (sales) vendor of software...

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens on Monday said he is considering a mechanism in which the Federal Communications Commission would be charged with ensuring that consumers can go wherever they choose on the Internet or run any Internet-based application. The Alaska Republican said at a conference sponsored by communications companies that the issue, dubbed network neutrality, is one of the most difficult for lawmakers to reach a consensus on as they craft legislation aimed at overhauling U.S. communications laws. ``Net neutrality is one of the most difficult issues our committee faces in this process,'' he told the conference sponsored...

The No. 1 computer maker in the world will double headcount in India in the next three years. Dell CEO Michael Dell said Monday the company would employ 20,000 people in India in the next three years, doubling the current headcount of 10,000. A small portion of the new employees, or about 300, will be on the R&D team, doubling the current 300-strong division. They will be based in Bangalore, designing and finding solutions for servers and storage equipment. “We found that the R&D team was designing patentable stuff, so we decided to extend their scope from just software to...

This is one of the more interesting things I have seen. I love the way it can right itself after being kicked. Very cool, although it is a bit creepy, and that noise has to be dealt with.

Samsung has taken the wraps off a mobile phone that boasts what it says is the biggest hard drive seen on such a device to date. The "candy bar"-style device, the SGH-i310, will pack 8GB of storage and run Windows Mobile 5.0. Samsung is hoping the device, which can hold more songs than an iPod Nano, will take off with music fans. In addition to its large hard drive, the device will let users sync playlists from their PC as well as store documents, photos and other information in the phone's internal memory. The i310 is the fourth of Samsung's...

CQ CQ CQ - Doctor Raoul has kindly asked if I would ping the Ham List in the hopes that a technically skilled Freeper may be able to assist with repairs to PA systems to be used in Freeps. Excerpts from his Freepmail appear below: ========================================================= I have a number of Amplivox portable PAs. It may be that I'm not aligning the prongs on the battery case or perhaps corrosion. Have a schematic on bottom of case. Need them checked out and then we can send them to people doing counter-protests. I think it's possible to wire them up to...

By 2010, nearly one in three workers in the United States will be older than 50, according to CompTIA. As the number of younger workers declines, attracting and retaining "experienced and reliable workers" will become a core business strategy for all employers. The aging workforce is becoming a significant concern for technology employers in the U.S., where a third of employees will be aged 50 or older in just four years. Ten years ago, the story was the "graying of Japan," where aging workers were expected to be less productive in their golden years as well. By Gene Koprowski

PARIS (Reuters) - Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday. "What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the U.S. market place than Google," said Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa. "The quality of our search and the relevance of our search from a solution perspective to the consumer will be more relevant," he told the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit. But being good is not enough to...

On Friday, Feb. 3, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the nonfarm payroll jobs report for January. New York Times reporter Vikas Bajaj wrote an upbeat news story, obviously based on a Labor Department press release rather than any study of the BLS report. If the rosy view of Ethan Harris, chief economist for Lehman Brothers, is typical, Wall Street has no more idea than Bajaj of what the jobs report really says. The export and import-competitive sectors of the U.S. economy have been tanking for a long time. To keep the story manageable, let's just go back to January...

We Support Our Troops!  For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.Part 2 Today we'll look at some gadgets that changed the way we lived  in the 1980's and 90's.  Last week, we looked at the 50's, 60's and 70's.  I'm sure you can think of MANY more gadgets in these eras.  Please share them with us!FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT:  Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allies military and the family members of the above. Honoring those who have served before. 1982, Commodore64 :  The...

IN BRITAIN they are the voice on the end of a phone interrupting meals and television show. But in India call-centre workers are trendsetters who are reshaping the country’s shopping habits and conservative mores. Dating, shopping and partying, deemed frivolous, unaffordable and risqué by their parents, are the pastimes of choice for the tens of thousands of highly educated, English-speaking Indians aged between 18 and 25 in cities such as Bangalore, Delhi and Pune, where the call centre industry is booming. With starting salaries almost triple that of an average Indian graduate, call-centre workers are the first generation able to...

Apple Computer’s new MacBook Pro -- the renamed Intel-based successor to the PowerBook unveiled by Apple CEO Steve Jobs two weeks ago -- isn’t yet shipping (see "Update: Apple unveils Intel-based laptop, iMac"). But Apple officials are now showing off their newest 15-in. laptop, and I had a chance at a special Apple event last week to get a closer look at it. In fact, I had some real "pick it up and use it" hands-on time. The good news is that the MacBook Pro, which comes in two models and starts at $1,999, feels and looks just as solid...