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New Software to Unravel Stasi Puzzle   The orderly habits of communist bureaucrats have made it easier for new technology to uncover secrets they sought to destroy.   Researchers at Berlin's prestigious Frauenhofer Institute are programming software that will piece together documents destroyed by East German secret police workers as the sun set on the communist era. Everyone knows that if you really want no-one to discover your secrets, the trick is to completely destroy all the evidence. But this concept appears to have been lost on the workers at East Germany's secret police agency, the Stasi, during the...

File photo of staff walking in Infosys Technologies campus at Electronics City in Bangalore, January 20, 2003. Global firms such as IBM and Accenture are increasingly taking advantage of relatively low wages to hire software engineers in India, lifting the pressure on local firms already struggling with tighter margins. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski The newly opened International Tech Park in Bangalore, India Global tech firms compete to hire Indian staff ADVERTISEMENT Click to enlarge photo By Anshuman Daga BANGALORE (Reuters) - Global firms such as IBM and Accenture are increasingly taking advantage of relatively low wages to hire software engineers in India,...

Face the MusicEven as the Recording Industry threatens to launch questionably legal countermeasures to damage the computers of musiclovers . . . three music biz events indicate an inflection in the battle between Internet-as-threat and Internet-as-opportunity. First, a federal judge rejected the Recording Industry's most current legal attack on file sharing. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that Grokster and Morpheus were not contributing to copyright infringement . . . . The second recent cyber-musical event is Apple's initiation of iTunes . . . . The third recent noteworthy event was the appearance in my inbox of a preview of...

High-tech CEOs have seen the future, and it is rosy, a survey says. Despite the continued economic downturn, the CEOs of North America's fastest-growing technology companies remain confident their companies will maintain the record-high growth rates they have enjoyed over the past five years, the 2003 Deloitte Touche's Technology Fast 500 report reported. The survey of more than 200 CEOs included 16 chief executives of Canadian companies. Of the respondents, 59 per cent said they are very or extremely confident their companies will maintain their high levels of growth. Companies in the Fast 500 posted an average growth rate of...

By Mercury News Before several hundred business executives in San Mateo, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and a key minister for Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said Russia could be the next big thing for telecom and information technology markets. With three straight years of substantial economic growth, a sharp increase in consumer spending, and a technology market that's averaging more than 20 percent annual growth, Russia is proving it can be a high-tech nation, they said. ``It's a no-brainer, it's a growth market. VCs should get on the plane,'' said Mark Sanor, a partner at Ernst & Young, who...

PORTLAND — Federal prosecutors on Monday (April 28) charged a former Intel Corp. engineer with allegedly conspiring to aid Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a move to “levy war” against the United States, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News on Tuesday (April 29). The ex-Intel engineer, Maher “Mike” Hawash, was arrested in March and has been held by the U.S. government without charge as part of what the report called a “secret investigation.” Hawash, 38, a U.S. citizen of Arab descent, worked for Intel from 1992 to 2001, when he was laid off....

Although Iraq first needs basics like electricity and a government, it is already shaping up as a rare opportunity for technology companies. It is saddled with a tattered phone system, weak Internet access and virtually none of the wireless wonders sweeping other countries. Even if Iraq never becomes the Silicon Crescent, big money is at stake. Rebuilding the country's telecommunications networks and constructing new facilities from scratch would cost billions. U.S. officials have not explained how telecom contracts will be awarded, whether deals signed by Saddam Hussein's regime will be honored, or whether American and British companies will be preferred....

Buoyed by its decisive win in Iraq, the Pentagon is betting billions that the information technology system that helped defeat Saddam Hussein will evolve into a more potent weapon than cluster bombs and howitzers. Department of Defense futurists call it network-centric warfare. Other military strategists simply refer to it as the digital war. The first Gulf War was analog, they say. This one was digital. Digital it may have been--using real-time video images to target missiles in flight, wireless PDAs to connect with stateside medical records from the battlefield, and virtual-reality simulations to provide just-in-time delivery of material to front-line...

New High Tech Weapons And Advanced SystemsMay Debut In A Conflict With Iraq   Last updated Oct. 15, 2002 View Standard Version   Introduction The quick implementation of systems and networks that are geared towards near-instantaneous decision-making and rapid response has had a dramatic impact on U.S. war fighting doctrine since combat operations began in Afghanistan in October 2001. Testing of several weapons and systems in development has aggressively continued throughout this year. Some of the brightest engineers and technicians in the defense industry are working with the Department of Defense to accelerate promising weapons and systems to an...

Oracle's Ellison: 1,000 Tech Firms Should Go Bankrupt By Peter Loftus Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Just call Larry Ellison the dark oracle of Silicon Valley. Ellison, the founder and chief executive of software giant Oracle Corp. (ORCL), says the high-technology industry must undergo a sweeping consolidation that will spell the end for many of his rivals. "We think there's at least 1,000 Silicon Valley companies that need to go bankrupt," Ellison said during a meeting here Tuesday with reporters and editors from The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. Not surprisingly, the hard-charging billionaire predicted Oracle,...

SALEM, Utah, Apr 1, 2003 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- International Automated Systems Inc. (OTCBB: IAUS) ("IAS") announced today that it has been awarded a patent on its new breakthrough technology, a Propulsion Turbine, which some experts believe will be a revolutionary solution to low-cost solar hydrogen fuel production and electrical power generation. IAS has conducted many tests during the past two years at its own testing facilities, at a university laboratory and at various power plant facilities. Conservative numbers demonstrate remarkable advantages in areas of cost, maintenance, size, efficiency and versatility. IAS expects to deploy its new technology into the marketplace...

Firewalls set to become illegal in many American states Legislation by the ignorant By Staff at the Newsdesk: Friday 28 March 2003, 13:21 AN INTERESTING PIECE of news has surfaced that will have sys admins fainting in disbelief. Eight states have put forward bills that would have a devastating effect on network security and even networks themselves if they come to pass. The wording in the bills is dumb enough that firewalls could become illegal. The news about the bills was brought to our attention by Edward Felten, more famous for having a go at a different Bill. The states...

<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>

Goldman's Latest Tech-Spend Survey Shows Less Optimism By Donna Fuscaldo of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Spending on technology gear may finally be stabilizing, but hopes for an actual improvement this year could be premature, according to a survey of technology executives. In Mid-February, investment company Goldman Sachs polled technology buyers to gauge their views of the information technology spending environment. What the survey found is many executives expect information technology spending to increase 1% in 2003. While any growth would be viewed favorably given last year's declines, it is still lower than the 2% to 3% growth tech...

Tech M&A Premiums Show Air Still Seeping Out Of Bubble By Janet Whitman Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Nearly three years after the burst of the dot-com bubble, the air continues to seep out of the once high-octane technology sector. Highlighting the ongoing slump in the value of technology companies, premiums paid for mergers and acquisitions in the computer sector have slipped to their lowest level since the tech boom went bust in March 2000, a new report released Thursday shows. Acquirers paid an average multiple of 1.69 times annual revenue for computer software, supplies and services companies,...

Equipment test manufacturer Agilent Friday said it will have to fire even more of its employees to remain profitable for the rest of the year. During its first quarter earnings report, the Palo Alto Calif.-based company, which spun off from Hewlett-Packard (Quote, Company Info) in 1999, said it will cut an additional 4,000 jobs, or 11 percent of its work force. Back in November, the company eliminated 2,500 jobs in November and 8,000 jobs in late 2001. Agilent had 35,000 employees before the cuts. "Our first quarter results were disappointing," said Agilent chairman, president and CEO Ned Barnholt. "Orders were...

<p>SANTA CLARA, California -- The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is threatening innovation in Silicon Valley, and it's time for businesses and consumers to mobilize to change the law.</p> <p>That was the message at the Digital Rights Summit here on Wednesday. Intel hosted the event at its Santa Clara headquarters with Digitalconsumer.org, an organization dedicated to protecting consumers' fair-use rights with regard to digital media.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - Top state officials Friday urged the creation of a board to oversee information-technology purchases, while also making a rare public admission that many of those who negotiate state contracts are unprepared for the job.</p> <p>At a news conference, the governor's top technology adviser proposed a new technology oversight panel as a way to protect taxpayers from a repeat of the Oracle software contract debacle.</p>

Is WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) here to stay or merely a passing fad, ripe for replacement by more flexible and capable technologies?There is no doubt that it is one of the hotter developments of the past year endorsed by a string of leading companies including International Business Machines, Intel and Microsoft. It is expected to a be a powerful talking point at the Cannes 3GSM World Congress this month.The Boston Consulting Group says it: "threatens to spark a new revolution in the telecommunications industry." WiFi products are already numbered in the hundreds and some pundits predict it could undermine the...

US Customs and the Federal Bureau of Investigations are looking into the possible transfer of thousands of Sony PlayStation 2s from US retail stores to Iraq, military intelligence sources have reported. An astounding 4,000 PlayStation 2s have apparently been shipped to Iraq in the last two to three months, according to a secret Defense Intelligence Agency report. With the under-whelming shipment of PS2s that have hit North American shores, this recent news makes strange sense. But is this the real reason that Sony can't meet US gamers' demand? Or is the news really real at all? According to the news...