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I came in nn it appears a harddrive was failing. Jumped in the car to take it to the computer guy. I should have a solid backup to restore plus I had a new 80 gig HD in a box.

WASHINGTON -- Federal agencies are facing a severe shortage of computer specialists, even as a growing wave of coordinated cyberattacks against the government poses potential national security risks, a private study found.

The doctrine of karma states that one's state in this life is a result of actions (both physical and mental) in past incarnations, and action in this life can determine one's destiny in future incarnations. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce the Karmic Koala, the newest member of our alliterative menagerie. Mark Shuttleworth introduces Ubuntu 9.10-Karmic Koala! A good Koala knows how to see the wood for the trees, even when her head is in the clouds. Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing by embracing the API’s of Amazon EC2, and making it...

Note: The following text is a quote: 09 July 2009 EGYPT ARRESTS TERRORIST CELL OF 25 MEMBERS CAIRO, July 9 (Xinhua) The Egyptian authorities have arrested a terrorist cell of 25 members, 24 Egyptians and one Palestinian, for plotting to carry out terrorist attacks in Suez Canal, Egyptian Interior Ministry said in statement issued on Thursday. According to the statement, the members of the cell who believe in Jihad (Holy War) were located in Cairo, Alexandria and Daqahlia governorates and communicated through internet with other terrorist groups outside Egypt. The cell's members, mostly engineers, were developing high-tech and electronic devices...

I have a .VOB file, from a DVD, from which I would like to extract 10 minutes. I am using Avidemux, but find the documentation to be virtually nonexistent. I have a really simple objective: extract a continuous 10 minutes from this original .VOB file. IF this were an audio file, and IF I were using Audacity, the process is simple: I would highlight the section of audio. Then I would - "trim" the audio outside the shaded area - save the result as a new file Or, I could - copy the highlighted section - open a new file...

The job picture shows IT jobs suffering along with the rest of the economy, but the hemorrhaging appears to have stopped in 2Q. BY CHRIS MURPHY The hemorrhaging of IT jobs stopped in the second quarter, as the IT sector added about 44,000 jobs amid a moribund white-collar job market, the latest government surveys show. However, the IT unemployment rate, at 5.5%, remains at its worst mark in five years. The economy employs about 8% fewer IT professionals than one year ago, a 343,000 job decline, with just under 3.8 million employed today. The analysis is based on Bureau of...

15 Must-Have Web Apps for Students June 28, 2009 in Tips and Tools Welcome! If this is your first time here, you may want to subscribe to get updates in your RSS feed reader. Thanks for visiting! This is a guest post from Karen Schweitzer. For more from Karen, check out her blog about Online College Courses, or follow her on Twitter. College students are increasingly reliant on computers – and, for many of us, that means spending tons of money software that we’d rather not use anyway. The reality, though, is that there are a ton of great, free...

China postponed a plan to require personal computer makers to supply Internet-filtering software Tuesday, retreating in the face of protests by Washington and Web surfers hours before it was due to take effect.

(06-16) 20:52 PDT -- Little about Austin Heap's first online venture, a site hosting free episodes of the cartoon "South Park," suggested he would one day use his computer skills to challenge a government. But for the past few days, Heap, an IT director in San Francisco, has been on the virtual front lines of the crisis in Iran, helping people there protest the presidential election, which opponents of the incumbent regime maintain was fraudulent. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets since Saturday, organizing and sharing news on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The...

The election crisis in Iran has ignited a full-on guerrilla cyberwar, with Twitterers and techies across the globe pitching in to help protesters in that country access the Internet, and official Iranian government Web sites being knocked offline.

The high-tech industry is planning to amplify its opposition to a tax proposal by the White House. On June 5, about a half-dozen tech trade associations discussed strategy for stopping a tax hike on multinational corporations, which would come if the Obama administration succeeds in changing a law that allows companies to defer taxes on overseas revenue of their subsidiaries. ..... That has led to a lobbying blitz out of Silicon Valley. This week, at least three tech trade associations are flying in executives from their member companies for meetings with lawmakers and White House aides. They will lobby against...

Apple today introduced the new iPhone 3G S, the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet, packed with new features including improved speed and performance--up to twice as fast as iPhone 3G--with longer battery life, a high-quality 3 megapixel autofocus camera, easy to use video recording and hands free voice control. iPhone 3G S includes the new iPhone OS 3.0, the world's most advanced mobile operating system with over 100 new features such as Cut, Copy and Paste, MMS*, Spotlight Search, landscape keyboard and more. iPhone 3G S customers get access to more than 50,000 applications from Apple's revolutionary App Store, the...

A 15-cent monthly surcharge should be levied on Internet access across Louisiana to fight online criminal activity, the House voted 81-9 Thursday, over the opposition of Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Enlarge ImageColor code. A new data-storage technique encodes multiple sets of data in the same area using different colors and polarizations of light.Credit: Adapted from Peter Zijlstra et al., Nature 459, 410 (2009) Better clear a shelf in your basement for that high-end Blu-ray DVD player you just bought. Researchers report that they can boost the amount of data stored on a disc 10,000-fold by using gold nanoparticles. If commercialized, the technology could allow a single disc to hold as many as 300 movies or 250,000 songs. Today's CDs and DVDs store data as a string of pits burned...

Global electricity use forecast to fall By Kate Mackenzie in London Published: May 21 2009 19:52 | Last updated: May 21 2009 19:52 Global electricity consumption will fall this year for the first time since 1945, according to the International Energy Agency. The watchdog for developed energy consuming countries will tell energy ministers from the Group of Eight leading economies on Sunday that electricity demand will fall 3.5 per cent in 2009. In China, where power use is seen as a more reliable barometer of economic activity than official economic measures, consumption will be more than 2 per cent lower...

Ever since I saw the F-35 demon helmet—which gives a 360-degree spherical view of the battlefield—I have wondered how it really looks inside, for the pilot. No more: Jump to minute 3:50.The helmet projects an augmented reality world inside its visor. This image is created by a visualization, targeting, and situational awareness marvel called Electro Optical Distributed Aperture System, which combines the feeds from six advanced infrared digital cameras located around the aircraft and other sensors—like radar—into a seamless 360-degree spherical panorama, all in real time.The panorama inside the helmet effectively makes the F-35 completely invisible to the pilot. In...

The Conficker Internet virus has infected important computerized medical devices, but governmental red tape interfered with their repair, an organizer of an antivirus working group told Congress on Friday. Rodney Joffe, one of the founders of an unofficial organization known as the Conficker Working Group, said that government regulations prevented hospital staff from carrying out the repairs. Joffe, who also is the senior vice president for the telecom clearinghouse Neustar, told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that over the last three weeks, he and another Conficker researcher identified at least 300 critical medical devices from a...

URGENT - VOTING IN EU PARLIAMENT 5th of MAY 2009 Don't let the EU parliament lock up the Internet! There will be no way back! Act now! Internet access is not conditional Everyone who owns a website has an interest in defending the free use of Internet... so has everyone who uses Google or Skype... everyone who expresses their opinions freely, does research of any kind, whether for personal health problems or academic study ... everyone who shops online...who dates online...socialises online... listens to music...watches video... Millions of Europeans now depend on the Internet, directly or indirectly, for their livelihood....

"Maybe it’s just me (and my wife). "We still put spare change into a piggy bank (a red pig, actually), as we go. Pays for a nice dinner, every now and then. "So it floors me, still, when I see the dimensions of the federal budget and how we pay (or don’t) for what we do. "Check this, but the federal budget is now $3.5 trillion. Okay. But the deficit is … $1.7 trillion? "This means our federal government only pays for half of what it spends by taxing you and I for it. The rest has got to be...

1. “Deregulation is a joke— but it’s probably not as funny for you.” For years the cable business had acted like a typical monopoly, providing lessthan- ideal customer service, skyrocketing prices, and little choice of service. Then along came the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which opened the door for competition and promised weary cable customers relief at last. Too bad that relief never came. Nearly four years after the bill was passed, a mere 286 of the 30,000 U.S. cable markets were being served by more than one provider, according to the Federal Communications Commission. And in the FCC’s most...