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I don’t like carrying cell phones. When it came to buying a wireless phone, I was one of the last holdouts. My house is a bit remote and to this date it has absolutely no cell coverage. Back in 2001, almost everyone I knew already had a cell phone. Finally, I broke down and bought a top of the line Motorola. It was in the $300 plus price range with a two year contract. I even bought a serial port Outlook synchronization device to download contacts and calendar information. I did have fun learning to use all of the device’s...

The 'Creative' Technology Behind The AP's News Registry from the magic-beans dept The Associated Press' attempt to DRM the news is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but its claims for the news registry's capabilities seem pretty misguided, once you examine the technology behind it (the "magic DRM beans"). Ed Felten dug into the details of the registry's microformat, hNews, which the AP announced a few weeks earlier, and here's where it gets really interesting: the hNews rights field is based on the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (ccREL). If the AP thinks it'll be able to build...

We've been closely following EEStor's potentially game-changing ultracapacitor--a technology that could allow for electric cars that charge almost instantaneously and drive hundreds of miles on a single charge. And if a purportedly "leaked" phone conversation from EEStor CEO Richard Weir currently making the rounds is legit, the long-in-development ultracapacitor has hit a breakthrough, and could be unveiled within months. ... EEStor's ultracapacitor works more or less exactly like the capacitors found in electronics today, briefly holding and releasing small charges, only on a much larger scale; it would be able rapidly take on enough juice to power a car for...

A Briton wanted in the United States for breaking into NASA and Pentagon networks in "the biggest military hack of all time" lost an appeal against his extradition Friday, making a U.S. trial more likely. Gary McKinnon, 43, has fought a three-year battle to avoid extradition, including going to the European Court of Human Rights, but he appeared to have run out of options as Britain's High Court ruled against his latest appeal Friday. The court rejected arguments by McKinnon's lawyers that extraditing McKinnon, who was recently diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism, would have disastrous consequences for...

New Version Reflects Lowered Price on Mac Notebook NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks. In the new version of the ad, Lauren doesn't talk about how much the Mac costs, but she does say: 'It seems like you're paying a lot for the brand.' 'Greatest single phone call' Just last week Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner was ecstatic about a phone call from Apple lawyers, who demanded that Microsoft stop showing...

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...