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<p>Volvo is trying to retain its image as a leader in safety with new technology designed to help drowsy drivers. Volvo and its owner, Ford, released results of a study on the problem Wednesday at the New York Auto Show and announced plans for the technology to be included in Volvo cars and SUVs before the end of the decade. Because the features are still several years from being offered in cars for sale, Ford was cagey about details for competitive reasons. It described a few different products that had been developed and were being considered as options.</p>

A computer hacker who allowed himself to be publicly identified only as ''Mudhen'' once boasted at a Las Vegas conference that he could disable a Chinese satellite with nothing but his laptop computer and a cellphone. The others took him at his word, because Mudhen worked at the Puzzle Palace -- the nickname of the U.S. National Security Agency facility at Fort Meade, Md., which houses the world's most powerful and sophisticated electronic eavesdropping and anti-terrorism systems. It was these systems, plus an army of cryptographers, chaos theorists, mathematicians and computer scientists, that may have pulled in the first piece...

Sun has finally found an American partner for its Java Desktop System (JSD), the company's Linux-based alternative to Microsoft Windows: über-retailer Wal-Mart.Wal-Mart on Tuesday began selling low-cost Microtel PCs pre-loaded with JDS, offering several systems at prices ranging from $298 to $698.Java Desktop System, which runs on Linux, includes the Gnome desktop, StarOffice productivity suite, Mozilla Web browser, and the Evolution e-mail client, and is Sun's pitch as a replacement for Windows and Microsoft Office in both the consumer and enterprise arenas.On Tuesday, Sun said that it was seriously considering Wal-Mart as the sole PC supplier for JDS-equipped computers.To prove...

A recent court filing from IBM Corp. appears to indicate a growing confidence on the part of the Armonk, New York, computing giant that it will prevail in its legal dispute with The SCO Group Inc., according to lawyers following the case.    ADVERTISEMENT    RELATED LINKS [an error occurred while processing this directive] In an amended counterclaim to SCO's lawsuit that was filed Friday, IBM asked the District Court for the District of Utah to enter a declaratory judgement in its favor. IBM asked the court to rule that it has not infringed on SCO's copyright and has not breached...

Seagate Unleashes Technology to Power 100+ Terabyte HDDs HAMR from Seagate to Allow 100TB Storage Solutions by Anton Shilov03/25/2004 | 07:49 AM Seagate Technology on Thursday is presenting research findings pointing toward data storage densities of 50 terabits per square inch or more at the American Physical Society (APS) conference. The move could eventually enable astonishingly large storage products.At 50 terabits (Tb) per square inch densities, over 3.5 million high-resolution photos, 2800 audio CDs, 1600 hours of television, or the entire printed collection of the US Library of Congress could be stored onto recording media about the size of a single...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Editor's Note: Far north in a mostly Native Alaskan town along the Yukon River, the Toshiba Corp. seeks to build a "super-safe" nuclear power plant. Residents, eager to lower costly power bills, are interested, but wary. GALENA, Alaska--The Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn't issued a permit for a new commercial nuclear power plant in the United States since the late 1980s, when the technology topped the list of energy industry taboos following the infamous meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor in the U.S.S.R. But if Japan's Toshiba Corp. has its way, the prototype...

<p>SCO's Suit: A Match Made in Redmond?</p> <p>For months, rumors have swirled around the Web alleging that Microsoft helped finance a small Utah software company's suit against IBM and two corporations that use Linux software. BusinessWeek has learned that Microsoft ( ) did not put up the money, but did play matchmaker for SCO Group ( ) and BayStar Capital, a San Francisco hedge fund which made a $50 million investment in SCO last October.</p>

SCO suddenly isn't faring so well in its lawsuit against IBM. The company recently dropped claims that Big Blue had misappropriated its trade-secrets by placing them in Linux. This leaves the SCO argument resting upon two copyright infringement claims. When IBM began building the AIX Unix system, it purchased a license from AT&T, the company that created Unix. AT&T's Unix business was later sold to Novell, which subsequently sold part of that business to SCO. Get Up to Speed on...Open sourceGet the latest headlines andcompany-specific news in ourexpanded GUTS section. SCO subsequently contended that under the terms of the Unix...

Intel Corp. said it could be forced to stop selling some computer chips in China this summer because it can't meet a deadline for compliance with a new Chinese government rule. Intel's announcement was the first concrete indication that trade in key products could be hurt by the Chinese rule, which requires that personal computers, mobile phones and other wireless-data products sold in China must use a unique security standard developed by Beijing, starting June 1. It raised the temperature further in the simmering trade dispute between China and high-tech manufacturers from the U.S. and elsewhere over the controversial rule....

Analysis: Microsoft, SCO have a lot more explaining to do Monday March 08, 2004 - [ 03:40 PM GMT ] Topics: Legal , News and Trends By: Chris Preimesberger Whether or not Microsoft is secretly bankrolling the SCO Group for more than $100 million to attack Linux and the general open source community through questionable intellectual property lawsuits, NewsForge has learned that U.S. federal regulators may have begun investigating the relationship between the two companies -- and may also be looking closely at a number of other people and companies connected to them through stock or other business transactions. Although...

Halloween X: Follow The Money 3 Mar 2004 Excuse me, did we say in Halloween IX that Microsoft's under-the-table payoff to SCO for attacking Linux was just eleven million dollars? Turns out we were off by an order of magnitude ? it was much, much more than that. The document below was emailed to me by an anonymous whistleblower inside SCO. He tells me the typos and syntax bobbles were in the original. I cannot certify its authenticity, but I presume that IBM's, Red Hat's, Novell's, AutoZone's, and Daimler-Chryler's lawyers can subpoena the original. Explanatory comments are interspersed in [...].....

I created a thread here a couple weeks back. I was asking for help with a Web site that I was planning on building for the OSU College Republicans. Well I have now built that Web site, and you can view it here. Let me know what you think of it. But I do have another problem I would like some help with. Our Public Relations manager somehow made it to where the Web site is now also available at www.osurepublicans.comBUT when you go to that one...it brings up an error. It says that a run time error has occured,...

ONDON, March 2 — The terrorism investigation code-named Mont Blanc began almost by accident in April 2002, when authorities intercepted a cellphone call that lasted less than a minute and involved not a single word of conversation. Investigators, suspicious that the call was a signal between terrorists, followed the trail first to one terror suspect, then to others, and eventually to terror cells on three continents. What tied them together was a computer chip smaller than a fingernail. But before the investigation wound down in recent weeks, its global net caught dozens of suspected Qaeda members and disrupted at least...

Hacks, Viruses, Scams & Spam Virus writers trade insults as e-mail users suffer Some 20 variants spreading across Net at furious rate By Bob Sullivan Technology correspondent MSNBC Updated: 3:31 p.m. ET March  03, 2004 With 20 variations of the Mydoom, Netsky and Bagle viruses circulating around the Internet, it's becoming clear that computer virus writers are engaged in some kind of can-you-top-this game. And it's Internet users who are suffering collateral damage.  advertisement E-mail inboxes around the world are teeming with cryptic notes that have simple messages like "Here is the file," or "I want a reply." When antivirus...

Dear Aiden, I think you remember the conversation we had recently at this software conference in Dublin. You came up to me and told me how the stuff I was talking about was mostly useless, because it is closed-source, people need to pay for it and that companies charging for software are evil anyways - especially Microsoft. Unfortunately I don't have your email, but I am sure this will reach you. First, I would like to thank you for the interesting conversation that developed and to make sure that none of what was said just fades away, I'll tell you...

To the outsider, and even to me for some time, the various lawsuits involving the SCO Group follow a relatively simple story line. I'm not a lawyer, but after many interviews with the involved parties and lawyers, the case boils down to divergent interpretations of the subject matter. The Linux operating system was coming on strong. A group of individuals, some with a history of using litigation to extract wealth from other parties, started to behave like pit bulls. They clamped onto the Linux ecosystem in hopes of exploiting it for riches that for the most part have not accrued...

The World's No.1 Science & Technology News Service     Chips to ease Microsoft's big security nightmare   10:00 22 February 04   Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.   Chip makers are planning a new generation of microprocessors that should plug the gaps that led Microsoft to issue a "critical security alert" last week.The alert was sparked by the discovery that a raft of Microsoft programs were vulnerable to a problem called "buffer overflow", which hackers can exploit to extract private information from a PC. And the risk of such attacks only worsened when, two...

SAN MATEO, Calif. — When the Mars rover Spirit went dark on Jan.21 a Jet Propulsion Laboratory team undertook to reprogram the craft's computer only to find themselves introducing an unpredictable sequences of events. The trouble with the Mars rover Spirit started much earlier in the mission than the day the craft stopped communicating with ground controllers. "It was recognized just after [the June 2003] launch that there were some serious shortcomings in the code that had been put into the launch load of software," said JPL data management engineer Roger Klemm. "The code was reworked, and a complete new...

New X-ray observations by orbiting satellites have given astronomers their first telling evidence that appears to confirm what had been only theory: that a star is doomed if it ventures too close to a supermassive black hole. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency announced yesterday the detection of a brilliant flare of X-rays from the heart of a distant galaxy, followed by a fading afterglow. After analysis, an international team of scientists concluded that the telescopes had witnessed the overpowering gravity of a black hole as it tore apart a star and gobbled up a...

By ANDREW BRIDGES (AP) This an artist's Illustration of the RX J1242-11 system depicting how the catastrophic destruction...Full Image   PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Two space observatories have provided the first strong evidence of a supermassive black hole stretching, tearing apart and partially gobbling up a star flung into reach of its enormous gravity, astronomers said Wednesday. The event had long been predicted by theory but never confirmed. A powerful X-ray blast drew the attention of astronomers to the event, located near the center of a galaxy about 700 million light-years from Earth. The international team of astronomers believe gases...