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On Monday Apple released Mac OS X update 10.6.3. This monster update weighed in at up to 719MB (depending on current configuration) and patched a whopping 92 vulnerabilities, some third of which were rated as critical. Is it time for Apple to adopt a “Patch Tuesday” for the Mac OS in order to drip-feed patches to users and plug up vulnerabilities in a more timely fashion? Is Apple putting good PR ahead of keeping users safe? Apple release Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” on August 28th, 2009. Over that time the OS has seen three updates: 10.6.1 - Released...

I spent a good part of my career as an engineer involved in complex aerospace systems. When I think of all the complexity that goes into aircraft design, I am impressed that our engineering process deliver such a high quality and safe solution. I have always thought a great deal of Toyota and their talent. The loss of life from unintended acceleration is a great tragedy. Frankly its amazing there are not more automotive deaths given the range of drivers and capabilities.....

he Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading free-market think tank, will celebrate the Second Annual “Human Achievement Hour” between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Saturday, March 27, 2010. The one-hour celebration coincides with “Earth Hour,” an hour in which governments, individuals, and corporations will dim or shut off lights to symbolically renounce the environmental impacts of modern technology. “Earth Hour’s creators suggest that human inventions and technology are a problem, but we see the ability to create and innovate as the ultimate resource,” says Human Achievement Hour founder and CEI Policy Analyst Michelle Minton. “Environmental challenges will not be solved by turning...

David Croslin is the President of a newly created company called "Innovate the Future." His company is seeking to assist both established and startup companies using his professional network and reputation, experience of an internationally acknowledged innovation leader to help companies grow, make the right connections, and become successful internationally.

Enlarge Image Limit breaker? The crystal structure of Fe16N2, which one group of researchers says beats the predicted limit for magnetism in a material. Credit: Jian-Ping Wang PORTLAND, OREGON—There are limits to just how magnetic a material can be. Or so researchers thought. A compound of iron and nitrogen is about 18% more magnetic than the most magnetic material currently known, a team of materials scientists claims. If such magnets could be produced commercially, they could, for example, allow electronics manufactures to equip computer hard drives with smaller "write heads" capable of cramming them with more information. Other researchers...

“Those in the know seat themselves here” says the woman behind me. The seats of great advantage are the ones next to electric outlets that can be used to supply power to a laptop. About 10% of the crowd seems to have brought their laptops with them and are peering intently into the displays. Others in the audience are tapping out important messages on their pocket communicators – sometimes to their colleagues across the room. Seated nearby are a “consultant in the music business”, a newly graduating attorney, and the owner of a start-up software business which provides secure online...

Imagine a 3-d printer so large that it can spit out entire buildings made from stone. Sounds science fiction-y, right? But that’s exactly what designer Enrico Dini created with his prototype D-Shape printer. Dini hopes to use the printer to create buildings made of stone and eventually, moon dust. The printing process starts with a thin layer of sand. The printer then sprays the sand with magnesium-based glue from hundreds of nozzles, which binds the sand into rock. That rock is then built up layer by layer, eventually taking shape of whatever object it is destined to become, be it...

Mr. Pinto is the first chief technology officer of a major American tech company to move to China. The company, Applied Materials, is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent firms. It supplied equipment used to perfect the first computer chips. Today, it is the world’s biggest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays. On the other side of Xian from Applied Materials sits Thermal Power Research Institute, China’s world-leading laboratory on cleaner coal. The company has just licensed its latest design to Future Fuels in the United States. Future Fuels will ship the equipment...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-national-broadband-plan Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release March 16, 2010 Statement from the President on the National Broadband Plan America today is on the verge of a broadband-driven Internet era that will unleash innovation, create new jobs and industries, provide consumers with new powerful sources of information, enhance American safety and security, and connect communities in ways that strengthen our democracy. Just as past generations of Americans met the great infrastructure challenges of the day, such as building the Transcontinental...

Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that scientists are not immune to the non-rational dynamics of the herd. A December 18 Washington Post poll, released on the final day of the ill-fated Copenhagen climate summit, reported “four in ten Americans now saying that they place little or no trust in what scientists have to say about the environment.” Nor is the poll an outlier. Several recent polls have found “climate change” skepticism rising faster than sea levels on Planet Algore (not to be confused with Planet Earth, where sea levels remain relatively stable).Many of the doubt-inducing climate...

Google co-founder Sergey Brin adores the company's social network called Google Buzz. Snip You might call Brin's enthusiasm premature, especially since privacy criticisms prompted Google to make a series of quick changes a few days later. Activists have asked the Federal Trade Commission to "compel" Google to reprogram Buzz a third time to adhere to the no doubt well-informed specifications of Beltway lawyers. A class action lawsuit filed on behalf of an aggrieved second-year law student is underway. Snip Much of our modern concept of privacy can be traced to a 1890 law review article by Samuel Warren and future...

Here’s another beef I have against my local paper: they glorify robots. Haven’t you seen articles in your paper, usually from AP, that talk about robots as the next big thing? Or they’re already here--wow!! Here is a headline that actually appeared in the Norfolk paper: ROBOTMAKER BUILDS AN ARTIFICIAL BOY. This is complete nonsense. The fact is, we have wonderful industrial robots assembling cars, etc. We also have a lot of ingenious remote-controlled devices such as drone aircraft. Conceptually, however, these are much like radio-controlled toys. If by robots you mean something more or less like a human, they...

Holographic preachers are stirring another technology-gone-too-far debate among Christians. While the dust over beaming preachers on a video screen on multi-site campuses has somewhat settled, the new 3D tool is raising more questions and concerns among some believers. "Since so many of us in the west are convinced that entertaining pew fodder is critical to advancing 'the gospel' and that only a very few have the necessary gifts to preachertain – this will become the 'perfect' solution," Bill Kinnon, author of A Networked Conspiracy, Social Networks, The Church & the Power of Collective Intelligence, wrote in a recent blog post....

Here’s a fact you won’t see mentioned in the public policy debate over “alternative” energy: There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Yet many want to make this group of functionally useless technologies the primary energy sources for our entire civilization.

Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared—and the number is rising IMAGINE you are one half of a young couple expecting your first child in a fast-growing, poor country. You are part of the new middle class; your income is rising; you want a small family. But traditional mores hold sway around you, most important in the preference for sons over daughters. Perhaps hard physical labour is still needed for the family to make its living. Perhaps only sons may inherit land. Perhaps a daughter is deemed to join another family on marriage and you want someone...

JERUSALEM - The killing of a Hamas operative in a Dubai hotel may signal the end of an era: the moment when modern technology finally caught up with the cloak-and-dagger world of disguised assassins and fake passports. -snip- The spread of technology of the kind that uncovered the Dubai operation has permanently altered the rules, wrote Yossi Melman, Haaretz's intelligence correspondent. "The conclusion could be that the era of heroic operations in the style of James Bond movies is close to its end." -snip- Jonna Mendez, who spent some of her 27 years in the CIA as the agency's chief...

When it comes to computer technology, thin is always in. It’s indisputable that the thinner, lighter, clearer, the better when dealing with the latest computer gadget. This keyboard is the epitome of the high standards expected of the technological version of the fashion industry. It’s based on image as well, that is, image recognition technology.

Even today there are some still blank stares when I suggest to an audience of C-level executives or security professionals that they should all read the front pages of the Financial Times, the Yomiuri Shimbun, etc., as well as the technology news, if they want to know what cyber risks and threats to prepare for. Oh, the battle might be waged in bits and bytes, and bloodied patch bulletins that arrive six months too late; but the war will be won by those who could read between lines of the lead stories in politics and business, and it will most...

The Internet is becoming a powerful tool of citizen-activists. Any person of ordinary means can create a social networking site and rally hundreds, thousands, and even millions to support their cause. The thousands of local Tea Party sites, for example, are making it difficult for politicians to ignore the will of the people because their self-serving shenanigans are widely exposed and so they are put at risk of being voted out of office.

Michael McConnell, former director of national intelligence, warns that the threat of a cyberattack rivals nuclear weapons in terms of seriousness.The risk of a catastrophic cyberattack is approaching the gravity of the nuclear risk, according to the Bush administration's top spy. "The cyber risk has become so important that, in my view, it rivals nuclear weapons in terms of seriousness," Michael McConnell, former director of national intelligence, said Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate committee on commerce, transportation, and technology. McConnell warned in striking terms that the United States was not prepared either for cyber warfare or cyber criminals....