Fast broadband 'for all by 2020'
Super-fast broadband will be available to every home in the UK by 2020, Gordon Brown is to promise.
03/22/2010 02:20 AM

Batman takes best game at Baftas
British developed Batman: Arkham Aslyum took the coveted title of best game at the 2010 Bafta video game awards.
03/19/2010 10:48 PM

China denounces Google 'US ties'
China's state media accuses Google of "intricate ties" with the US government and trying to change Chinese society.
03/21/2010 05:47 PM

US moots official data 'YouTube'
In a BBC interview, US technology chief Vivek Kundra calls on developers to build the "YouTube" of government data.
03/20/2010 12:04 AM

Smartphone web use abroad warning
Consumers' association Which? warns of the risk of huge bills for people using smartphones abroad to connect to the internet.
03/20/2010 12:19 AM

Consortium wins big weather prize
A Franco-German consortium will enter into negotiations for a 1.3bn-euro contract to build Europe's next weather satellites.
03/19/2010 02:09 PM

YouTube hits back in Viacom row
YouTube accuses Viacom of secretly uploading content to the video-sharing site whilst publicly complaining about its presence.
03/19/2010 10:19 AM

Palm hit by slow smartphone sales
Handheld computing veteran Palm is losing ground to the iPhone and Blackberry in the battle of the smartphones.
03/19/2010 10:50 AM

House approves sweeping healthcare overhaul
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval to a sweeping healthcare overhaul on Sunday, expanding insurance coverage to nearly all Americans and handing President Barack Obama a landmark victory.
03/22/2010 06:09 AM

Greenberg sells AIG stock to UBS for $278 million
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The former chief executive of American International Group Inc, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, reached a deal to sell most of the shares he holds in the insurer to a unit of Swiss bank UBS.
03/21/2010 09:50 PM

Immigration activists rally for change
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the U.S. capital on Sunday to demand immigration reform that defends the rights of foreign workers, but their voices may have been muted by Democrats' push for a historic vote on healthcare.
03/22/2010 12:53 AM

Karzai meets Afghan insurgent delegation
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has met personally in Kabul with a senior delegation of Hezb-i-Islami, one of the main insurgent groups fighting against his government, Karzai's spokesman said on Monday.
03/22/2010 06:31 AM

U.S. missile strike kills 8 militants in Pakistan
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles into an al Qaeda and Taliban hideout in northwest Pakistan on the Afghan border on Sunday, killing eight militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
03/21/2010 06:10 PM

House backs Obama's bid to revamp student loans
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic-led House of Representatives on Sunday approved President Barack Obama's bid to implement what would be the biggest overhaul in decades of the federal student loan program.
03/22/2010 03:38 AM

New Chip Offers Virtual Windows Desktops, On TVs
angry tapir writes "Ncomputing on Friday announced a chip that could turn devices like TVs or set-top boxes into virtual desktops through which users can run Windows applications or access the Internet. The Numo chip contains a dual-core processor based on an ARM design that will allow devices to run Windows multimedia applications when connected to a host machine like a desktop or server. The setup uses the company's Vspace software on host machines to set up remote devices as virtual desktops."

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03/22/2010 06:48 AM

Carbon-14 Dating Reveals 5% of Vintage Wines May Be Frauds
Carbon dating isn't all used for such academic pursuits as trying to determine the age of the Shroud of Turin, or figure out how old some rocks are. An anonymous reader writes "Up to 5% of fine wines are not from the year the label indicates, according to Australian researchers who have carbon dated some top dollar wines."

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03/22/2010 04:00 AM

Flaw In Emergency Response System May Have Killed Hundreds
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that a flaw in the way emergency response software was set up to handle Category A responses in Great Britain may have cost hundreds of lives over the past ten years. Most ambulance services use an international computerized system designed in America and in the US version, a fall of more than 6 feet receives the maximum priority response. However, the government committee which governs its use in Great Britain decided that such cases should be deemed less urgent, and excluded from an eight minute category A target response time. If a call involved a fall of more than 6 feet it was designated a lower priority 'category B response' despite the presence of life-threatening conditions which were supposed to receive the most urgent category A response. The flaw came to light after Bonnie Mason, 58, fell 12 feet down the stairs and died from a head injury after emergency controllers in Suffolk failed to identify her situation as 'life-threatening.'"

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03/22/2010 12:52 AM

Multicore Requires OS Rework, Windows Expert Says
alphadogg writes "With chip makers continuing to increase the number of cores they include on each new generation of their processors, perhaps it's time to rethink the basic architecture of today's operating systems, suggested Dave Probert, a kernel architect within the Windows core operating systems division at Microsoft. The current approach to harnessing the power of multicore processors is complicated and not entirely successful, he argued. The key may not be in throwing more energy into refining techniques such as parallel programming, but rather rethinking the basic abstractions that make up the operating systems model. Today's computers don't get enough performance out of their multicore chips, Probert said. 'Why should you ever, with all this parallel hardware, ever be waiting for your computer?' he asked. Probert made his presentation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Universal Parallel Computing Research Center."

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03/21/2010 11:48 PM

Medical Professionals Aren't Leaping For E-Medicine
theodp writes "Despite all the stimulus money being directed toward developing electronic medical records, surprisingly few doctors, hospitals and insurers are using Google Health and other sites like it. One reason, Newsweek suggests, may be that Web-based personal-health records like the ones being compiled on Google Health don't appear to be covered under HIPAA, which requires that health care providers and health plans protect patient confidentiality. 'We don't connect that information to other aspects of Google,' explains Dr. Roni Zeiger, product manager for Google Health. Still, the federal government is in the process of drafting privacy recommendations that would apply to Google Health, as well as the makers of consumer apps that perform tasks like monitoring blood pressure."

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03/21/2010 10:40 PM

If ET Calls, Who Speaks For Humanity?
EagleHasLanded writes "Who speaks for humankind if ET calls on us? Paul Davies, chairman of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, is a likely ambassador. But Allen Tough founded the Invitation to ETI Web site, which encourages ET to make contact via email (and also strongly discourages humans from impersonating ET). But an individual in the UK got over some of the hurdles designed to weed out hoaxers, before finally throwing in the towel."

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03/21/2010 09:36 PM

India First To Build a Supersonic Cruise Missile
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "India successfully tested Sunday a 'maneuverable' version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile which it has jointly developed with Russia, news reports said. The vertical-launch version of the 290-kilometer range BrahMos was tested from a warship in the Bay of Bengal off India's eastern coast, the PTI news agency reported. 'The vertical-launch version of missile was launched at 11:30 (0600 GMT) hours today from Indian Navy ship INS Ranvir and it manoeuvred successfully hitting the target ship. It was a perfect hit and a perfect mission,' BrahMos aerospace chief A Sivathanu Pillai was quoted as saying. 'After today's test, India has become the first and only country in the world to have a manoeuvrable supersonic cruise missile in its inventory,' Pillai said."

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03/21/2010 08:34 PM

What Is Holding Back the Paperless Office?
Drethon writes "CNN has an article (are we up to the millionth article on this topic?) asking if the paperless office has arrived. This got me wondering, what are the main things holding back the paperless office? Just off the top of my head, the main thing keeping me printing out documents is the ability to spread a dozen pages of a document under review out on my table and marking it up by hand. PDF and Word markups are not too bad but they still lack the ability to spread many pages out to look over at the same time and could be improved to make markup a bit less restrictive. I do find myself printing out less with the use of dual monitors to have source documents and work under progress up at the same time, perhaps something like Microsoft's tabletop computer used as a desk will let me have at least a paperless desk. I know there are other reasons why offices are not becoming paperless. What are your reasons?"

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03/21/2010 07:23 PM