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You're sitting at a restaurant waiting for a friend who is 10 minutes late. The maitre de tells you that if your friend does not arrive in the next 5 minutes, your table will be given to another group. You try to remember your friend's mobile phone number but can't, so your only option is to sit and wait Early next year, you might have another opti...

Governments at both the state and federal level in the U.S. are getting serious about addressing the void in the legal framework for fighting "spyware." To begin with, we need to define the term "spyware," due to the fact that this term has been used to describe everything from keystroke loggers, to advertising applications that track a user's web ...

I've never gotten the hang of casual chit chat, and I blew it again the other day. We were at one of those things preceded by a wifely lecture about my behavior, and I really thought I was doing pretty well when the "conversation" meandered to I Robot. Since this was the first movie mentioned that I'd actually seen, I thought it within the rules of the kind of social vacuity we were practicing to chime in that I hadn't much liked the movie but thought it made Will Smith a shoo-in as the next James Bond...

Due to its proximity to urban areas and its volatile activity in recent decades, Mount St. Helens may be the most closely monitored volcano in history Digital telemetry -- systems that automatically record and transmit data from remote sources -- circles the crater like a bracelet. Sensors monitor conditions ranging from lake levels to earthquakes...

Microsoft released a total of 22 patches in its monthly security update, labeling seven of them "urgent" and imploring companies to download them The software giant called three other patches "important," one level less severe than "urgent."

Gupta Technologies announced today that its SQLBase(R) 9.0 for Linux has been certified "Novell Ready" for SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 and 9 The Novell Ready designation means that the product has been designed to work with Novell's Linux family of enterprise-class software products....

Google took its first bite out of the European commercial market in Great Britain yesterday, launching a beta version of Froogle, an Internet price-comparison service for British shoppers which closely resembles Google's home page Shoppers search for products and are shown photos, prices and links to vendors. Results can be sorted by price or withi...

In an effort to avoid consumer confusion and information overload, and atthe same time to mirror the success of companies like Amazon and Dell,Microsoft has unveiled a new shopping site for Windows hardware andsoftware The software behemoth said the main reason for theWindows Marketplace site was to present all of the nearly 100,000 Windowsadd-ons ...

With the proclamation that it intends to overtake EMC as the top enterprise storage supplier, IBM announced today the DS6000, a disk storage system slightly bigger than a VCR, and the TotalStorage DS8000, which can act either as a single system or, through partitioning, as multiple systems Rich Lechner, vice president of IBM storage systems, told T...

Taking advantage perhaps of lowered expectations, two bellwether technology companies posted strong quarterly results that boosted optimism for the rest of the earnings season and helped lift the tech sector on the stock markets Intel and Yahoo both managed to post earnings that exceeded expectations, though in Yahoo's case the numbers were skewed ...

The European Union today expanded its investigation into Intel's alleged anticompetitive practices, filing formal charges that demand explanations from four countries that require purchased computers to contain chips that only Intel can offer The European Commission said such requirements might violate European law on public procurement, but it is ...

Now that the titans of e-commerce have been identified, search engines are leading the way for consumers online. At the same time, serious questions are emerging related to the efficacy of these search engines, among them "When will the search engines collide?" and, "How soon and why could this happen?" If search engines are the principal devices f...

Having set the pace by victimizing 12-year-old Brianna Lahara, the four members of the Big Music record label cartel say they're equally OK with suing children in Britain Brianna and her mother live in a New York housing project. Last year, Mrs. Lahara paid $2000 to the cartel's trade group, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)....

Security companies have identified a new worm spreading through Microsoft's instant messaging platform The worm, known as the Funner worm, originated in Asia but is quickly spreading to the U.S., according to instant messaging security firm IMLogic....

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates introduced Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 today at a gala media event at Los Angeles' Shrine Auditorium with high hopes of bringing his market-dominant operating system out of the office and into the living room "Today, the dream of digital entertainment becomes a reality," Gates said. "People want to choose how ...

The MP3 player market, where the iPod Mini once stood alone, will soon have several new entries. IDC predicted last month that the segment will grow from 12.5 million units sold last year to more than 50 million units in 2008 Virgin Electronics' 5 GB Player, the Creative Zen Micro and the Dell Pocket DJ5 will all crowd into the Mini's market....

A recent Gartner report predicts a 50 percent failure rate for radio frequency identification projects implemented between now and the end of the year. However, those involved in industry alliances and manufacturer projects that pull together best-in-class vendors proclaim that RFID is more than a solution looking for a problem -- it's a significant improvement in tightening the supply chain and giving product manufacturers better communication with everyone from their materials suppliers to their customers...

A new federal tax bill passed by the Senate yesterday and sent to President George W. Bush for signature will have a spotty effect on technology budgeting, according to one prominent analyst The tax bill, titled "American Jobs Creation Act of 2004," was designed partly to meet European Union objections to tax breaks for American exporters. It conta...

Apple just might be preparing for a coup d'etat in the digital media world, if gossip about new iPod functionality making its way across the Mac grapevine proves to be true Apple rumor site ThinkSecret said "highly reliable sources" have revealed that the computer-maker will announce a 60 GB iPod within the next 60 days, just in time for the holida...

EBay's PayPal online payment service has been hit by a week-long series of technical glitches that have left some small merchants unable to receive payments The problems have left some PayPal users unable to access the service or their accounts. PayPal is the most popular online payment service and the preferred method of payment for almost all mer...