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The U.S. government will increase spending on information technology for the third year in a row, if the Obama administration's proposed 2016 fiscal year budget is passed. The fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 The 2016 budget request includes civilian agency IT spending at US$49.1 billion and defense IT expenditures at $37.3 billion. The 2016 total of ...

Transaction systems have all the fun but systems of record do all of the work; at least it seems that way. Maybe you've never thought of it this way but unless both kinds of systems are working well -- and working together -- your results will suffer Record systems can tell you what happened, but by themselves they don't bring in business. Transac...

Evolve OS Beta 1 needs considerable fine-tuning to get to release candidate status, but it has two innovations that distinguish it from the crowd of Linux distro newcomers. This Linux new arrival is built around a home-made desktop called "Budgie," and a custom package manager forked from Pardus Linux. I am always interested in new desktop approac...

The latest handsets and tablets received their typical share of headlines at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but their mindshare shrank considerably. In what may mark its last hurrah in the mobile market, Sony unveiled its Xperia Z4 tablet after a series of leaks and teases leading up to the event. Meanwhile, Samsung's latest iPhon...

Square on Monday introduced two new services for small businesses: instant deposits; and protection for disputed purchases. Square, which six years ago began offering square-shaped mobile credit card readers for smartphones and tablets, has shifted its focus away from point-of-sale operations and toward data collection. The company processes milli...

The United States Federal Aviation Administration should implement cybersecurity upgrades recommended by the U.S. Government Accountability Office immediately, or risk hackers taking over its computer systems, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has warned The GAO last week released a report that found significant security control weaknesses in the FAA's...

Ellen Pao on Monday testified in a San Franciso courtroom that she was passed up for promotions and sexually harassed by a partner during her employment at prestigious venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers Responding to questions from her attorney, Therese Lawless, Pao said that after she broke off a relationship with former Klein...

Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, your trusted mountain guide through the peaks and crevasses of the latest gadget announcements ...

The Apple Watch wasn't the only new product to take the stage at Apple's media event on Monday -- Apple also introduced an all-new sleek MacBook. In addition, Apple nabbed the chance to be the exclusive launch partner for HBO's new HBO Now streaming subscription service. Here are the highlights of the event:...

Autonomous vehicles are on a roll, suggests a new report fromMcKinsey & Co., released last week during the Geneva Motor Show. Acceptance will increase substantially by 2050, accounting for as much of 20 percent of new car sales. The shift to self-driving technologies could reduce auto accidents by as much as 90 percent, the report suggests.

Social media firms should team up with the United States government to work out appropriate responses to extremism on their sites, recommends a Brookings Institution report released last week. The Institution's J.M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan last year launched a study to define and describe the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter. Among othe...

One of the pitches sales reps selling CRM make the mistake of dropping into conversations is that it's easy to use. "Users can practically train themselves, it's so intuitive! Just start clicking! And did we tell you -- we just introduced a new UI to improve the UX!" It's a line of discussion that really does CRM a disservice. Yes, today's applicat...

Red Hat last week made Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host generally available, following a four-month live beta test "The beta release was very successful," said Lars Herrmann, senior director of product strategy at Red Hat. Feedback from customers and partners "helped us refine several features and tools" for the GA version.

Google Wallet, bitcoin and other payment systems have spent years trying to oust the credit card as the be-all and end-all of payment methods. Publications and pundits everywhere have been quick to hail new technologies as "credit card-killers," and they're not without justification. As a payment method, the credit card has lost whatever futuristic luster it may have once had. Magnetic stripes wear out, plastic snaps in half, and the incessant manual inputting of 16-digit numbers eventually gets tiresome...

The Apple Watch -- which represents Apple's first major new device category in more than four years -- is about to be unleashed upon the world -- no doubt shortly after Apple reveals pricing and availability details at its special media event Monday Careful what you wish for....

Apple watchers likely will have to wait until September to see if the rumors about a bigger iPad are true Apple suppliers have been told that production of the rumored 12.9-inch iPad Pro won't ramp up until the second half of this year, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported Thursday....

Lockheed Martin this week conducted a test of its Advanced Test High Energy Asset, or ATHENA, laser system. The successful demonstration attests to just how far directed energy weapons technology has come Boring clean through the engine of a truck mounted on a platform more than a mile away, ATHENA decommissioned the running vehicle in a matter of ...

Microsoft on Thursday issued a security advisory acknowledging a vulnerability in all versions of Windows that could allow FREAK exploits. Windows systems previously were thought to be immune to FREAK attacks....

I've been traversing North America keynoting a series of cloud events hosted by Oracle. At every stop of the roadshow my comments regarding the opportunity to transform traditional product businesses into powerful information services via cloud-based alternatives has generated the greatest interest among enterprise decision-makers and software developers alike.

Almost 17,000 malware alerts surface every week, the Ponemon Institute recently found. Only 4 percent of alerts were investigated, and traditional antivirus products missed nearly 70 percent of malware in the first hour, researchers discovered in a recent Damballa study....