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Spoiler Alert: At the end of "Mass Effect 3," the Earth is not saved, and there isn't much players can do about it. Normally, the resolution of a video game's story line -- even one as popular as "Mass Effect 3" -- would not be news outside the gaming sector. In this case, however, some fans are so disgruntled that they've lodged a complaint with ...

Today we would say that the first implementation of PageRank was a form of crowdsourcing. The crowd was early webmasters, and they helped determine the relevancy of Web pages by linking to them. It didn't take long for "search engine specialists" to figure out how to game the system for fun and profit For more than a decade, these self-styled SEO...

The notion that the U.S. government workforce is a huge, deskbound bureaucracy is the typical stereotype, but that vision is only part true. The federal workforce is huge, and it may be well be bureaucratic -- but federal workers are not always deskbound Many federal jobs require mobility. Agricultural and industrial inspectors, Border Patrol agent...

Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux, announced version 3.3 of the kernel Sunday Among the most noteworthy changes found in 3.3 is the merging of kernel code from the Android project....

When biker Robert Swidersky learned about BikerOrNot.com from his son a few years ago, he decided he'd give it a shot "The more I used it, the more I found things I liked," Swidersky told TechNewsWorld. "I was informed about rides and events around me, and I could also inform others about rides and events, meet people, and create a fan page as to w...

Sanford C. Bernstein has downgraded Sprint Nextel to underperform from market perform, citing concerns it won't sell enough iPhones to pay for its "punishing" commitment to Apple. Worse, from Sprint's perspective, is that there's a strong chance Sprint may have to declare bankruptcy at some point, Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said in a research...

Despite 17 percent growth in monthly unique users at the top news sites in 2011, revenue remained an issue, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), which cites data from Nielsen Online. Online advertising grew by 23 percent in 2011, but just five big tech companies now account for about ...

Microsoft's next version of its office suite, Office 15, is currently available as a private preview for beta testers. However, a reviewer not bound by Microsoft's non-disclosure agreement claims to have used a copy, and he says the new version has a Metro look and feel to it that ties in Office to the minimalist aesthetics of Windows 8 The changes...

Sprint has canceled the 15-year agreement it inked with LightSquared last July to build out and license a 4G network. LightSquared was to have used this network, together with its own infrastructure, to launch its service. The agreement would have been beneficial to Sprint as well, as it had hoped to use LightSquared's network to relieve its own s...

Security experts have been debating for years the merits of whitelists versus blacklists in securing an enterprise, and last week the debate continued to rage with the release of some test results from the Tolly Group The group tested three endpoint protection programs: McAfee Endpoint Protection Suite, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1 and Parity ...

M5 Networks has partnered with InsightSquared to create a solution that will allow customers to manage data generated from M5, along with data from other systems, in InsightSquared's business intelligence product. The solution, which will be made available in Q2 of 2012, will help customers...

Windows 8 is likely the most ambitious UI project for Microsoft since Microsoft Bob, and we all know how that ended up. What was kind of sad about Microsoft Bob was that for what it was intended to do, it was both cutting-edge and very successful. However, because it was positioned as the follow-on to Windows, the bar was set too high and the product failed spectacularly. ...

Following a stellar 2011 holiday season, and with U.S. retail sales having exceeded expectations in February, etailers have many reasons for optimism in 2012 and beyond. By any measure, e-commerce will continue to grow -- Goldman Sachs most recently predicted that global retail Web sales will reach nearly US$1 trillion by 2013. Additionally, marke...

Nokia has been expected for some time to announce plans to get into the tablet space. It has now confirmed, via an interview by Nokia design chief Marko Ahtisaari to the Finnish magazine Kauppalehti Optio, that work is progressing on a Windows 8 tablet device. That Nokia is opting for Windows 8 instead of Android is hardly a surprise, given Nokia ...

PayPal has introduced PayPal Here, a mobile payment product that is meant to continue its push into retailing's brick-and-mortar world, no matter the size of the retailer The global mobile payment system will allow small businesses to accept almost any form of payment, PayPal said. Businesses can accept payments by swiping cards with a fully encryp...

Cisco Systems has revealed plans to acquire NDS Group, paying US$5 billion for the video software company as part of an effort to increase investment in its software and video services NDS software ensures that paid digital content gets to appropriate set-top boxes, smart TVs and consumer gadgets, an ability Cisco said is essential for continuing i...

The Court of Appeal for Ontario recently considered whether there was a cause of action for the invasion of personal privacy in Jones v.Tsige. The case involved two bank employees, Sandra Jones and Winne Tsige, who worked at two different branches of the same bank. The respondent, Tsige, was in a relationship with the former husband of the appel...

Avaya is formalizing an outsourcing service it has been offering select clients for the past year. The service, Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions, manages all of a company's communications operations, regardless of age, location or vendor. It is part of the company's portfolio of Managed Services "This is a custom managed service targeted ...

Windows 8 is on its way. In fact, it's already here, in a manner of speaking. Microsoft recently released what it called a "consumer preview" version of the OS. When the final versions arrive, it will finally give Microsoft a leg up in the tablet market. That might take a bite out of the market share Android has managed to scratch out in tablets.

Microsoft has made available a consumer preview version of its upcoming Windows 8 operating system that you can try out. The OS caught my eye because the tile-like user interface appears radically different from the boring old reiterations of Windows 3.1 -- with minor tweaks that irritatingly require getting used to after every upgrade This looks l...