A 1 question civics quiz Today American's celebrate the Declaration of Independence, the legal foundation of the USA and, after the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of the United States. I revere the Constitution as a magnificent piece of political engineering. But it...

The Register covered a very interesting story about AVG.  Apparently AVG is spamming the Internet with traffic that looks to be coming from Internet Explorer.  AVG software pre-crawls search results to try to protect users, but uses a user agent that makes the software appear to be Internet Explorer.  This pre-crawling is flooding websites with...

"Weekend? What's a weekend?" While the rest of the country is escaping their offices for a leisurely weekend, many in IT could end up back at theirs at the beep of a Blackberry. by Deb Perelman

If you read my blog postings semi-often, you know that I'm very, very critical of problems with airport security.  Nicole Wong of the Boston Globe reported that Boston's Logan International Airport will become the next airport to implement full-body scanners (thanks for the link from the LiquidMatrix guys!) that can see...

On Saturday the first alpha release of Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" was made available for download. So what's new on the horizon for Ubuntu users? by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

It's getaway day and as we prepare to hit the road, trudge through airport security and snag that car rental, spare a thought for the valuable data that travels with you on that trusty old laptop. According to a recent study by the Ponemon Institute, more than...

The U.S. economy lost 62,000 jobs in June for the sixth straight month of employment losses with an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent, but underneath the technology sector is holding up well, according to Labor Department statistics. What a difference a downturn makes. Last...

Updated: Nvidia said its fiscal second quarter revenue will fall well short of targets because of weak demand, pricing pressure from AMD's ATI and a faulty graphics processors on older notebook systems. In an SEC filing, the company said it is offering a driver that keeps fans running to relieve...

Notable headlines: Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft: Silverlight content searchable, too Ryan Stewart: Brian Goldfarb talks about Silverlight 2 and Deep Zoom with Michael Cot LineRider releases a Silverlight 2 version Microsoft steps up self-policing of its OSI-approved source licenses ...

Tom's Hardware is reporting test results that show that costly notebook flash drives actually use MORE power than hard drives - shrinking battery life by up to an hour. How could this be? The test Testing 4 SSDs against a 7200 RPM 2.5" drive on a...

Kaspersky's most recent product launch of the Kaspersky Internet Security 2009, is featuring a virtual keyboard "a secure pop-up that enables logins, passwords, bank card details and other important personal information to be entered safely to prevent the theft of confidential information" aiming to protect users from keyloggers, and consequently...

I had a good conversation today about the browser/desktop hybrid and where the converging is going to happen. Will it be more on the desktop side or will it be more on the browser side? I think we've seen the original browser-based development model win out as more and more...

Guest Editorial by Tiller Beauchamp Earlier this month I had the opportunity to present RE:Trace at the Recon conference, a reverse engineering conference held every other year in Montreal, Canada.  The conference consisted of three days of training and three days of talks in a single track.  Topics...

OK, I'm not going to freak out about this too bad... I've already pointed out enough problems with PCI, but I did find it morbidly entertaining.  My good friend Jeremiah Grossman pictured at right blogged today about the PCI-DSS 1.1 section 6.5, which covers "prevention of common coding vulnerabilities in...

Given the steady trickle of BIOS-related questions that I get via email, I think that it's time for a post to demystify BIOS updates and the role they have in keeping your PC in tip-top condition. by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

In the scheme of green things, Dell's PowerEdge M-Series blades could be described as emerald. Now, the company is trying to make it easier for data center managers to opt for them, with a new patent-pending tool called Dell FlexAddress. Glenn Keels, director, global relationship marketing...

Microsoft's announcement of Hyper-V, as with other Microsoft announcement, brings out the spin-miesters in the marketing departments at Microsoft's partners and competitors alike. Over the past few days I've been posting a summary of some of the converstions I've been having about Hyper-V. This time, I spoke with Sean Derrington...

If you compare the capital cost of a Wintel server and desktop architecture using Dell gear with 22" screens to that of a redundant SPARC/Sun Ray system with 24" screens, the Sun system comes in about $200,000 cheaper for 1,000 users. by Paul Murphy

Stay with me here readers, I'm stringing two stories about McAfee together here, a little out of the ordinary, so I hope it makes sense.  If you aren't interested in the tech details of which there are very little, please do read for a good laugh. Network World reported...

AMD has rounded out both the high and low ends of its desktop processor line with three new Phenoms. Though the chips have the same basic design, they are targeted at very different audiences by virtue of frequency, power consumption and price. The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition--now AMD's fastest...