In The News

The War on Web Anonymity

Marcel Rosenbach, Hilmar Schmundt August 11, 2011
Internet users, like patrons at a library or a grocery store, value privacy and cringe about how reporting even a few choices may influence advertisers, insurers or creditors to make incorrect assumptions about an individual’s health or career prospects. Internet companies, politicians and law-enforcement agencies, even in democratic societies, though express concerns that anonymity leads to...

Operation Shady Rat – Unprecedented Cyber-Espionage Campaign and Intellectual-Property Bonanza

Michael Joseph Gross August 9, 2011
For skilled hackers, computers of top corporations and governments are as easy to break into as a locked car. For at least five years, hackers had secret access to computer systems of the United Nations, ASEAN, national governments, multinational corporations, defense contractors, media, Olympic committees and other groups, as discovered by the cyber-security firm McAfee. Operation Shady Rat...

Foxconn, HSBC Join Global Trend: Technology Reducing Labor Costs

David Magee August 4, 2011
For corporations, people are becoming a redundancy. Reliance on technology to reduce costs and increase efficiency is a corporate trend that has contributed to high unemployment rates. An International Business Times article reports the trend is expanding into areas often blamed for jobs lost in the developed world: the world of finance and outsourcing to China. HSBC Bank and Foxconn, the maker...

Huge Arctic Fire Hints at New Climate Cue

Richard Black August 2, 2011
Dry conditions stemming from climate change could lead to more wildfires even in the cool Arctic; in turn, the fires could hasten the pace of global warming. A 2007 fire in Alaska put as much carbon into the air as the entire Arctic tundra can absorb in one year, suggests ecology research released by Nature magazine and reported by the BBC News. “Fires in the tundra are uncommon because the...

Foreign Nations Push Into Space as US Pulls Back

W.J. Hennigan, Ralph Vartabedian July 28, 2011
Amid economic woes and waning support for government investment in science, the US has suspended its human spaceflight program indefinitely. Former astronauts and NASA supporters are bitter about NASA losing its competitive edge. The pullback could give China, Russia, India, Iran and other nations – there are more than 50 national space programs in all – a chance to catch up. The US is counting...

SA Innovation Bears Fruit in the US

July 27, 2011
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved use of ultraviolet light technology for purifying fruit juice, an alternative to pasteurization for eliminating harmful pathogens, reports the Mail & Guardian. SurePure, a South African company that developed the technology says it offers” greater microbiological efficacy than conventional UV systems and is effective for both clear and turbid...

Resist the Temptations of the Cloud!

Richard Stallman July 21, 2011
Because of ready internet access, personal computing increasingly depends on outside sources for software tools and data storage and analysis. However, companies that provide remote-computing or so-called “cloud” services can ultimately limit or track individual users’ access, allowing law-enforcement agencies or more nefarious parties to snoop around. “The abusiveness of proprietary software has...