IBM announced that a new generation of its silicon germanium chips runs at double the speed of the previous generation. Silicon germanium chips offer advantages over straight silicon chips, but because of their higher cost, they have not been as popular as silicon. The new generation promises speeds of 200 GHz, compared to 100 GHz […]

A federal appeals court ruled in favor of the University of Texas (UT) in its dispute with White Buffalo Ventures over thousands of spam e-mails sent by the company to students of the institution. In 2003, White Buffalo, which operates an online dating service geared toward UT students, began sending thousands of messages to student […]

In a presentation at the Black Hat conference last week, security researcher Dan Kaminsky argued that domain name system (DNS) servers represent a broad vulnerability in the Internet. Kaminsky said that of 2.5 million DNS servers he tested, nearly 10 percent could be susceptible to so-called DNS cache poisoning. In total, about 9 million DNS […]

Hackers broke into a server at the University of Colorado (CU), marking the third security breach in the past six weeks. The latest attack targeted servers that held information for the school’s ID card, known as the Buff OneCard. Those servers included names, Social Security numbers, and photographs but not financial information. Potentially exposed in […]

The maker of BlackBerry devices will pay the University of Texas System $1.8 million to settle a patent-infringement case over technology that allows users to enter text into telephone-style keypads. Under the terms of the settlement, Research in Motion, based in Canada, will also be granted a license to continue using the technology. Part of […]

A Georgia court has issued a ruling that seemingly puts an end to a deal between Apple Computer and the Cobb County School District to provide as many as 63,000 iBook laptops to the district’s teachers and middle and high school students. Critics of the deal argued that the school district did not adequately inform […]

After reaching settlements with more than 60 alleged illegal file traders, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has filed civil charges against five individuals who reportedly refused to settle with the organization, according to Geoff Taylor, BPI general counsel. In March, a British court ruled that Internet service providers must disclose the names of those accused […]

A bill signed into law last week mandates the creation of a network of databases that store anonymous information on medical errors. According to a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine, medical errors cost the lives of 98,000 people in the United States each year. Sharing information about those errors is seen by many […]

Following the terrorist attacks of September 2001, Congress passed a law designed to encourage private-sector research into security technology, but so far, relatively few companies have taken advantage of the law, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Michael Chertoff, secretary of DHS, said that despite the provisions of the Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective […]

A new initiative will provide a rating system for open source applications, with the goal of saving corporate IT departments the time and expense of evaluating such tools. Business Readiness Ratings, a project of Carnegie Mellon University, Intel, and a company called SpikeSource, will allow users to rate open source applications on a scale of […]