Recipe: Chutney

A laptop stolen in March from the University of California at Berkeley has been recovered, after being bought and sold several times, ultimately landing in South Carolina. When stolen, the computer contained sensitive data on more than 98,000 UC Berkeley graduate students, but by the time it was recovered, all of its files and operating […]

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has circulated a draft of legislation that would revise the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which is widely considered obsolete, given the technology developments that have happened since it was enacted. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), chair of the committee, has said that revising the law is a “top priority” and that […]

Beginning in 2007, the Dutch Ministry of Health will begin tracking all citizens of the country in a single database from their births to their deaths. Each person will be added to the database at birth, with health and family information included. As people in the database age, information from schools, doctors, and the police […]

Following its Supreme Court victory against Grokster in June, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has sent cease-and-desist letters to seven unnamed providers of P2P services. In the Grokster case, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that operators of P2P services are in part liable for the copyright infringements of their users and bear some […]

A number of colleges and universities have begun including student blogs in the list of resources used in effort to attract new students.
According to David Hawkins, director of public policy at the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, high school counselors and students want highly personal information as part of their recommendations and decisions about […]

California-based Airgo Networks has developed new wireless chips that it says are more than four times faster than Wi-Fi technology. The chips are said to be capable of data transfer at rates of 240 megabits per second, compared to 54 megabits per second for Wi-Fi. Greg Raleigh, chief executive of Airgo, said that even with […]

Motivated by a desire to foster standardized software architectures, Panasonic has launched a Linux incubator at its Digital Concepts Center, located in San Jose, California. Brad McManus, director of the Digital Concepts Center, said that Panasonic sees much to be gained in developing technologies on standard architectures, which would minimize problems of incompatibility among products. […]

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have demonstrated that an audio recording of someone typing on a computer keyboard can reveal with surprising accuracy exactly what they have typed. Using commercially available recording equipment, the researchers captured audio of typing and analyzed the sounds using an algorithm they developed. Because keys make different […]

A new report from research firm Input forecasts rises in state and local spending for IT in education, but only after several more lean years. The report suggests that spending is not likely to increase significantly until 2008, after which education IT could see healthy investment at the state and local levels. Such growth will […]