According to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), cheating on examinations in the United Kingdom is increasing, due in part to the number of cell phones being taken into exams. Although the incidence of cheating remains relatively low, officials from the country’s testing agencies have begun to separate the kinds of cheating they discover. New […]

A bill being considered by Russian lawmakers has antipiracy groups up in arms, saying it would worsen the country’s already terrible record of enforcing intellectual property rights. Russia’s current laws include protections for rights holders, but enforcement of those laws is poor. Antipiracy groups say music and software piracy in Russia costs U.S. businesses $1.8 […]

Encyclopedia Britannica issued a harsh critique of a report released in December by the journal Nature about the reliability of information on Wikipedia. In its report, Nature concluded that the incidence of errors was about the same in Wikipedia as in Encyclopedia Britannica. The report compared articles on 50 topics and uncovered four serious errors […]

A program at MIT that offers remote access to instrumentation in its labs has grown to include universities in Africa. The iLab initiative began in 1998 when Jesus del Alamo, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, started developing tools that allow users to prepare experiments separate from lab equipment and then submit their tests […]

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing a network technology that promises increased access to high-speed Internet service. The technology would carry both wired and wireless signals on the same fiber-optic cable, allowing both kinds of service in facilities such as conference centers and offices with just one set of wiring. The signal […]

Members of a House committee have agreed on compromise language in a data-protection bill intended to provide increased protections for sensitive consumer information. The Data Accountability and Trust Act (DATA) includes definitions of when organizations must report a data breach to customers and requires companies that handle such information to meet minimum standards for protecting […]

A study conducted by Bentley College and software company Watchfire indicates that nearly three-quarters of colleges and universities in California fail to comply with a state law concerning the collection and use of personal information. The California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003 requires organizations that collect such information online to clearly post privacy policies […]

In its latest effort to comply with a March 2004 ruling by the European Commission (EC), Microsoft announced it would provide free, unlimited technical support to software companies developing products to work with Microsoft’s server software. The 2004 antitrust ruling requires Microsoft to make its code available to rivals that want to develop products that […]

Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly, the country’s lower house, have passed a bill that would require purveyors of digital music technologies to share access to those technologies, allowing cross-operation among files and players. The most obvious target of the legislation is Apple Computer, whose iPod device and iTunes music format are linked. Under the bill, […]

Sun Microsystems now offers pay-as-you-go access to its Sun Grid Compute Utility to U.S. customers. The new service is similar in concept to that provided through contracts between Sun and a number of organizations including Princeton University. Under those contracts, customers could buy processing power from Sun and only pay for processing cycles that they […]