Microsoft has filed 26 lawsuits in the United States against companies accused of selling pirated copies of the company’s software to businesses and consumers. Because of the increasing saturation of the global market for software, Microsoft has more to gain by ensuring that the copies of its Windows and Office software that are bought are […]

HP researchers based in England have developed very small chips that can store 512,000 bytes of information and be read by a handheld device. The chips, called Memory Spots, are 1.4 square millimeters and feature small processors, which would allow the chips to actively protect the data they contain. Unlike RFID tags, which company officials […]

AOL is set to release a test version of a security package that the company will offer to anyone, not just AOL customers. The company currently offers security applications to subscribers, including a firewall and antivirus and antispyware tools. The new offering, known as Total Care, will be a comprehensive package, with components coming from […]

Officials at Northwestern University have said that in May, hackers compromised troubleshooting software, giving them access to nine personal computers on campus that contained sensitive data on about 17,000 students and applicants. The troubleshooting software allows support staff to access computers remotely to fix problems; the compromised computers were in the school’s Office of Admissions […]

The regents of the University of Texas System have given their approval for Chancellor Mark Yudof to solicit grants and other funding to support a nanotechnology research center. Called the South West Academy for Nanoelectronics, the center would be housed at UT Austin’s Microelectronics Research Center. Among possible areas of study, researchers at the center […]

Rice University will restart its press, which was closed in 1996, as an online-only operation, publishing peer-reviewed books and monographs.
Faced with declining budgets, many libraries buy fewer books, leaving academic publishers unwilling to publish books unless they can justify the printing costs. Rice’s model does away with printing, allowing the press to publish texts not […]

Chinese courts have convicted another individual of using the Internet to distribute content deemed inappropriate and subversive. Li Yuanlong was accused of writing essays critical of unemployment and rural poverty and e-mailing them to Chinese-language news outlets based in the United States. Charges filed in February against Li said the essays “fabricated, distorted and exaggerated […]

Attorneys general in 34 states, led by California’s Bill Lockyer, have filed a suit alleging that seven makers of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips conspired to artificially inflate prices between 1998 and 2002. The lawsuit contends that the companies named fixed prices, limited supplies, and rigged bids for the chips. Makers of consumer products […]

Parents of public school kids in New York City have filed a lawsuit to overturn a ban on cell phones in schools. The ban, which was originally put in place in 1988 and concerned primarily pagers, was not widely enforced until recently, when schools added X-ray machines to help keep schools safe. Under the ban, […]

One of the spicier hot sauces I have ever tried is Dave’s Insanity Sauce from Dave’s Gourmet. Well they just came out with what is probably one of the hottest rather than coolest gadgets we’ve come across, the world’s first adjustable hot sauce spray.
The Adjustable Heat Sauce is a pretty clever kind of spice […]