28 October, 2003

Hackers get novel defense; the computer did it:
"Aaron Caffrey, 19, was acquitted earlier this month in the United Kingdom on charges of hacking into the computer system of the Houston Pilots, an independent contractor for the Port of Houston, in September 2001.

Caffrey had been charged with breaking into the system and crippling the server that provides scheduling information for all ships entering the world's sixth-largest port.

Although authorities traced the hack back to Caffrey's computer, he said that someone must have remotely planted a program, called a 'trojan,' onto his computer that did the hacking and that could have been programmed to self destruct. "

21 October, 2003

Device that lets a soldier see the unseen
A researcher here has claimed to have developed a device which will help soldiers in a battlefield see pictures of what's on the other side of a hill, forest, or a jungle.....

....The two-pound six-inch-long device made from off-the-shelf parts such as digital camera components, would be used in weapons like mortars that launch shells high in the air. Far above the battlefield, a separation charge opens a parachute, and the surveillance device floats down, transmitting digital images as it descends.......
Soon water will charge your mobile phones!

Wondering how? Well, engineering researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered a new way of generating electricity from flowing water.

It may soon be possible to never have to charge up a cellular phone again, instead, the phone could be fitted with a battery that uses pressurized water.

17 October, 2003

Inside track on Pak Hackers

They’re still in their rebellious teens and already are a part of the ‘elite’ group of hackers. Khalid Hussain from Karachi explores the seamy world of the Pakistan hackers whose favourite targets obviously are Indian sites
Doing business in China @ the speed of dumb


..........Ah, here we go. This article looks like it could be promising. It’s a presentation that Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and his billionaire buddy Warren Buffett gave to business school students at the University of Washington.

Ho ho! I think we might be on to something here. Just listen to how Gates described Microsoft’s strategy in China:

“Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.......

14 October, 2003

ZDNet India : The future of talking computers:

"A future in which conversational computers predominate has been a staple of computer science chit-chat since the 1940s, when Alan Turing set out to build a machine that would respond like a human to typed messages. "

13 October, 2003

IBM unveils giant computing grid in China:

The grid's computing power is expected to be second only to the Japanese government's Earth Simulator supercomputer, a $500 million machine that crunches more than 35 trillion calculations per second, it said.

IBM's system, which runs on the open-source Linux software, will link nearly 100 universities and 10,000 students in China when it is completed, it said.
"IBM unveils giant computing grid in China"
ZDNet India : Drawing on software storyboard, desi animation set to go places

"In his introduction to a recent report on the animation industry, National Association of Software & Services Companies (NASSCOM) president Kiran Karnik listed four reasons as to why India is important in the animation sector. According to Karnik, Indian companies offer certain intrinsic advantages. These include a substantial base of skilled, English-speaking animators; availability of at least 12 animation studios with hardware, software and communication infrastructure; low cost of animation production; and India's vast entertainment industry. "