Costco and Sam's Club are rationing rice. Friday's reported incident in the Persian Gulf probably has more than a few paranoid individuals stocking up on gasoline. And to top it all off, Microsoft's cutoff date for Windows XP is coming in two months, a decision that's left over 165,000 fans of the ...
Fuel cell technology is often associated with cars, specifically the next generation of automobiles that won't run on gasoline, juice from a wall socket or any combination of the two. Instead, fuel cell cars will run on highly efficient hydrogen and put out next to nothing in the way of emissions. M...
Last year, when Viacom visited YouTube and spotted shows from MTV, Comedy Central and other content producers it owns, it decided to act quickly -- and the only quick reaction a company of Viacom's size is capable of in that sort of situation is to sue. Only after many months did other giant TV netw...
There's an "elephant on the stage," commented BusinessWeek columnist Steve Wildstrom as he kicked off the Tech Policy Summit here in Hollywood, Calif. Although several telecommunication companies have representatives in attendance, and although the FCC's 700 MHz spectrum auction concluded recently, ...
Having your private information leaked is bad enough, but having it put on BitTorrent is really the final insult. It happened before with MySpace photos. By most accounts, the private images made available earlier this year via peer-to-peer networks consisted mostly of poorly snapped photos of peopl...
My sympathies to those out there who used last month's announcements from T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon as an excuse to quickly jump ship from Sprint Nextel and sign a contract with someone else for an all-you-can-eat talk plan at $100 a month. Sprint was the only major U.S. wireless carrier that d...
Handset makers are gathering in Barcelona this week for the Mobile World Congress, a conference where the market's biggest players show you why that top-dollar phone you picked up two weeks ago will be obsolete by Labor Day. Some of the biggest news coming out of the show focused on the multitude of...
My limited experience with online games has been nothing but nasty, brutish and short. A few online rounds of "Halo 2" at a friend's house showed me just how vicious gamers can be when they smell fresh meat. I could barely run 20 feet before getting cut down. The insults and taunts flew thick and fa...
Sony's had a huge Friday. It's made a smart move by growing out of DRM in its music division -- at least a little, at least reportedly -- and it's scored a decent victory on the Blu-ray side in getting Warner Bros. to commit to its hi-definition DVD format. All on the Friday before CES. Nicely done....
For advertisers, the mobile Web is full of possibilities -- and problems. U.S. adoption of the mobile Web lags behind European and Asian countries. Closed systems have hindered application development, as has the field's wide array of competing standards, platforms and browsers. Small screens necess...
Buying sponsored links on a major search engine isn't cheap. Getting to the top of the search engine pile without paying your way requires mastery of search engine optimization -- a craft that often seems to fall somewhere between advanced calculus and alchemy. However, for small businesses catering...
For a small business that serves a local area -- a restaurant or gardening service, for example -- word of mouth can quickly make or break a reputation. When the conversation happens online in organized and professionally managed forums like Citysearch and YellowPages.com, reputations can be made an...
It's no secret that an awful lot of TV shows and movies can be found on file-sharing networks like BitTorrent and Kazaa. It's also no secret that the producers of those shows really, really hate it when people share them without permission. Is there a way for content makers to cash in on what is a c...
As colleges and universities nationwide began installing broadband access to their dorm rooms and apartments years ago, they gave students convenient, at-home access to unprecedented amounts of information. The trend also played a significant role in opening the door to peer-to-peer file-sharing net...
Virtualization rootkits, Web application security and Voice over IP attack vectors topped Gerhard Eschelbeck's list of the top three biggest issues at this month's Black Hat USA conference, held Aug. 1 and 2 in Las Vegas. Eschelbeck is chief technology officer and senior vice president of security v...
Security experts, malware ninjas and hackers of all shades packed the hallways of the Palace Tower conference area at Caesar's Palace last week for the 11th Annual Black Hat conference. The event provides security pros with a venue for outlining the latest flaws, both technological and human, in tod...