Engineers and network experts are extending the Internet into deep space, adapting Net architecture to space-based communications with the lofty goal of establishing an interplanetary Internet backbone, reports MSNBC. NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Next Generation Internet Project are funding the Interplanetary Net (IPN). With the growth of wireless networking and the […]
Robert Fox
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A proposal to improve the way information flows across the Internet has privacy advocates worried the design could be used to trace a person’s identity. The proposal, an addressing system called IPv6, was created by the Internet Engineering Task Force, an international standards body, and would include a unique serial number for each computer’s network […]
An ongoing experiment that may change the nature of air traffic control is being studied by the Federal Aviation Administration. The $25 million experiment, funded in partnership by government and the airlines, uses a radical new approach to the way pilots relay information to ground controllers: incorporating GPS with a technology that identifies the precise […]
The National Conference of Commissions on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) in July voted to promulgate the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), formerly the Article 2B amendment of the Uniform Commercial Code. Under much scrutiny, and in the works for over 10 years, UCITA will govern all contracts in the development, sale, licensing, maintenance, and […]
Just as computers around the world are coping with the Y2K bug, the sun will enter the most violent and disruptive phase of its 11-year cycle, say astronomers, causing disruptions in satellite transmissions and triggering blackouts. According to reports at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, researchers are forecasting the sun’s cycle to peak […]
The design of a device that could quickly unscramble computer-generated code that until now has been considered secure was presented in Prague by one of the world’s foremost cryptographers, Adi Shamir, coinventor of R.S.A., the international standard for secure transmission. Shamir’s idea combines existing technology into a special, reasonably priced computer that would make factoring […]
At major U.S. corporations last year, there was a 43% chance—up sharply from 35% in 1997—employers monitored workers’ email files, voice mail, computer files, phone calls or other work-related activities, according to the American Management Association (AMA). Polling 1,054 human resource managers, the New-York-based AMA said the sample mirrored its corporate membership of 10,000 organizations […]
Direct losses technology companies attribute to theft are now $250 million a year, and the industry spends another $750,000 a year on insurance and security measures, according to a study by the Rand Corp. The survey included 95 companies representing 40% of industry sales and found 1,700 incidents of theft in a nine-month period in […]
The speed of light, which travels through empty space at about 186,171 miles per second—the highest speed anything can attain—has been slowed to 38 miles an hour by Danish physicists, reports Nature. The medium used in slowing light by a factor of 20 million was a cluster of atoms called a “Bose-Einstein condensate” chilled to […]
Some U.S. elementary school computer workstations could put children at risk for developing poor postures and painful repetitive stress injuries, according to a Cornell University study. In the study, to be published in the May issue of the journal Computers in the Schools, researchers watched 95 elementary school children as they worked on computers in […]
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