Technology

A woman suspected of contracting SARS has died and two more people have been confirmed as having the disease in China, government officials confirmed on Friday.

A Chinese Health Ministry spokesman also said the source of infection has been traced to a disease control laboratory in Beijing. In one sense, this will come as a relief to health officials, as it means there is a clear source for the outbreak. Cases that are acquired in the community are much more difficult to trace and isolate.

If there is an article of faith in computer science, it's that everything can keep getting faster and faster.

But scientists say they've discovered an apparent speed limit that will restrict how quickly data can be written onto disks and then retrieved.

The good news: This limit is about 1,000 times faster than today's state-of-the-art data storage devices.

L33tdawg: "File-swapping companies--some of which have contended that filtering their networks is impractical or even impossible--said they were skeptical of the claims..." -- They're certainly not the only ones! Even if it does work, it will only be a matter of time till people figure a way around it.

Network security company Palisade Systems this week will launch software that can identify and block copyrighted songs as they are being traded online.

The mind-boggling speed and reach of Internet search engines mask a severe limitation: They are powered by words alone.

What a humdrum existence. The world is so much brighter and more varied, full of objects and patterns that defy searchable descriptions.

In hopes of wrapping their arms around more of that stuff, computing researchers have developed new search engines that can mine catalogs of three-dimensional objects, like airplane parts or architectural features.

Japanese electronics conglomerate Sony Corp and Toppan Printing Co Ltd have developed a new optical disc, made mostly from paper, that they say will be compatible with next-generation DVD technology.

In a joint news release distributed late Thursday, the two companies said the new disc was comprised 51 percent of paper, enabling lower production costs.

The disc can store up to five times more information than current discs, because it is based on blue-laser DVD technology.

In this paper, you will learn how to use tools and commands built into Cisco's IOS to make configuring and monitoring your Cisco devices quicker and easier. We'll start with some basic, commonly used commands and settings. Then we'll move into more advanced ways to make your Cisco life easier, including some commands that are new with the most recent versions of the IOS.

AT&T Wireless cell phones can now be used to identify music that someone's listening to. The Redmond, Wash.-based provider on Thursday launched a service in which subscribers dial #ID, hold their cell phone close to a speaker for 15 seconds, and then a song's title and recording artist is sent via short text message to their phone. The "name that tune" service is the first in the United States, AT&T Wireless said.

The mind-boggling speed and reach of Internet search engines mask a severe limitation: They are powered by words alone. What a humdrum existence. The world is so much brighter and more varied, full of objects and patterns that defy searchable descriptions.

In hopes of wrapping their arms around more of that stuff, computing researchers have developed new search engines that can mine catalogs of three-dimensional objects, like airplane parts or architectural features.

In a nutshell, administrators spend too much time doing repetitive tasks that the system should be able to do for itself. For example, when Michelle in accounting installs a new bookkeeping client, she shouldn't have to learn about operating systems, run time environments, and how to check how much drive space and RAM she has before she can get it installed. The installer should be able to check for her and, preferably, resolve any problems before continuing.

Australia, one of the United States' strongest allies, has added a new weapon to its arsenal — a toaster-sized document reader that tells in seconds whether a passport is a fraud and identifies travelers who might be included on terrorist watch lists.

"What we're trying to do is strengthen border security by making sure that the people who are coming into this country are who they say they are," said Tim Chapman, a manager with Australia's Customs Service.