Technology

Microprocessors are wondrous devices: They integrate the brain of a computer onto a single electronic component. The computing power that once required a room full of equipment now fits onto a razor-thin slice of silicon, usually no larger than a centimeter square. Almost everything we do these days -- such as cooking our food, driving our cars, doing our laundry, and, of course, reading articles just like this one -- depends on these mighty mites.

IBM is rolling out a subscription service that aims to make it easier for large companies to use desktop virtualization, a technology that has been slow to take off but which some say has big potential.

Desktop virtualization allows companies to host an employee's desktop OS and applications in a virtual machine on a central server, where they can be accessed using a Web browser from a thin client or desktop PC.

Technology evolves at a breakneck speed, which mean's today's most-used technology, could just be a fleeting memory by tomorrow.

Sometimes, the loss is a good thing - who wants busy signals or staticky TV?. At other times, the departure stirs bittersweet feelings (remember saying farewell to your trusty old C:\ prompt?).

We've compiled a list of 40 once-commonplace activities that are rapidly approaching extinction. Some are in danger of disappearing, while others have already vanished. So join us for a spirited send-off.

Symwave, one of the first companies to design silicon for USB 3.0, is revealing more details about its SOC (system on a chip) using the high-speed standard at the Hot Chips conference on Monday.

USB 3.0, which debuted last November, is designed to provide throughput as high as 5GB per second (Gbps), up from just 480Mbps for USB 2.0. Symwave says its USB 3.0 SOC can be used in external storage devices that ship data as fast as 500MB per second.

The root of America's health crisis is bad habits formed in childhood. To protect children from harm, parents are keeping kids indoors, where they get sick, watch TV and form lifelong habits of screen addiction, inactivity and junk-food overeating.

It's time to tag and release the children. We have the technology.

Hybrids are booming in the U.S. thanks to the fuel efficient and green nature of the cars. The government $4,500 gas-guzzler trade-in program also helped sales of fuel-efficient cars and hybrids during the month of July in America.

Toyota is seeing very robust sales of its new Prius. Sales are so good in fact that many dealers have waiting lists for the vehicles that are months long. Toyota says that it can’t simply increase production of the Prius, which is crushing the Honda Insight in sales, because its battery partner can’t produce more batteries.

A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society's workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

If you've been monitoring your online sites using a third-party service you'll be more than slightly aware how expensive this can be. While there might have been some rationale to these high prices in the early days of Web monitoring, with the plummeting costs for hosting and bandwidth, today you'd expect these services to be cheap, er, more cost-effective.

I recently found a new service called BinaryCanary (a clever but really geeky name) that monitors any of 12 protocols (including HTTP, FTP, DNS and IMAP) and is reasonably priced.

The RIAA is one of the most controversial corporate organizations in America. It has carried out a prolific lawsuit campaign against file sharers, including its record $1.92M USD judgment against Jammie Thomas-Rasset. It has also taken other less high-profile, but equally contentious positions including declaring making CD backup copies of legal bought works "stealing" and supporting Digital Rights Management (DRM), a means of trying to prevent individuals from copying digital works for backup or other purposes.

Hacking computers might become a thing of the past if researchers at Bristol University succeed in a four-year research project.

The way computer processors are designed and their security against code breaking could be transformed thanks to a grant of £800,000 given to a team at the Department of Computer Science.