Tech News

In its early years, information theory was dominated by research on error-correcting codes: How do you encode information so as to guarantee its faithful transmission, even in the presence of the corrupting influences engineers call "noise"? Recently, one of the most intriguing developments in information theory has been a different kind of coding, called network coding, in which the question is how to encode information in order to maximize the capacity of a network as a whole. For information theorists, it was natural to ask how these two types of coding might be combined: If you want to both minimize error and maximize capacity, which kind of coding do you apply where, and when do you do the decoding?

The data-routing techniques that undergird the Internet could increase the efficiency of multicore chips while lowering their power requirements. Today, a typical chip might have six or eight cores, all communicating with each other over a single bundle of wires, called a bus. With a bus, however, only one pair of cores can talk at a time, which would be a serious limitation in chips with hundreds or even thousands of cores, which many electrical engineers envision as the future of computing.

The hacktivist group Anonymous has denied allegations that it is behind the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against The Pirate Bay. Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay remains down and out.

Oracle has released a cache of HP documents first seen during litigation, which shows just how much HP wanted to keep the ailing Itanium chip going.

Passengers flying Virgin Atlantic from London to New York will soon be able to make in-flight phone calls using personal devices.

A report finds that 60 sites have been wrongly blocked by UK mobile filters designed to protect children.

Don't anthropomorphize computers - they hate it. - Author Unknown

Stay the patient course Of little worth is your ire The network is down - David Ansel, 1998