Tech News

Climate researchers are producing some of the fastest growing datasets in science. Five years ago, the amount of information generated for the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report was 35 terabytes —- equivalent to the amount of text in 35 million books, occupying a bookshelf 248 miles (399 km) long. By 2014, when the next IPCC report is published, experts predict that 2 petabytes of data will have been generated for it—that's a 580 percent increase in data production. Because thousands of researchers around the world contribute to the generation and analysis of new data, a reliable, high-speed network is needed to transport the torrent of information. Fortunately, the Department of Energy's (DOE) ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) has laid the foundation for such a network -- not just for climate research, but for all data-intensive science.

The computer industry is nearing a crisis: microchips  get smaller and faster but they struggle to transfer data at sufficient speeds.  Electrons flowing through standard chip connections are just too slow. Now researchers have shown how chips with built-in lasers which use multiple wavelengths of light could in the future transmit data at terabit speeds.

SAP wants to be the biggest cloud player by 2015, but has a lot of catching up to do.

Google's goal is to take Motorola Mobility and create a bevy of new mobile experiences. But first there's a lot of integration work ahead.

The European Commission tells Google it has a "matter of weeks" to allay fears it is abusing its position as the world's dominant search engine.

China embraces the smartphone app economy

Yesterday it worked, Today it is not working, Windows is like that.- Margaret Segall, 1998

The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim. - Edsger W. Dijkstra