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?

Cybersecurity experts are researching the feasibility of building a computer network that could protect itself against online attackers by automatically changing its setup and configuration.

New York wants to outlaw anonymous comments to prevent cyberbullying and other online abuse. This criminologist examines why this plan, despite its controversy, may not be such a bad thing.

With the Release Preview due in a few weeks, there are still many questions about Windows 8 and Windows RT. They look similar--and share a lot of the same code under the hood--but there...

Satellite broadcaster clashes with US TV networks over a set-top box that strips ads out of recorded programmes

China embraces the smartphone app economy

When you are stuck in a traffic jam with a Porsche, all you do is burn more gas in idle. Scalability is about building wider roads, not about building faster cars. - Steve Swartz

I didn’t work hard to make Ruby perfect for everyone, because you feel differently from me. No language can be perfect for everyone. I tried to make Ruby perfect for me, but maybe it’s not perfect for you. The perfect language for Guido van Rossum is probably Python. - Yukihiro Matsumoto, aka Matz, creator of Ruby