technology - "computer"

D. J. Keenan notes that the cover story of the current issue of National Journal reports in depth on China's cyber-aggression against US targets in the government, military, and business. We have discussed China's actions on numerous occasions over the years. The news in this report is the suggestion that Chinese cyber-attakers may have been involved in major power outages in the US. 'Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of US companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to US government officials and computer-security experts...' of this story at Slashdot.

Those of us who carry laptops have different tastes and needs, of course, so it's unlikely computer makers will ever agree on the ideal compact. It always comes down to a balancing act over size, weight, price, features and ease of use. That's evident in the four subnotebooks I've been testing.

Apple has completed a major security overhaul of its Leopard operating system. The fix addresses more than 40 crucial security flaws, including one in iCal that allows hackers to attack the computer remotely. Plugging the iCal hole was the most immediate need Apple had to address.

Lori Jantulovich stands in the middle of Best Buy's computer section, flagging down a sales clerk. She's trying to buy a laptop for her nephew. 'I have no clue,' she says. Jantulovich, 51, is surrounded by displays touting the merits of dozens of similar-looking PCs. 'Superior performance with 3 GB of system memory,' one says. 'Powerful discrete graphics,' another advertises.

Ken E. writes 'Asus has backed down in the face of complaints from UK Eee PC 900 owners about the ultra-portable's low-capacity battery. Confusing statements posted in online reviews led buyers to believe that they would get a larger capacity battery than they actually did — and they weren't happy. Asus has, however, made a conciliatory gesture by extending a £10 high-capacity battery upgrade offer. Mobile computer has the full announcement, plus quite a bit of background on how this fuss all got started. The batteries will be available June 10 and in the meantime Eee PC owners can download a BIOS update that Asus claims will add half an hour to battery life.' of this story at Slashdot.

FnH writes 'Researchers at the University of Antwerp in Belgium have created a new supercomputer with standard gaming hardware. The system uses four NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards, costs less than €4,000 to build, and delivers roughly the same performance as a supercomputer cluster consisting of hundreds of PCs. This new system is used by the ASTRA research group, part of the Vision Lab of the University of Antwerp, to develop new computational methods for tomography. The guys explain the eight NVIDIA GPUs deliver the same performance for their work as more than 300 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz processors. On a normal desktop PC their tomography tasks would take several weeks but on this NVIDIA-based supercomputer it only takes a couple of hours. The NVIDIA graphics cards do the job very efficiently and consume a lot less power than a supercomputer cluster.' of this story at Slashdot.

FnH writes 'Researchers at the