technology - "technology"

(Reuters) - Information technology giants are teaming up in defense against potential patent-infringement lawsuits, the Wall Street Journal said on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Tech Post, which looks at people and ideas driving the local technology industry, runs Friday on the WashBiz Blog, at washingtonpost.com/washbizblog.

Recession who? Oracle is seeing its highest growth rate in 10 years. Wait until you hear what their strategy is. Bill Gates may have left the building?but he¹s not throwing in the towel just yet. IBM has teamed up with chocolate maker Mars and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Can you guess what their after? Microsoft¹s expanding its technology investments in rural China through a series of programs designed to create computer literacy and foster innovation--one of which includes touring buses loaded with computers. And lastly, has your hard drive ever crashed? Did you lose everything? There¹s a company out there that is making storage as easy as turning on your PC....

Because of the drought, efficiency and conservation efforts are ramping into high gear in California. Since the last drought emergency in 1992, the state's population has grown by more than 20 percent, but advances in technology have led to new ways of conserving water.

Singapore - Asian information technology (IT) managers consider technology that can increase IT utilization rates of computers and storage hardware as exerting the biggest influence on their industries, a published survey said on Monday. Called virtu...

Coach Wei writes 'An industry wishlist for future browsers has been collected and developed by OpenAjax Alliance. Using wiki as an open collaboration tool, the feature list now lists 37 separate feature requests, covering a wide range of technology areas, such as security, Comet, multimedia, CSS, interactivity, and performance. The goal is to inform the browser vendors about what the Ajax developer community feels are most important for the next round of browsers (i.e., FF4, IE9, Safari4, and Opera10) and to provide supplemental details relative to the feature requests. Currently, the top three voted features are: 2D Drawing/Vector Graphics, The Two HTTP Connection Limit Issue, and HTML DOM Operation Performance In General . OpenAjax Alliance is calling for everyone to vote for his/her favorite features. The alliance also strongly encourages people to comment on the wiki pages for each of the existing features and to add any important new features that are not yet on the list.'Read mor

coderrr writes 'New research could allow ISPs to selectively block or slow down your encrypted traffic even if they cannot snoop on your transmitted data. Italian researchers have found a way to categorize the type of traffic that is hidden inside an encrypted SSH session to around 90% accuracy. They are achieving this by analyzing packet sizes and inter-packet intervals instead of looking at the content itself. Challenges remain for ISPs to implement this technology, but it's clear that encrypting your traffic inside an SSH session or VPN connection is not a solution to protect net neutrality.' of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes with a link to a Reuters report, based on a WSJ story, that 'Verizon, Google, Cisco, and HP are among the companies that have joined a secretive group called the Allied Security Trust. Each of the companies will reportedly put $5 million in escrow to allow AST to snap up intellectual property on their behalf before it falls into the hands of parties that could use it against them. Patents will be resold after AST member companies have granted themselves a nonexclusive license to the underlying technology. According to AST CEO Brian Hinman, a former VP of IP and Licensing at IBM, the arrangement will keep member companies out of antitrust trouble.' (The WSJ's story itself is more detailed, but it's subscriber-only.) of this story at Slashdot.

HP researchers find the missing link of processor technology.

CWmike writes 'Turns out the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. John McCain is the same person as the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. Barack Obama, according to a sophisticated online survey based on technology developed at MIT. Mr. Ideal? Colin Powell, a former U.S. Army general and former secretary of state. Affinnova's survey methods doesn't use the typical polling method of asking respondents to pick a name from a list. Instead, it gives respondents larger concepts, including photos, biographical information and possible first-term priorities. Affinnova calls this algorithm 'evolutionary optimization.' Steve Lamoureaux, the company's chief innovation officer, said of the VP finding: 'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'' of this story at Slashdot.