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BOSTON (AP) -- A computer hacker who was once a federal informant and was a driving force behind one of the largest cases of identity theft in U.S. history pleaded guilty Friday in a deal with prosecutors that will send him to prison for up to 25 years....

Sophisticated computer scans of fossils have helped solve a mystery over the nature of a giant, ancient raptor known as the Haast's ...

Symantec researchers have uncovered a Trojan using a private newsgroup within Google Groups as a command and control server. The move follows an attempt to use Twitter as a C C earlier this year. - Symantec has uncovered a scheme to use a Google Groups newsgroup to sneak commands to malware on compromised computers. The move is another example of attackers looking for covert ways to communicate to their bots. Earlier this year, attackers were found using Twitter as a command and control (C...

...have been able to crack cases by finding extraneous and incriminating bits of electronic data on computers, cell phones and PDAs. The 2006 murder case of Boulder businessman and bodybuilder Sergio Libman may never have been solved had it not been ...

Are computers and the other gadgets of modern life, like iPods and game systems, always ready to retire after two years, or three or four? For economic and environmental reasons, repairing is often better than replacing.

krick-zero writes 'eBay recently rolled out a new page design. Many eBay sellers are reporting issues with missing description text, resulting in lost sales. Buyers are reporting the same intermittent issue, on multiple platforms, with multiple browsers. After complaining to eBay customer service, one user got this response: 'I have reviewed several of your listings using my computer and had several of my coworkers view your listings as well and we are seeing the complete listings. Many times when buyers are not able to see the whole description or just bits and pieces it is due to browser issues they are having. A lot of times if they simply clear out their cache and cookies or change browsers (i.e. change from Internet explorer to Firefox or vice versa) they no longer have this problem.'' of this story at Slashdot.

Those in the market for a new laptop this fall will find a batch of new, mid-priced models that promise less weight and longer battery life than traditional notebook computers, but more performance '” and a bigger screen and keyboard '” than they'd get with a netbook.

After watching the stock market struggle for the past year, financial experts from Wall Street and academia are putting more effort into bringing behavioral modeling into their complex financial calculations. 'The risk models proved myopic, they say, because they were too simple-minded. They focused mainly on figures like the expected returns and the default risk of financial instruments. What they didn't sufficiently take into account was human behavior, specifically the potential for widespread panic.' Analysts are looking at research from other fields to supplement the hard mathematics of risk assessment. 'Financial markets, like online communities, are social networks. Researchers are looking at whether the mechanisms and models being developed to explore collective behavior on the Web can be applied to financial markets.' Another avenue they're exploring is how we react to the spread of disease. Jon M. Kleinberg, a computer scientist at Cornell, said, 'The hope is to take this und

ROUND ROCK, Texas.– Because many people now live their lives online, they need computers that make it easy to create their own entertainment experiences and share them with others, whether that means ...

proslack writes 'In a study presented at the Human-Computer Interaction conference in Cambridge, England, British researchers Beale and Bond found that plot and graphics are not critical to the success of video games; price and the inclusion of social aspects (e.g. multiplayer or chat) were found to be more important.' An unfinished version of the paper (PDF) is available from the researchers' web site. They said, 'One of the most unexpected findings was that gameplay was not featured as one of the most important categories to fulfill,' though they acknowledge that variety and cohesion were measured separately from gameplay, which past studies have not done. of this story at Slashdot.