Hacking human gullibility at Defcon

Defcon A hacker competition that challenges contestants to trick employees of large companies into divulging potentially sensitive information aims to show how human gullibility is the biggest security vulnerability of all. During its first day at the Defcon hacker contest in Las Vegas, it had clearly achieved its goal.…

The camel's nose under Google's tent

A trio of Apple filings seek to patent mobile-application "systems and methods" for travel and online shopping — and to move us three steps closer to a Google-free world.…

Dressing up what you kill

Microsoft is so committed to the cloud that it's throwing everything at rivals like Google to crack open the door on sales and gain momentum online.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

* - offensive humor may vary

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is preparing to launch an iPad competitor in November, and it will be called the BlackPad, according to a report citing two people familiar with the company's plans.…

Gate not closing

When AMD spin-off GlobalFoundries broke ground on its fab in upstate New York last year, the chip manufacturer boasted it was "closing the gap" on Intel. "We were a year behind Intel at the 45nm node, and that difference will be cut significantly at the 32nm generation," said vice president of manufacturing systems technology Tom Sonderman. "By 22nm, there will be no difference. It will be in the noise level."…

Judas Phone 'death grip' proven fatal

More evidence has surfaced that Apple's beleaguered Judas Phone does, indeed, have serious reception challenges — and today's facts and figures come from a sophisticated source.…

Attacks on rise

Warning of an uptick in attacks, Microsoft plans to issue an emergency update to patch a critical Windows vulnerability that hackers are exploiting to seize control of PCs.…

Hunts down Japanese FTC

Microsoft will try to stop Yahoo! from hooking up with Google in Japan.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

CINCINNATI—The Bengals reached a contract agreement with wide receiver Terrell Owens Tuesday, signing the outspoken six-time Pro Bowler to an excruciating one-year ordeal worth $2 million plus bonuses.

After only nine starts, Strasburg's incredible speed, motion, and control have made this pitcher the most exciting rookie baseball has seen in years. Is he any good?

Take a peep

Leaving aside the creepy privacy aspects, Street View is one of Google's most valuable services. The ability to familiarise yourself with somewhere strange, before you arrive, is genuinely useful.…

Seven-time champ Armstrong will almost certainly retire from cycling following his crash-ridden swan song in this year's Tour, but he leaves fans with many memories.

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND—Scientists announced that experimentation on mice has been motivated out of sheer distaste for the rodents.

Dust up over supposed evil particles

A futurologist has defended his controversial warning that "smart dust" is liable to become a future information stealing threat.…

A ClearPath to the development skies

A mainframe cloud may seem oxymoronic like a lead Zeppelin ("a" included on purpose), or intuitively obvious (given the virtualization and metering capabilities that have been in mainframes for decades). But Unisys has nonetheless fluffed up a mainframe cloud for its ClearPath mainframe customers.…

$20 million

BlueArc, the hardware-accelerated NAS array supplier startup, has pocketed another $20m in a seventh funding round, taking total funding to around $225m.…