John Lister

An Indian computer has been ranked the fourth-fastest in the world. It's the first time India has even cracked the top 100 in speed rankings. Computers from Sweden and Germany are among five new entries in the top ten, which was previously dominated ... by US-built machines. The list was announced at the SuperComputing 07 conference in Reno, Nevada. It's the 30th edition of the list, which comes out every six months and is compiled by experts from universities in Tennessee and Germany and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in California. (Source: Top500.org ) The Indian ... (view more)

A leaked list reveals some of the most commonly requested features for the successor to Windows Vista (code-named Windows 7). The 61 suggestions include some based on rival products, such as Session Restore from Mozilla's Firefox browser. After a ... crash, a Firefox user is able to go straight back to the page or pages that they were browsing at the time. Other users suggested a Firefox-style download manager to make it easier to keep track of multiple simultaneous downloads. Another common theme is improvements to visual displays of information, such as the Recycle Bin icon gradually 'filling ... (view more)

Hackers are now hiding viruses in the last place you'd expect to find them: anti-spyware software. The elaborate scam allows hackers to get access to users computers. And for added measure, they even take credit card details on the way. The scam ... works by posting adverts on big-name websites. A random selection of these ads produce a pop-up window with a fake warning that the user's computer is infected, and offers a download of an anti-spyware program, paid for by credit card. The download, which comes under more than 40 different names such as Spyshredder, is actually a Trojan virus. The ... (view more)

Computers can now recognise the work of different artists and even tell the differences between genuine paintings and fakes. Scientists at Israel's University of Haifa have developed a mathematical program that analyses paintings geometrically. The ... computer breaks down the picture into its component sections, then calculates the sines and cosines. (If you've forgotten your high school trigonometry, that means the relative size and shapes of triangles.) Once the computer learns the pattern of a particular artist, it can identify whether another painting is legitimately that person's work. ... (view more)

An ambitious scheme could see Russian spy planes provide broadband Internet services. The scheme would use Myasishchev M-55 planes to plug gaps in Russia's patchy satellite coverage. They would also be used in areas where the telecoms system has ... been damaged or destroyed. Because the planes are designed to fly at high altitude, they can provide coverage to a much wider ground area. The planes, which are equivalent to the American U-2s, were originally designed to intercept US spy balloons. They've since been transferred to scientific uses such as studying the arctic stratosphere. An existing ... (view more)

Google has confirmed it's entering the mobile market, but not with the much-rumored Gphone. Rather than launching a branded handset, Google is developing an open source software platform for all mobile devices. They'll be providing their 'Android' ... software free of charge to handset manufacturers, which could pave the way for cheaper phones. As part of the launch, Google has formed the Open Handset Alliance, bringing together 34 partners. This includes handset producers Motorola, HTC, Samsung and LG, plus carriers such as T-Mobile and Sprint. (Source: BBC ) The software should be with ... (view more)

An Indian man has spent 50 days in prison after his Internet service wrongly accused him of posting images that insulted a historical figure. Police swooped on the home of Lakshmana Kailash K, a 26 year old technology worker, after offensive ... pictures appeared on Orkut, a social networking site run by Google. The images depicted Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the 17th century founder of India's Maratha empire. Officials asked Google to hand over the IP address of the poster, then checked with ISP Airtel to find the person behind that address. Airtel incorrectly told them it belonged to Kailash. ... (view more)

Facebook appears to have decided not to fight Google's plans to bring social networking sites together. Jim Breyer, an investor and board member at Facebook, reportedly says the company would be willing to join Google's OpenSocial platform. That's a ... scheme by which programmers can more easily create applications that run on many different social networking sites. For example, a user could make a single blog post that is instantly viewable by their friends on both MySpace and Bebo. One of the main reasons for Facebook's success to date is that users can create their own applications such as ... (view more)

Spammers have recruited an unusual new ally in their battle against security checks: 'Melissa' the virtual stripper. She features in the Captcha Trojan, named because of its attempts to get 'round the 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell ... Computers and Humans Apart' technology. This is the system where users have to type in the letters they see in an image, designed to stop computers automatically completing a forum. The spammers behind this case are trying to automatically sign up for multiple Yahoo mail accounts. The Captcha Trojan replaces Yahoo pages with what appears to be a ... (view more)