Desktop-as-a-Service is an interesting way for IT execs to provide cloud-based Windows desktop sessions, as well as shared resources such as storage. DaaS can help companies roll out new desktops and support Bring Your Own Device policies. 5 desktops in the cloud DaaS or Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD) providers offer a pristine, policy-controlled session (either persistent or ad hoc) that can be accessed by a wide variety of devices. If you have an iPad3 and a Bluetooth keyboard, you're in. Mac? You're in. An old and wheezing Windows XP patched-to-death machine? You're in. The machine used to access a DaaS session is largely irrelevant to the session's use, which can be for standard "office" functions, or as part of an application-specific setup. The products we ... Continue reading →
The State Department says it has targeted tribal websites filled with anti-American screeds. The State Department has launched a different sort of raid against al-Qaida — hacking into al-Qaida websites in Yemen. Skip to next paragraph In a rare public admission of the covert cyber war against extremists, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says cyber experts based at the State Department hacked Yemeni tribal websites, replacing al-Qaida propaganda that bragged about killing Americans."Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaida attacks have taken on the Yemeni people," Clinton said Wednesday.In response, "Extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the Internet," she said.Clinton described ... Continue reading →
Unless it turns out that Alexander Graham Bell didn't really want to see Watson - that he was just goofing on the guy - then the first documented prank phone call would appear to have occurred about eight years after that famous 1876 exchange ... and at the expense of an undertaker in Providence, R.I. This little-known nugget of telecommunications history comes from the Feb. 2, 1884 edition of The Electrical World, via Google Books, and was unearthed by Paul Collins, an associate professor of English at Portland State University, who is perhaps better known as The Literary Detective. The image above is difficult to read, so here's what it says: "A GRAVE JOKE ON UNDERTAKERS -- Some malicious wag at Providence R.I. has been ... Continue reading →
Using BrainGate, the world’s most advanced brain-computer interface, a woman with quadriplegia has used a mind-controlled robot arm to serve herself coffee — an act she hasn’t been able to perform for 15 years. I strongly suggest you watch the video below — the expression on her face at the end is really quite beautiful.BrainGate, which is being developed by a team of American neuroscientists from Brown and Stanford universities, and is currently undergoing clinical trial, requires a computer chip to be implanted in the motor cortex of the patient. This chip (pictured below) uses its 100 electrodes to measure neural activity, which it then transmits to a computer for processing. Like all brain-computer interfaces, the user must train the software — basically, you just ... Continue reading →
I get a real kick out of people who are unafraid to buck the system with their unconventional wisdom such as Microsoft Researchers Cormac Herley and Dinei Florêncio. These two researchers remind me of the people who try to show the real cost of piracy and even have monetary figures and statistics to show it may actually help artists. No, I'm not promoting piracy; I'm not a really big fan of either the MPAA or the RIAA; their bloated figures on the cost of piracy are either written when high or the numbers are just flat-out made up. While we're on the subject of fictional high dollar losses and folks not afraid to say so, enter Microsoft researchers. The cybercrime wave, with all those scary ... Continue reading →
