Digital Culture

Why can't I use a cable longer than 3 or 5m?

The government accidentally posted on the Internet a list of government and civilian nuclear facilities and their activities in the United States, but U.S. officials said Wednesday the posting included no information that compromised national security.

Microsoft's New Xbox Motion Sensor Blows Wii Away, Project Natal takes the idea of the Wii motion controller five steps further -- by removing the controller.... uses cameras and a microphone mounted to a Wii-style sensor bar to detect the user. It recognizes movements, talking, and can even tell the difference between me and my grandma....

Wikipedia, the giant online encyclopedia anyone can edit, has decided to block contributions from computers owned by the Church of Scientology, saying that it has changed copy to advance its own agenda.

At the All Things D conference on Thursday, Microsoft unveiled the latest re-branding of its search engine. Forget Live Search--that's so three months ago. Now Bing is in! Launching in a couple of weeks, Bing hopes to make searching a little more useful and, judging from this video demo (warning: video contains Steve Ballmer), it looks a bit like the love-child of Google and WolframAlpha.

at this morning's Google I/O 2009 opening keynote, Google gave away a new, unlocked HTC Magic to all 4,000 attendees. This phone was previously unavailable in the US. As you might expect, this move drew the biggest applause by far from the audience, but actually very little of the keynote was devoted to Android.

Psystar, maker of the the Open Computer, has filed for bankruptcy protection. ... "Debtor sales have been greatly affected by the decrease in consumer spending. The financial crisis has also caused creditors to tighten up their terms and become more demanding for immediate payment," the company said in a court document. Psystar also blames its partner vendors' own financial problems, which resulted in Psystar having to pay higher prices on parts. At that point, Psystar was unable "to turn a significant profit in each sale."

A revolutionary new search engine that computes answers rather than pointing to websites will be launched officially today amid heated talk that it could challenge the might of Google. WolframAlpha, named after Stephen Wolfram, the British-born computer scientist and inventor behind the project, takes a query and uses computational power to crunch through huge databases

I noticed something interesting in the Google outage and its aftermath on Thursday ... there doesn't appear to be the same lasting hostility and call to arms that often follows such incidents. ... Within about 20 minutes, though, Google made a statement ... An hour later, another statement came in: ... a sign of ongoing communiqué and a promise of information. Here's where the good part comes in: Google actually kept the promise. ....

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts directed employees earlier this month not to log onto the Drudge Report website with government-issued computers due to potential viruses on the site.

This chart provides a rundown of some of the major features introduced in each Windows iteration, as well as a quick look at the minimum hardware requirements for XP, Vista, and 7

a method to integrate high-speed CMOS electronics and nanophotonic circuitry based on plasmonic effects. Metal-based nanophotonics (plasmonics) can squeeze light into nanoscale structures that are much smaller than conventional optic components.

a unique robotic hand that can firmly hold objects as heavy as a can of food or as delicate as a raw egg, while dexterous enough to gesture for sign language.

Critics of Craigslist are calling for the site to remove its erotic services section in response to controversy. But threats by South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster to pursue a criminal investigation lack substance, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation digital rights advocate organization.