Google builds big data plant

The New York Times (NYT) has uncovered the new plant that Google is building on the Oregon-Washington state border, 80 miles from Portland in an area described as 'barren desert'. The NYT notes that the Internet search pioneer is building 'a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky'. While Google is already ahead of its main rivals, Yahoo! and Microsoft, when it comes to data processing power, the new plant demonstrates 'extraordinary ambition'. ...more

Skulls variant threatens Nokia phones

A new variant of the Skulls virus for Nokia phones using the Symbian-based Series 60 platform has been discovered. Skulls-D is being touted around the Net as a Macromedia Flash Player with the filename Flash_1[1].1_Full_DotSiS. ...more

INTERVIEW: Richard Stallman on 20 years of GNU

Last week saw the 20th anniversary of Richard Stallman's decision to quit the MIT and start the GNU Project in 1984, with a goal to creating a platform using 'free' software that a user can run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve: the GNU operating system which used widely today in its GNU/Linux form. A year later he founded the Free Software Foundation, a body that seeks to further the development and use of free software. He is also the author of the GNU General Public Licence, the licence under which free software can be distributed. ...more

Stolen hospital laptop prompts ID theft concerns

A laptop stolen from a hospital in Cornwall contained the personal and financial information of 10,000 NHS staff. The computer, which stored staff names, addresses and bank details was taken from the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust. The Trust handles the payroll for thousands of NHS workers across the country. ...more

IP addresses for Sony products

At the recent NAB 2001 convention in Las Vegas, electronics giant Sony announced that it would start to put IP addresses into its products. The move has been inspired by the prevalence of the Internet and the company believes that with content being sent and received over the World Wide Web, both sides should have a dedicated IP address. The reasoning behind this is that dedicated IP addresses would improve the connection. ...more