NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.

Artist concept of interplanetary internet. (Credit: NASA/JPL)
Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science […]

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De cat came back—thought she were a goner,
But de cat came back for it wouldn’t stay away.
—Lyrics from "The Cat Came Back," a song written by Harry S. Miller in 1893.

It’s a story that tugs at the heartstrings of all pet devotees: A cat given up for lost in 1995 has come home. As […]

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A DOZEN men wearing dark green T-shirts and wide grins whoop, shake hands and high-five, while another group in navy blue baseball caps do their best to look magnanimous in defeat in front of several dozen onlookers.

In most respects this was a low-key event, but the scene, at a nondescript booth of a Las Vegas […]

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Cray Inc. and CSC - IT Center for Science Ltd has announced that CSC’s Cray supercomputer has been upgraded to over 85 teraflops (trillions of floating point operations per second). This makes the new Cray XT5 system at CSC the most powerful academic supercomputer in the Nordic countries and one of the fastest supercomputers in […]

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Choosing a processor is an exercise in predicting the future. Given the rapid pace of technology, you’d ideally like a CPU—and the other parts of the system—to last a few years.

Choose a CPU that’s too new and you end up on the pricey, bleeding edge of the envelope. Choose one that’s been around too long […]

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Companies, organisations and citizens spend billions of euros a year on licensing fees for proprietary software. Could that money not be put to better use developing free software alternatives and local expertise?

For that to happen, teachers, software developers, researchers, IT managers and citizens in general need to be educated about what free (also known as […]

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Tear apart of the DSi reveals that better sound and speedier processor responsible for drop in battery life.

The Nintendo DSi has a bigger screen, a better processor and an SD card slot, but one thing the DS Lite (and the humble DS Phat) still have on their younger brother is roughly one to six hours […]

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Bletchley Park is best known for the work done on cracking the German codes and helping to bring World War II to a close far sooner than might have happened without those code breakers.

By the end of WWII, 11 Colossus machines were in use.
But many believe Bletchley should be celebrated not just for what it […]

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Imagine if Howard Carter had opened Tutankhamen’s tomb and found an internal combustion engine inside. That’s the sort of surprise scholars received when they realised what had been hauled up from a Mediterranean shipwreck in 1901 and left in a cigar box in the storeroom of a Greek museum.

Amongst the treasures of one of the […]

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Hard landings can be tough on aircraft as well as passengers. As a result, pilots are obliged to report such incidents, ensuring that the plane is thoroughly checked for possible damage.

When equipped with the right sensors and software planes could report when they need to be checked for damage (Image: WIPO)
Although pilots attempt to be […]

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