Boy hacker goes to jail

An American teenager has been sentenced to six months in jail after being found guilty of hacking into NASA and Pentagon computers. The story sounds like the 1983 classic film "Wargames", but for this sixteen-year-old boy, who can't be named for legal reasons, it was neither film nor fiction. The hacker, known only as "cOmrade", admitted hacking into computers that support the international space station and intercepting 3,300 emails and passwords from the Pentagon computer system. ...more

New e-minister appointed

The government has appointed Douglas Alexander, MP for Paisley South, as the new e-minister. Alexander replaces Patricia Hewitt, who has been promoted to Trade and Industry secretary. He has a slightly different portfolio to Hewitt, who carried the title minister for e-commerce and small business. ...more

Intel plugs in 50-watt Quad-Core Xeons

With an eye on the increasing power requirements of server-packed data centres, Intel has announced an update to its Xeon server range, with two low-voltage chips. The 50-watt Quad-Core Intel Xeon L5320 and L5310 run at 1.86 GHz and 1. ...more

World's largest computing grid goes live

The world's largest permanent computing grid has gone online, giving scientists access to the processing power of 6,000 computers at 78 locations, including 1,000 at 12 sites across the UK. The Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (LCG) is designed to be big enough to handle the 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data that will be generated each year by the large hadron collider at CERN, Europe's particle physics laboratory In Geneva, Switzerland. By 2007, LCG will be able to generate the processing power of the equivalent of 100,000 of the fastest computers, creating a 'virtual supercomputer' that can be expanded as required. ...more

It's time to surf when the rivers rise

If you are one of the unlucky people who have decided to live in a river, a new Web site might just be able to help you. Reallymoving.com is available for all of you hit by the floods and can provide instant online quotes for cleaning ruined carpets and moving furniture. ...more