Distributed computing hasn't folded us a cure for cancer yet, but these projects in which PC users donate their spare processing power to solve scientific problems have unquestionably made major strides in uncovering ridiculously large prime numbers.…

An American psychologist has invented a new form of wiki in which every word is directly linked to its author. He believes the so-called "mememoir"* project will "revolutionize publishing in all of science".…

Poll It must be the longest and most public job application in history. The Democrats' presidential candidate Barack Obama wants to create a new post of "Chief Technology Officer" in the Federal bureaucracy - and Lawrence Lessig wants the job.…

Updated Cybercrooks are targeting self-service checkout systems in UK supermarkets to cash-out compromised US credit and debit card accounts.…

An exhibition designed to show off the whizzy high-tech futurescape of biometric identity has succumbed to a bout of very contemporary gremlins, by emailing dozens of fingerprints and iris scans to the wrong people.…

The IEEE has formally approved 802.11r, the amendment to the Wi-Fi standard that allows devices to smoothly transition between Wi-Fi hotspots without breaking the flow of conversation.…

IFA An intrepid Reg Hardware hack was this morning stopped from looking around MSI's stand at the consumer electronics show IFA, in Berlin. The uniformed gents he mistook for overly officious security guards were in fact German Customs officers investigating claims of patent infringement.…

IFA Garmin has confirmed that the Nuvi Fone will be launched between January and April next year.…

A high-efficiency plasma drive designed for faster interplanetary journeys may be lifted into space by a privately-developed launcher. The candidates for the job include PayPal zillionaire Elon Musk's Falcon 9 rocket.…

Google has done a swift about-face and decided to allow code released under the Mozilla Public Licence (MPL) into its Google Code silo, just a month after it was judged redundant and banned.…

EMC has set out to rubbish its competition on storage capacity efficiency and claimed its new CX4 array is much more efficient than HP and NetApp arrays.…

The Network Neutrality pigeons are coming home to roost, with Comcast formally announcing a British-style capping regime.…

The technical forums for Oracle's entire software and services catalogue - a support and collaboration resource for thousands worldwide - have been down for two-days.…

Qualcomm is planning to appeal after a court found it in breach of an injunction related to infringements of Broadcom patents.…

IFA Sony Ericsson has blamed the Xperia X1’s no-show on problems with the phone’s operating system.…

Microsoft is splashing nearly $500m in cash on a price comparison and survey company, most of which it is going to immediately sell on.…

Windows XP fans who have installed Service Pack 3 (SP3) after downloading Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) beta 1 won’t be able to downgrade their browser if they subsequently install IE8 beta 2.…

Hackers can force your browser to send requests to any site they want. It's not even hard - all they have to do is get you to view an email or a web page.…

The use by spammers of dictionary attacks means those whose email address begins with a less common first character are liable to get less spam.…

Good news today for people who like flying cars or flying robots, but clouds on the horizon for professional pilots and air-traffic controllers. Trials by US aerospace colossus Lockheed have shown that lightweight, distributed, automated systems can easily deconflict pilotless aircraft operating in crowded airspace.…

Comment In March, Microsoft announced that their upcoming Internet Explorer 8 would: "use its most standards compliant mode, IE8 Standards, as the default."…

Review 2008 has been the year of the small, cheap gadget. Sadly, the standard bearers of the new breed of pocket video cams, the Flip Ultra and Creative's Vado, maybe be small but they're also overpriced.…

IFA If you’ve got the wall space to spare, then perhaps you’ll be attracted by the world’s largest TV - which also features a resolution four times better than crummy old full HD.…

Intellectual property laws which were designed to protect inventors are actually stifling innovation, according to a leading US law academic.…

NSFW Our shock exposé earlier this week of the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard poster campaign outrage promoted a provocative call to Vulture Central from one "Barnacle Bill", who claimed to have been party to the original promotion brainstorm which eventually led to the rather unfortunately accurate depiction of seafaring life back in the days of the tall ships:…