Far from turning teenagers into anti-social loners, video games help them engage with friends and community, says a report.

The Pew Internet study of US teenagers found that few play alone and most join up with friends when gaming.

It found that many used educational games to learn about world issues and to begin to engage with politics.

The report also found that gaming had become an almost universal pastime among young Americans.

Community chance

The survey of 1,102 teenagers aged 12-17 revealed that 99% of boys and 94% of girls across the socio-economic spectrum play some kind of computer or video game.

The most popular title was Guitar Hero, followed by Halo 3, Madden NFL, Solitaire, and Dance Dance Revolution.

continue

A computer virus is alive and well on the International Space Station (ISS).

Nasa has confirmed that laptops carried to the ISS in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG.

The worm was first detected on Earth in August 2007 and lurks on infected machines waiting to steal login names for popular online games.

Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected.

Orbital outbreak

Space news website SpaceRef broke the story about the virus on the laptops that astronauts took to the ISS.

Nasa told SpaceRef that no command or control systems of the ISS were at risk from the malicious program.

continue

Present era requires expertise in the field of Information Technology (IT),’ The Acting Governor of Sindh, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said this in the inauguration of the AR Saleh Mohammad Computer Learning Centre. The Centre at the AR Saleh Mohammad Government Model Primary/Secondary School in Lyari has been established by a social welfare project of the Kalia Group called Ko-Ordination Group (KRG).

continue

New ways of analyzing fingerprints could tell investigators much more than what the ridges of a criminal’s digits look like. Scientists say new techniques can identify whether the print’s owner had recently handled materials like drugs or explosives. They can even sometimes figure out the person’s approximate age based on the effects of atomic weapons testing in the 1950s.

Scientists have found ways to tease even more clues out of fingerprints’ telltale marks — one in a string of developments that gives modern forensics even better ways to solve mysteries like the anthrax attacks or JonBenet Ramsey’s murder.

continue

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Struggling to climb back to profitability, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. suffered another setback Friday when the chip maker disclosed that two businesses it acquired in a pricey acquisition were underperforming.

AMD said the businesses’ values would have to be reduced by $880 million. It’s the second time AMD has had to slash the value of businesses it absorbed as part of its pricey — and controversial — acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI Technologies Inc.
continue

KARACHI: Nokia on Monday gave an overview and highlighted features of its latest devices likely to be launched later this year in the local markets. At a press briefing held at a local hotel, country manager Nokia Imran Khalid Mehmood and product manager Khuram Pradhan were present. The Nokia N78 - a latest model of N series was prominently highlighted.

continue

TOKYO: A new computer language that will allow for the instant slicing and dicing of financial data will be put to the test in Japan. Brokers, investors and companies everywhere should pay notice or risk falling behind.

Starting next month, Japanese companies will begin reporting their earnings in a language known as XBRL, the first time it will be used in filing results and forecasts in real time.

continue

Size isn’t everything: Power efficiency becomes major factor in new builds. Proving that size isn’t everything, the Top500 List of supercomputers for the first time is looking at power efficiency.

With the IT industry increasingly looking at growing electric bills and calls for greener machines, the world’s most powerful and largest systems are under scrutiny. The latest edition of the twice yearly Top500 List of supercomputers was unveiled today at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany. At the same time, the list authors also provided energy-efficiency calculations for many of the computers on the list.

continue

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer on Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise.

The technology breakthrough was accomplished by engineers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the IBM Corp. on a computer to be used primarily on nuclear weapons work, including simulating nuclear explosions.

continue

IF YOU thought it was hard finding the email address that some other john.smith hasn’t already bagged, that’s nothing compared with the difficulty you’ll have getting an internet connection for your computer after 2011.

As of this month 85 per cent of the 4.3 billion available Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which identify devices connected to the net, are already in use. Within three years they will all be used up, according to a report by the OECD. “The situation is critical for the future of the internet economy,” it says.

continue

Unwanted PCs are ending up in massive toxic dumps in West Africa

Hidden Flow: The rising tide of European e-waste, from Danwatch

From our “In case you missed it” department, today’s paper has a piece by Richard Wray on Breeding toxins from dead PCs. Briefly:

Thousands of discarded computers from western Europe and the US arrive in the ports of west Africa every day, ending up in massive toxic dumps where children burn and pull them apart to extract metals for cash.

Read the rest of this entry »

ISLAMABAD (April 28 2008): A computer that can interact with humans and react to their non-verbal gestures is being developed by a European team. Known as SEMAINE, the project will build a sensitive artificial listener (SAL) system, which will perceive user’s facial expression, gaze, and voice and then engage with the user, BBC radio reported.

When engaging with a human, the sensitive artificial listener will be able to adapt its own performance and pursue different actions, depending on the non-verbal behaviour of the user.

continue