Stories about: Quantum

Hyper-V is finally here -- almost. With the recent delivery of Release Candidate 1, Microsoft is shifting from major engineering operations mode to cross-the-i's-and-dot-the-t's mode. The majority of the Hyper-V bits, including an ever-expanding list of supported guest operating systems, are now in place, and Microsoft customers can start migrating their test VMs into preproduction and production roles with a fair degree of confidence.

It's impossible to look at the x86 family of microprocessors without wondering if, after three decades of dominance, the architecture might be running out of steam. Intel, naturally, says the x86 still has legs, while hastening to add that its battles with competing architectures are far from over.

Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a technique that could make quantum cryptography significantly cheaper to implement, moving it nearer to possible commercial acceptance.

If IT security professionals think they have challenges now, they should wait until new technologies such as quantum computing and devices embedded in skin arrive in the not-so-distant future, three science-fiction writers said Monday.

The late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke famously said that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

CodeGear, the development tools unit of Borland Software, has been acquired by Embarcadero Technologies.

Silicon Valley's latest computer was recently unveiled, but the entrepreneur who designed it was unable to attend.

When Craig Urizzola's company decided to make a seven-figure investment in a new ERP system, he contacted his local reseller to order hardware to run it on. "We told them exactly what we wanted and said, 'We don't need SANs or clustering or any of that,'" says Urizzola, CIO at Saladino's, a food service distributor in Fresno, Calif. "But their proposal came back with SANs and 10 more servers than we asked for. They just don't listen."

Some enterprises have found ways to ensure their technology investments provide both environmental benefit and a quick return on investment.

Will Windows XP still be properly supported by Microsoft and, as a primary development target, by third parties? Is there something XP die-hards have missed, some hidden gotcha that's going to trip them up 12, 18, or 24 months from now?

While universities don't tend to shout as loudly about their latest tech innovations as do Google, Cisco and other big vendors, their results are no less impressive in what they could mean for faster, more secure and more useful networking. Here's a roundup, in no particular order, of some of the most amazing and colorful projects in the works.