Stories about: NASA

After all these years I am willing to admit that Microsoft has won the desktop and server wars. Thanks to VMWare Windows is spreading throughout the datacenter. And, of course, there is only one operating system to use if you are dependent on Microsoft apps like Outlook, Word, and Excel. While I have joined the chorus of security folks who rail against the Microsoft Monoculture I still cannot believe some of the uses for Windows. Some of them are just downright silly, some you may claim are criminally negligent.

A German scientific research institute is using an open-source database running on Linux and x86 hardware to store global seismic activity data and to interpret that data. The purpose is to ensure that countries around the world are in compliance with the terms of the nuclear test ban treaty.

The ice and minerals found using a robotic arm in the Martian soil could make it easier for humans to live on the planet in the not-so-distant future.

Finding more familiar than alien elements, NASA scientists Thursday announced that their initial analysis found that Martian soil could support life.

NASA scientists are eagerly waiting for the first test results to come down from a wet chemistry lab on the Phoenix Mars Lander that Tuesday analysed its first bit of Martian soil.

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Previously we have spoken to Alfred v. Aho of AWK fame, S. Tucker Taft on the Ada 1995 and 2005 revisions, Microsoft about its server-side script engine ASP, and Chet Ramey about his experience maintaining Bash. We have also spoken to Charles H. Moore about Forth. In this interview, we chat to Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame about the design and development of C++, garbage collection and the role of facial hair in successful programming languages.

After a technical glitch and the loss of data last week, NASA engineers and scientists are finally finding what they'd hoped to discover in the latest Mars mission -- signs of elements that could support life.

Artificial intelligence promised us great technology. But has it delivered?

Convolve last week filed a federal lawsuit this week charging that Dell, Western Digital and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies have violated its patents for vibration control techniques in hard drives and PCs.

The release of Intel's 8086 microprocessor in 1978 was a watershed moment for personal computing. The DNA of that chip is likely at the centre of whatever computer--Windows, Mac, or Linux--you're using to read this, and it helped transform Intel from merely one of many chip companies to the world's largest.

A British hacker fighting extradition to the US on computer hacking charges is preparing for his final UK appeal.