How much is too much? Upgrade your notebook without going over the line

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE / more stories...

Oracle still top dog in tough database market
Research firm IDC reports that Oracle holds the database market lead, with a 44% share.

Algorithm determines 'ideal' VP candidates for Obama, McCain
A U.S. company, Affinnova, has used technology developed at MIT to determine the best vice presidential picks for Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain in this year's presidential election. Ironically, the same person topped both lists.

CAREERS / more stories...

Former Newark IT contractor pleads guilty to defrauding Cisco
A third-party IT contractor for the city of Newark has pleaded guilty to illegally reselling technology from Cisco.

Former HP VP charged with stealing IBM trade secrets
A former Hewlett-Packard vice president has been changed in federal court with stealing confidential information from a previous employer, IBM.

DEVELOPMENT / more stories...

OLPC tries to bridge gap with developer community
There's a big ideological gap between developers, who espouse the XO laptop as a watershed open-source project, and One Laptop Per Child, which wants to sell more cheap PCs, one observer says, and now OLPC is trying to mend fences.

Ex-NASA engineer gets 5 years in child porn case
A former NASA engineer was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $25,000 after pleading guilty to downloading child pornography on to his government computer.

HARDWARE / more stories...

Apple cuts price of high-end SSD MacBook Air by $500
Apple on Thursday quietly reduced the price of its most expensive laptop by $500, dropping the cost of the upper-end MacBook Air to $2,598.

OLPC tries to bridge gap with developer community
There's a big ideological gap between developers, who espouse the XO laptop as a watershed open-source project, and One Laptop Per Child, which wants to sell more cheap PCs, one observer says, and now OLPC is trying to mend fences.

GOVERNMENT / more stories...

Former Newark IT contractor pleads guilty to defrauding Cisco
A third-party IT contractor for the city of Newark has pleaded guilty to illegally reselling technology from Cisco.

Judge orders YouTube to expose user viewing habits and history
A federal judge has ordered Google's YouTube business to turn over its logging database to Viacom as part of the latter's $1 billion lawsuit against the video-sharing Web site.

MANAGEMENT / more stories...

Google bows to pressure, adds 'Privacy' link to home page

Nvidia reports problem with laptop chips
Nvidia said it will take a one-time charge to cover costs related to repair of defective GPUs used in notebooks.

MOBILE & WIRELESS / more stories...

Apple cuts price of high-end SSD MacBook Air by $500
Apple on Thursday quietly reduced the price of its most expensive laptop by $500, dropping the cost of the upper-end MacBook Air to $2,598.

A tale of two city Wi-Fi's
Different approaches to wireless Internet access in San Francisco and neighboring Silicon Valley are producing very different results, with one project springing up around the city and the other inching through regulatory procedures.

NETWORKING & INTERNET / more stories...

How to banish the 'blah blog' blues with WordPress
Tired of toying with the puny tools that cookie-cutter blog services provide? Follow the steps in this easy guide to install a WordPress blog on your domain and personalize your Web presence.

A tale of two city Wi-Fi's
Different approaches to wireless Internet access in San Francisco and neighboring Silicon Valley are producing very different results, with one project springing up around the city and the other inching through regulatory procedures.

OPERATING SYSTEMS / more stories...

Apple cuts price of high-end SSD MacBook Air by $500
Apple on Thursday quietly reduced the price of its most expensive laptop by $500, dropping the cost of the upper-end MacBook Air to $2,598.

Microsoft promises four patches next week
The upcoming Patch Tuesday collection has no critical-level entries, according to Microsoft information released Thursday afternoon.

SECURITY / more stories...

Lithuania: Attacks focused on hosting company

Google gives away home-cooked Web application security scanner
An in-house tool for testing Web-apps security at Google is now available for free download under the Apache 2.0 software license.

SERVERS & DATA CENTER / more stories...

Energy Star for servers may be ready by year's end, EPA says
The EPA said an Energy Star rating for servers could be ready by the end of the year, although the amount of information it offers will be limited at first.

Q&A: E-voting activist more optimistic about voting systems
E-voting activist Avi Rubin says voting systems around the U.S. have improved since the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, noting that more states are using paper records as a backup to electronic voting systems.

SOFTWARE / more stories...

How to banish the 'blah blog' blues with WordPress
Tired of toying with the puny tools that cookie-cutter blog services provide? Follow the steps in this easy guide to install a WordPress blog on your domain and personalize your Web presence.

Google gives away home-cooked Web application security scanner
An in-house tool for testing Web-apps security at Google is now available for free download under the Apache 2.0 software license.

STORAGE / more stories...

Q&A: E-voting activist more optimistic about voting systems
E-voting activist Avi Rubin says voting systems around the U.S. have improved since the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, noting that more states are using paper records as a backup to electronic voting systems.

Unstructured data at risk in most firms, survey finds
A survey of IT managers by Ponemon Institute found that companies are having increasing difficulty maintaining control of rapidly growing unstructured data files.