Technology News

San Francisco - Ruby, the popular open source dynamic language, is making headway not only on Java but also on the Windows and Mac platforms.

California's ban on plasma-screen televisions to reduce energy consumption could cost as much as $50 million per year in sales taxes because consumers are free to buy the sets online or in other states. "At a time when the state of California is facing its worst money crisis in history, this is going to be disastrous," said Jennifer Bemisderfer, a spokesperson for the Consumer Electronics Association, which lobbied against the ban.

Two competing approaches to equipping mobile phones with contactless communications capabilities vied for supporters at the Cartes exhibition in Paris this week. Either approach could turn phones into self-service electronic tour guides, travel tickets or secure payment terminals.

Microsoft wants you on Xbox LIVE for the weekend with, of course, a view toward forever, and it's prepared to temporarily waive the cover fee to grab your attention.

San Francisco - Vapor was in the air this week as rumors swirled around two products that exist only as pixels, not molecules: the Google Phone and the Apple Tablet. In its war over 3G ads, AT&T fired back at Verizon (and missed); Twitter got dissed; and Activision dodged a Kalashnikov bullet with its wildly popular Modern Warfare 2. Can you hit the bull's-eye with this week's quiz? Give yourself 10 points for each correct answer. Now: ready, aim ... fire!

BEIJING (AFP) - China has vowed to tighten supervision of its fast-growing online games market, saying some games contained content that was "harmful" to players.

NEW YORK - Moody's Investors Service downgraded ratings for Liberty Media Corp. subsidiary Liberty Media LLC on Friday. The changes come shortly after shareholders approved the formation of a new company out of DirecTV Group Inc. and some of Liberty's entertainment businesses.

JOHNSTON, Iowa - Former U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt pushed Friday for Iowa to expand its focus on public health, arguing the state has the medical infrastructure in place to make it a leader in the field.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Media mogul John Malone said the U.S. No.1 satellite TV operator DirecTV Group is not up for sale in an interview with business cable network CNBC on Friday.

A Seattle computer security consultant says he's developed a new way to exploit a recently disclosed bug in the SSL protocol, used to secure communications on the Internet. The attack, while difficult to execute, could give attackers a very powerful phishing attack.

LONDON - A couple suspected of helping spread some of the Internet's most aggressive computer viruses has been arrested in the English city of Manchester, police said Wednesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Detectives have made the first arrests in Europe to tackle a "trojan" computer virus which is believed to have infected tens of thousands of computers across the world, London police said on Wednesday.

It was a banner week for stupid opinion pieces about Apple. Indeed, the Macalope had a hard time narrowing the field. He did eventually pick two lucky winners, but he’d like to assure all the silly pundits who auditioned that they did horrible, horrible work and even though they didn’t get selected, they should still feel terrible about themselves. Before we wade into the muck, though, who wants to dance…with Microsoft?!

Though you may think us to be iPhone fans all the time, we really do want to root for the underdog. Whether it's Google's Android or Palm's webOS, the smartphone industry could really use a David to the iPhone's Goliath to promote competition and better products all around.

Early last week, Apple released the 10.6.2 update to Snow Leopard loaded mostly with welcome, but unsurprising bug fixes, including a patch for the uncommon but extremely harmful user account deletion bug.

San Francisco - Ruby, the popular open source dynamic language, is making headway not only on Java but also on the Windows and Mac platforms.

The open source version of Google Chrome OS was released on Thursday, and tech wizards didn't waste any time turning the code into a workable test version of the new operating system. If you don't want to wait until next year to see what's going on with Chrome OS, then follow this handy guide to find all the information you need to get the new system up and running on almost any computer.

Not surprisingly, developers have already snapped up the code to Google's open-source Chrome OS, known as Chromium, then compiled it and put it on the Web for users to download.

WASHINGTON - A 20-foot-long crocodile with three sets of fangs — like wild boar tusks — roamed parts of northern Africa millions of years ago, researchers reported Thursday. While this fearsome creature hunted meat, not far away another newly found type of croc with a wide, flat snout like a pancake was fishing for food.

GENEVA - Scientists are preparing the world's largest atom smasher to explore the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs.

WASHINGTON - The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion that could blow up the fragile political coalition behind President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.