Technology

Microsoft says its Windows Phone 7 developer tools have already been downloaded more than 300,000 times. The firm hopes this means there will be plenty of apps available to help the new system compete with rivals such as the iPhone and Android. ... Microsoft confirmed that the final edition of the developer toolkit will be released on September 16th, 2010: a package that should contain everything developers need to make sure their apps work when the phones go on sale. (Source: arstechnica.com ) Thus, we now have the clearest indication yet that phones carrying the new operating system should be ... (view more)

User Account Control (UAC) is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems, with a more refined version also present in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The UAC ... aims to improve the security of Microsoft Windows by limiting application software to standard user privileges until an administrator authorizes an increase or elevation. In this way, only applications trusted by the user may receive administrative privileges, and malware should be kept from compromising the operating system. User Account Control (UAC ... (view more)

Reports from Germany suggest the upcoming Windows Phone 7 system won't support either Adobe Flash or HTML 5. That would severely limit many potential applications and leave some online video inaccessible. Microsoft's Frank Penge made the revelations ... during a press conference in Hamburg. He said there are no concrete plans to support HTML 5 at any time, while Flash support will only appear once Adobe produces a suitable version of the software. It's unclear when the latter will be ready. (Source: winfuture.de ) Flash is a multimedia system that can be used for a variety of interactive tools, ... (view more)

In computing, the kernel is the central component of most computer operating systems; it is a bridge between applications and the actual data processing done at the hardware level. The kernel's responsibilities include managing the system's ... resources (the communication between hardware and software components). Usually as a basic component of an operating system, a kernel can provide the lowest-level abstraction layer for the resources (especially processors and input / output devices) that application software must control to perform its function. Kernel Basic Facilities The kernel's primary ... (view more)

Data mining is the process of extracting patterns from data. Data mining is becoming an increasingly important tool to transform otherwise abstract data into useable information. It is commonly used in a wide range of profiling practices, such as ... marketing, surveillance, fraud detection and scientific discovery. Data mining can be used to uncover patterns in data but is often carried out only on samples of data. The mining process will be ineffective if the samples are not a good representation of the larger body of data. Data mining cannot discover patterns that may be present in the larger ... (view more)

Business users may love their BlackBerry smartphones, but governments in the Middle East are not so keen. Three countries have issued different degrees of bans on the devices' functions. The biggest conflict comes in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), ... where officials there accuse the device of breaching local laws on data security. The problem is that messages sent on a BlackBerry are encrypted and immediately sent to servers in Canada for processing and storage. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The UAE frowns upon such activity because it demands the ... (view more)

When software is developed, it goes through a number of stages before it is officially released to the public. This document briefly explains this process. Software Release Development Life Cycles Pre-Alpha (Development) Pre-alpha refers to all ... activities performed during the software project prior to testing. These activities can include requirements analysis, software design, software development and unit testing. Pre-alpha software is rarely ever released to the public. Alpha (Developer Testing) The alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin Software testing. In this ... (view more)

In computer security, "sandboxing" is a security term used to describe the separation of running programs on an operating system. A sandbox, as it is also referred to, is often used to execute untested computer programs to ensure that they do not ... overstep their boundaries and cause harm to the system. The sandbox typically provides a tightly-controlled set of resources for guest programs to run in, such as scratch space on disk and memory. Network access and the ability to inspect the host system or read from input devices are usually disallowed or heavily restricted. In this sense, sandboxes ... (view more)

In mathematics and computer science, an 'algorithm' is an effective method for solving a problem expressed as a finite sequence of instructions. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and many other fields. Each algorithm is a list of ... well-defined instructions for completing a task. Starting from an initial state, the instructions describe a computation that proceeds through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in a final ending state. Expressing algorithms Algorithms can be expressed in many kinds of notation, including natural languages, ... (view more)

In computer terminology, a honeypot is a trap set to detect, deflect, or in some manner counteract attempts at unauthorized use of information systems. Generally it consists of a computer, data, or a network site that appears to be part of a ... network, but is actually isolated, (un)protected, and monitored, and which seems to contain information or a resource of value to attackers. Honeypot Function A honeypot is valuable as a surveillance and early-warning tool. While it is often a computer, a honeypot can take other forms, such as files or data records, or even unused IP address space. ... (view more)