cyberspace

The Internet finally seems to be as popular as TV, according to a study released yesterday by Forrester.

Based on a survey, the research firm's report found that people in the U.S. on average spend around 13 hours a week online, the same amount of time they spend watching TV.

As usual, the results vary by age. People ages 18 to 30 have been spending more time on the Internet than watching TV for awhile. But this marks the first Forrester study in which folks in the 32 to 44 group also are online more than they are … Read more

If the U.S. were hit by a severe cyberattack, would you want the president to be able to control or even shut down portions of the Internet?

A majority 61 percent of Americans polled by Unisys for a new security study believes the president should have the power to control or effectively "kill" portions of the Internet if key U.S. systems (military, financial, electrical) were hit by a malicious cyberattack from a foreign government.

These findings from the latest biannual Unisys Security Index suggest that the public may support a pending cybersecurity bill that would give … Read more

The White House is hoping to come up with a comprehensive strategy to better protect people in cyberspace and is asking the public for help.

Releasing a draft of the potential new National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (PDF) last Friday, the government is aiming to set up a system that would let people voluntarily create trusted identities to use in online transactions.

The goal, as described in a blog post by White House cybersecurity chief Howard Schmidt, is to secure and protect transactions in cyberspace through use of a special ID--a smart card or digital certificate--that would prove … Read more

How much time do you spend online each week? If you're an average Net user, a new poll shows, it's around 13 hours--excluding e-mail.

The Harris Interactive poll, released Wednesday, found that 80 percent of U.S. adults go online, whether at home, work, or elsewhere. Those who surf the Net spend an average of 13 hours per week online, but that figure varies widely. Twenty percent are online for two hours or less a week, while 14 percent are there for 24 hours or more.

The average number of hours that people spend online each week has … Read more

Radio Shack, as we mentioned yesterday, is changing to The Shack. But a good restaurant in Connecticut is also called The Shack and has pie. Radio Shack does not have pie. They lose. We also talk about Google dropping search share and the rumored new PS3.

Buzz Out Loud interviews Aneesh Chopra, Obama's Chief Technology Officer http://www.cnet.com/8301-19709_1-10302978-10.html

Google search share drops as Bing gains momentum http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/bing-continues-to-chip-away-at-googles-search-share.ars

Misunderstandings abound … Read more

On Wednesday, HBGary announced that Andy Purdy has joined their advisory board.

Purdy, while a member of the White House, co-drafted the 2003 edition of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, then joined the Department of Homeland Security. There, he served on the tiger team that helped to form the National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). He went to head both organizations and was dubbed by the media as the "cyberczar" of the United States until DHS appointed Greg Garcia as assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications.

In 2006, Purdy … Read more

We're constantly imitating nature.

Artificial intelligence researchers study the way babies learn to right themselves after falling down to help train robots to behave similarly.

We're still learning new things about flight dynamics and wing design from butterflies and other animals.

If you've ever carefully tiptoed across the floor to keep from disturbing someone, you're mimicking how a deer walks to avoid alerting predators to its presence.

Okay, that one's a stretch, but if you've ever watched a deer do this, it sure seems like one heck of a coincidence.

In any case, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It's also how modern science works - creating models for simple structures in order to approximate the real world. When we succeed, we learn; when we fail, we learn more. It's a painstaking process of trial and error called the scientific method.

Every year the biotechnology industry comes one step closer to learning how to cure our ills and extend the human lifespan. We have further to go than we've come, to be sure, but getting here was no easy trick. After all, biotech research is attempting nothing short of unveiling the secrets of life.

Why am I telling you all this? Because, this is the same thought process that changed my opinion about Second Life being over-hyped - an opinion many of you have recently expressed.… Read more

Speaking before a standing-room-only crowd at Stacey's Bookstore in San Francisco on Wednesday, William Gibson, the man generally credited with coining the term "cyberspace" in 1982, said the prefix cyber is going away. He said "it's going away like the word 'electro' or 'electra' was used to modify products." He also said the word "digital" is rapidly becoming obsolete as well.

Gibson is on tour for his new, present-day novel Spook Country. The book includes high-tech international terrorism among its many threaded plots. He also makes fun of the word cyberspace within … Read more