COMPUTERS
COMPUTERS 
January 29, 2019 Computers and authority: Defeatism, enemy of freedom
Fighting a battle when the odds are against you requires a lot of courage and a strong moral conviction. These attributes perhaps best describe Dr Richard M. Stallman (RMS to fellow programmers) for whom computing freedom is non-negotiable. A pioneer in the field of computing, Stallman could see how computing would be used to control […]
COMPUTERS January 27, 2019 Computers and authority
Computational sovereignty is a concept that applies to governments, especially to countries. A country’s government should be sovereign. It should make decisions about that country in accord with the people that it serves. A legitimate government has to be democratic. If it is not democratic it shouldn’t continue to be the government. But if the […]
COMPUTERS January 25, 2019 Photographing computers to show the art inside the black box
What computers mean to us depends largely on what we bring to them. Our expectations, our past experience, the dreams and myths that surround them, their physical characteristics—all these aspects resonate on multiple, often overlapping levels. One level is aesthetic. Many nonspecialists in the computer arts enjoy these machines for their visual appeal and curiosity. […]
COMPUTERS January 23, 2019 Rush to fix computers in England’s courts
The Ministry of Justice is rushing to fix IT issues affecting courts across England. Lawyers say trials have been delayed, jurors are unable to enrol and witness statements are inaccessible. Twitter user @BarristerSecret said the “entire digital infrastructure” of courts had been “broken for days”. The Common Platform, a system shared between the police, the […]
COMPUTERS January 16, 2019 New partnership teaches community how to use computers
A new partnership has been announced to teach folks how to use a computer! About 11% of Americans do not have access to the internet according to a study conducted in 2018 by Pew research. This is particularly problematic here in the County, as it causes folks to fall behind in our digital age. To […]
COMPUTERS January 14, 2019 Government’s new snoop order on computers: SC issues notice
New Delhi, Jan 14: The Supreme Court has issued notices to the Union Government among others on a petition that challenged the decision authorising 10 agencies to monitor, decrypt any computer. The petition filed by advocate, M L Sharma challenged the validity of the order was passed by the Ministry for Home Affairs last week. The […]
COMPUTERS December 9, 2018 Snapdragon 8cx Is Qualcomm’s Latest Chip for Always-On, Always-Connected Windows 10 Machines
Qualcomm, the biggest supplier of chips for mobile phones, on Thursday pushed further into the PC market with a line of chips designed to power business machines. Qualcomm’s “Snapdragon” processor chips historically have been at the heart of mobile phones like Alphabet’s Google Pixel phone and many Samsung Electronics Co devices. Over the past year, though, Qualcomm […]
COMPUTERS December 3, 2018 US Senate computers will use disk encryption
The US Senate will enable disk encryption on all Senate computers as a basic security measure that will make it harder for spies or criminals to extract sensitive data from stolen Senate staff PCs or hard drives. The decision was taken last month by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which instructed the Senate […]
COMPUTERS December 2, 2018 Indian Police Break Up International Computer Virus Scam
Police said Thursday that they have arrested nearly two dozen people on suspicion of defrauding people around the world by sending fake pop-up messages warning them that their computers were infected with a virus and offering to rectify the problem at a price. UP police officer Ajay Pal Sharma said those arrested Tuesday and Wednesday […]
October 28, 2018 Machine Learning and Big Data in the Quantum Computing Age
In the information technology age, on an average 2.5 exabytes of data is produced every day, which is equivalent to the content of 5 million laptops. Humongous isn’t it? Here is more, on a daily basis, every minute 3.2 billion global internet users add massive data to the data banks with 347,222 Tweets, 4.2 million Facebook likes, 9,722 […]
COMPUTERS October 27, 2018 Understanding quantum computers: The noise problem
Quantum computers are fragile miracles of physics that are unreliable, cost-prohibitive, and more error-prone than a shortstop with no depth perception. But, if we ever want to get to Star Trek levels of technology, we probably need them. To make them useful we have to make them reliable. And that’s a pretty tall order. The […]
COMPUTERS October 26, 2018 Opinion | Catch a quantum computer and pin it down
Urmila Mahadev has a soft voice with slightly nasal inflections, rounding out what we in India would have no hesitation in describing as a “generic American accent”. With gadgets in each hand controlling her presentation and her microphone, she speaks for an hour and she speaks in English and yet I fully grasp only parts […]
