Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Rupert started off as a nerdy lad expecting to be an electronics engineer, but having tried it for a while discovered that journalism was more fun. He ended up on PC Magazine in the early '90s, before that evolved into ZDNet UK - and Rupert evolved with them into an online journalist.
It was a time before the GUI, when computers were micros, when memory was measured in kilobytes and storage strategy meant choosing whether to buy a second five and a quarter inch floppy drive. It was eleven days before the launch of the Apple Macintosh.
January. Not so much a month as 31 days of post-party comedown, where every pleasure is circumscribed by resolution and, let's be frank, those long, empty, fiscally-fraught acres of calendar between now and payday.
My phone was back and the battle almost won.All that remained was to run the software that gave me root access to the kernel — which took about five minutes, four minutes longer than it should due to me mistaking it for an Android app instead of the Windows executable it really was — and to actually perform the exorcisms of silence and sanity in the name of which I'd gone through all of the above.
ERR indeed.The phone had gone to its own Valhalla.
Having decided to take control of my Samsung Galaxy S II by installing new system software, I needed to know two things: what and how. Start by asking Google about "rooting Samsung Galaxy S2" — it doesn't really matter what the topic is these days, the basic skill you need in making a good start is framing the right Google query.
The festive break presents the technically inclined with challenge and opportunity. The challenge is that petty annoyances with wayward IT can seem much more significant during those long winter days where normal work is absent.
It's 600 light years away, twice the size of Earth and has the unassuming name of Kepler-22b. But Nasa says that the planet is the first we've found, apart from our own, that could have liquid water on its surface — in other words, it orbits its star in a habitable zone.
OK, it's not much of a calamity. But when you want to be seen as leading a government intent on making the internet a safer place, heading up global cybersecurity and locking down the nation's digital jewels, it's a bit bad to be the agent of — oh, I don't know — encouraging attacks on VIP laptops.
Researchers at Columbia University have said they have uncovered a major security flaw in printers that could lead to data theft, vandalism or even a risk of fire.They say that the vulnerability, which involves rogue firmware updates that reprogram the printers and take control, could affect millions of devices already installed, that there is no easy fix, and no way to tell if it's already been exploited.
Graphene is getting some decent press at last. Its Nobel prize winning discovery has quickly mutated into an entire field of enquiry, as the material's unique electrical, mechanical and inspirational qualities are explored and put to work.