Wired: Top Stories (6 unread)
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Geek ChicGallery: Costumes of WonderCon 2008
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 9:30pm EST by Jenna Wortham
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From superheroes to pirate queens, WonderCon attendees love to dress up as characters ripped from the pages of comics and from the silver screen. Wired.com presnnts a gallery of some of the best costumes seen at San Francisco's comics convention.
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Can Apple Patent the Pinch? Experts Say It's Possible
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 9:00pm EST by Bryan Gardiner
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Apple has filed many patent applications relating to multitouch interfaces like that found on the iPhone -- including patents on the "pinch" gesture used to zoom in and out. As other manufacturers bring multitouch devices to market, Apple's patent applications could prove a major stumbling block.
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Microsoft Says It Wouldn't Move All of Yahoo
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 7:00pm EST by Associated Press
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Yahoo shares fall sharply in early trading Monday but are off their lows following the surprise weekend announcement that Microsoft withdrew its $47.5 billion takeover bid.
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Exascale Computing Requires Chips, Power and Money
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 7:00pm EST by Alexis Madrigal
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Scientists at two national laboratories are launching an effort to create new computers capable of completing one million trillion calculations per second.
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Judge Dismisses RIAA Racketeering Lawsuit
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 6:45pm EST by Threat Level
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A legal attack on the Recording Industry Association of America is suffering a setback after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit accusing the recording label's lobbying arm of racketeering. The suit sought to represent "thousands" of individuals the lawyers claim were falsely sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement.
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Gallery: The Hard Science Behind Videogame Technologies
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 3:00pm EST by Alexis Madrigal
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Wired.com takes a look at some of the real-world scientific applications of the latest gaming gear on display at the Game Developers Conference.
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Wild Ideas for Interspecies Gaming
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 2:45pm EST by Game|Life
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Three videogame vets think way outside the box during the Game Design Challenge, pitching concepts for getting dolphins, dogs and bacteria into the game.
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Forumwarz: Hilarious NSFW Satire Skewers Web Culture
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 2:45pm EST by Compiler
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The role-playing game Forumwarz takes an offensive but deadly funny approach to lampooning the poor grammar, childish humor and bad manners of the web's underbelly. Players accumulate points by wreaking havoc on a series of fake websites, insulting others as they go.
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U.S. Spies Want to Find Terrorists in 'World of Warcraft'
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 2:00pm EST by Threat Level
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The nation's intelligence community launches a program to see if it can detect terrorists playing in virtual worlds and games like Second Life and World of Warcraft. The project hopes to study what normal people do in online games in order to later detect people who want to kill for politics, not fun.
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Honey Bees Give Clues on Virus Spread
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 2:00pm EST by Carl Zimmer
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As scientists try to solve the mystery of dying bees, it becomes more and more clear that nature is awesomely complex. Commentary by Carl Zimmer
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Nurture Your Newborn Leopard -- Optimize Mac OS X With Free Software
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 1:45pm EST by How-To Wiki
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Apple's native operating system provides a wealth of helpful applications right out of the box. But by downloading some free software and making a few tweaks to the system, you can make it do so much more. Wired's How-To Wiki shows you everything you need to trick out your Mac.
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Review: M-Audio's MixLab Tutors Aspiring Digital DJs
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 1:30pm EST by Gadget Lab
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M-Audio's MixLab is a perfect start for wannabe DJs: It lets you drag and drop tracks into two virtual on-screen decks. From there, you can take the tunes and run with them.
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Google's Brin Calls Microsoft Bid a Threat to Innovation
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 11:55am EST by Associated Press
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A Microsoft-Yahoo merger would threaten innovation on the internet, says Google cofounder Sergei Brin, who describes the maneuver as "unnerving."
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DNA Testing Confirms Mankind's African Origins
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 10:25am EST by Associated Press
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Anthropology's long-held theory that Africa is our common point of origin appears to be borne out by new DNA sampling from a variety of cultures.
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Appeal Trial Begins for Disgraced Japanese Net Mogul
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 10:15am EST
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Takafumi Horie, the flamboyant former CEO of Livedoor sentenced to 2-1/2 years for defrauding shareholders, will try to avoid actual prison time. Not surprisingly, his attorney says Horie is innocent.
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Computers Are Smart, but They Don't Understand Apostrophes
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 10:05am EST by Associated Press
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It's a common piece of punctuation that continues bedeviling computers well into the information age. The reason? Sloppy programming, mostly.
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EU Skeptical of Microsoft's Promise to Share Technology
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 9:55am EST by Associated Press
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Regulators say the software maker still hasn't addressed past monopolistic practices, and continues bundling Internet Explorer with its Windows OS.
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Bridging the Future: Behind the Scenes at the Bay Bridge Construction
Posted: February 22nd, 2008, 12:00am EST by Autopia
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Take a look up close at the steel and concrete skeleton of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as it's being built. It's one of Caltrans' biggest engineering challenges in decades, featuring a cantilevered design, 5,000 miles of steel strands and 450,000 cubic yards of concrete.