NASA will delay the launch of its nuclear-powered robotic tank to the surface of Mars by two years because of unresolved technical issues.

The military has always had better security than we can get on our computers, and Green Hills Software, a provider of a real-time, secure operating system called Integrity, wants to change that. To that end, the company has spun its Integrity operating system into a wholly owned subsidiary called Integrity Global Security and has set it loose with the job of becoming a kind of security abstraction layer for Windows, Linux, and Solaris guest operating systems on x64 iron.

Vahid Manian, a board director of SSD supplier STEC, has been sacked by employer Broadcom after it was found that he may have conjured academic qualifications out of thin air.

According to the dictionary on my computer, the origin of the word ‘architect’ is from the Greek: specifically, from arkhi, which means ‘chief’ and tektōn, which means ‘builder’. That sounds like a pretty good start for understanding the role of the architect in IT; the trouble is, in practice things appear to unravel pretty quickly.

UpdateHP is shortly to launch a 300GB 2.5-inch hard drive claiming it will have "more storage capacity than any other SFF drive in the market." Both Fujitsu and Seagate's have 300GB 2.5-inch drives already. What's going on?

The government's proposals to increase data sharing between departments will be buried in the Coroners and Justice Bill - which is expected to be presented to the House of Commons today.

ReviewIs there any real reason why a Walkman phone shouldn’t have a top spec camera like a Cyber-shot phone? With the W902, its first 5-megapixel camera-packing Walkman mobile, Sony Ericsson is attempting to address this often-asked question.

Customs is warning shoppers looking for bargains this Christmas not to be fooled into buying fake Nintendo DS and DS Lite machines.

NASA has announced that the space shuttle Atlantis's STS-125 mission to the Hubble Space Telescope will finally blast off on 12 May next year.

Aboxalypse nowForget global warming - HP is well on its way to thoroughly trashing the planet by dispatching kit in the biggest box it can lay its hands on, as witnessed by our previous shock coverage of packaging outrages here, here and here.

Logitech has shat all over those plastic Guitar Hero frets with the launch of a gaming axe that looks and handles like the real thing - because most of it actually is.

Boffins at MIT say they have cracked some tricky problems in the design of power stations running on nuclear fusion, though they hasten to add that many more hurdles remain before fusion energy becomes a reality.

Microsoft has hired a senior ex-Yahooer to run its loss-making internet search and advertising business.

A second beta release of Firefox 3.1 is on the starting blocks, with the publication of an almost ready version of the latest edition of the open source browser due in days. A third beta is expected before Mozilla ships a final version of the software next year.

'Leccy TechElectric cars sales have tanked in the UK. A mere 156 EVs were sold between January and October 2008, compared to 347 in the same period in 2007 - a drop of 58 per cent. To deepen the gloom, the Nice Car Company has gone into administration.

Brussels has invited a senior Google lawyer and lobbyist to join a new quango to help it decide the future of European data protection legislation.

A Colorado man who allegedly made anonymous postings on a Craigslist forum attacking his former girlfriend faces two criminal libel raps with a maximum tariff of 18 months' jail, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The first Acer-branded smartphone will be launched in the first quarter of 2009, it has emerged.

The South Korean government wants its games industry to become a force to be reckoned with. So it’s promised to pump hundreds of millions of Won into the sector over the coming years.

VidThe US Missile Defence Agency and American aerospace behemoth Lockheed is chuffed to announce that they have carried out successful hover tests of a Multiple Kill Vehicle space interceptor system this week.

Episode 39

ReviewRIM’s first BlackBerry to feature a touchscreen has been eagerly awaited for some time now, and after all the hype, you’d have thought it would have made a much better job of it.

Armed robbers yesterday made off with "at least" £70m (€80m, $102m) in jewels after storming the prestigious Harry Winston store near Paris's Champs-Elysee and relieving the shop of pretty well all its stock.

Supermarket-PC vendor Medion has blasted the wraps off the Akoya P8610 desktop replacement notebook, which features a Blu-ray drive and surround sound technology.

Social networking fanatics can now get their online fix when they're out and about, because 3 today began selling the INQ1 Facebook phone.

Hitachi Data Systems has a new Storage Economics software tool to make its expensive kit become more affordable. It's a dashboard backed by a spreadsheet showing CAPEX, OPEX and other savings from using HDS kit - good enough to have gained HDS a four-year storage migration deal with Norwich Union.

The 1976 screenplay for Warhead, a planned 007 outing penned by Sir Sean Connery, author Len Deighton and producer Kevin McClory, has sold at auction for £46,850, the BBC reports.

Do you remember when the internet was supposed to "empower" new businesses, sweep away cartels and monopolies, and give a voice to the little guy? Well, unless you view increasing concentrations of power as a good thing, this week has been a bad one for the music economy.

Wii Sports helps burn fat - until you put the controller down. But a new gaming gadget will force you to keep fit by keeping itself in control.

Businesses love the idea of cranking up productivity levels. It means they earn more per unit of expenditure. At least, that's the theory. The trouble is that people get in the way.

The internet's TCP/IP protocol doesn't work very well. As the internet's traffic cop, it's supposed to prevent applications from overloading the network, but it's at a loss when it comes to managing P2P applications. This deficiency, generally known to network engineers but denied by net neutrality advocates, has been a central issue in the net neutrality debate. BitTorrent Inc has now weighed in on the side of the TCP/IP critics.

Home secretary Jacqui Smith has told Parliament that she wants police forces to introduce handheld devices quickly and to increase collaboration on IT.

Google's model of pimping out words used in searches comes to SMS messaging with a new service from Wadja, one that allows advertisers to sponsor specific words in text messages sent by members.

The Ministry of Justice has hauled in EDS for what promises to be a lively discussion about the future of the prisoner record programme.

Graphics card maker HIS has warned punters off of netbooks bearing its brand - it didn't make them.

Ofcom has opened a second consultation on increasing the amount that BT Openreach, the company that manages the UK's telephony infrastructure, can charge for access to phone lines.

American weaponry researchers have awarded a $21m contract for the design and development of a 150-kilowatt energy weapon, high-powered enough to blast missiles out of the sky yet light enough to be carried by a jet fighter.

A video sharing website user who posted a clip of a man apparently swinging a baby around has had his house raided by an armed Australian police anti-paedophile squad.

Less than one quarter of people with web-capable handsets actually make use of mobile internet services, it has been claimed.

Konami has offered a glimmer of hope to Xbox 360 gamers who’ve cried into their pillows because Metal Gear Solid 4 is a PlayStation 3 exclusive.

Not only has the economy in the United States shed 533,000 jobs in November, but the US Department of Labor, whose Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report just before Wall Street opened this morning, now says many more jobs were cut in September and October than originally thought.

In 1993, meat space bookseller Barnes & Noble started offering Starbucks coffee to augment customers' shopping experience. Not to be outdone, the Internet's largest bookseller has finally answered.

EMC is responding to the deepening recession by laying off a small number of employees from around the company.

Thanks to Macworld's iPhone Central, we learn today that Apple has purchased full-page ads in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that include the news - in small print at the bottom of the ads - that the iTunes App Store has now distributed "over 300 million" iPhone apps from a total of "over 10,000" titles available.

Welsh police have arrested two Nottinghamshire people over last month's leak of the BNP membership list to the internet.

A few weeks ago, IBM offered customers using its AIX variants of its Power5, Power5+, and Power6 machines discounts on processor activations for installed iron and offered customers with Power5 and Power5+ machines in the System p 590 and 595 machines discounts.

Researchers have identified a new trojan that can tamper with a wide array of devices on a local network, an exploit that sends them to impostor websites even if they are hardened machines that are fully patched or run non-Windows operating systems.

Bazillionare investor Carl Icahn has held talks with Microsoft over the purchase of Yahoo!'s search business, according to a regulatory filing.

Red Hat's long-delayed final release of JBoss Application Server 5.0 for the Java Enterprise Edition 5 codebase has arrived.

Citing "volatile economic conditions," Google has backed out of a $4.7 million grant that would have greased the expansion of its worldwide data center empire into the sleepy town of Lenoir, North Carolina.

Apple's XServe RAID may have given up the ghost, but now there's a new option for storage-hungry Mac shops.

Microsoft is preparing eight patches - six of which cover critical vulnerabilities - for next Tuesday as part the last edition this year of its monthly Patch Tuesday update cycle.

A British surgeon has performed an arm amputation on a 16 year-old boy, using instructions sent to him by text message.