All Blog Posts from Tech Talk

Most everyone in tech agrees: lasers are cool. These days a red laser pen is sort of 2003. A green laser pen is very 2007. ThinkGeek has blue laser pens for 2008 costing about $900 each. But what would you pay for a laser that when turned on -- even for a fraction of a second -- is 2,000 times more powerful than all the power plants in the U.S.? Does $7 million seem reasonable? You can read more about the work being done at Unveristy of Texas at Austin here.

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Working late tonight as we finish a segment for tomorrow's Early Show. The story is pretty alarming, especially for people with a certain type of epilepsy. According to the Epilepsy Foundation, within the last two weeks hackers broke into its site and planted flashing pornographic images and patterns on some message boards that were clearly designed to trigger headaches or seizures with people who have photosensitive epilepsy. It's a type of epilepsy experienced by about 3-5% of people with the condition. And it may be the first computer attack solely designed to cause physical harm.

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Botnets. You may not have heard of them, but their invisible nature makes them all the more dangerous. And you may already be both a victim and an accomplice in a botnet operation. Because everything in the high-tech world needs an acronym or abbreviation, a botnet is actually short for a robot network. Think of it as a massive super-computer army with your computer one of the many conscripted ranks.

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