Whether or not we agree with it, we’re all pretty used to the idea of genetic engineering. Our food chain is full of GM crops and pretty soon we may be genetically modified ourselves. But synthetic biology takes the idea even further. Instead of merely modifying existing organisms, synthetic biology aims to create entirely new organisms
Author: Editor
Social media, it seems, is going to become a more prominent part of our lives, whether or not we want it to be. Although some of us remain sceptical about the mundane information overload, social networking occasionally has more pros than cons — as evidenced by Waze, a new social networking traffic app that was recently launched officially
President Jacob Zuma on Friday quashed any hopes that the planned Gauteng e-tolling system will dropped by government. “The Gauteng economy cannot afford any impediment to the traffic flow, since such an impediment will stifle economic growth that leads to job creation,” Zuma told a New Age and SABC business briefing in
Absa denied rumours on Thursday that it is planning mass retrenchments to cut costs. Employees affected by its restructuring process, were being given the opportunity to apply for positions across the group, it said. It was responding after Solidarity challenged Absa CEO Maria Ramos to confirm or deny rumours
When you can’t beat them, sue them. That seems to be the modus operandi of Yahoo, a former Web star whose fondness for lawyers has grown as its commercial fortunes have faded. On 12 March, the ailing company sued Facebook, alleging that the social networking giant had violated 10 patents that belong to it. Yahoo’s aggressive move has sparked
BitTorrent, the San Francisco-based company that develops the popular peer-to-peer Internet file transfer protocol of the same name, should not be blamed for online piracy, despite the fact that its technology is used extensively by consumers to share copyrighted material digitally. In an interview with TechCentral, the
Not long after Steve Jobs died last year, wags eulogised the Apple co-founder with a joke: “Ten years ago we had Steve Jobs, Bob Hope and Johnny Cash. Now we have no jobs, no hope and no cash.” Apple may no longer have Jobs, but it fills investors with hope and is brimming with cash. Its market capitalisation recently passed US$500bn
His seven online aliases, which include Anarchaos, POW and yohoho, suggest that Jeremy Hammond, as somebody who spends much of his time at a keyboard talking to other people with aliases online, is a distrustful man. He now has even more reason to be. According to indictments revealed last week, Hammond and four other hackers were
JSE-listed multinational IT group Datatec raked in US$5bn in revenue in its 2012 financial year, which ended on 29 February, despite what it calls “challening conditions” in North America and Europe. For the financial year, the group expects revenues of about $5bn, from $4,3bn in 2011, and profit
Imagine you’re the CEO of an Internet security start-up. Now imagine one of the world’s most notorious hacker groups signs up for your service, to help protect their own website from attacks. What do you do? That’s exactly the dilemma Matthew Prince, CEO and founder of CloudFlare, faced in June 2011. LulzSec — short for Lulz Security — was