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It is unusual, but not unheard of, for a murder case to go forward if a body has not been found. It is even rarer for the charge to be first-degree murder -- and less common still for the defendant to be found guilty. Those were the exact circumstances, though, under which Hans Reiser was convicted ...

No less true today than it has been since the notion of private property became one of the main pillars of Western society, investing in real estate is one of the most popular means of amassing wealth. Now, a new breed of "virtual" real estate investors and developers is emerging. Massively multipla...

The ideas blend together so well. Open source has been around for a long time and is built on the concept of developers working together and sharing software. Social networking has broken into the headlines as a new generation uses MySpace and Facebook as a whole new means of sharing their life expe...

While Wikipedia may be the best known example, wikis are not only becoming the first place people turn when conducting online research, but also when they're looking to build specialist online communities. It's not surprising, then, that wikis dedicated to real estate are emerging. InmanWiki -- part...

Months of eager anticipation came to an end Thursday with the long-awaited release of Ubuntu Hardy Heron. Both desktop and server editions of Ubuntu 8.04 were released as free downloads, and both are Long Term Support releases, meaning that they come with commercial support for five years on the ser...

The former president of the One Laptop Per Child project stepped down from his position earlier this week as the non-profit continues restructuring and faces competition from the private sector. Walter Bender directed the MIT Media Lab for six years before joining Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC project ...

Japanese Linux computer firm Plat'Home has released a palm-sized, full-featured Linux-based server dubbed "OpenBlockS." This tiny marvel is no lightweight wanna-be replacement for a real Linux server. It can run most server applications that you would expect to run on a "normal" full-sized Linux box...

Google has opened up a new sandbox for developers designed to entice them into building richer social networking gadgets for iGoogle. iGoogle is basically a customizable home page for individuals that uses Web-based "gadgets" to deliver content to the page. The new sandbox will let developers contin...

Sony Computer Entertainment pushed back its open beta test for the launch of Playstation's Home, a 3-D virtual world, from the summer to the fall, marking the second time the company has delayed the launch of the product. Unlike traditional games, Home is a sandbox world designed to allow players th...

As if stepping on the Linux community's toes when they first teamed up wasn't enough, Microsoft and Novell have announced a joint push into the China market to attack the Linux installed base there. They have launched what they call "an incremental investment in their relationship" that will focus o...

In what surely came as a blow to many Linux aficionados, Red Hat announced Wednesday that it will not develop a desktop implementation of the operating system for the consumer market anytime soon. "We have no plans to create a traditional desktop product for the consumer market in the foreseeable fu...

Microsoft is renaming its existing embedded Windows operating systems and supplementing them with additional offerings in key device categories, the company announced Tuesday. Windows XP Embedded will become Windows Embedded Standard, while Windows Embedded CE will be renamed Windows Embedded Compac...

OpenLogic, a provider of open source packages, kicked off the data-gathering second phase of a global project aiming to collect and share quantitative data on the use of open source software. The company on Wednesday announced an initial list of 10 survey sponsors and launched a census designed to s...

Memory bugs, essentially a mistake in the management of heap memory, are caused by a number of factors and can occur in any program that is being written, enhanced or maintained. The fact that memory bugs can be introduced at any time is part of what makes memory debugging a challenging task. This i...

It must be tough to be 34 and already see your children overshadow you. That's what's happened to "Dungeons & Dragons," the roleplaying game that for decades has drawn geeks to roll dice and pretend to be elves, sorcerers and other fantasy heroes. It has never quite become mainstream entertainme...