Lisa Vaas

Helicopter pilots the world over fly in fear of the dreaded Jesus Nut. A part on all rotor-powered craft, the Jesus Nut is so critical that, if it were ever to pop off while in flight, the helicopter would dive faster than a ripped parachute. These days, IT officials at Bell Helicopter Textron Inc.—and all […]

Theres nothing new about peer-to-peer networking. Indeed, the Internet fundamentally is P2P. Packet switching—a P2P technology that breaks a message into smaller packets, which are then transmitted over the network via dynamic routing as circuits become available—is the technology that made the Net the Net. But if P2P is so fundamental to the Internet, why […]

Do you have P2P jitters? Is all the talk about peer-to-peer sending frigid, lack-of-control, lack-of-security, lack-of-standards shivers down your spine? Stop fretting. P2P is about a lot more than the chaos of Napster and your teenagers ripped-off Metallica hits. Although the music-sharing, recording-industry-provoking service certainly helped to shine the spotlight on this powerful networking technology, […]

Put a Web developer up against a wall and demand why his or her site isnt accessible to the disabled. Youre likely to get a response something like this recent anonymous posting to online techie news site slashdot.org: “Im sorry, the burden is on the user,” the correspondent sniffed. “Im not going to dumb down […]

As with most Web sites, the click-on-me buttons in the banner ads for America Online Inc.s online service read with simple, understandable interfaces. “Tell me more,” they say, or “No thanks.” If youre reading this story as text online or on paper, thats fine. You can easily choose the correct button to get out of […]