Tag: COMPUTER

As President of the United States, Barack Obama gets to enjoy some pretty sweet perks. Big house, private jet, personal chef -- and yes, his very own computer. He has an iPad, too, in case you were wondering. Univision's Jorge Ramos posed these hard-hitting questions during a recent interview with the President, who replied with a blank stare, before coolly reminding Ramos that he's the ...

Walk into just about any classroom in the developed world, and you'll see the same basic things: desks, chairs, students -- and, of course, a teacher. You won't always find those things in the sunny state of Florida, however, where someone has had the bright idea to replace teachers with computers. It's all part of a new program in the public schools of Miami-Dade County, and involves 54 ...

You can work out all you want, but if you spend a good part of the day sitting in front of a TV or computer screen, you could still be putting your health at serious risk. According to a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, people who spend more than four hours per day watching TV, surfing the Web or playing video games are 113-percent more likely to suffer ...

Share Do you open your laptop as soon as you wake up? Do you sneak out of the office to tweet from your smartphone? Do you get the shakes if you go several hours without visiting Switched? If so, you're not alone, because, according to a new study, we're all physically addicted to the meth of new media. The study, titled 'Unplugged,' was undertaken by the University of Maryland's International ...

NASA recently decided to sell off some of its old computers. Unfortunately, though, it forgot to erase some of the sensitive data that many of those computers still held. The embarrassing oversight came to light in a recent internal investigation (PDF), during which the issue was discovered at four NASA locations: Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, and the Ames and Langley Research Centers. ...

Last month, a group of researchers in the U.K. discovered that school-age kids who spend more than two hours a day in front of a computer or television screen tend to display more serious behavioral problems than their less tech-addled counterparts. And, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the two-hour threshold even applies to preschoolers, as well. But how many tots actually adhere ...

If your child spends most of his days staring at some kind of screen, he may very well grow up to be a psycho, according to one new U.K. study, at least. The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Bristol, involved a group of children aged 10 to 11, each of whom were given a standard test to measure behavioral problems, and asked to report the amount of time they spend in front of ...

The next time you save child pornography on your hard drive, you probably shouldn't save it under a name like 'KiddiePornXXX.' Doing so, it turns out, may give law enforcement officials the green light to search and seize your hard drive. That's exactly what happened to Corey Beantee Melton, from Alabama, after he took his computer to get repaired at a local Best Buy. When Best Buy's Geek Squad ...

A U.K. teenager most recently employed at a fast food restaurant has been sentenced to 4 months in jail for refusing to give authorities the password to his computer. According to The Daily Mail, Oliver Drage, 19, would not give up his 50-character password, which authorities had requested as part of a child sexual exploitation investigation that has involved the teen since starting back in 2009. ...

It looks like the kids are alright, after all. A new study from the University of Maryland shows that more time spent in front of a computer doesn't hurt a child's academic performance, and, in some cases, actually improves test scores. Led by family science professor Sandra L. Hofferth, the six-year study followed a group of 1,000 children, who were between the ages of six and 12 in 1997, and ...

Take a moment to glance down at your laptop. Chances are, you see a bunch of hideous, glittery stickers, with the names or logos of companies like Skype, Intel or Microsoft [Ed. Note: Nope! Just see white. Cult of Mac!]. Don't try and remove them, though. Scratching off these stickers, as with Chicken Pox, will only result in even uglier scars and residue. So, why are they there? The New York ...

Hey, amateur astronomers, listen to this: A couple of at-home space nuts recently discovered a pulsar with a screensaver that uses idle PC time to process data collected from telescopes. By using Einstein@Home to 'donate' a PC's processors to the pursuit of science, the program harnesses thousands of willing computers, rather than one supercomputer, to analyze data. This helps on-the-clock ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/07/21/indian-phone-scammers-pose-as-microsoft-technicians-plant-malwa/'; Kolkata may be the land of elaborate Durga Pujas, cinematic legend Satyajit Ray and coronary-inducing kati rolls, but the Eastern Indian metropolis is also the land of a virulent phone scam that's been quietly making its way around the world for the past two years. As the ...

It seems like Choire Sicha over at The Awl may have had a feline-facilitated, coffee-on-the-keyboard calamity this morning when he decided to declare July 20th Be Conscientious With Beverages Around Your Laptop Day. He writes, "How many laptops have we seen destroyed by a forgotten cup of coffee or a dripping bottle of Vitamin Water?" Well, Choire, this writer can personally vouch for a $250 bill ...

In 1999, Professor Sugata Mitra was working for a software company in Delhi, at an office building surrounded by one of India's infamous slums. The children populating the slum, needless to say, were mired in poverty, and hardly spent any time in school, much less in front of a computer. That didn't stop Mitra, though, from embedding computers on the walls of his office building, and exposing ...