The chairman of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates, is stepping down from his job running the world’s largest software company.
Mr Gates, who made his fortune through developing software for the personal computer, plans to devote his time to charity work.
As a teenager Bill Gates had a vision of a personal computer on every desk in every home.
He says he caught sight of the future and based his career on what he saw.
Now 52, he still has boyish looks, but he is no longer the world’s richest man. He has been overtaken by the investor Warren Buffett and the Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim.
But Mr Gates’ fortune is at the root of his decision to leave his day job and concentrate on his charitable organisation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
He will remain as Microsoft’s chairman and work on special technology projects, but according to Mr Gates, great wealth brings great responsibility and his future work will include finding new vaccines and financing projects in the developing world.
Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7476720.stm
Being woken in the dead of night by noisy neighbours blasting out music could soon be a thing of the past.
Scientists have shown off the blueprint for “acoustic cloaks“, which could make objects impervious to sound waves.
The technology, outlined in the New Journal of Physics, could be used to build sound-proof homes, advanced concert halls or stealth warships.
Scientists have previously demonstrated devices that cloak objects from microwaves, making them “invisible”.
“The mathematics behind cloaking has been known for several years,” said Professor John Pendry of Imperial College London, UK, an expert in cloaking.
“What hasn’t been available for sound is the sort of materials you need to build a cloak out of.”
Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7450321.stm
A network of tiny pipes of water could be used to cool next-generation PC chips, researchers at IBM have said.
Scientists at the firm have shown off a prototype device layered with thousands of “hair-width” cooling arteries.
They believe it could be a solution to the increasing amount of heat pumped out by chips as they become smaller and more densely packed with components.
The technology was demonstrated in IBM’s 3D chips, where circuits are stacked one on top of the other.
Laying chips vertically, instead of side by side, reduces the distance data has to travel , enhancing performance and saving critical space. Read more
Web payment firm Paypal has said it will block “unsafe browsers” from using its service as part of wider anti-phishing efforts.
Customers will first be warned that a browser is unsafe but could then be blocked if they continue using it.
Paypal said it was “an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4″.
Phishing attacks trick users into handing over sensitive data.
Paypal said some users were still using Internet Explorer 3 , released more than 10 years ago. It lacks many of the security and safety features needed to protect users from phishing and other online attacks. Read more