Computer

After years of suffering from chronically inflamed and infected sinuses, I finally decided I'd had enough. I chose to do what 500,000 other Americans do every year - have sinus surgery. It wasn't an easy decision. I had to balance my need for a fix against my fear of surgery and research that raised questions about the procedure. I was miserable. My sinuses, those supposedly hollow spaces around the nose, had become clogged by scar tissue and the build-up of thickened mucus from decades of infections and inflammation.

Just in time for spring snowmelt: a webcam pointed at one of Yosemite National Park's main attractions, the soaring 2,425-foot Yosemite Falls. The HD camera went live on North America's tallest fall Monday, allowing anyone with computer access to watch in stunning detail as shadows race across the towering granite monolith over which Yosemite Creek crashes in a series of plunges and cascades. It's updated every 30 seconds through a high-speed DSL connection. To those for whom the park's breathtaking scenery revives the soul, getting a fix of spiritual uplift just got a little...

Days after state environmental officials found unacceptable noise levels from wind turbines in Falmouth, they are considering new regulations that would require the state to review potential noise issues before wind turbines are built in Massachusetts. The state might also conduct sound studies in other communities, such as Fairhaven and Kingston, where residents, as in Falmouth, have complained about newly installed turbines, officials said. A panel of independent scientists and doctors, convened by the state to look at the effects of wind turbines on the health of nearby residents, urged the...

PlumChoice Inc. , a Billerica company that provides computer technical support services, said Tuesday that Bob Badavas has been appointed to the posts of president and chief executive. Badavas has been a member of the company's board of directors since February 2011. Previously, he was with TAC Worldwide, where he served as president and chief executive. At PlumChoice, Badavas succeeds company founder Ted Werth, who now serves in the newly created role of chief strategy and products officer, PlumChoice said.

NEWTON - Dan Kennedy will graduate from Boston College on Monday, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and the recipient of the school's most prestigious prize, the Edward H. Finnegan Award. Winners of the Finnegan, given to the student who best exemplifies the BC motto, "ever to excel," tend to go big - top grad schools, Wall Street, overseas fellowships. Kennedy is planning to give away his computer, recycle his Blackberry, and move to a modest communal house in St. Paul, Minn.

Three Dorchester men were arrested Monday and charged with stealing about a dozen laptops from a local computer repair store and pointing a handgun at an employee of the shop, police said. An employee of Comp-Net Solutions on Dorchester Avenue told police that three men entered the store and asked about buying a charger for a laptop at about 11:15 a.m. When he told them the store did not sell chargers, one of the men pointed a black handgun at him while the other two men took 10 to 15 laptops from the display cases, the employee told police.

WASHINGTON - US intelligence agencies, in an unusually blunt public criticism of China and Russia, reported to Congress yesterday that those two foreign governments steal valuable US technology over the Internet as a matter of national policy. Both China and Russia hide behind the anonymity of proxy computers and dispersed routers in third countries to pilfer proprietary corporate information to accelerate their own economic development, according to the new intelligence assessment.

Harry Lewis, a Harvard University computer science professor, knew Mark Zuckerberg as a student and has no trouble remembering the Facebook cofounder. "There was a wise-guy aspect to him," Lewis said as he sat in his office. "He wasn't insulting, just skeptical. " They remember Zuckerberg at tiny Pinocchio's Pizza in Harvard Square, too. On the walls are four framed photos of him eating there, the most recent taken a few months ago. In his student days, Zuckerberg "was in here two or three nights a week, usually late," said Adam DiCenso, the owner.

A computer made of crabs If you're tired of artificial, factory-built computers, then check out this new, all-natural one, designed by computer scientists in Japan and Britain. It's 100 percent organic: In place of the usual silicon circuits, it uses huge swarms of blue soldier crabs. The "computer" was built by Yukio-Pegio Gunji and Yuta Nishiyama, of Kobe University, and Andrew Adamatzky, of the appropriately named Unconventional Computing Centre at the University of the West of England.

If you're tired of artificial, machine-made computers, then check out this new, all-natural computer, designed by computer scientists in Japan and Britain. It's 100% organic: In place of the usual silicon circuits, it uses huge swarms of blue soldier crabs. The "computer" was built by Yukio-Pegio Gunji and Yuta Nishiyama, of Kobe University, and Andrew Adamatzky, of the appropriately named Unconventional Computing Centre at the University of the West of England.

JOB IN JEOPARDY: Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson could be fired after just four months at the struggling Internet company because he allowed an inaccuracy about his college education to appear in his official bio, including a version filed with securities regulators. THE TROUBLE: The distorted bio said Thompson held two degrees — one in accounting and the other in computer science — from Stonehill College. After being confronted by a major shareholder, Yahoo Inc. acknowledged Thompson never got the computer science degree.

The name of a Chicago man already charged in a computer hacking case aimed at taking out key players in the worldwide group Anonymous was added to an indictment Wednesday, boosting the accusations against him by including him in much of the wider conspiracy to hack into corporations and government agencies worldwide. Jeremy Hammond, 27, joined four other defendants named in the indictment in federal court in Manhattan in a prosecution revealed in March. Hammond is being held at a lower Manhattan lockup after initially appearing in a Chicago court.

Moving digital files between your work and home computers can be a pain. Add smartphones and tablet computers to the mix, and you've got yourself a giant headache. Google Inc. unveiled its solution to the problem last week, while two other companies, Dropbox Inc. and Microsoft Corp., improved their existing offerings. The idea is to leave your files on their computers, so that you can access them from any Internet-connected device, wherever you are. That means you can stop emailing big files to yourself, and you can stop carrying those USB thumb...

A computer made of crabs If you're tired of artificial, factory-built computers, then check out this new, all-natural one, designed by computer scientists in Japan and Britain. It's 100 percent organic: In place of the usual silicon circuits, it uses huge swarms of blue soldier crabs. The "computer" was built by Yukio-Pegio Gunji and Yuta Nishiyama, of Kobe University, and Andrew Adamatzky, of the appropriately named Unconventional Computing Centre at the University of the West of England.

TOUGH QUARTER: United Continental Holdings Inc. lost $448 million in the first quarter because of higher fuel prices, bookings hurt by a computer conversion, and the seasonal weakness of the winter travel season. A year ago, it lost $213 million. GETTING BETTER: The company said most of the computer problems are behind it, and that the conversion will pay off in the form of higher revenue from passengers in the future. SHARES DECLINE: The stock dropped 85 cents, or 3.7 percent, to close at $22.12.

If you're tired of artificial, machine-made computers, then check out this new, all-natural computer, designed by computer scientists in Japan and Britain. It's 100% organic: In place of the usual silicon circuits, it uses huge swarms of blue soldier crabs. The "computer" was built by Yukio-Pegio Gunji and Yuta Nishiyama, of Kobe University, and Andrew Adamatzky, of the appropriately named Unconventional Computing Centre at the University of the West of England.

NEW YORK -- Poker champion Phil Laak has a good chance of winning when he sits down this week to play 2,000 hands of Texas Hold'em -- against a computer. It may be the last chance he gets. Computers have gotten a lot better at poker in recent years; they're good enough now to challenge top professionals like Laak, who won the World Poker Tour invitational in 2004. But it's only a matter of time before the machines take a commanding lead in the war for poker supremacy. Just as they already have in backgammon, checkers, and chess, computers are expected to surpass even the best human poker players within...

PORTLAND, Maine - You can no longer hear the rapid-fire spiel of a fast-talking auctioneer at the fish auction on the Portland waterfront. These days, the auction at the Portland Fish Exchange is run by a computer program. Instead of raising numbered paddles in the air, seafood buyers place their bids by tapping the space bar on their computer keyboards. After more than 20 years with an auctioneer, the Fish Exchange, where buyers bid on fresh seafood caught by New England fishermen, has entered the eBay era. Mike Twiss, the owner of Ad-Jon fish processing company in...

Budget cuts threaten public universities across the nation. But they especially hit home at the University of Florida, where officials recently announced plans to essentially dismantle the research arm of the school's computer science department in order to save $1.7 million. Administrators tried to downplay the impact of the decision, saying the program would be absorbed elsewhere in the university. But students formed a human chain to protest it, and one doctoral student told the Gainesville Sun, "This is not a merger.