Hybrid technology degrees emerging

As demand for college graduates with technical degrees soars, new majors are emerging that are hybrids of computer science, information systems and computer engineering. Penn State University, for example, created the College of Information Science and Technology a decade ago as an interdisciplinary program that combines engineering and business courses. The college offers three bachelor's degrees: a B.S. and a B.A....

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Seagate upgrades hybrid drive family, adds desktop model

Seagate today announced upgrades to its 2.5-in. laptop hybrid drives and released its first 3.5-in. desktop hybrid drive. Hybrid drives combine a relatively small amount of NAND flash with traditional spinning disks along with firmware that determines where data resides on the disk based on application performance requirements. Because the hybrid drives use spinning disk, they can provide terabyte-plus capacities, but because...

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Academy Cube aims to tackle IT skills shortage with online learning platform

Software vendors, academic institutions and government agencies united on Tuesday to tackle European youth unemployment and the IT skills shortage with a new online education platform. Academy Cube, developed by SAP with the support of the European Commission, will focus on teaching IT skills and matching students with job vacancies. It runs on a learning management system developed by SuccessFactors, a company SAP acquired...

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NASA Mars rover Curiosity on road to recovery

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is out of safe mode and back on active status after computer trouble hadsidelined the vehicle for nearly a week. The space agency reported that Curiosity is now running on its backup computer system, known as its B-side. It's been taken out of its minimal-activity safe mode and ready to return to full operation. "We are making good progress in the recovery," said Mars Science Laboratory...

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EBay develops 'miles per gallon' metric for data centers

There's a maxim in the data center business that you can't manage what you can't measure, and eBay has come up with the mother of all measurement systems for calculating data center efficiency. The online auction giant has devised a methodology that looks at the cost of its IT operations in dollars, kilowatt hours and carbon emissions, and ties those costs back to a single performance metric -- in eBay's case, the number of...

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Computer History Museum to induct Pixar co-founder not named Steve Jobs into Hall of Fellows

The Computer History Museum on Monday announced its Class of 2013 includes Ed Catmull, a computer scientist and Pixar co-founder, along with two PC pioneers: Harry Huskey and Robert W. Taylor. These accomplished technology industry professionals will be inducted into the museum's Hall of Fellows on April 27 in Mountain View. While their names might not be household ones, they join a roster of technology bigwigs from...

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