It has emerged that the multi-billion-dollar DCGS-A military computer system that was designed to help the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan simply doesn't work.

This isn't the first time that the US Army - or indeed any sovereign armed force - has spent a lot of money on a system that doesn't work.

To spend almost $3 billion on a broken system, while proven, out-of-the-box alternatives like Palantir are readily and cheaply available, is pretty darn special.

We've talked plenty of times about Sony's long history of trying to block tinkerers and modders, culminating in the company's absolutely ridiculous lawsuit against Geohot (George Hotz) for jailbreaking the PS3. It appears that Samsung is taking an extremely different approach. Rather than trying to restrict or hinder modders, the company just sent a bunch of free smartphones to some of the top modders.

Since Late 2009, there's been a well-documented issue with the iMac line. If you upgrade the hard drive, the fans can start spinning like crazy.

For the main 3.5" SATA hard drive bay in the new 2011 machines, Apple has altered the SATA power connector itself from a standard 4-wire power configuration to a 7-wire configuration. Hard drive temperature control is regulated by a combination of this cable and Apple proprietary firmware on the hard drive itself. From our testing, we've found that removing this drive from the system, or even from that bay itself, causes the machine's hard drive fans to spin at maximum speed and replacing the drive with any non-Apple original drive will result in the iMac failing the Apple Hardware Test (AHT).

After a 33.5 hour wait, the first Apple fanboi finally bought an Ipad 2 from the flagship Apple store in London.

After waiting from 7:30am on Thurday morning and about 15 minutes in the store, Jewels emerged smiling with his shiny new drinks tray in hand.

They carefully pull out their Apple device. I admire it and then say: "So where do you insert the DVD?".

Most iPad users readily admit typing data-intensive text on their tablet's touch keyboard is difficult.

The iPad 2's maximum 64GB of storage falls short. Even the 250GB of storage on a decent laptop fills up faster than you might expect.

Being able to insert a USB device or a thumbdrive into my laptop is essential to me.

The iPad doesn't support multitasking. Its battery isn't replacable.

They removed the drive from the PC and connected a 'write blocker', a piece of hardware designed to isolate the drive and stop any purging of its contents. Incredibly, after leaving this attached for only 20 minutes, almost 19 percent of its files had been wiped for good, a process the researchers put down the ability of SSDs to initiate certain routines independent of a computer.

The firmware built into many and possibly all of these drives allows them to destroy data simply by being powered on, even when not connected to a PC or under the apparent control of an operating system.

Sony said Wednesday it would permanently block PlayStation 3 owners from the PlayStation Network if they are using jailbroken consoles.

The demands came six weeks after the first full-fledged PS3 hack was released. The hack was designed to allow PlayStation 3 owners the ability to play home-brewed games, but can be tweaked to allow the console to play pirated games.

For instance, Bross told Ars that "the flash chips used in the iPad have several layers of NAND flash stacked on top of each other." Each of those layers has to be analyzed separately, and data from each layer has to be mixed together just the right way to re-create the logical format of the volume stored in the flash chip.

Sometimes the chips can be easily desoldered, while in other cases the chips are covered in epoxy resins that have to be carefully removed to prevent damage to the NAND flash inside.

"They chose this 'Pentalobe' fastener specifically because it was new, guaranteeing repair tools would be both rare and expensive," said Kyle Wiens, iFixit's CEO. "The iPhone 4 originally shipped with Phillips screws, but Apple has transitioned completely to this new security screw. Shame on them."

Wiens added that if you own an iPhone 4 that came with Phillips screws and you take it to an Apple store for repair, Apple employees will replace the screws with the Pentalobular screws to prevent you from getting inside.

"This move is a part of Apple's strategic plan to increase the rate of obsolescence of their hardware," Wiens said.

Hacker Claims To Have The PS3's Front Door KeysFamed hacker George "GeoHot" Hotz, who among other things helped crack the iPhone, reckons he's found what are essentially the keys to the PlayStation 3. And has posted them online for the world to see.

The root key is a signature of sorts, that lets the PS3 know that the program that's about to run on the console is a legitimate piece of software.