• Most Popular
  • Most Shared

Pictures

Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Pictures of the year: Technology

A look at the year's best science and technology photos.   Slideshow 

    Free computer virus finds willing victims

    HELSINKI
    Tue May 22, 2007 2:52pm EDT

    HELSINKI (Reuters) - Computer specialist Didier Stevens put up a simple text advertisement on the Internet offering downloads of a computer virus for people who did not have any.

    Surprisingly, he found as many as 409 people clicking on the ad saying "Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!" during a 6-month advertising campaign on Google's Adword, said the IT security expert.

    "Some of them must have clicked on it by mistake. Some must have been curious or stupid," said Mikko Hypponen, head of research at data security firm F-Secure.

    There was no virus involved, it was an experiment aiming to show these kind of advertising systems can be used for malicious intent, Stevens told Reuters.


    More from Reuters

    Afghan insurgents kill CIA agents, Canadians

    KABUL (Reuters) - Insurgents intensified their campaign against military targets and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, killing eight U.S. CIA agents at a base and four Canadian servicemen on patrol and a journalist accompanying them.

    » More Top News
    Floor traders work at the Hong Kong Stocks Exchange, January 16, 2008. REUTERS/Bobby Yip

    My way or the highway?

    Hong Kong is poised to accept Beijing's accounting standards. That's good. The system, though, is prone to scandal. That's bad.  Full Article 

    Global Markets
    People walk past a branch of Bank of America in New York's financial district April 28, 2009. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
    Rolfe Winkler:

    Move your money

    Boycotting "too big to fail" banks is a great idea -- so long as investors remember that banks aren't the only ones responsible for the crisis.  Full Article 

      Commentary