Moreover, companies are upgrading their notebook computers only when they're in danger of not working, which is roughly every four to five years, rather than every two in the heyday of the computer industry's rocketship growth.
Goldberg's program ran on Berkeley's network of 250 workstations, not some fancy supercomputer, and it ran in the background, sucking up computer power only when it wasn't needed for other jobs.
His tests included such things as responding to particular words on a computer screen, responding only when two digits on the screen were the same, and remembering words, numbers and pictures that had been shown before.
Unlike fully functional laptops, these computers would work only when connected to the board's network.
Designing the software to cope with this shift between high-and low-speed networks (it involves breaking up the data stream into small packets of information, and connecting a computer to the network only when a packet is being sent, or has to be received) was the key to this seamless transition.
WebTek, a subsidiary of Germany's Dresdner Bank, plans to use a shift in accounting work from London to Delhi as a chance to introduce "thin client" technology, which plucks from a computer only new data needed when a change is made, instead of always having to pick up an entire screen of data.Insecure independentsIndependent teleworking outfits have had a rockier time than captives.
The software works as a screen saver, analyzing data only when computers are idle.
Stuxnet was devilishly ingenious: it infected millions of computers, but did damage only when the code was transferred to special controllers that run centrifuges, which spin at supersonic speed when enriching uranium.
Hobbyists developed the first personal computers, but it was only when I.B.M. entered the field in 1981, lending its seal of approval, that the PC industry really took off.
An e-ticket is merely an electronic record for which the traveler holds an identification number; this gets a passenger aboard a plane only when computers communicate and cause a printer at the departure gate to spit out a boarding pass.
