Symantec have written a $1.28 billion cheque to buy a division of VeriSign

AV outfit Symantec have written a $1.28 billion cheque to buy a division of VeriSign. The authentication outfit, best known for its antivirus software for personal computers, wants to secure more things and has been buying shedloads lately.

VeriSign, whose brand is ubiquitous on the Web for protecting online transactions, wants to secure fewer things and is finding its traffic managing division a bit of a spare leg. It collects fees for registering domain names and has been purging divisions like this for three years. VeriSign had sold more than a dozen businesses since 2007 for a total of nearly $1 billion. Some were curious choices for VeriSign to have in the first place, such as a division that did billing services for telecommunications companies and another that sold ring tones and insurance for mobile phones.

HP cow dung plan

Reducing energy consumption in data centers, particularly with the prospect of a federal carbon tax, is pushing vendors to explore an ever-growing range of ideas. HP engineers say that biogas may, excuse this, offer a fresh alternative energy approach for IT managers.
Researchers at Hewlett Packard Co.'s HP Labs presented a paper  on using cow manure from dairy farms and cattle feedlots and other "digested farm waste" to generate electricity to an American Society of Mechanical Engineers conference held this week.
In the paper, the research team calculates that "a hypothetical farm of 10,000 dairy cows" could power a 1 MW data center -- or on the order of 1,000 servers.

Nvidia has shown off its reference tablet design

Inside this 8.9-inch tablet, you see, is Nvidia's Tegra 2, the heart of which is a dual core ARM Cortex A9—a chip that's a generation ahead of the silicon the iPad's A4 is based on—meaning this thing will zooooom. It's also got a gig of RAM (the iPad's biggest technical limitation now is its puny amount of RAM), two USB ports, and a front-facing camera.