Face scanner trial at UK airports

Hi-tech face scanners are being used at a British airport to help stop terrorists and criminals from entering the country, reports News.com.au.

Manchester Airport is testing the new facial recognition scanners, which aim to improve security and reduce long queues at immigration checkpoints.

The device works by comparing a digital photo of a passenger inside their UK or European Union biometric passport with their face as they stand in front of a small camera.

IBM further bolstered its green credentials today with the launch of Green Sigma, a consulting offering designed to help firms reduce energy and water consumption, says Computing.co.uk.

Green Sigma is based on Lean Six Sigma, a best practice framework for creating process efficiencies, lowering costs and improving performance.

It applies the same principles as Lean Six Sigma to energy and water consumption, focusing on areas including IT and transportation systems, according to Niall Brady, worldwide technical development manager for Green Sigma at IBM.

Intel plans to bring its first dual-core Atom to market next month, reports CNet.

The power-efficient mobile processor will be targeted at Atom-based desktops called nettops. An Intel employee revealed this news as senior VP Pat Gelsinger was delivering a keynote at the Intel Developers Forum in San Francisco.

The keynote included more specifics about Nehalem, the family of chips the company plans to begin rolling out in the fourth quarter. Gelsinger, GM of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, showed the first wafer holding individual eight-core processors, detailed the power-saving features of the Nehalem processors, and confirmed future mobile Nehalem processors.

Federal law enforcement officials arrested seven men yesterday on charges related to child pornography, the latest arrests in an investigation of peer-to-peer networks that led to 52 California residents charged or indicted this year, reports ZDNet.

The investigation, spearheaded by the FBI's Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement team and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, used unspecified "sophisticated computer programs" to identify child pornography stored in folders shared through peer-to-peer applications.

Law enforcement officers have previously used pattern-matching programs, similar to anti-virus scanners, to quickly scan Usenet groups for images that match a list of known images of child abuse.