While popular science fiction considers the main question around artificial intelligence to be how will we overthrow our eventual machine oppressors?, many academics are not even sure true AI is possible. Dr Kevin Korb, a Reader at Melbourne’s Monash University, will give a seminar on this topic later this week. [ + ]

Andrew Collins casts an eye over the big stories in IT from the last seven days, including the Australian Federal Government’s backdown on internet filtering, Apple’s week of patent lawsuits and ACMA’s targeting of TPG over its alleged failure to provide customers with access to 000 emergency services. [ + ]

Anthony Caruana, editor of Technology Decisions magazine and IT manager at a Melbourne school, explains how he rejuvenated his company’s managed printer contracts, realising significant cost savings in the process. [ + ]

Researchers can’t afford to be slowed by technology - they need to process large batches of research calculations quickly or they risk a rival publishing a finding first. As such, researchers who need to perform complicated calculations on giant datasets rely on high performance computing (HPC) facilities - systems that are capable of processing many trillions of calculations per second. [ + ]

Andrew Collins looks at the biggest IT stories from the last seven days, including big staff cuts at Vodafone Australia, a patent infringement lawsuit aimed at Microsoft’s Windows 8 interface and Apple’s defiance of a UK court. [ + ]

IT managers in corporate and mid-size businesses have to balance both network performance and network security concerns. Earlier-generation firewalls pose a serious security risk to organisations today as their technology has effectively become obsolete, failing to inspect the data payload of network packets circulated by today’s internet criminals. Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) have emerged as the solution to this thorny problem. [ + ]

Looking past the initial promise of the big data craze, Cameron Wall, Managing Partner of C3 Business Solutions, discusses why big data predictive analytics is pure hype for the majority of the business world and how companies can better take advantage of the information they already possess. [ + ]

SharePoint is a powerful tool for enterprise collaboration - when used well. With the release of SharePoint 2013 pending, now is a good time to examine your organisation’s use of the tool, and the merits of migrating to the new version. [ + ]

With all the hype about clouds, 2011 was a year of education. The term 'cloud' is overused and has been sullied by the sheer variety of definitions used in the industry. [ + ]

‘Cloud’ has become a pervasive part of the IT vocabulary - but how big a role will it play in enterprise service delivery? Stephen Withers speaks to a panel of senior IT executives drawn from the user and analyst communities and found there was a broad consensus. [ + ]

We are in the middle of the third great revolution of technology delivery. The ages of the mainframe and the PC are quite dead. Anthony Caruana looks to the future and ponders the question: what will your data centre look like in 2025? [ + ]

Andrew Collins takes a look at the more interesting tales from IT in the last seven days, including a spat between Anonymous and WikiLeaks, and iiNet’s new 4G wireless broadband plans. [ + ]

Andrew Collins considers the more curious tales from IT in the last seven days, including continued workers strikes at the Foxconn factory responsible for producing iPhone 5 units; a blow to the guts behind a Microsoft support telemarketing scam; and the US’s opinion on Huawei’s trustworthiness. [ + ]

Transferring large amounts of data between devices is much faster with a recently developed optical wireless communication module that can achieve a transmission rate of 3 Gbps. [ + ]

Australian-based technology services company DiUS Computing has been awarded for developing Easy Care Online (ECO) - a cloud-based compliance management software solution enabling users to securely access sleep apnoea patients’ usage and efficacy data online. [ + ]