And in a conversation February 2 with an avid Facebook user, I learned that she keeps the site on her computer all day while at work and in her free time she looks at photos and checks on the evolving status of her friends.

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One woman was on her way to work at Intel, the computer chip maker.

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"This is intended as a wake-up call, " said Andrew Tanenbaum, one of the researchers in the computer science department at Amsterdam's Free University that did the work revealing the weaknesses on smart tags.

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He needed 24-hour nursing assistance but otherwise led as normal a life as possible, taking the subway to work each day at his job as a systems analyst, using a mouthpiece to tap the keys on his computer, enjoying books, movies, TV and dinners with friends, most frequently with Abe.

CNN: [Abraham J. Zelmanowitz]

Melinda, 32, is no longer at Microsoft, and she is active in charity work and on the board of Duke, where she studied computer science as an undergraduate and then got a graduate degree in business.

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By turning their problem into a game, the scientists have harnessed thousands of human brains without specialist knowledge to work on protein-folding, says Adrien Treuille, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who helped to develop the program.

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Such dilemmas have always been pertinent to players in the motor industry, though at a time when technologies - ranging from computer games to on-the-go access to work - seem to be what wows consumers, it is possible that research and development budgets, rather than the latest model launches, offer the best clue to which carmakers will succeed in the years ahead.

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But when they are out of the office for work or on vacation, other employees can reserve their spaces, either through an online system or at a computer terminal in the office.

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