An anonymous hacker has posted private e-mails, files and other documents belonging to a noted climate researcher, sparking an international debate between skeptics of global warming and those who see it as an urgent problem.

LG's N4B1 NAS box is neither a comprehensive media server nor a particularly fast performer, but as a network-attached storage device, it's quick enough for home/small-business file serving. The unit--available at this writing for around $700--is also the sturdiest and quite possibly the best-looking such box I've had my hands on. You also can't beat it's HTML configuration interface for looks or ease of learning and use. But none of that compares to the N4B1's most outstanding feature: an integrated Blu-ray burner, unique among NAS products in the SMB/SOHO market.

One of my favorite Windows 7 amenities is thumbnail previews, which appear when you mouse over any running program in the taskbar.

Here are four things that Apple believes that explain the unexplainable.

Google's Chrome OS captured a lot of headlines and hype this week after the company invited the media in to have a look-see, setting off a whole lot of opinions about whether it will be any good. Microsoft, predictably, doesn't think so. Otherwise, Al Gore offered his opinion on the role supercomputers can play to quell climate change, and for the first time we can recollect there were not one, but two, cat-related IT stories that caught our attention.

Wireless carriers and retailers have been promising a wide array of low-priced gadgets beyond smartphones that will hit the market soon, taking advantage of faster wireless networks.

Microsoft has launched new betas for its free Office suite and for the "streaming" technology it will use to deliver some paid versions of Office 2010 next year.

When Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) was first released, I noted that many (maybe even all) third-party screensavers would no longer work in the new OS. This was because 10.6 required 64-bit compatible screensavers, whereas existing screensavers were 32 bit.

A New Jersey teenager was sentenced to a year in jail and was fined $37,500 after pleading guilty to charges in connection with a DDOS attack on the Church of Scientology Web site.

Just two days after Sony said that its wireless e-reader, the Daily Edition, might not make it to buyers before the end of the year, Barnes & Noble said its Nook e-reader is sold out.

View more news and analysis from Computerworld.com