Das Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lässt offenbar nichts unversucht, um die Kontrolle über die eigenen Bürger auszuweiten. Nachdem erst kürzlich durchgesickert ist, dass die Ermittlungsbehörde von Internetkonzernen wie Facebook, Google und Yahoo gefordert haben soll, in ihren Angeboten eine spezielle Hintertür zum raschen Abhören der Nutzer einzubauen, sorgt nun bereits die nächste Meldung für Proteststürme bei US-Bürgerrechtlern.
Schadsoftware wurde zu dem Zweck programmiert, wie der Name auch schon vermuten lässt, um Schaden anzurichten. Google warnt seine Besucher jetzt automatisch, wenn ihr Rechner von einer solchen Software befallen ist.
Er steckt hinter dem Design von iMac, iPhone und iPad - jetzt ist Apple-Chefdesigner Jonathan Ive für seine Verdienste mit Ritterwürden ausgezeichnet worden. Der Brite darf sich künftig Sir Jonathan nennen.
Nach dem verpatzten Börsengang von Facebook rollt auf das Soziale Netzwerk und die beteiligten Banken eine Klagewelle zu. Mehrere Kanzleien reichten heute im Namen geschädigter Investoren Klage ein, auch die Technologiebörse Nasdaq geriet ins Visier. Facebook wies die Klagen als „unbegründet“ zurück und kündigte an, sich gegen die Vorwürfe zu wehren.
Mit Lukas Bänninger und Justyna Bahl verstärken eine Expertin und ein Experte neu das Zürcher Usability-Beratungsunternehmen "Die Ergonomen Usability". Der promovierte Bänninger, zuletzt bei Swisscom tätig, arbeitet bei den Ergonomen künftig als Senior User Experience Expert und Mitglied der Geschäftsleitung.
Apple und Also-Actebis haben ein Distributionsabkommen unterzeichnet. Man erwarte sich davon eine bedeutende zusätzliche Umsatz- und Gewinnsteigerung, lässt Also-Actebis dazu verlauten. In Deutschland greift die Zusammenarbeit ab sofort, in Finnland und in der Schweiz, wo Also-Actebis bereits seit Jahren mit Apple zusammenarbeite, werde die Kooperation ausgebaut.
Der CRM-Spezialist EC4U Expert Consulting (Schweiz) ruft den Wettbewerb "CRM-Champion Schweiz 2012" ins Leben. Vertriebs- und Marketing-Spezialisten sollen dabei ihr Wissen zum Thema Kundenmanagement unter Beweis stellen, heisst es dazu.
Ohne diesen Mann gäbe es keinen gemütlichen Fernsehabend: Der Amerikaner Eugene Polley erfand in den 1950er Jahren die erste kabellose Fernbedienung. Er starb am Sonntag in einem Krankenhaus in der Nähe von Chicago, wie sein ehemaliger Arbeitgeber mitteilte, die US-Elektronikfirma Zenith. Polley wurde 96 Jahre alt.
Die Führungskrise beim deutschen Handelskonzern Metro hat ein halbes Jahr später ein Nachspiel. Die Fondsgesellschaft Union Investment kündigte kurz vor Beginn der Hauptversammlung am Mittwoch in Düsseldorf an, Vorstand und Aufsichtsrat nicht zu entlasten.
TA-Chef Hannes Ametsreiter und Finanzvorstand Hans Tschuden wollen das Verlustjahr 2011 abhaken, das vom Korruptionsskandal überschattet war. "Jeder blickt lieber in die Zukunft als in die Vergangenheit, wir ganz besonders", so Ametsreiter.
New submitter Direwolf20 writes "The Red Power 2 mod for Minecraft has recently been updated, and it adds a fully emulated 6502 processor that can be programmed in assembly, but comes with a Forth interpreter. From the article: 'Eloraam calls it the 65EL02, because "it supports all the 6502, 65C02, and part of the 65C816 instruction set" as well as "a set of completely new instructions and two addressing modes. Since the 65EL02 is an 8-bit CPU, Eloraam didn't have as many options for programming environments as we have on today's 64-bit computers. While it's possible to program the 65EL02 in assembly language, for general use she chose to implement a Forth interpreter. Further technical information about RedPower Control's 65EL02 is available on Eloraam's blog RP Control Internals, and on the RedPower wiki's page for Red Power Control.' (Fair disclosure: The video linked in the article is mine.)"
sciencehabit writes "Peer inside an antique radio and you'll find what look like small light bulbs. They're actually vacuum tubes — the predecessors of the silicon transistor. Vacuum tubes went the way of the dinosaurs in the 1960s, but researchers have now brought them back to life, creating a nano-sized version that's faster and hardier than the transistor (abstract). It's even able to survive the harsh radiation of outer space."
New submitter OceanMan7 writes "Linux Mint 13 (Maya) has just been released. DVDs come in four flavors — MATE (with and without codecs) and Cinnamon (with and without codecs) — in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The codec-free versions comply with U.S. and Japanese IP regulations. MATE 1.2 is Linux Mint's community-powered extension of Gnome 2. Cinnamon 1.4 is built upon Gnome 3, but has a more traditional look and feel. As with Ubuntu 12.04, upon which Linux Mint draws, all editions come with Long-term support (LTS) until April, 2017. The release notes provide a list of changes.
pacopico writes "Businessweek reports that DARPA will pay for the creation of two new TechShops in Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh. The $3.5 million deal includes 2,000 TechShop memberships for military veterans and will have DARPA employees performing top secret work at night. 'The project is called iFab. For a month, a given factory might use dozens of machines to make parts for helicopters. Then you reboot the software controlling the machines, and out come the parts for the drive train system in a tank. The Darpa workers at TechShop will try to figure out which tools and methods can be used to rewire factories in this fashion.' Maker mayhem."
Here is a breakdown of R, Octave and Python, and how analysts can rely on open-source software and online learning resources to bring data-mining capabilities into their companies. The article breaks down which of the three is easiest to use, which do well with visualizations, which handle big data the best, etc. The lack of a budget shouldn't prevent you from experiencing all the benefits of a top-shelf data analysis package, and each of these options brings its own set of strengths while being much cheaper to implement than the typical proprietary solutions.
gbrumfiel writes "Two independent reports show that the public and most workers received only low doses of radiation following last year's meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Nature reports that the risks presented by the doses are small, even though some are above guidelines and limits set by the Japanese government. Few people will develop cancer as a result of the accident, and those that do may never be able to conclusively link their illness to the meltdowns. The greatest risk lies with the workers who struggled in the early days to bring the reactors under control. So far no ill-effects have been detected. At Chernobyl, by contrast, the highest exposed workers died quickly from radiation sickness."
sl4shd0rk writes "Today, the jury in the Oracle vs. Google trial found no infringement of patents by Google. The jury deliberated about 30 minutes to reach the verdict, bringing an end to the second phase of the trial, and a beginning to the damage phase, which may be very little of what Oracle originally asked for. Still no word on API copyright issues. Judge Alsup will be ruling on that in the near future, and it will certainly have an impact on the developer community."
New submitter plawson writes "CNET offers an in-depth discussion of the browser's future, making the case that 'new mobile devices threaten to stifle the competitive vigor of the market for Web browsers on PCs.' Given the vertical integration of many mobile systems, the article predicts that 'the only opportunity you'll get to truly change browsers is when your two-year smartphone contract expires.' The trade-offs are security and performance. Web pages that rely on JavaScript and JIT will be big losers. How important is browser choice on a smartphone or tablet compared with a PC?"
An anonymous reader writes "You don't hear too much about biological computing but in research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists reveal they have devised the genetic equivalent of a binary digit (full article, freely available) — a 'bit' in data parlance. 'It took us three years and 750 tries to make it work, but we finally did it,' according to Jerome Bonnet, of research which describes, a method for repeatedly encoding, storing and erasing digital data within the DNA of living cells."
New submitter himilean writes with this snippet from PC World: "A Florida VoIP carrier has filed a net neutrality complaint against a Georgia utility and broadband provider, after the utility accused the VoIP firm of theft of service for using its network to deliver voice service without paying for it. L2Networks filed the net neutrality complaint with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission Tuesday, the first formal complaint since the FCC passed net neutrality rules in December 2010. L2Networks' filing comes after the telecommunications manager for the City of Albany Water, Gas & Light Commission, a municipal utility in Georgia, filed a theft-of-service complaint with the Dougherty County Police Department in Albany earlier this year." Asks himilean: "So, would this not be considered the most abusive power of all within the legal system? Does this mean if I Skype my buddy and he's on Comcast, Comcast can file theft charges against me?"
mikejuk writes "A team from Microsoft Research has taken the lead in the MinuteSort data sorting test using a specially-devised technology: Flat DataCenter Storage. The figures are impressive — 1401 gigabytes in 60 seconds, using 1033 disks across 250 machines. Not only is this three times as much as the previous record, but also, it uses only one sixth of the hardware resources, according to a blog post about the test from Microsoft. One thing that's interesting about the success is the technology used. While solutions such as Hadoop and MapReduce are traditionally used for working with large data sets, Microsoft Research created its own technology called the 'Flat Datacenter Storage,' or FDS for short. This isn't just academic research, of course. The team from Microsoft Research has already been working with the Bing team to help Bing accelerate its search results, and there are plans to use it in other Microsoft technologies."
An anonymous reader writes "A man with one clock knows what time it is, goes the old saw, a man with two is never sure. Imagine the confusion, then, experienced by a doctor with dozens. Julian Goldman is an anaesthetist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. After beginning to administer blood-thinning medication during an urgent neurological procedure in 2005, Mr Goldman noticed that the EMR had recorded him checking the level of clotting 22 minutes earlier. As a result, four hospitals in the northeast had their medical devices checked, and found that on average they were off by 24 minutes. The easy solution that devices could have used since 1985? NTP."
mrquagmire writes with this snippet from CNET: "Facebook shareholders have sued the social network, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a number of banks, alleging that crucial information was concealed ahead of Facebook's IPO. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan this morning, charges the defendants with failing to disclose in the critical days leading up to Friday's initial public offering 'a severe and pronounced reduction' in forecasts for Facebook's revenue growth, as users more and more access Facebook through mobile devices, according to Reuters, which cited a law firm for the plaintiffs."
jrepin writes "In the wake of the announcement of the first ever KDE powered tablet, quite a few interesting things are happening in the background. One of them is the formation of a professional Partner Network for devices such as the Vivaldi tablet. The Make Play Live Partner Program is designed to build and support a collaborative business and economic network. Members work together to provide comprehensive professional service and product offerings around Plasma Active and devices such as Vivaldi. Professional support options make it easier to convince potential parties, such as users, clients, customers and partners, bringing KDE software to a larger group of users. Nine organizations have already joined."