Im August dieses Jahres hatte die auf Telekommunikationsgeräte ausgerichtete deutsche Gigaset ein Kosten- und Effizienzprogramm aufgelegt. Nun hat das Unternehmen bekannt gegeben, dass Arbeitsplätze abgebaut werden.
Apple hat auf Beschwerden von Nutzern des iPhone 5 reagiert, wonach damit gemachte Bilder und Videos immer wieder störende lilafarbene Lichtreflexe am Rande haben. Der Effekt tritt vor allem auf, wenn eine zentrale Lichtquelle nur knapp ausserhalb des Bildes ist.
Nach einer Affäre um den Verkauf von Netzwerkbauteilen von Cisco Systems in den Iran hat der US-Hersteller ein langjähriges Bündnis mit der chinesischen ZTE aufgekündigt. Interne Ermittlungen bei Cisco hatten ergeben, dass der chinesische Partner Geräte an eine iranische Telekomfirma verkaufte, obwohl für die Produkte Sanktionen gelten.
Der 51-jährige Betriebswirt und langjähre IT-Unternehmer Stephan Isenschmid hat sämtliche Rechte am Swiss CRM Forum von der Community Building Company (CBC) mit Sitz in Dübendorf übernommen. Die Rechte sollen in die neue Swiss CRM Institute AG mit Sitz in Inwil/Luzern eingebracht werden, welche im alleinigen Besitz von Isenschmid ist, heisst es in einer Aussendung.
Das Berliner Start-up Researchgate macht sich als "Facebook der Wissenschaft" einen Namen und verändert die Art und Weise, wie Forscher miteinander kommunizieren. Bereits zwei Mio. registrierte Nutzer teilen und bewerten auf der Plattform wissenschaftliche Arbeiten, die sie der Gemeinschaft kostenlos zur Verfügung stellen.
Ein handgeschriebener Brief des Physikers Albert Einstein wird ab Montag beim Online-Auktionshaus Ebay versteigert. In dem an den Philosophen Eric Gutkind gerichteten Schreiben legt der Schöpfer der Relativitätstheorie seine Ansichten zur Religion dar.
Die türkische Staatsanwaltschaft fordert bis zu 24 Jahre Haft für die mutmaßlichen Mitglieder einer Hackergruppe, die unter anderem die Website der Polizeibehörde des Landes attackiert hatte. Unter den zehn Beschuldigten seien drei Universitätsstudenten, berichteten türkische Medien am Montag.
Wenige Wochen vor der wichtigsten Produkteinführung des Jahres hat ein führender Nokia-Manager das finnische Unternehmen verlassen. Der für die Smartphone-Strategie verantwortliche Vice President Ilari Nurmi gab keine Gründe dafür an. Im Internet-Dienst Twitter schrieb er, er sei dankbar für fast 15 Jahre bei Nokia und wünsche dem Unternehmen nur das Beste. Informationen über einen Nachfolger waren am Montag auf Anfrage noch nicht zu erhalten.
Für ihre neue, mIDentity-basierte Softwarelösung mIDentity Application Security Technology (mID AST) hat die IT-Security-Spezialistin Kobil Systems den "Banking IT-Innovation Award 2012" erhalten. Der Award wird für innovative Technologien an der Kunde-Bank-Schnittstelle durch das Kompetenzzentrum „Sourcing in der Finanzindustrie“ der Universitäten Leipzig, St. Gallen und Zürich vergeben.
Der US-Kongress hat mit scharfen Worten vor den zwei chinesischen Telekom-Unternehmen Huawei und ZTE gewarnt. Die beiden Firmen stellten eine Sicherheitsgefahr für die USA dar, heisst es im Entwurf eines Untersuchungsberichtes des Geheimdienstausschuss des Kongresses, welcher der Nachrichtenagentur AFP bereits am Sonntag vorlag.
First time accepted submitter ryanferrell writes "Not even Harvard can afford to subscribe to every academic journal. For scientists at small institutions, lack of access to journals specific to one's narrow field can be painful. Individual articles can cost $30 to $50 each, which is paid out of personal or grant funds. The Boston Globe profiles a start-up that is piloting an 'iTunes' model with Nature Publishing Group and the University of Utah. In the pilot program, researchers pay nothing to download articles and their library foots a smaller bill for a la carte access from the publisher."
hypnosec writes "Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces and launched a new resource – the Web Platform in a bid to create a 'definitive resource' for all open Web technologies. The companies have come together to provide developers with a single source of all the latest information about HTML5, CSS3, WebGL, SVG and other Web standards. The platform will also offer tips and best practices on web development as well as web technologies. 'We are an open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform,' notes the WebPlatform site."
First time accepted submitter drichan writes "Those of us who watched the live feed of last night's Falcon 9 launch could be forgiven for assuming that everything went according to plan. All the reports that came through over the audio were heavy on the word "nominal," and the craft successfully entered an orbit that has it on schedule to dock with the International Space Station on Wednesday. But over night, SpaceX released a slow-motion video of what they're calling an 'anomaly.'"
First time accepted submitter poofmeisterp writes "Felix Baumgarner's planned record jump from 120,000 feet has been delayed due to 'bad wind.' Humor aside, it's good that careful thought is going into this potentially record-setting public act. From the article: 'The Austrian - who described himself as "like a tiger in a cage waiting to get out" - was due to leap from his Red Bull Stratos space capsule today at a planned altitude of 36,576m (120,000ft) over the New Mexico desert. However, the weather has forced a 24-hour launch delay. In July, Baumgartner jumped from an altitude of 29,455m (96,640ft), hitting 586.92km/h (364.69mph) during the free fall part of his drop.'"
Nerval's Lobster writes "Poor sales have driven Motorola Mobility to whack the Webtop, its attempt to make Android into an all-in-one operating system for both smartphones and traditional PCs. Motorola confirmed the death to CNET before issuing a widely circulated statement. Webtop allowed users to plug their Motorola device into a special laptop dock, which could then display Web pages and files on a full screen. Supported devices included the Motorola Atrix 2, which launched with Android 2.3 ('Gingerbread') and a dual-core 1GHz processor. For those few who bought a Webtop and now need something to do with it, Liliputing posted an article earlier this year about using the device to transform Raspberry Pi into a laptop (with the aid of some key accessories). Raspberry Pi's homebrew computer features a 700MHz processor capable of overclocking to 1GHz and 256MB of RAM, as well as an SD card for longer storage—specs that lag those of the latest smartphones, but Raspberry Pi has the virtue of being quite a bit cheaper at $35."
parallel_prankster writes "NYTimes has an interesting article about how patents are really stifling innovation in the tech industry. Today, almost every major technology company is involved in ongoing patent battles. Of course, the most significant player is Apple, industry executives say, because of its influence and the size of its claims: in August in California, the company won a $1 billion patent infringement judgment against Samsung. Former Apple employees say senior executives made a deliberate decision over the last decade, after Apple was a victim of patent attacks, to use patents as leverage against competitors to the iPhone, the company's biggest source of profits. At a technology conference this year, Apple's chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, said patent battles had not slowed innovation at the company, but acknowledged that some aspects of the battles had 'kind of gotten crazy.' It is a complaint heard throughout the industry. The increasing push to assert ownership of broad technologies has led to a destructive arms race, engineers say. Some point to so-called patent trolls, companies that exist solely to sue over patent violations. Others say big technology companies have also exploited the system's weaknesses. 'There are hundreds of ways to write the same computer program,' said James Bessen, a legal expert at Harvard. And so patent applications often try to encompass every potential aspect of a new technology. When such applications are approved, Mr. Bessen said, 'the borders are fuzzy, so it's really easy to accuse others of trespassing on your ideas.'"
Discussions about ethics and technology are perennial Slashdot staples. But if you want to frequent a site that is about ethics and technology and almost nothing else, with a strong science fiction bent to it, you might want to check out the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET.org) website. Here to introduce us to IEET and tell us what it's about, we have IEET Managing Director Hank Pellissier in a remote video interview we made through Skype.
An anonymous reader writes "Samsung has released the source code for the Samsung GALAXY Note II. This clears the way for custom ROM's for the smartphone. From the article: 'It's now been posted for the international GT-N7100 model, giving developers a peek at the 5.5-incher's inner workings and allowing them to get to work on new mods.'"
MrSeb writes "Tighten the strap on your tinfoil hat: Recently declassified documents show that the US Air Force was working on, and perhaps had already built, a supersonic flying saucer in 1956. The aircraft, which had the code name Project 1794, was developed by the USAF and Avro Canada in the 1950s. One declassified memo, which seems to be the conclusion of initial research and prototyping, says that Project 1794 is a flying saucer capable of 'between Mach 3 and Mach 4,' (2,300-3,000 mph) a service ceiling of over 100,000 feet (30,500m), and a range of around 1,000 nautical miles (1,150mi, 1850km). According to declassified cutaway diagrams, the supersonic flying saucer would propel itself by rotating an outer disk at very high speed, taking advantage of the Coand effect. Maneuvering would be accomplished by using small shutters on the edge of the disc (similar to ailerons on a winged aircraft). Power would be provided by jet turbines. According to the cutaway diagrams, the entire thing would even be capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL). The fact that there are no disc-shaped aircraft in the skies today, though, suggests that the USAF's flying saucer efforts probably never got past the prototype stage."
Linus Torvalds was (and still is) the primary force behind the development of the Linux kernel, and since you are reading Slashdot, you already knew that. Mr. Torvalds has agreed to answer any questions you may have about the direction of software, his thoughts on politics, winning the Millenial Technology Prize, or anything else. Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please keep them to one per post. We'll send the best to Linus, and post his answers when we get them back. Remember to keep an eye out for the rest of our upcoming special interviews this month.
another random user writes "Previously redacted documents presented in the Apple-Samsung case seem not to offer actual evidence that Samsung told its designers to copy the iPhone. Documents that have now been unredacted seem to show that there was never any 'copy apple' instruction. There was a push towards things that would be different, such as what is now seen in the Galaxy S3: 'Our biggest asset is our screen. It is very important that we make screen size bigger, and in the future mobile phones will absorb even the function of e-books.' Groklaw suggests, rather shockingly, that Apple's lawyers might have been a little selective in how they presented some of this evidence to the court, by picking little parts of it that offered a different shade of nuance."
hcs_$reboot writes "Apple has started shipping the iPhone 5 Lightning connector to 30-pin adapters. Some iPhone 5 owners complained about its new connector being incompatible with the previously well known 30 pin connectors (iPhone 4S and before, iPod, iPad, and chargers). From the article: 'Apple's accessories page shows the adapter as available to ship in October, while one MacRumors reader said the e-mail notice pointed to a delivery day of October 9.'"
concealment writes "At the end of August this year, the US Department of Transport's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new standards to significantly improve the fuel economy of cars and light trucks by 2025. Last week, we took a look at a range of recent engine technologies that car companies have been deploying in aid of better fuel efficiency today. But what about the cars of tomorrow, or next week? What do Detroit, or Stuttgart, or Tokyo have waiting in the wings that will get to the Obama administration's target of 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2025?"
First time accepted submitter dsjodin writes "There are only 19% females in Tolkien's works and the life expectancy of a Hobbit is 96.24 years. In January 2012 chemical engineering student Emil Johansson published a website with the hope for it to become a complete Middle-Earth genealogy. Now, ten months later, he has published some interesting numbers derived from the database of 923 characters. The site features a set of unique graphs helping us understand the world Tolkien described. Perhaps the most interesting ones are showing the decrease of the longevity of Men and the change in population of Middle-Earth throughout history. The latter was also recently published in the September edition of Wired Magazine."
jfruh writes "The Start Button, which has offered Windows users quick access to important programs, folders, and configuration options since 1995 and has looked more or less the same for all that time, has been re-engineered beyond recognition for Windows 8, replaced by a Start Screen of colorful Metro tiles that greets the user upon startup. One big problem: once you enter Desktop mode to access non-Metro apps, you lose easy access to all the stuff you expect from the Start Button. This has given rise to something of a cottage industry for Start Button replacements, with multiple replacement utilities available even before Windows 8 officially arrives."