Der Jugendschutz wird bei frei nutzbaren Verkaufsplattformen wie dem sogenannten Marketplace von Amazon offenbar reihenweise grob missachtet. Das ist das Ergebnis von Testbestellungen des Nachrichtenmagazins "Der Spiegel". Bei 49 von 50 Testbestellungen seien DVDs oder Computerspiele, die nicht für Jugendliche freigegeben sind, ohne Alterskontrolle versandt worden.
Das Kantonsspital Aarau bewegt sich bei der Patienteninformation auf neuen Pfaden. Kinder können sich neu mit einem Online-Spiel über das Spital informieren. Damit wolle man den kleinen Patienten die Furcht vor einem Spitalaufenthalt nehmen, heisst es. Ein Online-Spiel sei effizienter als eine Broschüre.
Stephen Wolfram, der Entwickler von Mathematica und Wolfram Alpha, hat in seinem Blog beschrieben, wie er die persönlichen Daten, die er seit den 1980er-Jahren über sich gesammelt hat, auswertet und zu seinem Vorteil nutzt.
Dicke Luft zwischen Siemens und dem Gemeinschaftsunternehmen NSN: Der geplante Jobabbau bei Nokia Siemens Networks stösst dem Management des Münchener Industriekonzerns übel auf. Der Telefonnetzausrüster - ein Gemeinschaftsunternehmen von Siemens und der finnischen Nokia - will seinen Münchner Zentralstandort schliessen.
Im Kampf gegen den Erzrivalen Apple setzt der Internet-Konzern Google Software-Entwickler unter Druck, beim Verkauf ihrer Programme an Mobiltelefonnutzer sein eigenes Bezahlsystem Google Wallet zu nutzen.
Mehr als 200 Personen sind am Samstag in Lausanne gegen das Acta-Abkommen auf die Strasse gegangen. Die vorwiegend jugendlichen und teilweise maskierten Aktivisten demonstrierten gegen Zensur und die fehlende demokratische Debatte über das internationale Abkommen.
Der japanische Elektronikkonzern Sony will sein verlustreiches TV-Geschäft nicht aufgeben. "Sony ohne Fernseher wird es nicht geben", sagte der künftige Konzernchef Kazuo Hirai gegenüber der deutschen Zeitung "Welt am Sonntag". Hirai soll ab Anfang April Sony-Chef Sir Howard Stringer an der Spitze des Unternehmens ablösen.
Nach der Trendwende 2011 hat die deutsche Hightech-Messe Cebit in Hannover in diesem Jahr ihr Niveau nach Einschätzung der Veranstalter gehalten. "Wir werden weit über 300.000 Besucher haben und liegen damit auf dem Level des Vorjahres", sagte Messevorstand Ernst Raue am Samstag in Hannover.
Die Social-Media-Profile berühmter Persönlichkeiten entwickeln teilweise enorme Zugkraft. Musikerin Lady Gaga hat kürzlich die 20-Millionen-Verfolger-Marke bei Twitter übersprungen. Vor allem aufstrebende Künstler, deren Social-Media-Präsenz erst in Zusammenarbeit mit einer Plattenfirma entwickelt wird, müssen neuerdings Verträge unterzeichnen, die dem Unternehmen die Nutzungsrechte für die Accounts übertragen.
Die Maison d'Ailleurs in Yverdon-les-Bains (VD) widmet sich bis zum 9. Dezember der Videospiel-Kultur. Die Ausstellung "Playtime - Videogame mythologies" untersucht die Beziehung zwischen Spiel, Form und Technologie.
Hugh Pickens writes "Dick Teresi writes in the WSJ that becoming an organ donor seems like a noble act, but what doctors won't tell you is that checking yourself off as an organ donor when you renew your driver's license means you are giving up your right to informed consent, and that you may suffer for it, especially if you happen to become a victim of head trauma. Even though they compromise only 1% of deaths, victims of head trauma are the most likely organ donors. Patients who can be ruled brain dead usually have good organs, while organs from people who die from heart failure, circulation, or breathing deteriorate quickly. But here's the weird part. In at least two studies before the 1981 Uniform Determination of Death Act, some 'brain-dead' patients were found to be emitting brain waves, and at least one doctor has reported a case in which a patient with severe head trauma began breathing spontaneously after being declared brain dead. Organ transplantation — from procurement of organs to transplant to the first year of postoperative care — is a $20 billion per year business, with average recipients charged $750,000 for a transplant. At an average of 3.3 donated organs per donor, that is more than $2 million per body. 'In order to be dead enough to bury but alive enough to be a donor, you must be irreversibly brain dead. If it's reversible, you're no longer dead; you're a patient,' writes David Crippen, M.D. 'And once you start messing around with this definition, you're on a slippery slope, and the question then becomes: How dead do you want patients to be before you start taking their organs?'"
Trailrunner7 writes "When the long arm of the law reached in to arrest members of Anonymous's senior leadership on Tuesday, speculation immediately turned to the identities of the six men behind the Guy Fawkes mask. With the benefit of hindsight, it turns out that many had been hiding in plain site, with day jobs, burgeoning online lives and — for those who knew where to look — plenty of clues about their extracurricular activities on behalf of the world's most famous hacking crew. Two of the accused, Darren Martyn (aka 'pwnsauce,' 'raepsauce,' and 'networkkitten,') and Donncha O'Cearbhail, formerly known as Donncha Carroll (aka 'Palladium'), sported significant online footprints and made little effort to hide their affinity for hacking. In other areas, however, Martyn (who was reported to be 25, but claimed to be 19), seemed to be on his way to bigger and better things. He was a local chapter leader of the Open Web Application Security Project in Galway, Ireland. He spent some of his free time with a small collective of computer researchers with Insecurety Research, under the name 'infodox.'"
mikejuk writes "This video will change the way you think about programming. The argument is clear and impressive — it suggest that we really are building programs with one hand tied behind our backs. Programmers can only understand their code by pretending to be computers and running it in their heads. As this video shows, this is increadibly inefficient and, as we generally have a computer in front of us, why not use it to help us understand the code? The key is probably interactivity. Don't wait for a compile to complete to see what effect your code has on things — if you can see it in real time then programming becomes much easier."
westlake writes "The AP is reporting that the world's first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Enterprise, is to be retired after fifty years of active service — the longest of any warship in U.S. naval history. Its final deployment will take it to the Middle East and last for seven months. The big ship has become notoriously difficult to keep in repair. As an old ship and the only one in its class, breakdowns have become frequent and replacement parts often have to be custom made. Despite its place in naval history and popular culture, Enterprise will meet its end at the scrap yard rather than being preserved at a museum. This is expected to happen in 2015, after the nuclear fuel has been removed."
MojoKid writes "At the iPad unveiling last week, Apple flashed up a slide claiming that the iPad 2 was 2x as fast as Nvidia's Tegra 3, while the new iPad would be 4x more powerful than Team Green's best tablet. NVIDIA's response boils down to: 'it's flattering to be compared to you, but how about a little data on which tests you ran and how you crunched the numbers?' NVIDIA is right to call Apple out on the meaningless nature of such a comparison, and the company is likely feeling a bit dogpiled given that TI was waving unverified webpage benchmarks around less than two weeks ago. That said, the Imagination Technologies (PowerVR) GPUs built into the iPad 2 and the new iPad both utilize tile-based rendering. In some ways, 2012 is a repeat of 2001 — memory bandwidth is at an absolute premium because adding more bandwidth has a direct impact on power consumption. The GPU inside NVIDIA's Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 is a traditional chip, which means it's subject to significant overdraw, especially at higher resolutions. Apple's comparisons may be bogus, but Tegra 3's bandwidth issue they indirectly point to aren't. It will be interesting to see NVIDIA's next move and what their rumored Tegra 3+ chip might bring."
An anonymous reader writes "Double Fine Adventure, the crowd-funded adventure game from Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert (of Monkey Island fame), just crossed the $2.5 million mark in funding on Kickstarter. So far, about 73,000 enthusiastic backers have contributed an average of $35 dollars each, with 3 extravagant backers going as far as to contribute $10,000 (earning them a lunch with Schafer and Gilbert, among other goodies). The total sum is over 6 times the amount Schafer and Gilbert were initially hoping to raise ($400,000). Schafer released a few pictures showing what he's doing with all the money. The project has received attention in mainstream media (sort of), with NPR's Morning Edition covering the story."
judgecorp writes "MIME email attachments have been around for 20 years, and we now send a trillion every day. The mountains of emails in corporate archives now contain vital information, says MIME inventor Nathaniel Borenstein, which can be mined to expose conspiracies and make businesses more efficient. He also says a one-penny tax on attachments would make him as rich as Germany — if it weren't for the fact that such a charge would have killed MIME."
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo Finance reports that convicted criminal offenders can serve their court-ordered community service hours online by taking educational courses through Community Service Help. According to the article, there is a high correlation between criminal activity and lack of education. Who knew? 'About 40 percent of all U.S. prison inmates never finished high school, and nearly 44 percent of jail inmates did not complete high school. More current data shows that hasn't changed. In Washington, D.C., for instance, 44 percent of Department of Corrections inmates are not high school graduates. Less than 2 percent had 16 years or more of schooling.'"
Hugh Pickens writes "Some insiders from Japan's tightly knit nuclear industry have stepped forward to say that Tepco and regulators had for years ignored warnings of the possibility of a larger-than-expected tsunami in northeastern Japan, and thus failed to take adequate countermeasures, such as raising wave walls or placing backup generators on higher ground. 'March 11 exposed the true nature of Japan's postwar system, that it is led by bureaucrats who stand on the side of industry, not the people,' says Shigeaki Koga, a former director of industrial policy at the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. Eight years ago, as a member of an influential cabinet office committee on offshore earthquakes in northeastern Japan, Kunihiko Shimazaki, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo, warned that Fukushima's coast was vulnerable to tsunamis more than twice as tall as the forecasts of up to 17 feet put forth by regulators and Tepco, but government bureaucrats running the committee moved quickly to exclude his views from debate as too speculative and 'pending further research.' Then in 2008, Tepco's own engineers made three separate sets of calculations that showed Fukushima Daiichi could be hit by tsunamis as high as 50 feet. 'They completely ignored me in order to save Tepco money,' says Shimazaki."
dkleinsc writes "The NYTimes ran a profile of the New York Jedi Club, an organization dedicated to teaching the ways of the Force. Jedi Grandmaster Flynn Michael, a sound engineer and (by his own proclamation) an 'over-the-top geek,' connected the ideas of the Jedi with dance, martial arts, sword-fighting and Tibetan Buddhism to form the curriculum."
ananyo writes "In 1961, IBM physicist Rolf Landauer argued that to reset one bit of information — say, to set a binary digit to zero in a computer memory regardless of whether it is initially 1 or 0 — must release a certain minimum amount of heat, proportional to the ambient temperature. New work has now finally confirmed that Landauer was right. To test the principle, the researchers created a simple two-state bit: a single microscopic silica bead held in a 'light trap' by a laser beam. (Abstract) The trap contains two 'valleys' where the particle can rest, one representing a 1 and the other a 0. It could jump between the two if the energy 'hill' separating them is not too high. The researchers could control this height by changing the power of the laser, and could 'tilt' the two valleys to tip the bead into one of them by moving the physical cell containing the bead slightly out of the laser's focus. By monitoring the position and speed of the particle during a cycle of switching and resetting the bit, they could calculate how much energy was dissipated."
Sara Chan writes "NATO has awarded its largest cyber-security contract to date, in a move that is expected to prompt member states to augment their own cyber-security capabilities. The contract, for €58 million ($76 million), is to design and implement NATO's Computer Incident Response Capability. NCIRC will enable NATO to monitor computer networks from its headquarters in Brussels and detect and respond to cyber threats and vulnerabilities at about 50 NATO sites in 28 countries. The project is intended to meet the requirements of a declaration by NATO Head of States at the Lisbon Summit, in November 2010, which called for the achievement of NCIRC Full Operational Capability by end of 2012."
Tackhead writes "Hot on the hooves of Sergey Glazunov's hack 5-minutes into Pwn2Own, an image of an axe-wielding pink pony was the mark of success for a hacker with the handle of Pinkie Pie. Pinkie Pie subtly tweaked Chromium's sandbox design by chaining together three zero-day vulnerabilities, thereby widening his appeal to $60K in prize money, another shot at a job opportunity at the Googleplex, and instantly making Google's $1M Pwnium contest about 20% cooler. (Let the record show that Slashdot was six years ahead of this particular curve, and that April Fool's Day is less than a month away.)"
An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from Hack a Day: "Clap On! Clap Off! was super awesome when The Clapper came out in the mid-eighties. Now [Mathieu Stephan] is trying to make the concept much more functional. He put together a controller that lets you knock on walls to control things around the house. It's called the Toktoktok project and uses small boxes to receive user input and control items like lamps and computers." As the project website points out, Stephan is keeping the project intentionally open.