Die Schweiz sei ein Paradies für digitale Piraten, sagt Markus Naef, Präsident von Audiovision Schweiz. Die Frage nach der Verfolgung von illegalen Downloads sei zu lange auf der Seite gelassen worden.

Nach der Energieetikette für Fernsehgeräte plant der Bund auch einen obligatorischen Aufkleber für Computer und andere elektronische Geräte. Die Einführung soll mit der Revision der Energieverordnung 2013 erfolgen.

Für Smartphones oder Tablet-PC bietet die Gemeinde Schwyz nun eine App an. Auf dieser App gibt es allerhand aktuelle Informationen über die Gemeinde. Aber auch über das Gewerbe sowie auch eine Liste aller Notfall-Telefonnummern.

"Apple macht Rekordgewinne, erzielt 70 Prozent der Umsätze auf dem App-Markt und präsentiert ein technologisches Ökosystem aus einem Guss. Deshalb sind Smartphone-Statistiken kritisch zu bewerten, die undifferenziert das Apple-Betriebssystem mit Google vergleichen. Genau hier liegt die Schwäche des Android-Marktes."

Die Glaubensgemeinschaft der aus Utah stammenden Mormonen setzen bei der Rekrutierung neuer Mitglieder nun verstärkt auf soziale Medien. Mithilfe von Facebook und Twitter wollen sie ihre Missionierungsstrategie revolutionieren und somit ihre religiösen Botschaften schneller und weiter in die Welt hinaustragen.

Künftig sollen Firmen und Behörden einfacher elektronisch unterschreiben können. Einer entsprechenden Revision des schweizerischen Bundesgesetzes über die elektronische Signatur steht nichts im Weg. In der soeben abgelaufenen Vernehmlassung begrüssen alle interessierten Kreise die Pläne des Bundes.

Der koreanische Elektronikhersteller Samsung hat im ewigen Patentstreit mit Apple vor einem US-Berufungsgericht zur Abwechslung wieder einmal einen Teilerfolg erzielt. Die Bundesrichter hoben eine einstweilige Verfügung gegen Samsung auf, mit der der Verkauf des Smartphones Galaxy Nexus vorerst untersagt wurde.

Nach Orange verzichtet auch Sunrise auf eine Klage gegen die Mobilfunkauktion. Man wolle sich jetzt auf den Netzausbau konzentrieren, erklärte der zweitgrösste Telekomkonzern der Schweiz kurz vor Ablauf der Beschwerdefrist, die am Freitag um Mitternacht endete.

Die Chefsuche beim angeschlagenen Internetkonzern Yahoo verdichtet sich auf zwei Kandidaten: den aktuellen Übergangs-CEO Ross Levinsohn und den Vorstandsvorsitzenden des Videoportals Hulu, Jason Kilar.

Die sich ändernden regulatorischen Vorschriften im Finanzsektor zwingen die Banken verstärkt zu Investitionen in die IT. Was wiederm gute Aussichten für die in diesem Bereich tätigen IT-Anbieter bedeutet.

MarkWhittington writes "A deal is in the works to establish a corporate headquarters in Midland, Texas for XCOR, a commercial space company that is developing a suborbital space tourism vehicle, the Lynx. The deal will likely also involve certifying Midland International Air Port as a space port so that the Lynx can operate there. XCOR is characterizing the move as an expansion as it still intends to maintain operations at the Mojave Spaceport in California."

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Maryland analyzing meticulous data collected by Danish authorities have identified a positive correlation between suicides among women with infection with the fairly common parasite T. gondii. Carriers were 53 percent more likely to commit suicide in a sample of 45,000 Danish women monitored for over a decade (researchers believe that the same correlation likely exists for men). Increased susceptibility to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder was also discovered. The physiological mechanism has not been determined, although some speculation centers around changes to dopamine levels. Two intriguing aspects were noted: 1) human infection often (but not always) begins by exposure to cats carrying the parasite, for example, by changing an infected animal's litter; and 2) the parasite spreads itself by infecting the nervous system of rodents, causing them to become suicidally attracted to feline odors which will increase the likelihood of their hosts being eaten by cats, whose digestive tracts provide the preferred environment for parasite reproduction."

bs0d3 writes "In regards to the new 'voluntary' graduated response deal (where no one really knows how ISPs will track and accuse customers of copyright infringement), according to CNN, it may be the ISP directly spying on their customers. 'But now that they're free from individual blame, there's also the strong possibility that the ISPs will be doing the data monitoring directly. That's a much bigger deal. So instead of reaching out to the Internet to track down illegally flowing bits of their movies, the studios will sit back while ISP's "sniff" the packets of data coming to and from their customers' computers.' This could be a problem for people who use U.S.-based internet services. If the U.S. wants to be an internet savvy country, they still need the competition in the marketplace that's always been missing, and a digital bill of rights that isn't a sneaky anti-piracy measure."

Hugh Pickens writes "Ben Fractenberg and Jeff Mays write that the NYPD has created a 'wanted' poster for a Harlem couple who film cops conducting stop-and-frisks and post the videos on YouTube — branding them 'professional agitators' who portray cops in a bad light and listing their home address. The flyer featuring side-by-side mugshots of Matthew Swaye and Christina Gonzalez and the couple's home address was taped to a podium outside a public hearing room in the 30th Precinct house and warns officers to be on guard against them. The couple has filmed officers stopping and frisking and arresting young people of color in Harlem and around New York City, which they post on Gonzalez's YouTube account. They said their actions are legal. 'There have been times when it's gotten combative. There have been times when they [police officers] have videoed Christina,' says Swaye. 'But if we were breaking the law they would have arrested us.' Swaye was part of a group of advocates including Cornel West who were detained at the 28th Precinct in Harlem in October for protesting the stop-and-frisk policy which Mayor Bloomberg strongly defends. "

After reports that South Korean had "surrendered to creationists" by removing references to evolution in several textbooks, openfrog writes with this excerpt from Science Insider that indicates that fight is still in progress: "The South Korean government is poised to appoint a new committee that will revisit a controversial plan to drop two examples of evolutionary theory from high school textbooks. The committee, to be led by insect taxonomist Byoung-Hoon Lee, a member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, has been asked to re-evaluate requests from a Korean creationist group to drop references to bird and horse evolution that they argue promote 'atheist materialism.' At the same time, about 50 prominent Korean scientists are preparing to present government officials with a petition, organized by the Korean Association of Biological Sciences, which calls for rejecting the proposed changes. 'When these things are done, I think it will turn out that after all Korean science will not surrender to religion' says Jae Choe, an evolutionary biologist at Ewha Womans University in Seoul who helped organize the petition."

LoudMusic writes "One of the many tasks of a network administrator is documenting the network so that other members of the administration and support teams can find devices on the network. Currently my organization uses Excel spreadsheets to handle this, and it's invariably error ridden. We also save a new file with the date in the name each time an update is made. I'd like to move this to a more intelligent database system, but the driving force for keeping it in spreadsheets is the ability to take the document offline, edit it, then upload this new revision to the file server when we have a connection again. Our clients often don't have reliable internet connections, especially when we're tearing their network apart and rebuilding it. The information we're currently documenting about an individual device are: device name, device model, description, IP address, MAC address, physical location, uplink switch & port, and VLAN. What tools exist that would allow us to have multiple users make updates both online and offline simultaneously, and synchronize changes into both the online and offline copies?"

SchrodingerZ writes "Since 1985, scientists have been trying to determine how Buckyballs (scientifically named Buckminsterfullerene ) are created. They are molecules with the formula C60 (a fullerene ) that forms a hexagonal sphere of interlocking carbon atoms. 'But how these often highly symmetric, beautiful molecules with extremely fascinating properties form in the first place has been a mystery.' For over three decades the creation of these molecules have baffled the scientific community. Recently researchers at Florida State University, in cooperation with MagLab, have looked deeper into the creation process and determined their origin. It was already known the the process for buckyball creation was under highly energetic conditions over an instant, 'We started with a paste of pre-existing fullerene molecules mixed with carbon and helium, shot it with a laser, and instead of destroying the fullerenes we were surprised to find they'd actually grown.' The fullerenes were able to absorb and incorporate carbon from the surrounding gas. This study will help to illuminate the path towards carbon nanotechnology and extraterrestrial environmental studies, due to buckyball's abundance in extrasolar clouds."

New submitter Doctor_Jest links to a recent I, Cringely column, in which Cringely "is speculating how the world will look when the 'Post-PC' era is in full swing." He makes the case that in just a few upgrade cycles, extensible phones and other devices, coupled with remotely stored data, could replace most of today's conventional PCs — but also admits he thought this transition would have already happened.

tsamsoniw writes "A mid-year salary survey has a mix of good and bad news for IT professionals: The good news, hiring is slowly increasing as companies bring more IT operations back in house and salaries are creeping up a bit. But compensation (including benefits) are just now reaching 2008 levels — and hiring will remain soft, at least until the presidential election is over."

sciencehabit writes "A team of researchers has found a way to forecast the intensity of solar storms by monitoring neutron sensors at the South Pole. The approach could help give advanced warning to astronauts and sattelites, which would otherwise be irradiated and fried, respectively. Smaller versions of these sensors could one day be standard equipment on interplanetary spacecraft."

Rambo Tribble writes "The BBC is reporting that the worldwide, tangled mess of IP litigation has come to the attention of the UN's International Telecommunication Union. The agency has announced it will be holding talks aimed at reducing this massive drag on the digital economy. Good luck."

First time accepted submitter darinfp writes "As an Australian, I'd like to announce a new definition of the word 'Irony.' A government contractor put a list of users and details in the mail and it was lost. The list contained users subscribed to the government's privacy breach alert system."

beefsack writes "Miniand have demonstrated how to control Linux using a Samsung Galaxy S2. Using an MK802 with the ARM build of Droidmote server bundled into an MK802 Lubuntu image with uinput enabled, Miniand demonstrates (video) using an Android phone as a keyboard, mouse, and gamepad over Wi-Fi to the device."