One of Microsoft's top Windows executives this week said the company remains bullish about and has no intention of dumping the limited-feature, touch-enabled tablet operating system. Analysts accepted that at face value, but remain suspicious of unless Microsoft makes dramatic changes, including dropping the price of the licenses it sells to OEMs. "Microsoft's strategy to portray Windows RT as for both work and play is not working," said Carolina Milanesi in an interview. "They need to change their tactics to position RT as the OS for consumption devices, to make the hardware a companion to the full Windows experience, not a replacement for it." Last week, Tami Reller, CFO of the Windows division, went on a mini-PR spree, granting interviews to several media outlets to slated for release later this year, and in some cases, offer mea culpas for mistakes the company made with both Windows 8 and Windows RT.
Airbus has partnered with Dell to provide electronic flight bag (EFB) systems for A320 airliner operators worldwide. An EFB is an electronic system for viewing and interacting with flight crew functions and replaces paper operating manuals, performance calculations, airport charts, and navigation charts. Dell Latitude laptops, which will adhere to regulatory standards, will be preloaded with the FlySmart system with Airbus software, and installed as Class-2 EFB equipment. The initial agreement covers Airbus' single aisle aircraft, but may be extended in the future to cover other types. A Class-2 EFB system is a portable laptop which is connectable to the aircraft's avionics systems and power supply via a docking station. Pilots can disconnect it from the aircraft, take it with them when leaving the aircraft and continue working with the data to prepare for their next flight.
Mobility has all but eclipsed speed and anything else as the capability garnering the most attention in desktop processors. . Many of these chips run well under 2 GHz, which is more than enough to enable vendors to create fast and fan-less tablets and laptops, such as the Samsung Chromebook. But clock rate speeds still matter to some.
Google has released a draft of its next five-year plan for login authentication that tries to stay at least on par with criminal hackers, but recognizes that strong security requires industry collaboration. The draft, which was released last week for security pros, may be discussed further at the Google I/O conference next week. It explores where Google might head following its first five-year plan, issued in 2008. Over the last five years, the security landscape has changed dramatically with the broad adoption of smartphones, the rise in and the evolution in hacking techniques and tools that require innovation in defenses. This year, Google rolled out to attach a specific device to an account holder. The company is now considering becoming much more aggressive with the mechanism, which is currently optional.
Western Digital has released new information about its first hybrid drive, revealing that it is using NAND flash technology from SanDisk. The drive is now shipping. WD to date, the WD Blue. use a small amount of NAND flash memory to accelerate performance in combination with a traditional hard disk drive for added storage. In the partnership, SanDisk will supply its iSSD NAND flash and WD will offer up its WD Black hard drive to create the SSHD. The drive uses a 6Gbps SATA interface.
Internet criminals have opened a new front in Latin America and the Caribbean and seem to have founded booming businesses thanks to low levels of cybercrime protection and awareness, a rare but timely analysis of the region by Trend Micro has found. After gathering data from 20 out of 32 members of the Organization of American States (OAS) and its own honeypots, is on the rise, not a surprise perhaps given that this is a global phenomenon, but worth paying attention to for any firm doing business in these countries. Overall, incidents increased in OAS countries by between 8 percent and 40 percent in every category of threat in 2011 and 2012, with attacks on online banks, and infrastructure probes particular standouts. More interesting than the percentages alone, however, were the inferences Trend was able to make about underlying cybersecurity based on the types of attack that were reported.
Microsoft last week said it will issue ten security updates next week, two of them rated "critical," to patch 34 vulnerabilities, including the zero-day bug that has been used by cyber criminals to poison "watering hole" websites in attacks aimed at U.S. government workers. "IE is always critical, and we expected at least one update this month," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at Tripwire's nCircle Security, in an interview. "What was surprising was the IE8 fix." The remaining eight updates, called "bulletins" by Microsoft, were pegged as "important" on the firm's threat scale, and will provide patches for Windows, several applications in the Office family and for multiple communications products, including Lync, Microsoft's enterprise-grade instant messaging platform. Three of the Windows security updates will affect Windows 8 and Windows RT, Microsoft's newest operating systems; one of the trio will patch only those two editions.
Researchers at Virginia Tech have built an autonomous, robotic jellyfish that could someday work as an underwater military spy. unveiled the prototype robot, named Cyro. The life-like, autonomous robotic jellyfish weighs 170 pounds and is 5 feet 7 inches in height. A handout photo from the school shows researchers swimming around with Cyro. The research is backed by the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Office of Naval Research, which are looking for self-powering, autonomous robots to do underwater surveillance or to monitor the environment.
-- the ambient, persistent and automatic recording of your everyday life. At the time, the idea was one of those science-fiction-like notions that would come into being sometime in the future -- when lifelogging would be something that happened in the background while you commuted to your glass-dome office via jet pack. Well, I'm back to talk about lifelogging. Except now it's real. More than that. It can also be free and easy.
, is on the hot seat. . compute, storage and content delivery services, and has been upgrading its IT management software to accommodate virtual workloads in the cloud as well. Prior to leading HP's cloud business, Gillai headed the development, marketing and sales of HP networking products for the cloud, and served as chief technology officer for the networking group. He also worked at Cisco Systems as well as 3Com, prior to HP's acquisition of 3Com.
Increasing confidence in the economy and a rising stock market could lay the groundwork for a revival in tech-sector mergers and acquisitions as companies embrace cloud technology and pursue game-changing software, particularly for the mobile market. On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard and Poor's 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange all closed up for the week, marking three straight weeks of gains. Last week the Dow and the S&P broke through to milestone levels -- 15,000 points for the Dow and 1,600 for the S&P. Meanwhile the Nasdaq closed up 27.41 at 3463.58 Friday, its highest point since 2000, right after the dot-com boom started to go bust. "Ultimately higher market values should result in higher valuations for sellers and thus result in more deals," said Rob Fisher, PricewaterhouseCooper's U.S. technology industry deals leader, in an email. "To the extent the rising markets are driven by confidence in long term fundamentals that also tends to increase the appetite of buyers who tend to shy away from deals when they have uncertainty about their existing prospects."
Microsoft is firing back with a little pop of its own amid criticism that its Windows 8 operating system is which fizzled after its debut. A communications executive for the Redmond, Wash.-based company, Frank Shaw, said in this week that such characterizations are more about getting page views on Web sites than predicting doom for the product. He focused his message on “the center” of Microsoft’s strategy with its latest operating system, one in which it is “listening to feedback and improving a product.” Despite the fact that a major marketing failure Coca-Cola suffered in 1985. The world’s largest beverage maker did an about-face and dumped the new formulation in less than three months.
and its ilk, the snub cuts deep. is so …wanting. (The baked-in Music app? Meh.) sales alike. If you buy digital media, there's a great chance you have something stashed in iTunes—and, if that something includes any video files or DRM-protected songs, you'll find it utterly inaccessible on Windows RT.
On Feb. 27th in the middle of the afternoon, a 16-year-old girl was walking through San Francisco's Mission district when she was ordered at gun point to hand over her cellphone. The robbery was one of 10 serious crimes in the city that day, and they all involved cellphones. Three were stolen at gun point, three at knife point and four through brute force. Incidents of cellphone theft have been rising for several years and are fast becoming an epidemic. IDG News Service collected data on serious crimes in San Francisco from November to April and recorded 579 thefts of cellphones or tablets, accounting for 41 percent of all serious crime. On several days, like Feb. 27, the only serious crimes reported in the daily police log were cellphone thefts. In just over half the incidents, victims were punched, kicked or otherwise physically intimidated for their phones, and in a quarter of robberies, users were threatened with guns or knives. )
A U.S. appeals court has ruled that an abstract idea is not patentable simply because it is tied to a computer system, signaling what one judge described as the "death" of software and business method patents. that four patents held by electronic marketplace Alice are too abstract for a patent, despite a long-standing legal assumption that software running on a computer is eligible for patents. The implications of the case are huge, wrote Judge Kimberly Moore, dissenting in part with the majority decision. The ruling in CLS Bank v. Alice gives "staggering breadth to what is meant to be a narrow judicial exception" on patent ineligibility, she wrote. "And let's be clear: if all of these claims, including the system claims, are not patent-eligible, this case is the death of hundreds of thousands of patents, including all business method, financial system, and software patents as well as many computer implemented and telecommunications patents."
The Web interface for Gmail has a very distinct look. Your office mates can probably recognize it at a glance. This Chrome extension, however, might cause a few double-takes in your office: Gmail Offline, an extension by Google, puts a completely different face on Gmail, making it more similar to the tablet version used on Android tablets.
When I first heard that Notion Music had dropped the price of its musical notation editor and scoring package from $249 to $99, I thought that the company was getting ready to close shop and having a fire sale. Or they'd gone crazy. Apparently, however, the company's experience with the iPad version of Notion has convinced them that selling more programs at a lower price might make them more money. Whatever the reason, it's nice to know that the slickest score editor on the planet is safe, sound, and improving. The first thing you'll notice when you run Notion is how good-looking everything is. The interface, the pages, the notation, the musical symbol palettes, etc. are all rendered in a very inviting style. The program simply makes you want to compose. It's also easy to use compared to most of the competition. I have a long-standing beef with the notation software industry's lack of true drag-and-drop editing. Notion doesn't support it either, but its editing methods are slightly more intuitive than those employed by Sibelius, Finale, or MuseScore, so editing is easier with Notion. Notion 4 has three excellent virtual instrument grids: a guitar, a piano, and a drum pad which allows you to enter notes. Notion Music's more guitar-oriented Progression featured a guitar, but these are new to Notion. The piano and guitar feature a preview mode so you can try things before you enter them, and both let you enter melodies or chords. If you're instrument-dependent, these are very useful features. The drum pad features a library of rhythm patterns you can drag to your score, but doesn't have a preview mode as the piano and guitar features.
Bing is adding some new social features to its search engine, by letting users comment and Like their Facebook friends' posts directly on the site. The new tools constitute yet another expansion to the Microsoft search site to make it more interactive and useful as the company seeks to distinguish itself from Google search. was scaled out to include more content from users' Facebook friends such as status updates, shared links and comments. Previously, users could see that content, but could not interact with it without leaving the Bing site. But with the latest expansion, they can.
Stuttery YouTube videos begone! Frequent fliers may eventually get a reprieve from subpar in-flight Wi-Fi, if the government allocates more wireless spectrum for airplane-friendly services like Gogo. auctioning off the rights to an additional 500 MHz of spectrum for ground-to-air wireless services. More available spectrum would result in faster speeds and more reliable connections. The move could create more competition, in turn driving prices down for in-flight Wi-Fi. when many passengers are trying to get online for free.
There's no doubt that focus more on ease of use than others do. are two examples at the forefront of this usability trend, but recently I came across another that has put friendliness at the forefront of its goals. Enter remix with tweaks and extras for additional usability. Korora recently got a key update to version 18, and it looks intriguing. Here's a summary of what's inside.
Colleges and universities are being encouraged to scrutinize their systems to keep them from being hijacked in DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks. The Research and Education Networking Information Sharing and Analysis Center (REN-ISAC) advised academic institutions this week to review their DNS (Domain Name System) and network configurations in order to prevent their systems from being abused to amplify DDoS attacks. "The REN-ISAC wants to raise awareness and drive change concerning common network and domain name system (DNS) configurations that fall short of accepted best practice and which, if left unchecked, open the door for your institution to be exploited as an unwitting partner to crippling denial of service attacks against third parties," said Doug Pearson, technical director of REN-ISAC, in sent Wednesday to the organization's members. REN-ISAC's members include over 350 universities, colleges and research centers from the U.S, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden.
You know you're not in iTunes anymore when the app you're eyeing has a $1,050 price tag, but SAP is nonetheless expanding its online shopping experience in a bid to entice its customers to purchase enterprise software the way they shop on their smartphones. SAP has made some changes and additions to its enterprise application store, including a new deal with Bazaarvoice aimed at improving the volume and quality of product reviews on the site. The store now contains more than 2,000 applications from SAP and some 1,000 partners, the ERP vendor said Friday. The offerings include mobile, cloud-based and on-premises software. Other recent improvements include the ability to buy some partner applications using PayPal, new tools partners can use to build out storefronts and expanded geographic availability of the store to 26 countries. New additions include Belgium, Denmark, Hong Kong, Norway, the Philippines, Spain and Sweden, SAP said.
Earlier today my dad called the Hassle-Free Hotline (also known as my home phone number). The poor guy seems to encounter more than his fair share of inadvertant computer problems. For example, somehow, while using his laptop's touchpad, he'd made everything in his browser bigger. Consequently, he had to scroll pages left and right, not just up and down. Welcome to the Curse of the Multitouch Touchpad. Most laptop owners know that dragging a finger across the touchpad moves the cursor. On some systems, dragging two fingers up and down enables scrolling. But there's another "gesture" that's easy to perform by accident, and the results often leave users scratching their heads. It's the pinch-zoom gesture, which works just like on a smartphone or tablet: you pinch two fingers together to decrease the zoom (i.e. zoom out), or pinch them away from each other to increase the zoom (i.e. zoom in).
has been the go-to music and video manager for Windows and Mac users. If you use a Windows RT tablet or are partial to the Windows 8 modern UI, however, iTunes is not available to you; a touch-centric version of Apple’s desktop software has yet to appear in the Windows Store. That won’t change in the near future either, according to Tami Reller, chief financial officer for Microsoft’s Windows division. Despite courting from Microsoft, the Mac maker is not interested in putting iTunes on Windows 8. , dashing the hopes of longtime iTunes users everywhere. "iTunes is in high demand. The welcome mat has been laid out. It's not for lack of trying." Reller’s comments were part of a larger conversation when the Windows co-chief said Microsoft expects the Windows Store to offer versions of nearly every major iOS app title by the fall.
A vast debit card fraud scheme that allegedly netted $45 million has been linked to the hacking of credit card processors in the U.S. and India. on Thursday whom they accuse of a scheme centered on raising the limit on prepaid debit cards and then withdrawing the cash from ATMs. "In such operations, hackers manipulate account balances and in some cases security protocols to effectively eliminate any withdrawal limits on individual accounts," the indictment reads. "As a result, even a few compromised bank account numbers can result in tremendous financial loss to the victim financial institution," it said.
Hackers who commandeered The Onion's Twitter account used simple but effective phishing attacks to obtain passwords, according to a writeup by the publisher's technology team. The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a group supporting embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has also compromised prominent Twitter accounts, including those of the Associated Press, The Guardian, the BBC and NBC News. that it had changed its Twitter password to "OnionMan77." on Thursday explaining how it temporarily lost control of the account.
Okay, say you have this shiny new car. It looks great, it performs like a demon, it features all the latest safety gadgets, and it's crawling with creature comforts. Just one problem, though. The local tinkerer, clearly consumed by jealousy, comes by sometime during the night to disassemble the entire thing. Sitting in the middle of a zillion bits and pieces the next morning, you quickly realize how totally useless this marvelously complicated car has become. is the Internet without a browser. Far more than the blank slate it appears to be, a Web browser is ridiculously sophisticated and entirely capable of morphing the code-crazed reality of the Internet into the Matrix-like façade we now can't live without. But how did we get where we are today? We thought you'd never ask...
Acer got a few things right and a number of things wrong with the Predator (specifically, Predator model AG3620-UR12). On the “right” side of the ledger, it has one of Intel’s better processors—a 3.4GHz Core i7-3770—and 32GB of DDR3/1600 memory. With those components, the asking price of $1299 is very reasonable. On the “wrong” side of the ledger, the Predator has an AMD Radeon HD 8760 video card (the OEM version of the milquetoast Radeon HD 7770), a chintzy custom motherboard with just PCIe x16 slot (occupied), and a miniscule 16GB SSD that serves as a cache to the 2TB, 7200-rpm mechanical hard drive. The all-steel case is wrapped in painted satin black, with glossy black accents on top. Three doors in its face flip down to reveal 5.25-inch drive bays. Of these, one is occupied by a 16x DVD burner, and a second has a slide-out tray with SATA power and data connectors in the rear of the bay. Though this isn’t a hot-swappable drive bay, it does provide an opportunity for data backup that you can remove to an offsite location. Also included are two empty 3.5-inch drive bays (accessible only from inside the case), but you’ll need to supply your own SATA cables and Molex-to-SATA power adapters if you decide to populate them (leads from the 500-watt power supply are available).
Die Europäer sind eine einzige, grosse Familie: Jeder heute lebende Europäer ist gemäss US-Forschern mit sämtlichen Männern und Frauen verwandt, die vor 1000 Jahren auf dem Kontinent gelebt haben.
Welches ist die beste Schule der Schweiz? Der Erziehungswissenschafter Jürgen Oelkers präsidiert die Jury, die das herauszufinden hat.
Diamanten sind nicht nur der beste Freund einer Frau. Sie sind mehrere Milliarden Jahre alt, waren lange Zeit heilig und galten als unbesiegbar – bis sie der Mensch gefügig machte
Akupunktur gegen Pollenallergie ist beliebt. Doch nun zeigt eine grosse Studie, dass sie kaum hilft.
Jährlich legen 50 Milliarden Zugvögel Tausende Kilometer zurück. Ihre Rastplätze entlang der Flugrouten werden jedoch zunehmend zerstückelt. Experten warnen vor den Folgen: Viele Vogelarten könnten deswegen aussterben.
Zur Kühlung eines Stromkreislaufes wird in der Internationalen Raumstation ISS Ammoniak verwendet. Nun entweicht das giftige Gas durch ein Leck. Experten warnen vor einem «ernsthaften Problem».
Ein Student hatte kürzlich die Baupläne für eine funktionsfähige Pistole aus einem 3-D-Drucker ins Internet gestellt. Nun hat sich Washington die Hoheit über die Daten gesichert. Die Pläne bleiben allerdings verfügbar.
Nach einer Äusserung über John Maynard Keynes' Sexualität sieht sich Wirtschaftshistoriker Niall Ferguson einem Entrüstungssturm gegenüber. Weil ein Entschuldigungsbrief nichts nützte, geht er nun in die Offensive.
Der zweite Mensch auf dem Mond hat sich für eine US-Mission zum Mars ausgesprochen. Seiner Meinung nach wäre es möglich, den Roten Planeten in den 2030er-Jahren zu besiedeln – allerdings ohne Rückkehr.
Einer Gruppe von Wissenschaftlern ist es erstmals gelungen, Spuren einer Sternenexplosion nachzuweisen. Dies bedeutet, dass sich in Reichweite der Erde einmal eine Supernova ereignete.
Bei einem Vulkanausbruch starben auf den Philippinen fünf Menschen, darunter drei Deutsche. Zeugen schildern das Drama. Während die Retter weiter nach Überlebenden suchen, wird Kritik an den Behörden laut.
Einzelne Wörter aus der Eiszeit sind noch heute in Gebrauch, wie Forscher herausfanden.
Die Schweiz im Jahr 2060: Ein Bericht von Meteo Schweiz sagt eine drastische Klimaveränderung voraus. Besonders hart würde es die Skigebiete treffen.
Langfristig ist er wohl nicht zu retten. Aber die Engelberger wollen noch möglichst lange vom touristisch wichtigen Gletscher profitieren. Dafür kühlen sie die Eisgrotte und prüfen eine Beschneiung im Sommer.
Eher still verläuft bisher die Himalaja-Expedition des Schweizer Profi-Alpinisten Stephan Siegrist. Sein Ziel: Der 8485 Meter hohe Makalu. Probleme mit Sherpas hat er nicht – im Gegenteil.
Tiefengeothermie soll für die Schweizer Energieversorgung wichtiger werden. Die ETH Zürich erhält zehn Millionen Franken, um die Forschung in dem Feld voranzutreiben. Diese steckt noch in den Kinderschuhen.
Selten hat eine Bergsteigergeschichte so viel Aufregung ausgelöst wie jene von Ueli Steck und Simone Moro am Mount Everest. Was hat genau zum Eklat mit den Sherpas geführt?
Eine bemannte Mission zum Roten Planeten hat für die US-Weltraumbehörde absolute Priorität. Das ist dem US-Präsidenten Barack Obama im nächsten Jahr fast 18 Milliarden Dollar wert.
Ein Student aus den USA hat brisante Baupläne ins Internet gestellt. Sie zeigen, wie man eine Pistole mit handelsüblichen 3-D-Druckern herstellen kann.
Wanderfalken jagen andere Vögel. Aus grosser Höhe stürzen sie sich in rasantem Flug auf ihre Beute. Fliegen Sie mit diesem Video auf dem Rücken von Falke Dora mit – und schnappen Sie sich die Ente.