benfrog writes “Blackberry maker Research in Motion may need to write off more than $1 billion in inventory, according to Bloomberg. The potential ‘writedown’ comes after RIM took a $485 million pretax charge to write down the value of its PlayBook inventory in December. RIM has said it aims to save $1 billion in operating costs this fiscal year by cutting its number of manufacturing sites and is ‘reviewing its organizational efficiency’ across the company, which may lead to job cuts of 2,000-3,000. Its shares have tumbled 75 percent over the past year and are down 90 percent from their all-time high.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See the article here:
RIM May Need To Write Off $1 Billion In Inventory

When it rains, it pours — after a tiny drizzle of tall iPod touch leaks, we’re suddenly faced with a deluge of photos of what might just be the next iPhone’s back plating. If that’s what we’re looking at through photos supplied by a historically reliable uBreakiFix, talk of bigger iPhone screens might just pan out, as it looks decidedly taller than the iPhone 4S we use today. Apple may likewise be going all old-school iPhone on us, with a modern twist: we could be reverting to an aluminum back with more receptive materials (likely glass) at the ends, just in a much thinner form that keeps the steel antenna band. Perhaps the most intriguing bit is at the bottom, where rumors of a much smaller dock connector may have been validated along with a shift of place for the headphone jack. There’s still a chance we’re looking at an elaborate KIRF or an early engineering prototype that could change, but given that 9to5 Mac just got very similar images with black trim, there’s a real possibility that we’ve just been given a sneak peek of what to expect from Apple later this year.

Update: A handful of extra photos have surfaced at 9to5 that show a bit of the front, as well as better views of the back. It’s looking like the new model won’t quite be as skinny as some photos suggest, and we’re digging the different-hued, two-tone design a bit more now that it’s not being subjected to Mr. Blurrycam. We’ve included the more choice shots in the gallery.

[Thanks to Brandon and Steven from uBreakiFix]

Supposed new iPhone casings show up with tall body, tiny dock connector, tons of mystery (update: a bit of the front too) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 May 2012 11:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink uBreakiFix | | Email this | Comments

Read the original post:
Supposed new iPhone casings show up with tall body, tiny dock connector, tons of mystery (update: a bit of the front too)

Remember that Compal franken-gadget reference design we saw at CES? Well, something quite similar looks to be heading to Computex and thence to market, courtesy of Chinese manufacturer CZC Tech. The company has loaded up its Transformer-style 13.3-inch U116T with Ivy Bridge and HD 4000 graphics, the world’s favorite resolution, 4GB RAM and a choice of SSD capacities. On the connectivity front you’ll get one each of USB 2.0 and 3.0, a memory card slot, audio jacks, SIM slot and an optional fingerprint scanner for people who don’t like sharing. What’s more, all that technology is housed in the display component — the detachable keyboard itself will apparently only add an extra battery. On the software side, CZC is promoting Windows 7 alongside a bit of future-proofing, which means the only thing left to discover is the price, availability and whether this device will have anything like the astonishing lightness of that fiber glass Compal.

The CZC U116T: it’s an Ultrabook, it’s a hybrid and it’s hopefully coming to Computex originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 May 2012 11:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Netbook Italia, Ultrabook News | CZC Tech | Email this | Comments

See the article here:
The CZC U116T: it’s an Ultrabook, it’s a hybrid and it’s hopefully coming to Computex

Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson

Future of Bandwidth

• How much bandwidth does your office really need?
• Bandwidth explosion: As Internet use soars, can bottlenecks be averted?

At the rate technology has changed everything else in our lives, by now we should have the equivalent of tricorders in our smartphones—instant access to our health statistics collected by sensors in our clothes and pulled into our individual health history in the cloud. We should be able to Skype our physician, text our pharmacist, and get both a blood sugar measurement and an MRI at Starbucks while waiting for a grande latte.

Except for the MRI part, all of that is doable today. Thanks to the big stick provided by the Affordable Care Act in the US, some healthcare organizations are pushing more aggressive use of network bandwidth and cloud technology:

• Monitoring patients’ health more proactively with networked devices, ranging from wirelessly networked medicine bottle lids to worn or embedded sensors that report back on vital signs;
• Coordinating care with the help of analytic tools in the cloud and a wealth of individual and collective patient data; and
• Connecting physicians directly with patients over PCs or mobile devices for between-appointment follow-ups.

Those things can’t be pulled off without cloud technology, whether it’s hosted internally in a health organization’s data center or elsewhere. But ask any random sampling of physicians, technologists, and health industry observers. They’ll tell you technology isn’t restraining the next big paradigm shift in health care. The bandwidth is willing.

Read more | Comments

View post:
X-rays and iPads: The network healthcare evolution

If you’ve been in the baby monitor racket as long as I have, you’ve seen it all: the good, the bad, and the unusable. Well here’s a monitor that just might win my heart. It’s called the BabyPing (there’s an N in there) and it allows you to view your child’s every squiggle and giggle on your iPhone or iPad. The app and monitor costs about $230 and is currently available in Europe only, although it’s expected to hit our shores shortly.

Arguably video monitors are mostly for first-time parents who are total freakouts about watching the baby at all times. The system notifies you if the baby is stirring and an infrared system ensures you can peep in on him or her at night.

As I noted before, video systems like this one usually used special hardware and/or wonky software so it’s nice to see something that just works.

Product Page

View article:
BabyPing Is A Wireless Baby Monitor You Control With Your iPhone

Much ado was made when security experts found Stuxnet wreaking havoc, but it’s looking as though the malware was just a prelude to a much more elaborate attack that’s plaguing the Middle East. Flame, a backdoor Windows trojan, doesn’t just sniff and steal nearby network traffic info — it uses your computer’s hardware against you. The rogue code nabs phone data over Bluetooth, spreads over USB drives and records conversations from the PC’s microphone. If that isn’t enough to set even the slightly paranoid on edge, it’s also so complex that it has to infect a PC in stages; Flame may have been attacking computers since 2010 without being spotted, and researchers at Kaspersky think it may be a decade before they know just how much damage the code can wreak.

No culprit has been pinpointed yet, but a link to the same printer spool vulnerability used by Stuxnet has led researchers to suspect that it may be another instance of a targeted cyberwar attack given that Iran, Syria and a handful of other countries in the region are almost exclusively marked as targets. Even if you live in a ‘safe’ region, we’d keep an eye out for any suspicious activity knowing that even a fully updated Windows 7 PC can be compromised.

Flame malware snoops on PCs across the Middle East, makes Stuxnet look small-time originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 May 2012 17:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Wired | Kaspersky Securelist | Email this | Comments

Read more here:
Flame malware snoops on PCs across the Middle East, makes Stuxnet look small-time

theodp writes “Covered earlier on Slashdot, but lost in the buzz over the Google driverless car is Project Sartre (Safe Road Trains for the Environment), Europe’s experiment with ‘vehicle platooning,’ which has successfully completed a 125 mile road test on a busy Spain motorway. Three Volvos drove themselves by automatically following a truck in the presence of other, normal road users. The Register reports that on-board cameras, radar and laser tracking allow each vehicle to monitor the one in front, and wirelessly streamed data from the lead vehicle tells each car when to accelerate, break and turn.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue reading here:
Autonomous Road Train Project Completes First Public Road Test

An anonymous reader writes “Wired is reporting on a massive, highly sophisticated piece of malware has been newly found infecting systems in Iran and elsewhere and is believed to be part of a well-coordinated, ongoing, state-run cyberespionage operation. Kaspersky Lab, the company that discovered the malware, has a FAQ with more details.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Visit link:
Flame: The Massive Stuxnet-Level Malware Sweeping the Middle East

André Kuipers, a Dutch physician and astronaut with the European Space Agency, was on board the ISS when the SpaceX Dragon vehicle berthed. He took this photograph, and wrote,

Inside of the Dragon module. Beautiful. Spacious, Modern. Blue LEDs. Feels a bit like a sci-fi filmset. Of course it is from Los Angeles.

He wrote more about the historic space milestone here, on his blog.

Last Friday was a special day on my mission. Don and I docked the SpaceX’s cargoship Dragon to the Space Station. Dragon brings new equipment for the crew. On the 31st of May it will return to Earth with supplies from the others and myself. The Dragon mission is the operational highlight of my mission. But it is also a milestone for international spaceflight. This is the first time that a commercial spacecraft has flown to the ISS and docked with the Station. You could say a new era of spaceflight has begun. Soon private companies will take people to and from space.

Excerpt from:
ISS astronaut, upon seeing inside SpaceX Dragon vehicle first time: “It looks sci-fi.”

Ubuntu 12.04, codenamed Precise Pangolin, rolled out last month. The new version of the popular Linux distribution brings updated software and new features, including the highly-anticipated Heads-Up Display (HUD) interface. The HUD is one of several excellent improvements that have helped to make Ubuntu’s Unity desktop shell even better in Ubuntu 12.04

When Unity was first unveiled in 2010, it was introduced as a new graphical frontend for the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Canonical later brought Unity to the desktop, making it the cornerstone of the company’s Linux usability enhancement efforts. Ubuntu 11.04 (released last year) was the first version that shipped with Unity as the standard environment on the desktop.

Unity has come a long way since Canonical and the Ubuntu community began working to iron out its rough edges on the desktop. The performance and stability issues that afflicted earlier versions have largely been remedied. It was already in great shape back in October when version 11.10 was released, but it has benefited from further refinement.

Read more | Comments

Link:
Precision and purpose: Ubuntu 12.04 and the Unity HUD reviewed