Новости за 13.11.2015

Two brothers who used H-1B workers to create a low-cost and profitable on-demand workforce were found guilty Thursday in federal court of violating the law.

If there's one problem with presentation software, it's that it's hard for many people to create slides that look and feel professional. While Microsoft does its best to provide people with templates, it can still be hard to make slides look good -- and that's made doubly difficult for users starting from a blank canvas.

Smart cities could become healthier cities as the Internet of Things learns to gauge conditions from the sky to the sewer.

The IEEE-USA is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to consider whether the business model used by many offshore outsourcing firms -- replacing U.S. workers with visa holders -- violates the law.

Microsoft today launched a new preview program for consumers who subscribe to Office 365 that will give them a sneak peak at new features slated to be added to the subscription service in the next one to three weeks.

At a symposium concerned with the advances and regulatory issues pertaining to the burgeoning area of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS, aka "drones"), Dr. Richard Kelley of the University of Nevada at Reno brought up something that is still oscillating in my head: In almost every article or discussion on drones, the machines are talked about in the singular, i.e., the drone. What he brought up is so logical an extension of Moore's Law that it seems positively inevitable. We're going to see, everywhere and in abundance, drone swarms. Читать дальше...

It’s here.

The monster iPad I’ve been wanting to test for years is finally in my hands. Before Apple actually announced this one, I dreamed of a more powerful iPad with a bigger screen and enough chops to handle my daily routine of writing, editing photos, checking email and Slack, and browsing the Web. I often do all of those activities concurrently with all of the apps running, so I’ve been curious if a “business ready” tablet from Apple would really meet my needs.

Before I get too far into my review, a few quick things. Читать дальше...

If you can't buy 'em, copy 'em.

Facebook confirmed to Computerworld today that it is running a small test of a Snapchat-like feature, enabling users to send messages that will automatically disappear.

A disappearing message in the Facebook test.

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Editor’s Note: Apple invited CIO.com's Matt Kapko to Cupertino to offer him details about its plans for the iPad Pro -- specifically Apple wanted to share background on why the new tablet is well-suited for the enterprise. As a condition of the interview, all comments are attributed only to an unidentified Apple spokesman.

Efforts to establish a global ban on offensive autonomous weapons — a.k.a. “killer robots” — have intensified in recent weeks. This uptick in lobbying comes on the heels of an open letter calling for such a ban from a group of artificial intelligence and robotics researchers, including well-known luminaries such as Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Noam Chomsky.

Microsoft is on a roll with the new Office 2016 suite.

I’m impressed not just with some of the new features--in particular, the team-editing capabilities in Word 2016 that let everyone edit the same document--but with how the company is working to add new features even though the app debuted just a few weeks ago.

Just today, Microsoft announced two new features in PowerPoint 2016. Chris Maloney and Sean Villaron from Microsoft, who lead the PowerPoint 2016 program, showed me the features... Читать дальше...

Apple is killing its Beats Music streaming service. It all kicks off the end of the month, when Tim’s crew want you to be on Apple Music.

Google's self-driving car had a run-in with the law this week.

A Mountain View, Calif. motorcycle police officer pulled over a Google autonomous car for driving too slowly, and a photo of the roadside stop posted to Facebook by Zandr Milewski has gone viral.

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Google responded to the hubbub yesterday on its Self-Driving Car Project page on Google+.

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If Apple creates a mobile person-to-person payment service, it could rock the banking and payments world as never before, some analysts believe.

Some of the most popular automated software building and testing tools used by developers have not been designed with security in mind and can open the door for attackers to compromise enterprise networks.

Someone at Microsoft must not have gotten the memo.

In a statement issued Thursday, Microsoft's top operating system executive repeatedly used the term "update" to describe the first major refresh of Windows 10, which has been tagged within the OS as 1511 to indicate it was released in November (11) of 2015 (15).

"Today, we reach our next milestone as the first major update to Windows 10 is now available for PCs and tablets," Terry Myerson, who leads the combined OS-and-device division at Microsoft... Читать дальше...

It's hard to argue with a paper written by a Nobel Laureate. But statistician Andrew Gelman is -- if not debunking (as he points out in a blog post), at least clarifying -- much-reported research that death rates are soaring for middle-aged white Americans.

Recent data breaches, like those at Xero, Experian and TalkTalk, are one of the many reasons data security analysts are in high demand.

Now that machine learning is becoming more and more mainstream, some design patterns are starting to emerge. As the CEO of CrowdFlower, I’ve worked with many companies building machine learning algorithms and I’ve noticed a best practice in nearly every successful deployment of machine learning on tough business problems. That practice is called “human-in-the-loop” computing. Here’s how it works:

The Tor Project is up in arms, alleging that the FBI paid Carnegie Mellon University “at least” a million dollars to unmask Tor users.

Gene M. Amdahl, chief architect of IBM's System/360 mainframe and later the creator of the IBM plug-compatible mainframe vendor that bore his name, has died aged 92.

Apple TV has always been the best way for those in the Apple ecosystem to bring iTunes content to their TV. The small, hockey-puck-sized device can fit unobtrusively into most people's living rooms and stream content from a variety of sources, including iTunes libraries on computers with Home Sharing enabled; iPhones and iPads via wireless AirPlay; the iTunes music and movie/TV store portal; and various third-party partners lucky enough to land a spot on its exclusive and seemingly arbitrary Home screen. Читать дальше...

Emergence

Emboldened by huge success in China, Apple is moving to make an impact on other emerging economies worldwide, with India seemingly next in line. The company has a secret weapon as it broadens its appeal in these markets – and that weapon is Apple Pay.

This is what we know so far: Apple is working to introduce person-to-person payments to Apple Pay, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Flashback to the late 1990s, when this big aerospace/defense contractor acquires a competitor -- although it takes a few years for them to convert to a common manufacturing system, according to a pilot fish on the scene.

Apple is pulling the plug on Beats Music on Nov. 30, shortly after launching the beta of an Android app for its Apple Music streaming service.