Datamation Staff

Reuters: In a speech, Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, said that Europe needed new data protection rules that would assure consumers that their data is protected and that would simplify the current system of regulations that varies from country to country. The proposed rules would require companies to report data breaches to […]

Washington Post: On Tuesday, Google announced some changes to its privacy policies. Instead of having separate privacy policies for each of its services, the company will combine 60 of its services under one umbrella policy. Bloggers and privacy advocates immediately criticized the change, with some saying that Google had violated its “Don’t be evil” motto. […]

eWeek: Enterprise software vendor SAP reported that its total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011 reached $5.8 billion, a year-over-year increase of 11 percent. The company’s software revenue was up 16 percent, while support revenue climbed 13 percent. “We are well positioned to exceed our [about $25 billion] revenue target and reach a 35 […]

The Wall Street Journal: According to online job board Dice.com, 2011 was the first year ever when the average Silicon Valley tech worker made more than $100,000. To be more exact, the average Silicon Valley techie earned $104,195 last year, 5.2 percent more than in 2010. Hourly rates for contract workers and bonuses in the […]

ZDNet: A Cisco survey of 1,500 IT managers and executives in six different countries finds that many oppose bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies. In fact, 48 percent of the companies surveyed said they would never allow employees to use their personal tablets and smartphones for work. The most common reason cited for opposition to BYOD was the […]

PCMag: An appeals court in The Hague, Netherlands, has upheld an earlier ruling that banned Dutch sales of Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones but not the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. Apple had appealed the earlier ruling because it believes the Samsung tablet copies the design of the iPad. “Samsung welcomes today’s ruling by the court in the […]

BBC News: In a blog post, Microsoft wrote that it believes Andrey Sabelnikov “wrote the code for and either created, or participated in creating, the Kelihos malware.” At its peak, the Kelihos botnet infected 41,000 systems, which it used to send more than 3.8 billion spam emails. Sabelnikov worked for Russian antivirus vendor Agnitum between […]

Cnet: A new report from Juniper Research predicts that sales of ultrabooks will grow three times as fast as sales of tablets over the next five years. However, because tablets have a head start, total sales of tablets will continue to exceed ultrabook sales. By 2016, Juniper predicts 253 million tablets sold, compared to 178 […]

The Industry Standard: Research in Motion has announced that co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have left the ailing company. Former COO Thorsten Heins will step in as president and CEO, and director Barbara Stymiest will fill the vacant chairman job. The new CEO for the BlackBerry maker does not seem inclined to make dramatic […]

USAToday: A new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that tablet and e-reader ownership doubled over the holiday. By the end of December, 19 percent of American adults owned a tablet, a 10 percent increase from 2010. The numbers were similar for those who owned e-readers. In all, 29 […]

Computerworld: Two new research reports have shed light on the trends impacting IT hiring. The first report from the National Science Foundation finds that high-tech manufacturing employment in the U.S. has declined 28 percent since 2000, costing the country 687,000 jobs. However, a separate report from Forrester Research found that the U.S. tech sector employed […]

Forbes: Over the weekend, the hacktivist group Anonymous continued its retaliation against the takedown of the site Megaupload by launching DDoS attacks against CBS.com, Universal Music, Vivendi and other media-related sites. Akamai’s web-monitoring service reported that attack-related traffic increased 24 percent and network traffic in general climbed 14 percent shortly after the attacks began. The […]