Datamation Staff

All Things D: The Obama administration has officially expressed its disapproval of Congress’s attempt to overturn the FCC’s net neutrality rules. In a formal statement of administration policy, the White House threatened to veto S.J. Res. 6 if it is passed because it would “undermine a fundamental part of the nation’s Open Internet and innovation […]

All Things D: After declining to recommend the iPhone 4 because of antenna issues, Consumer Reports is recommending its successor, the Apple iPhone 4S. “In special reception tests of the iPhone 4S that duplicated those we did on the iPhone 4, the newer phone did not display the same reception flaw, which involves a loss […]

InformationWeek: The Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) said it needs to spend $208 million on cyber research in 2012, up from $120 million in 2011. In all, the agency that created the Internet plans to boost spending 50 percent over the next five years as it builds the country’s offensive and defensive cyberwar capabilities. […]

Reuters: Google wants smartphone manufacturers to know that it doesn’t plan to favor its own hardware after purchasing Motorola Mobility. “In general, with all of our partners, we told them that the Motorola deal will close and we will run it sufficiently and independently, that it will not violate the openness of Android,” Google chairman […]

PCWorld: After receiving 19,584 more CPUs in an upgrade, the world’s fastest supercomputer, known as “K,” set a new record: 10.51 petaflops. Owned by Fujitsu and RIKEN, K also held the previous record of 8.162 petaflops, which was set in June of this year. If you add up the computing power of the seven next […]

The Inquirer: On the Charlie Rose television show, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his company’s privacy record by saying it isn’t as bad as other tech giants. “If you look at companies, whether it’s Google or Yahoo or Microsoft, that have search engines and ad networks, they also have a huge amount of information about […]

The Register: Apple’s lawyers failed to show up for a court appearance in the German patent infringement case brought by Motorola Mobility. As a result, the court issued a default injunction that would ban sales of the iPhone and iPad in Germany. Apple says that it will be a simple matter to get the injunction […]

USAToday: On Monday, Barnes & Noble will begin taking pre-orders for its Nook Tablet, which will become available November 17. B&N’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle Fire features a 7-inch screen and costs $249, $50 more than the Fire. However, for that $50, buyers will get nearly twice as much internal storage (16GB) and a lighter […]

InformationWeek: Google chairman Eric Schmidt recently told the U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee that the iPhone’s Siri voice assistant represented a competitive threat to Google’s search business. “Google has many strong competitors and we sometimes fail to anticipate the competitive threat posed by new methods of accessing information,” Schmidt said. “Apple’s Siri is a significant development–a […]

The New Yorker: In this article, Malcolm Gladwell makes the case that the late Steve Jobs’s real gift was editing—tweaking details until they were exactly right. He writes, “Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him—the tablet with stylus—and ruthlessly refining it.” Citing numerous examples of […]

eWeek: IBM has announced that technology to support Microsoft Windows on its mainframe hardware via the zEnterprise System will become available December 16. That will allow enterprise users to consolidate applications and data on their mainframe systems, resulting in cost savings of  up to 70 percent, according to IBM. IBM expects the new technology to […]

Computerworld: Chip maker AMD has announced that it will lay off 10 percent of its workers and terminate “existing contractual commitments.” The company believes the restructuring plan will help it to cut costs by $200 million in 2012. The company reported lackluster profits in its most recent third quarter, due in large part to “manufacturing […]