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Android

Submission + - XBMC Ported to Android (xbmc.org) 3

Submitted by
TheUni
TheUni writes: "We have been keeping a little secret.. the kind that is so much fun to share when the time comes.

Today we announce XBMC for Android. Not a remote, not a thin client; the real deal. No root or jailbreak required. XBMC can be launched as an application on your set-top-box, tablet, phone, or wherever else Android may be found.

The feature-set on Android is the same that you have come to expect from XBMC, no different from its cousin on the desktop. Running your favorite media-center software on small, cheap, embedded hardware is about to become a hassle-free reality. And as Android-based set-top-boxes are becoming more and more ubiquitous, it couldn’t be a better time. In fact, primary development was done on a Pivos XIOS DS set-top-box. And that is no coincidence, you will notice that Pivos is now listed as an official sponsor (more on that later). XBMC is stable and works great there, as well as on various tablets and phones. Though with Android, as many of you probably know, that is only the beginning of the story.

Enjoy the stereotypical dev-shot low-quality demo video. More video, including phone/tablet usage in the next post."
Australia

Submission + - Tasmanian Cops Decline To 'Censor Internet' (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by aesoteric
aesoteric writes: Tasmania's police force has taken the unusual step of asking the public to stop alerting it to every "abusive or harassing" comment posted to Facebook or other social media sites. The force said it was "increasingly receiving complaints" about material posted to the sites, but sought to clarify that "the use of technology to undertake some conduct does not in itself create an offence".
Security

Submission + - Discovered Patterns in Numeric Passwords Raise New Questions (qualys.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Looking at a heat map representing numerical LinkedIn passwords, an abnormal line in the upper right corner was noticed. A weird range of nearly complete sequential list of 423 numbers from 67108865 to 67108899 and 67109000 to 67109397. At the time of writing this post, LinkedIn haven't confirmed that the accounts related to this range may have been automatically generated in some way.

Submission + - New Analyst Report Calls Agile a Scam, Says Easy Out for Lazy Devs (adtmag.com)

Submitted by msmoriarty
msmoriarty writes: We recently got a copy of a new Voke analyst report (for sale here) on Agile and the firm basically blasts the movement from top to bottom. Some highlights: "The Agile movement is designed to sell services," "Out of over 200 survey participants, we received only four detailed comments describing success with Agile," "Survey participants report that developers use the guise of Agile to avoid planning and to avoid creating documentation required for future maintenance," and " Be aware that the Agile movement might very well just be either a developer rebellion against unwanted tasks and schedules or just an opportunity to sell Agile services including certification and training." So did the analysts just talk to to the wrong 200 people?
Crime

Submission + - Justice Dept., FBI to review use of forensic evidence in thousands of cases (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by NotSanguine
NotSanguine writes: From The Washington Post Article:

The Justice Department and the FBI have launched a review of thousands of criminal cases to determine whether any defendants were wrongly convicted or deserve a new trial because of flawed forensic evidence, officials said Tuesday. The undertaking is the largest post-conviction review ever done by the FBI. It will include cases conducted by all FBI Laboratory hair and fiber examiners since at least 1985 and may reach earlier if records are available, people familiar with the process said. Such FBI examinations have taken place in federal and local cases across the country, often in violent crimes, such as rape, murder and robbery.

Submission + - Take a $33k paycut for better developer experience? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After college I was hired as a Junior .NET Developer (C#) for company X. Five years later I am still at company X, now called a Senior Level and given $120k a year, with a $10k bonus and guaranteed $10k raise come January. The problem begins in that company X doesn't sell software, it sells product — it's an e-commerce company that does not outsource and has it's own small development team. It's not a coding house, and large projects are worked on through ticket systems as if it was simple tech support. Bad habits and poor practices have molded me into a 'right now' developer and not a 'right way' developer, being reactive and solving problems as they come.

After applying for a Senior level position at company Y — which is a coding house that is extremely organized and object/design-oriented — the interview did not go as well as hoped, even with my excellent troubleshooting and problem-solving skills. I got the impression this was due to a lacking in my OOP skill set, which I attribute to not being given proper direction by my superiors, the time to spend iterating design, and my ignorance in the way I was growing as a developer was not how I should. Instead of a potential matching salary, they said they would have to bring me in at $90k, possibly $100k if I aced an interview lab.

Company Y would be able to reign in my cowboy coding skills and help me get on the path of the Jedi.

The question posed to Slashdot readers: Is the gigantic pay cut worth it? Should I remain at X — which is becoming an unbearable work environment — for the pay and spend the rest of my waking hours unlearning what I'd still have to use daily and study/practice every facet of C# and OO principles?
Cloud

Submission + - City Brought To Its Knees By Datacenter Outage

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On July 11th in Calgary, Canada, a fire and explosion was reported at the Shaw Communications headquarters. This took down a large swath of IT infrastructure, including Shaw's telephone and Internet customers, local radio stations, emergency 911 services, provincial services such Alberta Health Services computers, and Alberta Registries. One news site reports that "The building was designed with network backups, but the explosion damaged those systems as well.". No doubt this has been a hard lesson on how NOT to host critical public services.
Iphone

Submission + - Judge Rules iPod/iPhone Speaker Docks Don't Infringe on Bose Patent; Apple Sighs (cepro.com)

Submitted by
CIStud
CIStud writes: "U.S. District Court in Massachusetts has ruled that iPod, iPad and iPhone speakers docks do not infringe on a patent owned by Bose Corp. for digital audio conversion. The ruling in the case of Bose vs. small dock speaker makers SDI, DPI, Imation and others reportedly was a test case that would have set precedent for potential patent infringement by other manufacturers... and even Apple... according to the defendant's legal team. At issue: Is an iPhone, iPad or iPod a "computer." The judge says they aren't."

Submission + - Building a "Crowdsourced" IT Support System for a Large Organization

Submitted by BerkeleyNerd
BerkeleyNerd writes: I work for a large federal agency that is exploring different ways to lower IT support costs and reduce wait times for users who need help with application features, network problems, agency IT policies, etc. One solution could be: help users share popular IT support "fixes" and identify emerging problems by providing some kind of agency-wide user support forum.

For example, Xerox created the Eureka peer support system in 1996, which was used by field techs to quickly share information. There have been some academic studies on peer support, such as The Usefulness of Electronic Weak Ties for Technical Advice and Peer Collaboration: Building an Infrastructure for Enhancing Technical Support. Also, the Economist recently featured an article on "Unsourcing" — a consumer-oriented spin on the same idea, and the concept of Social IT Support has been discussed.

Does the Slashdot community know of any peer IT support "success stories" in other large institutions, or any software tools that we should evaluate for this purpose, such as UserResponse or StackExchange?
Security

Submission + - Niagra Framework Leaves Government, Private Infrastructure Open to Hacks (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
benfrog
benfrog writes: "Tridium's Niagra framework is a 'marvel of connectivity,' allowing everything from power plants to gas pumps to be monitored online. Many installations are frighteningly insecure, though, according to an investgation by the Washington Post, leaving both public and private infrastructure potentially open to simple hacks (as simple as a directory traversal attack)."

Submission + - U.S. Internet Providers Continue to Support DNS Changer DNS redirection Servers (esecurityplanet.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: On Monday of this week, the primary servers that kept those infected with the DNSChanger malware were taken offline. It's a story that sparked lots of media hype with people claiming that hundreds of thousands of people could loose their Internet access.
As it turns out, major U.S. ISPs including Verizon, Cox, AT&T and CenturyLink all kept their own DNSChanger servers online, protecting any users from losing their access.
Java

Submission + - JQuery 2.0 will Drop Support for IE 6, 7, 8 (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
benfrog
benfrog writes: "The developers of JQuery recently announced in a blog entry that JQuery 2.0 will drop support for legacy versions of Internet Explorer. The release will come in parallel with version 1.9, however, which will include support for older versions of IE. The versions will offer full API compatibility, but 2.0 will 'benefit from a faster implementation that doesn’t have to rely on legacy compatibility hacks.'""
Advertising

Submission + - The ugly, profitable details about Xbox Live advertising (penny-arcade.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an editorial at Penny Arcade, Ben Kuchera writes about how Microsoft's subscription-based Xbox Live platform has become an advertising cash cow — to the detriment of users who already pay for the service. Quoting: 'People who don’t play video games would be forgiven if they turned on an Xbox 360 and didn’t realize it was a device used to primarily play games. The first screen you see on the Xbox 360 Dashboard is often a mixture of ads for all sorts of goods and services, and many times games are in the minority of ad slots. The latest redesign increased the ad space that can be sold to advertisers, and that in turn increased this problem. Let’s be clear, it is a problem. Game discovery is terrible in the current design of Xbox Live, and the usability of a system that used to be about games is suffering in order for Microsoft to make money on ads. Sadly, this issue isn’t going away: Ad sales simply bring in too much money to ignore, and revenue is growing. ... I contacted Microsoft and asked how much advertising revenue impacted the profitability of the Xbox 360. “We don’t share this information publicly but we can tell you that, since 2010, the advertising business has grown 142%,” I was told.'
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8 Mail leaves users pining for the desktop—or even their phones (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
jbrodkin
jbrodkin writes: "The e-mail client in Windows 8 is the shell of a potentially good application—but Microsoft hasn't given it the proper care it deserves. With less than a month before Windows 8 hits RTM, Mail is a mess that doesn't support IMAP, can't connect to servers with self-signed certificates, and lacks basic features like flagging messages for followup. Metro Mail is feature-deficient compared not just to other desktop and tablet apps—it's behind Microsoft's own phone platform. Whether used on a tablet or desktop, this in-depth look concludes that Metro Mail in its current form will have users pining for a real desktop application."
Programming

Submission + - Can 50-core Xeon Phi's x86 Architecture Best Nvidia's Massive GPUs? (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nvidia's massively parallel GPUs are being harnessed by an increasing number of supercomputer makers to boost their performance, but at the cost of using a proprietary instruction set that was not designed for general-purpose computing. Now that Intel is releasing its own x86-based massively parallel processor--the Xeon Phi--the supercomputer community will have a choice to make: use Intel's x86 parallel processing tools to create their supercomputer applications or rewrite their applications to make use of Nvidia's GPU's and proprietary instructions. The verdict won't be in on which is best for several years, but I'm hoping to stimulate the programming community to start debating the pros and cons now, so that by the time Intel starts shipping its 50-core Xeon Phi this fall we can have enough data points to make an informed decision. What's your take on Intel's versus Nvidia's approach to supercomputing?
Google

Submission + - MIT creates car co-pilot that only interferes if you're about to crash (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Mechanical engineers and roboticists working at MIT have developed an intelligent automobile co-pilot that sits in the background and only interferes if you’re about to have an accident. If you fall asleep, for example, the co-pilot activates and keeps you on the road until you wake up again. Like other autonomous and semi-autonomous solutions, the MIT co-pilot uses an on-board camera and laser rangefinder to identify obstacles. These obstacles are then combined with various data points — such as the driver’s performance, and the car’s speed, stability, and physical characteristics — to create constraints. The co-pilot stays completely silent unless you come close to breaking one of these constraints — which might be as simple as a car in front braking quickly, or as complex as taking a corner too quickly. When this happens, a ton of robotics under the hood take over, only passing back control to the driver when the car is safe. This intelligent co-pilot is starkly contrasted with Google’s self-driving cars, which are completely computer-controlled unless you lean forward, put your hands on the wheel, and take over. Which method is better? A computer backup, or a human backup? I'm not sure."
Piracy

Submission + - ISP "six strikes" plan delayed (dailydot.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Shortly, a new system in the US will allow your ISP to give you gradually sterner warnings and possible punishment if you download copyrighted material. The Copyright Alerts System (CAS) — more commonly known as the “six strikes” policy, after the number of warnings users receive — is coming. Soon. Any minute now. Really. But it’s not here yet, even though several news outlets — including CNN — said the system would go online yesterday, Thursday. Speaking to the Daily Dot, a press contact for the six strikes system says: 'We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly. We expect our implementation to begin later this year, with each of the ISPs launching at potentially overlapping but different times.' This is the second time the six strikes plan has been delayed — it was originally meant to be implemented in late 2011. The six strikes system is officially helmed by an industry coalition called the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), which was created by the MPAA and RIAA. It counts the U.S.’s five top ISPs under its umbrella: AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon."
Crime

Submission + - O2's UK Network Crash Hits Offender Monitoring (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "Mobile operator O2's network crashed on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. In the aftermath it has emerged how other services rely on mobile networks. Law enforcement agencies were unable to track some convicted criminals wearing electronic tags, and the crash also disabled parts of London's network of "Boris Bikes" — public hire bikes."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft gives Linux "Big Boobs".

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For all those living under the false impression that large software companies "do software development properly, including code reviews", I submit exhibit "A". It appears that Microsoft's HyperV currently uses the guest ID "0xB16B00B5" for Linux, which may prove a little difficult to change if it has been baked into their management stack for Asure.

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