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HP

Submission + - Meg Whitman & HP defrauded by Autonomy; HP stock plunges (cnbc.com)

McGruber writes: CNBC is reporting (http://www.cnbc.com/id/49900639) that Meg Whitman claims HP was defrauded in its purchase of Autonomy.

"We believed there is a willful effort on the part of certain members of Autonomy management to mislead shareholders when Autonomy was a publicly traded company, and to mislead potential buyers including HP, Whitman said. "We stand by the forensic review that we’ve seen," she added.

I wish her the same level of success I had when I filed an eBay claim.

Music

Submission + - Highway to Sell - AC/DC iTunes Snub Finally Over

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The LA Times reports that after years of stubbornly arguing that iTunes was, in the words of singer Brian Johnson, “going to kill music if they’re not careful,” the band has reached a deal with Apple to sell its entire catalog — 16 studio albums, four live albums and three compilations — through the service. AC/DC was one of the last high-profile holdouts from the digital music marketplace outlasting the Beatles, Led Zeppeli, and Pink Floyd, all of which jumped into the realm long after much of the population had accepted the downloading future. Angus Young, AC/DC’s lead guitarist (known for wearing a schoolboy’s uniform when performing), had long argued against hawking the band’s music because he didn’t like the idea of allowing for individual song downloads — submitting that the group’s albums were designed to be listened to from beginning to end. “It’s like an artist who does a painting,” he said in 2008. “If he thinks it’s a great piece of work, he protects it. It’s the same thing: This is our work.”"
Security

Submission + - New Linux Rootkit Emerges (threatpost.com)

Trailrunner7 writes: A new Linux rootkit has emerged and researchers who have analyzed its code and operation say that the malware appears to be a custom-written tool designed to inject iframes into Web sites and drive traffic to malicious sites for drive-by download attacks. The rootkit is designed specifically for 64-bit Linux systems, and while it has some interesting features, it does not appear to be the work of high-level programmer or be meant for use in targeted attacks.

The Linux rootkit does not appear to be a modified version of any known piece of malware and it first came to light last week when someone posted a quick description and analysis of it on the Full Disclosure mailing list. That poster said that his site had been targeted by the malware and some of his customers had been redirected to malicious sites.

Chrome

Submission + - $250 Chromebook With Ubuntu Linux Is Very Fast (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Google Samsung Chromebook was already interesting for its competitive $250 price-tag and that it can be loaded with Linux distributions beyond Chrome OS, but it turns out that its performance is particularly good too. When loaded with Ubuntu Linux, the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual ARM SoC on the Chrome notebook had outperformed a 1.8GHz Intel Atom, a quad-core Calxeda ARM server, and a TI OMAP4 PandaBoard.
Businesses

Submission + - Sharp Overwhelmed By Volunteers For Early Retirement (itworld.com)

jfruh writes: "Sharp, the Japanese LCD supplier in dire financial straits, is trying to cut staffing by offering an early retirement package. Unfortunately, it seems Sharp employees are eager to scuttle off the sinking ship. The company was planning on cutting its headcount by about 2,000 employees with the move; instead, it had to cut short the program after getting nearly 3,000 applicants."
Microsoft

Submission + - Poop Powers Experimental Microsoft Data Center (slashdot.org)

Nerval's Lobster writes: "Microsoft, FuelCell Energy and a collection of local Cheyenne, Wyoming companies are collaborating on a project to supply one of Microsoft’s local data centers with biogas, in a bid to determine if what we poop can be turned into power. FuelCell and Microsoft will test a small 200-kilowatt data center with a fuel cell that can produce up to 300 kilowatts in a carbon-neutral manner. Microsoft estimates the total carbon savings at about 1,833 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per megawatt-hour, compared to a typical fossil fuel plant. Although other data centers rely on biogas as a power source, Microsoft claims this is the first time a biogas source—specifically, a wastewater treatment facility—will be integrated directly with a data center."
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Pirate MEP Christian Engström helps draft new Credit Card Company controls (falkvinge.net)

Dupple writes: Today, the European Parliament ordered new legislation to regulate credit card companies’ ability to refuse service. This regulation follows the unilateral and rightless cutoff of donations to WikiLeaks, as well as similar trampling on small entrepreneurs. The Pirate Party took the initiative to the new regulation.

It has become an increasingly large problem that Visa, MasterCard, and Paypal control the valve to any money flow on the planet. Today, the European Parliament established this as a clear problem, and initiated regulation of the companies, limiting and strictly regulating their right to refuse service. The Pirate Party was the initiator of this regulation, following the damaging cutoff of donations to WikiLeaks. after said organization had performed journalism that was embarrassing to certain governments.

Television

Submission + - Giant Boxing Robots Reality Show Unveiled (ew.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It looks like the next generation of "Battle Bots" is here:

Syfy has greenlit and shot the first season of a new show where eight-foot-tall state-of-the-art humanoid robots will rock ‘em and sock ‘em in a boxing cage until one is defeated. The future-shock new series is called Robot Combat League and the project has been kept under wraps until today. The action resembles a real-life version of last year’s hit movie Real Steel, with large menacing robots pounding away at each other in a satisfying shower of sparks and gushing hydraulic fluid.

There's pics with the story.

Science

Submission + - Harvard develops drug-filled, injectable sponge that expands inside the body (geek.com) 1

An anonymous reader writes: Harvard bioengineers have perfected injecteing us with a drug-filled sponge instead of just a liquid.

It may seem strange to want to inject a piece of sponge into your body, but it does actually help solve a number of invasive problems. For example, sometimes it is necessary to have drugs released slowly into our bodies, and/or some kind of bio-scaffold is required to be positioned so that it can help support a damaged organ or to engineer new tissue.

This new, injectable sponge is incredibly useful because not only can it be filled with drugs that then are slowly released, it also has a memory and can be collapsed down to a tiny fraction of its original size.

Data Storage

Submission + - Facebook condemns European data protection fines (computerworlduk.com)

concertina226 writes: Facebook claims companies could start court battles with data protection authorities if the regulators are given powers to levy fines of 2% of global turnover for data protection law breaches.

Facebook said the European Commission's proposed sanctions regime — which is contained in its draft General Data Protection Regulation — could also put off US and other businesses from trading within the EU, meaning less jobs being created.

Privacy

Submission + - Why big data could sink Europe's "right to be forgotten" (gigaom.com)

concealment writes: "Europe’s proposed ‘right to be forgotten’ has been the subject of intense debate, with many people arguing it’s simply not practical in the age of the internet for any data to be reliably expunged from history.

Well, add another voice to that mix. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has published its assessment of the proposals, and the tone is sceptical to say the least. And, interestingly, one of the biggest problems ENISA has found has to do with big data."

Government

Submission + - Senate bill rewrite lets Feds read your e-mail without warrants (cnet.com) 1

concealment writes: "A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.

Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge."

Government

Submission + - Jail Looms for Man Who Revealed AT&T Leaked iPad User E-Mails (technologyreview.com)

concealment writes: "AT&T screwed up in 2010, serving up the e-mail addresses of over 110,000 of its iPad 3G customers online for anyone to find. But today Andrew Auernheimer, an online activist who pointed out AT&T’s blunder to Gawker Media, which went on to publicize the breach of private information, is the one in federal court this week.

Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) worry that should that charge succeed it will become easy to criminalize many online activities, including work by well-intentioned activists looking for leaks of private information or other online security holes. Weev’s case hasn’t received much attention so far, but should he be found guilty this week it will likely become well known, fast."

Encryption

Submission + - Quantum cryptography conquers noise problem (nature.com)

ananyo writes: "Quantum-encryption systems that encode signals into a series of single photons have so far been unable to piggyback on existing telecommunications lines because they don't stand out from the millions of others in an optical fiber. But now, physicists using a technique for detecting dim light signals have transmitted a quantum key along 90 kilometres of noisy optical fibre. The feat could see quantum cryptography finally enter the mainstream.
The researchers developed a detector that picks out photons only if they strike it at a precise instant, calculated on the basis of when the encoded photons were sent.
The team’s ‘self-differentiating’ detector activates for 100 picoseconds, every nanosecond. The weak charge triggered by a photon strike in this short interval would not normally stand out, but the detector measures the difference between the signal recorded during one operational cycle and the signal from the preceding cycle — when no matching photon was likely to be detected. This cancels out the background hum. Using this device, the team has transmitted a quantum key along a 90-kilometre fiber, which also carried noisy data at 1 billion bits per second in both directions — a rate typical of a telecommunications fiber."

Security

Submission + - Hosting provider automatically fixes vulnerabilities in customers' websites (antagonist.nl) 1

An anonymous reader writes: Dutch hosting provider Antagonist today announced their in-house developed technology that automatically detects and fixes vulnerabilities in their customers’ websites. The service is aimed at popular software such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. Antagonist is the first hosting provider on the planet to offer this service, and plans to license the technology to other hosting providers as well.

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