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IT

Submission + - What to do after you fire an idiot sysadmin or developer (hp.com) 1

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "The job of dealing with an under-performing employee doesn't end when the culprit is shown the door. Everyone focuses on security tasks, after you fire the idiot, such as changing passwords, but that's just one part of the To Do list. More important, in the long run, is the cleanup job that needs to be done after you fire the turkey, looking for the hidden messes and security flaws the ex-employee may have left behind. Otherwise, you’ll still be cleaning up the problems six months later, when you discovered that the backup he automated... well, not that we are speaking from experience or anything, but we wanted to bring him back in just so we could fire his butt all over again. Rick Cook has a checklist of Stuff To Look For in his article, Cleaning Out The Turkey Coop: What To Do After You Get Rid of an Incompetent Employee. See what you might add to the list."

Submission + - Why are online contact forms so bad?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This is a cry for help and an attempt to speak directly to the world's web developers. Why are web contact forms so useless? In the last hour I used one contact form for my bank that prohibited the use of the Euro symbol. I live in Europe. Ok, so banking back ends are subject to all kinds of regulation but another form I just used to contact an insurance company prohibited the pound sterling sign. Currency symbols aren't the only issue, of course. Contact forms often balk at dates and phone numbers not being entered exactly as they want them to be. Fields to type credit card numbers often balk if you type a space between the numbers — although that's how the numbers are printed on the card. Shouldn't we have found a way past these elementary gotchas in our modern day and age? Are there any open source libraries that can parse contact forms so that they're made safe, regardless of what the user types, so that the user isn't picked up for typing a potentially dangerous / or in their messages? Or that include intelligence to understand the various ways humans type dates? In short, does it really have to be like this?
Politics

Submission + - All of Nate Silver's Presidential Predictions Proved True (singularityhub.com) 2

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "For the last few months, the political pundit class has been at war with NYT/FiveThirtyEight blogger Nate Silver. Joe Scarborough of MSNBC called him a “joke,” while an op-ed in the LA Times accused him of running a “numbers racket.” But last night, Silver triumphed: every one of his state-level presidential predictions proved true. Statistics FTW!"
China

Submission + - Foxconn Sees New Source Of Cheap Labor: The United States (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Foxconn is planning to build manufacturing plants in the U.S., probably in cites such as Detroit and Los Angeles. “Since the manufacturing of Apple’s products is rather complicated, the market watchers expect the rumored plants to focus on LCD TV production, which can be highly automated and easier.” Nice to think they will be hiring herebut still a fascinating insult to U.S. manufacturing prowess, dontcha think – the idea that actually making Apple products is a little too complicated for Americans to handle (Or maybe they won't be able to hire enough workers sitting 8 hours a day screwing really tiny screws into iPhone 5; despite of the higher unemployment rate, laborers here may not be as desperate as the millions of migrant workers looking for work in China.) Foxconn chairman Terry Guo, at a recent public event, noted that the company is planning a training program for US-based engineers, bringing them to Taiwan or China to learn the processes of product design and manufacturing.
Toys

Submission + - Buckyballs Throws in the Towell

Submitted by RenderSeven
RenderSeven writes: As previously reported the immensely popular Buckyballs office toys have been targeted by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Last week Maxfield and Oberton, the maker of Buckyballs gave up the battle and announced they would discontinue sales and close. However, being driven out of business is not enough for R Buckminster Fuller's estate, who has filed yet another lawsuit that they own all rights to the name "buckyballs" despite widespread use of the term. If you still haven't bought your own yet, a few thousand sets in stock are still available.
Biotech

Submission + - Proteins made to order (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "Proteins are an enormous molecular achievement: chains of amino acids that fold spontaneously into a precise conformation, time after time, optimized by evolution for their particular function. Yet given the exponential number of contortions possible for any chain of amino acids, dictating a sequence that will fold into a predictable structure has been a daunting task.
Now researchers report that they can do just that. By following a set of rules described in a paper published in Nature (abstract), a husband and wife team from David Baker’s laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle has designed five proteins from scratch that fold reliably into predicted conformations. The work could eventually allow scientists to custom design proteins with specific functions."
Piracy

Submission + - BitTorrent traffic is up 40 percent from six months ago (techpounce.com) 2

Submitted by
damagedbits
damagedbits writes: "BitTorrent traffic is still booming even though legal streaming services like Netflix and YouTube are on the rise. It's far from its all time high of the mid 2000's, but BT traffic is up 40 percent from six months ago. BitTorrent is responsible for about 11 percent of total Internet traffic in the US."

Submission + - Cloud version of OpenOffice (apache.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Apache Foundation revealed in Sinsheim, Germany their plans for a cloud version of OpenOffice.org based on html5. Chinese and German engineers use OpenOffice in "headless" mode as a base.
Television

Submission + - Fox's attempt to block ad-skipping TV recorder Autohop fails (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: A bid to block a TV service that allows viewers to automatically skip adverts on recorded shows has been rejected.

Fox had called for a preliminary injunction on Dish Network's Autohop ahead of a copyright ruling.

Broadcasters Fox, Comcast, NBC and CBS have each sued Dish Networks, saying the show recordings are unauthorised.

Fox said it would appeal against the ruling. It says Autohop is "destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem".

But Dish called the decision not to grant a preliminary injunction a "victory for common sense".

Its Hopper digital video recorder can record and store prime-time content from the four major networks for up to eight days.

And the Autohop feature lets viewers skip advertisements completely — rather than fast-forwarding through them — at the press of a button.
China

Submission + - Government Work Too Boring, Says Chinese Ex-Hacker (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Now working at IBM, 41-year-old Tao Wan, who was once a member of the Green Army hacker group, is dismissive of today's young Chinese hackers. Wan told the audience at the Power of Community security conference in Seoul that 'this generation of hackers are not that technically capable, they just like to show off — young kids with a low technical ability.' Wan went on to say that China's 'overall hacking ability is still less sophisticated that other countries' and that 'they need to become more competitive.' For himself, however, Wan said government work was to boring to pursue."

Submission + - Finding Work Over 60

Submitted by
Hatfield56
Hatfield56 writes: "I've been in IT since the mid-1980s, mainly working for financial institutions. After 16 years at a company, as a programmer (Java, C#, PL/SQL, some Unix scripting) and technical lead, my job was outsourced. That was in 2009 when the job market was basically dead. After many false starts, here I am 3 years later wondering what to do. I'm sure if I were 40 I'd be working already but over 60 you might as well be dead. SO, I'm wondering about A+. Does anyone think that this will make me more employable? Or should I being a greeter at Walmart?"
Power

Submission + - Saphonian Bladeless Wind Turbine Boasts Impressive Efficiency, Low Cost (gizmag.com) 1

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Tunisian green energy startup Saphon Energy has created a new bladeless wind turbine which draws inspiration from the design of a ship’s sails, and promises to convert the kinetic energy of the wind into electricity at up to double the efficiency – and half the cost – of a typical wind turbine.

Submission + - $50,000 Zero-Day Exploit Smashes Adobe Reader Sandbox (krebsonsecurity.com) 1

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: Software vendor Adobe says it is investigating claims that instructions for exploiting a previously unknown critical security hole in the latest versions of its widely-used PDF Reader software are being sold in the cybercriminal underground, Krebsonsecurity.com writes. The finding comes from malware analysts at Moscow-based forensics firm Group-IB, who say theyâ(TM)ve discovered that a new exploit capable of compromising the security of computers running Adobe X and XI (Adobe Reader 10 and 11) is being sold in the underground for up to $50,000. This is significant because â" beginning with Reader Xâ" Adobe introduced a âoesandboxâ feature aimed at blocking the exploitation of previously unidentified security holes in its software, and until now that protection has held its ground. Adobe, meanwhile, says it has not yet been able to verify the zero-day claims.
Government

Submission + - Bradley Manning offers partial guilty plea to military court (cnet.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "During a pre-trial hearing in military court today, Manning's attorney, David Coombs, proposed a partial guilty plea covering a subset of the slew of criminal charges that the U.S. Army has lodged against him.

"Manning is attempting to accept responsibility for offenses that are encapsulated within, or are a subset of, the charged offenses," Coombs wrote on his blog this evening. "The court will consider whether this is a permissible plea.""
Power

Submission + - Quantum entangled batteries could be the perfect power source (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Two European theoretical physicists have shown that it may be possible to build a near-perfect, entangled quantum battery. In the future, such quantum batteries might power the tiniest of devices — or provide power storage that is much more efficient than state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery packs. In a quantum system, some quantum states have energy that can be extracted, reducing the system to a passive, neutral energy state. Robert Alicki of the University of Gdansk in Poland, and Mark Fannes of the University of Leuven in Belgium, theorize that it should be possible to build a quantum battery that is full of energy-rich quantum states — and then, somehow, recharge it when you run out of juice. Better yet, the physicists also theorize that quantum entanglement could be used to create an even more efficient quantum battery. In essence, Alicki and Fannes say that you can link together any number of quantum batteries, allowing you to extract all of the stored energy in one big gulp. Their research paper goes on to say that with enough entanglement, these batteries would be perfect — with no energy lost/wasted during charge or discharge."
Iphone

Submission + - Samsung's Galaxy S III steals smartphone crown from iPhone (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: The best-selling smartphone in the world is no longer an iPhone. New data released on Thursday by market research firm Strategy Analytics finds that Samsung’s Galaxy S III was the world’s top-selling smartphone model in the third quarter this year, displacing Apple’s iPhone for the first time in years. Samsung announced earlier this week that cumulative Galaxy S III channel sales reached the 30 million unit milestone and according to Strategy Analytics, 18 million of those were shipped in Q3 2012. During the same period, Apple shipped an estimated 16.2 million iPhone 4S handsets, slipping into the No.2 spot for the quarter...
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Australia abandons plans for a mandatory internet filter (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by littlekorea
littlekorea writes: The Australian Government has officially abandoned plans to legislate a mandatory internet filter. The news ends a four-year campaign by the ruling party to implement legislation that would have compelled ISPs to block a list of URLs dictated by Australia's telecommunications regulator, the ACMA. ISPs have instead been told to block a list of known child pornography sites maintained by INTERPOL.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Hidden Windows 8 Feature: Ads (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Despite the fact that I've been using Windows 8 for the past three weeks, I somehow managed to overlook a rather stark feature in the OS: ads. No, we're not talking about ads cluttering up the desktop or login screen (thankfully), but rather ads that can be found inside of some Modern UI apps that Windows ships with. That includes Finance, Weather, Travel, News and so forth. On previous mobile platforms, such as iOS and Android, seeing ads inside of free apps hasn't been uncommon. It's a way for the developer to get paid while allowing the user to have the app for free. However, while people can expect ads in a free app, no one expects ads in a piece of software that they just paid good money for."

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