62890533
submission
girlmad writes:
Secret Cinema, the darling of quirky movie experiences, has seen exactly how frightening a bunch of angry hipsters can be after it cancelled the opening night of its latest show, Back to the Future. The short notice and lack of explanation from the 'immersive cinema experience' company led to a huge backlash on social media, with angry fans taking to Twitter and Facebook to share their frustrations at the handling of the whole thing. Cue much blaming of the Libyans and flux capacitor breakdowns.
58322761
submission
girlmad writes:
Google has scored a major win on the back of Microsoft’s Windows XP support cut-off. The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham has begun moving all its employees over to Samsung Chromebooks and Chromeboxes ahead of the 8 April deadline. The council was previously running 3,500 Windows XP desktops and 800 XP laptops, and is currently in the process of retiring these in favour of around 2,000 Chromebooks and 300 Chromeboxes. It estimates the savings at around £400,000, no small change.
51387695
submission
girlmad writes:
The UK government is looking to recruit IT experts for a cyber reserves army, which will help it defend against the threat of cyber warfare. "This is an exciting opportunity for internet experts in industry to put their skills to good use for the nation, protecting our vital computer systems and capabilities," said the Ministry of Defence. The reserve unit will cover a range of military cyber tactics, including a strike capability to augment the UK's military prowess.
47585875
submission
girlmad writes:
The Met Police in London has revealed that officers have to wait 30 minutes every day for their machines to turn on and be ready to use. It's not surprising, considering that the Met assistant commissioner has admitted that the IT systems the police are using date as far back as the 1970s.
47156053
submission
girlmad writes:
The UK government’s chief operating officer Stephen Kelly offered a frightening insight into the world of government IT spending this week. According to Kelly, the government spends a crazy £6,000 per year per PC just to maintain the devices, and wastes 3 days per year per person due to slow boot-up times. One PC supplier must be rubbing their hands with glee at this cushy deal.
46776909
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girlmad writes:
The UK government department the DWP has confirmed that to claim certain benefits online, users are limited to very out-of-date systems like Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 and older. Their basic approach seems to be pushing people away from the web to make people phone or come in for meetings instead, not great for trying to achieve cost savings by promoting online services.
46645807
submission
girlmad writes:
Despite moves by government to get Google, Amazon and Apple to admit they make sales in the UK and US, and therefore should pay tax on these earnings, this article argues these are empty threats and that any taxes paid will get returned to the tech giants in government grants and subsidies. Tough luck to the small firms out there.
46085355
submission
girlmad writes:
Judge Birss, who gained renown as the man who forced Apple to run adverts saying Samsung didn't copy the iPad, is back under the spotlight, claiming that we need to take the fight to patent trolls. But he's also warning that the courts might run out of capacity soon to handle the growing number of patent cases.
45519329
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girlmad writes:
Thousands of PCs have been crippled by a faulty update from security vendor Malwarebytes that marked legitimate system files as malware code. The update definition meant Malwarebytes' software treated essential Windows.dll and .exe files as malware, stopping them running and thus knocking IT systems and PCs offline, leaving lots of unhappy users and one firm with 80% of its servers offline.
44987731
submission
girlmad writes:
Rackspace has come out fighting against one of the US's most notorious patent trolls, Parallel Iron. The cloud services firm said it's totally fed up with trolls of all kinds, which have caused a 500 percent rise in its legal bills.
Rackspace was last week named among 12 firms accused of infringing Parallel Iron's Hadoop Distributed File System patents. Rackspace is now counter-suing the troll, as the firm said it has a deal in place with Parallel Iron after signing a previous patent settlement with them.
44386335
submission
girlmad writes:
Intel's Pentium processor was launched 20 years ago today, a move that led to the firm becoming the dominant supplier of computer chips across the globe. This article has some original iComp benchmark scores, rating the 66MHz Pentium at a heady 565, compared with 297 for the 66MHz 486DX2, which was the fastest chip available prior to the Pentium launch.
43573341
submission
girlmad writes:
To mark the Oscars, here's a list of films that tech site V3 thinks deserve an Oscar for being the best tech movies of all time. Some on the list are obvious contenders, but there's some quirkier and more controversial inclusions in there — along with some missing classics.
41139811
submission
girlmad writes:
Google has revealed it won't be developing any apps for Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8, so those wanting a dedicated app for Gmail or Drive on their Microsoft device will miss out.
Google Apps product management director Clay Bavor said that due to a lack of interest for the Microsoft systems, it is holding back on any work.
Bavor said Google is very careful about where it invests and will go where its users are — and they are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8. Ouch.
39274533
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girlmad writes:
Doesn't sound like Microsoft’s Windows 8 has got off to a great start in the UK, with computer retailer Currys and PC World struggling to shift devices running the new software. The store on Oxford Street in London was yet to sell one device running Windows 8 by midday today. It seems that the hype created in the build-up to Microsoft's launch has already blown over.
38991785
submission
girlmad writes:
Looks like HSBC is the latest victim of the Anonymous group of hackers. The bank's servers were hit by a denial of service attack Thursday night that took down a number of their websites. A Twitter account called Anonymous @Fawkessecurity has taken credit for the attack and has posted a statement to Pastebin saying the proof is all in their Tweets although doesn't give a reason for the attack.