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Microsoft

Submission + - Sinofsky leaves Microsoft, Julie Larson-Green now in charge of Windows Division (winbeta.org)

Submitted by BogenDorpher
BogenDorpher writes: Steven Sinofsky, the man who was behind the development and marketing of Windows (including the recently released Windows 8), Internet Explorer, Outlook.com, and SkyDrive had apparently left the company. In his place, Julie Larson-Green will run the Windows division while Tami Reller will take charge of the business of Windows.
Businesses

Samsung Hits Apple With 20% Price Increase 447

Posted by samzenpus from the pay-up dept.
EthanV2 writes "The Wall Street Journal cites a report which quotes a 'person familiar with negotiations between the two tech giants,' apparently confirming this special price hike for Apple. The source said: 'Samsung Electronics recently asked Apple for a significant price raise in (the mobile processor known as) application processor. Apple first disapproved it, but finding no replacement supplier, it accepted the [increase].'"
Businesses

A Year After Thailand Flooding, Hard Drive Prices Remain High 214

Posted by Soulskill from the what-the-market-will-bear dept.
crookedvulture writes "Last October, Thailand was hit by massive flooding that put much of the world's hard drive industry under water. Production slowed to a crawl as drive makers and their suppliers mopped up the damage, and prices predictably skyrocketed. One year later, production has rebounded, with the industry expected to ship more drives in 2012 than it did in 2011. For the most part, though, hard drive prices haven't returned to pre-flood levels. Although 2.5" notebook drives are a little cheaper now than before the flood, the average price of 3.5" desktop drives is up 35% from a year ago. Prices have certainly fallen dramatically from their post-flood peaks, but the rate of decline has slowed substantially in recent months, suggesting that higher prices are the new norm for desktop drives."

Comment Re:1st Amendment (Score 4, Insightful) 383

by AdmiralXyz (#41894887) Attached to: Pull Lever, Don't Snap Shutter: It May Be Illegal To Post Your Ballot
No, there is a very good reason for this law: if you can show which way you voted to third parties, then it's possible for you to sell your vote to those third parties. As it stands, it's not possible to "sell votes" (at least, not in the direct sense), because you could just take the money and say you voted a certain way, when you didn't.

(Incidentally, I see a lot of people proposing reformed voting systems that include a hard confirmation that your vote for X was counted. Voting reform is good, but that particular idea is bad, for this exact reason. Cut it out).

If someone tried to defend their right to post a picture of their ballot on First Amendment grounds, I'd be willing to bet that a court would rule that a fair election represents the overriding concern and would still prosecute.
Cloud

Amazon EBS Failure Brings Down Reddit, Imgur, Others 176

Posted by Soulskill from the karma-for-the-kindle-wiping dept.
Several readers have sent word of a significant Amazon EBS outage. Quoting: "Amazon Web Services has confirmed that its Elastic Block Storage (EBS) service is experiencing degraded service, leading sites across the Internet to experience downtime, including Reddit, Imgur and many others. AWS confirmed on its status page at 2:11 p.m. ET that it is experiencing 'degraded performance for a small number of EBS volumes.' It says the issue is restricted to a single Availability Zone within the US-East-1 Region, which is in Northern Virginia. AWS later reported that its Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) and its Elastic Beanstalk application plaform also experienced failures on Monday afternoon."

Comment D-Wave might actually be legitimate (Score 5, Interesting) 73

by AdmiralXyz (#41554499) Attached to: The CIA and Jeff Bezos Bet $30 Million On Quantum Computing Company
Just a quick FYI: for those of you still assuming that D-Wave is a bunch of snake-oil salesman (like I did for a long time), take a look at this bit from Ars Technica. Basically what they've built is not a genuine quantum computer, but a sort of "quantum optimizer" that delivers speedups for some kinds of problems. Their crime might be that they just use too much marketing hyperbole, instead of being complete frauds.
Idle

Global Bacon Shortage 'Unavoidable' 293

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the no-word-yet-on-facon-shortage dept.
New submitter The name is Dave. Ja debuts on the front page with the most dismal news of our time: "This is truly 'Stuff That Matters'. Where would civilization be today without bacon? I don't mean to be alarmist but ... sound the alarms! This is big — it could lead to civil unrest." Yes, a bacon shortage. Hopefully what bacon there is will be more delicious after being fed with gummi worms.
Blackberry

Flatlining User Base May Spell End of RIM 180

Posted by timothy from the rim-edge-brink-what's-the-difference? dept.
Meshach writes "There is an article in the Globe and Mail that says that the user base for Blackberry has stopped growing for the first time in the company's history, and speculates that this is the beginning of the end of RIM. The main problem seems to be that RIM's new Blackberry models like the Bold and Torch are selling poorly, and their production costs are much higher than other products manufactured in China. A recent research report says that after BB10 the company will need to sell or drastically change its business model."
Security

The Man Who Hacked the Bank of France 184

Posted by timothy from the whereas-6-5-4-3-2-1-would-have-stopped-him dept.
First time accepted submitter David Off writes "In 2008 a Skype user looking for cheap rate gateway numbers found himself connected to the Bank of France where he was asked for a password. He typed 1 2 3 4 5 6 and found himself connected to their computer system. The intrusion was rapidly detected but led to the system being frozen for 48 hours as a security measure. Two years of extensive international police inquiries eventually traced the 37-year-old unemployed Breton despite the fact he'd used his real address when he registered with Skype. The man was found not guilty in court today (Original, in French) of maliciously breaking into the bank."
Android

Alibaba Says Google Threatened Acer With Banishment From Android 352

Posted by timothy from the they'd-have-to-use-windows-phone dept.
Spy Handler writes "In a Microsoft-esque move, Google threatened Acer with banishment from Android if it went ahead with its new cellphone project with Alibaba (China's version of Amazon), using an OS called Aliyun. Acer has remained silent on the issue, but Alibaba reports that they received notification from Google, stating 'if the new product launch with Aliyun went ahead, Google would terminate Android product cooperation and related technical authorization with Acer.' A possible reason for Google's upset is that the Aliyun OS, which is not Android, can run Android apps as well as its own."
Censorship

MP Seeking To Outlaw Written Accounts of Child Abuse 454

Posted by samzenpus from the watch-what-you-write dept.
First time accepted submitter Anduril1986 writes "A UK Conservative MP is seeking to expand censorship in another 'think of the children' debate. The plan this time is to make it illegal to possess written accounts of child abuse. According to Sir Paul Beresford, the MP for Mole Valley such writing 'fuels the fantasies' of offenders and could lead to the physical abuse of children."
Open Source

Submission + - 4chan undergoing major revision, getting public API (boingboing.net) 1

Submitted by AdmiralXyz
AdmiralXyz writes: Even the darkest corners of the internet aren't immune to the Web 2.0 boom: BoingBoing reports that 4chan is working on the largest codebase update in its history. The new 4chan will include as standard the functionality of popular browser plugins for using the site, as well as a JSON API so- hooray?- anyone can have immediate access to the contents of 4chan for any purpose they like. This represents a significant update to the heretofore haphazard development process of 4chan, and opens up the possibility of third-party 4chan apps... though probably not on the App Store.
Businesses

Cash-Poor Sharp Mortgages Display Factories 111

Posted by timothy from the surely-they-can-reach-a-resolution dept.
Sharp is one of the small handful of companies that actually make the LCDs that go into products badged with many other companies' names. Now, itwbennett writes "The company was asked by one of its main banks to put its physical assets, including its Apple screen plant, up as collateral for about $2 billion in emergency loans, according to an IDG News Service report. Sharp expects to lose over $3 billion this fiscal year."

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