Phoghat writes "In 2015 the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford will take to the seas and the plan is to use a railgun to launch planes, instead of steam powered catapults. From the article: 'The Navy developed its Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System as a replacement for the steam catapults currently used on aircraft carriers. The EMALS is a linear induction motor that's capable of accelerating a 100,000 pound aircraft to 240 miles per hour in the space of 300 feet. Compared to a steam catapult, the railgun catapult is much smaller, more efficient, simpler to maintain, gentler on airframes, and can deliver up to 30% more power. It's also capable of being cranked down a whole bunch, meaning that it can also launch smaller (and more fragile) unmanned drones.'"

theodp writes "The White House Thursday announced plans to restructure IT by consolidating federal government data centers and applications, and adopting a so-called 'cloud first' policy. Unveiled by federal CIO Vivek Kundra, the 25-Point Plan (PDF) calls for cutting 800+ data centers by 2015, as well as shifting work to cloud computing systems. The new 'Cloud First' policy cites the ability of Animoto.com to scale vs. the government's short-lived Cars.gov (Cash for Clunkers), although Google Trends suggests this may be somewhat of an apple-to-oranges comparison for justifying a national IT strategy. As long as we're talking clouds, a tag cloud of the 25-Point Plan underscores that the Feds are counting more on IT Program and Contract Management rather than Computer Science wizardry to deliver 'the productivity improvements that private industry has realized from IT.' Not to be a buzzkill, but those of you celebrating CS Education Week might be advised to consider an MBA if you want a Federal IT career."

An anonymous reader writes "Will Canada become a black hole in cyberspace? Or will it remain a country of which former prime minister Wilfred Laurier once said, 'Canada is free and freedom is its nationality.' According to p2pnet's Jon Newton, that'll be for the nine members of the federal Supreme Court to decide. Newton was sued by ex-Green Party of Canada financier Wayne Crookes for allegedly defaming him by linking to a story Crookes didn't like. Newton is now back home on Vancouver Island after traveling to Ottawa for the SCC hearing. Was it win or lose? It's an 'Epic Fail' for Crookes, Newton says. The Supreme Court reserved its decision. Its rulings are 'typically released six to eight months after a hearing,' according to the CBC in its report on the case. Says Ars Technica, 'As CIPPIC puts it, if Newton loses, the ruling could "chill hyperlinking which in turn undermines the communicative force of the Internet and deters innovation of new, expression-enhancing platforms that may not develop due to fear of defamation actions."'"

UnmaskParasites writes "To drive traffic to their online stores, software pirates hack reputable legitimate websites injecting hidden spammy links and creating doorway pages. Google's search results are seriously poisoned by such doorways. Negligence of webmasters of compromised sites makes this scheme viable — doorways remain unnoticed for years. Not so long ago, hackers began to re-configure Apache on compromised servers to make them serve doorway pages off of non-default ports, still taking advantage of using established domain names."

Orome1 writes "A group of fraudsters has been arrested in Yakutsk and Moscow for allegedly compromising all the ATMs in the city of Yakutsk — population: around 210,000 — in the Republic of Yakutia in the Russian Federation. Three of the men formed the actual criminal group, and the fourth — a Moscow-based malware developer — was 'subcontracted' by them and received 100,000 rubles (some $3200) to develop a custom ATM virus with which they would infect the devices."

rbrander writes "Don't call it a 'rifle,' call it the 'XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System' and get your $35,000 worth. Much more than a projector of high-speed lead, this device hurls small grenades that automatically detonate in mid-flight with 1-meter accuracy over nearly 800m. The vital field feature is the ability to explode 1m behind the wall you just lazed — the one with the enemy hiding behind it."

recoiledsnake writes "Apple dialed its battle with Android up a notch today by banning an Android magazine app from its App Store, leaving no way for users to install the app on iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches without jailbreaking. The reason for rejection, as given by an Apple rep, was: 'You know... your magazine...It's just about Android.... we can't have that in our App Store.' The bi-monthly publication — the Android counterpart to an iPhone magazine Dixon began putting out earlier this year — launched Nov. 11. 'It's funny really because I don't think we would sell many magazines on Android through Apple App Store,' Dixon told Media Watch. 'But the question is where this is going.' This comes on the heels of Jobs lashing out at Android, calling it fragmented, and its patent attacks on Android."

Hugh Pickens writes "Jonathan Fahey writes for AP that as the first mass-market electric cars go on sale next month, the power industry faces a huge growth opportunity, with SoCal Edison expecting to be charging 100,000 cars by 2015 and California setting a goal of 1 million electric vehicles by 2020. But utility executives are worried that the difficulty of keeping the lights on for the first crop of buyers — and their neighbors — could slow the growth of this industry because it's inevitable that electric utilities will suffer some difficulties early on. 'We are all going to be a lot smarter two years from now,' says Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America. When plugged into a home charging station the first Leafs and Volts will draw 3,300 Watts and take about 8 hours to deliver a full charge, but both carmakers may soon boost that to 6,600 Watts. The Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car with a huge battery, can draw 16,800 Watts. That means that adding an electric vehicle or two to a neighborhood can be like adding another house, and it can stress the equipment that services those houses. The problem is that transformers that distribute power from the electrical grid to homes are often designed to handle less than about 12,000 watts so the extra stress on a transformer from one or two electric vehicles could cause it to overheat and fail, knocking out power to the block."

An anonymous reader writes "During these long breaks from work, it's refreshing to not have to worry about your job. Unless you work in IT, in which case you're salaried and constantly on the clock. To all the server room monkeys and desktop admins, do you suffer from anxiety? How do you deal with it? Does the crushing worry of a businesses IT infrastructure (and the rest of the business) coming to a screeching halt make IT occupations prone to anxiety?"

adonoman writes "A 25-year-old Winnipeg businessman is the first Pirate Party of Canada candidate to run for federal election. At the same time, the US and UK pirate parties have put out an open letter to Anonymous requesting that they cease Operation Payback's DDOS attacks and focus on taking a legal route to fix intellectual property law."

KindMind notes coverage in The Register on a researcher who has developed a firmware-based rootkit that resides in a network card. Here is the developer's blog entry. "Guillaume Delugré, a reverse engineer at French security firm Sogeti ESEC, was able to develop proof-of-concept code after studying the firmware from Broadcom Ethernet NetExtreme PCI Ethernet cards... Using the knowledge gained from this process, Delugré was able to develop custom firmware code and flash the device so that his proof-of-concept code ran on the CPU of the network card."

Instead of bottle caps and ridicule from his peers, 3-year-old James Hyatt found a locket worth millions with his metal detector. James and his dad found the gold locket last May in Essex. Since then the 500-year-old treasure has been appraised at around £2.5million. From the article: "James’s father Jason, 34, said: ‘My son is one of the luckiest people ever. If we go to the doctors he’ll put his hand down the side of the sofa and pull out a tenner.’"