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Submission + - Police waste 30 minutes each per day waiting for computers to boot up (v3.co.uk)

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.

Submission + - Government splashing out £6,000 per year per PC to maintain desktops (v3.co.uk)

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.

Submission + - Building a 3D printer with a 3D printer (theinquirer.net)

llebeel writes: 3D printing's ubiquity is being aided by the open source nature of the technology alongside a community of designers, developers and enthusiasts that are taking advantage of 3D printer design blueprints available online, and constructing homemade machines.

We visited New York last week, and met with one of the city's 3D printing community's members; full-time architect Gordon Laplante, who has not only built his own machine, but used it to print out parts to build a much bigger version, all in the comfort of his living room.

Submission + - Raspberry Pi-powered beer keg pours you a hands-free pint (theinquirer.net)

llebeel writes: The INQUIRER: A New York City start-up named Robokeg has showed off a Raspberry Pi and NFC-powered beer keg prototype.

Made up of "three lazy hackers", Robokeg demoed the gadget at the New York Tech Meetup (NYTM) event on Tuesday, offering up some hands-free beer service via a Raspberry Pi PC, which acts as the brain of the machine with 3D-printed parts covering the brawn.

Robokeg said it could one day act as a vending machine at festivals when you don't have your wallet, or in clubs to reduce queue times at the bar. Watch for it at your local pub.

Submission + - UK benefits claimants forced to use Microsoft Windows XP and IE6 (theinquirer.net)

carlypage3 writes: Benefits claimants in the UK are being forced to use Microsoft's now obsolete Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 software. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) states that its online forms are not compatible with Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 and 10, Safari, Google Chrome or Firefox. As if that wasn't unnerving enough, the Gov.UK website says that users cannot submit claims using Mac OS X or Linux operating systems, either.

Submission + - Apple vs Samsung lawyer speaks out against patent trolls (theinquirer.net)

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.

Submission + - Selling Linux to Microsoft Exchange users is easy says Icewarp (theinquirer.net)

illiteratehack writes: Icewarp, a company that has sold messaging software to the US Navy and the British Army, claims that getting existing Microsoft Exchange customers over to Linux is easy once it demonstrates the same features can be had without the need to licensing both the operating system and the messaging server. Given feature parity on Linux, just how long can firms justify paying Microsoft's licensing fees?

Submission + - 64-bit x86 computing reaches 10th anniversary (theinquirer.net)

illiteratehack writes: 10 years ago AMD released its first Opteron processor, the first 64-bit x86 processor. The firm's 64-bit 'extensions' allowed the chip to run existing 32-bit x86 code in a bid to avoid the problems faced by Intel's Itanium processor. However AMD suffered from a lack of native 64-bit software support, with Microsoft's Windows XP 64-bit edition severely hampering its adoption in the workstation market.

Submission + - Botched security update cripples thousands of computers across the world (v3.co.uk)

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.

Submission + - Gigabyte's Brix mini PC could rival the Raspberry Pi (theinquirer.net)

llebeel writes: Gigabyte previewed a mini PC called Brix at a "tech tour" event in London last night, which could see the firm take on the Raspberry Pi.

Boasting what the firm claims is "the same power as a tower PC", the mini computer boasts a choice of Intel Celeron or Core processors as powerful as the Core i7 chip for "low to high power".

However, as yet specs are thin on the ground, but we do know it should launch in the UK within the next month or so..

Submission + - London cops fired for abusive social media posts (v3.co.uk)

illiteratehack writes: Six London police have been fired for writing abusive messages on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook in the last three years. A further 30-odd have been disciplined too new data has revealed.

Submission + - Google reported to EC for giving 'Trojan Horse' Android away for free (v3.co.uk)

DW100 writes: Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle have taken it upon themselves to moan to the European Commission about Google’s Android dominance, which they say is an underhand bid to control the entire mobile market. The firms are part of the FairSearch group, which has just filed a complaint that Google is using Android as a ‘Trojan Horse’ to take control of the mobile market and all the related advertising revenue. Microsoft would of course know all about this, being at the end of several similar anti-competitive complaints in the past.

Submission + - Film studios send takedown notices about takedown notices (bbc.co.uk)

another random user writes: Two film studios have asked Google to take down links to messages sent by them requesting the removal of links connected to film piracy.

Google receives 20 million "takedown" requests, officially known as DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices, a month. They are all published online.

Recent submissions by Fox and Universal Studios include requests for the removal of previous takedown notices.

Intel

Submission + - Intel's Pentium chip turns 20 today (v3.co.uk)

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.
Movies

Submission + - Top 10 Oscar contenders for best tech movie (v3.co.uk)

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.

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