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Adobe Photoshop Is Coming To Linux, Through Chromebooks 197

Posted by timothy from the scared-of-a-little-gimp-action-eh dept.
sfcrazy writes Adobe is bringing the king of all photo editing software, Photoshop, to Linux-based Chrome OS. Chrome OS-powered devices, such as Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, already have a decent line-up of 'applications' that can work offline and eliminate the need of a traditional desktop computer. So far it sounds like great news. The bad news is that the offering is in its beta stage and is available only to the customers of the Creative Cloud Education program residing in the U.S. I have a full subscription of Creative Cloud for Photographers, and LightRoom, but even I can't join the program at the moment.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: EBay follows Icahn's advice, plans PayPal spinoff in 2015 - Toronto Sun (google.com)

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Toronto Sun
EBay follows Icahn's advice, plans PayPal spinoff in 2015
Toronto Sun
eBay logo REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach/Files. Tweet. Change text size for the story; Print this story. Report an error. Related Stories. EBay considering PayPal spinoff: report Ebay in talks to accept bitcoins: Report eBay to launch an in-app mobile advertising...
Ebay to spin off payments arm PayPalFinancial Times
EBay to spin off PayPalIrish Independent
PayPal to separate from eBay in 2015The Denver Channel

all 292 news articles

Stats

Microsoft's Asimov System To Monitor Users' Machines In Real Time 269

Posted by timothy from the all-persons-who-enter-herein dept.
SmartAboutThings writes Microsoft will monitor users in the new Windows 9 Operating System in order to determine how the new OS is used, thus decide what tweaks and changes are need to be made. During Windows 8 testing, Microsoft said that they had data showing Start Menu usage had dropped, but it seems that the tools they were using at the time weren't as evolved as the new 'Asimov' monitor. The new system is codenamed 'Asimov' and will provide a near real-time view of what is happening on users' machines. Rest assured, the data is going to be obscured and aggregated, but intelligible enough to allow Microsoft to get detailed insights into user interactions with the OS. Mary Jo Foley says that the system was originally built by the Xbox Team and now is being used by the Windows team. Users who will download the technical preview of Windows 9, which is said to get unveiled today, will become 'power users' who will utilize the platform in unique scenarios. This will help Microsoft identify any odd bugs ahead of the final release.

Submission + - Chinese Regulator Claims Flaws In Apple's iOS Can Steal Users' Data (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: China has effectively cleared the iPhone 6 for sale in the country, granting the product a license, but not before a government regulator demanded Apple make some security changes in the iOS operating system to fix suspected flaws in the software. These flaws involved "three background services" that can be exploited to retrieve users' private information, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in its posting.
Technology

Robotic Taster Will Judge 'Real Thai Food' 103

Posted by timothy from the what-about-best-barbecue? dept.
HughPickens.com (3830033) writes The NYT reports that Thailand's former prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra repeatedly encountered a distressing problem while traveling the world: bad Thai food. Too often, she found, the meals she sampled at Thai restaurants abroad were unworthy of the name, too bland to be called genuine Thai cooking. The problem bothered her enough to raise it at a cabinet meeting. Even though her political party has since been thrown out of office, in a May military coup, the Thai government is unveiling its project to standardize the art of Thai food using a robot. The government-financed Thai Delicious Committee, which oversaw the development of the machine, describes it as "an intelligent robot that measures smell and taste in food ingredients through sensor technology in order to measure taste like a food critic." Thailand's National Innovation Agency has spent about $100,000 to develop the e-delicious machine. The e-delicious machine has 10 sensors that measure smell and taste, generating a unique fingerprint (signature) for each sample of food that passes its digital maw. Generally with electronic tasting, there are electronic sensors that work just like the taste buds on your tongue, measuring the quantity of various taste-giving compounds, acidity, etc. While these electronic sensors can't actually tell you how something tastes — that's a very subjective, human thing — they are very good at comparing two foods scientifically. Meanwhile at a tiny food stall along one of Bangkok's traffic-clogged boulevards, Thaweekiat Nimmalairatana, questioned the necessity of a robatic taster. "I use my tongue to test if it's delicious or not," said Nimmalairatana. "I think the government should consider using a human to gauge authenticity."

Submission + - Huntsville schools say call from NSA led to monitoring students online

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: An alleged phone call from the NSA prompted public school officials in an Alabama school district to launch a surveillance program to monitor students’ online activities, administrators of the Huntsville City School District now admit.

The NSA allegedly took an interest in the Lee High School student body after Auseel Yousefi, a straight-A student, posted a series of questionable tweets about getting into fights and hitting a teacher. Yousefi claims the tweets were intended in jest, but school security officials searched the student’s car and found a weapon, which he says is a “jeweled dagger from a Renaissance fair.”

That was all the evidence school authorities needed to expel Yousefi for the semester and launch a district-wide information-gathering program aimed at discovering security threats and identifying gang members. The subsequent investigation led to a series of expulsions of students who were found posing on social media holding guns or throwing gang signs.

School administrators say the wider surveillance program was conducted at the behest of the NSA, but the security agency now denies it ever called the school.

Submission + - Calling Mr Orwell, rejigged executive order makes collecting data not collecting (techdirt.com)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: '...it is often the case that one can be led astray by relying on the generic or commonly understood definition of a particular word.' Specifically words offering constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. TechDirt looks at the redefinition of the term collection as redefined by Executive Order 12333 to allow basically every information dragnet, provided no-one looks at it. "Collection" is now defined as "collection plus action." According to this document, ot still isn't collected, even if its been gathered, packaged and sent to a "supervisory authority." No collection happens until examination. It's Schroedinger's data, neither collected nor uncollected until the "box" has been opened. This leads to the question of aging off collected data/communications: if certain (non) collections haven't been examined at the end of the 5-year storage limit, are they allowed to be retained simply because they haven't officially been collected yet? Does the timer start when the "box" is opened or when the "box" is filled?
Bug

Apple Fixes Shellshock In OS X 174

Posted by timothy from the that's-mac-os-x-to-you-buddy dept.
jones_supa (887896) writes Apple has released the OS X Bash Update 1.0 for OS X Mavericks, Mountain Lion, and Lion, a patch that fixes the "Shellshock" bug in the Bash shell. Bash, which is the default shell for many Linux-based operating systems, has been updated two times to fix the bug, and many Linux distributions have already issued updates to their users. When installed on an OS X Mavericks system, the patch upgrades the Bash shell from version 3.2.51 to version 3.2.53. The update requires the OS X 10.9.5, 10.8.5, or 10.7.5 updates to be installed on the system first. An Apple representative told Ars Technica that OS X Yosemite, the upcoming version of OS X, will receive the patch later.

Submission + - School district goes "all in" on Open Source with 3500 Linux laptops (opensource.com)

Submitted by lerchie
lerchie writes: Charlie Reisinger, IT director of the Penn Manor School District in Pennsylvania discusses how they converted to Open Source software on both the desktop level and at an infrastructure level. The schools also give the students the freedom to tinker with the Linux laptops they are assigned, with each student having root access to their machines.

Submission + - Linux Foundation Announces Major Network Functions Virtualization Project (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: The Linux Foundation this morning announced the latest addition to its family of major hosted open source initiatives: the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV), Its mission is to develop and maintain a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform for the telecom industry. Importantly, the thirty-eight founding members include not only cloud and service infrastructure vendors, but telecom service providers, developers and end users as well. The announcement of OPNFV highlights three of the most significant trends in IT: virtualization (the NFV part of the name refers to network function virtualization), moving software and services to the Cloud, and collaboratively developing complex open source platforms in order to accelerate deployment of new business models while enabling interoperability across a wide range of products and services. The project is also significant for reflecting a growing recognition that open source projects need to incorporate open standards planning into their work programs from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought.

Submission + - Internet Census 2014 to come?

Submitted by d33tah
d33tah writes: According to the project's website, the Internet Census 2012 researchers are crowdfunding next internet-wide research via Bitcoin.

"We are working on a vast and ground-breaking census, this time we hope to do it legally. Please help us make this happen by donating bitcoins to: 1tUCEnTyKzWrTBn1tgruSRkfahGUhxHcq"

Internet Census 2012 was a biggest complete scan of the entire internet with results being publicly available. This included traceroute information, port scanning, service and OS fingerprinting and more.

Submission + - Microsoft's Asimov System to Monitor Users' Machines in Real-time

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: Microsoft will monitor users in the new Windows 9 Operating System in order to determine how the new OS is used, thus decide what tweaks and changes are need to be made. During Windows 8 testing, Microsoft said that they had data showing Start Menu usage had dropped, but it seems that the tools they were using at the time weren’t as evolved as the new ‘Asimov’ monitor.

The new system is codenamed ‘Asimov’ and will provide a near real-time view of what is happening on users’ machines. Rest assured, the data is going to be obscured and aggregated, but intelligible enough to allow Microsoft to get detailed insights into user interactions with the OS.

Mary Jo Foley says that the system was originally built by the Xbox Team and now is being used by the Windows team. Users who will download the technical preview of Windows 9, which is said to get unveiled today, will become ‘power users’ who will utilize the platform in unique scenarios. This will help Microsoft identify any odd bugs ahead of the final release.

Submission + - People Will Do Anything For Free Wi-Fi

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new Wi-Fi investigation conducted on the streets of London shows that consumers carelessly use public Wi-Fi without regard for their personal privacy. In the experiment, which involved setting up a ‘poisoned’ Wi-Fi hotspot, unsuspecting users exposed their Internet traffic, their personal data, the contents of their email, and even agreed to an outrageous clause obligating them to give up their firstborn child in exchange for Wi-Fi use.

Submission + - Web Magna Carta: WWW inventor calls for 'online bill of rights'

Submitted by ltorvalds11
ltorvalds11 writes: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web has spoken out against world governments and corporations, which he says are seeking to control the web for their own gain. He called for a revolutionary bill of rights to guaranty the web’s independence.

"If a company can control your access to the internet, if they can control which websites they go to, then they have tremendous control over your life," Berners-Lee spoke at London’s ‘Web We Want’ festival, which discussed the future of the internet and its guidelines.
"If a government can block you going to, for example, the opposition's political pages, then they can give you a blinkered view of reality to keep themselves in power."
"There have been lots of times that it has been abused, so now the Magna Carta is about saying...I want a web where I'm not spied on, where there's no censorship," Berners-Lee said at the Web We Want Festival According to his comment, the only information that should be kept off the web relates to things that were illegal before the web, and remain illegal now – such as “child pornography, fraud, telling someone how to rob a bank,” and the like.

Submission + - UK Conservative Party Proposes Police Vetting Of "Extremist" Posts (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Jahta
Jahta writes: Extremists will have to get posts on Facebook and Twitter approved in advance by the police under sweeping rules planned by the Conservatives. They will also be barred from speaking at public events if they represent a threat to “the functioning of democracy”, under the new Extremist Disruption Orders.

There are also plans to allow judges to ban people from broadcasting or protesting in certain places, as well as associating with specific people. The plans — to be brought in if the Conservatives win the election in May — are part of a wide-ranging set of rules to strengthen the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy.

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