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Submission + - Microsoft Takes Another Stab at Tablets, Unveils Surface 2, Surface 2 Pro

Submitted by Dputiger
Dputiger writes: Microsoft has unveiled both the Surface 2 and Surface 2 Pro, updating the former with a Tegra 4 processor and the latter with a new Haswell chip. Among the additional improvements are a more comfortable kickstand with two height settings, 1080p displays for both devices, USB 3.0 support, better battery life, and a higher resolution camera. Pricing for the 32GB Surface without a Touch or Type Cover is set at $449

Submission + - SteamOS Announced

Submitted by Chameleon Man
Chameleon Man writes: Valve has finally announced it's plans to bring it's library of games to the living room. From the article:

As we’ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we’ve come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself. SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen. It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.

Valve appears to be championing this system on a free-standing linux console, flaunting the ability to mod and share games. Perhaps Valve will have more success than Microsoft?

Submission + - Given Recent Crypto Revelations, 'Everything is Suspect' (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Gunkerty Jeb
Gunkerty Jeb writes: So now that RSA Security has urged developers to back away from the table and stop using the maligned Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generation (Dual EC DRBG) algorithm, the question begging to be asked is why did RSA use it in the first place?

Going back to 2007 and a seminal presentation at the CRYPTO conference by Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson, there have been suspicions about Dual EC DRBG primarily because it was backed by the National Security Agency, which initially proposed the algorithm as a standard. Cryptographer Bruce Schneier wrote in a 2007 essay that the algorithm contains a weakness that “can only be described as a backdoor.”

“I wrote about it in 2007 and said it was suspect. I didn’t like it back then because it was from the government,” Schneier told Threatpost today. “It was designed so that it could contain a backdoor. Back then I was suspicious, now I’m terrified.

Submission + - The New iPhones: Everything Is Amazing and Nobody Is Happy (xconomy.com)

Submitted by waderoush
waderoush writes: Legions of reviewers, including many here on Slashdot, have expressed disappointment over what Apple didn’t announce this week. The new iPhones should be cheaper, many critics said. They should have a larger screen, or more memory, or longer battery life. The 64-bit processor in the iPhone 5S is marketing fluff. There’s no NFC, no notification LED, no always-on clock. The fingerprint scanner is either too hackable or too secure (will there now be a market in dismembered fingers?). Most absurdly: Apple should have skipped straight to the iPhone 6. At some point, clearly, consumers decided that incremental advances won’t cut it, and that we deserve to be bowled over by every Apple product refresh. But that’s unrealistic, bordering on delusional. A column in Xconomy this week offers a look at the real substance of Apple’s improvements to the iPhone, a defense of incrementalism, and a reminder that today’s smartphones already surpass the wildest visions of 20th-century sci-fi creators.

Submission + - NSA Shares Intel on Americans with Israel (theguardian.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The UK's Guardian newspaper is reporting that the NSA shares the raw intel collected on Americans with Israel. No doubt the Israeli's are respecting the the Constitutional rights of US Citizens in utilizing this information, so nothing to worry about!

Submission + - IT Monitoring Effective in Deterring Fraud by Restaurant Employees (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Science Daily reports, "For many firms, losing significant revenue and profit to employee theft has been a cost of doing business. But a new study from Washington University in St. Louis finds that information technology monitoring is strikingly effective in reducing theft and fraud, especially in the restaurant industry. "Cleaning House: The Impact of Information Technology Monitoring on Employee Theft and Productivity," (.pdf) by Lamar Pierce, PhD, associate professor of strategy at Olin Business School, finds that mining sales data of employees increased restaurant revenue about 7 percent. The paper is co-written with Daniel Snow, associate professor at the Marriott School at Brigham Young University, and Andrew McAfee, research scientist at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... Pierce and his team found that after installing the monitoring software, revenue per restaurant increased an average of $2,982 per week, about 7 percent. Restaurants also experienced a 22 percent drop in theft." More at The New York Times.

Submission + - (Can't help it): Uranus is holding a Trojan (space.com)

Submitted by LeadSongDog
LeadSongDog writes: Space.com is reporting on a 60km comet-like body in Lagrangian orbit around the Sun, locked to Uranus. This means a distant, but fairly accessible supply of water-ice, hence reaction mass, hydrogen and oxygen for robotic miners if we can just get them there with an energy source.

Submission + - Stand-Up Comedy at the LHC Today (physicscentral.com)

Submitted by BuzzSkyline
BuzzSkyline writes: Some physicists at the Large Hadron Collider are about to embark on a completely different sort of experiment. What they will discover today may rival the detection of the Higgs particle in, well, in no way whatsoever. Unlike most high energy physics experiments, you won't need countless hours on a massive computer farm to tell if the experiment is a success. You should know pretty quickly by tuning into CERN's After Dark Stand-Up Comedy Evening taking place today at 20:00 in Europe/Zurich time, (2:00 PM Eastern time).

Submission + - Mexican Village Creates Its Own Mobile Phone Service (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by Dave_Minsky
Dave_Minsky writes: The small indigenous village of Villa Talea de Castro (pop. 2,500) in the state of Oaxaca is showing the world that it doesn't have to rely on major cellular telecommunications providers for service.

With the help from indigenous groups, civil organizations and universities, village residents put up an antenna on a rooftop, installed radio and computer equipment, and created its own micro provider called Red Celular de Talea (RCT).

Service costs only 15 pesos ($1.2) per month and a few pennies per minute to make calls to the United States. However, there is one catch: calls are limited to a maximum of five minutes to prevent saturation of lines.

Submission + - Romanian science in freefall (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: In 2011, Romania took a step towards changing its cronyism-ridden research landscape by allocating government grants for science solely on the basis of performance. In 2012, a new government eliminated those rules, then slashed science funding — and since then things have gotten a whole lot worse. The entire National Research Council, Romania’s main research-funding agency, has resigned in protest and 900 scientists signed a petition addressed to Prime Minister Victor Ponta, demanding that the research budget and quality control be restored. Ponta himself unfortunately has been accused of academic plagiarism so seems an unlikely figure to address corruption in the scientific establishment. The new science minister, Ecaterina Andronescu, is experienced — she's held the post twice before and is a rector at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest. But she's already reversed conflict of interest rules brought in by the previous government that were designed to end croneyism, And no wonder — they would have meant that she couldn't be science minister and run a university at the same time. Oh, she has also been accused of plagiarism.

Comment Re:Budgets, not tax. Jeez. (Score 1) 301

by damacus (#44690807) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Get Open Source Projects To Take Our Money?

Yeah, I agree, but not everyone works in an organization with that accounting structure. :-)

"Fund accounting is an accounting system emphasizing accountability rather than profitability, used by non-profit organizations and governments. In this system, a fund is a self-balancing set of accounts, segregated for specific purposes in accordance with laws and regulations or special restrictions and limitations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fund_accounting

Comment Re:501(c)(3)'s CAN CHARGE FOR SERVICES!!!!! (Score 1) 301

by damacus (#44688629) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Get Open Source Projects To Take Our Money?

Absolutely. Quoting Wikipedia, "While not-for-profit organizations are permitted to generate surplus revenues, they must be retained by the organization for its self-preservation, expansion, or plans." ... "The extent to which an NPO can generate surplus revenues may be constrained or use of surplus revenues may be restricted."

Comment Budgets, not tax. Jeez. (Score 5, Insightful) 301

by damacus (#44688015) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Get Open Source Projects To Take Our Money?

"Dodging" tax laws has a negative connotation. Tax laws related to donations *benefit* companies generally as write-offs. I think your post was unfair and presumptuous as to the original poster's intentions.

I don't think the original poster's intentions / considerations had anything to do with tax laws and instead are directly relevant to financial budgets, hinted at by the "underspend" part. Budgets are different from a wallet or general corporate account. You don't want to get into dealings with the administration on misappropriation of budgeted funds.

As far as misappropriations are concerned: if your underspend is on a 'services' or 'software' category, and you use a lot of open source software, it isn't necessarily a misappropriation of funds (and the spirit of the account) to help ensure the projects on which your company depends stay in good health. The groups could've sold a $5,000 consultation or Support Meeting and just talked about how the org. used the software in question and had a chance to present ideas to them. And then at the end of the call or meeting, the project is $5K richer.

TL;DR large organizations that may have money to spend sometimes need some flexibility.

Submission + - Steve Ballmer Steps Down as Microsoft's CEO (infoq.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, has announced today his retirement from Microsoft, stepping down from his position within the next 12 months after a new CEO has been chosen. Ballmer said that he would have stepped down anyway, but later, after the current organizational transformation Microsoft is going through has been half completed. He has decided to do it though because “now is the right time.”

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