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Businesses

Submission + - Apple Treating Its Flash Chip Partners Unfairly (koreatimes.co.kr) 3

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: According to an article in Korea Times, there are growing complaints in the semiconductor industry that Apple, the "smart" phone maker extraordinaire and major chip buyer, is manipulating NAND flash memory prices through its "questionable" purchasing strategies. Apple is contributing to the suppression in flash memory prices by ordering more chips from semiconductor makers than the amount it actually buys from them and waits until chip prices to fall to the level the company has internally targeted. Unfortunately for the flash industry, experts believe that Apple may be treating the flash market unfairly, but not illegally.
Google

Submission + - Is Google abandoning Gears? (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: When Google announced its Gears technology for giving Web services offline capabilities in early 2007, it looked like it could have a huge impact in speeding the transition from traditional software to the cloud. But Gears never got an outpouring of support from Web-service companies--even Google's own support in its own products has been scattered and incomplete. Now the company seems to be saying that developers who like the Gears concept should focus their attention on HTML5, which will bring Gears-like features--eventually. Is the Gears dream over?
Security

Submission + - 100% of certificate errors are fale positives (schneier.com)

Submitted by isoloisti
isoloisti writes: Users are completely rational to reject security advice. From password strength, to certificate errors to identifying phishing sites the advice does more harm than good.
"Users understand the security risks better than security professionals." Discussion over at Schneier's blog.

Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time." While amusing, this is unfair: users are never offered security, either
on its own or as an alternative to anything else. They are offered long, complex and growing sets of advice, mandates, policy updates and tips. These sometimes
carry vague and tentative suggestions of reduced risk, never security. We have shown that much of this advice does nothing to make users more secure, and some of it
is harmful in its own right.

Submission + - Programming pay sucks, postdoc becomes call girl (newscientist.com)

Submitted by nbauman
nbauman writes: Jesus Christ, Slashdot, how did you miss this one? A UK postdoc worked as call girl because she couldn't make enough as a programmer.

Brooke Magnanti, PhD, established a link between thyroid cancer and fallout from Chernobyl (Geographical analysis of thyroid cancer in young people from northern England: Evidence for a sustained excess in females in Cumbria, European Journal of Cancer, 45:1624-1629), and recently published an assessment in Toxicology Letters (Chlorpyrifos and neurodevelopmental toxicity doi:10.1016/j.toxlet.2009.06.835) on the environmental risks of organophosphates.

While a postdoc at the Univeristy of Sheffield, she ran out of money. She considered Starbucks, but that didn't pay enough. She did some programming, but that didn't pay enough. So she checked out some escort agency web sites, and picked the one that seemed nicest. She took home £200 for a 2-hour session, and finally was able to quit the programming job. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article6917495.ece She also had a blog under the pen name Belle de Jour http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-10-11T09%3A21%3A00Z and published a successful anonymous book about her experiences. Now New Scientist has an interview by somebody who finally understands her scientific work. http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2009/11/belle-de-jour-on-science-and-prostitution.php
Apple

Submission + - Steve Jobs in standover against app developer (theage.com.au)

Submitted by BrokenHalo
BrokenHalo writes: The Age has an article showing us another unsavoury aspect of Apple's business model.

A long-time Apple software developer from Sydney fears he may have to lay off most of his staff after draconian Apple legal threats and a rare personal email from Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs.

Mathew Peterson, 25, has been creating Mac software since he was 17 and one of his most popular products has been "iPodRip", which allows people to back up their music collections from their iPods on to their computers. It was an instant hit and particularly useful in emergencies because, if a user's computer dies and they attempt to connect their iPod to their new machine, all music and videos on the device are usually wiped... Peterson's Manly-based company, The Little App Factory, now employs eight staff members, makes two other Apple-related software tools and claims to have approximately 6 million customers. But iPodRip, which sells for $US19.95, pulls in the lion's share of revenue.

Despite iPodRip being available for the past six years, about 2 weeks ago, Peterson received a cease and desist letter from Apple's lawyers, Baker & McKenzie. It asked him to stop using "iPod" in his software's name, remove any Apple-related logos from his product and relinquish control of his domain name, ipodrip.com.
Security

Submission + - First malicious iphone worm in the wild (security.nl)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After the ikee worm that displayed a picture of rick astley on jailbroken iphones, the first malicious iphone worm has now been discovered in the wild. Internetprovider XS4ALL in the Netherlands encountered several of such devices on the wireless networks of their customers and put out a warning: http://www.xs4all.nl/veiligheid/security.php.

After obtaining a copy of the malware it was discovered that the jailbroken phones, which are exploited through openSSH with a default password, scan IP ranges of mobile internet providers for other vulnerable iphones, phone home to a C&C botnet server, are able to update themselves with additional malware and have the ability to dump the SMS database as well. Owners of a jailbroken iphone with a default root password are advised to flash to the latest Apple firmware in order to ensure no malware is present.
Businesses

Respected Developers Begin Fleeing the App Store 485

Posted by Soulskill from the also-known-as-the-french-rush dept.
wiedzmin writes "Facebook's Joe Hewitt, Second Gear's Justin Williams, the long-time Mac software developer known as 'Rogue Amoeba' and other respected App Store developers have recently decided to discontinue their work on the platform, citing their frustration with Apple's opaque approval process. Continued issues with erroneous and snap rejections of applications and APIs are prompting more and more developers to shun the platform entirely. Though there are tens of thousands of other developers who have pumped out over 100,000 apps for the platform, continued migration away from iPhone development will most likely result in lower quality software."
Apple

Submission + - Respected developers begin fleeing from App Store 1

Submitted by wiedzmin
wiedzmin writes: Facebook's Joe Hewitt, Second Gear's Justin Williams, long-time Mac software developer known as "Rogue Amoeba" and other respected App Store developers have recently decided to discontinue their work on the platform, citing their frustration with Apple's opaque approval processes. Continued issues with erroneous and snap application and API rejections are prompting more and more developers to shun the platform entirely. Though there are tens of thousands of other developers pumping out over 100,000 iPhone apps, continued migration away from iPhone development will most likely result in less quality software for the platform.
Microsoft

Submission + - Office 2010 beta now available

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ars Technica reports that "the public betas for Office 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, and SharePoint Server 2010 have now been posted for download by Microsoft. The beta is available in seven languages (more than any other Office beta program in the past): English, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, French, and German. Office Mobile 2010 (which includes mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and, SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010) is available worldwide in Windows Marketplace for Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. The Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta (which includes Word, Excel PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, Communicator, and SharePoint Workspace) is available in 32-bit and 64-bit over at Microsoft.com/Office/2010 (registration required). The portal that seems like the best starting point for learning more about the whole 2010 wave of Microsoft products is actually Microsoft.com/2010."
Science

Submission + - Solving history’s ‘largest mass poison (mit.edu)

Submitted by zvrk
zvrk writes: As many as 3,000 Bangladeshis die from arsenic-induced cancer each year and today approximately 2 million people in the country live with arsenic poisoning, which manifests as skin lesions and neurological disorders, and causes cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases and cancer. Allan H. Smith a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley, calls it “the largest mass poisoning of a population in history.”
Space

Submission + - NASA to restart primate irradiation testing (newscientist.com)

Submitted by zvrk
zvrk writes: If it goes ahead, the experiment will be the first NASA-funded primate project to begin in more than 30 years. What will the experiment do and what does NASA hope to learn? New Scientist investigates.
Apple

Apple Patents "Enforceable" Ad Viewing On Devices 439

Posted by CmdrTaco from the touch-the-lizard dept.
Rexdude writes "Apple has filed a patent that forces users to interact with an ad. FTFA: 'Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn't simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.'" We've been following this story for awhile now but it seems to have broken into the mainstream.
Microsoft

Submission + - Bill Gates praises "inspirational" Steve Jobs (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: Bill Gates has showered former nemesis Steve Jobs in praise for his role in rebuilding Apple in the nineties. In a program called "Keeping America Great" shown on CNBC, Gates was asked by a university student how he felt about the Apple chief executive. "He brought in a team and he brought in inspiration in great products and design that's made Apple into an incredible force, and doing good things," Gates gushed. "Of all the leaders in the industry that I've worked with he's showed more inspiration and he saved the company."
Microsoft

Submission + - Is Windows 7 any good on 5 yrs old Tablet PC? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by zvrk
zvrk writes: My Acer was running Windows XP Table PC edition. I wasn't even thinking of upgrading it to Windows Vista (as it did not have enough resources), but with all the hype that Windows 7 is optimized operating systems — I was thinking — let's give it a try!
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