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Cloud

Submission + - Apple's iCloud runs on Microsoft Azure (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by ge7
ge7 writes: Apple's recently announced cloud storage and cloud service platform iCloud runs on their main competitor Microsoft's Azure platform and Amazon services. "Apple has selected Microsoft's Azure and Amazon's AWS to jointly host its iCloud service. According to The Reg's sources, Microsoft insiders see the iCloud deal as a validation of Azure. iCloud puts Azure into a different league, given the brand love for Apple and the Apple management's fanatical attitude to perfection. It is a 'huge consumer brand, a great opportunity to get Azure under a very visible workload'. Apple has had a recent unpleasant experience in providing online services: in a famous memo, Steve Jobs admitted his company had 'more to learn about internet services' following the outages and failures of his precursor to iCloud for email, contacts, calendar, photos and other files on MobileMe.
Canada

Submission + - Canada Encouraged US To Place It on Piracy List (michaelgeist.ca) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Copyright, U.S. lobbying, and the stunning backroom Canadian response gets front page news treatment today in Canada as the Toronto Star covers new revelations on copyright by Michael Geist (who offers a longer post with links to the cables) from the U.S. cables released by Wikileaks. The cables reveal that former Industry Minister Maxime Bernier raised the possibility of leaking the copyright bill to U.S. officials before it was to be tabled it in the House of Commons, former Industry Minister Tony Clement’s director of policy Zoe Addington encouraged the U.S. to pressure Canada by elevating it on a piracy watch list, Privy Council Office official Ailish Johnson disclosed the content of ministerial mandate letters, and former RCMP national coordinator for intellectual property crime Andris Zarins advised the U.S. that the government was working on a separate intellectual property enforcement bill.
Android

Submission + - Lenovo claims Samsung Galaxy Tab sold just 20,000 (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian writes that Andrew Barrow, director of consumer products for Lenovo Western Europe, claims that the original Galaxy Tab only sold 20,000 out of one million shipped. He goes on to say Samsung was "channel stuffing" in order to generate publicity and become known as a major Android tablet manufacturer.
The Internet

Submission + - Dutch government revokes Diginotar certificates (google.nl)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: (original Dutch text: http://nos.nl/artikel/269586-veiligheid-overheidssites-niet-gegarandeerd.html)

After previously claiming that the Iranian hack of CA Diginotar did not compromise certificates of the Dutch government, it has now been decided that there is too much risk and the certificates will have to be revoked after all. Since the Dutch government has been using only Diginotar-supplied certificates this will leave all government websites with invalid certificates while a new supplier is being searched for. The minister of internal affairs recommends people not to use the websites if a warning about an invalid certificate appears.
AMD

Submission + - Intel and AMD May Both Delay Next-Generation CPUs (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "AMD and Intel are both preparing to launch new CPU architectures between now and the end of the year, but rumors have surfaced that suggest the two companies may delay their product introductions, albeit for different reasons. Various unnamed PC manufactures have apparently reported that Intel may push back the introduction of its Ivy Bridge processor from the end of 2011 to late Q1/early Q2 2012. Meanwhile on the other side of the CPU pasture, there are rumors that AMD's Bulldozer might slip once again. Apparently AMD hasn't officially confirmed that it shipped its upcoming server-class Bulldozer products for revenue during August. This is possible, but seems somewhat unlikely. The CPU's anticipated launch date is close enough that the company should already know if it can launch the product."
Graphics

Submission + - Fascinating 1972 film uses 3D graphics (nerdplusart.com)

Submitted by
AlejoHausner
AlejoHausner writes: "In 1972, Ed Catmull, then at the University of Utah, put together a film showcasing many of the 3D computer graphics techniques he and others had developed while working as students in Ivan Sutherland's lab. That film has been digitized and is available on http://nerdplusart.com/first-3d-rendered-film-from-1972-and-my-visit-to-pixar . All kinds of modern techniques like gouraud shading, deformed meshes, and z-buffering are shown in the film. There is a segment showing Catmull digitizing a plaster model of his hand. Catmull later founded Pixar, but at the time the Utah lab pioneered many of the graphics techniques we take for granted today."
Facebook

Submission + - Heise's "Two Clicks For More Privacy" vs. Facebook (google.com)

Submitted by FlameWise
FlameWise writes: Yesterday, German technology news site Heise changed their social Like-Buttons to a two-click format. This will effectively disable unintentional automatic tracking of all page visits by third-party social sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Less than 24 hours later over 500 websites have asked about the technology. Facebook is now threatening to blacklist Heise.

German source: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Facebook-beschwert-sich-ueber-datenschutzfreundlichen-2-Klick-Button-1335658.html
Android

Submission + - Google Boots Transdroid From Android Market (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by
fysdt
fysdt writes: "Google has pulled one of the most popular torrent download managers from the Android Market because of policy violations. Before Google booted the application, Transdroid had been available for two years and amassed 400,000 users during that time. Thus far Google hasn’t specified what the exact nature of Transdoid’s violations are, but it’s not unlikely that they relate to copyright infringement.

For many Android users Transdroid is the perfect remote access app for managing their BitTorrent clients on the go. The app allows users to start and stop torrents, search torrent files and even use the barcode scanner to find matching torrent files.

Transdroid offered both a free and a paid version of the app, and judging from the 400,000 downloads people seemed to appreciate it. However, as of this week, Google decided that Transdroid is no longer eligible to be placed in the Android Market."
Printer

Submission + - A Solar-Powered 3D Printer Prints Glass from Sand (thisiscolossal.com)

Submitted by Tx-0
Tx-0 writes: From the article:
Industrial designer and tinkerer Markus Kayser spent the better part of a year building and experimenting with two fantastic devices that harness the sun’s power in some of the world’s harshest climates. The first he calls a Sun Cutter, a low-tech light cutter that uses a large ball lens to focus the sun’s rays onto a surface that’s moved by a cam-guided system. As the surface moves under the magnified light it cuts 2D components like a laser. The project was tested for the first time in August 2010 in the Egyptian desert and Kayser used thin plywood to create the parts for a few pairs of pretty sweet shades. But he didn’t stop there. Next, Kayser began to examine the process of 3D printing. Merging two of the deserts most abundant resources, nearly unlimited quantities of sand and sun, he created the Solar Sinter, a device that melts sand to create 3D objects out of glass.
Power

Submission + - Top Home Energy Hogs Are DVRs and Cable Boxes 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Elisabeth Rosenthal writes that cable setup boxes and DVRs have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, causing an increase of over $10 for a home with many devices with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator. The set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are running full tilt, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use consuming $3 billion in electricity in the US with 66 percent of that power wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded. “People in the energy efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use,” says John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission. “Companies say it can’t be done or it’s too expensive. But in my experience, neither one is true. It can be done, and it often doesn’t cost much, if anything.” The perpetually “powered on” state is largely a function of design and programming choices made by electronics companies and cable and Internet providers, which are related to the way cable networks function in the United States. Similar devices in some European countries can automatically go into standby mode when not in use, cutting power drawn by half and go into an optional “deep sleep,” which can reduce energy consumption by about 95 percent (PDF) compared with when the machine is active but cable companies say US customers will not tolerate the time it takes to reboot the system once the system has been shut down or put to sleep. Although the EPA has established Energy Star standards for set-top boxes and has plans to tighten them significantly by 2013 cable providers and box manufacturers like Cisco Systems, Samsung and Motorola currently do not feel consumer pressure to improve box efficiency. When Wilson asked box makers why the hard drives were on all the time, using so much power. The answer was: “Nobody asked us to use less.”"
Cloud

Submission + - Should a web startup go straight to the cloud?

Submitted by Javaman59
Javaman59 writes: I am a one person company developing a web site from home. The site is hoped to attract millions of accounts and daily hits (just to give an idea of the scale of things, as its important to the question). My infrastructure is currently Visual Studio 2010 on a PC.To progress the site I need to set up version control, continuous integration, and staging. I have a Win2008 server VM, with all the Windows software (free and legal) to do this. However, I am only just competent as a Win admin, and I foresee each step of the way (setting up a domain; SQL-Server, etc) as a slow, risky process, and a big disruption to development. Should I forget my VM server (it will make a nice games machine!) and just go straight to the cloud for all my infrastructure?
Programming

Submission + - Author of Cash-Spitting ATM Malware Heads to Jail (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: A former Bank of America (BOA) computer programmer was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison this week, after he installed malware on Bank of America ATMs that allowed him to suck out large amounts of cash from the machines.

Hired to work on a project involving the bank’s ATM systems, he installed malware on certain ATMs that caused them to disburse cash without any transaction record of the disbursements. The code enabled him to suck approximately $285,000 from the machines.

Submission + - SCOTUS Adds Exception to 4th Amendment (nytimes.com) 2

Submitted by T Murphy
T Murphy writes: The US supreme court has ruled 8-1 that police may enter a residence without a warrant if, upon knocking, they hear sounds suggesting evidence my be getting destroyed. The ruling was made over a case where police pursuing a drug suspect into an apartment building knocked on the wrong apartment when they smelled marijuana smoke. They heard people moving and assumed evidence was being destroyed, so they entered and arrested the defendant for drug trafficking upon finding cocaine. Justice Ginsburg, alone in dissent, raised a concerning question: “How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?”.

Submission + - Air France Black Box Found Intact (yahoo.com)

Submitted by clm1970
clm1970 writes: Finding the proverbial needle in the haystack the Black Box from Air France Flight 447 has been recovered almost two years after the crash that killed all 228 passengers on board. Investigators have been able to download the data and can further sift for clues as to what caused the mysterious crash.
Games

Submission + - 10 Unreleased Video Game Consoles

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: It's been almost four decades now since the first video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, made waves in electronic entertainment. With such a long and varied history of video game systems behind us, it should be no surprise that more than a few consoles were planned but never made it to market. Even though concepts like Odyssey 3, Phantom and others were marketable, unfortunately they never made it into production.

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