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Submission + - Why My LG Optimus Cellphone Is Worse Than It's Supposed To be

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: Bennett Haselton writes My LG Optimus F3Q was the lowest-end phone in the T-Mobile store, but a cheap phone is supposed to suck in specific ways that make you want to upgrade to a better model. This one is plagued with software bugs that have nothing to do with the cheap hardware, and thus lower one's confidence in the whole product line. Similar to the suckiness of the Stratosphere and Stratosphere 2 that I was subjected to before this one, the phone's shortcomings actually raise more interesting questions — about why the free-market system rewards companies for pulling off miracles at the hardware level, but not for fixing software bugs that should be easy to catch. Read below to see what Bennett has to say.

Submission + - Chinese Hackers Infiltrate Firms Using Malware-Laden Handheld Scanners (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: China-based threat actors are using sophisticated malware installed on handheld scanners to target shipping and logistics organizations from all over the world. According to security firm TrapX, the attack begins at a Chinese company that provides hardware and software for handheld scanners used by shipping and logistics firms worldwide to inventory the items they're handling. The Chinese manufacturer installs the malware on the Windows XP operating systems embedded in the devices.

Experts determined that the threat group targets servers storing corporate financial data, customer data and other sensitive information. A second payload downloaded by the malware then establishes a sophisticated C&C on the company's finance servers, enabling the attackers to exfiltrate the information they're after. The malware used by the Zombie Zero attackers is highly sophisticated and polymorphic, the researchers said. In one attack they observed, 16 of the 48 scanners used by the victim were infected, and the malware managed to penetrate the targeted organization's defenses and gain access to servers on the corporate network.

Interestingly, the C&C is located at the Lanxiang Vocational School, an educational institution said to be involved in the Operation Aurora attacks against Google, and which is physically located only one block away from the scanner manufacturer, TrapX said.

Submission + - Soon hard drives will be thousand times faster (themukt.com) 1

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: How fast the data is written on a hard drive is directly proportional to the magnetic property of material and the storage speed can be increased by changing this property. Researchers at De Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e) have found a way to speed up data storage by a thousand times on hard drives. The researchers have managed to generate a flow of electrons using ultra-fast laser pulses in a material which all have the same spin. This spin changes the very magnetic property which is responsible for the storage speed.

Comment Re:Actually it's good news since... (Score 1) 107

by LeadSongDog (#47297729) Attached to: Great White Sharks Making Comeback Off Atlantic Coast
Mod parent up! If the sharks can get the seals back under control, there's still an outside chance the cod will recover (everyone sing together: "It's the circle, the circle of life!"). Then if that happens, maybe we'll even see an end to this glut of lobster! Disgusting bottom feeders.... they remind me of lawyers.

Comment "Coffee Can" (Score 1) 79

But The Atlantic said "a small satellite about as large as a half-gallon of milk". I may be confused here, but at that ambient pressure, wouldn't that launched half-gallon of milk turn into a very much larger volume of water vapour, plus half a cup of freeze-dried milk solids? Just what would that volume be? Conversely, if it was a half-gallon at insertion, we're talking a fractional-droplet of milk at launch. So which is it?

Ya gotta love it when Americans try to talk down to each other about stuff that's already simple.

Submission + - US Supreme Court invalidates patent for being software patent (swpat.org)

Submitted by ciaran_o_riordan
ciaran_o_riordan writes: The US Supreme Court has just invalidated a patent for being a software patent! To no fanfare, the Court has spent the past months reviewing a case, Alice v. CLS Bank, which posed the question of "Whether claims to computer-implemented inventions ... are directed to patent-eligible subject matter". Their ruling was just published, and what we can say already is that the court was unanimous in finding this particular software patent invalid, saying: "the method claims, which merely require generic computer implementation, fail to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention", and go on to conclude that because "petitioner’s system and media claims add nothing of substance to the underlying abstract idea, we hold that they too are patent ineligible". The 'End Software Patents' wiki has a page for commenting the key extracts and listing third-party analyses. Analysis will appear there as the day(s) goes on. Careful reading is needed to get an idea of what is clearly invalidated (file formats?), and what areas are left for future rulings. If you can help, well, it's a wiki. Software Freedom Law Center's website will also be worth checking in the near future.

Comment Re:So in 5 years... (Score 1) 126

by LeadSongDog (#47264021) Attached to: Google To Take On Apple's CarPlay
No, in 5 years you'll have to pay extra to have Google drive the car go to where you want, stop, and unlock the doors to let you out. Decline to pay extra and you'll be delivered to the drive-through shopping mall that bids highest for your eyeballs. Or perhaps direct to the soylent green^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrecycling plant....

Submission + - Freecode Freezeup (freecode.com)

Submitted by LeadSongDog
LeadSongDog writes: The venerable Freecode site has today gone static, blaming low traffic. No new content is being accepted, but they continue to serve existing content. They recommend projects consider moving to Sourceforge.

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