49181153
submission
sfcrazy writes:
KDE-based Ubuntu flavor Kubuntu is now open for outside donations. The distribution was earlier funded by Canonical, but then as the company shifted focus towards mobile platform. Jonathan Riddell the lead Kubuntu developer who was hired by Canonical to develop Kubuntu was reassigned to other projects. Jonathan quit Canonical and joined Blue Systems, which funds other GNU/Linux based systems such as Linux Mint, to continue his work on Kubuntu. Now Kubuntu team is opening up for external donations to allow the team to invest more resources on making Kubuntu better.
49088303
submission
Rebecka writes:
After weeks of battling unusually warm temperatures in the UK, one flamingo has already adapted to the rapid change in climate.
Multiple onlookers at Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) Slimbridge Wetland Centre in Gloucestershire have captured images of one the centre's 250 famously pink birds adapting its natural stance to mimic that of a swan. According to a report from the Telegraph, the wading animal's adaption has experts baffled and has resulted in the new name for the 52-year-old bird: flamingo swan.
48852573
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Just as Carl Icahn's months-long, high-profile bid for control of Dell seemed to have run its course, came the announcement that Dell's board had postponed a shareholder's vote on the bid from Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake Partners, to take private the company that Dell had started in a University of Texas dorm room twenty nine years ago. The postponement indicated that Dell was not confident that their $24.4 billion ($13.65 per share) deal had the necessary votes. Icahn and his main ally, Southeastern Asset Management, claim that the proposed deal undervalues the company and its upside potential; Icahn's latest proposal is to keep the company public, but to offer $14 per share plus upside warrants, for every share tendered by stockholders. The latest wrinkle is apparent tension within the Dell/Silver Lake team; Silver Lake reportedly feels entitled to the $450 million buyout fee specified in the deal's language, if any alternative bid from Icahn succeeds within a year; Dell and the board feel that Silver Lake would only be entitled to expenses in that case, perhaps amounting to a few tens of millions USD. The Bloomberg story also reports that Michael Dell has at times been unable to reach his Silver Lake counterpart (a longtime friend) on the phone to discuss possibly sweetening the bid.
48834965
submission
SmartAboutThings writes:
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention website curiously mothballed pages admitting that the polio vaccine administered from 1955 to 1963 to over 98 million Americans was contaminated with a primate form of cancer virus. cdclogoOther CDC web pages also referencing the link between the widely-distributed vaccine and cancer have similarly been discarded. The pages are still available through Google’s cache system and at the links below: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/updates/archive/polio_and_cancer_factsheet.htm http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/updates/archive/polio_and_cancer.htm
48604689
submission
typhon71959 writes:
At the time that you have retrieved the info that you need to jailberak your iOS operated system or your iphone it is time to do the jailbreaking process. There are certain restrictions that are used for tags in your iTunes account and this may make it difficult to get the info that you need to do the jailbreaks you need to do. There are many easier ways to do this and the update that you will do will give you a few options. Your iOS system is one that is restricted by the manufacturer in its use of certain third party apps. In order to have an unlimited amount if your jailbreaks will be necessary.
The jail-breaking of a gadget like the iPad or the iPod touch can be quite technical, especially for those that aren't quite tech savvy. Indeed, the procedure requires following some strict instructions, guidelines that while being quite simple, can make the procedure go wrong if they aren't followed perfectly. Not only would it void the warranty on the iPad, but it may also end up bricking the device, making it entirely useless. Moreover, not using the jail-broken properly will put it at risk. One example would be a user that isn't careful about where they download apps, which may result in the download of malware onto the iPad, as highlighted by iPad jailbreak experts.
The jail-breaking of a gadget like the iPad or the iPod touch can be quite technical, especially for those that aren't quite tech savvy. Indeed, the procedure requires following some strict instructions, guidelines that while being quite simple, can make the procedure go wrong if they aren't followed perfectly. Not only would it void the warranty on the iPad, but it may also end up bricking the device, making it entirely useless. Moreover, not using the jail-broken properly will put it at risk. One example would be a user that isn't careful about where they download apps, which may result in the download of malware onto the iPad, as highlighted by iPad jailbreak experts.
48603213
submission
MarkWhittington writes:
The Denver Post reported on July 12, 2013 that Texas and Florida, already embroiled in a fight over which state will be the venue for SpaceX’s commercial space port, are now vying to be the site of the headquarters of a company that, while smaller, has much loftier ambitions
Golden Spike, the Boulder, Colorado based company that proposes to start commercial space flights to the moon with paying customers, is being courted by Texas and Florida to leave Colorado and to relocate its headquarters in either state.
48598717
submission
holy_calamity writes:
When Microsoft re-engineered its online services to assist NSA surveillance programs, the company was either acting voluntarily, or under a new kind of court order, reports MIT Technology Review. Existing laws were believed to shelter companies from being forced to modify their systems to aid surveillance, but experts say the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court may now have a new interpretation. Microsoft's statement about its cooperation with NSA surveillance doesn't make it clear whether it acted under legal duress, or simply decided that to helping out voluntarily was in its best interest.
48597131
submission
SmartAboutThings writes:
Microsoft has filed a lawsuit on Friday, accusing the United States Customs of secretly meeting with Google representatives in order to allow imports of Motorola devices that are infringing on Microsoft's ActiveSync technology and therefore should be banned.
48595669
submission
Cliff Stoll writes:
Along with 7000 containers, ship MOL Comfort broke in half in high seas in the Indian Ocean. The aft section floated for a week, then sank on June 27th. The forward section was towed most of the way to port, but burned and sank on July 10th. This post-panamax ship was 316 meters long and only 5 years old. With a typical value of $40,000 per container, this amounts to a quarter billion dollar loss. The cause is unknown, but may be structural or perhaps due to overfilled containers that are declared as underweight. Of course, the software used to calculate ship stability relies upon these incorrect physical parameters.
48575447
submission
Lizel writes:
Facebook finally rolled out their Graph Search, a new search tool that allows users to quickly find information, photos, videos, and stories across the site. The results vary for each user just like the News Feed, as the algorithm is limited to what the user has shared. What other users / searchers see is determined by his privacy choices.
Graph Search might be a privacy issue, but for business owners, this is another tool that would help their organization grow through Social Media Optimization. However, since Graph Search was just recently released; there is no exact science about its proper optimization yet. What’s certain is that business owners should take advantage of whatever tool is available and what works for them. As a user, if you find the Graph Search as a privacy issue, then you’d better start tweaking your privacy settings.
Without a doubt, as Graph Search becomes more widely available, SEO companies and online marketers will surely find a way to gain visibility in the results page. What do you think? Is the Graph Search a promising optimization tool, or just another stalking machine in the making?
Read the full scoop at: http://www.forward.ph/blog/facebook-graph-search/
48575163
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Fairfax Media is reporting today that Australian telecommunications giant Telstra agreed more than a decade ago to store huge volumes of electronic communications it carried between Asia and America for potential surveillance by United States intelligence agencies.
Under the previously secret agreement, the telco was required to route all communications involving a US point of contact through a secure storage facility on US soil that was staffed exclusively by US citizens carrying a top-level security clearance.
The US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation also demanded that Telstra "provide technical or other assistance to facilitate ... electronic surveillance".
The revelations come as the British and US governments reel from the leaking of sensitive intelligence material that has detailed a vast electronic spying apparatus being used against foreign nationals and their own citizens.
48568201
submission
grahamsaa writes:
I work at medium sized company that offers a number of products that rely fairly heavily on backend databases, some of which are hundreds of gigabytes and deal with hundreds or thousands of queries per second. Currently, we're using a mix of Postgres, Oracle, and MySQL, though we're working hard to move everything to Postgres. The products that are still on MySQL and Oracle were acquisitions, so we didn't get to choose the RDBMS at the time these products were designed.
So far, we've been very happy with Postgres, but I know next to nothing about Oracle. It's expensive and has a long history of use in large enterprises, but I'm curious about what it offers that Postgres might not — I'm not saying this because I think that sticking with Oracle would be a good idea (because in our case, it probably isn't), but I'm curious as to how some companies justify the cost — especially considering that EnterpriseDB makes transitioning from Oracle to Postgres feasible (though not painless) in most cases. For those that use Oracle — is it worth the money? What's keeping you from switching?
48493715
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
A little-noticed post-Manning Executive Order from 2011 establishes something called the "Insider Threat Program" which looks like something from the Cold War East German Stasi, complete with criminal penalties for not narcing on each other. Instant paranoia. Suddenly the purpose behind the whole improbable Snowden affair seems to become very clear. If you're a Fed, and one of the good guys, you might want to take that early retirement. You're needed elsewhere.
48478781
submission
snydeq writes:
InfoWorld's Roger Grimes interviews a longtime friend and cyber warrior under contract with the U.S. government, offering a fascinating glimpse of the front lines in the ever-escalating and completely clandestine cyber war. From the interview: 'They didn't seem to care that I had hacked our own government years ago or that I smoked pot. I wasn't sure I was going to take the job, but then they showed me the work environment and introduced me to a few future coworkers. I was impressed. ... We have tens of thousands of ready-to-use bugs in single applications, single operating systems. ... It's all zero-days. Literally, if you can name the software or the controller, we have ways to exploit it. There is no software that isn't easily crackable. In the last few years, every publicly known and patched bug makes almost no impact on us. They aren't scratching the surface.'
