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Submission + - Chinese government probes Microsoft over anti-monopoly issues

Submitted by DroidJason1
DroidJason1 writes: The Chinese government is investigating Microsoft for possible breaches of anti-monopoly laws, following a series of surprise visits to Redmond's offices in cities across China on Monday. These surprise visits were part of China's ongoing investigation, and were based on security complaints about Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Office productivity suite. Results from an earlier inspection apparently were not enough to clear Microsoft of suspicion of anti-competitive behavior. Microsoft's alleged anti-monopoly behavior is a criminal matter, so if found guilty, the software giant could face steep fines as well as other sanctions.

Comment Re:Where are the buggy whip dealers? (Score 1) 544

That's based on the premise that the model T was less expensive than a horse

No, it's based on the premise of the Model-T being the cheapest possible automobile.

It's not obvious that the automobile would take off, though the piles of horse feces in city streets should have been a hint. But it is obvious that the best chance anybody has, starting a new market, is to go for the least-expensive possible vehicle.

otherwise Ford wouldn't have been the only one in the USA doing it so cheaply/successfully for the better part of 10 years.

Ford found a way to do it very cheaply, that had escaped all others. There were plenty of other car makers out there, and once they adopted the assembly-line model, they started competing with Ford, too.

Comment Re:Radicalization (Score 1) 868

by cshark (#47561009) Attached to: Gaza's Only Power Plant Knocked Offline

Given that Israel rules Palestine, that really doesn't meet my definition of democracy. As an American I'm sure I'd have problems with an Islamic Israel, but we tell ourselves we value democracy and freedom above all else. Furthermore, I can't imagine the current course will end up better.

You might want to do a bit more googling.

Let's start by correcting your math.
There are 5.9 million Jewish citizens in Israel. They comprise 73.75% of the population.
There are 1.4 million arab Israelis, who comprise 17.5% of the population.

Neither group is separated by law or for any other reason. They often share the same neighborhoods, employers, and elected officials.

Of the 12 arabs in the Knesset, 2 of them are Christians; which, by your numbers would mean that Christians are disproportionately represented in the Knesset because they only comprise 2% of the overall population. MK's are represented on their merits, and very little else.

How does that not conform to your idea of a democracy?

The West Bank is not governed by Israel. Under Oslo it is fully autonomous, and it elects its own government.

The arab population in the West Bank is 92% muslim.
There are no Christian members of Fatah serving in any capacity. Nor are there any to my knowledge in the "unity" government. Christians are routinely the targets of terror attacks, are required to pay the Jizya, and are regularly discriminated against by their Muslim neighbors. Often, their homes and holy sites are used as launching posts for attacks against Israel. They are prevented by the PA from rebuilding these structures.

Gaza is a completely different country, outside of the borders of Israel since 2005, and it is not a democracy at the present time.
Just yesterday, 20 peace protesters were executed. There is a gender apartheid similar to the one in Saudi Arabia. Like the Christians of the West Bank, Gazan Christians must also pay the Jizya without the benefit of any representation in government whatsoever. No freedom of speech is tolerated by anyone. Weddings are bulldozed when music is played, and honor killings are a fact of life.

If you as an American value the ideals of peace and freedom, you're being a complete fucking hypocrite by supporting terrorists in Gaza and the Territories.

Submission + - 5 Programming Languages You'll Need Next Year (and Beyond) (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Over at Dice, there's a breakdown of the programming languages that could prove most popular over the next year or two, including Apple's Swift, JavaScript, CSS3, and PHP. But perhaps the most interesting entry on the list is Erlang, an older language that was invented in 1986 by engineers at Erricson. It was originally intended to be used specifically for telecommunications needs, but has since evolved into a general-purpose language, and found a home in cloud-based, high-performance computing when concurrency is needed. "There aren’t a lot of Erlang jobs out there," writes developer Jeff Cogswell. "However, if you do master it (and I mean master it, not just learn a bit about it), then you’ll probably land a really good job. That’s the trade-off: You’ll have to devote a lot of energy into it. But if you do, the payoffs could be high." And while the rest of the featured languages are no-brainers with regard to popularity, it's an open question how long it might take Swift to become popular, given how hard Apple will push it as the language for developing on iOS.
Security

Ask Slashdot: Open Hardware/Software-Based Security Token? 113

Posted by timothy from the you-could-use-postcards-scanned-by-an-arduino dept.
Qbertino (265505) writes I've been musing about a security setup to allow my coworkers/users access to files from the outside. I want security to be a little safer than pure key- or password-based SSH access, and some super-expensive RSA Token setup is out of question. I've been wondering whether there are any feasible and working FOSS and open hardware-based security token generator projects out there. It'd be best with ready-made server-side scripts/daemons. Perhaps something Arduino or Raspberry Pi based? Has anybody tried something like this? What are your experiences? What do you use? How would you attempt an open hardware FOSS solution to this problem?
Stats

Better Living Through Data 38

Posted by timothy from the we-call-them-insomnia-anomolies dept.
jradavenport (3020071) writes "Using two years of continuous monitoring of my MacBook Air battery usage (once every minute), I have been able to study my own computer use patterns in amazing detail. This dataset includes 293k measurements, or more than 204 days of use over two years. I use the laptop over 50 hours per week on average, and my most productive day is Tuesday. Changes in my work/life balance have begun to appear over the two-year span, and I am curious whether such data can help inform how much computer use is healthy/productive."
Graphics

$299 Android Gaming Tablet Reviewed 65

Posted by timothy from the is-$300-an-impulse-buy? dept.
Vigile (99919) writes "Last week NVIDIA announced the SHIELD Tablet and SHIELD Controller, and reviews are finally appearing this morning. Based on the high performance Tegra K1 SoC that integrates 192 Kepler architecture CUDA cores, benchmarks reveal that that the SHIELD Tablet is basically unmatched by any other mobile device on the market when it comes to graphics performance — it is more than 2.5x the performance of the Apple A7 in some instances. With that power NVIDIA is able to showcase full OpenGL versions of games like Portal and Half-Life 2 running at 1080p locally on the 19:12 display or output to a TV in a "console mode." PC Perspective has impressions of that experience as well as using the NVIDIA Game Stream technology to play your PC games on the SHIELD Tablet and controller. To go even further down the rabbit hole, you can stream your PC games from your desktop to your tablet, output them to the TV in console mode, stream your game play to Twitch from the tablet while overlaying your image through the front facing camera AND record your sessions locally via ShadowPlay and using the Wi-Fi Direct powered controller to send and receive audio. It is incredibly impressive hardware but the question remains as to whether or not there is, or will be, a market for Android-based gaming devices, even those with the power and performance that NVIDIA has built."
Sci-Fi

Ridley Scott to Produce Philip K Dick's The Man In the High Castle 144

Posted by timothy from the it's-all-in-your-head dept.
hawkinspeter (831501) writes Amazon has given the green light to produce the Hugo award-winning "The Man in the High Castle". This is after the four-hour mini-series was rejected by Syfy and afterwards by the BBC. Philip K Dick's novel takes place in an alternate universe where the Axis Powers won the Second World War. It's one of his most successful works, probably due to him actually spending the time to do some editing on it (most of his fiction was produced rapidly in order to get some money). Ridley Scott has previously adapted PKD's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" as the film Blade Runner, so it will be interesting to see how close he keeps to the source material this time. This news has been picked up by a few sites: International Business Times; The Register and Deadline.

Submission + - sel4 microkernel now Open Source (osnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: OSnews is reporting that the formally verified sel4 microkernel is now open source: "General Dynamics C4 Systems and NICTA are pleased to announce the open sourcing of seL4, the world's first operating-system kernel with an
end-to-end proof of implementation correctness and security enforcement. It is still the world's most highly assured OS."
Security

Put Your Code in the SWAMP: DHS Sponsors Online Open Source Code Testing 67

Posted by timothy from the they'll-take-a-look-see dept.
cold fjord (826450) writes with an excerpt from ZDNet At OSCon, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ... quietly announced that they're now offering a service for checking out your open-source code for security holes and bugs: the Software Assurance Marketplace (SWAMP). ... Patrick Beyer, SWAMP's Project Manager at Morgridge Institute for Research, the project's prime contractor, explained, "With open source's popularity, more and more government branches are using open-source code. Some are grabbing code from here, there, and everywhere." Understandably, "there's more and more concern about the safety and quality of this code. We're the one place you can go to check into the code" ... funded by a $23.4 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), SWAMP is designed by researchers from the Morgridge Institute, the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, Indiana University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Each brings broad experience in software assurance, security, open source software development, national distributed facilities and identity management to the project. ... SWAMP opened its services to the community in February of 2014 offering five open-source static analysis tools that analyze source code for possible security defects without having to execute the program. ... In addition, SWAMP hosts almost 400 open source software packages to enable tool developers to add enhancements in both the precision and scope of their tools. On top of that the SWAMP provides developers with software packages from the National Institute for Standards and Technology's (NIST) Juliet Test Suite. I got a chance to talk with Beyer at OSCON, and he emphasized that anyone's code is eligible — and that there's no cost to participants, while the center is covered by a grant.

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