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Submission + - Global Secure Digital Card Market 2011-2015 - aarkstore (aarkstore.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: TechNavio's analysts forecast the Global Secure Digital Card market to grow at a CAGR of -5.3 percent over the period 2011-2015. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increasing demand for storage devices in smartphones. The Global Secure Digital Card market has also been witnessing the introduction of high-density memory cards. However, the increasing penetration of smartphones not compatible with secure digital (SD) cards could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

Submission + - RealSmart Baby Food (realsmartbabyfood.com)

Submitted by ternawenz
ternawenz writes: RealSmart Baby Food offers a unique strategy that allows you to:
Create 3-months worth of delicious, nutritious baby food in 3 one-hour blocks of time.
Combine individual whole food purées and freshly ground grains into an endless combination of flavorful, nutritionally balanced meal possibilities.
Learn simple nutrition principals and practices that will prepare you for feeding baby wholesome foods for a lifetime.

Submission + - Ex-Microsoft Managers Now Running Washington State's Budget (thestranger.com)

Submitted by reifman
reifman writes: The Seattle Times reports 'For the first time in state history, the Washington state budget is being written by Microsofties,' Rep. Ross Hunter has 'tamed his Microsoft-style head-butting with a politician’s trust-building.' While Sen. Andy Hill is 'the first Senate budget chair ever to request Excel files instead of paper spreadsheets.' 'The two must find $1 billion in new money for the state’s K-12 system.' Unfortunately, The Times neglects to mention that Hunter and Microsoft are behind the deficit and cutbacks in the first place. Hunter led passage of the amnesty bill for Microsoft's $1.5 billion dollar Nevada tax dodge that contributed to $4 billion in cuts to K-12 and higher education since 2008. The state has resorted to using Yelp to tax night clubs that offer the "opportunity to dance" to try to make up the shortfall.

Submission + - Global 3D Printer Market 2011-2015 - aarkstore (aarkstore.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: TechNavio’s analysts forecast the Global 3D Printer market to grow at a CAGR of 17 percent over the period 2011–2015. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the increasing demand for cost-effective customization. The Global 3D Printer market has also been witnessing a development of segment-specific 3D printers for the Healthcare segment. However, the limited availability of raw materials for fabrication could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

Submission + - vTel deploying gigabit Internet in Vermont at $35/month (gigaom.com)

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: Up to 17,500 rural Vermont subscribers of vTel, a legacy copper telephone company stand to get gigabit fiber to the premises. Funded by a $95 million US grant and $55 million in coinvestment from a utility for smart meters, if every subscriber takes the gigabit Internet the 1,200 mile fiber network will cost $8,500 per home. Currently the company is doing its best to convince people this is a product they need, but have seen only 600 takers so far.

The federal grant is part of $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds that seem to have accomplished very little.

Submission + - FBI hack cybersuspects computer .. (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "A federal court in Houston has rejected an FBI request for a warrant to hack into the computer of a suspect in an attempted cyberheist .. The FBI in March sought a warrant to search a computer situated at a location unknown to them and belonging to an unknown suspect. In its request, the FBI sought a warrant that would allow investigators to surreptitiously install software capable of extracting information from the target computer, identify its location and also take photos of those who used the system."

Submission + - LivingSocial Hacked: 50 Million Users Exposed (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Daily deals site and Groupon competitor LivingSocial, said on Friday that it had fallen victim to a cyber attack that put its roughly 50 million users are risk.

“LivingSocial recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers,” the company said in a brief note on its site while prompting users to reset their passwords.

Attackers reportedly obtained informing including names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and passwords, which fortunately were hashed and salted. Additionally, the database holding credit card information was not accessed by the attacker, the company said.

“While it is good that the passwords stolen from LivingSocial are hashed and salted as this likely slow down the cracking process, it won’t stop it," Rapid7's Ross Barrett said. “Once they had cracked the first round with the tools at their disposal, they posted the hashes in a Russian hacker forum where other motivated individuals with the necessary skills and more advanced cracking tools were able to help decode the remaining passwords,” Barrett continued. “While salting the passwords will slow this process down further, eventually the attackers or their network will get the information they’re after.”

LivingSocial said they are actively working with law enforcement to investigate the incident but have not provided any additional details.

Submission + - Cyber vulnerabilities found in Navy's newest warship .. (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: (Reuters) — The computer network on the U.S. Navy's newest class of coastal warships showed vulnerabilities in Navy cybersecurity tests .. A Navy team of computer hacking experts found some deficiencies when assigned to try to penetrate the network of the USS Freedom ...

Submission + - Should TV networks put pilots online for judgement like Amazon is doing? (ew.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: EW debates how broadcasters might (and might not) benefit from letting the Internet help decide which of their pilots get series orders (like Amazon is doing with their new original content efforts). If NBC had posted its pilots online, would we have been spared 'Animal Practice'?

Submission + - Hollywood Studios Fuming Over Indie Studio Deal With BitTorrent

Submitted by silentbrad
silentbrad writes: "It's a deal with the devil," one studio executive told TheWrap. "Cinedigm is being used as their pawn." Cinedigm announced this weekend that it would offer the first seven minutes of the Emily Blunt-Colin Firth indie "Arthur Newman" exclusively to BitTorrent users, which number up to 170 million people. ... Hollywood studios have spent years and many millions of dollars to protect their intellectual property and worry that by teaming up with BitTorrent, Cinedigm has embraced a company that imperils the financial underpinnings of the film business and should be kept at arm's length. "It's great for BitTorrent and disingenuous of Cinedigm," said the executive. "The fact of the matter is BitTorrent is in it for themselves, they're not in it for the health of the industry and Cinedigm is being used as their pawn," the executive added. Other executives including at Warner Brothers and Sony echoed those comments, fretting that Cinedigm had unwittingly opened a Pandora's box in a bid to get attention for its low-budget release. ... "Blaming BitTorrent for piracy is like blaming a freeway for drunk drivers, " Jill Calcaterra, Cinedigm's chief marketing officer said. "How people use it can be positive for the industry or it can hurt the industry. We want it help us make this indie film successful." ... "We'll be working with all of [the studios] one day," [Matt Mason, BitTorrent's vice president of marketing] said. "It's really up to them how quickly they come to the table and realize we're not the villain, we're the heroes." ... "I really missed them being at the forefront of the piracy issue," the studio executive said. "I don't remember them going, 'Naughty, naughty, don't use our technology for that.' They don’t give a shit."

Submission + - How do you assess the status of an open source project?

Submitted by Chrisq
Chrisq writes: Our software landscape includes a number of open source components, and we currently assume that these components will follow the same life-cycle as commercial products, they will have a beta or test phase, a supported phase, and finally reach the end of life. In fact a clear statement that support is ended is unusual. The statement by Apache that Struts 1 has reached end of life is almost unique. What we usually find is:
  • Projects that appear are obviously inactive, having had no updates for years
  • Projects that obviously not going to be used in any new deployments because the standard language, library, or platform now has the capability built in
  • Projects that are rapidly losing developers to some more-trendy alternative project
  • Projects who's status is unclear, with some releases and statements in the forums that they are "definitely alive", but which seem to have lost direction or momentum.
  • Projects that have had no updates but are highly stable and do what is necessary, but are risky because they may not interoperate with future upgrades to other components.

By the treating Open Source in the same way as commercial software we only start registering risks when there is an official announcement. We have no metric we can use to accurately gauge the state of an Open Source component, but there are a number of components that we have a "bad feeling" about.

Are there any standard ways of assessing the status of an open source project? Do you use the same stages for Open source as commercial components? How do you incorporate these in a software landscape to indicate at-risk components and dependencies?

Submission + - Yahoo's Chairman Fred Amoroso Resigns

Submitted by suresh_mari
suresh_mari writes: Fred Amoroso said, "his intention from the beginning was to serve as chairman for one year.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer statement:
“Fred has been a wonderful chairman for Yahoo! over the past year, and I’m personally grateful for his trust and guidance as I took on the role as Yahoo! CEO,”.

Submission + - Rapid Systems Covertly Seeks $25 Million From Florida Rural Broadband Grantee (fiercetelecom.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tampa, Florida based Rapid Systems, Inc. announced April 19 it filed a $25 Million suit against the Florida Rural Broadband Alliance (FRBA) along with several co-defendants.

***Rapid Systems is seeking to recover not only its own investment but also fees, costs and lost revenue.***

Rapid Systems is a wireless broadband Internet service provider that entered an agreement with FRBA and others to provide broadband network support for a project developed with Broadband Opportunities Grants awarded in Florida as part of a government economic stimulus program. The grant totaled $23 Million. Rapid Systems allege in the complaint that after providing the agreed services, equipment and in-kind contributions totaling $2 Million, the FRBA and several co-defendants failed to pay Rapid Systems for any of the services or expenses rendered under the agreement. *(See copies of cleared checks and agreements below)

The grant money FRBA received is intended to develop the infrastructure needed for wireless Internet service in rural Florida counties. The program is intended to bridge the gap between large public service providers and small and often poor rural communities without the economic impact to attract private investment for wireless broadband connectivity networks.

A similar program was already funded as the North Florida Broadband Authority and has seen similar litigation and various towns and counties pulling out of the program. After three years and over $28 Million federal dollars invested in the NFBA, there are a confirmed 60 customers using the services. Both the NFBA and RFBA are currently under federal investigation. Questions of mismanagement, fraud, misinformation and misappropriating funds have dogged the grant recipients almost since their inception early in the Obama administration’s economic recovery efforts.

Rapid Systems has also included some public official in its complaint alleging a coordinated effort with the FRBA to defame the plaintiff in an effort to justify not paying the outstanding balances. The lawsuit filed in Hardee County Circuit Court details a complicated “fraud scheme” perpetrated by FRBA’s management to keep from paying out various invoices and accounts. Rapid Systems has told the court all contracted work was performed to agreed standards and payment is now due.

There was no immediate word from the court or federal authorities if the Rapid Systems suit will, in any way, affect the ongoing investigation into the FRBA or NFBA. Also, federal authorities have offered no confirmed time frame for completing their investigation. Whether the federal investigation could impact Rapid Systems and their alleged claims remains unclear.

Source Lawsuit: http://cdn.l2net.com/dl/BTOP_NTIA_FRBA_Lawsuit_KraigBeahnCopy_FSReduced.pdf

Copies of FRBA cleared checks and the various agreements in question: http://cdn.l2net.com/dl/BTOP_NTIA_FRBA_RSChecksAndContract.pdf

FierceTelecom: http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/florida-provider-rapid-systems-inc-sues-frba-25-million-alleging-fraud-misc/2013-04-25

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Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

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