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Submission + - The How and Why of BlackBerry's Collapse (informationweek.com)

Submitted by CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: The company once stood at the top of the market. Tens of millions of professionals carried their devices, which were the envy of the office and the industry. But then Blackberry made a few key missteps and just this week announced that it is exploring strategic options, including an outright sale of the company to investors or other third parties. BlackBerry is close to the end of the road and desperately seeking an escape route. What the heck happened? For starters, they were wrong to ignore the significance of the iPhone when it was launched, while also spending too many resources on their Playbook tablet which was too little too late, completely overshadowed by the iPad. Additionally, Blackberry was too slow to see the risks involved with BYOD, and then delaying Blackberry 10 as long as they did was the final nail.

Submission + - White House's Fight for Warrantless Cellphone Searches Hinges on a Flip Phone (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Last week, the White House filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to sort out whether or not police can search a suspect's cell phone without a warrant. The Obama administration came down firmly on the side of warrantless searches, and has found leverage in its argument by focusing on a case from 2007 that features outdated technology: a flip phone.

Even as decades-old laws allow authorities loopholes for warrantless searches in myriad ways—ECPA's 180 day rule allowing the government to read emails is a big one—the Obama administration is arguing for even more ability to search for evidence without a warrant.

Submission + - Intel, Unisys Partner On New Range Of Servers (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Unisys is primarily a services and consulting company with just a small amount of revenue coming from hardware, but they may be on to something new that could 'could give them a competitive advantage at a time when the big guns are a mess,' says ITworld's Andy Patrizio. Unisys and Intel are are set to introduce on September 9 a new kind of secure computing platform designed to as a replacement platform for RISC systems running mission-critical cloud and big data workloads. 'It sounds funny to hear Intel talk about RISC migration since it is in the RISC business with the Itanium,' says Andy Patrizio, 'but at this point, what's left? HP was the driving force behind Itanium and it's in chaos right now. IBM has a healthy RISC business, so the target is obviously what's left of the Sun installed base.'

Submission + - Detecting Whether You Are on a Targeted Watchlist?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday, we learned that Kim Dotcom determined he was being spied on when he noticed that his latency to a few servers increased by 20 or 30 milliseconds. I have always wondered if, based on some of the slightly suspicious things I do on the Internet (download many Linux ISOs on BitTorrent and use Tor frequently), whether I am on some sort of elevated watchlist. Are there any telltale signs to look for to determine whether or not I have attracted undesirable attention on the Internet?

Submission + - How Should Slashdot Handle an NSA Incursion?

Submitted by wjcofkc
wjcofkc writes: With the fall of Lavabit and Groklaw at hand, an interesting question arises: how should Slashdot respond to the NSA if they come knocking? It is not entirely unreasonable to think that this might happen, if it hasn't already. Slashdot is after all highly trafficked by the fringes of society and is rife with seditious discussion. Courtesy of gag orders, it's difficult to know who the NSA's heavy handed dragnet operation has already ensnared. Should we expect Slashdot's editors and administrators to reflect it's powerfully counter-culture user base, and out an NSA incursion while shutting down the site, violating a gag order? Or could Dice Holdings prevent the people that run Slashdot from even knowing it was happening? These are question we should all be asking. And so I pose the question to those who administer this site: do you have a plan in case the NSA comes knocking? Is Dice Holdings in a position to keep you ignorant of NSA snooping activity? Also, to the users: how do you think Slashdot should handle their user base in response to a visit from the NSA to copy hard drives, install 'special' hardware, and lay down a gag order? If you think the question doesn't apply to us, consider that it shouldn't have applied to Groklaw either.

Submission + - The Pirate Bay Experiences Downtime (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds
Dangerous_Minds writes: It appears that BitTorrent website The Pirate Bay is experiencing some downtime. ZeroPaid notes that users who attempt to access the site see a "Could not connect to caching server 00" error message. Drew Wilson says that it's unlikely that a raid has occurred and that it couldn't be a DNS problem as users can access enough of the site to receive the error message. Still, details are sparse as to the precise problem of the site at this point in time.

Submission + - UK Heat Wave Causes Bird To Transform Natural Stance Into 'Flamingo Swan' (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Rebecka
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.

Submission + - Ethiopia criminalises Skype (techcentral.co.za)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Ethiopia’s state-owned Internet service provider, the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (Ethio-Telcom), has begun performing deep-packet inspection of all Internet traffic in the country. The country’s government recently ushered in new legislation that criminalises the use of services such as Skype, Google Talk and other forms of Internet phone calling. The new law, which came into effect on 24 May, makes use of Internet voice services punishable by hefty fines and up to 15 years in prison. The official line from the government is that the move is intended to protect national security and protect the national, state-owned telecoms carrier from losing revenue to Skype and similar services; this, despite the fact that Ethiopia’s fixed-line penetration rate is the second worst in Africa (after Sierra Leone) at an estimated 1% of its 85m strong population.

Submission + - Ubuntu Touch container flip announced (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Ubuntu Touch development team has made available pre-release test images of the mobile operating system wherein the Ubuntu system launches directly instead of firing up after Android has booted. Up until now Ubuntu resided in a separate area and the OS was fired up on top of Android using ‘change root (chroot).’ This led many to claim that Ubuntu Touch was just another Android shell. The scenario has changed now and new images boot Ubuntu directly following which Android is initialized inside an LXC Container.

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