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Submission + - Microsoft Launches Office For iPad: Includes Word, Excel, And PowerPoint

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At an event in San Francisco today, Microsoft Office General Manager Julia White unveiled Office for iPad, featuring Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The new suite, which supports viewing but not editing for free, will go live in Apple's App Store at 11:00AM PDT (2:00PM EST). Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for iPad feature a ribbon interface just like the one featured in Office for Windows and OS X. The trio of apps are much more powerful on the tablet than the smartphone, but naturally aren't comparable to the desktop versions.

Comment Law (Score 1) 72

by puddingebola (#46593479) Attached to: Taxis By Algorithm: Streamlining City Transport With Graph Theory
We have a dominant Taxi company in the city where I live, one so influential and powerful that it has landed a former city councilman in Federal court for accepting bribe money to stifle competition from other companies. They are, of course, bringing some serious legal pressure to bear on our politicians for allowing Uber to operate independent of codes regulating the taxi business. Seems that the biggest barriers to improving cab transportation are existing regulations and conflict with existing companies, not technical. In Dallas, the attempt to stifle Uber went so far as to include police stings of Uber drivers: http://www.dallasobserver.com/... Either existing taxi companies need to adopt new technologies like this on their own, or citizens have to demand restructuring of the rules governing them. It seems in many places that taxi companies view these more as a threat than a benefit.

Submission + - Canonical's Troubles with the Free Software Community (datamation.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Bruce Byfield looks back at the soured relationships between Canonical and the free software community. Partly analysis, partly a review of past conflicts, the writer touches on Mir and Wayland, and what he sees as Canonical's attempts to take over projects. From the article, "However, despite these other concerns, probably the most important single reason for the reservations about Ubuntu is its frequent attempts to assume the leadership of free software — a position that no one has ever filled, and that no one particularly wants to see filled. In its first few years, Ubuntu's influence was mostly by example. However, by 2008, Shuttleworth was promoting the idea that major projects should coordinate their release schedules. That idea was received without enthusiasm. However, it is worth noting that some of those who opposed it, like Aaron Seigo, have re-emerged as critics of Mir — another indication that personal differences are as important as the issues under discussion."

Submission + - Jack A Kinzler savior of the Skylab mission, dies at 94 (nytimes.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: From his New York Times Obituary, "Had Jack A. Kinzler not built model planes as a boy, had he not visited the post office as a youth and had he not, as a grown man, purchased four fishing rods at $12.95 apiece, Skylab — the United States’ $2.5 billion space station — would very likely have been forfeit." An excellent obit from the NYT, recounting the story of how Kinzler saved the Skylab mission with a telescoping parasol to patch a damaged heat shield. An inventive thinker and tinkerer, Mr. Kinzler was also responsible for the flags and plaques placed during the Apollo mission. Worth reading.

Comment Comments (Score 1) 167

by puddingebola (#46495797) Attached to: Forests Around Chernobyl Aren't Decaying Properly
Seems like there's some skepticism over the nature of the study. Somewhat reasonable, but it still seems to add to evidence about the long term effects of the disaster on the ecosystem around Chernobyl. Some comments seem to express skepticism about the importance of decomposition. Perhaps a biologist could go into greater detail on its benefit to life on earth. The suggestion about controlled fires makes me wonder if you read the article.

Submission + - The hacker-activist community leaves no safe place for women. Can it grow up? (medium.com)

Submitted by eggboard
eggboard writes: Rosie J. Spinks writes about the experience of women in the hacking and hacking/activism communities, where harassment, intimidation, sexualization, and patronization try to relegate them to the sidelines. Some just up and leave.

She writes: "Nowhere is evidence of this anti-female ethos easier to find than in the Internet’s most high-profile and highly organized subverters: the hacktivist group Anonymous. Anonymous’s roots lie in the profane message board known as 4chan, where jokes about rape, porn, and homosexuality are for nothing other than the “Lulz,” or gratuitous laughs. When 4chan factions morphed into Anonymous, the entity gradually gained a political activist-minded consciousness.

"Anonymous has always been a shifting entity, defined by whoever decides to participate on any given day, making proper accountability nearly impossible. Using devious tactics and a middle-school sense of humor (such as sending hundreds of unpaid-for pizzas to a target’s address), the amorphous group carries out a diverse range of well-publicized actions (or “AnonOps”), such as targeting the Church of Scientology’s Dianetics hotline or impinging on the operations of PayPal after it suspended payments to Internet messiah Julian Assange’s Wikileaks."

Submission + - Target Ignored Signs of Data Breach (informationweek.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Target ignored indications from it's threat-detection tools that malware had infected it's network. From the article, "Unusually for a retailer, Target was even running its own security operations center in Minneapolis, according to a report published Thursday by Bloomberg Businessweek. Among its security defenses, following a months-long testing period and May 2013 implementation, was software from attack-detection firm FireEye, which caught the initial November 30 infection of Target's payment system by malware. All told, up to five "malware.binary" alarms reportedly sounded, each graded at the top of FireEye's criticality scale, and which were seen by Target's information security teams first in Bangalore, and then Minneapolis." Unfortunately, it appears Target's security team failed to act on the threat indicators.

Submission + - Mozilla & Epic Games bing Unreal Engine 4 to the Web (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: From the article, "Mozilla is announcing today that it has partnered up once again with Epic Games, the makers of the most-used middleware in gaming. The two companies are bringing the Unreal Engine 4 framework to the web just in time for the Game Developers Conference next week in San Francisco."

Comment Nuclear War (Score 1) 126

by puddingebola (#46403561) Attached to: Interview: Ask Eric Raymond What You Will
Do you think it would be possible to break into those computers that control the nuclear missiles and launch all the missiles like in that movie Wargames and start a nuclear war with the Russians, and if you think it's possible could you like tell me how, and could you like send it to my email and use like super secret encryption so that the NSA won't detect it, and make the instructions really clear so I can follow them. THANKS!

Submission + - Nokia turns to Android to regain share in Emerging Markets (wsj.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Nokia is preparing to release it's first Android phone, as the lost market share in emerging markets from the death of Symbian has never been recovered. Windows Phone could never be adapted to the entry level devices that have driven growth in these markets, necessitating the move. From the article, "Nokia was once the king of cellphones in emerging markets. But it has lost ground because it was slow to respond to Android's popularity in many countries. In India, where Nokia's Symbian-powered phones held a big share of cellphone sales just a few years ago, Android was installed on 93% of new smartphones shipped there last year, according to estimates from research firm IDC."

Submission + - VMware and Google partner to bring Horizon View Desktop to Chromebooks (infoworld.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: With companies looking to transition away from Windows XP, VMware and Google are partnering to deliver the virtual desktop of Horizon view to thin client, Chrome OS Chromebooks. From the article, " Google is hoping that companies opt for the Chromebook/Horizon combo as a way to replace aging Windows XP devices but still keep running the legacy desktops and apps they need. That's the scenario painted by Caesar Sengupta, vice president of product management, Chrome OS, when I spoke to him earlier today. "What we've found," he told me, "is that a lot of companies are adopting Chromebooks for cloud deployments because they're easy to manage and very secure. But those companies still have some legacy applications left over, and they want to figure out how to get these legacy apps to their users. We make it very easy to transition from where they are right now to move to a cloud world without having to make too many changes.""

Submission + - Rumors say it will be Satya Nadella as CEO (valuewalk.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Rumors on the internet say that Microsoft is set to appoint Satya Nadella as CEO. From the article, "After a prolonged search, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) appears set to appoint Satya Nadella, EVP of its Cloud & Enterprise Group as its next CEO to replace Steve Ballmer. In addition, reports indicate that founder and current chairman Bill Gates will cede the chairman role to independent director John Thompson but will remain as a board member. As of last night, neither of these reports have been confirmed by Microsoft." Described as the safe internal pick, will Nadella alter the Gates/Ballmer strategy?

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