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Submission + - In Wisconsin, Scott Walker's state, Dems seek outsourcing penalities (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, one of the polling leaders in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, is still a cipher on offshore outsourcing and the H-1B issue. But Wisconsin lawmakers have introduced anti-outsourcing legislation that could shed light on Walker's views, if the bill makes it to his desk. The legislation cuts state benefits to any company that sends jobs out of state or offshore. Walker has used the offshore outsourcing of jobs as a political weapon. In the 2014 gubernatorial campaign, a nursery rhyme video ad posted to YouTube by Walker supporters accused his Democratic opponent, Mary Burke, a former executive at bicycle maker Trek and the daughter of its founder, of profiting by offshoring some work to China.

Submission + - Critical vulnerability in all windows versions allowing remote code execution (microsoft.com)

Submitted by QuantumReality
QuantumReality writes: A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Microsoft Windows when the Windows Adobe Type Manager Library improperly handles specially crafted OpenType fonts. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of the affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

Submission + - How a young child fought off the AIDS virus (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In 1996, a baby infected with HIV at birth was started on anti-AIDS drugs. But at age 6, against the advice of doctors, her family stopped treatment. Twelve years later, the young French woman is still healthy, with no detectable virus in her blood. Her unusual case, reported today at an international AIDS conference in Vancouver, Canada, may hold clues that might help other HIV-infected people control their infections without antiretroviral drugs and offer insights to AIDS vaccine developers.

Comment Outsourcing (Score 1) 138

by mrflash818 (#50135217) Attached to: How Will IT Workers' Roles Change in the Next Five Years? (Video)

The company where I work has gone the Outsourcing route for their data centers.

When I started at the Company, ten years ago, Data Center employees were FTEs (Full Time Employees) that worked for the Company.

Then there was a change of CTO, and during that CTOs reign the Company FTE Data Center staff were aggressively and mostly eliminated, then replaced with Outsource IBM service staff. Additionally many IT EDI staff became Outsourced.

Ten years ago, I worked with none (maybe one?) Outsourced IT staffer. Many of the IT staff I now work with are Outsourced staff. There remains a core of Company staff in IT, that act as team leads to the Outsourced staff (for now?).

A specific example. A Lead in EDI that I work with, now works with a staff of six Outsourced staff (international names, strong accents).

Of course, that CTO then got promoted to SVP. But is service better than ten years ago? Nope. Are there communication challenges for work orders and non-cookie cutter problem solving when collaborating with Outsourced personnel? Yep. Do all the Outsourced staff have full medical/dental/retirement benefits? (we're not allowed to ask) Did the Company save millions of dollars? I will assume so.

Submission + - Could there be a joint 'US Iran space mission in the future?' (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: 40 years ago on Friday, an American Apollo spacecraft and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft docked in low Earth orbit in the climax of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission. The mission was conceived as a symbol of the détente policy enacted by President Richard Nixon as well as a test of a common docking mechanism between the two spacecraft. The famous handshake between Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts was considered by some to be an amicable end to the Cold War era space race. The anniversary inspired Iranian-American businesswoman and space advocate Anousheh Ansari to tweet Friday, “Hey may be there will be a US Iran space mission in the future!”

Submission + - Techies hire witch to protect computers from viruses and offices from spirits (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Many people have had their computer or smartphone possessed by an evil demon — or at least that's what it can feel like when some mysterious bug keeps causing an app to crash, or your phone keeps shutting off for no reason.

But if you truly think your electronics have been invaded by an evil spirit, there's someone who will take your call — Reverend Joey Talley — a Wiccan witch from the San Francisco Bay Area who claims to solve supernatural issues for techies.

Submission + - Inside China's Next Generation DSP Supercomputer Accelerator (theplatform.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When Tianhe-2A supercomputer emerges (behind schedule since the team at the National University of Defense Technology had planned on outfitting it with Knights Landing cards to bring it another 45 petaflops) it will now feature a homegrown architecture as the acceleration unit. Interestingly, as a slide we captured during the briefing at the International Supercomputing Conference noted, the host processor appears to be a Xeon E5 2692, a carryover from the existing Ivy Bridge architecture that is part of the existing system.

The new accelerator for the upcoming Tianhe-2A supercomputer, which is slated to arrive sometime next year, was referred to as both the “China Accelerator” and the Matrix2000 GPDSP.

Submission + - OPM hack included fingerprints (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Office of Personnel Management announced last week that the personal data for 21.5 million people had been stolen. But for national security professionals and cybersecurity experts, the more troubling issue is the theft of 1.1 million fingerprints.

Much of their concern rests with the permanent nature of fingerprints and the uncertainty about just how the hackers intend to use them. Unlike a Social Security number, address, or password, fingerprints cannot be changedâ"once they are hacked, they're hacked for good. And government officials have less understanding about what adversaries could do or want to do with fingerprints, a knowledge gap that undergirds just how frightening many view the mass lifting of them from OPM.

"It's probably the biggest counterintelligence threat in my lifetime," said Jim Penrose, former chief of the Operational Discovery Center at the National Security Agency and now an executive vice president at the cybersecurity company Darktrace. "There's no situation we've had like this before, the compromise of our fingerprints. And it doesn't have any easy remedy or fix in the world of intelligence."

Submission + - Five Linux desktop distributions with a great future (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Linux is everywhere. It's on your servers and in your phones, cars, watches, toasters, refrigerators... and desktops. Although fewer users see Linux on their desktops than in their thermostats, even that is on the rise, partly due to the number of high-quality distributions. This new wave of Linux desktop distributions is bringing a confluence of user-friendliness, modern design, and stability to the open source platform ..

I have you covered with the five Linux desktop distributions I feel are the hottest commodities coming out of the open source world.

Submission + - Critical Internet Explorer 11 Vulnerability Identified After Hacking Team Breach

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After analyzing the leaked data from last week's attack on Hacking Team, Vectra researchers discovered a previously unknown high severity vulnerability in Internet Explorer 11, which impacts a fully patched IE 11 web browser on both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. The vulnerability is an exploitable use-after-free (UAF) vulnerability that occurs within a custom heap in JSCRIPT9. Since it exists within a custom heap, it can allow an attacker to bypass protections found in standard memory.

Submission + - Security Fears Might Slowly Doom Adobe Flash (dice.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: A day after Facebook’s head of security suggested the Web would be better off without Adobe Flash, Mozilla executive Mark Schmidt announced that Firefox would block all versions of Flash by default. Adobe Flash isn’t going away anytime soon—a great many websites rely on it to power animations, forms, and other features. But the two-pronged attack from Facebook and Mozilla is sure to revive the long-running argument that the plugin is too error-riddled for its own good. The current criticisms of Flash focus almost exclusively on its security vulnerabilities, and Adobe’s perceived slowness in patching them. Given the comments by Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, it seems likely that the social network will eventually sub out Flash for HTML5, notably for video playback. For those developers who specialize in Flash, the thought of thousands of websites suddenly deciding to dump the technology en masse is probably not a comforting one (or maybe it is, if you dislike working with the platform). Given Flash’s sizable presence, however, that doom date is likely a long time from now. Wherever he is, Steve Jobs might be grinning a little.

Submission + - How to win the copyleft fight—without litigation (opensource.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Software Freedom Conservancy's Bradley Kuhn is probably best known for his work in enforcing the GNU General Public License (GPL). Enforcement-by-litigation might get the headlines, but Kuhn treats the courts as a last resort.

A regular OSCON speaker, he returns this year to share the story of a project that avoided the courtroom. Opensource.com spoke to Kuhn about his talk and the free software landscape at large.

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