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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 14 declined, 10 accepted (24 total, 41.67% accepted)

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Submission + - Hackers, gamers and tech workers: Your country needs you for a new cyber army (theinquirer.net)

girlmad writes: The UK government is looking to recruit IT experts for a cyber reserves army, which will help it defend against the threat of cyber warfare. "This is an exciting opportunity for internet experts in industry to put their skills to good use for the nation, protecting our vital computer systems and capabilities," said the Ministry of Defence. The reserve unit will cover a range of military cyber tactics, including a strike capability to augment the UK's military prowess.

Submission + - Government splashing out £6,000 per year per PC to maintain desktops (v3.co.uk)

girlmad writes: The UK government’s chief operating officer Stephen Kelly offered a frightening insight into the world of government IT spending this week. According to Kelly, the government spends a crazy £6,000 per year per PC just to maintain the devices, and wastes 3 days per year per person due to slow boot-up times. One PC supplier must be rubbing their hands with glee at this cushy deal.

Submission + - Government has no immediate plans to support systems newer than XP and IE6 (v3.co.uk)

girlmad writes: The UK government department the DWP has confirmed that to claim certain benefits online, users are limited to very out-of-date systems like Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 and older. Their basic approach seems to be pushing people away from the web to make people phone or come in for meetings instead, not great for trying to achieve cost savings by promoting online services.

Submission + - Amazon, Google and Apple won't need to pay tax, despite goverment threats (v3.co.uk)

girlmad writes: Despite moves by government to get Google, Amazon and Apple to admit they make sales in the UK and US, and therefore should pay tax on these earnings, this article argues these are empty threats and that any taxes paid will get returned to the tech giants in government grants and subsidies. Tough luck to the small firms out there.

Submission + - Apple vs Samsung lawyer speaks out against patent trolls (theinquirer.net)

girlmad writes: Judge Birss, who gained renown as the man who forced Apple to run adverts saying Samsung didn't copy the iPad, is back under the spotlight, claiming that we need to take the fight to patent trolls. But he's also warning that the courts might run out of capacity soon to handle the growing number of patent cases.

Submission + - Botched security update cripples thousands of computers across the world (v3.co.uk)

girlmad writes: Thousands of PCs have been crippled by a faulty update from security vendor Malwarebytes that marked legitimate system files as malware code. The update definition meant Malwarebytes' software treated essential Windows.dll and .exe files as malware, stopping them running and thus knocking IT systems and PCs offline, leaving lots of unhappy users and one firm with 80% of its servers offline.

Submission + - Rackspace goes on rampage against patent trolls (v3.co.uk)

girlmad writes: Rackspace has come out fighting against one of the US's most notorious patent trolls, Parallel Iron. The cloud services firm said it's totally fed up with trolls of all kinds, which have caused a 500 percent rise in its legal bills.

Rackspace was last week named among 12 firms accused of infringing Parallel Iron's Hadoop Distributed File System patents. Rackspace is now counter-suing the troll, as the firm said it has a deal in place with Parallel Iron after signing a previous patent settlement with them.

Intel

Submission + - Intel's Pentium chip turns 20 today (v3.co.uk)

girlmad writes: Intel's Pentium processor was launched 20 years ago today, a move that led to the firm becoming the dominant supplier of computer chips across the globe. This article has some original iComp benchmark scores, rating the 66MHz Pentium at a heady 565, compared with 297 for the 66MHz 486DX2, which was the fastest chip available prior to the Pentium launch.
Movies

Submission + - Top 10 Oscar contenders for best tech movie (v3.co.uk)

girlmad writes: To mark the Oscars, here's a list of films that tech site V3 thinks deserve an Oscar for being the best tech movies of all time. Some on the list are obvious contenders, but there's some quirkier and more controversial inclusions in there — along with some missing classics.
Google

Submission + - Google rules out Gmail and Drive apps for Windows 8 (v3.co.uk) 4

girlmad writes: Google has revealed it won't be developing any apps for Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8, so those wanting a dedicated app for Gmail or Drive on their Microsoft device will miss out.

Google Apps product management director Clay Bavor said that due to a lack of interest for the Microsoft systems, it is holding back on any work.

Bavor said Google is very careful about where it invests and will go where its users are — and they are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8. Ouch.

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Windows 8 devices not exactly flying off the shelves (theinquirer.net) 1

girlmad writes: Doesn't sound like Microsoft’s Windows 8 has got off to a great start in the UK, with computer retailer Currys and PC World struggling to shift devices running the new software. The store on Oxford Street in London was yet to sell one device running Windows 8 by midday today. It seems that the hype created in the build-up to Microsoft's launch has already blown over.
Security

Submission + - HSBC taken down by Anonymous hacking group (theinquirer.net)

girlmad writes: Looks like HSBC is the latest victim of the Anonymous group of hackers. The bank's servers were hit by a denial of service attack Thursday night that took down a number of their websites. A Twitter account called Anonymous @Fawkessecurity has taken credit for the attack and has posted a statement to Pastebin saying the proof is all in their Tweets although doesn't give a reason for the attack.
Intel

Submission + - Intel says Clover Trail won't work with Linux (theinquirer.net)

girlmad writes: Intel's Clover Trail Atom processor can be seen in various non-descript laptops around IDF and the firm provided a lot of architectural details on the chip, confirming details such as dual-core and a number of power states. However Intel said Clover Trail "is a Windows 8 chip" and that "the chip cannot run Linux".

While Intel's claim that Clover Trail won't run Linux is not quite true — after all it is an x86 instruction set so there is no major reason why the Linux kernel and userland will not run — given that the firm will not support it, device makers are unlikely to produce Linux Clover Trail devices for their own support reasons.

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