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Submission + - RIAA wants 21 sites shut down in piracy axe fall (theinquirer.net) 1

souperfly writes: The Inquirer.net has a list of 21 sites that the RIAA is looking to get shutdown by ISPs this week. The list includes sites filestube, Bomb-Mp3, Mp3skull, Bitsnoop, Extratorrent, Torrenthound, Torrentreactor and Monova, and at least one ISP — Virgin Media in the UK — has confirmed the number of targetted sites.

Before it was thought that only six sites were lined up for a chop.

Submission + - Microsoft warns Windows XP is six times less secure than Windows 8 (v3.co.uk)

TinTops writes: Businesses still running XP should switch to Windows 8 as soon as possible, as Microsoft details its own findings into the relative security of its operating systems:

"If you look at the infection rate on Windows systems you can see older versions are infected more than newer machines. Windows XP is six-times more likely to be infected than Windows 8, even though it has the same malware encounter rate," said Mike Reavey, GM of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, at the RSA Conference in Amsterdam.

He added: "The downward rate is a sign of secure development practices," he said. "In pretty much every service in Microsoft we have people devoted purely on security, focused on what's going on in the marketplace and what's needed to secure it."

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 + - Police waste 30 minutes each per day waiting for computers to boot up (v3.co.uk)

girlmad writes: The Met Police in London has revealed that officers have to wait 30 minutes every day for their machines to turn on and be ready to use. It's not surprising, considering that the Met assistant commissioner has admitted that the IT systems the police are using date as far back as the 1970s.

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 + - Ethernet Turns 40 Years Old (theinquirer.net)

alancronin writes: Four decades ago the Ethernet protocol made its debut as a way to connect machines in close proximity, today it is the networking layer two protocol of choice for local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs) and everything in between. For many people Ethernet is merely the RJ45 jack on the back of a laptop, but its relative ubiquity and simplicity belie what Ethernet has done for the networking industry and in turn for consumers and enterprises. Ethernet has in the space of 40 years gone from a technology that many in the industry viewed as something not fit for high bandwidth, dependable communications to the default data link protocol.

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 + - 64-bit x86 computing reaches 10th anniversary (theinquirer.net)

illiteratehack writes: 10 years ago AMD released its first Opteron processor, the first 64-bit x86 processor. The firm's 64-bit 'extensions' allowed the chip to run existing 32-bit x86 code in a bid to avoid the problems faced by Intel's Itanium processor. However AMD suffered from a lack of native 64-bit software support, with Microsoft's Windows XP 64-bit edition severely hampering its adoption in the workstation market.

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 + - Documentary to tell the story of the UK games industry

necronom426 writes: For those of us who grew up in the '80s there are many interesting tales of how the games industry developed. The UK has it's own set of unique stories, and two film makers are documenting it in their film From Bedrooms to Billions. If you had a Spectrum or C64, or get nostalgic if someone mentions Julian Rignall, Oliver Frey, Rob Hubbard, Andrew Braybrook, David Braben, Jon Hare, Jeff Minter, Matthew Smith, Martin Galway, Zzap!64, Crash, etc., then you might want to take a look.

Submission + - Gigabyte's Brix mini PC could rival the Raspberry Pi (theinquirer.net)

llebeel writes: Gigabyte previewed a mini PC called Brix at a "tech tour" event in London last night, which could see the firm take on the Raspberry Pi.

Boasting what the firm claims is "the same power as a tower PC", the mini computer boasts a choice of Intel Celeron or Core processors as powerful as the Core i7 chip for "low to high power".

However, as yet specs are thin on the ground, but we do know it should launch in the UK within the next month or so..

Submission + - Microsoft Telling Users to Uninstall Bad Patch (threatpost.com)

msm1267 writes: Microsoft announced last night that it has stopped pushing a security update originally released on Patch Tuesday because the fix is causing some PCs to blue screen. Microsoft recommends users uninstall the patch, which is also causing compatibility with some endpoint security software.
MS13-036 was part of this week’s Patch Tuesday update. It addressed three vulnerabilities in the Windows Kernel-Mode Driver, which if exploited could allow an attacker to elevate their privileges on a compromised machine.
Users began reporting issues earlier this week with some systems failing to recover from restarts, or applications failing to load, after the patch was installed.

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