73322901
submission
jfruh writes:
With Nokia's handset business now sold off to Microsoft, you might be wondering what the remainder of the company does, exactly. The company is trying to use its expertise at other end of its old business, offering data centers and virtualized infrastructure to wireless networking companies to make their businesses more efficient. Competitors include Ericsson, another mobile phone also-ran.
73321623
submission
itwbennett writes:
ITworld's Josh Fruhlinger asked seasoned (and some not-so-seasoned) tech professionals what they wished they knew back when they were newly minted graduates entering the workforce. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the best advice has more to do with soft skills than with tech skills. To wit: 'When [managers] say they are suggesting you do something, it's not really a suggestion — it is an order disguised as a suggestion. Plain-speaking is a lost art at big companies and corporate double talk is the name of the game.' What's your best piece of advice for the newest among you?
73258997
submission
itwbennett writes:
Uber Technologies is revising its privacy policy to allow it to access a rider’s location when its smartphone app is running in the background, and to send special offers to users’ friends and family. Writing about the policy update in a blog post Thursday, Katherine Tassi, managing counsel of data privacy at Uber, noted that users will be in control in either case, and will be able to choose whether to share that data. The company has faced criticism in the past over how it handles sensitive information, particularly over its so-called ”God view” tool that apparently lets some Uber employees track the location of customers that have requested car service.
73237355
submission
jfruh writes:
The promise of the cloud is that your storage and computing problems will be abstracted away from messy physical objects that you need to maintain, taken care of far way by other people. Well, it turns out that those other people need to buy a lot of servers.
73237309
submission
jfruh writes:
The FCC's Lifeline program subsidizes phone service for very poor Americans; it gained notoriety under the label "Obamaphone," even though the program started under Reagan and was extended to cell phones under Clinton. Now the FCC is proposing that the program, which is funded by a fee on telecom providers, be extended to broadband, on the logic that high-speed internet is as necessary today as telephone service was a generation ago.
73217633
submission
itwbennett writes:
In a bid to fight tax avoidance by international business behemoths like Amazon and Apple, the European Commission is proposing mandatory rules to make companies pay taxes to all the countries in which they generate profit. To make sure that companies are taxed for all the profit they generate, the Commission wants to introduce a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB), said Valdis Dombrovskis, Commission vice president responsible for economic and financial affairs. EU countries in which a company is active would be entitled to a portion of its unified tax return.
73207101
submission
itwbennett writes:
U.S. and Chinese researchers have developed semiconductor chips that are nearly entirely made out of wood-derived material. Aside from being biodegradable, the chips could be produced for only a fraction of the cost of conventional semiconductors, according to the group of 17 researchers, mostly from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with others from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
73185373
submission
itwbennett writes:
Friction between the lead Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell and Ubuntu reached extreme temperatures on Monday when the Ubuntu Community Council (UCC) asked Riddell to step down from 'leadership in Kubuntu' as well as 'all positions of leadership in the Ubuntu Community.' According to Riddell, the bone of contention was a years-long, ongoing inquiry by Riddell about the distribution of donations collected by Canonical from Ubuntu.com. The Kubuntu Council met this morning and has come out behind Riddell, saying they didn’t find his behavior in violation of Ubuntu Code of Conduct.
73157849
submission
jfruh writes:
Point-of-sale software has meant that in many cases where once you'd have seen a cash register, you now see a general-purpose PC running point-of-sale (PoS) software. Unfortunately, those PCs have all the usual vulnerabilities, and when you run software on it that processes credit card payments, they become a tempting target for hackers. One of the latest attacks on PoS software comes in the form of malicious Word macros downloaded from spam emails.
73054135
submission
itwbennett writes:
Google has started to update its ranking system for Google Maps searches after racist search terms brought up the White House among their top results. The updates build on a previous algorithmic change that was developed for Google Search ... in 2007.
73043999
submission
itwbennett writes:
In follow-up to a story that appeared on Slashdot yesterday about a critical vulnerability in the NetUSB service, networking device manufacturers ZyXEL Communications and Netgear have confirmed that some of their routers are affected and said they are working on fixes. ZyXEL will begin issuing firmware updates in June, while Netgear plans to start releasing patches in the third quarter of the year.
73036725
submission
itwbennett writes:
The U.S. Commerce Department has proposed tighter export rules for computer security tools and could prohibit the export of penetration testing tools without a license. The proposal would modify rules added to the Wassenaar Arrangement in 2013 that limit the export of technologies related to intrusion and traffic inspection. The definition of intrusion software would also encompass 'proprietary research on the vulnerabilities and exploitation of computers and network-capable devices,' the proposal said.
73036587
submission
itwbennett writes:
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, has disclosed it fell victim to a cyberattack in June last year that affected about 1.1 million people. The attack targeted a single database that contained information about CareFirst members and others who accessed its websites and services, the company said Monday.
73019935
submission
jfruh writes:
Java made its public debut twenty years ago today, and desite a sometimes bumpy history that features its parent company being absorbed by Oracle, it's still widely used. Mark Reinhold, chief architect for the Oracle's Java platform group, offers one explanation for its continuing popularity: it's easy for humans to understand it at a glance. "It is pretty easy to read Java code and figure out what it means. There aren’t a lot of obscure gotchas in the language ... Most of the cost of maintaining any body of code over time is in maintenance, not in initial creation."
73015707
submission
itwbennett writes:
During the combined 33 year run of Late Night With David Letterman and the Late Show with David Letterman, Dave and his crew introduced some, um, original technologies that, while not having the impact of, say, Windows, Google or the iPhone, still made quite an impression. From The Late Night Monkey-Cam Mobile Unit to The Late Show Hose Cam, here are 5 innovative (or, at least, original) uses of technology that Dave and company gave to the world.
