TexNex - Slashdot User

Submission + - IBM to share technology with China in strategy shift (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23, 2015 @09:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: IBM Corp will share technology with Chinese firms and will actively help build China's industry, CEO Virginia Rometty said in Beijing as she set out a strategy for one of the foreign firms hardest hit by China's shifting technology policies.

IBM must help China build its IT industry rather than viewing the country solely as a sales destination or manufacturing base, Rometty said at the China Development Forum, an annual Chinese government-sponsored conference bringing together business executives and China's ruling elite.

"If you're a country, as China is, of 1.3 billion people you would want an IT industry as well," the chief executive said on Monday. "I think some firms find that perhaps frightening. We, though, at IBM ... find that to be a great opportunity."

Submission + - Facebook Engineering Tool Mimics Dodgy Network Connectivity (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett on Monday March 23, 2015 @09:06PM

itwbennett writes: Facebook has released as open source an application, called Augmented Traffic Control (ATC), that can simulate the connectivity of a portable telephone accessing an app over 2G, Edge, 3G, or LTE network. It can also simulate weak and erratic WiFi connections. The simulations can give engineers an estimate of how long it would take a user to download a file, for instance, given varying network connections. It can help engineers re-create problems that crop up only on very slow networks.

Submission + - Pixar Releases Free Version of RenderMan

Submitted by jones_supa on Monday March 23, 2015 @04:05PM

jones_supa writes: A year ago the animation studio Pixar promised its RenderMan animation and rendering suite to eventually become free for non-commercial use. This was originally scheduled to happen in the SIGGRAPH 2014 computer graphics conference, but things got delayed. Nevertheless, today Pixar is releasing the free version into wild. Free non-commercial RenderMan can be used for research, education, evaluation, plug-in development, and any personal projects that do not generate commercial profits. This version is fully featured, without a watermark or any kind of artificial limits. Featuring Pixar's new RIS technology, RenderMan delivers extremely fast global illumination and interactive shading and lighting for artists. The software is available for Mac, Linux and Windows. In conjunction with the release, Pixar has also launched a new RenderMan Community site where users can exchange knowledge and resources, showcase their own work, share assets such as shaders and scripts, and learn about RenderMan from tutorials.

Comment Re:could be right (Score 1) 353

by brunes69 on Monday March 23, 2015 @12:13PM (#49321067) Attached to: Child Psychotherapist: Easy and Constant Access To the Internet Is Harming Kids

If you think yours is not, you are living in a reality distortion bubble.

Comment Re:Sooo .. (Score 1) 127

by brunes69 on Monday March 23, 2015 @11:51AM (#49320863) Attached to: Android's Smart Lock Won't Ask You For a Password Until You Set Your Phone Down

Do you have any links to how to do #1? I have never heard of this before.

Comment Re:Sooo .. (Score 2) 127

by brunes69 on Monday March 23, 2015 @09:55AM (#49319845) Attached to: Android's Smart Lock Won't Ask You For a Password Until You Set Your Phone Down

Couple of mitigations

- You can disable this feature if you want

- You can also enable SmartLock which will lock the phone as soon as it gets out of range of another bluetooth device (smart watch or key fob)

- Use android device manager to lock and/or remote wipe the phone as soon as possible after the theft. My wife has the ability to lock and remote wipe my phone from her phone using Android Device Manager, and I can do the same to hers.. you should set this up.

- You could simply hold the power button in while handing over the phone, forcing a reboot and lock

- You could get a dimple.io NFC button that lets you password lock your phone with a keypress

Comment Re:could be right (Score 4, Insightful) 353

by brunes69 on Monday March 23, 2015 @06:49AM (#49318739) Attached to: Child Psychotherapist: Easy and Constant Access To the Internet Is Harming Kids

When my kid reaches secondary school (aka High School), she will no longer be a "child", she will be a young adult. The idea that a 15+ year old can not be trusted with a smartphone, when they drinking, having sex, and in all likelihood doing drugs from time to time, is ridiculous.

People need to stop coddling their kids so much. Maybe that is the indirect cause of some of these issues, kids now unable to deal with the realities of the world as they get older because their helicopter parents never exposed them to it.

Submission + - Android's Smart Lock Won't Ask You For A Password Until You Set Your Phone Down (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by jfruh on Monday March 23, 2015 @03:36AM

jfruh writes: Nothing confronts you with how addicted you are to your phone than constantly taking it out of your pocket and entering and re-entering your passcode over and over again to unlock. But without fanfare, Google is releasing an Android update that might solve the problem: a "smart lock" that can figure out if your phone has been set down since the last time you unlocked it. As long as it stays on your person, you won't need to re-enter your password.

Submission + - Cisco SPA300/500 IP phones vulnerable to remote eavesdropping (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by Bismillah on Sunday March 22, 2015 @11:11PM

Bismillah writes: Cisco has confirmed that its SPA300 and SPA500 are vulnerable to remote eavesdropping and dialling, and is working on a patch. Meanwhile, the advice is not to have the phones on internet-facing connections.

Submission + - Finland To Fly "Open Skies" Surveillance Flight Over Russia (sputniknews.com)

Submitted by jones_supa on Sunday March 22, 2015 @10:49PM

jones_supa writes: Inspectors from Finland will conduct an observation flight on March 23-27 over the Russian territory within the framework of the Treaty on Open Skies. During the flight that will be conducted along the mutually agreed route, Russian specialists on board of the aircraft will ensure strict compliance with the agreed flight schedule and monitor the use of the equipment stipulated by the treaty. The flight will be conducted on a Swedish SAAB 340 observation aircraft that is not equipped with any weaponry. Both the plane and the equipment installed in it have been examined by the international inspection, including Russian specialists. The treaty on Open Skies is designed to enhance mutual understanding by allowing unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the territories of its 34 current member states.

Submission + - Gaming On Linux With Newest AMD Catalyst Driver Remains Slow (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22, 2015 @04:55PM

An anonymous reader writes: The AMD Catalyst binary graphics driver has made a lot of improvements over the years, but it seems that NVIDIA is still leading in the Linux game with their shared cross-platform driver. Tests done by Phoronix of the Catalyst 15.3 Linux Beta found on Ubuntu 15.04 shows that NVIDIA continues leading over AMD Catalyst with several different GPUs on BioShock Infinite, a game finally released for Linux last week. With BioShock Infinite on Linux, years old mid-range GeForce GPUs were clobbering the high-end Radeon R9 290 and other recent AMD GPUs tested. The poor showing wasn't limited to BS:I though as the Metro Redux games were re-tested too on the new drivers and found the NVIDIA graphics still ran significantly faster and certainly a different story than under Windows.

Submission + - Finland's Education System Supersedes "Subjects" With "Topics" (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by jones_supa on Sunday March 22, 2015 @10:12AM

jones_supa writes: Finland is about to embark on one of the most radical education reform programmes ever undertaken by a nation state – scrapping traditional "teaching by subject" in favour of "teaching by topic". The motivation to do this is to prepare people better for working life. For instance, a teenager studying a vocational course might take "cafeteria services" lessons, which would include elements of maths, languages, writing skills and communication skills. More academic pupils would be taught cross-subject topics such as the European Union — which would merge elements of economics, history, languages and geography. There will also be a more collaborative teaching approach, with pupils working in smaller groups to solve problems while improving their communication skills.

Submission + - Microsoft: Windows 10 Free for pirates, but no tech support (techworm.net)

Submitted by techworm.net on Friday March 20, 2015 @06:52AM

techworm.net writes: Microsoft cause quite a flutter in the tech world after it announced that it will offer free Windows 10 upgrades to users who had downloaded the pirated Windows XP/Windows 7/Windows 8.1 version. The announcement came after Microsoft had earlier announced free upgrade for registered Windows 7/Windows 8.1 users to Windows 10.

However, if you run your PC on the pirated older versions of Windows and want to take this opportunity by Microsoft and download the Windows 10 version, there is a catch in the announcement.

Microsoft has said that it will not provide any support to non-genuine systems after they’re updated to Windows 10.

Submission + - US Threatened Germany Over Snowden, Vice Chancellor Says (firstlook.org)

Submitted by siddesu on Friday March 20, 2015 @02:39AM

siddesu writes: German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (above) said this week in Homburg that the U.S. government threatened to cease sharing intelligence with Germany if Berlin offered asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden or otherwise arranged for him to travel to that country. “They told us they would stop notifying us of plots and other intelligence matters,” Gabriel said.

Submission + - To avoid NSA, Cisco gear gets delivered to strange address (computerworld.com.au) 1

Submitted by angry tapir on Thursday March 19, 2015 @11:39PM

angry tapir writes: One of the most successful U.S. National Security Agency spying programs involved intercepting IT equipment en route to customers and modifying it. It appears some Cisco Systems customers have taken steps to prevent NSA tampering, including having Cisco ship gear to addresses that appear unrelated to the customer.

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