Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror

+ - Reporters threatened with CFAA suit, labeled hackers for finding security hole-> 1

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "Scripps News reporters discovered 170,000 records online of customers of Lifeline, a government program offering affordable phone service for low-income citizens, that contained everything needed for identity theft . Last year, the FCC "tightened" the rules for the program by requiring Lifeline phone carriers to document applicants' eligibility, which led to collecting more sensitive information from citizens. A Scripps News investigative team claims it "Googled" the phone companies TerraCom Inc. and YourTel America Inc. to discover all of the files.

A Scripps reporter asked (pdf) for an on-camera interview with the COO of TerraCom and YourTel after explaining the files were freely available online. That did not happen, but shortly thereafter the customer records disappeared from the internet. Then, the blame-the-messenger hacker accusations and mudslinging began. Although the Scripps reporters videotaped the process showing how they found the documents, attorney Jonathon Lee for both telecoms threatened the "Scripps Hackers" with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)."
Link to Original Source

+ - Why aren't Microsoft's competitors joining in on the Windows 8 jokes?->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "Everyone has an opinion on Windows 8, and we're all having a blast making fun of it — except for Microsoft's competitors. Strangely, we've had no "I'm a Mac" ads, and it's not just because those ads backfired the first time around. So where are the attacks? Google, Samsung and Apple should be all over this; instead, they are MIA. Apple can't say too much because its MacBook sales are down along with PC sales. So it's rather difficult to blame Windows 8 for MacBook sales. Google has been strangely quiet, even as Microsoft pounds on it from multiple fronts. There's the Scroogled ads, the Bing It On ads, and now a new ad campaign lambasting Google Docs.

In the case of Google, Microsoft's attack ads aren't working. Google's lead in search remains untouchable and Bing is settling for scraps. Samsung isn't ready to go to war with Microsoft, although it has taken a jab. Thus far, that's as much as they will do, and that's good. As for Apple, I suspect it may have written off Microsoft, and perhaps the PC business. The "I'm a Mac" ads were in the pre-iPad days. Tablets have changed things forever, now that Apple has validated the concept."
Link to Original Source

+ - iTunes: Still slowing down Windows PCs after all these years->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "I run a very nifty desktop utility called Rainmeter on my PC that I heartily recommend to anyone who wants to keep an eye on their system. One of its main features is it has skins that can monitor your system activity. Thanks to my numerous meters, I see all CPU, disk, memory and network activity in real time. the C: drive meter. It is a circle split down the middle, with the right half lighting up to indicate a read and the left half lighting up for write activity. The C: drive was flashing a fair amount of activity considering I had nothing loaded save Outlook and Word, plus a few background apps. At the time, I didn't have a Rainmeter skin that lists the top processes by CPU and memory. So instead, I went into the Task Manager, and under Performance selected the Resource Monitor. Under the Processes tab, the culprit showed its face immediately: AppleMobileDeviceService.exe. It was consuming a ridiculous amount of threads and CPU cycles.

The only way to turn it off is to go into Windows Services and turn off the service.

There’s just one problem. I use an iPhone. I can't disable it. But doing so for a little while dropped the CPU meters to nothing. So I now have more motivation to migrate to a new phone beyond just having one with a larger screen. This problem has been known for years. AppleMobileDeviceService.exe has been in iTunes since version 7.3. People complained on the Apple boards more than two years ago that it was consuming up to 50% of CPU cycles, and thus far it's as bad as it always has been. Mind you, Mac users aren't complaining. Just Windows users."
Link to Original Source

+ - Boston replacing Microsoft Exchange with Google Apps->

Submitted by netbuzz
netbuzz writes "The city of Boston, which employs 20,000 people, has become the latest large organization to switch from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. The city estimates that the move will save it $280,000 a year. Microsoft’s reaction? “We believe the citizens of Boston deserve cloud productivity tools that protect their security and privacy. Google’s investments in these areas are inadequate, and they lack the proper protections most organizations require.” More and more customers aren’t buying that FUD."
Link to Original Source

+ - Flexible display screens on smartphones will be just a 'novelty,' analyst says->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "Although multiple manufacturers are expected to release smartphones with flexible display screens by the end of this year, the technology will be little more than a novelty until about 2015, one analyst says. Raza Ali, an analyst at Visiongain, authored a report released in February that forecasted the market for flexible display technology to reach $260.3 million by the end of 2013. That may not come as much of a surprise, with LG planning to ship its first flexible displays later this year and Samsung drumming up publicity with its flexible YOUM prototype at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

But manufacturers need to overcome a few obstacles, First, they need to make smartphone components that are flexible, because a device with a flexible screen is useless if the rest of the device isn't, Ali says. They'll also need to keep the cost low enough for manufacturers to mass produce the devices, and cost has been an issue since flexible displays were invented."
Link to Original Source

+ - John McCain Working On Legislation For 'a la carte' TV Channel Packages->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "John McCain, Republican Senator for Arizona and former U.S. presidential candidate, is drafting a new bill that would pressure TV providers to allow customers to select and pay for only the channels they want to watch. The bill will also 'bar TV networks from bundling their broadcast stations with cable channels they own during negotiations with the cable companies, according to industry sources. So for example, the Disney Company, which owns both ABC and ESPN, could not force a cable provider to pay for ESPN in order to carry ABC.' Perhaps most importantly, the bill could 'end the sports blackout rule, which prohibits cable companies from carrying a sports event if the game is blacked out on local broadcast television stations.' This would hamstring the ludicrous practice of blacking out TV broadcasts in order to drive fans to buy actual tickets to a game. The cable and satellite TV industry is expected to push back very strongly against the bill."
Link to Original Source

+ - Ubuntu Touch for smartphones could be ready by end of May->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "The team behind Ubuntu Touch (aka “Ubuntu for Phones”) have committed to pushing forward to a ready-to-use version of the OS, one that the group will use to "eat their own dog food," by the end of May. What that means: Over the next few weeks, the team behind Ubuntu Touch is going to be attempting to implement enough functionality to make it possible to use Ubuntu on your phone (such as the Nexus 4) on a day-to-day basis. At which point their development team will be doing exactly that.

So what features are they going to be working on? Making and receiving calls and SMS messages; using the web browser on both 3G and Wi-Fi; the ability to import, add, and edit contact data, with contacts retained even after updating the handset OS (something pretty critical when we're talking about an early “in development” system that is likely to be updated on a pretty rapid basis)."
Link to Original Source

+ - Microsoft: "What are people really asking for when they ask for a Start button?"-> 1

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "Lack of a Start button is the biggest Windows 8 criticism for users on non-touch devices. Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller recently told The Verge, "We have heard that, we definitely have heard that and taken that into account. We've really also tried to understand what people are really asking for when they're asking for that."

"We knew there would be a learning curve with Windows 8," admitted Microsoft VP for Windows Julie Larson-Green at the Wired Business Conference. She is in charge of bringing Windows to the "mobile age" and may even be a candidate to eventually follow Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft. For now, Larson-Green is the head of Windows Engineering and is "tweaking the design and layout of Windows to free it from the desktop and allow people to better incorporate it into their lives through mobile devices." She explained that Windows 8 was designed for mobile, compared to Windows 7, which was "optimized for the laptop." She insisted that people want to be mobile, yet added that Microsoft is "not going to be stubborn" when it comes to Blue."
Link to Original Source

+ - A case for a Software Testing undergrad major->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "I have spent the last couple of days at the StarEast conference, listening to people explain to a roomful of testers about modeling workflows and data transitions, managing test environments in the cloud, writing automation scripts for regression tests, best methods for exploratory testing, running mobile test lab. And as I look around the room at the raw intelligence of the people who are not only absorbing that information but probing deeper into it during the Q&A sessions, I have to wonder how much easier their careers could have been if they had been able to major in Software Testing in college.

It’s time to give employers a testing workforce that is competitive and trained so they can stand toe-to-toe with the development team. Imagine the power of being able to hire a recent college graduate who has been taught how to develop system diagrams, build complex SQL, run log analysis, set up a cloud test environment, and write automation scripts. No more crossing your fingers that this eager young face in front of you can really pick up those skills, and no more investing so much time and money in training them on the job. We ask no less from Technical Writing and Development. Why do we have such different expectations for one of the most important functions on the team?"
Link to Original Source

+ - Open Build Service 2.4 adds Arch support->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "Package management on Linux is a pretty amazing thing. But building new packages (and new scripts to generate those packages) can become a major time sink. And which formats/distros do you create them for? Ubuntu 32bit .deb? Fedora 64bit RPM? After you start taking all of the various incarnations, of just the major versions of, the major distros into account... you've got a lot of work ahead of you.

Luckily, there are some ways to make this whole process a bit less painful. One of the most mature and flexible being the Open Build Service, which is part of the openSUSE project. And they have just announced version 2.4 of their package-building solution.Let's say you want to release a new version of your software. You put the files up in the Open Build Service (which is, as you might have guessed, Open Source) – or the public instance which is in place at build.opensuse.org – then you create your configuration and utilize their web interface to automatically create the packages you'd like. Now, here's the cool part: You can tell it to create packages not to use for openSUSE... but for Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora and plenty of others. And, as of version 2.4, it will build for Arch as well (in the form of PKGBUILD)."
Link to Original Source

+ - Skype accounts easily hijacked via Skype Support, warns hacker->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "security researcher @TibitXimer complained about a horrible user experience after losing control of his Skype account six times in one day. In fact, Ximer says Skype recovery mechanisms are so inadequate that "anyone can steal your Skype account" by providing: "3-5 of your contacts on skype, 1 email you've used on skype at any point, and your first and/or last name."

Unsurprisingly, Skype Support disagrees with Ximer about how easily Skype accounts can be hijacked by social engineering the support team. "Skype CS is looking into your case. Our unlock policy does in fact require more than just the information you have quoted and we are checking where the failure happened during the required steps of verification."

Other Skype users on the forum pointed out that there are guides for sale that explain how to easily exploit Skype Support and steal accounts. Ximer said Skype Support has now suspended his account while the matter is being investigated. He added that Skype account hijacking has also "happened to many members of a forum I'm on all in the same week," before providing a screenshot of other users complaining about it. He then wrote, "This was a massive failure by Skype support. While they may ask more questions during the verification process, they did not require that all questions were answered. Majority of the time they only required those 3 steps as enough for the verification of the account owner.""
Link to Original Source

+ - Why iTunes is dying->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "As the iTunes Store celebrates the 10th anniversary of a very successful run, it may have fallen too far behind competing services to survive in the next 10 years. Currently, iTunes’ share of online music sales stands at 63%, its lowest figure since 2006 and a steep drop from its peak of 69% in 2010, according to market researchers at the NPD Group. And while Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, HBO Go and all the other competitors keep signing up new customers, only rumors have emerged about an Apple streaming service, and they aren't very flattering.

Apple will reportedly use a streaming service to drive sales of songs on iTunes, and will use advertisements to help boost revenues even further. That may appease content providers, but consumers who can pay for unlimited access to Spotify's library without advertisements wouldn't even consider it.

By the time Apple does get its streaming service off the ground, customers will be too entrenched in competing services to be swayed by another that doesn't offer any advantage. As the concept of "owning" content becomes more outdated, so will iTunes."
Link to Original Source

+ - 3D-printed gun may be unveiled soon->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "A 3D-printed gun capable of firing multiple rounds may be unveiled soon. Cody Wilson, the 25-year-old founder and director of nonprofit organization Defense Distributed, recently told Mashable that the end product of Wiki Weapon, the initiative to create an operational 3D-printed gun, may soon be ready to unveil to the public. In a March interview with CNN, Wilson said he hoped to have a printable gun ready by the end of April, so his most recent comments suggest that he may fulfill that promise.

While Wilson was sparse with details, he did tell Mashable that the prototype would be a handgun consisting of 12 parts made out of ABS+ thermoplastic, which is known for its durability and is commonly used in industrial settings. The firing pin would be the only steel component of the 3D-printed gun, which will be able to withstand a few shots before melting or breaking. Wilson reportedly anticipates making an official announcement soon."
Link to Original Source

+ - ValueAct's $2 billion bet on Microsoft could mean big changes in Redmond->

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes "No one is saying Steve Ballmer will be out of a job tomorrow as a result of ValueAct's $2 billion purchase of Microsoft stock, but it is interesting to hear ValueAct's CEO talk about why he bought such a large chunk of Microsoft in the first place.

ValueAct says its investment strategy involves targeting companies that are "fundamentally undervalued, and then working with management and the company’s board to implement strategies that generate superior returns on invested capital." Where ValueAct wants to go is interesting. Bloomberg quotes ValueAct CEO Jeffrey Ubben as saying "In three to five years, which is our time horizon, we’ll stop talking about PC cycles and instead talk about Microsoft as the largest cloud-computing company in the world."

CNBC pundits have speculated that ValueAct would work with Ballmer and the board behind the scenes long before anything went public, which I understand. But history tends to show that investors like this do inevitably get involved. It might be a sale (not likely) or a change in executives or strategy, but eventually, major investors like ValueAct do make their presence known and felt. And no, it's not in your best interests, it's in the best interests of their investment."
Link to Original Source

+ - US Senate To Vote On Internet Sales Tax Mandate Today->

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes "The Senate could vote as early as Thursday on a bill to empower states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for purchases made over the Internet. Under the bill, the sales taxes would be sent to the states where a shopper lives.

On Wednesday, the bill passed a test vote in the Senate, 74 to 23, with 27 Republicans voting in favor. Senators were trying to work out agreements Thursday on potential amendments and the timing of a final vote."
Link to Original Source

What's so funny?

Close