73317881
submission
girlmad writes:
Three of the technology industry's heavyweights have been out in force recently to decry the current state of the IT industry, warning that the right to encryption is doomed and that there's far too much snooping and surveillance going on.
72389549
submission
girlmad writes:
The government's one-year £5.5m Windows XP support deal with Microsoft has not been extended, sources have told V3, despite thousands of computers across Whitehall still running the ancient software, leaving them wide open to cyber attacks. It's still unclear when all government machines will be migrated to a newer OS.
62890533
submission
girlmad writes:
Secret Cinema, the darling of quirky movie experiences, has seen exactly how frightening a bunch of angry hipsters can be after it cancelled the opening night of its latest show, Back to the Future. The short notice and lack of explanation from the 'immersive cinema experience' company led to a huge backlash on social media, with angry fans taking to Twitter and Facebook to share their frustrations at the handling of the whole thing. Cue much blaming of the Libyans and flux capacitor breakdowns.
58322761
submission
girlmad writes:
Google has scored a major win on the back of Microsoft’s Windows XP support cut-off. The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham has begun moving all its employees over to Samsung Chromebooks and Chromeboxes ahead of the 8 April deadline. The council was previously running 3,500 Windows XP desktops and 800 XP laptops, and is currently in the process of retiring these in favour of around 2,000 Chromebooks and 300 Chromeboxes. It estimates the savings at around £400,000, no small change.
52451265
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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.
52451207
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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."
51387695
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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.
47585875
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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.
47156053
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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.
46776909
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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.
46770495
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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.
46645807
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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.
46085355
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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.
45721595
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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.
45519329
submission
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.