28152220
submission
mvar writes:
Frustrated customers threw eggs at Apple's flagship Beijing store after its opening for the Chinese launch of the iPhone 4S was cancelled due to concerns over the size of the crowd. Apple reacted to the scuffle by postponing iPhone 4S sales in its mainland China stores to protect the safety of customers and employees.
28110166
submission
mvar writes:
French fast food chain Quick is commemorating the coming premiere of "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3D" by launching a line of "Star Wars"-themed burgers, including a black-bunned Darth Vader burger. According to the Daily Mail, the burgers will only be available until March 1. The limited-edition burgers come in three flavors: Dark Burger, Jedi Burger and Dark Vador. (No JarJar Burger i guess)
28073438
submission
mvar writes:
Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin stopped short of accusing any specific country of disabling Russian satellites, but in an interview in the daily Izvestia he said some Russian craft had suffered "unexplained" malfunctions while flying over another side of the globe beyond the reach of his nation's tracking facilities.
"I wouldn't like to accuse anyone, but today there exists powerful means to influence spacecraft, and their use can't be excluded," he said.
James Oberg, a NASA veteran who has written books on the Russian space program and now works as a space consultant, said Popovkin's comments were a sad example of the Russian cultural instinct to 'blame foreigners.'
28068640
submission
mvar writes:
After a meeting held last Monday regarding Mozilla Firefox ESR (Enterprise Support Release), the new version was announced yesterday in a post on Mozilla's official blog: "We are pleased to announce that the proposal for an Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox is now a plan of action. The ESR version of Firefox is for use by enterprises, public institutions, universities and other organizations that centrally manage their Firefox deployments. Releases of the ESR will occur once a year, providing these organizations with a version of Firefox that receives security updates but does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform."
26577648
submission
mvar writes:
A couple of weeks after Carrie Fisher's initial response to Shatner's comments on Star Trek vs Star Wars as it was reported on Slashdot last September, Captain Kirk strikes back
26292324
submission
mvar writes:
Christwire.org has an article on how Bethesda's latest Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, teaches children how to perform "rim-jobs" and other nasty things.
"In the land of Skyrim, the player starts off as a captured terrorist, who has been caught plotting to destroy the golden empire by using dragons. Before the player gets to take control of his avatar, they are asked to create a character, which is purely the liberal’s way of teaching out kids that modifying and gender changing one’s self is fun and normal. Once the player has decided if they want to be a female wood fairy or an black ogre from Stormwind, they get to take control of their hell spawned fictitious demon."
Yes, the author is obviously trolling, but its a good and funny read nevertheless.
25650434
submission
mvar writes:
NASA engineers have produced a material that absorbs on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it — a development that promises to open new frontiers in space technology.
"The reflectance tests showed that our team had extended by 50 times the range of the material’s absorption capabilities. Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared," the research team's leader John Hagopian said. "No one else has achieved this milestone yet."
25514610
submission
mvar writes:
Following two petitions that requested the acknowledgement and/or disclosure of any contacts with ET life, which was signed by ~5300 and ~12000 people respectively, the White House has posted a response saying that the search for ET continues but there are no evidence yet. They also amended the minimum requirements for petitions to 25000 signatures (was 5000)
25092074
submission
mvar writes:
The Linux Foundation today released technical guidance to PC makers on how to implement secure UEFI without locking Linux or other free software off of new Windows 8 machines. The guidance included a subtle tisk-tisk at Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky for suggesting that PC owners won't want to mess with control of their hardware and would happily concede that to operating system makers and hardware manufacturers.
24561736
submission
mvar writes:
Network World has an article about Apple's iCloud service claiming that, as experts say, it could be an IT security professional's nightmare.
iCloud's functionality will be very tightly integrated with both Apple devices and third-party applications. For example, app developers could use the iCloud to store data such as high scores and in-game credits, without having to set up their own Web services. Users would be automatically signed in the minute they opened the app — no need to create new user accounts for each game or application.
Then there's this scenario. You're at your office Mac, working on a sensitive company document. Now, there's a copy of the document automatically pushed to your iPad, which a family member borrowed and took to Starbucks. There's a copy on your home Macbook, which your teenager is using. Oh, and there's a copy on your iPhone, which you just left in a cab. ICloud raises serious questions in terms of what Apple plans to do to deliver a secure experience, and what enterprises need to do to protect sensitive corporate data.
24498464
submission
mvar writes:
Dtrace co-author Adam Leventhal writes on his blog about Dtrace for Linux:
Yesterday (October 4, 2011) Oracle made the surprising announcement that they would be porting some key Solaris features, DTrace and Zones, to Oracle Enterprise Linux. As one of the original authors, the news about DTrace was particularly interesting to me, so I started digging.
Even among Oracle employees, there’s uncertainty about what was announced. Ed Screven gave us just a couple of bullet points in his keynote; Sergio Leunissen, the product manager for OEL, didn’t have further details in his OpenWorld talk beyond it being a beta of limited functionality; and the entire Solaris team seemed completely taken by surprise.
Leunissen stated that only the kernel components of DTrace are part of the port. It’s unclear whether that means just fbt or includes sdt and the related providers. It sounds certain, though, that it won’t pass the DTrace test suite which is the deciding criterion between a DTrace port and some sort of work in progress.
23685474
submission
mvar writes:
Yahoo's chief executive Carol Bartz has been fired by the internet company after two-and-a-half years in the top job.
The news first broke on the Wall Street Journal's All Things D website, which quoted an email from Ms Bartz to Yahoo staff. The email has since been reported by other news agencies including Bloomberg and Reuters.
"I am very sad to tell you that I've just been fired over the phone by Yahoo's chairman of the board," Ms Bartz said in the email to staff.
As news of the sacking spread across the internet, Yahoo released its own press statement in which it confirmed it was undergoing a "leadership reorganisation" and that Ms Bartz would be leaving the company.
23043876
submission
mvar writes:
David Cameron told MPs the riots in cities across England were "criminality pure and simple", but there were "far too few police" on the streets.The prime minister promised he would do "whatever it takes" to restore order to the streets as he set out a range of measures aimed at helping businesses and homeowners affected by the riots. This included looking at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via social media when "we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality". Also Mr Cameron ruled out bringing in the Army, but added: "It is my responsibility to make sure that every contingency is looked at — including whether there are tasks that the Army could undertake that would free up more police for the front line. "
22945910
submission
mvar writes:
In a move that has drawn the opposition of quite a few environmental groups, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Enforcement and Regulation, or BOEMRE, gave its conditional approval on Thursday to a plan that could see Shell drilling in the Beaufort Sea as early as next year. The decision is contingent upon Shell securing drilling, air quality and other necessary permits and authorizations. Shell plans to drill up to four wells over two years in the Beaufort. Michael Bromwich, BOEMRE's director, said the agency bases it decisions surrounding energy exploration and development in the Arctic on the best scientific information available.
21783210
submission
mvar writes:
Internet domain name overlords ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) have voted on and approved today to open up the world of domain endings to include just about anything a person’s heart desires. The margin was 13-1 with two abstaining. Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are currently limited to 22 across the internet. They include your basic .com, .org and .net as well as some more specific endings you have probably seen around the interwebs like .uk and .eu. Now, the ICANN will be lifting almost all the restrictions on gTLDs.
Not only will domain registers be able to choose almost any word in the English language, but the ICANN will also approve domain names in any sort of characters – like Cyrillic or Kanji.
