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Businesses

Microsoft (Probably) Didn't Just Buy Unix 289

Posted by Soulskill from the how's-that-for-definitive dept.
jfruhlinger writes "Word came down this morning that when Attachmate bought Novell, certain intellectual property rights were sold to a Microsoft-led consortium as part of the deal. Since Unix is the most valuable piece of IP Novell owns, there was a certain amount of panic that suddenly Redmond is in charge of this foundational technology for Linux and a number of other open source projects. But, while MS is being cagey, Brian Proffitt doubts that Unix was part of the IP package that was sold — and believes that Linux would be safe even if it were."
Image

The World's Smallest Legible Font Screenshot-sm 280

Posted by samzenpus from the because-he-can dept.
hasanabbas1987 writes "From the article: 'Well 'technically' they aren't the smallest fonts in the world as if they were you wouldn't be able to read even a single letter, but, you should be able to read the entire paragraph in the picture given above... we did. A Computer science professor called Ken Perlin designed these tiny fonts and you can fit 500 reasonable words in a resolution of 320 x 240 space. There are at the moment the smallest legible fonts in the world.'"
Businesses

Obama Says Offshoring Fears Are Unwarranted 763

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-worry-citizen dept.
alphadogg writes "The perception that Indian call centers and back office operations cost US jobs is an old stereotype that ignores today's reality that two-way trade between the US and India is helping create jobs and raise the standard of living in both countries, US President Barack Obama told a gathering of business executives in Mumbai on Saturday. President Obama's remarks come after some moves in the US that had Indian outsourcers worried that the US may get protectionist in the wake of job losses in the country. The state of Ohio, for example, banned earlier this year the expenditure of public funds for offshore purposes. US exports to India have quadrupled in recent years, and currently support tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the US, he said in a speech that was also streamed live. In addition, there are jobs supported by exports to India of agriculture products, travel and education services. President Obama, who is in India on a three-day visit, said that more than 20 deals worth about $10 billion were announced on the first day of his visit."

Feed Engadget: Sprint axes Huawei, ZTE telecom bids due to security fears in Washington? (engadget.com)

From feed by feedfeeder
Huawei might be making inroads into the US consumer smartphone market, but the Chinese telecom supplier's attempts to break into big business have been stonewalled. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that Sprint is excluding both Huawei and competitor ZTE from a multi-billion dollar contract -- where they would have been the lowest bidders -- primarily because of national security concerns. The US Secretary of Commerce reportedly called Sprint CEO Dan Hesse to voice concerns about letting firms with possible ties to the Chinese government supply local communications infrastructure, a perspective also penned by eight US senators back in August. "DoD is very concerned about China's emerging cyber capabilities and any potential vulnerability within or threat to DoD networks," the Department of Defense told the publication, without naming Huawei or ZTE directly. We're not doctors, but it sounds like someone's got a serious case of supercomputer envy.

Sprint axes Huawei, ZTE telecom bids due to security fears in Washington? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Submission + - NoSQL Solution: A Handy Evaluation Guide [CHART] (perfectmarket.com)

Submitted by archivedigger
archivedigger writes: I had pre-determined requirements for the NoSQL 'solution-to-be' before I started looking:

        * Fast data insertion. Some data sets in our content processing platform may contain hundreds of millions of rows (KV pairs), although each row may be small. If data insertion is slow, populating a data set into the database may take days, which would not be acceptable.
        * Extremely fast random reads on large datasets. This is key to achieving short content processing time.
        * Consistent read/write speed across the whole data set. What this means is that the speed should not favor certain parts of a data set due to how data is stored or indices are organized.
        * Efficient data storage. The ratio of the database size (after original data is loaded into database) to original data size should be as low as possible.
        * Scale well. Our content processing nodes in EC2 may spawn a large number of concurrent threads hitting data nodes, which requires data nodes to scale well. Also, not all data sets are read-only. Some data nodes must scale well under moderate write load.
        * Easy to maintain. Our content processing platform utilizes both local and EC2 resources. Packaging code, setting up data and running different types of nodes in different environments is not easy. The 'solution-to-be' must be easy to maintain to fit in the highly automated content processing system.
        * Have a network interface. A library solution is not sufficient.
        * Stable, of course.
I started looking without any bias in mind since I had never seriously used any of the NoSQL solutions. With some recommendations from fellow co-workers, and after reading a bunch of blogs (yes, blogs), the journey of evaluation started with Tokyo Cabinet, then Berkeley DB library, MemcacheDB, Project Voldemort, Redis, and finally MongoDB.
Government

Income Tax Quashed, Ballmer To Cash In Billions 650

Posted by Soulskill from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.
theodp writes "Washington's proposed state income tax not only prompted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to spend $425,000 of his own money to help crush the measure at the polls, it also inspired Microsoft to launch a FUD campaign aimed at torpedoing the initiative. 'As an employer, we're concerned that I-1098 will make it harder to attract talent and create additional jobs in Washington state,' explained Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith. 'We strongly support public education, but we're concerned by key details in I-1098. This initiative would give Washington one of the top five highest state income tax rates in the country. I-1098 would apply this tax rate to all income, including capital gains and dividends, and would not permit any deductions for charitable contributions.' Nice to see a company take a principled stand, backed by a CEO who's not afraid to put his money where his company's mouth is, right? Well, maybe not. Just three days after the measure went down in flames, Ballmer said in a statement that he plans to sell up to 75 million of his Microsoft shares by the end of the year to 'gain financial diversification and to assist in tax planning.' Based on Friday's closing price of $26.85, the 75M shares would be valued at approximately $2 billion. All of which might make a cynic question what was really important to Microsoft — public education, or a $2B state income tax-free payday for its CEO?"
Transportation

EPIC Files Lawsuit To Suspend Airport Body Scanner Use 559

Posted by Soulskill from the shut-up-it's-cold-here dept.
nacturation writes "The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a petition for review and motion for an emergency stay, urging the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to suspend the Transportation Security Administration's full body scanner program. EPIC said that the program is 'unlawful, invasive, and ineffective' (PDF). EPIC argued that the federal agency has violated the Administrative Procedures Act, the Privacy Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Fourth Amendment. EPIC cited the invasive nature of the devices, the TSA's disregard of public opinion, and the impact on religious freedom."
Google

Google Sues US Gov't For Only Considering Microsoft 407

Posted by Soulskill from the do-not-pass-go dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Late last week, Google sued the US government for putting out a Request For Quotation for the messaging needs of the Department of the Interior that specified only Microsoft solutions would be considered. Google apparently had spent plenty of time talking to DOI officials to understand their needs and make sure they had a solution ready to go — and were promised that there wasn't a deal already in place with Microsoft. And then the RFQ came out. Google protested, but the protest was dismissed, with the claim that Google was 'not an interested party.'"
The Internet

Information Rage Coming Soon To an Office Near You 201

Posted by CmdrTaco from the just-having-a-bad-day dept.
digitaldc submitted the latest excuse to get a few days off: "A survey released this week revealed the latest affliction to hit white-collar workers. It's called 'information rage,' and almost one in two employees is affected by it. Overwhelmed by the torrent of data flooding corporate workplaces, many are near the breaking point. The aftermath of all this is the deterioration in quality that occurs when flustered employees — unable to sort through a pile of information fast enough — end up submitting work that's substandard. Almost three quarters of the survey's respondents declared their work has suffered as a result."
Iphone

Xbox 360 Jailbreaker May Need Real Jailbreak 359

Posted by Soulskill from the root-root-root-for-the-home-team dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Back in July, the Librarian of Congress officially made it legal to jailbreak your iPhone (or any phone). So why is it that the government is trying to prosecute Matthew Crippen for jailbreaking Xbox 360s? If convicted, he could face up to three years in prison, and lawyers are trying to prevent the author of a book about jailbreaking the original Xbox from testifying in Crippen's defense. What kind of law says it's okay to jailbreak the phone in your pocket, but not your gaming console?"
Government

Some Countries Want To Ban 'Information Weapons' 321

Posted by kdawson from the treaty-to-suppress dept.
DrgnDancer sends in an NPR piece on recent efforts to control so-called "information weapons" on the Internet. What's interesting is that the term "information weapon," as defined by many of the countries trying to limit them, doesn't mean what you would think. It's closer to the old Soviet term "ideological aggression." "At a UN disarmament conference in 2008, Sergei Korotkov of the Russian Defense Ministry argued that anytime a government promotes ideas on the Internet with the goal of subverting another country's government — even in the name of democratic reform — it should qualify as 'aggression.' And that, in turn, would make it illegal under the UN Charter. 'Practically any information operation conducted by a state or a number of states against another state would be qualified as an interference into internal affairs,' Korotkov said through an interpreter. 'So any good cause, like [the] promotion of democracy, cannot be used as a justification for such actions.' The Russians, and a lot of other countries such as Iran and China, apparently consider the free exchange of information to be an information technology threat. One that must be managed by treaty."
Government

US Couple Arrested For Transmitting Nuclear Secrets In Sting Operation 372

Posted by timothy from the when-alabama-gets-the-bomb dept.
DesScorp writes "Recalling the famous Rosenberg nuclear spy case of the '50s, the US Justice Department has arrested a couple working at a 'leading nuclear research facility' for giving nuclear secrets to Venezuela. Pedro and Marjorie Mascheroni 'have been indicted on charges of communicating classified nuclear weapons data to a person they believed to be a Venezuelan government official and conspiring to participate in the development of an atomic weapon for Venezuela,' the department said in a statement. If convicted, the couple would receive life in prison."

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