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Submission + - Netbooks vs. iPads -- can they coexist? - Computer (computerworld.com)

Submitted by bsk_cw
bsk_cw writes: According to Computerworld's Serdar Yegulalp, there has been a lot of talk about whether the iPad will take the place of the netbook — or, in fact, whether it will eat into the market share for more mainstream desktop and laptop computers. But, he continues, the iPad has a long way to go before it becomes a netbook killer — if only because it has created a space all its own.

Submission + - Assange asks for new lawyer, Denies blaming CIA (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Tootech
Tootech writes: Julian Assange has requested a new lawyer to represent him during a rape investigation in Sweden because his previous brief, Leif Silbersky, was not engaged enough with the case.

Assange wants Bjorn Hurtig to represent him as authorities continue to investigate the allegations, according to AP.

Various alleged Wikileaks insiders are busy giving anonymous briefings to the press in support of, or opposition to, Assange's continued role as spokesman for the organisation.

Assange told Sweden's TV4 that he had never blamed the CIA for the "smears".

He said: "I don't describe other people's private lives. I don't describe my own private life, because it's private. That is the correct discretion for all people to have and is certainly the correct discretion for a man to have. However I've never done anything unconsensual in my private life...in Sweden or anywhere else."
Earth

Submission + - BP's Gulf Spill Report Shows String of Failures (bp.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: News is out of BP's report on the gulf spill that shifts some of the blame on to other companies like Transocean that worked with BP in erecting the Deepwater Horizon rig. If you were affected by the spill, you might find the video, executive summary and 193 page report an interesting read. The summary outlines six or seven major failures in safety and engineering that all built up to the deaths of eleven workers and widespread contamination of the gulf. From incorrectly using seawater instead of drilling fluid to misinterpreting pressure test results, this report is just BP's side of the story as the blowout preventer has been pulled up and is still on its way to NASA where it will be analyzed by government investigators who will be able to compile their own report.
Government

Submission + - James Bond loses his laptop (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by superapecommando
superapecommando writes: GCHQ lost 35 laptops in one year, potentially containing highly sensitive data.
The UK’s electronic spy centre was today lambasted by MPs for having a “cavalier” attitude to data security. The centre is responsible for tracking the electronic communications of terrorists.
In a new report, the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee expressed concern that GCHQ appeared to be entirely unaware whether or not the computers, lost in 2008, contained top secret information on people posing an imminent security threat to the country.
Censorship

Submission + - China Warns Google: Obey or Leave (google.com) 3

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: China's top Internet regulator insisted Friday that Google must obey its laws or "pay the consequences," giving no sign of a possible compromise in their dispute over censorship and hacking.

"If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay the consequences," Li Yizhong, the minister of Industry and Information Technology, said on the sidelines of China's annual legislature.

"Whether they leave or not is up to them," Li said. "But if they leave, China's Internet market is still going to develop."

Li insisted the government needs to censor Internet content to protect the rights of the country and its people. "If there is information that harms stability or the people, of course we will have to block it," he said.

AP: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gKrY51vO2V86xiICf35Q05J0FIEAD9ED1NF80
Security

Submission + - HTC Google Phones Preinstalled with Malware (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Security researchers have found that Vodafone, one of the world's larger wireless providers, is distributing some HTC phones with malware pre-installed on them. The phone, the HTC Magic, runs the Google Android mobile operating system, and is one of the more popular handsets right now. A researcher at Panda Software received one of the handsets recently, and upon attaching it to her PC, found that the phone was pre-loaded with the Mariposa bot client. Mariposa has been in the news of late thanks to some arrests connected to the operation of the botnet.
Microsoft

Submission + - The secret origin of Windows (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: Windows has been so dominant for so long that it's easy to forget that Windows 1.0 was vaporware, mocked both outside and inside of Microsoft--and that its immediate successors were considered stopgaps until OS/2 was everywhere. Tandy Trower, the product manager who finally got Windows 1.0 out the door a quarter century ago has written a memoir of the experience. (He thought being assigned the much-maligned project was Microsoft's fiendish way of trying to get rid of him.) The story involves such still-signifcant figures as Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, and Nathan Myhrvold; Trower left Microsoft only in November of 2009 after 28 years with the company.
Government

Submission + - Terry Childs' Slow Road to Justice? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Deep End's Paul Venezia provides an update on the City of San Francisco's trial against IT admin Terry Childs, which — at eight weeks and counting — hasn't even seen the defense begin to present its case. The main spotlight thus far has been on the testimony of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. 'Many articles about this case have pounced on the fact that after Childs gave the passwords to the mayor, they couldn't immediately be used. Most of these pieces chalk this up to some kind of secondary infraction on Childs' part,' Venezia writes. 'Just because you give someone a password doesn't mean that person knows how to use it. Childs' security measures would have included access lists that blocked attempted logins from non-specified IP addresses or subnets. In short, it was nothing out of the ordinary if you know anything about network security.' But while the lack of technical expertise in the case is troubling, encouraging is the fact that the San Francisco Chronicle's 'breathless piece reporting on the mayor's testimony' drew comments 10-to-1 in Childs' favor, which may indicate that 'public opinion of this case has tilted in favor of the defense,' Venezia writes. Of course, 'if [the trial] drags into summer, Childs will have the dubious honor of being held in jail for two full years' This for a man who 'ultimately protected the [City's] network until the bitter end.'"
Security

Submission + - New 'Spear Phishing' Attacks Target IT Admins (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "A new breed of 'spear phishing' aimed at IT admins is gaining prevalence, with emails containing no obvious malicious links fooling even the savviest of users into opening up holes in their company's network defenses. The authentic-looking emails, which often include the admin's complete name or refer to a real project they are working on, are the product of tactical research or database hacks and appear as if having been sent by the company's hosting provider. 'In each case, the victim remembered getting a similar sort of email message when they first signed on with a service and, thus, thought the bogus message was legitimate — especially because their cloud/hosting providers keep bragging about all the new data centers they're continuing to bring online.' The phishing messages often include instructions for opening up mail servers to enable spam relaying, to disable their host-based firewalls, and to open up unprotected network shares. Certainly fodder for some bone-headed mistakes on the part of admins, the new attack 'makes the old days of hoax messages that caused users to delete legitimate operating system files seem relatively harmless.'"
The Internet

Europe To Block ACTA Disconnect Provisions 194

Posted by kdawson from the swing-and-a-miss dept.
superglaze writes "The European Commission is 'not supporting and will not accept' any attempt to have ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) force countries to disconnect people for downloading copyrighted material, a spokesman for the new EU trade commissioner has said. All the signs are that the new commission, which took office earlier this month, intends to take a hard-line stance against US proposals for a filesharing-related disconnection system. 'Three strikes' is allowed in EU countries, but not mandated by the European government itself, and it looks like the new administration wants to keep it that way. From trade commission spokesman John Clancy, quoted in ZDNet UK's article: '[Ac ta] has never been about pursuing infringements by an individual who has a couple of pirated songs on their music player. For several years, the debate has been about what is "commercial scale" [piracy]. EU legislation has left it to each country to define what a commercial scale is and this flexibility should be kept in ACTA.'"
Science

Submission + - Scientists Develop Financial Turing Test (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Various economists argue that the efficiency of a market ought to be clearly evident in the returns it produces. They say that the more efficient it is, the more random its returns will be and a perfect market should be completely random. That would appear to give the lie to the widespread belief that humans are unable to tell the difference between financial market returns and, say, a sequence of coin tosses. However, there is good evidence that financial markets are not random (although they do not appear to be predictable either). Now a group of scientists have developed a financial Turing test to find out whether humans can distinguish real financial data from the same data randomly rearranged. Anybody can take the test and the results indicate that humans are actually rather good at this kind of pattern recognition.

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