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Operating Systems

Submission + - Intel porting Android to x86 for netbooks and slat (liliputing.com)

Submitted by timothy
timothy writes: According to Liliputing, Intel is bringing the sweet eye candy of Android to x86, which — if all goes well — means it will land on (more) netbooks and tablets soon. I'm more excited about ARM-based tablets, for their current advantage in battery life, but the more the merrier, when it comes to breaking up the tight circle of OSes available for any given arbitrary class of computing devices. Given all the OS swings that the OLPC project has gone through, maybe they should be thinking of Android, too.

Submission + - Apple Sues HTC Again Over Patents

Submitted by recoiledsnake
recoiledsnake writes: Apple is suing HTC again over patent infringement. Apple is adding two new patents to the twenty included in the earlier case while adding additional details to two patents already included previously. Although Android is not mentioned in any of the court documents, many of the patent infringement complaints refer to the software rather than the hardware that HTC manufactures, leading to speculation that Google is the real target, especially considering that Android sales are surpassing the iPhone's. With HTC countersuing Apple, Microsoft siding with HTC over Android, and Apple trying to stop import of Nokia phones, it seems like Apple has set off a patent Armageddon in the mobile space.

Submission + - US feds fear loss of ICQ honeypot (rt.com) 2

Submitted by AHuxley
AHuxley writes: US law enforcement bodies view the sale of instant messaging service ICQ to a Russian company as a threat to homeland security.
The US notes it is sure that most criminals use ICQ and, therefore, constant access to the ICQ servers is needed to track them down.
As the system is based in Israel, American security service have had access.
In spring 2010, Russia’s largest Internet investment company, Digital Sky Technologies purchased of the service for $187 million from AOL

Submission + - Most effective troll ever hits G20 security (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by
epiphani
epiphani writes: "Byron Sonne of Toronto, was arrested today by a task force of around 50 police officers associated with the G20 summit taking place this week. An independent contractor, IT security specialist and private investigator, he had notable ties to the Toronto technology and security communities. According to friends and associates, he had been purchasing goods online and speaking with security groups about building devices to collect unencrypted police broadcasts and relay them through twitter, as well as other activities designed to test the security of the G20 summit. By all accounts, it would appear that Mr. Sonne had no actual malicious intent. In Canada, the summit has been garnering significant press for the cost and invasive nature of the security measures taken."
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 3.6.4 released - Out-of-process plugins (mozilla.com)

Submitted by DragonHawk
DragonHawk writes: Mozilla Firefox 3.6.4 went to general release today. The big new feature in this release is out-of-process plugins (OOPP). This means things like Flash, Java, QuickTime, etc., all run in separate processes. So when Flash decides to crash, it won't take your browser out with it. If Flash jumps to hyperspace and starts consuming all the CPU it can find, you can kill it without nuking your browser session. Or if Flash just starts acting funny, you can restart it separately. I've been using this feature since it was in the "nightly build" stage, and it was *still* more stable than 3.6.3, just because Flash was isolated.
Microsoft

Submission + - Bill Gates Doesn't Work at Microsoft Anymore (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The recent Fortune article on Bill Gates' post-Microsoft life made one thing very clear to blogger Steven Vaughan-Nichols: 'Bill Gates was, and still is, the face of Microsoft. What Microsoft doesn't want you to know though is that Gates has almost nothing to do with the company anymore.' The fact is that Microsoft doesn't want to draw attention to Gates' absence because the company 'has been tanking in recent years,' says Vaughan-Nichols. 'While Microsoft's last quarter was far better than it was a year ago, thanks largely to Windows 7 finally picking up steam, neither Microsoft's growth nor its profits are what they were like when Gates was at the helm.'
Privacy

Submission + - Coming Soon: Web Ads Tailored to Your Zip+4 Read (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Your internet service provider knows where you live, and soon, it will have a way to sell your zip code to advertisers so they can target ads by neighborhood. If your local pizza joint wants to find you, they will have a new way to do that. National advertisers will be able to market directly to neighborhoods with like characteristics across the whole country using demographic data they’ve been gathering for decades.

Juniper Networks, which sells routers to ISPs, plans to start selling them add-on technology from digital marketer Feeva that affixes a tag inside the HTTP header, consisting of each user’s “zip+4 — a nine-digit zipcode that offers more accuracy than five-digit codes. Juniper hopes to sell the software to ISPs starting this summer, having announced a partnership with Feeva earlier this year.
Intel

Submission + - Intel says farewell to PCI bus (kingofgng.com)

Submitted by KingofGnG
KingofGnG writes: Soon another technology that in the past years dominated the always-changing universe of computer hardware will bite the dust. That’s the decision by Intel, the merciless executioner of standards which the company itself imposes on the market and that in the upcoming months will rule the end of official support for the PCI bus. Developed by the chipmaker in 1993, the PCI Local Bus standard has been implemented on all the motherboards for x86 and compatible platforms until 2004, the year when it passed on the baton to the younger and faster PCI Express technology.

Submission + - Out of control Job Responsibilities 5

Submitted by greymond
greymond writes: I was originally hired as an Online Content Producer to write articles for a company website as well as start up the company’s social media outlets on Facebook and Twitter. With budget cuts and layoffs I ended up also taking over the website facilitation for three of the company’s websites (they let go of the current webmaster). During this time the company has been developing a new website and I was handed the role of pseudo project manager to make sure the developer stayed on course with the projects due date. Now that we’re closer to launch the company has informed me that they don’t have the budget or staff in place to set up the web server and have tasked me with setting up the LAMP and Zend App on an Amazon EC2 setup, which while it’s been years since I worked this much with Linux I’m picking it up and moving things along. Needless to say I want to ask for more money, as well as more resources, as well as a better title that fits my roles, but what is the best way to go about this? Of course my other thought is that I'd much rather go back to writing and working with marketing than getting back into IT.
Power

Submission + - ITER Fusion Reactor Enters Existential Crisis

Submitted by deglr6328
deglr6328 writes: The long beleaguered experimental magnetic confinement fusion reactor ITER, is currently in what some are calling the worst crisis of its 25 year history. Still existing only on the paper of thousands of proposed design documents, latest cost estimates for the superconducting behemoth are soaring to nearly 20 billion USD; roughly twice the estimates of as recent as a few years ago. Anti-nuclear environmentalist organizations have seized upon the moment as an opportunity to use the current global economic crisis as a means to push for permanently killing the project. If ITER is not built, the prospect of magnetic confinement fusion as a technique to reach thermonuclear breakeven and ignition in the laboratory would be in serious question. Meanwhile, the largest laser-driven inertial confinement fusion project, the National Ignition Facility, has demonstrated the ability to use self generated plasma optical gratings to control capsule implosion symmetry with high finesse, and is on schedule to achieve ignition and potentially high gain before the end of the year.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Finally had to disable advertising

Journal by glassware

I really liked the option to continue displaying advertising on Slashdot. It was nice - I felt like I was allowing them to continue to get revenue from my browsing habit.
Security

Submission + - ATT Leaks emails addresses of 114,000 iPad Users

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Daily Tech reports that in what is one of the biggest leaks of email addresses in recent history, a group called Goatse Security has published the personal email addresses of 114,067 iPad 3G purchasers in what appears to be a legal fashion by querying a public interface that AT&T accidentally left exposed. Apparently AT&T left a script on their public website, which when handed an ICC-ID would respond back with the email address of the subscriber. This apparently was intended for an AJAX-style response inside AT&T's web apps. Gawker reports that it's possible that confidential information about every iPad 3G owner in the U.S. has been exposed. "This is going to hurt the telecommunications company's already poor image with iPhone and iPad customers, and complicate its very profitable relationship with Apple," writes Ryan Tate adding that the leak is likely unnerve customers thinking of buying iPads that connect to AT&T's cellular network. "Although the security vulnerability was confined to AT&T servers, Apple bears responsibility for ensuring the privacy of its users, who must provide the company with their email addresses to activate their iPads." In a statement, AT&T says that the issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and that they have essentially turned off the feature that provided the e-mail addresses. "We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose e-mail addresses and ICC IDS may have been obtained," says AT&T. "We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted.""

Submission + - Twitter API TOS to force routing clicks to Twitter (vambenepe.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter has announced that they will change the way they handle URLs in tweet. This has been widely reported, including the likely consequences for bit.ly. What has not received much attention, and was not in the official blog announcement (but in the google Twitter developers mailing list instead) is that the Terms of Service for all applications that use the Twitter API will be changed to require that any click on a URL in a Tweet be routed through a Twitter gateway, allowing Twitter to see exactly which links are followed and by whom.
Operating Systems

Canonical Developing Ubuntu OS For Tablets 228

Posted by timothy from the wheels-spinning-all-the-time dept.
snydeq writes "Canonical is preparing a version of the Ubuntu OS for tablet computers as the company looks to extend its presence in the mobile space, InfoWorld reports. The OS will be a lightweight version of Linux with a simplified, touch-friendly user interface, and tablets with the Ubuntu OS could become available late in winter 2011. The focus will be on developing an OS with a simplified user interface that provides quick access to the most-used applications. Development efforts will also focus on adding on-screen keyboard features and compatibility for multitouch drivers."
Firefox

Submission + - MS hides Firefox extension in toolbar update 2

Submitted by Jan
Jan writes: As part of its regular Patch Tuesday, Microsoft released an update for its various toolbars, and this update came with more than just documented fixes. The update also installs an add-on for Internet Explorer and an extension for Mozilla Firefox, both without the user's permission.

Ars Technica

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