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Submission + - Obama one-time tax on $2 trillion US companies hoard overseas

mrspoonsi writes: President Barack Obama's fiscal 2016 budget would impose a one-time 14 percent tax on some $2 trillion of untaxed foreign earnings accumulated by U.S. companies abroad and use that to fund infrastructure projects, a White House official said. The money also would be used to fill a projected shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund. "This transition tax would mean that companies have to pay U.S. tax right now on the $2 trillion they already have overseas, rather than being able to delay paying any U.S. tax indefinitely," the official said. "Unlike a voluntary repatriation holiday, which the president opposes and which would lose revenue, the president’s proposed transition tax is a one-time, mandatory tax on previously untaxed foreign earnings, regardless of whether the earnings are repatriated." In the future, the budget proposes that U.S. companies pay a 19 percent tax on all of their foreign earnings as they are earned, while a tax credit would be issued for foreign taxes paid, the official said.

Submission + - Microsoft Tops Expectations With Record Revenue (google.com)

jones_supa writes: Microsoft soared to record revenues in Q4/2013, confounding Wall Street forecasts on the back of strong demand for Xbox consoles, Surface tablets and Internet cloud services. The US-based technology titan reported net income of $6.56 billion on revenue that hit a record high of $24.52 billion in the quarter that ended December 31. 'Our Commercial segment continues to outpace the overall market, and our Devices and Consumer segment had a great holiday quarter,' said outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer. Sales of Surface tables more than doubled from previous quarter, and Bing's share of the Internet search market grew to 18.2%, but money made from selling Windows software to computer makers slid down by 3%. Microsoft reported that cloud services to businesses and consumers posted 'strong growth'. All in all, Microsoft shares climbed more than 3% to $37.37 in after-market trades on the Nasdaq following release of the earnings figures.

Submission + - Court Says Craigslist Sperm Donor Must Pay Child Support

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: David Stout reports at Time Magazine that what began with a Craigslist ad from a lesbian couple calling for a sperm donor in rural Topeka, Kansas ended in court on Wednesday with a judge ordering the sperm donor to pay child support. The Kansas Department for Children and Families filed the case in October 2012 seeking to have William Marotta declared the father of a child born to Jennifer Schreiner in 2009 so he can be held responsible for about $6,000 in public assistance the state provided, as well as future child support. "In this case, quite simply, the parties failed to perform to statutory requirement of the Kansas Parentage Act in not enlisting a licensed physician at some point in the artificial insemination process, and the parties' self-designation of (Marotta) as a sperm donor is insufficient to relieve (Marotta) of parental right and responsibilities to the child," wrote Judge Mattivi. Marotta opposed that action, saying he had contacted Schreiner and her partner at the time, Angela Bauer, in response to an ad they placed on Craigslist seeking a sperm donor and signed a contract waiving his parental rights and responsibilities. "We stand by that contract," says Defense attorney Swinnen adding that the Kansas statute doesn't specifically require the artificial insemination be carried out by a physician. "The insinuation is offensive, and we are responding vigorously to that. We stand by our story. There was no personal relationship whatsoever between my client and the mother, or the partner of the mother, or the child. Anything the state insinuates is vilifying my client, and I will address it."

Submission + - Windows 8 And Windows 8.1 Pass 10% Market Share, Windows XP Falls Below 30%

An anonymous reader writes: With the release of Windows 8.1 to the world in October, Microsoft ended 2013 with two full months of availability for its latest operating system version. While Windows 8.1 is certainly growing quickly and eating into Windows 8s share, the duo has only now been able to pass 10 percent market share, while Windows 7 seems to be plowing forward unaffected. The latest market share data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 made steady progression in December 2013, gaining a combined 1.19 percentage points (from 9.30 percent to 10.49 percent). More specifically, Windows 8 gained 0.23 percentage points (from 6.66 percent to 6.89 percent), while Windows 8.1 jumped 0.96 percentage points (from 2.64 percent to 3.60 percent).

Submission + - Backdoor discovered in Netgear and Linkys routers, NSA? (github.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: "Reverse engineer Eloi Vanderbeken a backdoor in the Linksys WAG200G router, that give access to the admin panel without authentication. Further research shows that these devices are made by Sercomm, meaning that Cisco, Watchguard, Belkin and various others maybe affected as well. The first NSA backdoor?"

Submission + - Why Snapchat and Its Ilk Face a Revenue Conundrum (slashdot.org)

Nerval's Lobster writes: Snapchat managed to attract a lot of buzz in 2013—perhaps more than any other app on the market—and it’s easy to see why: in these paranoid times, with the NSA allegedly sniffing around the world’s collective inbox, and lots of software on the market designed to snoop into people’s lives, it’s comforting to have an app that’ll vaporize your messages within seconds of their opening. Snapchat’s executives see the startup’s future as so bright, in fact, that they reportedly turned down a $3 billion buyout from Facebook. But whether Snapchat eventually accepts a buyout offer, or tries to parlay its popularity into some sort of IPO, it faces a rather unique problem: how do you make money off a free app that near-instantly vaporizes all content? Snapchat could emulate enterprise-centric vaporizing-message firms such as Silent Circle and start charging for subscriptions, but that would probably kill the service; a multitude of free rivals would likely spring up, with the express purpose of stealing irate customers away. More likely, Snapchat will probably launch some sort of display ad system, similar to what Facebook and Twitter have now—but given how it doesn’t store user information on its servers, it’ll probably be hard to monetize its users as extensively as those social networks. With that in mind, Snapchat might be left with two options going forward—either expand its services in a radical new (and more profitable) direction, or sell to a Tech Big Fish for a whole lot of money.

Submission + - The Mysterious Malware that Jumps Airgaps

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Dan Goodwin writes at Ars Technica about a rootkit that seems straight out of a science-fiction thriller. According to security consultant Dragos Ruiu one day his MacBook Air, on which he had just installed a fresh copy of OS X, spontaneously updated the firmware that helps it boot. Stranger still, when Ruiu then tried to boot the machine off a CD ROM, it refused and he also found that the machine could delete data and undo configuration changes with no prompting. Next a computer running the Open BSD operating system also began to modify its settings and delete its data without explanation or prompting and further investigation showed that multiple variants of Windows and Linux were also affected. But the story gets stranger still. Ruiu began observing encrypted data packets being sent to and from an infected laptop that had no obvious network connection with—but was in close proximity to—another badBIOS-infected computer. The packets were transmitted even when the laptop had its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards removed. Ruiu also disconnected the machine's power cord so it ran only on battery to rule out the possibility it was receiving signals over the electrical connection. Even then, forensic tools showed the packets continued to flow over the airgapped machine. Then, when Ruiu removed internal speaker and microphone connected to the airgapped machine, the packets suddenly stopped. With the speakers and mic intact, Ruiu said, the isolated computer seemed to be using the high-frequency connection to maintain the integrity of the badBIOS infection as he worked to dismantle software components the malware relied on. It's too early to say with confidence that what Ruiu has been observing is a USB-transmitted rootkit that can burrow into a computer's lowest levels and use it as a jumping off point to infect a variety of operating systems with malware that can't be detected. It's even harder to know for sure that infected systems are using high-frequency sounds to communicate with isolated machines. But after almost two weeks of online discussion, no one has been able to rule out these troubling scenarios, either. "It looks like the state of the art in intrusion stuff is a lot more advanced than we assumed it was," says Ruiu. "The take-away from this is a lot of our forensic procedures are weak when faced with challenges like this. A lot of companies have to take a lot more care when they use forensic data if they're faced with sophisticated attackers."

Comment Re:My question (Score 1) 63

If only things were so simple. Hey, I'm sure if Africans had a nice stable democracy, with a ludicrously powerful dollar to return to, then they would go home to. The poster before me had simply asked why people in Zimbabwe didn't leave, and we've both given him part of the answer.

Comment Re:My question (Score 1) 63

One thing that I discovered on my visits to Africa is that it can be extremely difficult for Africans to get visas to enter other counties. They don't have the freedom of movement that we enjoy. On top of that, many will have responsibilities to support relatives (social security in Zim is very limited), so leaving ain't as easy as it might first appear.

Submission + - Civil disobedience against mass surveillance (nzherald.co.nz)

nut writes: We're all aware of how much surveillance we are under on the internet thanks to Edward Snowden. Gehan Gunasekara, an associate commercial law professor at Auckland University in New Zealand, wants all to start sending suspicious looking but meaningless data across the internet to overload these automated surveillance systems. Essentially he is advocating a mass distributed Bayesian poisoning attack against our watchers. I'm curious, what do Slashdotters think of the practicality of this?

Submission + - Office for Android: Pretty but woefully incomplete (citeworld.com)

mattydread23 writes: The new Office 365 app for Android, launched a week ago, has a super nice UI, but lacks a bunch of basic features and has some really weird oversights — including a classic Microsoft dialog box that offers a choice that makes no sense. Overall, it feels like a half-hearted effort and that the company is still trying to drive users to Windows Phone.

Submission + - The World's First Road-Powered Electric Vehicle Network Is Now Open (vice.com) 1

Daniel_Stuckey writes: South Korea continues to pull out all the stops on the long road to a high-tech utopia. Last year, the city Yeosu hosted the Expo 2012, an international exhibition that highlighted emerging technology and design that attracted 8 million visitors over three months. Today, the nation has finally unveiled the world's first road-powered electric vehicle network for regular use.

Here's how it works. The network runs on newly-built roads that have electric cables and wires embedded below the surface. This allows for the magnetic-resonance transfer of energy to the network's vehicles, which not only already run on small batteries (about a third of the size of a typical electric vehicle, or EV) but also do not require the plug-in-and-recharge process common to other electric cars. Read more: #ixzz2bD7cPKTq Follow us: @motherboard on Twitter | motherboardtv on Facebook

Submission + - The Big Def Con Question: Would You Work for the NSA? (vice.com)

Daniel_Stuckey writes: Premier hacker conference Def Con, which just wrapped up its 21st year, played host to security professionals who all had very different opinions on what the NSA is up to. In fact, the only thing everyone could agree on is that the PRISM revelations came as no surprise.

Even if it isn't news to this crowd, it is still a significant development in the general climate of government surveillance and national security. And at Def Con, where government recruitment was hampered this year by conference founder Jeff Moss's requesting that feds stay away, it seemed like a good idea to walk around asking people if they would still want to work for the NSA.

Submission + - Fukishama Springs Water Leak

sl4shd0rk writes: The Japanese Fukishama crisis took a turn for the worse this week as it was found a barrier built to contain contaminated water has been breached; a leak defined by 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium. This is yet another problem on top of a spate of errors plauging the 2011 nuclear disaster site. Nuclear regulatory official Shinji Kinjo has cited Tokyo Electric Power Company as having a "Weak sense of crisis" as well as hinted at previous bunglings by TEPCO as the reason one cannot "just leave it up to Tepco alone". If Nuclear energy is ever to move forward, these types of disasters need to be eliminated. Is the ongoing saga of Fukishama a problem which can be cured with appropriate technology, or are disasters like this simply the element of cost vs. risk in the business of nuclear energy?

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