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c0lo writes:

Jean Louis Gassée (I'll mention here only the creation of BeOS as one of his achievements) runs a piece of opinion on his blog, stating that Satya Nadella's latest message to the Microsoftians show his dire need for an editor. A 3000+ words message, full of MBA-speak my engineering mind had huge difficulties in staying awake while trying to read it, so I'm highly obliged to Gassée in his attempt to analyze the text and extract a possible/plausible "translation":

With all this in mind, let's see if we can restate Nadella's message to the troops:


This is the beginning of our new FY 2015 and of a new era at Microsoft.
I have good news and bad news.
The bad news is the old Devices and Services mantra won't work.
For example: I've determined we'll never make money in tablets or smartphones.

So, do we continue to pretend we're "all in" or do we face reality and make the painful decision to pull out so we can use our resources including our integrity to fight winnable battles? With the support of the Microsoft Board, I've chosen the latter. We'll do our utmost to minimize the pain that will naturally arise from this change. Specifically, we'll offer generous transitions arrangements in and out of the company to concerned Microsoftians and former Nokians.

The good news is we have immense resources to be a major player in the new world of Cloud services and Native Apps for mobile devices. We let the first innings of that game go by, but the sting energizes us. An example of such commitment is the rapid spread of Office applications and related Cloud services on any and all mobile devices. All Microsoft Enterprise and Consumer products/services will follow, including Xbox properties.

I realize this will disrupt the status quo and apologize for the pain to come. We have a choice: change or be changed.


Stay tuned.

Or words (about 200) to that effect.

keplr writes:

One of the more disturbing revelations to come out of the recent leaks by Edward Snowden is the fact that the the NSA and GCHQ specifically target social media and online forums using a variety of methods to sway domestic public opinion and manufacture false consensus for government actions. SN, being a relatively small and new website, probably isn't currently being targeted, but as a growing site it is almost guaranteed to be targeted at some point in the future. GCHQ programs have already been the subject of media reporting.

What methods, if any, could be deployed to spot these techniques and government agents? The tech-savvy, pro-privacy, niche that this website caters to probably makes it a particularly important potential target, and the threat will scale exponentially as SN's community expands in size and influence. I would like to see SN foster a culture of pro-active defense and vigilance. We know this sort of manipulation happens, being aware of it is the first step to neutralizing its pernicious effects. At the very least, I think we need keep the conversation going, so that it remains in the foreground of our collective consciousness.

AnonTechie writes:

Ars Technica reports:

The US Secret Service is warning hotel operators to be on the lookout for malware that steals passwords and other sensitive data from guests using PCs in business centers, according to a published report.

The non-public advisory was issued on last Thursday, KrebsOnSecurity reporter Brian Krebs reported Monday. Krebs said the notice warned that authorities recently arrested suspects who infected computers at several major hotel business centers around Dallas. In that case, crooks using stolen credit card data to register as hotel guests used business center computers to access Gmail accounts. From there, they downloaded and installed keylogging software. The malware then surreptitiously captured login credentials for banking and other online services accessed by guests who later used the compromised PCs.

The report is a poignant reminder why it's rarely a good idea to use public PCs for anything more than casual browsing of websites. Even when PCs are within eyesight of a business center employee, librarian, or other supervisor, and even when it is locked down with limited "guest" privileges, there are usually a host of ways attackers can compromise machines running either Windows or Mac OS X.

AnonTechie writes:

This seems to be one of the biggest cases of scientific misconduct ever:

On July 8, scientific publisher SAGE announced that it was retracting a whopping 60 scientific papers connected to Taiwanese researcher Peter Chen, in what appears to be an elaborate work of fraud.

This case is one of what appears to be a recent spate of scientific malfeasance. So what's going on here? Is this just a uniquely bad run? Or does the recent spate of scientific misconduct point to a flaw in the peer-review process? Vox.com provides a rundown.

The Chen case is quite astounding. Publisher SAGE announced it was retracting 60 papers from 2010-2014 in the Journal of Vibration and Control, which covers acoustics, all connected to Peter Chen of National Pingtung University of Education, Taiwan.

Chen allegedly created up to 130 fake email accounts to create a 'peer review and citation ring'.

lhsi writes:

The BBC reports on the rise in smartphone use and what is being called "dumbwalking"; where smartphone users focus on their smartphone entirely and walk almost blindly. A journalist tries it out on purpose and although initially worried about people walking into him, he notices that most others crossing the road get out of his was just in time.

Japan has been a late adopter when it comes to smartphones, but it's catching up quickly - already more than half the population owns one. But Tokyo is a crowded city, and warnings are being issued about the risk of mass collisions among phone-using pedestrians at one busy crossing.

Researchers here have found people don't just walk more slowly when they're on smartphones, their field of vision is reduced to 5% of what it should be, and some are worrying what this means for Shibuya.

Recently the Japanese mobile giant NTT Docomo released a simulation of what would happen there if everyone crossing was doing the smartphone walk.

There would be more than 400 collisions every time, it said, and most likely just 36% of people would get across. Orderly Japanese society as we know it, would be at an end.

Michael Cucek is a consultant who has lived here for more than 20 years. In his spare time, he writes a popular political blog called Shisaku that has recently been littered with posts about what he calls "dumbwalking".

He told me dumbwalking probably wouldn't be a long-term problem.

Japanese phone etiquette is in fact better than anywhere else in the world - hardly anyone speaks on their phones on trains, and teenagers wouldn't dare broadcast music out of one.

If things got truly bad at Shibuya, the police would just start patrolling the crossing shouting at people to look up. Until that does happen, though, he's going to carry on ranting.

SpaceMan writes:

The BBC reports:

Scotland could host the UK's first dedicated base for spaceplanes, according to new government plans.

Ministers want to establish the UK spaceport by 2018 — the first of its kind outside of the US.

For ministers and the space industry, the major interest in a UK spaceport is as a facility to enable satellite launches, but hopefully it would also become a centre for the new tourism initiatives from specialist operators such as Virgin Galactic and XCor.

Other relevant links: Space Port Scotland - Virgin Galactic - XCor

gewg_ writes:

One of Roy Schestowitz's pages pointed to work by Professor James Bessen.

Surveys of software developers find that most are opposed to patent protection for software. Why is this? Patents, after all, are supposed to aid inventors, and developers are the "inventors" in this important technology.

A look at the data makes it clear why patents are unpopular in the software industry. Most software developers and startup firms gain little from patents. The patent system is difficult to navigate, thanks to unclear rules about which patents cover which technologies. And the software industry has been swamped by lawsuits from litigious firms known as patent trolls.

Here are 9 charts that show why patents are such a problem in the software industry.

Does anyone know what caused the divot in charts 8 & 9 in 2003?

AnonTechie writes:

Phys.org is reporting on a breakthrough in the world's darkest material by British company Surrey NanoSystems.

Surrey NanoSystems describes its development as not just a black material but super-black. They are calling it Vantablack, and they are singling out its ability to be applied to lightweight, temperature-sensitive structures such as aluminum, absorbing 99.96% of incident radiation; that is, they said, believed to be the highest ever recorded.

This coating is made of carbon nanotubes - "each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair," wrote Ian Johnston in The Independent on Sunday. It's not what you see; it's what you don't see. If fact, you see nothing, period. "It is so dark that the human eye cannot understand what it is seeing," wrote Johnston. "Shapes and contours are lost, leaving nothing but an apparent abyss."

Randolph Carter writes:

The CIA, via their recently new twitter account have admitted to being the cause of unusual activity in the 50s. Norwegian news website The Local reports:

Sensational reports of UFO activity in the skies, that gripped Norway in the 1950s, are explained 60 years later.

The CIA has revealed sightings of mysterious flying crafts travelling at high speeds with flashing lights were actually test flights of US military aircraft.

Blackmoore writes:

Tech Dirt is pondering The Return Of SOPA.

You'd think that the IP Section of the ABA would understand things like fair use and copyfraud, but apparently not. Anyway, the document itself weighs in at a hefty 133 pages, and you can go through the whole thing, but it's basically setting the stage for trying to make internet companies copyright cops again, just as in SOPA.

There's much more in the paper, and it's well worth reading, to get a sense of what the ABA IP Section (a lot of entertainment industry lawyers are in there) are thinking about how to get a SOPA-like law through in the future (probably during the comprehensive copyright reform effort). To be fair, the paper is fairly comprehensive in its thinking, and at least mentions people being opposed to its reasoning and why (it even cites Techdirt multiple times...). It also pays some lip service to actually paying attention to those concerns, but nearly all of the actual recommendations bring back SOPA-like ideas. It's troubling to see that the overall lesson of SOPA was clearly not learned, and they're clearly planning to try, try again.

Even some of the comments are insightful "One possible positive outcome for the big internet companies like Google and Facebook if this or something like it passes is to offer the content companies a choice: indemnify us from this law you've passed or 100% of your content (legal or not) disappears from search, streaming, YouTube, social media, cloud storage, you name it. "

A Call For Action For Online Piracy And Counterfeiting Legislation (pdf) I should warn you that, according to the genius intellectual property experts at the ABA's IP Section, clicking on that link may be a violation of their copyright. It's not, of course, but that doesn't stop them from claiming it is at the beginning of the paper.

So here we are with SOPA whack-a-mole again. Aside from what the Bard advised how do we defeat this vampire again?

janrinok writes:

The Australian Government is considering what legislation, if any, is required to combat the protection of public privacy from the potential threats posed by drone aircraft. From the article:

Australian privacy law needs to be updated to take into account potential breaches of privacy by remotely piloted aircraft, a report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs has recommended.

[....]

The report stated that while remotely piloted aircraft can offer economic benefits and safety improvements, there were a number of incidents reported that raise questions about the safety of drones, and the potential privacy intrusions associated with the use of drones. Although the total number of drones in Australia is unknown, according to the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority (CASA) there are 110 commercial drone operators with 40 more applying to be drone operators in Australia as of June this year.

The report noted that Australian privacy law was limited in the protections offered against the invasive use of drones federally, with some state laws offering some protection by making it illegal in some circumstances to use a surveillance device to record or monitor private activities."The complexity of privacy laws generates considerable uncertainty as to the law's scope and effect. Evidence suggested that Australia's current privacy laws may not be sufficient to cope with the explosion of technologies that can be used to observe, record and broadcast potentially private behaviour," the report stated.

Ethanol-fueled writes:

The Intercept reports that GCHQ have developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, "amplify" sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be "extremist."

Included in those capabilities is an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. [ Submitter's note: This item is especially troubling because it allows the GCHQ to "force" a connection between two individuals, manufacturing an association and the scrutiny with which it comes ]

AnonTechie writes:

Australian fans pumped to see their team take on Spain during the first round of the World Cup were intrigued by the honeycomb-like machine that had replaced the standard manual search process at Arena de Baixada stadium in Curitiba, Brazil. They were less thrilled when the machine spotted the toy kangaroos they were trying to sneak into the match.

That machine is the Qylatron Entry Experience Solution, and it could soon replace a crappy experience of going through security checks at airports and other venues with one that's faster and less invasive. Instead of having a human poke around in your bag, the machine scans it for a variety of threats in just a few seconds. Searching those Aussies and other soccer fans may prove to be a watershed moment for the system, a successful test of how well it can spot trouble and move people through security, efficiently and with their dignity intact.

number6 writes:

I am interested in buying an 'iPad' type of device to use for only one specific purpose:

- Format the device and setup some kind of bare-bones operating system which allows me to...
- Copy 'Faststone Screen Capture' and 'Faststone Image Viewer' (x86 software) from my Windows XP computer into the device.
- Take photos using the built-in camera of the device and then edit/annotate/draw using 'Faststone Screen Capture' inside the device.
- Connect the device to my Windows XP desktop computer when I get home and copy out the images via USB cable.

That's it! ...I basically want something resembling a USB stick with a huge screen and some input/output controls ...or to put it another way, a mobile extension of my Windows XP desktop set up to run one single-minded task and all other functions removed/hacked/stripped out.

Does anybody have any tips, thanks.

P.S. :: I don't own any mobile devices, no tablet, no phone, nothing! ...I also have zero interest in Social Media, Cloud Computing, AppStores and anything else related to mobile internet connectivity.

janrinok writes:

Researchers looking at the use of nanoparticles to deliver drugs to precise regions of the body have made a potentially worrying discovery:

A simple change in electric charge may make the difference between someone getting the medicine they need and a trip to the emergency room at least if a new study bears out. Researchers investigating the toxicity of particles designed to ferry drugs inside the body have found that carriers with a positive charge on their surface appear to cause damage if they reach the brain.

These particles, called micelles, are one type of a class of materials known as nanoparticles. By varying properties such as charge, composition, and attached surface molecules, researchers can design nanoparticles to deliver medicine to specific body regions and cell types and even to carry medicine into cells. This ability allows drugs to directly target locations they would otherwise be unable to, such as the heart of tumors. Researchers are also looking at nanoparticles as a way to transport drugs across the blood-brain barrier, a wall of tightly connected cells that keeps most medication out of the brain. Just how safe nanoparticles in the brain are, however, remains unclear.

So Kristina Bram Knudsen, a toxicologist at the National Research Centre for the Working Environment in Copenhagen, and colleagues tested two types of micelles, which were made from different polymers that gave the micelles either a positive or negative surface charge. They injected both versions, empty of drugs, into the brains of rats, and 1 week later they checked for damage. Three out of the five rats injected with the positively charged micelles developed brain lesions. The rats injected with the negatively charged micelles or a saline control solution did not suffer any observable harm from the injections, the team will report in an upcoming issue of Nanotoxicology.