IT News

Well done chaps, no damage to society at all

The minister responsible for counter-terrorism has said that despite "some very nasty bastards out there who aim to do us harm", government security initiatives have made the UK safer from attacks in recent years.…

What is your recession sales strategy?

Trick-cyclist blasts Googleplex massage parlour

It's official. Proper actual science* has confirmed that the young Westerners of Generation Y (people now in their 20s) are idle, workshy loafers by comparison to their elders. They are also think that the world owes them a handsome living, having higher expectations of salary and status than their predecessors.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

Corporate crusaders for free speech unite

Mandybill Ian Livingston, the boss of Britain's biggest ISP BT, is lobbying for the government's proposed technical sanctions against filesharers to be replaced with fines.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Hardware guru wins computing's 'Nobel prize'

A Microsoft researcher was received the Turing Award in recognition for his pioneering work in personal computing hardware and networking technology development.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

An anonymous reader writes "Philippe Dauman, Viacom CEO and President, announced today that Harmonix is currently working on the next Rock Band game, Rock Band 3, due for release Holiday 2010. 'The company is pursuing the game in spite of an industry-weakening decline in the once-booming genre of peripheral-equipped music games. Although the franchise has generated over $1 billion to date, the category in general saw sales contract by as much as half throughout 2009. MTV Games parent Viacom also saw Rock Band declines drag on its balance sheet in its last fiscal quarter, and expressed a need to refocus away from pricey peripherals in favor of software. It also said that due to royalties it would need to be more "selective" about track listings, and that it needs more support from the music industry in that department.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sector inspector

Western Digital is to help Windows XP users more easily make the transition to so-called '4K' hard drive technology, the new standard for basic drive formatting.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Cyber Cynic: "I found it more than a little sad that someone in 2010 could still think that Linux is "still a non-starter on the desktop." Please — wake up: We're all Linux desktop users now."

WebOs goes native

Palm has released its Plug-in Development Kit, enabling native development for those who find AJAX just can't cut it.…

What is your recession sales strategy?

Connect-your-own-storage DVR too

Sharp will release the first of two Freeview HD set-top boxes at the end of April. It's also preparing a regular Freeview DVR that uses USB-connected storage to make it a doddle to transfer taped programmes to a PC.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Wife is 100% free range and foie gras fed

A New York chef is offering samples of cheese made from his wife's breast milk with the promise that it's "100 per cent organic, free range and foie gras fed".…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

daria42 writes "The Electoral Commission in the Australian state of Victoria has made plans to expand its use of electronic voting kiosks based on Linux in the next state election in November of this year. But it appears to be a little confused: the documentation states it will be using the '2.6 kernel/Gentoo release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.' Huh?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Warns of more bumps ahead

Gordon Brown is set to announce the Budget will happen at the end of the month, increasing the likelihood that the election will be on 6 May.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Kiss and don't tell

Celebrity publicist Max Clifford has agreed to accept a £1m plus payoff in exchange for dropping phone hacking allegations against the News of the World.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Turn left here and jump that red light

Google is offering a cycling option for users of its map service.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Worldlabel: "The Open Clip Art Library grew from a project between Jon Phillips (of Fabricatorz) and Bryce Harrington, in early 2004. From humble beginnings, it has evolved into a massive collection of over 24,000 scalable vector images, all created by 1200+ artists from around the world."

An anonymous reader writes "After a little over five months of pondering, xkcd fans have cracked a puzzle hidden inside Randall Munroe's recent book xkcd: volume 0. Here is the start of the thread on the xkcd forums; and here is the post revealing the final message (a latitude and longitude plus a date and time)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hard to resist

Review The flourishing Android operating system has appeared on phones made by Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG and HTC. Now Google has launched its own handset, though it’s actually made by HTC, which has made the bulk of Android handsets so far.…

Practical Matters discussed live

Webcast: 10am If virtualisation is creeping across your organisation you’ve presumably ticked some of the security boxes, right? Well, whether you have or not, you may still want to tune in to our webcast at 10am today: Virtualisation and Security: Practical Matters.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

Mirk writes "Computer-science legend Edsger W. Dijkstra famously wrote: 'It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.' The Reinvigorated Programmer argues that the world is full of excellent programmers who cut their teeth on BASIC, and suggests it could even be because they started out with BASIC."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Free Software Magazine: "There seems to be no respite from the predations of Microsoft FUD and the machinations of Big Business. Just when it seemed safe to come out of the closet and admit to being a user of free and open source software without being accused of being a Communist, it appears that we are now criminals too"