Canonical -- the commercial outfit behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution -- is offering a version of the open source operating system meant specifically for desktop PCs inside the world's businesses. "Ubuntu has been hot-rodded for business," says Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon.
Uptime Software on Monday began offering its uptimeCloud online monitoring and forecasting tool for Amazon Web Services (AWS), offering to help users avoid bill shock by letting them monitor usage throughout a given month.
Following ongoing public outcry and organized protests at Apple stores last week, Apple has announced that an organization called the Fair Labor Association is conducting independent assessments of worker conditions inside the factories of track record.
A new tool and web site launched today purports to clear some of the fog around the issue of online privacy. PrivacyChoice has analyzed more than a thousand of the most trafficked web sites to score them on a scale of 1 to 100 in their collection and use of personal data, as well as the collection and use practices of the third-party companies that they allow to track users on their sites.
The president's 2013 budget, released Feb. 13, asks for modest increases to some federal science agencies but trims funding to NASA. The request also takes a deep bite out of Mars and outer-planet science exploration.
The night sky seems unchanging to the naked eye, but beauty is hidden beyond the limits of unaided human perception. As Earth rotates, the sky moves, revealing astronomical events that only time-lapse photography -- a series of exposures lasting for minutes apiece -- can truly capture.
Gadget teardown site iFixit has disassembled the new Motorola Droid 4 smartphone, and says it offers "the best keyboard yet" in the Droid series. Repairability, however, will be difficult and expensive for the phone overall.
What happened to prehistoric, dolphin-like marine reptiles when they died? Did they sink or they float until the gases from decomposition blew up their bodies and scattered their bones? Laelaps blogger Brian Switek tries to pop the bubble of an ancient mystery.
The venture capital firm A-Team Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers says it is considering a fund for startups looking to deliver cloud services to enterprises. But it already invests in the cloud.
The U.S. military is almost entirely out of Iraq, with the exception of an office in Baghdad to sell the Iraqis American-made weapons. But it still wants to spend $3 billion-with-a-B in Iraq next year.
Unlike Netflix, Amazon isn't looking to compete with television cable channels in bidding on projects from established industry names; it's doing something more homespun, closer to YouTube or Fox, but with a professional sheen.
A hidden message in the newest trailer for kicked off a new viral campaign that hid Peter Parker's backpack in six U.S. cities: Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, and Seattle. Countdown clocks expiring on Valentine's Day imply that these cities will be seeing more from the webbed wonder soon.
Money for research and development is down. Cash for maintaining the military's aging and existing inventory of planes, trucks, guns and bombs that the military already is up. This is what happens when austerity comes to the Pentagon: an older, wheezing force -- for the low, low price of $613.9 billion.
Exclusive and first interview with the author of "The Command: Deep Inside the President's Secret Army." It promises to be the most definitive look so far at the Joint Special Operations Command -- the lethal force behind the Osama Bin Laden raid.
Art is usually considered a uniquely human ability, but that may not be true. Given the opportunity, animals like chimpanzees and gorillas and elephants produce abstract designs that arguably rise to artistic level.
Netflix unveiled , its first original series, to unwaveringly mixed reviews last week. Here are Lore Sj?berg's pitches for more-appropriate Netflix series.
A Senate staffer was tasked two years ago with compiling reports for a subcommittee about the number of times annually the Justice Department employed a covert internet and telephone surveillance method known as pen register and trap-and-trace capturing. But the records, which the Justice Department is required to forward to Congress annually, were nowhere in sight.That's because the Justice Department was not following the law and had not provided Congress with the material at least for years 2004 to 2008.
Which apps might Apple use to show off the brilliance of its new iPad 3 display? We've identified four key app categories that would be ideal for demo'ing the HD display.
SeaMicro's servers are unusual. But its manufacturing strategy is not. As Apple fights off countless complaints over the behavior of Foxconn, its Chinese manufacturing partner, the assumption is that electronics manufacturing only happens in Asia -- and most of it does. But smaller outfits such as SeaMicro are keeping their manufacturing operations right here in the US.
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Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
The Facebook data team has tracked which songs people in new relationships are most likely to play, as well as the songs they cue up following a breakup.
Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.
While you're curled up comfy in your bed each night, the crew of the International Space Station is getting unrivaled views of our planet. For anyone wishing they could see what the astronauts see, here are recent videos of the Earth at night taken from space.
Two recent Google Wallet hacks have brought the long-term viability of the platform into question.
Yahoo is hoping to build a facility in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska, where it will assemble its own servers and ship them to data centers it operates across the country, according to lawmakers and officials in the Midwestern state. These lawmakers have proposed a bill that would provide this facility with tax breaks, and though Yahoo has discussed its plans in full, the Nebraska bill opens another window onto how the web's biggest names juggle the massive amounts of servers needed to run their myriad online services.
Intel and the New York Attorney General's office have agreed to settle a 2009 lawsuit that accused the chip giant of violating federal and state antitrust laws. As part of the settlement, Intel has agreed to pay $6.5 million dollars to account for some of the court costs, but it has not admitted wrongdoing.
An anonymous reader writes "Jeffrey Rosen, Legal Affairs Editor for The New Republic, explains why the E.U.'s proposed data protection regulation known as the right to be forgotten is actually 'the biggest threat to free speech on the Internet in the coming decade.' In the Stanford Law Review Online (there's a shorter version in TNR), he writes: 'The right to be forgotten could make Facebook and Google, for example, liable for up to two percent of their global income if they fail to remove photos that people post about themselves and later regret, even if the photos have been widely distributed already. Unless the right is defined more precisely when it is promulgated over the next year or so, it could precipitate a dramatic clash between European and American conceptions of the proper balance between privacy and free speech, leading to a far less open Internet.' According to Rosen, the 'right' goes farther than previously thought, treating 'takedown requests for truthful information posted by others identically to takedown requests for photos I've posted myself that have then been copied by others: both are included in the definition of personal data as "any information relating" to me, regardless of its source.' Examples of previous attempts this might bolster include 'efforts by two Germans convicted of murdering a famous actor to remove their criminal history from the actor's Wikipedia page' and an 'Argentine pop star [who] had posed for racy pictures when she was young, but recently sued Google and Yahoo to take them down.'"
Last Friday, an article in Eurogamer about the Raspberry Pi's upcoming release threw a wrench in the mental gears of anyone hoping to soon order one of the long-awaited (and much anticipated) boards, which had been expected to be ready for orders sometime this month. The piece was based on an interview with David Braben — since picked up, and subsequently corrected, by others as well — and it gave the impression both that a sudden delay had cropped up in the schedule (so that the boards wouldn't be available for consumers until September), and that the price might rise as well. The Raspberry Pi site says that both of these were mistaken, and clarifies (with some bold print, even): "You will be able to buy a Raspberry Pi from the end of February, from this website. The 'consumer release' that Eurogamer is talking about is actually the educational release, which, as you’ll be aware if you’ve been hanging out on our forums, will come with a kid-targetted software stack, a heap of written support materials, and a standard case." That educational version sounds like it's got enough value added to justify a higher price and a longer wait, but you can unwrench those gears if you're just interested in the plain (unboxed) board instead.
New submitter KJE writes "The CBC is reporting that an Ontario teachers' union is calling for an end to new Wi-Fi setups in the province's 1,400-plus Catholic schools. The Ontario English Catholic Teacher's Association (OECTA) says computers in all new schools should be hardwired instead of setting up wireless networks. The OECTA, in its paper (PDF), said the 'safety of this technology has not thoroughly been researched and therefore the precautionary principle and prudent avoidance of exposure should be practiced.'"
eldavojohn writes "Twisted Metal designer David Jaffe gave a DICE Summit presentation in which he argued against 'games that have been intentionally made from the ground up with the intent and purpose of telling a story or expressing a philosophy or giving a designer's narrative.' He went on to say essentially that it's a waste of time and resources when the focus should be on gameplay, not story. While some parts of his presentation are warmly welcomed by the gaming community (like his instructions for game execs to get a BS filter), this particular point has some unsurprising opponents. His argument against a 'cinematic narrative' was probably strongest with his comparison to the movie Saving Private Ryan, where Spielberg made the Normandy Beach invasion scene as close to a documentary as possible. The audience could sit back and appreciate that. But if you made a game where the player is in that position of the soldier then that historically accurate imagery and top shelf voice acting doesn't really matter, the only thing the player should be thinking is 'How the **** do I get to that rock? How do I get to the exit?' Is Jaffe right? Have game makers been 'seduced by the power and language of film' at the expense of gameplay?"
astroengine writes "On Feb. 10, NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons probe entered the homestretch of its mission. When you are sprinting across the solar system, 'homestretch' is the final 1 billion miles of your journey. That sounds like quite a long stretch! But the half-ton spacecraft has already logged 2 billion miles since its launch in early 2006. That's twice the distance between Earth and Saturn. Though the icy dwarf planet is still three years away from its close encounter, mission scientists call this the Late Cruise phase of the flight."
If you have a startup idea kicking around in your head, you don't necessarily need to head for California, New York or Massachusetts to find venture capital. In today's video, Timothy Lord visits a venture capital firm called Detroit Venture Partners. (Yes, it's in Detroit.) This not an intimidating company, even though it has some big bucks and big names (including Magic Johnson) behind it. But this doesn't mean you need to rush to Detroit to fund your million-dollar idea. There are lots of local venture capital companies in the U.S. -- and chances are, wherever you are, there's one near you that's panting to invest in your can't-miss business opportunity.
An anonymous reader writes "Due to a decision made at Chamonix, the LHC will operate with a 4 TeV beam energy in 2012. This will allow them to collect as much data as possible (15 inverse femtobarns for ATLAS and CMS) before the whole accelerator complex gets shut down for about 20 months to prepare for even higher energies. 'By the time the LHC goes into its first long stop at the end of this year, we will either know that a Higgs particle exists or have ruled out the existence of a Standard Model Higgs,' said CERN's Research Director, Sergio Bertolucci. 'Either would be a major advance in our exploration of nature, bringing us closer to understanding how the fundamental particles acquire their mass, and marking the beginning of a new chapter in particle physics.'"
jfruh writes "Dan Tynan is a privacy blogger and longtime proponent of the use of browser plug-ins and other technologies that block advertisers from tracking your web browsing habits. He's also a professional tech writer who makes his living writing articles for free, ad-supported sites. But he doesn't feel those two facts are in conflict, and points out that users pay good money to ISPs for those 'free' sites."
redletterdave writes "If you were expecting a radically different-looking tablet from the iPad 2, prepare for a minor letdown. In the same way Apple upgraded the iPhone 4 into the iPhone 4S, the exterior of the iPad 3 mirrors that of the iPad 2, despite completely renovated and upgraded innards. iLab Factory reportedly provided Sharp with the necessary parts to build the high-resolution iPad 3 display, and in a company blog post, various iPad 3 components are displayed alongside those of the iPad 2 for quick comparison. In addition to a new camera mount that will reportedly match or improve upon the 8-megapixel camera system in the iPhone 4S, the post also revealed that the iPad 3 will be approximately 1 mm thicker than its predecessor to house Apple's upgraded components, including a bigger battery, an improved camera, and a dual-LED lit system to make the 2048 x 1536 display even brighter."
Knowing that ideas are a dime a dozen and eager to think outside the box, Hungary's central bank is burning old currency to help the needy. The bank has found that the 40-50 tons of currency that needs to be burned every year is a blessing in disguise for people caught between a rock and a hard place due to the extreme cold sweeping across Europe.
angry tapir writes "Sony's new CEO says the company needs to move on from its hardware roots. From its inception, the company has defined itself through its gadget lines — Walkman, Vaio, Cyber-shot, PlayStation — but incoming CEO Kazuo Hirai, who will officially lead the company from April, says Sony must now focus more on the software and platforms they access. He said he wants to model the company after its successful PlayStation gaming business, which he helped turn around, where 'hardware drives software, and software drives hardware, and it's all tied in by the network.' Sony is forecasting nearly US$3 billion in losses for the fiscal year through March."
walterbyrd writes "Apple Inc has asked a federal court in California to block Samsung Electronics Co Ltd from selling its new Galaxy Nexus smartphones, alleging patent violations. In a suit filed last week in San Jose, Apple said the Galaxy Nexus infringes on patents underlying features customers expect from its products. Those include the ability to unlock phones by sliding an image and to search for information by voice."