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Showing posts from January, 2013
YouTube Set to Introduce Paid Subscriptions This Spring A New Revenue Model For TV Networks and Video Producers By: Jason Del Rey  Published: January 29, 2013 A new chapter in online video is about to begin. YouTube is prepping to launch paid subscriptions for individual channels on its video platform in its latest attempt to lure content producers, eyeballs, and advertiser dollars away from traditional TV, according to multiple people familiar with the plans. YouTube has reached out to a small group of channel producers and asked them to submit applications to create channels that users would have to pay to access. As of now it appears that the first paid channels will cost somewhere between $1 and $5 a month, two of these people said. In addition to episodic content, YouTube is also considering charging for content libraries and access to live events, a la pay-per-view, as well as self-help or financial advice shows. It's not clear which channels will be part
Java: How to fix your biggest Internet security risk 1/27/2013 The weekly - sometimes daily - security scares that occur with the Java programming language are starting to remind me of the old whack-a-mole arcade game. Researchers or hackers discover a major flaw in Java. Java's developer, Oracle, whacks it with a patch. Another mole pops up. Oracle whacks it with a patch. Many experts say Oracle is losing this game, or isn’t trying very hard to win. And computer users are paying the price. When a vulnerable version of Java is active in a Web browser, visiting a compromised website is all it takes for crooks to sneak malware on to your computer. In most cases, you won't even know the site is compromised until it's too late. Here's how to stay safe: Stop using Java - or stay on top of the upgrades and use Java a lot more guardedly. I'm going to help you do just that. But first: What the heck is Java, and why is it capable of scalding your computer?
Storing Digital Data in DNA ·           Updated January 24, 2013, 8:41 a.m. ET Technique One Day May Replace Hard Drives as Web Leads to Information Deluge By   GAUTAM NAIK Scientists have stored audio and text on fragments of DNA and then retrieved them with near-perfect fidelity—a technique that eventually may provide a way to handle the overwhelming data of the digital age. The scientists encoded in DNA—the recipe of life—an audio clip of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a photograph, a copy of Francis Crick and James Watson's famous "double helix" scientific paper on DNA from 1953 and Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. They later were able to retrieve them with 99.99% accuracy. The experiment was reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. "All we're doing is adapting what nature has hit upon—a very good way of storing information," said Nick Goldman, a computational biologist at the European Bioinformatics Ins
Child labour "uncovered" in Apple's supply chain Internal audit reveals 106 children employed at 11 factories making Apple products in past year Juliette Garside, telecoms correspondent The Guardian, Friday 25 January 2013 14.22 EST Apple has discovered multiple cases of child labour in its supply chain, including one Chinese company that employed 74 children under the age of 16, in the latest controversy over the technology giant's manufacturing methods. An internal audit found a flipside to the western consumer's insatiable thirst for innovative and competitively priced gadgets. It uncovered 106 cases of underage labour being used at Apple suppliers last year and 70 cases historically. The report follows a series of worker suicides over working conditions at Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles must-have products such as the iPad and iPhone, and lethal explosions at other plants. Apple's annual supplier report – which monitor
France studies new tax measures on web giants By Leila Abboud PARIS | Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:26pm EST (Reuters) - France plans to study different measures to collect more tax from global Internet companies, including a new type of levy on the personal data of web surfers that the likes of Google and Facebook use to make money. In a 150-page report commissioned by the government of Socialist President Francois Hollande in July, two experts laid out a series of recommendations for measures at the national and international level to limit technology companies' ability to avoid tax legally. The government said it would now evaluate the feasibility of the various policies with the aim of proposing a law by year-end to modify how global Internet companies are taxed in France. It added that France would work with countries in the G20, the OECD and the European Union to adapt international tax regimes to the "new reality of the Internet economy". "This r
The latest Java zero-day hole ascended to the level of a national security threat. Has the tipping point for Java finally come? Why the Java threat rang every alarm By InfoWorld Tech Watch Created 2013-01-18 03:00AM If the IT industry had a color-coded threat-level advisory system, the alerts would have spiked to red this week -- and in a way they did when the Department of Homeland Security, no less, urged users to disable or uninstall Java [1] because of a serious security vulnerability. Judging by the ensuing avalanche of ink (mea culpa for adding to the pileup), you might think this attack took the industry by surprise. Far from it -- as Twitter engineer and security expert Charlie Miller told Reuters [2], "It's not like Java got insecure all of a sudden. It's been insecure for years." Java was responsible for half of all cyber attacks [3] last year in which hackers broke into computers by exploiting software bugs, according to Kaspersky Lab, a
Jan 18, 6:32 PM EST IRS LOSES LAWSUIT IN FIGHT AGAINST TAX PREPARERS BY MATTHEW BARAKAT ASSOCIATED PRESS FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) -- A federal judge on Friday barred the IRS from imposing a series of new regulations, including a competency exam, on hundreds of thousands of tax preparers. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington ruled against the IRS in favor of three tax preparers who filed suit last year with the help of a libertarian legal group, the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice. Since 2011, in response to what it says has been a growing problem of poorly done returns, the IRS has sought to impose a series of new regulations on tax preparers. That included a requirement to pass a qualifying exam, paying an annual application fee, and taking 15 hours annually of continuing-education courses. Attorneys and certified public accountants would have been exempt from the regulations. The Institute for Justice argued that the IRS lacked the sta
CBS Forced CNET To Drop Its 'Best Of CES 2013' Winner, The DISH Hopper  - Reporter quits over CBS interference 1/14/2013 @ 4:10PM The ‘Hopper’ not only could have been a contender, it would have won CNET’s Best of CES award. Instead, CBS told the editors to do a re-vote. According to a report by The Verge, CNET editors had already voted on their Best of CES winner when news came down from corporate that they had to change their vote and drop the “Hopper” entirely. The device, developed by the DISH Network, gives television viewers the ability to “hop” over commercials. It’s hardly surprising that it might win a few awards—after all, skipping commercials is one reason people have DVRs, TiVo and used to record shows on their VCRs way-back-when. But apparently CBS (along with a number of other major networks) are in the midst of litigation with DISH over the Hopper, and when the suits at the top learned that the pesky editorial staff at CNET had picked the Ho
Skyscanner We picked the Skyscanner flight search engine as one of our most   invaluable booking sites , and its mobile app   is just as good. Skyscanner searches the major airline sites as well as online travel agencies (OTAs) for the lowest fares. Just daydreaming? You can also search from your home airport to "everywhere" and see a list of the cheapest flights on certain dates to destinations all over the world.   (Free for Apple, Android, Windows, and Blackberry)   Google Translate Instantly translate more than 65 languages—speak a phrase into your phone and it will read it back in another tongue, or read foreign scripts with the   Google Translate   app, perfect for traveling to countries where you don't speak the language. You can even use the app's conversation mode to converse in a foreign language with a native speaker or fellow traveler.   (Free for Apple and Android)   RoadNinja Save gas (and never drive miles off an interstate only to
Holiday PC sales slide for first time in 5 years By Bill Rigby  1/11/2013 Holiday-season sales of personal computers fell for the first time in more than five years, according to tech industry tracker IDC, as Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system failed to excite buyers and many instead opted for tablet devices and smartphones. The slump caps a miserable year for PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard Co, Lenovo Group and Dell Inc, which saw the first annual decline for more than a decade with no immediate signs of relief. It underscores an unspectacular launch for the latest version of the Windows franchise, which Microsoft is banking on to fight off incursions into the PC arena by touch-friendly devices such as Apple Inc's iPad. "The sense is that until Windows 8 is fully installed and prices start to come down, we will be in this state of negative dynamics in the PC market," said Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Still