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Microsoft

China Gives Microsoft 20 Days To Respond To Competition Probe 79

Posted by samzenpus from the explain-yourself dept.
An anonymous reader writes "China has given Microsoft three weeks to explain "compatibility issues" in Windows and Office that could violate Chinese competition laws. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) questioned Microsoft Vice President David Chen and gave the company a deadline to make an explanation, the agency said in a short statement on its website. Microsoft's use of verification codes also spurred complaints from Chinese companies. Their use "may have violated China's anti-monopoly law", the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday."

Submission + - Study: Antarctic Sea-Level Rising Faster Than Global Rate

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Melting ice is fuelling sea-level rise around the coast of Antarctica, a new report in Nature Geoscience finds. Near-shore waters went up by about 2mm per year more than the general trend for the Southern Ocean as a whole in the period between 1992 and 2011. Scientists say the melting of glaciers and the thinning of ice shelves are dumping 350 billion tonnes of additional water into the sea annually. This influx is warming and freshening the ocean, pushing up its surface. "Freshwater is less dense than salt water and so in regions where an excess of freshwater has accumulated we expect a localised rise in sea level," explained Dr Craig Rye from the University of Southampton, UK, and lead author on the new journal paper.
Space

Saturn's F Ring Is Now Three Times As Wide As During the Voyager Flybys 41

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-bigger dept.
KentuckyFC writes In 1980 and 1981, Voyager 1 and 2 flew past Saturn providing unprecedented images of its magnificent ring system. At that time, its most distant discrete ring, the F ring, was about 200 kilometres wide. But puzzlingly, images sent back by Cassini show that the ring is now 580 kilometres wide and twice as bright as it was thirty years ago. Now astronomers think they have finally solved the mystery of the expanding F ring. The ring is shepherded by a number of small moons, the most famous of which is Prometheus. These moons interact gravitationally with the ring creating structures such as braids and spokes. The new thinking is that the moons' orbits resonate with the F ring, pushing clouds of dust and ice further away from Saturn. This makes the ring wider. But beyond a certain radius the orbit of the dust becomes unstable and it begins to spiral back towards Saturn and collides with the rest of the ring. This causes a chain reaction of collisions that dramatically increases the number of particles in the ring and hence its brightness. This theory also leads to a prediction--the resonant process is currently at a maximum but should reduce sharply in the coming years, if the theory is correct. So by 2018, the F ring should be back to the same configuration the Voyagers saw in 80/81.

Submission + - China gives Microsoft 20 days to respond to competition probe

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: China has given Microsoft three weeks to explain "compatibility issues" in Windows and Office that could violate Chinese competition laws. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) questioned Microsoft Vice President David Chen and gave the company a deadline to make an explanation, the agency said in a short statement on its website. Microsoft's use of verification codes also spurred complaints from Chinese companies. Their use "may have violated China's anti-monopoly law", the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.
Biotech

The Passenger Pigeon: A Century of Extinction 108

Posted by samzenpus from the coming-soon dept.
An anonymous reader writes On September 1, 1914, Martha, the last passenger pigeon was found dead in her aviary at the Cincinnati Zoo. When the first European settlers arrived in North America at least one of every four birds on the continent was a passenger pigeon, making them the most numerous birds in North America, and perhaps in the world. From the article: "But extinction apparently doesn't ring with the finality it used to. Researchers are working to 'de-extinct' the bird. They got their hands on some of the 1,500 or so known passenger pigeon specimens and are hoping to resurrect the species through some Jurassic Park-like genetic engineering. Instead of using frog DNA to fill out the missing parts of a dinosaur's genetic code as in Michael Crichton's story, the real-life 'bring-back-the-passenger pigeon' researchers are using the bird's closest relative, the band-tailed pigeon.
Government

Hacker Disrupts New Zealand Election Campaign 75

Posted by samzenpus from the throwing-a-wrench-in-the-works dept.
An anonymous reader writes New Zealand is facing its weirdest election ever with a hacker calling himself "Rawshark" progressively dumping emails hacked from a controversial blogger. This weekend, revelations forced the resignation of one Government minister and nobody knows what will drop next. Emails revealed that the blogger, called "Whale Oil", was in contact with both a government minister in charge of New Zealand's white collar crime investigations unit and with a PR man acting for a founder of a failed finance company then under investigation.
Cloud

Apple Said To Team With Visa, MasterCard On iPhone Wallet 187

Posted by samzenpus from the pay-your-way dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news about a possible partnership between Apple and major credit card companies. Apple plans to turn its next iPhone into a mobile wallet through a partnership with major payment networks, banks and retailers, according a person familiar with the situation. The agreement includes Visa, MasterCard, and American Express and will be unveiled on Sept. 9 along with the next iPhone, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The new iPhone will make mobile payment easier by including a near-field communication chip for the first time, the person said. That advancement along with Touch ID, a fingerprint recognition reader that debuted on the most recent iPhone, will allow consumers to securely pay for items in a store with the touch of a finger.
The Internet

Grand Ayatollah Says High Speed Internet Is "Against Moral Standards" 542

Posted by samzenpus from the slow-it-down dept.
An anonymous reader writes A Grand Ayatollah in Iran has determined that access to high-speed and 3G Internet is "against Sharia" and "against moral standards." However, Iran's President, Hassan Rouhani, plans to renew licenses and expand the country’s 3G cellular phone network. A radical MP associated with the conservative Resistance Front, warned: “If the minister continues to go ahead with increasing bandwidth and Internet speed, then we will push for his impeachment and removal from the cabinet.” “We will vigorously prevent all attempts by the [communication] minister to expand 3G technology, and if our warnings are not heeded, then the necessary course of action will be taken,” he added.

Submission + - Apple Said to Team With Visa, MasterCard on iPhone Wallet

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple plans to its next iPhone into a mobile wallet through a partnership with major payment networks, banks and retailers, according a person familiar with the situation. The agreement includes Visa, MasterCard, and American Express and will be unveiled on Sept. 9 along with the next iPhone, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The new iPhone will make mobile payment easier by including a near-field communication chip for the first time, the person said. That advancement along with Touch ID, a fingerprint recognition reader that debuted on the most recent iPhone, will allow consumers to securely pay for items in a store with the touch of a finger.
Books

XKCD Author's Unpublished Book Remains a Best-Seller For 5 Months 169

Posted by samzenpus from the big-before-it-was-big dept.
destinyland writes Tuesday is the official release date for the newest book from the geeky cartoonist behind XKCD — yet it's already become one of Amazon's best-selling books. Thanks to a hefty pre-order discount, one blogger notes that it's appeared on Amazon's list of hardcover best-sellers since the book was first announced in March, and this weekend it remains in the top 10. Randall Munroe recently announced personal appearances beginning this week throughout the U.S. (including Cambridge, New York, Seattle, and the San Francisco Bay Area) — as well as a Google Hangout on Friday, September 12. Just two weeks ago he was also awarded the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story — and now many of his appearances are already sold out.
Yahoo!

Yahoo Stops New Development On YUI 79

Posted by samzenpus from the end-of-the-line dept.
First time accepted submitter dnebin writes Yahoo announced that they will cease new development on their javascript framework YUI, bowing to industry trends towards Node.js, Angular, and others. The announcement reads in part: "The consequence of this evolution in web technologies is that large JavaScript libraries, such as YUI, have been receiving less attention from the community. Many developers today look at large JavaScript libraries as walled gardens they don't want to be locked into. As a result, the number of YUI issues and pull requests we've received in the past couple of years has slowly reduced to a trickle. Most core YUI modules do not have active maintainers, relying instead on a slow stream of occasional patches from external contributors. Few reviewers still have the time to ensure that the patches submitted are reviewed quickly and thoroughly."
Bitcoin

The Apache Software Foundation Now Accepting BitCoin For Donations 67

Posted by samzenpus from the a-different-way-to-give dept.
rbowen writes The Apache Software Foundation is the latest not-for-profit organization to accept bitcoin donations, as pointed out by a user on the Bitcoin subreddit. The organization is well known for their catalog of open-source software, including the ubiquitous Apache web server, Hadoop, Tomcat, Cassandra, and about 150 other projects. Users in the community have been eager to support their efforts using digital currency for quite a while. The Foundation accepts donations in many different forms: Amazon, PayPal, and they'll even accept donated cars. On their contribution page the Apache Software Foundation has published a bitcoin address and QR code.
Earth

DNA Reveals History of Vanished "Paleo-Eskimos" 57

Posted by samzenpus from the back-in-the-day dept.
An anonymous reader writes The earliest people in the North American Arctic remained isolated from others in the region for over 4,000 years before vanishing around 700 years ago, new analysis shows. The study also reveals that today's Inuit and Native Americans of the Arctic are genetically distinct from the region's first settlers. "A single founding population settled, and endured the harsh environmental conditions of the Arctic, for almost 5,000 years — during which time the culture and lifestyle changed enough to be represented as distinct cultural units," explained Dr Maanasa Raghavan, first author of the new paper.
United States

Feds Want Nuclear Waste Train, But Don't Know Where It Would Go 258

Posted by samzenpus from the put-that-anywhere dept.
mdsolar writes with news of a plan to move radioactive waste from nuclear plants. The U.S. government is looking for trains to haul radioactive waste from nuclear power plants to disposal sites. Too bad those trains have nowhere to go. Putting the cart before the horse, the U.S. Department of Energy recently asked companies for ideas on how the government should get the rail cars needed to haul 150-ton casks filled with used, radioactive nuclear fuel. They won't be moving anytime soon. The latest government plans call for having an interim test storage site in 2021 and a long-term geologic depository in 2048. No one knows where those sites will be, but the Obama administration is already thinking about contracts to develop, test and certify the necessary rail equipment.
Censorship

Ukraine Asks Zuckerberg to Discipline Kremlin Facebook Bots 254

Posted by samzenpus from the bot-breaker dept.
mi writes "Ukrainian media is reporting (link in Ukrainian), that Facebook is getting increasingly heavy-handed blocking Ukrainian bloggers. The likely explanation for the observed phenomenon is that Facebook's Ukrainian office is located in Russia and is headed by a Russian citizen (Catherine Skorobogatov). For example, a post calling on Russian mothers to not let their sons go to war was blocked "Due to multiple complaints". Fed up, Ukrainian users are writing directly to Zukerberg to ask him to replace Catherine with someone, who would not be quite as swayed by the "complaints" generated by Russian bots.

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