Cloud service providers have previously drawn ire from environmentalists for not being transparent when it comes to the of their data centres. However, a new report from the University of Melbourne in Australia says that the real sustainability threat comes not from the growing demand for data centers to house cloud-ready infrastructure, but from the rising use of cellular and Wi-Fi networks to access cloud services. A 2012 report produced by Greenpeace titled "How Clean is Your Cloud?" argues that three of the biggest businesses delivering cloud-based offerings—Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft—are "rapidly expanding without adequate regard to source of electricity, and rely heavily on dirty energy to power their clouds."
The problem with Windows 8 sales isn't it's Windows Phone 8, says a Gartner analyst. As consumers move from PCs to tablets they are more likely to buy tablets with a familiar touch interface, says Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa. So users of phones are more likely to choose an Android tablet, Kitagawa says, and users of Windows Phone 8 devices are more likely to choose a Windows 8 tablet. But Windows Phone 8 lags far behind Androids and iPhones, so the coattail effect has less impact on Windows 8 tablet and PC sales than it would if Windows Phone 8 were more popular.
Unidentified hackers are said to have have launched a large-scale attack against WordPress blogs, and any hosts using weak passwords are urged to update them immediately. Security firms have been tracking an escalating number of "brute force" attacks against WordPress installations, which have been trying out logins such as "admin" and then running through thousands of commonly-used passwords to try to break in. "One of the concerns of an attack like this is that the attacker is using a relatively weak botnet of home PCs in order to build a much larger botnet of beefy servers in preparation for a future attack," security and website performance firm CloudFlare said in a Friday. Security firm Incapsula that infected sites are seeded with a backdoor that gives the attackers remote control of the site. "The infected sites then are conscripted into the attacking server botnet, and forced to launch password-guessing attacks against other sites running WordPress," the site reported.
. and accessories in our pockets and on our person everywhere we go. We "wear" them in our clothes. ScottEVest's Fleece 7.0, shown in a faux "X-ray view" makes it looks like you're carrying nothing, when you've really got everything. Although we carry the gadgets of 2013, our clothes are designed for the gadgets of 1913. For example, that tiny pocket in jeans above the right front pocket? That's for a .
also have another option from the Document Foundation. Specifically, LibreOffice 3.6 is currently the version of the free and open source productivity suite recommended for enterprises. On Thursday it got a significant update that fixes more than 50 bugs. “This new release is suited to the increasing number of organizations migrating to LibreOffice, which is steadily growing worldwide,” the Document Foundation noted in its announcement.
Who wants to be an adventurer, when you can be the NPC who owns the town the adventurers shop at? That's the premise of "Towns," and it's a damn good one. . You begin with some wandering civilians who enter an untamed wilderness and immediately begin chopping trees, mining stones, and butchering the wildlife. You till the fields, build homes, and set up complex production chains to keep your civilians alive, because they have all the survival instincts of lemmings. The civilians will trap themselves in pits. They will work to starvation. They will get stuck in suicide chains where one dies to a monster, so another feels compelled to go gather their bones, and then any more bones, and you give them weapons and armor so they stop dying quite so much. You tweak zones, production schedules, and task priorities to keep everyone happy and healthy. For example, a standard start-up sequence in Towns goes like this: Do some logging, create a zone for carpentry, build a carpenters' table and a wood detailer. Then mine some stone, and make a masonry area, and then make a mason's bench. Then till some fields, gather some wheat, and plant it. Then make a bakery, equipped with a mill, an oven, and a bakers table. Then you take wheat to the mill, which produces flour, which you then bake into bread, which your civilians can now eat.
The memory market is feeling the effects of a fall in PC shipments with the subsequent stabilization of DRAM prices, which industry observers say will delay the wide adoption of the upcoming DRAM called DDR4. The latest PCs and servers come with DDR3 SDRAM, and mobile devices have just started getting a type of low-power memory called LPDDR3 (low-power DDR3). DDR4 is the successor to DDR3, and consumes 20 percent to 40 percent less power while offering double the throughput of its predecessor. But with after years of double-digit drops, analysts said that DDR3 DRAM will likely have a longer-than-expected life, which could delay the wide adoption of DDR4 in computers. DRAM prices have stabilized as demand for DDR3 has exceeded supply, and the number of memory makers has also dwindled. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron dominate the DRAM market, while other memory makers have either been acquired or are focusing on the more profitable NAND flash business. The volume shipments of PCs and servers are not enough to justify an early switch to DDR4, analysts said. Also, a lot of focus is now on the fast-growing tablet and smartphone markets, so manufacturers are shifting capacity to LPDDR3 and other forms of mobile memory and storage.
Microsoft today urged Windows 7 users to uninstall a patch shipped earlier this week that has crashed customer's PCs and crippled the machines with endless reboots. The patch, which was originally issued Tuesday, has been pulled from Microsoft's Windows Update service. . Microsoft yanked the patch in response to widespread reports that it was generating the notorious "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD) error message and by rebooting repeatedly, making the PCs useless.
