What Windows as a Service and a “free upgrade” mean at home and at work

Windows licensing is more or less straightforward in the consumer sphere. Oh, sure, there are complications surrounding self-built systems, but compared to the world of enterprise licensing, the range of options is limited and the pricing simple. Corporate licensing, however, is a whole other matter. We’ve been saying for some time that the process of updating and upgrading Windows is going to change in Windows 10, and perhaps unsurprisingly, this is going to have implications for Windows licensing. The underlying theme is this: Microsoft does not want the Windows market to be split between a bunch of different versions. For a brief period, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 were all both extant and actively supported Windows versions. This is bad for more or less the entire Windows world. It’s bad for developers of Windows software because they’re forced to choose between the best functionality (found in Windows 8.1) or the widest compatibility (target Windows XP). It’s bad for Microsoft, because it has to support all these versions. It’s bad, in many ways, for end-users, too; using old versions means that they don’t get the latest features, and in the case of Windows XP, they don’t even receive security updates. Read 22 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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What Windows as a Service and a “free upgrade” mean at home and at work

iTunes Connect bug logs developers in to other developers’ accounts at random

This morning, a number of developers signed in to Apple’s iTunes Connect service only to be greeted by a list of apps that didn’t belong to them. TechCrunch has a good roundup of tweets from affected developers —it seems that whenever developers signed in with their credentials, they were being granted access to other developers’ accounts at random. As of about noon Eastern today, Apple took the service down to resolve the problem. It also looks like developers won’t be able to submit new apps or invite new testers to TestFlight while iTunes Connect is down. Affected developers can check Apple’s System Status page for developers for updates while they wait for the problems to be resolved (no other developer services appear to be affected by the outage). We don’t yet know whether the outage was caused by some error on Apple’s end or by a security breach like the one that brought all developer systems down  in the summer of 2013 . We’ve asked Apple when the service will be back and what caused the login problem in the first place, and we’ll update this article as we have new details. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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iTunes Connect bug logs developers in to other developers’ accounts at random

FCC: Blocking Wi-Fi in hotels is prohibited

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission issued an “Enforcement Advisory” stating that blocking W-Fi in hotels is unequivocally “prohibited.” “Persons or businesses causing intentional interference to Wi-Fi hotspots are subject to enforcement action,” the FCC bluntly stated, referencing a dispute between Marriott and its customers who said the hotel chain had blocked their personal hotspots to force them to pay for Marriott’s Wi-Fi services. “The Enforcement Bureau has seen a disturbing trend in which hotels and other commercial establishments block wireless consumers from using their own personal Wi-Fi hot spots on the commercial establishment’s premises,” the FCC wrote. “As a result, the Bureau is protecting consumers by aggressively investigating and acting against such unlawful intentional interference.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FCC: Blocking Wi-Fi in hotels is prohibited

iOS 8.1.3 released, reduces the space you need to install updates

Apple has just released iOS 8.1.3, the third patch for iOS 8.1 and the sixth update to iOS 8 since its release. The most significant problem addressed by the new update is that it reduces the amount of free space that you need to install software updates, a problem which has proven especially irritating for owners of 8GB and 16GB iDevices. Currently, users who are using most of their storage either need to delete stuff or connect their phones to iTunes to perform updates, a throwback to pre-iOS 5 releases of the operating system. The update squashes a few other bugs too: it fixes problems keeping some users from entering their passwords for Messages and FaceTime; fixes a problem where Spotlight would stop showing locally installed apps among its search results (this is one we’ve run into); and fixes multitasking gestures for iPad users. Finally, 8.1.3 adds a few configuration options to limit iDevices’ functionality during standardized tests. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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iOS 8.1.3 released, reduces the space you need to install updates

PlayStation Now review: Sony finally proves streaming gaming is viable

When Sony launched its PlayStation Now service as a beta last year, the ridiculous per-game rental pricing structure stopped us from giving it any serious consideration almost immediately. Last week, though, the service graduated from beta with a more feasible all-you-can-play subscription plan . Suddenly this was an opportunity. Has the idea of running games on remote servers advanced at all since OnLive’s ahead-of-its-time launch back in 2010 ? We’ve been kicking the tires on the service for about a week now, and what we’ve found is a surprisingly compelling addition to the pay-per-game ownership model of retail discs and downloads. If you have the bandwidth and a yearning to sample some PS3 classics among the service’s somewhat limited initial selection on your PlayStation 4, PlayStation Now is well worth checking out. Performance When initially reviewing OnLive back in 2010 , running a game through the offering’s remote servers was a noticeably worse experience than running that same game locally. Even with a 20Mbps FiOS connection, our reviewer “could tell that the game was not running natively” thanks to “framerate bumps, sudden resolution drops, and gameplay blips.” Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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PlayStation Now review: Sony finally proves streaming gaming is viable

Verizon nears “the end” of FiOS builds

It’s been nearly five years since Verizon decided to stop expanding its FiOS fiber network into new cities and towns, so this week’s news won’t come as a huge surprise: Verizon is nearing “the end” of its fiber construction and is reducing wireline capital expenditures while spending more on wireless. “I have been pretty consistent with this in the fact that we will spend more CapEx in the Wireless side and we will continue to curtail CapEx on the Wireline side. Some of that is because we are getting to the end of our committed build around FiOS, penetration is getting higher,” Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said yesterday in the Q4 2014  call with investors . Wireline capital spending totaled $1.6 billion in the most recent quarter and $5.8 billion for 2014, down 7.7 percent from 2013, Verizon said. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon nears “the end” of FiOS builds

Making ultra-thin materials with holes the size of water molecules

While visiting GE’s China Technology Center, we got to take a look at reverse osmosis membranes. Reverse osmosis is the most energy-efficient means of removing dissolved substances from water. It’s what’s used commercially for desalination, the process of producing drinking water from seawater. The term “membrane” is typically used to mean a thin sheet of some material (in fact, the word “sheet” appears in the definition of the term). But for some of the things GE is using it for, the membranes were thin yet robust tubes, each one capable of supporting the weight of a bowling ball. Despite that toughness, features on the tubes are so fine that they can allow water molecules to pass through but reject many things that are roughly the same size, such as the salt ions found in seawater. This all raises an obvious question: how do you actually produce anything like that? We decided to look into the process of making reverse osmosis membranes. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Making ultra-thin materials with holes the size of water molecules

Google drops three OS X 0days on Apple

Don’t look now, but Google’s Project Zero vulnerability research program may have dropped more zero-day vulnerabilities—this time on Apple’s OS X platform. In the past two days, Project Zero has disclosed OS X vulnerabilities here , here , and here . At first glance, none of them appear to be highly critical, since all three appear to require the attacker to already have some access to a targeted machine. What’s more, the first vulnerability, the one involving the “networkd ‘effective_audit_token’ XPC,” may already have been mitigated in OS X Yosemite, but if so the Google advisory doesn’t make this explicit and Apple doesn’t publicly discuss security matters with reporters. Still, the exploits could be combined with a separate attack to elevate lower-level privileges and gain control over vulnerable Macs. And since the disclosures contain proof-of-concept exploit code, they provide enough technical detail for experienced hackers to write malicious attacks that target the previously unknown vulnerabilities. The security flaws were privately reported to Apple on October 20, October 21, and October 23, 2014. All three advisories appear to have been published after the expiration of the 90-day grace period Project Zero gives developers before making reports public. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google drops three OS X 0days on Apple

British spy agency captured 70,000 e-mails of journalists in 10 minutes

The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British sister agency of the National Security Agency, captured 70,000 e-mails of journalists in 10 minutes during a November 2008 test. According to The Guardian , which on Monday cited some of its Snowden documents as its source (but did not publish them), the e-mails were scooped up as part of the intelligence agency’s direct fiber taps . Journalists from the BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Sun , NBC, and The Washington Post were apparently targeted. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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British spy agency captured 70,000 e-mails of journalists in 10 minutes

Marriott tentatively backs off Wi-Fi blocking plans

In a brief statement on Wednesday evening , hotel chain Marriott International said that it would not block any personal Wi-Fi devices belonging to its customers. Marriott International listens to its customers, and we will not block guests from using their personal Wi-Fi devices at any of our managed hotels. Marriott remains committed to protecting the security of Wi-Fi access in meeting and conference areas at our hotels. We will continue to look to the FCC to clarify appropriate security measures network operators can take to protect customer data, and will continue to work with the industry and others to find appropriate market solutions that do not involve the blocking of Wi-Fi devices. Despite that pledge, Re/Code reports that the company is not rescinding a request for rulemaking that it submitted to the Federal Communications Commission late last year, in which it asked for the Commission’s blessing to block personal hotspots. In October, Marriott was fined $600,000 by the FCC following a complaint that one of its Nashville, Tennessee branches was interfering with and disabling personal Wi-Fi hotspots set up by its customers. Marriott agreed to pay the fine but remained defiant, asking the FCC to allow it to resume its practice. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Marriott tentatively backs off Wi-Fi blocking plans