Computers

It's graduation time, and everyone is sharing their best advice for graduates. So we decided to ask our editorial and senior staff here at Business Insider, "What do you wish someone had told you at graduation?" Our colleagues had a lot ...
It's graduation time, and everyone is sharing their best advice for graduates. So we decided to ask our editorial and senior staff here at Business Insider, "What do you wish someone had told you at graduation?" Our colleagues had a lot to say, from how important it is to take care of your finances to not worrying about the first five years after graduation (you read that correctly: the first five years aren't all that important, according to SAI Senior Editor Jay Yarow). But advice is all relative. As Politics Reporter Walter Hickey says, "Ignore all the advice. Statistics insist."Alyson Shontell, Senior Reporter, SAI "Join a startup when you graduate run by seasoned, smart founders. In an ideal world, you'll pick one that will grow far bigger than it is when you join it. Either way, you will get tremendous experience and get to try your hand at a number of different roles, which can help you decide what you actually want to do with your life. And if the company grows, your career can grow with it." Steve Kovach, SAI Editor "My advice is to not settle. There's a good chance your first job will be something you hate. If that's the case, don't stop looking until you land somewhere you can see yourself working for several years." Alex Davies, Transportation Reporter "Leave the country for at least a year. Chances are you can find a job in Europe, South America, or Asia teaching English. You'll have a good time, and won't have to worry about a career for a year. When you come back you will seem more interesting to everyone, including potential employers. It's not like you'll be missing out on a booming economy, either, and none of the people in my graduating class who left the country for a year had more trouble than usual finding a job upon their return." See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.
32 minutes ago
If you have tried to download a trailer from the Quicktime website lately and wondered why it wasn't possible, Apple has discontinued the option. Without announcing the upcoming action, Apple began phasing out the downloading options as ...
If you have tried to download a trailer from the Quicktime website lately and wondered why it wasn't possible, Apple has discontinued the option. Without announcing the upcoming action, Apple began phasing out the downloading options as of May 22nd. So, while older trailers can still be downloaded from the site, Apple appears to be removing downloads from older trailers as newer trailers are added, slowly phasing out the availability of trailer downloads altogether. Comments
about 1 hour ago
What does video tool Vine have in common with iconic rappers like the Beastie Boys and the Notorious BIG? More than you think. Like hip-hop, Vine is way to sample and collect culture — and it may have to run the same legal gambit t...
What does video tool Vine have in common with iconic rappers like the Beastie Boys and the Notorious BIG? More than you think. Like hip-hop, Vine is way to sample and collect culture — and it may have to run the same legal gambit that rappers did a decade ago. If you haven’t tried it, Vine is a tool to make looping, six-second video clips and post them on social media or a website. The company, which is owned by Twitter, launched in January and its videos have already become a part of the Tribeca Film Festival, the U.S. Senate and major marketing campaigns. A new video mash-up culture Vine exists because of new smartphone technology but it also replicates older forms of mashup culture. In particular, it mirrors what pioneering hip-hop artists started to do in the 1980s — taking sounds from myriad sources and sharing them through records like Paul’s Boutique and Ready to Die. Those hiphop records are aural tapestries that today stand as monuments to a new form of music and community. In the 2000s, however, copyright collectors came along and sued the rappers — resulting in a drawn-out debate over where to draw a line between culture and intellectual property theft. Hip-hop  largely prevailed but was damaged in the process. Now, a fight over a Vine video last month suggests history may repeat itself but this time, on the video front. The dispute involved the musician Prince using a law called the DMCA to force Vine to take down six-second concert clips posted by a fan. The fan didn’t oppose Prince’s takedown demand, meaning no has ruled on whether a six-second clip actually infringes copyright. But if a court did look at the Vine case, the decision process would lead right through hip-hop. Hip hop, copyright and six second samples In the 1990s, hip-hop artists called the sounds they use “samples.” Copyright owners, however, called it theft instead and sued the musicians. The conflicts led to important court decisions about music, but whose principles apply equally to Vine. As the Disco Project explained in a thoughtful analysis of the Prince case, the most relevant precedents involve the Notorious B.I.G. and the Beastie Boys. Both were involved in famous cases involving short samples. In the case of the Notorious B.I.G., a Tennessee court shut down store sales and radio plays of the late rapper’s “Ready to Die” album, and a jury awarded $4 million in damages — all over a three note horn riff. An appeals court, which had earlier written “get a license or do not sample,” upheld the verdict in 2007. As law professor Tim Wu explained at the time, the case and others like it were especially absurd because the copyright owner was not even a musician but a one-man corporation who had obtained the music rights under shady circumstances. Fortunately, in the case of the Beastie Boys, a California appeals court took a more rational approach to the issue and ruled that a six second (the same length as a Vine video!) flute sample on the song “Pass the Mic” didn’t infringe on copyright. The Supreme Court, in 2005, refused to reconsider the decision. The upshot, however, is that today we still don’t know for sure how long a sample can be before it infringes copyright. Twitter declined to comment on whether it believes Vine videos are covered by copyright law’s “fair use” exception, but a source familiar with the company told me that the decision to make the videos six seconds long was not a coincidence. Chilling our new visual culture The trouble with Prince’s request to take down the Vine videos is not so much the disappearance of the videos themselves — but instead that Vine and other forms of visual expression could meet the same fate as early hip-hop. When the Beastie Boys released their sample-stuffed 1989 masterpiece, Paul’s Boutique, the law was still in a gray area and no one was suing hi
about 1 hour ago
Just in time for the start of what has been predicted as a very active hurricane season for the East Coast, the weather satellite positioned to give accurate tracking information and imaging has gone dark. A backup satellite has been act...
Just in time for the start of what has been predicted as a very active hurricane season for the East Coast, the weather satellite positioned to give accurate tracking information and imaging has gone dark. A backup satellite has been activated, but does not have the view range of the failed satellite due to its particular geostationary orbit. The satellite fleets that meteorologists use to monitor severe weather and generate forecasts are aging. Replacements are scheduled to launch beginning in 2015, but between now and then there is growing concern "that we are going to end up with gaps in our coverage" Comments
about 2 hours ago
Remember the days of Buzz? It was Google's kinda-sorta social network that made Google Reader into a Twitter-type platform for sharing cool stuff online. Not too many people cared to use it, and in October 2011 Google announced that it'd...
Remember the days of Buzz? It was Google's kinda-sorta social network that made Google Reader into a Twitter-type platform for sharing cool stuff online. Not too many people cared to use it, and in October 2011 Google announced that it'd eventually discontinue the service. Finally and at long last, Google's determined that the time has arrived. Doors are closing on Buzz forever, and you'll receive a backup data file of all your posts saved to your Google Drive on or after July 17, 2013. Any active Buzz users out there better take note – your service is only guaranteed through July 17. For everyone else, you can go about continuing to live your lives. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »
about 2 hours ago
How much has Apple's iPhone camera improved over time? The makers of Camera+, a filtered-photos camera app for smartphones, did some cool tests to find out.Our first test is a a well-lit macro setting, to test the detail and quality of t...
How much has Apple's iPhone camera improved over time? The makers of Camera+, a filtered-photos camera app for smartphones, did some cool tests to find out.Our first test is a a well-lit macro setting, to test the detail and quality of the cameras This is a macro test using the very iPhone. Yuck. This one was taken by the second iPhone, the iPhone 3G. Better, but the detail is still really blurry. See the rest of the story at Business Insider Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.
about 2 hours ago
Maggie Philbin introduced a whole generation to the wonders of technology as a presenter on the BBC’s legendary Tomorrow’s World show in the 1980s. During her eight-year stint on the program, she demonstrated the mobile phone...
Maggie Philbin introduced a whole generation to the wonders of technology as a presenter on the BBC’s legendary Tomorrow’s World show in the 1980s. During her eight-year stint on the program, she demonstrated the mobile phone, in-car satellite navigation, digital photography and more, all for the first time on British television. Since then, she has stayed very much involved in technology. She currently presents the BBC’s popular science show Bang Goes the Theory, and she works to inspire a whole new generation of technologists with the TeenTech initiative that she co-founded. TeenTech inspires young people to consider careers in technology through events targeted at schools. It even partners teens with good ideas up with companies and organizations such as Airbus and NASA to help them develop their ideas under NDA. At the Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead, UK this week, I caught up with Philbin to hear more about TeenTech and how the technology industry and TV producers alike should be doing more to encourage young people to look at a technology career. Oh, and is the time right for Tomorrow’s World to return? As a bonus, here she is discussing some new thing called digital photography on Tomorrow’s World in 1985:
about 2 hours ago
Agree To Purchase Seagate Technology At $25, Earn 7.5%: Investors considering a purchase of Seagate Technology...
Agree To Purchase Seagate Technology At $25, Earn 7.5%: Investors considering a purchase of Seagate Technology...
about 2 hours ago
You should watch this video, which comes to us via CNET. There are only so many Google Glass units out there now, but imagine a world where they're even more plentiful than the smartphone – to not have one is to be less than whole....
You should watch this video, which comes to us via CNET. There are only so many Google Glass units out there now, but imagine a world where they're even more plentiful than the smartphone – to not have one is to be less than whole. Then you might very well have people taking pictures and videos so casually that they lose self-consciousness and get lost in the moment of just trying to take a good photo. The guy in this video is happy to demonstrate for you. Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »
about 2 hours ago
SEOUL, South Korea — This year, North Korea has been flaunting its nuclear hardware in an effort to extort concessions from the United States and South Korea. But the tactic has failed to provoke panic for one key reason: Officials...
SEOUL, South Korea — This year, North Korea has been flaunting its nuclear hardware in an effort to extort concessions from the United States and South Korea. But the tactic has failed to provoke panic for one key reason: Officials doubt that Pyongyang would be stupid enough to start a nuclear war. While nukes are better seen than used, and thus of limited blackmail value, dictator Kim Jong Un possesses a quieter weapon that’s more readily unleashed — and has already become a serious nuisance: cyber war. Experts say Pyongyang typically deploys it about once a year, although it’s not always clear that North Korea is behind the attacks. The most recent offensive hit Seoul in April 2013. The strike disabled anti-virus software, brought down ATMs across the country and froze online banking systems for days. About 30,000 computers had their hard drives wiped and went dead. In an Austin Powers-style twist, the malicious software displayed pixelated skulls on the monitors of infected machines. After initially saying the strike originated in China, officials tracked it to a specific Pyongyang neighborhood. A month before the assault erupted, they said, hackers had quietly planted a simple but devastating software program on computers at three South Korean television broadcasters and three banks. Authorities identified the code as a hard-drive wiper called “DarkSeoul,” first identified a year ago. Although this type of virus is relatively simple and has been around since the early 1980s, experts acknowledged that its impact was devastating. A computer security expert from Cisco, Seth Hanford, wrote that the “highly targeted” attack led to significant downtime and a “severe” loss of data. On April 12, North Korea denied it was the culprit, but the South has maintained the accusation. Although North Korea is among the poorest and most isolated countries, it is surprisingly adept at hacking — a testament to how dangerously accessible cyber warfare is to anyone that wants to pursue it. Training a cyber brigade, it turns out, does not demand high levels of tech sophistication, and is a handy way to pester a far stronger foe. A convenient arsenal On the Korean battlefield — which remains manned 60 years after the end of the shooting war that divided the Koreas — the North is indisputably outgunned and outmaneuvered. That fact has led Pyongyang to adopt a modified guerrilla warfare strategy. As the Pentagon described it in a May report to Congress: “North Korea uses small-scale attacks to gain psychological advantage in diplomacy and win limited political and economic concessions.” In the 1970s and 1980s, Pyongyang sent agents on risky operations to sabotage South Korean targets and hijack one South Korean civilian airliner. In November 2010, the north launched an artillery barrage at an island near the DMZ, and sunk a South Korean naval corvette in March 2010, leaving 46 South Korean sailors dead. Strikes like these, however, can provoke dangerous retaliation. In contrast, cyber warfare supports the nation’s military strategy, and carries less risk. A digital offensive requires a “very low developmental cost and can bring catastrophic results,” said Hyeong-wook Boo, an analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a think tank in Seoul. “The North Korean espionage team sees cyberspace as a very favorable place for its activities.” The threat has been looming since the late 1990s, when North Korea unleashed its first basic denial of service (DDoS) attacks on its neighbor. Since then, the computer plots have become somewhat more sophisticated, targeting South Korean banks and businesses with malware and throwing the occasional wrench in the markets. According to the National Intelligence Service, South Korea’s spy agency, the north was probably behind six cyber attacks from 2008 to 2012. Two of the largest came i
about 3 hours ago