Whether you love tweet seats or loathe them, you probably never thought they were patentable. But one company, Inselberg Interactive, insists it has already patented the seats, and is pressing Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam, Connecticut to license their patented platform or desist from hosting “tweet seats” nights
Groupon reveals lower revenue, admits internal controls ‘weakness’
In its SEC filing, Groupon said it sets aside a refund reserve by applying a financial model based on refund patterns from previous deals. The problem with this approach was that refund behavior started changing in late 2011 as the company introduced higher-priced deals, which required commensurately higher refund payouts when customers requested returns. Groupon was still modeling the size of its allowance on lower-priced deals.
via Groupon reveals lower revenue, admits internal controls ‘weakness’ – chicagotribune.com.
RIM’s Q4: Weak results, outlook and brutally honest CEO commentary
RIM gave the bears more ammunition to punish the stock. It’s trading below tangible book value and there’s no conceivable reason to expect that to change anytime soon. If anything, fears about RIM’s survival are becoming much more real.
I don’t mean to sound too harsh, but it’s obvious that a timely launch of BlackBerry 10 is RIM’s last chance. It’s a pretty GOOD chance, but if they screw it up we’re talking about break up value, take-out pricing and other less-than-ideal scenarios for investors.
via RIM’s Q4: Weak results, outlook and brutally honest CEO commentary | CrackBerry.com.
Hackers Can Steal Credit Card Information From Your Old Xbox, Experts Tell Us
So what should you do if you want to get rid of your Xbox 360 but you don’t want your personal information compromised? Podhradsky recommends detaching your 360’s hard drive, hooking it up to your computer, and using a sanitization program like Darik’s Boot & Nuke to wipe everything out. Just reformatting the system isn’t enough.
via Hackers Can Steal Credit Card Information From Your Old Xbox, Experts Tell Us.
Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing
DBAN is a self-contained boot disk that automatically deletes the contents of any hard disk that it can detect. This method can help prevent identity theft before recycling a computer. It is also a solution commonly used to remove viruses and spyware from Microsoft Windows installations.
DBAN prevents all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis. It does not provide users with a proof of erasure, such as an audit-ready erasure report.
Professional data erasure tools are recommended for company and organizational users. For secure data erasure with audit-ready reporting, contact Blancco or download a free evaluation license.
Darik’s Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing.
Chapter 4 The amazing em unit and other best practices
The foremost tool for writing scalable style sheets is the “em” unit, and it therefore goes on top of the list of guidelines that we will compile throughout this chapter: use ems to make scalable style sheets. Named after the letter “M”, the em unit has a long-standing tradition in typography where it has been used to measure horizontal widths. For example, the long dash often found in American texts (–) is known as “em-dash” since it historically has had the same width as the letter “M”. Its narrower cousin (-), often found in European texts is similarly referred to as “en-dash”.
The meaning of “em” has changed over the years. Not all fonts have the letter “M” in them (for example Chinese), but all fonts have a height. The term has therefore come to mean the height of the font – not the width of the letter “M”.
In CSS, the em unit is a general unit for measuring lenghts, for example page margins and padding around elements. You can use it both horizontally and vertically, and this shocks traditional typographers who always have used em exclusively for horizontal measurements. By extending the em unit to also work vertically, it has become a very powerful unit – so powerful that you seldom have to use other length units.
LG begins mass production of first flexible, plastic e-ink displays
The new plastic display has a resolution of 1024×768 and is six inches across the diagonal, which is comparable to the Kindle and Nook. Because it’s made of plastic and not glass, though, the LG display is half the weight (14g) and 30% thinner (0.7mm) than a comparable, glass e-ink panel. Existing e-book readers need to be thick (and heavy) to protect the glass display, but LG is promising that its display is a lot more rugged. The press release says that the plastic display survives repeated 1.5-meter drop tests and break/scratch tests with a small hammer, and that it’s flexible up to 40 degrees from the mid point.
via LG begins mass production of first flexible, plastic e-ink displays | ExtremeTech.
According to LG, the first plastic display-toting e-readers are expected to emerge in Europe “at the beginning of next month,” with the US presumably following swiftly after.
As 60th anniversary nears, tape reinvents itself
The Ultrium Linear Tape Open (LTO) specification, by far the most widely used tape spec in the industry, has a road map that takes tape out to 32TB per cartridge and up to 1.2GB/sec. throughput. “We’ve done a public demonstration of 29.5Gbits of data in a square inch of tape,” said Brian Truskowski, IBM’s general manager of system storage and networking. “We see a lot of headroom in terms of areal density.”
via As 60th anniversary nears, tape reinvents itself – Computerworld.
IETF explores new working group on identity management in the cloud
IETF explores new working group on identity management in the cloud.
A specification already exists for Simple Cloud Identity Management (SCIM) that is supported by security software vendors including Cisco, Courion, Ping Identity, UnboundID and SailPoint. SCIM also has support from key cloud vendors, including Salesforce, Google and VMware.
IETF attendees reengineer their hotel’s Wi-Fi network
What happens when a bunch of IETF super nerds show up in Paris for a major conference and discover their hotel’s Wi-Fi network has imploded?
They give it an Extreme Wi-Fi Makeover.