Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco caught in the Dish-CBS crossfire



"The Big Bang Theory" star Kaley Cuoco doesn't mind making a few extra dollars endorsing products. Tweeting an ad to her 1.2 million Twitter followers is an easy way to pick up some spare change. Just as long as she isn't tweeting at Dish Network's behest about its ad-skipping Hopper DVR.


As first reported by TheWrap, Cuoco, or her representatives, deleted the following tweet after TheWrap inquired about it: "Amazing! Watching live TV anywhere on the #Hopper looks pretty awesome! Now where can I find a tiny beer? #ad."


Dish officials claim that Cuoco's tweet generated thousands of clicks from her followers to an informational site about the Dish product. "We felt Kaley was a good match for our brand and that her fans represented our customers and potential customers who would be interested in the benefits of Hopper," a Dish spokesperson told CNET in an email.


With the sponsored tweet touting the Dish Hopper, Cuoco got caught in the middle of a bitter, prolonged battle between CBS, which airs "The Big Bang Theory," and Dish, which offers a product that CBS (the parent company of CNET) and the other broadcast networks believe is illegal. The Dish Hopper features AutoHop, which allows users to automatically skip over ads on recorded programming. The networks contend that Dish doesn't have the right to tamper with advertising from broadcast replays for its own economic and commercial advantage. The lawsuits brought by CBS, Fox (News Corp.), NBC (Comcast), and ABC (Disney) so far have not stopped Dish from selling the Hopper, which the company says is in two million homes.


Read:
Fox asks court to block sales of Dish Hopper with Sling


Read: Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen: 'I don't want to kill ads'


In a press release, Dish CEO Joe Clayton accused CBS of demanding that the sitcom star remove the tweet: "Clearly, with this kind of response, consumers have a true interest in the types of innovations the DISH Hopper offers. It's a shame that CBS, despite its legacy, feels it needs to thwart this kind of consumer demand."


A CBS spokesperson denied the accusation: "Once again, Joe Clayton demonstrates his dubious gift for hyperbole and hucksterism. No demands were made, but it's clear that Dish's culture of fabrication is alive and well."


Cuoco so far has not addressed the question of why the Dish paid endorsement tweet was deleted. She may have come to the sudden realization that the sponsored tweet hit a sensitive nerve at CBS.


The Cuoco tweet delete comes on the heels of CBS' decision to have CNET disqualify the Dish Hopper with Sling as the winner of the Best of
CES award at the Consumer Electronics Show in January due to the parent company's ongoing litigation with Dish over the AutoHop technology.


In another bit of Dish guerrilla marketing Dish sponsored a car driven by Scott Speed in Sunday's Daytona 500 to get around the ban by the TV networks on advertising the Hopper product on their airwaves. The race was broadcast on the Fox network.


Last week, Fox Broadcasting amended its original lawsuit against Dish, asking the court to stop sales of the just-released Dish Hopper with Sling, which lets users watch programming on the go, over the Internet, and on mobile devices via its place-shifting Sling technology. A hearing is slated for March 22 to address Fox's amended claim.


Read:
CBS claims Dish concealed AutoHop ad-skipping technology


Read:
Editor's take: Dish Hopper with Sling


Read:
CEA back Dish in Hopper copyright lawsuit


Read More..

Manning makes sudden admission in WikiLeaks case

Updated at 12:14 p.m. ET

FORT MEADE, Md. An Army private charged in the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history offered guilty pleas Thursday to 10 of 22 charges against him and a military judge said she would allow the soldier to read a statement explaining his actions.

"I believe that if the general public ... had access to the information ... this could spark a domestic debate as to the role of the military and foreign policy in general," Manning said in court, according to the Reuters news service.

Pfc. Bradley Manning would plead guilty to sending hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, in violation of military regulations but not in violation of federal espionage laws.

The judge, Col. Denise Lind, must decide whether to accept the guilty pleas, which could carry a sentence of 20 years in prison. Prosecutors could still pursue a court-martial on the remaining charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.




12 Photos


WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning



The 25-year-old Manning is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports, State Department diplomatic cables, other classified records and two battlefield video clips to WikiLeaks in 2009 and 2010 while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad.

The Obama administration has said releasing the information threatened valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained America's relations with other governments. Experts say that by seeking to punish Manning, the administration is sending a strong message that such leaks will not be tolerated.

Manning supporters — who held events Saturday to mark his 1,000 days in confinement — consider him a whistleblowing hero whose actions exposed war crimes and helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring in late 2010.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Manning has submitted a written statement about the leak and the motive behind it that he wanted to read in court during Thursday's hearing. Prosecutors objected to the statement, but the judge said Thursday she would allow him to read it.

Manning has won few significant victories in his lengthy pretrial proceedings, which included testimony from the soldier about how he was deprived of his clothing and told to stand at attention naked while on suicide watch at the maximum-security Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Va. He has since been transferred to medium-security confinement at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The judge ruled that Manning was illegally punished for part of the time he spent at Quantico and that 112 days should be cut from any prison sentence he receives if convicted.

Read More..

Benedict Departs Vatican for the Last Time as Pope












Pope Benedict XVI bade his final farewell to the faithful today, lifting off from the Vatican in a white helicopter as the first pope to resign in six centuries.


Just before 5 p.m. local time, Benedict, 85, walked out of the Vatican for the last time as pope, waving to a cheering crowd in the Courtyard of San Damaso as he entered a black Mercedes for the short drive to a nearby heliport.


In a tweet sent from Benedict XVI ?@Pontifex as his motorcade rolled to the heliport, Benedict said, "Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."


With church bells ringing across Rome, he then embarked on the 15-minute flight to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence just south of the city and his home for the coming months when he'll be recognized by the church as His Holiness Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus.


When Benedict landed in the gardens at Castel Gandolfo, he was greeted by a group of dignitaries, including the governor of the Vatican City state Giovanni Bertello, two bishops, the director of the pontifical villas, and the mayor and parish priest. Off the helicopter and back into a car, Benedict headed to the palace.










From a window of the palace, Benedict will make one final wave to the crowd at the papal retreat.


In his final remarks earlier in the day to colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict had promised "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his eventual successor.


Benedict, in a morning meeting at the Vatican, urged the cardinals to act "like an orchestra" to find "harmony" moving forward.


Benedict, 85, is spending a quiet final day as pope, bidding farewell to his colleagues and moving on to a secluded life of prayer, far from the grueling demands of the papacy and the scandals that have recently plagued the church.


His first order of business was a morning meeting with the cardinals in the Clementine Hall, a room in the Apostolic Palace. Despite the historical nature of Benedict's resignation, not all cardinals attended the event.


Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service to the church during the eight years he has spent as pontiff.


Pope Benedict XVI Delivers Farewell Address


9 Men Who Could Replace Pope Benedict XVI


Pope Benedict's Last Sunday Prayer Service


For some U.S. Catholics in Rome for the historic occasion, Benedict's departure is bittersweet. Christopher Kerzich, a Chicago resident studying at the Pontifical North American College of Rome, said Wednesday he is sad to see Benedict leave, but excited to see what comes next.


"Many Catholics have come to love this pontiff, this very humble man," Kerzich said. "He is a man who's really fought this and prayed this through and has peace in his heart. I take comfort in that and I think a lot of Catholics should take comfort in that."






Read More..

U.S. to give Syrian rebels medical, food aid, not arms


ROME (Reuters) - The United States will send non-lethal aid directly to Syrian rebels for the first time, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday, disappointing opponents of President Bashar al-Assad who are clamoring for Western weapons.


But in a change of emphasis, the mainly Western and Arab "Friends of Syria" group meeting in Rome "underlined the need to change the balance of power on the ground".


A final communique said participants would "coordinate their efforts closely so as to best empower the Syrian people and support the Supreme Military Command of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army in its efforts to help them exercise self-defense".


More than 70,000 Syrians have been killed in a fierce conflict that began with peaceful anti-Assad protests nearly two years ago. Some 860,000 have fled abroad and several million are displaced within the country or need humanitarian assistance.


Kerry, after the talks in Rome, said Washington would more than double its aid to the Syrian civilian opposition, giving it an extra $60 million to help provide food, sanitation and medical care to devastated communities.


The United States would now "extend food and medical supplies to the opposition, including to the Syrian opposition's Supreme Military (Council)", Kerry said.


In their communique, the "Friends of Syria" pledged more political and material support to the Syrian National Coalition, a fractious Cairo-based group that has struggled to gain traction inside Syria, especially among disparate rebel forces.


Riad Seif, a coalition leader, said before the Rome meeting that the opposition would demand "qualitative military support".


Another coalition official welcomed the result of the talks. "We move forward with a great deal of cautious optimism. We heard today a different kind of discourse," Yasser Tabbara said.


But the continued U.S. refusal to send weapons may compound the frustration that prompted the coalition to say last week it would shun the Rome talks. It attended only under U.S. pressure.


Many in the coalition say Western reluctance to arm rebels only plays into the hands of Islamist militants now widely seen as the most effective forces in the struggle to topple Assad.


However, a European diplomat held out the possibility of Western military support, saying the coalition and its Western and Arab backers would meet in Istanbul next week to discuss military and humanitarian support to the insurgents.


MEALS READY TO EAT


Kerry's offer of medical aid and Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), the U.S. army's basic ration, fell far short of rebel demands for sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to help turn the tables against Assad's mostly Russian-supplied forces.


It also stopped short of providing other forms of non-lethal assistance such as bullet-proof vests, armored personnel vehicles and military training to the insurgents.


Last week the European Union opened the way for direct aid to Syrian rebels, but did not lift an arms embargo on Syria.


The Rome talks again signaled the lack of appetite among the United States and its allies for direct military intervention in Syria, after the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Iraq and the drawdown under way in Afghanistan.


The communique called for an immediate halt to "unabated" arms supplies to Damascus by third countries, referring mostly to Assad's allies Russia and Iran.


It also said Syria must immediately stop indiscriminate bombardment of populated areas, which it described as crimes against humanity. NATO officials say Assad's military has fired ballistic missiles within Syria, which the government denies.


Human Rights Watch has reported that at least 171 civilians were killed in four Scud missile strikes last week.


The "Friends of Syria" pledged "more political and material support to the coalition as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people and to get more concrete assistance inside Syria", but gave no details on exactly what would be provided.


Kerry said earlier this week he would not leave the Syrian opposition "dangling in the wind", unsure of getting support.


But the White House continues to resist providing weaponry to the rebel forces, arguing there is no way to guarantee the arms might not fall into the hands of Islamist militants who might eventually use them against Western or Israeli targets.


"HUGE DEBATE"


U.S. officials have said that the U.S. Defense and State departments, under former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, privately recommended that the White House arm the rebels, but were overruled.


"It's a huge debate inside the administration between those that have to deal with Syria on an everyday basis, the State Department and DoD (Defense) particularly, and the White House, which ... until now has vetoed any kind of outreach to the armed groups," said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think-tank.


The United States says it has already provided more than $50 million in non-lethal assistance such as communications gear and governance training to Syria's civilian opposition.


A source in the Syrian coalition, however, said even the extra $60 million promised by Washington was a pittance compared to what he said was the $40 million a day in humanitarian aid needed for Syrian refugees and internally displaced persons.


The United States has provided some $365 million in humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees in countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon and for internally displaced people, channeling this money through non-governmental organizations.


More than 40,000 people a week are fleeing Syria and the total number of refugees will likely pass 1 million in less than a month, far sooner than the United Nations had forecast, a senior U.N. official told the Security Council on Wednesday.


U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said his agency had registered 936,000 Syrians across the Middle East and North Africa, nearly 30 times as many as in April last year.


"We expected to have 1.1 million Syrian refugees by June. If things continue to accelerate like this, it will take less than a month to reach that number," he told the 15-member council.


(Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Mark Heinrich)



Read More..

N. Korea's Kim, Rodman watch basketball game: Xinhua






BEIJING: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un watched a basketball game with former Chicago Bulls' star Dennis Rodman on Thursday, Chinese state media reported.

In a dispatch from Pyongyang, China's official Xinhua news agency said that Kim and Rodman watched a game consisting of players from North Korea and the Harlem Globetrotters, a famed goodwill team from the United States.

Xinhua, which has a bureau in the North Korean capital, cited unidentified witnesses for its account.

Rodman, a 51-year-old Hall of Famer, was quoted as calling relations between the United States and North Korea "regrettable", though added "personally I am a friend of Marshal Kim Jong-Un and the DPRK people".

DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.

Nicknamed "The Worm" and famed for his changing hair colour, off-court antics and dating Madonna, Rodman arrived in the state this week with tensions high following the North's third nuclear test earlier in February.

Rodman wore dark glasses and a hat, Xinhua said, and sat to the left of Kim. They spoke to each other without any interpretation, according to the report.

He arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday with members of the Globetrotters on a goodwill visit to engage in "basketball diplomacy".

Kim is the son of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and the grandson of the country's founder Kim Il-Sung. He is reported to be a huge fan of basketball and the Chicago Bulls.

Rodman has been actively tweeting during the visit, saying he was looking forward to meeting Kim, that North Koreans love basketball and that he was "honoured" to represent the United States.

North Korea and the United States, an ally of South Korea, have never had diplomatic relations.

Xinhua said Thursday's game consisted of 12 players from North Korea and four Globetrotters divided up into two teams.

The game, attended by college students, citizens of Pyongyang and foreign diplomats, among others, ended in a 110-110 tie, Xinhua said. North Korean cheerleaders in traditional dress and miniskirts performed during the break.

Separately, North Korea's state news agency reported on Thursday that Rodman and his entourage visited the landmark Pyongyang building where the bodies of Kim's father and grandfather lie in state.

"They paid high tribute to Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il before their statues", the Korean central News Agency said. "They entered the halls where Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il lie in state and paid homage to them."

- AFP/xq



Read More..

Mobile oddities: Delve into the stranger side of MWC



Fujistu GPS cane

Fujitsu's New Generation GPS Cane puts directions at your fingertips.



(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CNET)


Imagine waking up, reaching for the tablet on your nightstand, and turning on your coffee maker from bed. You catch a few more winks before it alerts you that your hot java's ready. If Qualcomm's concept Wi-Fi coffee maker ever goes into production, your mornings may never be quite the same.

The coffee maker, however, is just one of many odd and unusual gadgets on display at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.



Fujitsu rolled (or walked) out a cane equipped with GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth that could help seniors get around. BeeWi showed off an early version of its Mobot power plug. Not only can you use it to remotely turn electrical devices off and on with your phone, but it also has a motion sensor and temperature sensor to warm you when things get too hot.



Revel in the weird and wonderful world of the wackier side of Mobile World Congress. If you ever dreamed of having a folding phablet or a smartphone that comes from a company that also makes compactors and hydraulic excavators, this is the place for you.


Read More..

Anti-virus firm makes new revelation on Stuxnet

Updated at 11:22 a.m. ET

LONDON The sophisticated cyberweapon which targeted an Iranian nuclear plant is older than previously believed, an anti-virus firm said Tuesday, peeling back another layer of mystery on a series of attacks attributed to U.S. and Israeli intelligence.

The Stuxnet worm, aimed at the centrifuges in Iran's Natanz plant, transformed the cybersecurity field because it was the first known computer attack specifically designed to cause physical damage. The precise origins of the worm remain unclear, but until now the earliest samples of Stuxnet had been dated to 2009.

Security experts generally agree that Stuxnet was an attempt to sabotage Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges, which can be used to make fuel for reactors or weapons-usable material for atomic bombs. Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.




Play Video


Stuxnet: Computer worm opens new era of warfare






Play Video


Stuxnet copycats: Let the hacking begin



As "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft reported last year, Stuxnet was incredibly complicated and sophisticated, beyond the cutting edge. By the time it was first detected in June 2010, it had been out in the wild for a year without drawing anyone's attention, and seemed to spread by way of USB thumb drives, not over the Internet.

By the fall of 2010, the consensus was that Iran's top secret uranium enrichment plant at Natanz was the target and that Stuxnet was a carefully constructed weapon designed to be carried into the plant on a corrupted laptop or thumb drive, then infect the system, disguise its presence, move through the network, changing computer code and subtly alter the speed of the centrifuges without the Iranians ever noticing, Kroft reported.

"Stuxnet's entire purpose is to control centrifuges," Liam O Murchu, an operations manager for Symantec, told Kroft. "To make centrifuges speed up past what they're meant to spin at and to damage them. Certainly it would damage the uranium enrichment facility and they would need to be replaced."

Last June, The New York Times traced the origins of the top-secret program back to 2006.

In a new report issued late Tuesday, Symantec Corp. pushed that timeline further back, saying it had found a primitive version of Stuxnet circulating online in 2007 and that elements of the program had been in place as far back as 2005.

One independent expert who examined the report said it showed that the worm's creators were particularly far-sighted.

"What it looks like is that somebody's been thinking about this for a long, long time — the better part of a decade," said Alan Woodward, a computer science professor at the University of Surrey. "It really points to a very clever bunch of people behind all of this."




Nuclear Iran: Sites and potential targets


A look at the locations where Iran carries out work linked to its suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons



The Times reported that President George W. Bush ordered the deployment of Stuxnet against Iran in a bid to put the brakes on its atomic energy program, detailing how the worm tampered with the operation of Natanz's centrifuge machines to send them spinning out of control.

President Obama, who succeeded Bush shortly after the first attacks, expanded the campaign, the report said.

U.S. and Israeli officials have long declined to comment publicly on Stuxnet or their alleged involvement in creating and deploying the computer worm.

Symantec's report suggests that an intermediate version of the worm — Stuxnet 0.5 — was completed in November 2007. That worm lacked some of the sophistication of its descendant, Symantec said, and was designed to interfere with the centrifuges by opening and closing the valves which control the flow of uranium gas, causing a potentially damaging buildup in pressure.

That approach was dropped in later, improved versions of the Stuxnet code.

Symantec said the servers used to control the primitive worm were set up in November 2005, suggesting that Stuxnet's trailblazing authors were plotting out their attack at a time when many parts of the Internet now taken for granted were not yet in place. Twitter did not exist, Facebook was still largely limited to U.S. college campuses, and YouTube was in its infancy.

Woodward said that had troubling implications.

"Clearly these were very forward-thinking, clever people that were doing this," he said. "There's no reason to think that they're less forward-thinking now. What are they up to?"

Read More..

Bring on the Cuts: Some Want the Sequester












Mark Lucas wouldn't mind seeing America's defense budget cut by billions.


"There's quite a bit of waste within the military," Lucas, who serves as Iowa state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), told ABC News. "Being in there for 10 years, I've seen quite a bit of it."


With the budget sequester set to kick in on Friday, the former Army ranger is among a small chorus of conservatives saying bring on the cuts.


Read more: Bernanke on Sequester Cuts: Too Much, Too Soon


Lucas cited duplicative equipment purchases, military-run golf courses and lavish food on larger bases -- unlike the chow he endured at a combat operations post in Afghanistan with about 120 other soldiers.


"These guys would have very good food, and I'm talking almost like a buffet style, shrimp and steak once a week, ice cream, all this stuff," Lucas said. "They had Burger Kings and Pizza Huts and McDonald's. And I said to myself, 'Do we really need this?'"


Lucas and AFP would like to see the sequester modified, with federal agencies granted more authority to target the cuts and avoid the more dire consequences. But the group wants the cuts to happen.


"We're very supportive of the sequestration cuts but would prefer to see more targeted cuts at the same level," said the group's spokesman, Levi Russell.


As President Obama and his Cabinet members are sounding the sequester alarm bells, AFP's willingness shows that not everyone is running for the hills.






Charles Dharapak/Pool/AP Photo











Speaker Boehner Hopes Senate 'Gets Off Their Ass' Watch Video









Sequester Showdown: Automatic Spending Cuts Loom Watch Video









President Obama Details Consequences of Sequester Cuts Watch Video





Read more: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester


Obama traveled to Norfolk, Va., on Tuesday to speak at a shipyard about cuts and layoffs to defense contractors. In his most recent weekly radio address, he told Americans that the Navy has already kept an aircraft carrier home instead of deploying it to the Persian Gulf. And last week, he spoke before national TV cameras at the White House, warning that first responders would be laid off.


Homeland Security Secretary Jane Napolitano has warned that the sequester will "leave critical infrastructure vulnerable to attacks." Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has warned that air travel will back up after the Federal Aviation Administration furloughs air traffic controllers. And the heads of 18 other federal agencies told Congress that terrible things will happen unless the sequester is pushed off.


Some Republicans have accused the president of scaremongering to gin up popular support for tax hikes. Obama has warned of calamity and demanded compromise in the next breath, and a few Republicans have rejected this as a false choice.


Read more: Boehner Hopes Senate 'Gets Off Their Ass'


"I don't think the president's focused on trying to find a solution to the sequester," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. "For 16 months, the president's been traveling all over the country holding rallies, instead of sitting down with Senate leaders in order to try to forge an agreement over there in order to move the bill."


After Obama spoke to governors at the this week, Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told ABC News' Jonathan Karl outside the White House that the president is exaggerating the sequester's consequences.


"He's trying to scare the American people," Jindal said. "He's trying to distort the impact."






Read More..

Sausages containing horsemeat found in Russia: official






MOSCOW: Russia said on Wednesday it had found horsemeat in a shipment of sausages imported from Europe, its first known case of horsemeat contamination.

Alexei Alexeyenko, an aide to Sergei Dankvert, the head of Russian agriculture watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor, said that tests on sausages imported from the city of Linz in Austria found horse DNA.

"It came two days ago from Austria," Alexeyenko told AFP. "The shipment is over 20 tonnes," he said, adding that the enterprise that supplied the meat had been struck off the list of suppliers.

The contaminated meat will either be destroyed or returned to the supplier, he added.

Horsemeat is a traditional delicacy in Russia and can be found in many restaurants and stores across the country.

Alexeyenko said the problem with the contaminated meat was that it was not clear what it was made of.

"We are talking about adulterated meat products containing horsemeat," he said.

"The source of this meat is unknown," he noted, adding that old ill animals could have been used to make it.

- AFP/al



Read More..

Ubuntu Touch OS heading to slew of smartphones, tablets



The Ubuntu Touch home screen on a tablet.



(Credit:
Ubuntu/Canonical)



The Ubuntu Touch operating system is being ported to more than 20 types of smartphones and tablets.


The developer preview of the Linux-based OS was released for the Galaxy Nexus and
Nexus 4 smartphones and
Nexus 7 and
Nexus 10 tablets last week.


And developers are working to port the OS to a far greater range of devices, including the Asus Transformer series, HTC One handsets, the LG Optimus 4x HD, the Motorola Xoom, the Samsung Galaxy Note and S series, and Sony Xperia phones. They're also working on ports for the Nexus S and Nexus One devices.


The work to adapt the OS is being carried out as part of the Ubuntu port-a-thon initiative to get the developer community to bring Ubuntu Touch to a wider range of hardware.


"We want to port Ubuntu Touch to all kinds of devices," says the porting guide for Ubuntu Touch.


"If you have experience in porting code to Android devices or are generally knowledgeable in terms of porting, working with the kernel and other core bits and pieces of a distribution, this might be interesting to you."


The ports are at various stages of progress and though the OS reuses some of the drivers and other hardware compatibility code used by Android, it will likely take some time to get each port in working order.


Users have been warned not to use the developer preview as their primary OS, and the preview's release notes highlight various issues when running on Nexus devices.


These included problems when using the OS with some 3G and 4G networks, such as CDMA and LTE, and the possibility that the Nexus 4 would refuse to boot if the battery was drained.



This story originally appeared on ZDNet under the headline "Ubuntu Touch prepped for 20+ smartphones and tablets."

Read More..