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1st February 2011 Archive

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  • Mozilla slips 'Do Not Track' header into Firefox nightlies

    The call for 'DNT: 1'

    Mozilla has uploaded a working prototype of its "Do Not Track" http header into the Firefox nightly builds. Anyone interested in testing the header can do so by downloading a pre-beta version of Firefox, but it won't have any real effect until websites and advertisers chose to recognize the thing. Mozilla proposed such a …

    ID 1 Feb 2011, 01:30

  • School reinstates Facebooker who called teacher 'douche bag'

    'Cyberbullying' charge debunked

    A California high school student who was suspended for calling a teacher “a douche bag” on Facebook has been reinstated, following a legal showdown involving the American Civil Liberties Union. The youth, an honor student and star football player, apologized after school officials confronted him over his Facebook scrawling, …

    Music and Media 1 Feb 2011, 03:40

  • The future is analog (at least part of it)

    Open...and Shut Mixed messages in a digital economy

    The times they are a' changing for digital media and software, but perhaps not always for the better, as recent reports suggest, and not always as completely or as fast as the Silicon Valley set would expect. Silicon Valley, with its endless fascination for the new and the novel, is quick to point to Apple as the slayer of …

    Music and Media 1 Feb 2011, 04:00

  • Home Office crime maps go to street-level detail

    ICO says privacy of those involved is preserved

    The Home Office has announced the rollout of a new online crime-map service for England and Wales that ministers describe as "more comprehensive than any other scheme" in the world. The new mapping service offers crimes arranged by street, rather than merely by ward or subdistrict as before. Watch your step along there. The …

    Government 1 Feb 2011, 05:00

  • Virgin Media kills 20Mb broadband service

    New customers led through 30Mb door

    Virgin Media is urging existing customers on its 20Mbit/s broadband service to splurge a one-off payment of £30 to upgrade to its 30Mbit/s offering, which launched today. The company will no longer offer would-be punters the 20Mbit/s package, but existing customers do not have to upgrade to the new service as Virgin Media will …

    Mobile 1 Feb 2011, 06:00

  • Archos 101 8GB Android tablet

    Review Lightweight, 10.1in Froyo fondle slab, anyone?

    The Archos 101 – that's 'ten-one' – sits at the top of company's range of Android devices that also includes the 43 personal media player, reviewed here. So now, Archos can offer you an Android device with a screen anywhere between 2.8 and 10.1 inches – from a pocket media player to a fully-fledged iPad-esque tablet. Netbook …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 07:00

  • Assange traveled in drag to evade gov spooks

    'Can't imagine how ridiculous it was'

    Julian Assange's wariness of government spooks ran so high that the WikiLeaks founder resorted to disguising himself as a woman when traveling, according to a profile published Monday by The Guardian. As Assange's entourage moved from London to the village of Ellingham, the battered red car they rode in periodically pulled off …

    Security 1 Feb 2011, 07:00

  • Government put brakes on Bribery Act

    May be out after three months (if you can make it worth our while)

    The Government has delayed the implementation of the Bribery Act. It will not now come into force in April as planned, but will be put on hold while the Government rewrites guidance for businesses on how to comply with the 2010 law. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has not said when new guidance will be published but has said …

    Channel Register 1 Feb 2011, 07:15

  • Amazon to sell Kindle through Currys, PC World

    Advancing onto the high street

    Dixons' stores are to sell Amazon's popular Kindle e-book reader. Amazon already makes the Kindle - in both its Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi-plus-3G versions - available on the high street through John Lewis shops. Like John Lewis, Dixons will only sell Kindles through PC World and Currys bricks'n'mortar outlets, not online. Prices are …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 09:26

  • LG touts glasses-free 3D smartphone

    Optimus line goes stereoscopic

    LG will show off a 3D-capable mobile phone at this month's Mobile World Congress show, the Korean company has teased. It's saying little more about the smartphone than its name - the LG Optimus 3D - and that it will sport a pair of cameras on the back for 3D photography. Stereoscopic content, whether downloaded or shot …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 09:39

  • Egypt loses last vestiges of connectivity

    Country braced for massive protests

    Thousands of Egyptians ignored the government curfew and camped out overnight ahead of today's "million-man march" protests. The government meanwhile has tightened its grip on communications - Noor Group, which provided connectivity for the Cairo stock exchange, five star hotels and other businesses has had its internet access …

    Government 1 Feb 2011, 09:57

  • Openistas question UK.gov's £300k crime-mapping website

    Portal wobbles at launch

    Open data advocates are questioning why the Home Office splurged £300,000 on its shiny new police.uk crime-mapping website, which launched this morning. Sort of. The portal has been struggling to stay stable over the past few hours since the government hit the live button on the site. A Home Office spokesman told The Register …

    Policing 1 Feb 2011, 10:01

  • Samsung Android tablet sales smaller than thought

    When shipments don't equal sales

    A Samsung executive has admitted that the Korean giant hasn't put quite as many Android tablets in the hands of punters as its recent claim that it has shipped 2m of the things suggests. Speaking at its earnings conference late last week, Samsung executive Lee Young-hee implied that sales of Galaxy Tab tablets to consumers …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 10:11

  • Alternative security conferences plot European editions

    Flip over to B-Sides

    Organisers are putting together plans to stage two alternative security conferences in Europe this spring that aim to provide an alternative to vendor-driven events. Security B-Sides, already well established in the US, is coming to London for the first time on 20 April. The event will go head-to-head with Infosecurity Europe …

    Enterprise Security 1 Feb 2011, 10:20

  • Apple tosses Sony iBooks rival from iTunes

    E-book reader, buyer app rejected

    Sony's plans to release a virtual version of its e-book reader on the iPhone and iPad have been dashed by Apple. Sony announced in November 2010 that it was readying a Reader app for iOS devices. Just recently, it finished the software and submitted it to Apple for inclusion in the iTunes App Store. This week, the Japanese …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 10:34

  • Boots punts over-the-counter paternity test

    Jeremy Kyle, Trisha anxiously peruse job pages

    Boots is offering an over-the-counter paternity test kit, to the delight of some and the horror of others. The chemist describes assuredna as "the first UK approved and regulated DNA paternity testing kit to be made available nationally via Boots". The test is "simple, safe and proven", processing and returning paternity …

    Biology 1 Feb 2011, 10:35

  • Wanted: 1 solution architect to fist bankers' asses

    Willing to get hands dirty, presumably

    It's a cordial tip of the hat this morning to reader Simon Stahn, who has just been favoured with this employment opportunity by Jobserve: Simon says he wasn't aware getting your hands dirty was a requirement in the banking sector, but then again ... ®

    Bootnotes 1 Feb 2011, 11:04

  • DDoS bot infests food processing firms

    Miscreants make mincemeat

    A new family of malware agents is attacking the websites of firms involved in the industrial food processing industry. Variants of the Darkshell botnet agent, circulating in China, turn infected Windows machines into attack drones. Infected machines regularly phone in to command and control nodes for instructions, periodically …

    Enterprise Security 1 Feb 2011, 11:06

  • Yahoo! mail servers blamed for WinPho 7 data spew bug

    IMAP mishap?

    Microsoft's own Mail app and Yahoo! Mail have been implicated by the software giant as the cause of the Windows Phone 7 bug that has caused some handsets to rack up users' data transfer tallies. Microsoft last night blamed an "inefficiency" in the way its Windows Phone Mail app talks to Yahoo! Mail. The result: "larger than …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 11:25

  • Kaspersky plays down source-code leak

    Stolen, obsolete code has no effect on protection

    Leaked versions of source code for older versions of Kaspersky Lab's security software have been released through file-sharing networks over the last few days. The source code comes from early 2008 versions of the consumer version of Kaspersky's security suite, which included anti-virus, anti-spam and parental control features …

    Malware 1 Feb 2011, 11:33

  • Apple clips publishers' wings

    Only one of us is allowed to fly

    Apple is cracking down on applications that provide access to paid content, rejecting anything that looks as though its trying to bypass handing over 30 per cent to Cupertino. Apple gets a 30 per cent cut of anything purchased on the iPhone, or iPad, but iOS applications such as Amazon's Kindle reader and some newspaper …

    Mobile 1 Feb 2011, 11:41

  • Filth dominates net – shock survey

    Knock yourselves out

    Pornography is the most popular genre of internet traffic, a new survey shows. The research also suggests that music business may have overestimated the exchange of P2P trackers and underestimated other forms of unlicensed music acquisition. Researchers examined every share at the PublicBT tracker over a 24 hour period on a …

    Music and Media 1 Feb 2011, 11:45

  • China drafts in parent army to battle internet addiction

    One child, two hours a week policy

    China has sought to battle the scourge of internet addiction among the youth by giving parents the right to monitor their offspring's online meanderings. Eight government departments have issued new guidelines due to come into force from next month. These will allow, among other things, parents to set restrictions on their …

    Government 1 Feb 2011, 11:46

  • IEEE releases next-gen powerline spec to gadget makers

    Standards war heats up

    Standards organisation the IEEE has published the final version of its 1901 ethernet-over-mains specification. The standard was actually completed in December 2010, but its publication means that manufacturers not directly involved in its creation can now obtain the specs and start designing product that can use it. Such …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 11:50

  • LG comes to the NFC party

    European launch of proximity payments in 2012

    LG Electronics plans to launch proximity payments in Europe before the end of next year, putting it into competition with just about everyone else. The company told Reuters it is already beta-testing handsets, point-of-sale equipment and cloud-based transaction processing systems with a view to putting them into the hands of …

    Mobile 1 Feb 2011, 11:55

  • Ofcom to review Digital Economy Act site-blocking measures

    When a 'principle' simply isn't enough

    Communications watchdog Ofcom is to review sections of the Digital Economy Act to see if they are workable. The government said this morning that culture secretary Jeremy Hunt had asked Ofcom to consider whether the Act, which was expected to come into force this month, could work on the issue of reserve powers to enable …

    Law 1 Feb 2011, 11:57

  • Oracle coughs $46m for bribe claims

    Anti-kickback kicker

    Oracle is paying $46m to the Department of Justice to end an investigation into allegations that Sun Microsystems, now owned by Oracle, bribed resellers. The claim was that Sun paid dealers to recommend Sun hardware and software, in breach of the Anti-Kickback Act. The company was accused of misleading the General Services …

    Channel Register 1 Feb 2011, 12:07

  • Discovery crawls to launch pad

    Finally poised for 24 February launch

    Space shuttle Discovery reached Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A this morning after a seven-hour, 3.4 mile crawl from the Vehicle Assembly Building. The venerable vehicle is set to blast off on its final mission to the International Space Station on 24 February, carrying essential spares and the converted multi-purpose …

    Space 1 Feb 2011, 12:11

  • iPhone crashes car stereos, Toyota warns

    Dock distress down under

    Motor maker Toyota has warned Australian car dealers that iOS 4.1 devices can crash certain vehicles' sound systems. Toyota made the claim in a "technical newsflash", local car site Drive reports. The warning covers eight types of Fujitsu Ten-made car stereo fitted to Yaris, Corolla, Kluger, Prado, LandCruiser, HiLux and Prius …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 12:24

  • Boffins hope for dimensional portal event at LHC by 2013!

    Mighty atom-smasher upgrade postponed in excitement

    Top boffins at international science alliance CERN have decided to postpone a planned upgrade and keep the Large Hadron Collider - arse-kickingest particle-punisher and largest machine of any kind built by the human race - running at current power levels to the end of 2012. This decision has been made because scientists believe …

    Physics 1 Feb 2011, 12:27

  • Win five BlackBerry Torch 9800s!

    Competition The Super App-rentice

    Reg Hardware has teamed up with Research in Motion (RIM) for a spiffy competition called the BlackBerry Super App-rentice. The premise is simple. We want you to sketch out an idea for a BlackBerry Super App. Five entrants will win a BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone. And you may even see your idea turned into an app. What are …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 12:30

  • Baidu slurps up Google's leavings, pockets $1bn

    Eric's 'gift to Robin': Double income on Chinese searches

    Chinese search giant Baidu has almost doubled its income over the last year and made more than half a billion dollars in profit. Baidu said turnover in the fourth quarter was up 94.4 per cent to $371.3m (RMB 2.45bn) and operating profit was up 175.8 per cent to $193.2m or RMB 1.275bn. This gave China's largest search engine …

    Financial News 1 Feb 2011, 12:54

  • Intel 'Sandy Bridge' mobile platform

    Review Second-gen Core i7 CPU leaves its tyre marks

    Sandy Bridge is the codename for Intel's second generation of Core processors that covers Core i3, i5 and i7 for both side of the desktop-mobile divide. If you've been following the news lately, you'll know that Dell has discovered flaws in the Cougar Point chipset that, while not revealing a fault in the actual Sandy Bridge CPU …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 13:00

  • Cisco promises half a billion dollars for Cameron's BIG idea

    PM sprinkles Cisco Kool Aid over East London

    Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers met UK Prime minister David Cameron yesterday, pledging half a billion dollars over five years to help the UK private sector solve the unemployment problem, and avoid the Olympic legacy being more about white elephants than east London renewal. The investment comes in the form of the …

    Government 1 Feb 2011, 13:48

  • The lowdown on storage and data protection

    Deep dive Backup to tape, disk and beyond

    El Reg has teamed up with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) for a series of deep dive articles. Each month, the SNIA will deliver a comprehensive introduction to basic storage networking concepts. The first article explores data protection. Part1: Fundamental Concepts in Data Protection Data protection is …

    Storage 1 Feb 2011, 14:00

  • Elon Musk looking to get into 'black' spy sat market

    Opens office next door to space spook-military central

    Upstart startup rocket company SpaceX, helmed and bankrolled by renowned internet nerdwealth tycoon Elon Musk, is already taking NASA business away from the established American rocketry industry. Musk now appears to be targeting the potentially much bigger market for launching secret US spy satellites. In a statement issued …

    Space 1 Feb 2011, 14:28

  • Google boss preps seriously 'wonky' book

    Publishers scramble for super Schmidt spiel

    Eric Schmidt has made sure he won't be hanging around cluttering up the house when he finishes his stint as Google CEO, by immediately seeking to have someone jot down his words of wisdom for a book. A real one, apparently on paper. An auction for the book is expected to close today, according to reports. Schmidt has …

    Music and Media 1 Feb 2011, 14:35

  • Japan plans space debris fishing trip

    Unfurls really big metal net

    The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has a cunning plan to tackle the menace of orbiting space debris - a really big metal net. According to the Telegraph, the agency has hooked up with fishing net manufacturer Nitto Seimo Co to develop a metal mesh which will capture rogue scrap and consign it to incineration in the …

    Space 1 Feb 2011, 14:36

  • China bets on thorium

    Brand new nuclear programme within 20 years

    China has committed itself to establishing an entirely new nuclear energy programme using thorium as a fuel, within 20 years. The LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) is a 4G reactor that uses liquid salt as both fuel and coolant. China uses the more general term TMSR (Thorium Molten-Salt Reactor). The thorium fuel cycles …

    Physics 1 Feb 2011, 14:43

  • Public Wi-Fi is a dog's dinner, says Cloud founder

    Needs serious investment now

    Britain's Wi-Fi networks need masses more investment if they're to fulfill their potential, says the founder of The Cloud. George Polk founded the network in 2003 and left in 2007. BSkyB snapped it up last week. But he wasn't going to paint a rosy picture for the new owner's benefit, we discovered. "Sometimes it works, …

    Wireless 1 Feb 2011, 14:53

  • Dating site and hacker in online spat over security breach

    No love lost

    The founder of Canadian dating website PlentyOfFish.com has become embroiled in an online spat with a white-hat hacker who found security bugs on the site and a reporter who began asking questions about the flaw. Markus Frind, the founder and chief executive of Plenty of Fish, claims he was approached by someone who exported …

    Enterprise Security 1 Feb 2011, 15:12

  • Embrace your outsourced future

    What happens when we're all competing with Moldovan goatherders?

    The impact of outsourcing and the internet means people in the UK will need to create their own jobs, rather than hope to walk into a job as in the past. There is hardly a job left which cannot be simply and cheaply outsourced and offshored. Where once manufacturing work was sent abroad, increasingly it is design work and …

    Developer 1 Feb 2011, 15:17

  • PS3 to float into cloud

    Save your games in cyberspace, sync them to other devices

    Sony has popped its head in the cloud and informed developers of a feature to store saved game data online. The ability to then load saved game data onto various consoles, from the PS3 to the upcoming NGP - aka PSP 2 - is a welcomed attribute, but could there be more to this cloud-based service than meets the eye? Gaming …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 15:19

  • Second Samsung Wave smartphone slaps UK

    Bada boom

    Samsung today said its second-generation Bada based smartphone is now available to Britons. The Wave II, aka the GT-S8530, runs Bada 1.2 and comes with a 3.7in touchscreen. It's a slim device that features front-facing HD capture, as well as HD playback and broad format support. The emphasis though is on social networking …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 15:29

  • Speedlink goes gold for Competition Pro silver jubilee

    Blaster from the past

    Speedlink is celebrating 25 years of joystick jubilation, with the release of a limited edition gold Competition Pro - the ultimate home arcade accessory. Those of you who owned a Commodore 64 or Amiga, will look back upon your first Competition Pro with nostalgic exhilaration. Now on its silver anniversary, a quarter of a …

    reghardware 1 Feb 2011, 15:42

  • eSilo does dashing damp dedupe

    SiloSphere gets soggy at source

    Cloud backup and archive supplier eSilo has a novel twist on deduplicating backup data at source before sending it to the cloud - rehydrating it at the source as well so restore time from the cloud is cut. The technology, SiloSphere, is based on customers having "a fault-tolerant mesh of data points (computers/agents) …

    Storage 1 Feb 2011, 15:47

  • Microsoft Bing man puts self up for auction at eBay

    Yet another Redmond exec walks

    Microsoft's principal development manager for its Bing search engine has quit the role in favour of a job at online tat bazaar eBay. Scott Prevost has already joined eBay as the company's search product management veep as his LinkedIn account shows here. He joined Microsoft in 2008, when the software vendor bought Powerset …

    Applications 1 Feb 2011, 16:17

  • ARM Holdings eager for PC and server expansion

    Record 2010, looking for Intel killer 2020

    RISC chip designer ARM Holding has closed out a record Q4 and 2010, and is laying the foundations to expand into desktop PCs and servers through the aggressive and enlightened self-interest of its growing licensee base. In the fourth quarter ended in December, ARM (the company) had £113.9m in total revenues, up 34 per cent. …

    PCs & Chips 1 Feb 2011, 16:37

  • Netgear CEO sorry for 'when Steve Jobs goes away' bit

    But 'closed Apple' still 'doomed'

    Netgear chairman and CEO Patrick Lo has apologized for comments he made on Monday that, as he put it, "have been construed by some to be references to Steve Jobs' health." On Monday, in comments to journalists in Sydney, Australia, Lo rather indelicately referred to the Apple CEO's current medical leave of absence in a …

    Software 1 Feb 2011, 18:25

  • Newest PS3 firmware hacked in less than 24 hours

    All Sony's horses and all Sony's men...

    Hackers say they unlocked the latest firmware for the PlayStation 3 game console, less than 24 hours after Sony released it in a desperate attempt to stuff the jailbreaking genie back in the bottle. Sony announced the release of Version 3.56 on Wednesday. That same day, game console hacker Youness Alaoui, aka KaKaRoToKS, …

    Security 1 Feb 2011, 19:22

  • Open-source forkers declare Oracle independence

    It's Hudson versus Jenkins

    Opensourcers running a popular code management project have declared independence from Oracle by voting to fork rather than leave the giant in charge. Community members of Hudson have voted by 214 to 14 to keep the Hudson mailing list and archive on Google Groups and source code on GitHub servers. An interim governance board …

    Developer 1 Feb 2011, 19:28

  • Cisco: Mobile web grows 26X by 2015

    You think it's hard to get a link now?

    In 2015, over 5.6 billion mobile devices will stuff the interwebs with 75 exabytes of data, according to a new report by Cisco Systems. That's a 26X bigger load than currently burdens today's already-overcrowded networks. "The seemingly endless bevy of new mobile devices, combined with greater mobile broadband access, more …

    Mobile 1 Feb 2011, 19:42

  • M2 acquires Clear Telecoms

    Adds 20k customers

    M2 Telecommunications yesterday announced to the Australian Stock Exchange that it had acquired Clear Telecoms. The acqusition covers customer contracts, systems, brands and intellectual property. According to M2 Telecom’s announcement, Clear Telecoms had 20,000 SME customers Australia-wide and generated $70 million in annual …

    Channel Register 1 Feb 2011, 20:09

  • Google to Microsoft: You're stealing our search results!

    Redmond farce trapped by Google 'sting'

    Google has accused Microsoft of copying its search results, after running a "sting operation" that indicates Redmond's Internet Explorer software is tracking what searchers find on Google and using this data to tweak results on Bing. Microsoft indicates this is indeed happening – but on a small scale. Google first made the …

    Software 1 Feb 2011, 20:28

  • Intel, Google, Facebook back Obama startup love

    iPad peddler MIA

    Intel, IBM, HP, Google, and Facebook are putting their money where the mouths are in support of the Obama administration's new business-boosting initiative, the Startup America Partnership. Well, some are giving more mouth than money. "Entrepreneurs embody the promise of America: the idea that if you have a good idea and are …

    Government 1 Feb 2011, 20:35

  • VMware: Attack of the co-presidents

    Four replace half of Maritz

    Server virtualization behemoth VMware has announced that it has named four co-presidents and removed the president job from Paul Maritz, the hot-shot Microsoftie brought in by EMC to battle his old employer in the virtualization racket. Maritz took the helm at VMware after co-founder Diane Greene was show the door in July 2008 …

    Virtualization 1 Feb 2011, 22:59

  • EMC lets go of Greenplum Community Edition

    Uncrippled data warehouse development

    EMC's Greenplum data warehousing appliance and database division has a new Community Edition of its eponymous parallel database. The Community Edition replaces the single-node edition of the database, which was not as useful for companies trying to create parallel databases for warehouses and business analytics. It also has …

    Data Networking 1 Feb 2011, 23:11

  • Yahoo! kills its stuffed elephant

    For the love of Apache

    Yahoo! has killed off its Hadoop distro, choosing to put its weight behind the core Apache Hadoop project instead. Yahoo! was instrumental in bootstrapping Apache Hadoop, an open source distributed number-crunching platform based on Google's proprietary infrastructure, and in the summer of 2009, the web giant open sourced its …

    Channel Register 1 Feb 2011, 23:56