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6th April 2011 Archive

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  • Internet retail tax threshold 'probably irrelevant'

    Oz Productivity Commission looking at online sales

    Australia's Productivity Commission is re-igniting the debate about online retail, competition and taxation, with an issues paper published late last week. The paper, titled "Economic Structure and Performance of the Australian Retail Industry", launches the commission's inquiry into the industry, with a particular focus on …

    Channel Register 6 Apr 02:26

  • Why is ILM such a failure?

    Comment Unsuccessful and impractical software

    Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) promised much but delivered very little in practice; it was complex to implement and patchy in its coverage of a business's information assets. Now HP is having another canter around the ILM block... Will it succeed? Here's HP's ILM vision: "HP brings a holistic approach to information …

    Blocks and Files 6 Apr 04:00

  • Microsoft shows how to crowd-source spectrum management

    You do have a spare analyser, don't you?

    Researchers from Microsoft have proposed a new way to monitor spectrum usage, by connecting up idle analysers and providing an API allowing anyone to make use of them. The concept of SpecNet, as the researchers term their creation, is to link up spectrum analysers around the world and allow them to be accessed through a …

    Wireless 6 Apr 05:00

  • Apple Digital AV Adapter

    Review The iPad does HDMI at last

    It’s not often that a mere cable merits a review of its own, but the Digital AV Adapter that Apple recently launched along with the new iPad 2 is worth a closer look. HDMI ready: Apple's Digital AV Adapter The cable plugs into the dock connector on the base of the iPad 2, and is also compatible with the original iPad, the …

    reghardware 6 Apr 06:00

  • EMC gets fat and flashy with Greenplum appliances

    Take that, Teradata, Exadata, Netezza

    For one brief shining moment, when it bought Data General a zillion years ago, EMC was a server maker, and last year's acquisition of Greenplum makes it a server vendor (of sorts) once again. More like a data analytics systems integrator, but let's not split hairs. The original Data Computing Appliance, or DCA, was based on …

    Servers 6 Apr 06:00

  • It's the oldest working Seagate drive in the UK

    Twenty-eight years old and still spinning

    Seagate reckons it has found the oldest working Seagate disk drive in the UK: a 28-year-old ST-412 disk drive from 1983. It is the drive for an old IBM PC, which booted up when it was brought down from owner Mitch Hansen's attic in his Ruislip house. The 5.25-inch disk has four platters, eight read and write heads, spins at 3, …

    Storage 6 Apr 07:30

  • Ex-director permanently banned from revealing confidential info

    Not allowed to help rivals with the skinny on golfing trolley device

    A businessman has been ordered never to improperly reveal confidential information belonging to a company where he used to be a director. Former Hedgehog Golf Company director Frank Hauser has been banned by the High Court from revealing information about the company. The High Court said that Hauser had been prepared to …

    Small Biz 6 Apr 07:35

  • Toshiba: PS3 chip too hot for tellies

    Toshiba World 2011 From Cell to Cevo

    If you're wondering why Toshiba has been rather quiet about the Cell processor of late - last year it was very keen to tell World+Dog it would be putting the PlayStation 3 chip into high-end sets - it's because it has realised it can't put the thing into televisions. Last year's Cell TVs all shoved the CPU into a separate box …

    reghardware 6 Apr 07:40

  • Wordpress backup vuln published

    BackWPup has remote execution hole

    A remote execution vulnerability has been discovered in Wordpress backup utility BackWPup. According to Sydney (Australia) company Sense of Security, which published the advisory along with a proof-of-concept, the vulnerability allows local or remote PHP files to be passed to a component of the utility. “The input passed to …

    Security 6 Apr 08:00

  • Satyam pays $10m to end fraud probe

    PwC coughs up too

    Indian reseller and outsourcer Mahindra Satyam and its auditor PwC have paid a total of $16m to end a US investigation into fraud charges. The Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday that failings by five PwC Indian subsidiaries allowed the massive fraud to go undetected for years. It said the problems were not …

    Channel Register 6 Apr 08:58

  • One basket only? Proceed to self service

    Making the best of a long tail

    In tough economic times having lots of customers to sell to can give you a warm fuzzy feeling. But how many of them bring any real value? That warm glow could soon turn to a cold sweat of panic when you see how much it costs to sell to the low-value customers. “The segmentation of customers is vital,” says Dale Vile of the …

    Doing Better Business 6 Apr 09:00

  • McAfee recovers from Sesame Street email filter mix-up

    This snafu is brought to you by the letter A and the number 533

    McAfee has apologised for a Sesame Street-style mix-up over the weekend that temporarily prevented any customers with addresses that start with the letter A from receiving email. The glitch – which involved the managed email filtering service from MX Logic, acquired by McAfee back in 2009 – bounced emails sent to supported …

    Enterprise Security 6 Apr 09:06

  • Yuri Gagarin in triumphant return to London

    12ft statue set to touch down in the Mall

    London will later this year pay homage to Yuri Gagarin with a 12ft statue honouring the first man in space, set to touch down in the Mall on 14 July. The statue is a gift from the Russian space agency Roscosmos to the British Council. It's a copy of an original commissioned in 1984 by Vocational School no 10 in Lyubertsy, …

    Space 6 Apr 09:17

  • Judge flips $625.5m Apple patent payout

    Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?

    A US federal judge threw out a $625.5m patent infringement verdict brought against Apple that had been awarded to Mirror Worlds LLC in October last year. On Tuesday, Judge Leonard Davis said Apple hadn't infringed a patent owned by Mirror Worlds, which brought a lawsuit against the Jobsian outfit in 2008. The company was …

    Applications 6 Apr 09:28

  • SCO trading suspended in US

    But what of the sale to UnXis?

    The US Securities and Exchange Commission has temporarily halted trading in SCO shares. The software company, which filed for bankruptcy in September 2007, has been hampered by legal costs and falling sales, after a US judge ruled that Novell, not SCO, was the owner of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights. SCO was further …

    Financial News 6 Apr 09:59

  • Salt Lake City goes wallet-free with Isis

    Trial run for national rollout

    Operator consortium Isis has selected Salt Lake City as its flagship deployment to show the rest of the USA what NFC can do for them. The plan will see Salt Lake City's public transport system accepting pay-by-wave from a mobile phone by the middle of next year. Retailers have also been encouraged to adopt Near Field …

    Mobile 6 Apr 10:07

  • Buying Solutions launches office supply framework

    Computer supplies and hardware included in wide-ranging tender document

    Buying Solutions has tendered for the first of its nine frameworks designed to provide a centralised procurement model. A tender document from the government's chief procurement agency says that the framework, worth between £240m and £400m over four years, is aimed at transforming how it buys common goods and services. It …

    Channel Register 6 Apr 10:17

  • Online ticket company ordered to release data on ticket sellers

    Trade of tickets at above face value cost breached RFU's T&Cs

    An online company must hand over personal data of its customers, according to a High Court ruling. Viagogo Ltd has been ordered to supply the names, addresses and credit card information of people who used their website to advertise and sell England rugby match tickets. The web-based intermediary will also have to divulge the …

    Law 6 Apr 10:41

  • Civil servants just can't keep a grip on their BlackBerrys

    Aging smartphone platform is most 'lost' or 'stolen' item

    BlackBerrys have become the most lost or stolen item at the Department of Transport, a minister revealed yesterday, although thieves also seem to have a taste for heating fuel too. Under-Secretary of State for Transport Norman Baker produced a shopping list of items "recorded as lost by or stolen from DFT staff, from either on …

    Government 6 Apr 10:51

  • US Army releases new vid of Judge Dredd computer smart-rifle

    Definitely needs voice-command ammo selector

    The US military has released a new video showing the XM-25 computer smartgun being fired in trials. The revolutionary weapon seems to have heavy recoil - unsurprisingly, as it shoots hefty 25mm projectiles to long distances. The vid seems to bear out claims by US Army officials in charge of the programme that the weapon's …

    Science 6 Apr 11:00

  • Richard Branson to prowl oceans' hadal depths in flying sub

    Virgin Oceanic – coming soon to a trench near you

    Sir Richard Branson has set his sights on conquering the world's oceanic depths in a revolutionary carbon fibre and titanium "flying" submarine. The Virgin supremo's Virgin Oceanic project will encompass five dives over the next two years to "the deepest part of each of Earth's five oceans". The submarine is described as …

    Science 6 Apr 11:23

  • Culture minister rejects calls for UK probe of Google search biz

    Ed Vaizey agrees to meet with Foundem members

    Culture minister Ed Vaizey has rejected calls for UK regulators to investigate Google's search business practices. Tory MP Dominic Raab asked Vaizey to comment on why the Office of Fair Trading or indeed the Competition Commission hadn't undertaken their own probes into Google's search product, which currently has a 95 per …

    Government 6 Apr 11:47

  • HTC Desire S Android smartphone

    Review Gingerbread temptation?

    The revised version of HTC’s more than capable Desire offers an updated look and runs Gingerbread, the latest Android 2.3 OS. What the Desire S brings to the mix is a faster, more responsive handset with improved keyboards and video calling options, all for a reasonable price. Android appeal: HTC's Desire S The casing is …

    reghardware 6 Apr 12:00

  • Ofcom Radio pokes at potential pirates

    Frequency don't come for free

    Londoners can now tune into Ofcom's own radio station, which is transmitting for a week or two to let people know they shouldn't be. The station is transmitting across the South Bank on 87.7MHz, with a message explaining what a terrible thing pirate radio is, and reminding listeners that they can hire the frequency for their …

    Wireless 6 Apr 12:14

  • Israel mulls creation of elite counter-cyberterrorist unit

    Unit would protect private sector firms and gov agencies

    Israel is mulling the creation of a counter-cyberterrorism unit designed to safeguard both government agencies and core private sector firms against hacking attacks. The proposed unit would supplement the efforts of Mossad and other agencies in fighting cyberespionage and denial of service attacks. Israel is, of course, a …

    Enterprise Security 6 Apr 12:18

  • Nokia floats out a collection of cool concepts

    Folding phone with a nose of its own

    Concept phone designs sometimes materialise into real products, so although Nokia's latest line-up of maybes seem unlikely, we can keep our fingers crossed eh? Last month we saw a few concept designs for Windows Phone 7 mobiles. In response, Nokia has put out five of its favourite mobile designs that will probably remain …

    reghardware 6 Apr 12:39

  • SpaceX unveils new Falcon Heavy rocket - WORLD'S BIGGEST

    Elon Musk moves towards dream of boots-on-Mars glory

    SpaceX, the famous upstart startup rocket company founded on PayPal hecamillionaire Elon Musk's internet fortune, has announced details of its latest and mightiest launcher - which will be the most powerful rocket in the world. “Falcon Heavy will arrive at our Vandenberg, California, launch complex by the end of next year with …

    Space 6 Apr 12:50

  • Sage blames downloads for downtime

    All fine now though

    Sage 50 customers should be able to access the cloud-based service now after almost a week of intermittent access. Glamorous Scouse Reg reader Caroline said: "We had problems last Thursday and couldn't get on all day. On Friday we had access in the afternoon but couldn't get back onto the site on Monday, but I did manage to …

    Cloud 6 Apr 12:58

  • Halifax cuts investment accounts off from the web until April 2012

    Why not phone us? Or send your butler. Next year

    A British bank is closing off web acces access to its investment accounts while it works on "a fresh new site which is more secure and easier to use". The only downside is that this process will keep Halifax Bank of Scotland busy until April 2012. So anyone with an investment account at the banking group will need to manage …

    CIO 6 Apr 13:50

  • Antarctic meteorite yields exotic new mineral

    NASA scientists spy specks of 'Wassonite'

    NASA has announced the discovery of a new mineral inside a "historically significant"* meteorite recovered from Antarctica in December 1969. The exotic blend of sulphur and titanium was spotted in the 4.5bn-year-old Yamato 691 enstatite chondrite, which may have once formed part of an asteroid orbiting between Jupiter and Mars …

    Space 6 Apr 14:02

  • The Sun still not shining on Nintendo's 3DS

    Causes high heart rate, OMFG!

    The Sun stepped up its slagfest towards Nintendo's 3DS today, subjecting a self-less volunteer to two hours of 3DS gaming to show just how bad the console may be for your health. After yesterday's spat in which the tabloid claimed retailers had received huge levels of 3DS returns - heavily disputed by Nintendo and retailers …

    reghardware 6 Apr 14:06

  • Cisco CEO: 'We have disappointed our investors'

    John Chambers outlines turnaround strategy in lengthy memo

    John Chambers has led Cisco into becoming too broadly spread, undisciplined and caused three quarters of poor results disappointing investors. Now he wants to turn the tide and get Cisco back on track. The company's performance in the past three quarters has gotten Cisco to the point where Chambers has had to do something …

    Data Networking 6 Apr 14:42

  • Georgian granny disconnects Armenian internet

    Beware copper-scavenging septuagenarians

    A Georgian granny faces a possible three years in jail after a copper-scavenging expedition ended in Armenia's disconnection from the internet. While hoping to pick up some valuable booty in the village of Ksani on 28 March, the 75-year-old damaged fibre-optic cables owned by the Georgian Railway Telecom company, which serve …

    Data Networking 6 Apr 14:43

  • Microsoft crowns Capossela as new consumer channels head

    I'll fetch the suitcase from the van

    Microsoft has created a new consumer channels division and plonked the company's Office marketing boss in the chair to head up the group. Chris Capossela is a Redmond veteran, having worked at the software vendor for 20 years. He had previously flogged Microsoft's Office, SharePoint, Exchange and – most recently – Office 365 …

    Channel Register 6 Apr 14:58

  • Malware baddies crank up Trojan production

    Hi ho! Hi ho!

    Malware authors have stepped up production rates still further in their efforts to overwhelm anti-virus defences with banking Trojans and other crud. During the first three months of 2011 an average of 73,000 new strains of malware have been created every day: 10,000 more than during the same period last year, according to …

    Malware 6 Apr 15:09

  • Cycle Computing fires up 10,000-core HPC cloud on EC2

    Only $1,060 per hour, management included

    Setting up a 10,000-core physical server cluster to run supercomputing workloads is a tough task that can take weeks or months, and cost millions of dollars including the servers, storage, switching, and personnel overhead. And the thing about a cluster is that no matter how hard you try to share it, it is very tough to get …

    Cloud 6 Apr 16:05

  • Nokia admits 'open' Symbian is not open

    Open is the new closed

    Nokia has admitted that its "open and direct" Symbian source code is not open, proving – once again – that the word has been stripped of all discernible meaning. Late last week, a little over three months after the Symbian Foundation shut down its web servers, Nokia returned the Symbian source code to the web. It announced the …

    Developer 6 Apr 16:55

  • Couchbase serves Membase for OS X

    Big Data pie for fanbois

    Mac-happy coders are getting served a slice of Big Data pie, courtesy of the NoSQL shop Couchbase. The company, formed this year through the rather curious wedding of Couchio and Membase, has this week announced the latter's Membase Server on Apple's OS X, as a community edition. Membase Server is a distributed key-value …

    Software 6 Apr 17:00

  • Nimbula floats 'instamatic' cloud builder

    Ex-Amazon man offers your very own Amazon

    Nimbula – the build-your-own-cloud outfit founded by a former vice president of engineering at Amazon – has officially released Nimbula Director, its "cloud operating system". This includes a free version of the product, which is limited to server clusters of 40 or fewer processing cores. You can download the free version from …

    Cloud 6 Apr 17:34

  • Apple pressures Toyota to kill jailbreaker ad

    'Legality? We've heard of it'

    Apple has fired another shot in its war against iOS jailbreakers by pressuring Toyota to stop an ad campaign it was running on ModMyi.com, a website catering to jailbroken iPhones, and to pull a Toyota iOS "theme" available through the site. "I received a call from our contact at [Toyota's ad agency] Velti this evening as well …

    Music and Media 6 Apr 18:20

  • AT&T's iPhone 4 drops 2.5 times as many calls as Verizon's

    'You can't hear me now'

    Owners of AT&T's GSM iPhone 4 experience over two-and-a-half times as many dropped calls as do those using Verizon's new CDMA model. This bad news for AT&T comes from ChangeWave, self-described as "an independent research boutique", which released the results of its survey of 4,068 smartphone users on Tuesday. According to …

    Mobile 6 Apr 19:28

  • Pandora's mobile app transmits 'mass quantities' of user data

    From Android's lips to advertisers' ears

    A free smartphone app provided by internet radio service Pandora supplies advertisers with enough user information for them to compile detailed snapshots of those who use it, researchers who analyzed the software have said. Tuesday's report, titled Mobile Apps Invading Your Privacy and issued by software analysis firm Veracode …

    ID 6 Apr 20:32

  • Apple 'orders 12 petabytes of storage' from EMC

    That's not going into iPads

    Apple has ordered a gargantuan 12 petabytes of storage from Isilon – the recent EMC acquisition – to support its iTunes video service, according to report citing an "inside source". According to to StorageNewsletter.com, Apple is "probably" the largest of Isilon's 1,500 customers as of the end of December. That may be an …

    Cloud 6 Apr 21:18

  • The new killer app is … MMS

    Send a pic from the DeLorean

    Ditch the iPhone and forget about social media, the new killer app is actually MMS, claims tech author and 3G strategist Tomi Ahonen. Ahonen told an audience of digital and content executives at MipTV in Cannes that the humble mobile phone trumps iPhones, television and social media as the platform with greatest reach and …

    Mobile 6 Apr 21:28

  • SEC charges two with insider trading in Oracle-Sun deal

    And Intel-McAfee. And HP-3Com

    The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two people for running an alleged insider trading scam involving such marquee mergers and acquisitions as Oracle's Sun purchase, Intel's McAfee buy, and HP's acquisition of 3Com. According to the complaint filed on Wednesday by the SEC, the miscreants include a corporate …

    Financial News 6 Apr 23:04

  • Open source .NET mimic lands on Android

    Mono imitates Microsoft on Google Linux. What could go wrong?

    Novell has officially released its Androidian incarnation of Mono, letting .NET-happy coders build applications for Google's mobile OS using Microsoft Visual Studio. Appropriately enough, Novell calls its new toolset Mono for Android. It follows in the footsteps of the company's iOS incarnation of Mono, MonoTouch. "Since the …

    Developer 6 Apr 23:06

  • Anti-social media in defence a token of chronic stupidity

    Comment Skype on base, that was a bright idea

    First, for those of you not in Australia, a précis of a tawdry little tale. The Australian Defence Force found itself in the headlines for the wrong reasons when a young female member of the ADF Academy went public after having sex with a fellow cadet, only to find out later that he used a webcam and Skype to broadcast the …

    Government 6 Apr 23:24