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8th April 2011 Archive

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  • Mainland NBN pilot gets 12 retailers on board

    ISPs flock to Oz fast net trials

    In what must be a welcome break from a week of bad news, NBN Co has announced 12 retailers that have signed on to its mainland pilots. The providers – AAPT, AARNet, Comscentre, Exetel, iiNet, Internode, iPrimus, Nextgen Networks, Optus, Platform Networks, SkyMesh and Telstra – include some unexpected names. AARNet, for …

    Networks 8 Apr 2011, 03:44

  • iPads mooted for Qantas flight manuals

    Bet cattle class still gets the 'switch off all devices' nag

    Last week, when this correspondent was returning to Sydney from Melbourne on the Australian national carrier, the flight was delayed by a recalcitrant keeping his mobile phone switched on. After several stern warnings were relayed from the flight deck, radio silence was achieved and we made our flight. The alleged dangers of …

    Odds and Sods 8 Apr 2011, 03:55

  • Naked at 30: Osborne 1 stripped to its chips

    Photos He ain't heavy. He's my TV typewriter

    The Osborne 1 – the first mass-market portable computer – turns 30 years old this month. And what better way to celebrate than by tearing one apart? One problem: I couldn't get my hands on an original Osborne 1. But I was able to tear into the next best thing: the slightly remodeled follow-on to the original, also known as the …

    Music and Media 8 Apr 2011, 04:00

  • Larry Page to Google staff: Your bonus is tied to Facebook envy

    Social media strategy at the point of a gun

    Larry Page has worked out who at Google is responsible for its long string of failures in the social media space: everybody. Page is tying a proverbial lamb chop around the neck of its new social thingy, "Google +1", in the hope that the dogs will pay it some attention. According to Business Insider, Chocolate Factory boss …

    Financial News 8 Apr 2011, 05:00

  • Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

    Review Bricking it

    If you've got a winning, hugely popular formula, you don't dick around with it, right? Star Wars creator George Lucas may have forgotten what made the first three movies so good - character, as well as effects and story - when he started work on the prequels, but the latest addition to the Lego Star Wars franchise, this time …

    reghardware 8 Apr 2011, 06:00

  • Facebook's open hardware: Does it compute?

    Comment Open hardware is not open source

    What happens if, as we saw at the launch of Facebook's Open Compute Project on Thursday, the design of servers and data centers is open sourced and completely "demystified"? If open source software is any guide, hardware infrastructure will get better and cheaper at a faster rate than it might otherwise. And someone is going …

    Servers 8 Apr 2011, 06:00

  • Dell offers archive product, virtualised desktop service

    Extends Microsoft partnership

    Dell has announced a file and email archiving system and a virtualised desktop offering. It also intends to make up to eight acquisitions in the next twelve months. The Dell Email and File Archive involves file and email servers hooking up to an archive gateway (El Reg's term) using either Symantec or CommVault software, and …

    Storage 8 Apr 2011, 07:00

  • Networking galore at SNW Spring

    Blog Spot the EMC

    I'm at the airport once again, this time returning home from Storage Networking World Spring, held in Santa Clara, CA this week. The value of the event SNW is one of the most important events in the storage world and it's a great opportunity to meet in person all the people that run the storage market business. Indeed the …

    Blocks and Files 8 Apr 2011, 07:04

  • e-Borders snares 2,800 possible crims, 5 tons of baccy

    Also 7 million cigs, claims gov

    The UK Border Agency has claimed to have captured large number of crime suspects through the e-Borders monitoring system. It has issued a statement saying that alerts from the system led to 2,800 arrests in 2010-11 after the details of 126 million passengers were checked against watchlists of suspects wanted by itself, police …

    Security 8 Apr 2011, 08:00

  • Network Rail blames Atos for downtime

    Can't discuss commercially sensitive details...

    Network Rail has confirmed that problems with tech supplier Atos Origin on Wednesday meant it was unable to automatically update train departure boards as well as its offices losing access to the internet and external emails. An insider told us that the failure, blamed internally on a Cisco router and a spanning-tree loop, had …

    CIO 8 Apr 2011, 08:16

  • Compellent has a rethink over deduplication

    Comment NAS head may increase

    Prior to its acquisition by Dell in February, Compellent was developing its own deduplication technology and had two NAS heads, providing file access to its arrays. Now that it's in the Dell sphere, both areas face change. Conversations with a source "familiar with the situation" indicate that Dell's own technologies could …

    Storage 8 Apr 2011, 09:12

  • Record Patch Tuesday with 17-bulletin bumper crop

    Strap in: it's likely to be a bumpy ride

    Microsoft is lining up a record equaling 17 security bulletins, nine rated critical and eight classified as important, as part of the April edition of its monthly Patch Tuesday updates. The 12 April security update batch will collectively address 64 security vulnerabilities. Bugs in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, …

    Enterprise Security 8 Apr 2011, 09:15

  • Clegg'n'Cameron seek Director of Digital

    £142k for a Twitter Tsar! #cushylittlenumber

    Applicants for the government's new post of "Director of Digital" need to get a wriggle on - to be in by 20 April. The £142,000 a year gig has been dubbed the position of Twitter Tsar by just about everyone. But the government's Digital Champion Martha Lane-Fox said the job is much more than that, according to er, Twitter. …

    Government 8 Apr 2011, 09:30

  • Orange offers HTC Desire sequel

    Gingerbread confection available with Orange icing

    Orange will be offering HTC's Desire S smartphone any day now, the network operator said today. The Android 2.3 Gingerbread-running handset - which Reg Hardware reviewed this week - will be available on a range of pay-monthly plans. The phone costs nothing if it's acquired alongside a £35-a-month or pricier package. The …

    reghardware 8 Apr 2011, 09:43

  • Acer unveils easy access all-in-one

    Designer desktop

    Acer has revealed its latest AIO touchscreen PC, which includes an all-new media sharing system and can double up as a TV. The Acer Aspire Z5761 has a 23in 1920 x 1080 touchscreen and comes with the option of an Intel Core i5-2400S, i5-2500S or Core i7-2600S processor. Graphics are interchangeable between the in-chip Intel …

    reghardware 8 Apr 2011, 09:46

  • What will we do with 600MHz?

    Local TV for local people ...

    4G licences are getting all the attention these days, but the switch to digital released another big chunk of radio spectrum which no one seems to know what to do with. The 4G licences currently being discussed by Ofcom stretch across 790-862MHz (known as 800MHz), and 2.50-2.69GHz (the 2.6GHz band), but switching off analogue …

    Wireless 8 Apr 2011, 10:24

  • Apple store kneecaps rival browser

    Exclusive Bookmarklets considered harmful

    Apple has ordered the developer of a web browser for iPhones and iPads to disable vital functionality. The gatekeepers at the iTunes store, which sells the highly rated browser German browser iCab, ordered it to disable Javascript. The developer says he'll comply. iCab was launched two years ago, and brings many more features …

    Applications 8 Apr 2011, 10:28

  • Deep-space travel bad for astronauts' tickers, say boffins

    Mice zapped with atom-smasher beam in risky* experiments

    Deep-space travel could be bad for the heart, report boffins. This has been established by blasting mice with an ion beam from a powerful atom-smasher, causing the luckless murines to develop artery damage of the sort that might result from exposure to powerful cosmic space radiation. "Cosmic radiation is very different from X …

    Space 8 Apr 2011, 10:50

  • Google may accept government watchdog

    Travel deal not going anywhere otherwise

    US officials are close to convincing Google to accept some kind of government oversight in order to get approval for its takeover of ITA Software which provides travel and flight information. Several companies have vigorously opposed the move, which they believe will gift Google another effective monopoly. ITA Software is used …

    Law 8 Apr 2011, 10:55

  • Tie me customer down, sport

    And knowing when to let go

    Women are more loyal than men. Or at least, that is what women told the Ipsos Mori 2010 consumer customer loyalty survey. The study found that three out of five British adults are loyalty scheme members; 67 per cent of women belonged to at least one, compared with 57 per cent of men; and about 68 per cent of women are loyal to …

    Doing Better Business 8 Apr 2011, 11:00

  • Google CEO Larry Page makes his mark in management rejig

    In through the social out door

    While Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was waving his new racks in Google's face yesterday, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory's new helmsman Larry Page was reportedly rejigging his management underlings. According to the Los Angeles Times, a reorganisation of top Google wonks has already taken place, just days after Page returned …

    Applications 8 Apr 2011, 11:08

  • One-armed Maine residents whip out switchblades

    State Senate approval for 'emergency use'

    In good news for one-armed residents of Maine for whom conventional knives just don't cut it, the state's Senate has agreed to allow them to carry switchblades. The bold legislative move will "eliminate a need for one-armed people to be forced to open folding knives with their teeth in emergencies", as Reuters nicely puts it …

    Bootnotes 8 Apr 2011, 11:19

  • TJX mastermind chances his arm with deep cover infiltration appeal

    A Scanner Darkly-style defense

    Albert Gonzalez, mastermind of the infamous TJ Maxx hack, has sought to get a judge to set aside his earlier guilty plea and conviction in the case by arguing he carried out the hack while working as a paid government informant. Gonzalez, 29, who escaped jail time back in 2004 over his involvement in the sale of 1.5 million …

    Crime 8 Apr 2011, 11:28

  • FCC gives cautious go-ahead for signal boosters

    Can you hear me now?

    The US comms regulator looks set to permit consumer-owned boosters, including mobile ones, despite the industry's adamant opposition and predictions of worse service for all if the rules go ahead. While indisputably illegal in the UK, cell boosters have slipped between the rules in the USA where many companies sell them to …

    Mobile 8 Apr 2011, 11:39

  • Some top cloud tools to bash up the bus factor

    Cloud The path to simplicity

    Few business owners are willing to tolerate a low bus factor on critical endeavours. If your IT infrastructure is based on ten-year-old rebuilt hardware and a heavily customised version of Linux only one or two people truly understand, you’re in trouble. The simplest means by which the bus factor can be managed is to make the …

    Enterprise Tech 8 Apr 2011, 11:40

  • RadioShack franchises go gunning for business

    Free firearm for new satellite TV subscribers

    A couple of US RadioShack franchises are offering new subscribers to a satellite TV service a handy accessory should the quality of the service prove wanting - a free firearm. Steve Strand, owner of a RadioShack outlet in Montana's Bitterroot Valley, says subscriptions to the Dish Network package have tripled since he started …

    Bootnotes 8 Apr 2011, 11:53

  • Android book-scan app tames untidy tomes

    Dewey Decimal System sorts your shelves

    An augmented-reality application can look at a shelf of books and tell you which ones are out of order, for the professional librarian or obsessive compulsive bibliophile. The books have to be tagged first with a machine-readable label, but once that's done the user can walk down the shelves looking for red crosses in a sea of …

    Mobile 8 Apr 2011, 12:12

  • AOL's million dollar man sees 40% dip in compensation

    CEO Tim Armstrong feels pain of diminishing revenue

    AOL nearly halved its chief executive officer's compensation for the year ended 31 December 2010. Tim Armstrong was handed $15.3m in salary, stock awards and options last year, compared with a hefty $25.5m reward in 2009, according to a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission published yesterday. His …

    Music and Media 8 Apr 2011, 12:14

  • The BBC struggles with concept of 'tech bubble'

    Only bad people have bad thoughts, says Newsnight

    The BBC has a real problem with social media. It's delighted when something new appears. It slips into the patrician role that comes naturally to broadcasters – and especially the BBC. It can express childlike wonderment – Wow! – at something new and amazing. Getting beyond that though, is where the trouble starts. Perhaps the …

    Music and Media 8 Apr 2011, 12:51

  • Nokia to help WinPho outsell iOS in four years

    Google - but not Android phone makers - triumphant

    Come 2015 and Microsoft will own more of the smartphone OS market than Apple does. Redmond will have 19.5 per cent of the market, Cupertino just 17.2 per cent. The folk up in Canada - Research in Motion, if you have to ask - will have 11.1 per cent. So says market watcher Gartner, just one of a number of such firms to …

    reghardware 8 Apr 2011, 13:00

  • Technology turns us into RAGING CRACKHEADS

    Study maps our addiction

    Tech is like crack. If young people were to go without their favourite gadgets, they'd suffer withdrawal symptoms comparable to those of a heavy drug user going cold turkey, it has been claimed. A study has shown that students who were subjected to a tech-free day reacted in a distressed, confused and isolated state. Some were …

    reghardware 8 Apr 2011, 13:06

  • Hasselblad H4D-40 Stainless Steel 40Mp camera

    Review Shiny special edition for the pros

    When Hasselblad launched its 40Mp H4D model at Photokina, it was presented stripped of any coating, with just the bare bones of a stainless steel body on show. The idea was to illustrate the core strength of the HD4 series, but this denuded look was so striking – contemporary, yet oddly retro – that the Swedish company …

    reghardware 8 Apr 2011, 13:08

  • GIVING UP BOOZE CAUSES CANCER - shock study

    Numbers unarguable: For pity's sake have a drink

    A shocking new study has revealed that giving up drinking perceptibly increases your chance of getting cancer. If you stay on the booze, however, your chances of getting cancer will be pretty much exactly the same as if you had never touched a drop in your life. One need hardly add that this heartening result for boozers …

    Biology 8 Apr 2011, 13:09

  • Blackhole exploit posted on US Postal Service site

    Return to sender of Spotify tainted ads pathogen

    The US Postal Service has pulled down a site hosting malicious code that was earlier used in a sophisticated multi-stage attack featuring the Blackhole Exploit kit. The infected site - http://ribbs.usps.gov - which is involved in the delivery of USPS's business mail-focused barcode-based Intelligent Mail services - was …

    Malware 8 Apr 2011, 13:22

  • CPS: We won't prosecute over BT/Phorm secret trials

    No fair cop after all

    The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed today that it would not be prosecuting anyone in BT's secret trials of Phorm's web monitoring system. "We have decided not to consent to a request from an individual to begin a prosecution of BT Group Plc and Phorm Inc in relation to alleged unlawful interception of internet browsing …

    Law 8 Apr 2011, 13:30

  • Dutch astronaut unleashes 155 mph 'Superbus'

    Radical electric stretch limo concept

    A Dutch former astronaut is hoping the future of public transport could be a 250 km/h (155 mph) "Superbus" - a 23-seater electric beast stretching an impressive 15 metres (49 ft). Wubbo Ockels, who flew as a mission specialist on Challenger's STS-61A mission back in 1985, has worked with a design team from the TU Delft …

    Science 8 Apr 2011, 14:02

  • Asus drives out Lamborghini laptop

    Pop it in gear

    Get set, Asus has souped-up its Lamborghini laptop range, with the addition of the VX7, a bonnet-looking notebook that runs on Intel Core i7 Sandy Bridge processors. The VX7 comes with speedy 1.25TB SSD and features Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M graphics with 3GB of dedicated memory. It has a 2GHz Core i7 processor with 16GB of Ram …

    reghardware 8 Apr 2011, 14:09

  • Stephen Fry explains... How lightbulbs work

    Competition Yesterday was Thursday, today is Fryday, tomorrow is Saturday...

    It's Fryday and the sun is shining. As requested, you lot have have been trying on the tweeds of our National Treasure™, Stephen Fry, to come up with Fry-style technical explanations. The best of the most recent bunch is sent in by Michael Harper, who contributes this. So picture the scene. A TV studio is filming a general …

    Bootnotes 8 Apr 2011, 14:19

  • Belt, braces and external security standards

    The risky business of assessing the public cloud

    If you are about to hand the day to day running of your company’s technology and handling of data to a third party, you had better be sure they know what they are doing, and that what they are doing matches your requirements. The business case for adopting cloud computing is already clear for many: it can save a lot of money, …

    Cloud Business 8 Apr 2011, 14:55

  • Russian pres fumes at mystery DDoS hack

    'I couldn't update my blog', Medvedev seethes

    Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has denounced online vandals who launched an attack against the site that hosts his blog. The denial of service assault on the LiveJournal site on Wednesday was both "outrageous and illegal" the Russian politician fumed after the assault, the BBC reports. "What has occurred should be examined …

    Crime 8 Apr 2011, 15:06

  • Ex-top disk dog down in the revenue dumps

    Pays dividend to keep shareholders happy

    Seagate has announced preliminary third quarter results 11.5 per cent lower than a year ago, with 1.3 million fewer disk drives shipped, but announced it is going to begin making dividend payments. Happy investors have boosted its shares by 9.12 per cent to $16.03. Seagate said for its third fiscal 2011 quarter, ending April 1 …

    Channel Register 8 Apr 2011, 15:12

  • Egenera hooks up with HP for server management

    PAN Manager now runs on three-fourths of top blades

    For the past several years, virtualized blade server pioneer Egenera has been making a transition from a maker of the BladeFrame blade systems to a software peddler tuning its PAN Manager software to run on other blade boxes. Egenera has finally bagged the big game, now that PAN Manager has been certified on Hewlett-Packard's …

    Servers 8 Apr 2011, 15:21

  • Facebook closes today ... NOT!

    Bogus claim baits latest survey scam

    Credulous Facebook users are propagating a scam that claims that social network site is shutting up shop. The message behind the scam improbably claims that Facebook was having trouble managing old inactive accounts, so it has decided to delete everything, unless users "confirm" their activity. "Your account will be …

    Malware 8 Apr 2011, 15:27

  • NoTW offers apologies, 'regret' over phone hacks

    'Our pride in our journalism remains undiminished'

    Rupert Murdoch's UK tentacle News International, owner of the Sun, the Times and the News of the World titles, has expressed "genuine regret" regarding surveillance operations – specifically, voicemail interception – by staff at the NoTW. In a statement supplied to the Reg, the company says: News International has decided to …

    Law 8 Apr 2011, 15:28

  • Verizon iPad 2s suffer 3G blindness

    Updated Searching? Roaming? Rebooting? Cursing

    Owners of Verizon's iPad 2 are complaining on Apple's support forum that their fondleslabs are having problems connecting to Verizon's CDMA 3G network. Last Saturday, a user with the handle of nixxon2000 began a thread on Apple's iPad discussion board saying that he or she was unable to get a 3G connection. Since that initial …

    Music and Media 8 Apr 2011, 19:13

  • Google settles with DoJ over flight data buy

    Will FTC antitrust regulators pounce?

    Google has reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice that would allow it to complete its $700m acquisition of flight data outfit ITA Software. Under the agreement, Google must continue to develop ITA's QPX travel software and license it to third-party websites under "commercially reasonable terms", while erecting …

    Music and Media 8 Apr 2011, 19:23

  • IBM makes like Amazon with 'SmartClouds'

    The enterprise and beyond

    Big Blue has finally rolled out its first public infrastructure cloud for commercial clients, and it's promising to deliver another with even higher levels of guaranteed uptime later this year. The Smart Business Clouds are based on IBM's own x64-based CloudBurst preconfigured stacks, which come in x64 and Power variants, …

    Infrastructure 8 Apr 2011, 19:40

  • Facebook: No 'definite plans' to ARM data centers

    Intel versus the massively multicores

    Facebook's first custom-built data center – the Prineville, Oregon facility that it just "open sourced" – uses standard x86 chips from Intel and AMD. But there's little doubt the social networking giant is exploring the use of so-called massively multicore servers packed with hundreds of low-power ARM chips, or even silicon from …

    Servers 8 Apr 2011, 19:59

  • Google woos enterprises to Android with new security offerings

    Remote PIN reset comes to users

    Google is once again trying to coax large organizations into using its Android operating system, this time by giving the end user the ability to remotely secure lost or stolen devices and admins encrypt data stored on tablets. In a blog post published Thursday, Product Manager for Google Enterprise Mobility Mayur Kamat said …

    Enterprise Security 8 Apr 2011, 21:02

  • Steve Wozniak ready for return to Apple

    If only that other Steve would ask

    Steve Wozniak – Apple cofounder, former phone phreak, chief scientist at SSD startup Fusion-io, renowned prankster, Segway-polo pioneer, education philanthropist, and Dancing with the Stars contestant – has told Reuters that he's willing to add another chapter to his storied career: a return to Apple. "I'd consider it, yeah," …

    PCs & Chips 8 Apr 2011, 21:44

  • US gov mulls issuing terrorist warnings on Twitter, Facebook

    The apocalypse will be tweeted

    The US government may soon issue terrorism alerts over Twitter and Facebook in certain circumstances. According to the Associated Press, which recently obtained a 19-page confidential plan from the Department of Homeland Security, terrorism alerts would be published over the two sites “when appropriate.” The alerts would go …

    Government 8 Apr 2011, 22:22

  • OSI fears for Linux if Novell patents land with Apple, Oracle

    Judge Steve and Larry by words and deeds

    In buying up a stash of Novell patents, Apple and Oracle could choke rivals in the virtualization, middleware, mobile, and media markets, according to the Open Source Initiative. German regulators are looking into the proposed sale of 882 Novell patents to CPTN Holdings, Microsoft-led group that also includes Apple, Oracle, …

    Channel Register 8 Apr 2011, 22:48

  • Facebook's data center play sidelines Google, Apple

    Open...and Shut Information, not hardware, is the secret sauce

    Facebook, in one fell swoop, has made the Apple-versus-Google Android openness debate sound even sillier than it is. On Thursday, Facebook didn't announce an open-source mobile platform that somehow manages to not be very open. No, that was Google. Instead, Facebook announced it was open sourcing its server and data center …

    Infrastructure 8 Apr 2011, 22:54