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21st April 2011 Archive

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  • Internet child porn investigators net South Aust MP

    ‘Operation decimate’ nabs pollie

    A South Australian state Labor MP has been arrested and charged for using the Internet to access child exploitation material, in an ongoing police operation called Operation Decimate*. According to South Australia Police, the MP was arrested at home and charged with possession of child pornography, an aggravated count of …

    Security 21 Apr 2011, 01:00

  • Lady Gaga helps ease the Vodafail pain

    Parody vid goes viral

    The customer backlash over Vodafone and 3’s extensive network outage issues has given rise to dedicated blogs, Facebook pages, websites, and now – wait for it – a Lady Gaga music video parody. The clip – featuring an Australian comedy duo called TV Live on Stage – was recently posted to YouTube. It's called Vodafail The …

    Mobile 21 Apr 2011, 02:00

  • eBay buys mobile ad outfit Where

    Jumps on 'shop local' bandwagon

    eBay – famous for letting people buy stuff for auction from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world – has joined the “hyper-local” goldrush and bought Boston-based Where Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Where plays in the mobile location services space, delivering local-area advertising to mobile customers. eBay’s …

    Financial News 21 Apr 2011, 02:00

  • IPv4 addresses priced at $4 on new trading site

    But is it legal?

    IPv4 address trading – long predicted by authorities such as APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) chief scientist Geoff Huston – has arriving with a vengeance. Now there's even a site devoted to it: Tradeipv4.com, registered at the end of March by a German Python developer Martin von Loewis. Tradeipv4.com is …

    Networks 21 Apr 2011, 03:00

  • Ubuntu seeks Android-packin' Windows deserters

    A little tech knowledge goes a long way

    If you're packing an Android smartphone, not an iPhone, then you're the kind of free tech spirit that Canonical wants for Ubuntu Linux – version 11.04, to be precise. Even better if you're a hacked-off Microsoft user running Windows and considering a move to Mac – the preferred escape route of many a Windows defector. The …

    Operating Systems 21 Apr 2011, 04:01

  • Ubuntu Server 11.04: Fully baked in 7 days

    Mmm, this Narwhal is natty

    If you have nothing better to do next Thursday after stuffing yourself full of Easter lamb or ham on Sunday, you might want to wander over to Canonical, get a slice of "Natty Narwhal", and chew on a bit of Ubuntu Server 11.04. The Natty Narwhal release is based on the Linux 2.6.38 kernel, which came out in mid-March with lots …

    Operating Systems 21 Apr 2011, 04:01

  • Microsoft online app melodrama wins federal certification

    Feds underline Redmondian Google envy

    Microsoft's BPOS-Federal suite of online business applications has been certified for use by the US government. Which highlights the fact that it wasn't certified earlier. Earlier this month, Microsoft made headlines when it accused Google of making "misleading security claims" to the US government, an accusation that hinged …

    Government 21 Apr 2011, 04:15

  • ForeverMap 2.1

    iOS App of the Week A route worth taking?

    It’s holiday time! But we’ve all heard horror stories about people coming back from holiday and getting hit with a huge bill for using their smartphone outside the UK.   Settings on the iPhone So, when I went off to Portugal recently I was determined not to make any unnecessary calls or to use apps that might run up data …

    Phones 21 Apr 2011, 06:00

  • Cops refuse to say if they secretly snarf cellphone data

    'Enormous risk' from mobile snoop devices

    The American Civil Liberties Union has called on Michigan State Police to account for several pieces mobile hardware in its possession that can quickly download cellphone data without the owner's knowledge. “With certain exceptions that do not apply here, a search cannot occur without a warrant in which a judicial officer …

    Security 21 Apr 2011, 06:00

  • World's Biggest Pac-Man keeps growing

    Customise levels and play for years

    Want to relive those magic pill-munching days of dark rooms and repetitive electronic music? Then have a bash at The World's Biggest Pac-Man, an online version of the popular game that experiences continuous growth through user contributions. TWBP is a universe of custom levels that connect to one another and can be navigated …

    Games 21 Apr 2011, 07:16

  • Social networks must police kids' profiles, says EC

    Facebook and friends asked to play net nanny

    Social network sites must ensure that children's profiles are visible only to the child's friends and cannot be found on a search engine, the European Commission has said. The Commission adopted its stance after a survey (13-page/198KB PDF) found that an increasing number of children were flouting social network age limits to …

    Law 21 Apr 2011, 07:18

  • ICT classes in school should be binned – IT biz body

    Stop pretending basic knowledge is a specialist subject

    Schools should stop teaching ICT lessons in their current form as the subject is failing both pupils and employers, according to trade bod Intellect. "We believe that ICT in its current form should not be a statutory programme of study," says John Hoggard, Intellect education honcho. "Takeup of ICT courses is falling – GCSE …

    Policy 21 Apr 2011, 08:10

  • Watchdog sniffs Rihanna's 'gently thrusting buttocks'

    X Factor cleared of punting filth to kiddies

    ITV will not face action from TV watchdog Ofcom over X Factor performances by Rihanna and Christina Aguilera, despite the Daily Mail's insistence that the pair punted filth to wide-eyed kiddies. The two artists appeared on The X Factor Final on Saturday, 11 December. Rihanna performed What's My Name "in a dress which was …

    Bootnotes 21 Apr 2011, 08:12

  • Royal wedding scareware scams arise as Big Day looms

    Orf with their heads

    Spyware scammers have unsurprisingly latched onto the upcoming royal wedding as a theme for rogue anti-virus scams. Royalists searching for terms related to the upcoming nuptials (e.g., "Middleton wedding dress idea") are likely to find links to scareware portals among the top results. Surfers who visit these portals will be …

    Security 21 Apr 2011, 08:31

  • Hubble celebrates 21st with gorgeous galactic 'rose' snap

    Photogenic Andromedan pairing 'Arp 273' caught on scope

    NASA is celebrating the forthcoming 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's launch with a fetching snap of a galactic "rose". Hubble was lifted heavenwards on 24 April 1990 aboard space shuttle Discovery. Its anniversary photo was captured by the Wide Field Camera 3, under the guidance of astronomers at the Space …

    Science 21 Apr 2011, 08:44

  • PSN gaming network outage sparks DDoS rumours

    PS3 modder counterstrike to blame?

    Outage of the PlayStation network today sparked unconfirmed rumours that the downtime may be down to a denial of service attack. Perhaps the PSN network is just having a bit of a nap, but global problems in logging into the online gaming network have given rise to speculation that it is due either to a DDoS or hacking from a …

    Games 21 Apr 2011, 08:57

  • Obama to pop down to Endeavour launch

    Shuttle's last mission gets presidential send-off

    Barack Obama will pop down to Kennedy Space Center for next week's launch of space shuttle Endeavour, Reuters reports. The president may be joined by Gabrielle Giffords, wife of Endeavour commander Mark Kelly. She's still recovering from the head wound she received in the 8 January Tuscon shooting, and doctors will need to …

    Science 21 Apr 2011, 09:11

  • Government agrees terms with cloud supplier

    Company claims agreement fulfills agenda for 'gov as a single customer'

    A cloud computing service provider has claimed an agreement with a central government working group to make it the first supplier in the field to deal with government as a single customer. Huddle said it has developed common terms and conditions and a pricing model for all of its business with government in agreement with a …

    Cloud 21 Apr 2011, 09:30

  • Lasers set to replace spark plugs in car engines

    Squeeze, bang pew pew, blow, suck

    Spark plugs in petrol engines are set to be replaced by laser ignition systems, following development of new manufacturing techniques by Japanese boffins. The new research is to be presented to the world at an optics conference in Baltimore next month by Takunori Taira of Japan's National Institutes of Natural Sciences and his …

    Science 21 Apr 2011, 10:15

  • Animal lovers stamp on goldfish racing

    Washington bar cancels piscine derby

    A bar in Washington state has been obliged to cancel its weekly goldfish racing event following complaints from less-than-impressed animal lovers. Every Tuesday night, the Harmon Tap Room in Tacoma filled two eight-foot long troughs with water, threw in some "10 cent feeder fish from the pet store" and let punters encourage …

    Bootnotes 21 Apr 2011, 10:25

  • What now for the anti-piracy law?

    Analysis ISPs 'hoist with their own petard' says judge

    BT and TalkTalk threw the kitchen sink, legally speaking, at the Digital Economy Act and made very little stick. Reading the ruling, you wonder why they bothered. High Court Judge Kenneth Parker summarised the DEA as "a more efficient, focussed and fair system than the current arrangements". Over and over, he pointed out that …

    Law 21 Apr 2011, 10:30

  • Phones4U gets the jump on Samsung's Galaxy S II

    Dual-core smartphone

    Samsung's upcoming handset, the Galaxy S II will be offered through Phones4U in the week prior to release, making the retailer the first in the UK to market the smartphone. Punters who pre-ordered the dual-core smartphone were expecting to wait until the start of May for its official release.But those who opted to go through …

    Phones 21 Apr 2011, 10:34

  • ICO makes school stand in corner over data theft

    1/10 for encryption - see me

    The ICO has given an Oldham school a stern telling-off after an unencrypted laptop with pupils' details was stolen from a teachers' car. The laptop contained "personal information" relating to 90 pupils at Freehold Community School when it was half-inched from the boot of the corduroy's car, which was parked outside their home …

    Law 21 Apr 2011, 10:58

  • Eight... spatial soundbars

    Product Round-up Sonic boom

    TV’s have been getting thinner and thinner over the last few years, with some of today’s LED sets almost impossibly slim. Although picture quality has been improving, the tight amount of space available in these slim-line chassis means that they tend to house tiny speakers that produce audio that’s got less bottom end than most …

    Hardware 21 Apr 2011, 11:00

  • TalkTalk claims wooden spoon for highest level of broadband gripes

    Three UK scores most complaints to watchdog in mobile market

    Communications watchdog Ofcom placed TalkTalk at the the top of the list of companies it had received complaints about from UK broadband and landline customers between October 2010 and February this year. It said TalkTalk had notched up 1.78 gripes per 1,000 of its landline customers during that period. "Ofcom saw a peak in …

    Broadband 21 Apr 2011, 11:04

  • Dell refreshes Alienware laptops

    Sandy Bridge upgrade

    Dell has boosted its Alienware line-up with some fresh gaming-centric laptops, the M11x, M14x and M18x. The Alienware M11x, which we covered last year, has been refreshed with Sandy Bridge processors and comes with 2nd-gen Core i5 or i7 CPUs, up to 16GB DDR3 RAM and either a 750GB HD or 256GB SSD. There's also the bonus of USB …

    Laptops 21 Apr 2011, 11:31

  • Microsoft inks Nokia deal with phones set to fly in 2012

    Once and future ring

    The marriage between Microsoft and Nokia was today splashed in ink with the two companies signing a definitive deal for their 10-week-old strategic union. Under the new alliance, the two tech firms will build a number of Nokia Windows phones. The devices themselves are expected to ship in volume at some point in 2012, …

    Mobile 21 Apr 2011, 11:33

  • Multimillionaire's private space ship 'can land on Mars'

    Elon Musk's amazing claim for 'Dragon' capsule

    Famous upstart startup rocket company SpaceX, bankrolled and helmed by renowned internet nerdwealth hecamillionaire Elon Musk, has once again sent its goalposts racing ahead of its rapidly-advancing corporate reality. A proper Dragon can breathe fire as well as fly The plucky challenger has stated that its "Dragon" capsule …

    Science 21 Apr 2011, 11:59

  • Nokia market share dips below 30% in Q1

    Revenues up, pre-tax profit down

    Nokia's global mobile phone market share significantly fell below 30 per cent for the first time in 10 years during the company's first quarter, when it announced a new pact with Microsoft. The company, which today signed a definitive agreement with MS to build several Nokia Windows phones together, posted better than expected …

    Financial News 21 Apr 2011, 12:28

  • Robotic waiter service uses Kinect to see

    Customise your droid

    We've already seen Microsoft's Xbox Kinect used as the eyes for a robot, but here it is again, in a device offered commercially. Say hello to the TurtleBot, a robotic assistant that can be customised to perform a whole array of tasks. The Bot can act as a waiter, moving edibles from one room to another. It also takes …

    Hardware 21 Apr 2011, 13:29

  • Skype plugs Android privacy flaw

    Less paranoia

    Skype has plugged a privacy flaw in the Android version of its VoIP telephony software. The update plugs a hole that created a possible mechanism for third-party apps to get access to private data (name, phone number, chat logs etc) held on the Skype directory on Android devices. The security problem was discovered by …

    VoIP 21 Apr 2011, 14:44

  • Amazon cloud sinks, smothers Web 2.0 darlings

    Haven't Reddit!

    Whole swathes of Web 2.0 disappeared to the dark side of the cloud today, as an outage at one of Amazon's EC2 data centres torpedoed the likes of Quora and Reddit. The service's status site showed that things started going haywire just over five hours ago, when techies began "investigating latency and error rates with EBS …

    Cloud 21 Apr 2011, 14:49

  • Son of Kaspersky Lab's CEO 'kidnapped'

    Held for €3m ransom, says unconfirmed report

    The 20-year-old son of Kaspersky Lab's CEO has reportedly gone missing, with kidnappers said to be demanding €3m for his release. According to Lifenews.ru (via Google Translate), Ivan Kaspersky – the son of Eugene Kaspersky with his ex-wife Natalya Kaspersky – disappeared two days ago. Since then the police, Russian secret …

    Security 21 Apr 2011, 14:52

  • Japanese gov makes Fukushima evac zone compulsory

    It's more radioactive in Madras: no evac there

    Japanese authorities have elected to make a recommended evacuation zone around the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant compulsory and ordered residents of some communities beyond the zone to evacuate, despite the fact that radiation levels beyond the plant fence are dropping steadily and are nowhere such as to cause …

    Science 21 Apr 2011, 15:32

  • Google to sell subscriptions to Chrome OS notebooks?

    $10 to $20 a month for web happy hardware

    Google will sell Chrome OS notebooks and accompanying software services for a $10 to $20 monthly subscription fee, according to a report citing a "reliable source". Neowin reports that for those paying a subscription fee, Google will provide "hardware refreshes" as they become available and replace faulty hardware for the …

    Operating Systems 21 Apr 2011, 16:57

  • Google Linux servers hit with $5m patent infringement verdict

    'Information highway now toll road,' howls Google

    A jury has found that in using Linux on its back-end servers, Google has infringed a patent held by a small Texas-based company and must pay $5m in damages. In 2006, Bedrock Computer Technologies sued Google and several other outfits – including Yahoo!, Amazon.com, PayPal, and AOL – claiming they infringed on a patent filed in …

    Operating Systems 21 Apr 2011, 19:02

  • Geeks break time machine record

    Evolution in 244 steps

    A cabal of engineers from the Purdue Society of Professional Engineers and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers has broken the world record for a Rube Goldberg contraption, executing a review of history from the Big Bang to the Mayan 2012 apocalypse in 244 steps — to water a single flower. The Rube Goldberg competition …

    Bootnotes 21 Apr 2011, 21:09

  • Facebook restores fan page of social scam warning site

    Strong language to blame for mystery suspension?

    Facebook has restored the fan page of an anti-scam site after earlier turfing out the Bulldog Estate. The expulsion, decried by security watchers, meant that a site which serves the useful purpose of warning about survey scams and malware on Facebook disappeared off the social network. Scam Snipper, another similar service, …

    Security 21 Apr 2011, 22:05

  • AMD balance sheet not exactly an Intel clone

    Bulldozers to shore up server biz

    Advanced Micro Devices is no longer a fabricator of chips, but it is still benefitting from spinning out its wafer-baking unit to GlobalFoundries. In the first quarter ending April 2, AMD's sales were up a modest 2 per cent, to $1.61bn, but all of its costs were on the rise, and its operating income fell by 70 per cent, to $ …

    Financial News 21 Apr 2011, 22:25

  • Amazon outage spans clouds 'insulated' from each other

    Not what it says on the tin

    It's not surprising that Amazon's infrastructure cloud has gone on the fritz. This is what happens to internet services from time to time. What is surprising – or least more troubling – is that today's outage affected multiple "availability zones" across the service. "Availability Zones," according to Amazon, "are distinct …

    Cloud 21 Apr 2011, 23:48

  • Microsoft chucks bigger salaries and cash bonuses at staff

    Redmond's real Google and Facebook killer?

    Cash is the new king in Microsoft's battle to recruit and retain talent against the twin gravitational forces of Google and Facebook. The world's largest software company told employees on Thursday that it's giving them pay raises and changing the way it awards bonuses beginning this September. Bonuses are getting bigger and …

    Financial News 21 Apr 2011, 23:55