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4th May 2011 Archive

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  • Google Oz slips A$600 million through tax loophole

    The old Irish jig

    The Sydney Morning Herald has popped another installment in its long-running game of pinging Google’s Australian tax liability as revealed in its financial statements. In spite of Australian revenues estimated by experts like Frost & Sullivan to be more than A$700 million, the Chocolate Factory’s performance in Australia looks …

    Business 4 May 2011, 01:00

  • Apple thinks Intel is fab?

    Rumor says foundry switch on cards

    Apple is considering switching its iOS device silicon supply from Samsung to Intel. The switch would complete Intel’s dominance in Cupertino, according to a report in EE Times The article quotes analyst firm Piper Jaffray & Co as saying: “Intel is vying for Apple’s foundry business”. Analyst Gus Richard said the move would …

    Business 4 May 2011, 02:00

  • Vividwireless expands 4G footprint

    Everybody, move close to a university

    Vividwireless (which affects a “no capitals” company name that plays with sub-editors’ heads) has announced expanded coverage, adding bits of Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra to its network. The company had already rolled out its Huawei-based TD-LTE network in Perth, followed by Sydney and Melbourne. The new coverage, however …

    Software 4 May 2011, 03:00

  • There is no big Silicon Valley tech bubble, says VC king

    Just hundreds of small ones

    Forget what you may have heard: there is no massive tech bubble in Silicon Valley. Instead there are hundreds of little bubbles, and they're set to begin popping at the end of this year. That's according to investor and "co-maintainer" of the bubble-blowing AngelList, Naval Ravikant. Speaking at The Founder Conference in …

    Financial News 4 May 2011, 03:00

  • FreeNAS 8.0 hits the street

    Bitten by the enterprise bug: home user features missing

    The FreeNAS project has released version 8.0 of its popular FreeBSD-based network storage server, and in doing so has managed to alienate some of its user base. The projects directors have decided to focus on the enterprise user as their first priority, and have released FreeNAS 8.0 without the home user functionality present …

    Storage 4 May 2011, 04:00

  • Apple ex-evangelist Kawasaki pans, praises Jobs

    'Apple's existence proves there is a god'

    Apple fanboys may have religious fervor, but so too does its ex–chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki, who reckons that Apple's continued existence is evidence that there must be a God. Keynoting at The Founder Conference in Mountain View, California, just up the road from Apple's HQ, Kawasaki laid into his former employer, joking …

    Software 4 May 2011, 04:00

  • Is there anything to find on bin Laden's hard drive?

    Mining the 'mother lode' of intelligence

    US officials are already referring to the trove of computer drives and disks seized from Osama bin Laden's compound as “the mother lode of intelligence.” Such gloating is probably premature. As reported by Politico and others, the US Navy SEAL team that killed bin Laden on Sunday in Pakistan snatched computers, thumb drives and …

    Security 4 May 2011, 05:00

  • Platform embiggens Symphony financial grids

    Piggybacks Hadoop

    Grid computing software maker Platform Computing has goosed its low-latency Symphony financial grid as well as some add-ons to its Load Sharing Facility (LSF) gridding wares for more traditional HPC parallel cluster grids. Platform Symphony 5.1 may not have been giving a new release number, but it includes some important …

    HPC 4 May 2011, 06:00

  • Elgato Tivizen iOS Wi-Fi TV tuner

    Review Freeview on your fondleslab

    If the pictures of Elgato's Tivizen TV tuner look familiar, it's probably because you read Reg Hardware's review of the similarly named Tizi, from Equinux, back in February. The reason the two gadgets look the same is because they are the same: a product called Tivizen and made by South Korean company Valups. Tivizen: built …

    reghardware 4 May 2011, 07:00

  • Google Shopping hits Oz, still in beta (surprise)

    Fetid Froogle lurches into the sunlight, again

    Police with water cannons had to be deployed in Sydney yesterday to quell the celebrations, as hundreds of thousands of retailers held a wild street party to celebrate the launch of Google Shopping in Australia* (warning: don’t follow the link if you have a low tolerance of folksy, patronising, "say I wanted to buy a camera" …

    Music and Media 4 May 2011, 07:32

  • Can two small startups solve big storage pains?

    Scality and Nasuni should work together

    Explosive data growth is a big pain for every IT manager on earth. Many enterprises have their global infrastructures scattered among two or three continents. Maintaining file servers or filers all around the world isn't a simple matter: some of them are unattended, there are security concerns, backup/archive policies can't be …

    Infrastructure 4 May 2011, 07:58

  • Logica ups revs and orders

    Rest of the world saves UK

    Logica had a decent first quarter and grew revenues by 5 per cent to £978m, compared to £932m last year. The reseller said orders were up 29 per cent to £1,4m. Logica's consulting and professional services division stayed steady after nine quarters of falling revenues. Outsourcing was up 13 per cent and commercial sectors up …

    Government 4 May 2011, 08:12

  • Spotify denies movie deals (not very convincingly)

    P2P is still the killer app

    Spotify has denied claims it has inked deals with the major Hollywood studios ahead of an expansion into video on demand. Daniel Ek rubbished the report, by Michael Arrington of rumour site TechCrunch, that Spotify had deals in place with four studios. Not that getting deals signed is any guarantee of progress; Google had them …

    Applications 4 May 2011, 08:19

  • Parliamentary committee suspends intellectual property rights inquiry

    Hargreaves review out soon, will suggest freeing up 'orphan' works

    A parliamentary committee has dropped its inquiry into the Digital Economy Act (DEA) and whether it is the right mechanism to protect copyright on the internet. The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee said that it was taking its decision in light of ongoing court action surrounding the controversial UK law. …

    Law 4 May 2011, 08:35

  • Nintendo to whack Wii price by 28%

    'Wii 2' groundwork begins

    We know Nintendo's next console will be out in 2012, and now we know the videogames pioneer is pruning the price of the Wii to keep the machine selling in the meantime. In two weeks' time, the console will cost £50 less than it does now. You can't buy a Wii on its own, only in a bundle pack with Wii Sports Resort. Currently, …

    reghardware 4 May 2011, 08:59

  • Sage butters up SMEs in fiscal first half

    But US wing of biz still flagging

    British software outfit Sage saw a mild upswing in pretax profit and revenue in the first half of its fiscal year as SMEs tentatively splashed some cash. The company's boss Guy Berruyer attributed the gentle rise to an "increase in business confidence for SMEs in the period". Sage reported pre-tax profit was up 5 per cent to …

    Small Biz 4 May 2011, 08:59

  • Bin Laden corpse pics will be malware, says FBI

    Team Six headshot headshots unlikely to appear in email

    This just in from the FBI's department of the bleedin' obvious: if someone emails you with pictures of Osama bin Laden's bullet-riddled corpse*, this is probably an attempt to compromise your computer rather than a public-spirited effort intended to confirm that he really is dead. According to the FBI announcement, which seems …

    Malware 4 May 2011, 09:11

  • Brocade puffs CloudPlex and Virtual Compute Blocks

    Data centres without walls

    Brocade has developed a CloudPlex architecture with Virtual Compute Blocks, saying it is aimed at helping enterprises becoming virtual enterprises running data centres without walls. The idea is that the network is the data centre and that CloudPlex will help every data centre become a service provider and achieve better …

    Infrastructure 4 May 2011, 09:35

  • Spotify's new desktop client cuts off iTunes

    While Apple stomps on less-legit alternatives

    The latest client from music streaming service Spotify will talk directly to an iPod, removing the need for iTunes to vet everything copied onto every Apple music player. The new desktop client will synchronise playlists, and offline content for paying customers, with Android and iOS devices. That's particularly important for …

    Music and Media 4 May 2011, 09:46

  • Go forth and deduplicate

    Deep dive Will it benefit my data centre?

    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. This month the SNIA examines data deduplication. This article, derived from existing SNIA material, describes the …

    Storage 4 May 2011, 10:00

  • NetApp duplicates deduplication

    Comment Two much of a good thing

    By buying Engenio, NetApp gets engineers working with Permabit's Albireo deduplication technology to increase the effective capacity of Engenio's arrays. Trouble is it looks better than NetApp's in-house A-SIS dedupe. Oops. What does NetApp do now? A-SIS works with Data ONTAP, the software driving NetApp's FAS arrays, and is …

    Storage 4 May 2011, 10:07

  • NHS Barnet reveals 187 breaches of personal data

    Most leaky of 30 London NHS orgs that responded to data breach FoI request

    A North London primary care trust has suffered the most personal data breaches among NHS trusts in the capital over the past three years, according to figures obtained by Guardian Healthcare. The figures showed that out of 30 trusts responding to a freedom of information (FoI) request, NHS Barnet owned up to over 20 per cent …

    Government 4 May 2011, 10:21

  • Motorola's laptop-dock Android phone out on Orange

    Get tapped into the Atrix

    Motorola's netbook-powering Android smartphone, the Atrix, goes on sale today exclusively from Orange. As reported last month, the Atrix is a 2GHz dual-core handset with 1GB of Ram and 16GB of on-board Flash storage. Available separately is its netbook-like shell: an 11.6in screen, keyboard and battery called the Lapdock. The …

    reghardware 4 May 2011, 10:34

  • Samsung quietly lowers tablet graphics chip spec

    Not only 3G that the Wi-Fi-only Tab lacks

    Samsung has annoyed buyers of the Wi-Fi-only version of its 7in Galaxy Tab Android tablet by equipping the gadget with seemingly lesser chippery than the 3G model. The Galaxy Tab Wi-Fi - aka the P-1010; the original is the P-1000 - also comes with Bluetooth 2.1 while the 3G-enabled Tab comes with Bluetooth 3.0, but since that' …

    reghardware 4 May 2011, 10:40

  • New top-secret stealth choppers used on bin Laden raid

    Wreckage shows whisper silencing, IR, radar pimpage

    The US special-ops troops who killed Osama bin Laden at the weekend appear to have travelled to their target in previously unknown stealth helicopters. One of the secret choppers was disabled during the raid and blown up by the departing SEAL commandos in a largely successful attempt to prevent its technology falling into non-US …

    Physics 4 May 2011, 10:54

  • Novell bags anti-trust appeal against Microsoft

    'Reversed and remanded'

    A US appeals court has pumped fresh blood into an anti-trust lawsuit brought by Novell against Microsoft that was first filed in 2004. In a ruling yesterday, the court reversed a lower court's summary judgment that Microsoft had won last year, paving the way for Novell to take one final anti-trust stab at Redmond. Novell sued …

    Applications 4 May 2011, 10:56

  • Star Wars: From dream sci-fi bride to perfect Blu-ray wife

    A new hope to sell even more Skywalker tat

    Here's a pun-splattered heads-up to all you Star Wars fans out there. In about two hours' time news will reach us from a secret server located on the distant planet Bespin that Maythe4thbewithyou will prove a good day for the Lucasian franchise. There's a countdown and everything! The gimmicky website created in honour of the …

    Entertainment 4 May 2011, 10:58

  • Sensible security strategies for SMBs

    On demand Mind the gap!

    Mind the Gap, our latest Regcast, sees BitDefender’s Andrew Maguire, FreeForm Dynamics’ Andrew Buss and Reg broadcast editor Tim Phillips discussing: Key changes in the threat environment. Understanding the value of data. Smarter security that doesn't mean harder security. Practical steps that can be taken to make security …

    Small Biz 4 May 2011, 11:00

  • Amazon tablet, touchscreen Kindle on course for H2, say moles

    And a quad-core fondleslab from Asus

    Unnamed industry moles say Amazon will have a tablet out in the second half of the year - cheaper Kindles too - and that Asus will release a slate based on Nvidia's upcoming quad-core Tegra chip. Said sources were all cited by Taiwanese news site DigiTimes this week. Assuming Nvidia's four-core 'Kal El' system-on-a-chip - …

    reghardware 4 May 2011, 11:04

  • US operators shelve banking plan for Isis

    Isis will be a wallet, not a bank card

    US operators' initiative Isis won't be an NFC payment system as originally planned, just a wallet to hold payment cards and without a revenue stream to call its own. The scaled-back plan will see Isis verifying payment applications from Visa, Mastercard and anyone else rather than creating anything new. That removes the need …

    Mobile 4 May 2011, 11:23

  • Amazon jumps on time-limited sales

    Next big thing, or late to the 'alternative' online retail party?

    Amazon is getting into time-limited sales of men's, women's and kids' clothes with the launch of a stand-alone website called MyHabit.com. The site is US-only for now and requires users to sign up before using it – or to sign in using their Amazon IDs. It promises to offer discounted big name brands. So far it has i.am. …

    Financial News 4 May 2011, 11:46

  • Panasonic DMP-BDT310 Blu-ray player

    Review Image is everything?

    When it comes to raw performance in the mainstream Blu-ray market, Panasonic is a force to be reckoned with. The brand has consistently pushed the envelope in terms of picture quality. However, during 2010 it fell behind some of its high street rivals when it came to features and functionality. It's a situation Panasonic has …

    reghardware 4 May 2011, 12:00

  • Books biz talks up Kindle effect

    Paper down slightly, but digital is still tiny

    Digital book sales in the UK rose 38 per cent last year, but they still represent a drop in the ocean. The year saw £120m in reported digital sales out of total sales of £3.1bn reported to the Publishers Association: accounting for just under 4 per cent. The book market here is actually a larger than that – the Association …

    Music and Media 4 May 2011, 12:07

  • California Do-Not-Track web privacy law moves forward

    Browser alone isn't tough enough

    Companies trading online in California could soon be forced by law to give consumers the right not to be tracked across the web. State politicians Tuesday voted to move forward a proposed bill that would see California's top law enforcement officials draw up rules protecting shoppers' online privacy by July 1 2012. California …

    Law 4 May 2011, 12:08

  • 'Boil the ocean' data loss prevention needs to change

    Check Point slams security so complex you never get around to turning it on

    Check Point is pushing its vision of consolidating disparate security products, managed from a single dashboard and centred on enterprise firewalls. Consolidating security offers better control, Gil Shwed, Check Point's chief exec, told delegates to the security vendors' annual conference in Barcelona on Wednesday. Check Point …

    Enterprise Security 4 May 2011, 12:15

  • Lewisham Services move to the cloud

    Video Love them clean streets, baby

    The streets of Lewisham, and beyond, are a whole lot cleaner thanks to the quick thinking of Nigel Tyrell, who’s head of Environment for Lewisham. Back in 2004 the council had the idea of giving residents the ability to post images from a mobile device onto a website – so it knew where the problems were and could respond …

    Platform 4 May 2011, 12:25

  • Powerline networking pops up in Parliament

    But the song remains the same

    David Mowat has demonstrated that even MPs can't get a straight answer on powerline networking, although Ofcom has refined its initial explanation that not enough people care. The MP for Warrington South posed a question to the Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills, asking about future regulation of Power Line …

    Wireless 4 May 2011, 12:45

  • Panasonic refreshes 3D Blu-ray recorder range

    Changing dimensions

    Panasonic has added depth to its Blu-ray recorder range, with the introduction of two 3D compatible models, the DMR-BWT800 and DMR-BWT700. Each recorder packs twin Freeview HD terrestrial tuners for simultaneous recording of two separate channels. Subtitles and 5.1 sound settings can also be captured. Users can save TV …

    reghardware 4 May 2011, 12:47

  • Cross-dresser kills goat while high on bath salts

    Multi-day high ends in caprine tragedy

    A 19-year-old American man has blamed the narcotic effects of bath salts* for sparking an episode that resulted in the death of a pygmy goat. Mark L Thompson of Alum Creek, West Virginia, was arrested on Monday after police had been called by the owner of a pygmy goat, a neighbour of Thompson's, who had complained that the 19- …

    Bootnotes 4 May 2011, 12:57

  • Goodyear blimps to be replaced by German Zeppelins

    Revival of 1930s flying Cloudbase partnership

    The long-running era of the Goodyear Blimp has finally ended: but it's good news for airship enthusiasts, not bad. Goodyear has decided to replace its famous fleet of inflatable blimps with more sophisticated semi-rigid "Neue Technologie" ships designed by the modern-day German successor to the original Zeppelin company. NT …

    Science 4 May 2011, 13:14

  • Freeman Dyson: Shale gas is 'cheap and effective'

    Carbon reduction without the dodgy renewables?

    Renowned British-born boffin Freeman Dyson has given a cautious welcome to shale gas – the energy revolution that has caught energy experts, politicians and civil servants by surprise. "A surge in gas production and use may prove to be both the cheapest and most effective way to hasten the decarbonisation of the world economy …

    Energy 4 May 2011, 13:37

  • US spooks to build 60 megawatt data center

    What Federal budget crisis?

    The Obama administration might have been wrestling mightily with a recalcitrant Republican Congress high on strong tea over the US government's fiscal 2012 budget, which had tens of billions of dollars in spending slashed, but the one thing that both Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that the National Security Agency …

    HPC 4 May 2011, 14:33

  • Fierce tablet fight to be rough for Apple's rivals

    Less successful to exit market by year's end?

    Here's a notion: there will be so many tablet wannabes fighting for market share in the second half of the year that rather a lot of them will be left with unsold stock on their warehouse shelves. Whether they are pitching Android offerings, Windows machines or both, "non-Apple" tablet sellers risk being stuck with excess …

    reghardware 4 May 2011, 14:39

  • uDraw goes HD with PS3 and Xbox 360

    Masterstroke

    THQ's uDraw game tablet is to get a redesign for its Xbox 360 and PS3 release. The popular Wii peripheral - effectively a graphics tablet for games consoles - will come to HD platforms this winter. Earlier in the year at the uDraw launch event, I asked one of its developers if there were plans to make the jump across. The …

    reghardware 4 May 2011, 14:41

  • Sony calls in data Sherlocks to unpick megahack disaster

    Plus Inspector Lestrade of the FBI

    Sony has drafted in security experts to figure out who hacked into its systems - and how they did it - before stealing personal data on 100 million consumers of the company's services. Both the firm's PlayStation Network and Online Entertainment service remain suspended in the aftermath of high-profile hack attacks that have …

    ID 4 May 2011, 15:54

  • Virgin outsources techies, pulls plug on Trowbridge call centre

    80 tech jobs cut immediately - sources

    Virgin Media has announced a major overhaul of its IT operations on the same day it revealed plans to shutter a call centre in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, which has almost 500 staff members. The winding up of the call centre is part of Virgin's plan to shift its Mobile operation into the Virgin Media operation, which will mean a …

    CIO 4 May 2011, 16:21

  • Intel debuts '3D transistors' with 22nm chip recipe

    How do ya like them, Apple?

    Intel has unveiled its 22nm manufacturing process. The process marks the debut of Intel's "Tri-Gate" transistors, first revealed as a research project over eight years ago, and the company has demonstrated its first microprocessor built with the new process, a chip codenamed "Ivy Bridge". Equipped with a three-sided gate – …

    PCs & Chips 4 May 2011, 17:16

  • Amazon and PSN outages won't halt cloud revolution

    Open...and Shut You wanna go back to Windows?

    For all its promise, cloud computing has taken on a murky hue over the past few months. Most recently Amazon's EC2 and Sony's Playstation Network (PSN) were both brought down through human error and malevolence, respectively, leaving developers and consumers to wonder if cloud computing is all it's cracked up to be. Yet no …

    Infrastructure 4 May 2011, 17:27

  • Seagate to unveil 'perfect iPad companion'

    Takes the tablets

    Seagate says it's going to announce a "perfect companion" for iPads and other tablets later this month. We're told it's a first-of-a-kind product, and we're avidly trying to work out what it is. Being Seagate, this thing must have a hard disk drive in it. The company already has iPad involvement with its TV Remote app. This …

    Music and Media 4 May 2011, 17:58

  • Sony implicates Anonymous in PlayStation Network hack

    Updated Legions 'duped,' company says

    Forensics experts investigating the security breach on Sony's PlayStation Network found a file on one of the hacked systems that was titled “Anonymous” and contained the phrase “We are Legion,” the company's chairman told members of congress. The revelation, made in a letter, (PDF here) that Sony Chairman Kazuo Hirai sent on …

    Enterprise Security 4 May 2011, 18:52

  • Apple squashes location tracking 'bugs' with iOS update

    Cell tower and Wi-Fi database cache shrunk

    Apple has released an iOS update that changes the way its mobile operating system treats the database cache at the heart of the recent kerfuffle over the Jobsian location services. On Wednesday, Steve Jobs and company pushed out iOS 4.3.3, saying it contains three changes to the operating system's "crowd-sourced location …

    ID 4 May 2011, 20:18

  • Red Hat answers Microsoft Azure with OpenShift dev cloud

    PaaS master speaks

    Red Hat has launched a "platform-as-a-service" cloud called OpenShift, a service for building, hosting, and readily scaling applications. Think of it as a Microsoft Azure that isn't so Microsoftee. Initially, it's aimed at developers looking to test applications. By the end of the year, the OpenShift platform cloud will be able …

    Platform 4 May 2011, 20:57

  • End of the tether: Google plays nice with carriers

    ‘Free ride’ apps disappear from Android Market

    Applications that allowed users to tether Android devices to PCs – without buying a suitable plan from their carrier – have started disappearing from searches of the Android Marketplace. Droid-Life noticed on May 4th that the Wireless Tether app no longer appeared in searches conducted from phones, and while it would appear in …

    Mobile 4 May 2011, 22:42

  • Groupon starts buying Australian rivals

    Crowdmass gets critical mass

    Group buying behemoth Groupon has added Melbourne based coupon site Crowdmass for an undisclosed sum. Groupon entered the Australian market early this year operating under the brand name StarDeals and has quickly gained ground in an increasingly saturated market. Crowdmass was created by a trio of twenty-something university …

    Financial News 4 May 2011, 23:04

  • EA buys Aussie game studio

    Firemint founder becomes instant millionaire

    Electronics Arts has swooped on Melbourne-based mobile gaming developer Firemint for a reported estimate of somewhere between US$20-40 million. Founded in 1999 the Australian developer is the creator of mobile game hit “Flight Control” and driving game, "Real Racing," which is an iPhone and iPad favourite. Once the deal is …

    Financial News 4 May 2011, 23:04

  • Oz boffins in quantum computing breakthrough

    NSFMP*

    If you think testing a chip with a gazillion transistors is a challenge, try testing a handful of qubits in the quantum computing world. To confirm all the possible states of just eight qubits needs four billion or so measurements. The problem of characterization, as it is known, is the target of a technique developed by a …

    Physics 4 May 2011, 23:07

  • Voda stops worrying, learns to love the NBN

    Joins mainland retail services trials

    Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA), the entity created when the country’s two junior mobile telcos merged in 2009, has given a double endorsement to the government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) plans while delivering its annual results on Wednesday in Sydney. The company said the NBN would give mobile carriers like VHA a …

    Telecoms 4 May 2011, 23:10