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17th May 2011 Archive

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  • Internode boss details NBN interconnect complaint

    We’re without peer: that’s the problem

    Simon Hackett, head of Adelaide-based ISP Internode and Tesla enthusiast, has called for fair and enforceable peering arrangements for Australia’s National Broadband Network. In a discussion paper published on the company’s blog, Hackett says the lack of symmetrical peering arrangements for both voice and data traffic could …

    Broadband 17 May 2011, 00:30

  • AT&T moots consumer mobile security service

    A problem so urgent we'll tackle it next year

    In an attempt to counter rising security threats to mobile devices, AT&T has announced it will launch a consumer wireless security service next year. The service will ride on the back of reported growth in the malware-for-mobiles market, such as has been reported in the Android market. Last week, Juniper Networks claimed that …

    Broadband 17 May 2011, 02:00

  • Amazon-Android rumor: A family of devices

    From tablets to TV, if you believe the leak

    Amazon has long been readying Android tablets, but rumours have emerged that the e-book giant is readying an “entire family” of Android devices for America’s upcoming holiday shopping season. Rather than a single tablet, the Android and Me blog is speculating that there will be devices in several form factors – including a …

    Media 17 May 2011, 03:00

  • Winklevoss twins aim Zuckerberg case at Supreme Court

    Identical malcontents spy Facebook 'securities fraud'

    Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the square-jawed Ivy League twins who were dope-slapped by mean li'l Zucky in the movie The Social Network – oh, and allegedly in real life, as well – have announced that they will take their lawsuit against Zuckerberg to the US Supreme Court. The Reg's stateside readers must surely feel all warm …

    Media 17 May 2011, 03:08

  • HP tightens financial belt for 'tough' Q3

    No stomach for 'profitless revenue'

    Move over beleaguered Cisco Systems, here comes Hewlett-Packard. Newly minted Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker is looking for HPers to tighten the belt and use good judgment aimed at generating profits as they pursue sales in the company's third fiscal quarter of 2011, which began on May 1. According to a report in the Wall …

    Financial News 17 May 2011, 04:00

  • Netgear XAV5001 500Mb/s powerline Ethernet adaptor

    Review The mains event?

    The quest for faster home networks continues, and with 802.11n Wi-Fi failing to deliver promised 300-450Mb/s peak speeds to a lot of people - blame sneaky manufacturers slipping cheap, single-antenna, 72Mb/s adaptors into their devices - some punters, even those without wireless blackspots in their homes, are looking to …

    Hardware 17 May 2011, 06:00

  • Geek.com visitors attacked by DIY exploit kit

    Researchers blame 'poor coding practices'

    Technology news and reviews site Geek.com was recently hit by an attack that redirected visitors to malicious websites that attempted to install malware on their computers, researchers from zScaler said. Feature articles on the website, in addition to its home page and “about us” page, contained invisible iframes that …

    Security 17 May 2011, 06:00

  • Carbonite moves to IPO

    Comment Can the 'personal cloud' bring the rain of gold?

    Public cloud backup service provider Carbonite is preparing for an IPO and looking to raise $100m, while public cloud storage provider Nirvanix is not. Why is the time ripe for one but not the other? Carbonite, founded in 2005, had accumulated, by the end of April this year, more than 1 million customers in more than 100 …

    Business 17 May 2011, 07:54

  • My Tracks travel tracker

    Android App of the Week Every journey begins with a single app?

    My Tracks is a GPS tracker app and a must-have for any Android user who wants to record where they have been, how fast they got there and just about any other details of their trips, walks, bike rides and assorted wanderings.    Track your trip - with waypoints (left) and then upload to Google etc (right) Recorded data can …

    Phones 17 May 2011, 08:00

  • TMS launches RamSan-70 Gorilla

    PCIe ape beats chest, roars. Who will challenge Kong?

    TMS has doubled the capacity of its PCIe flash card and almost tripled its performance. The RamSan-70, code-named Gorilla, has a capacity of 900GB of single-level cell (SLC) flash, twice that of the preceding RamSan-20. Gorilla, using 32nm NAND from Toshiba, is 2.75 times faster than the RamSan-20, half the size, and has a …

    Storage 17 May 2011, 08:07

  • Israeli couple dub sprog 'Like'

    Luckless nipper joins siblings 'Pie' and 'Vash'

    An Israeli couple inspired by the spawn of Zuckerberg have dubbed their unfortunate daughter "Like", the BBC reports. Lior Adler and missus Vardit slapped the sprog with the unique moniker in honour of the Facebook button which allows users to express approval of their chums' posts. Proud dad Adler explained to the Maariv …

    Bootnotes 17 May 2011, 08:18

  • Vodafone chuffed with pleasing figures

    Emerging markets, smartphone data were their friends

    Vodafone shares are up two per cent this morning on a solid set of figures for the year. The UK's largest mobile company said data and services revenues helped boost sales by 3.2 per cent to £45.9bn. Adjusted operating profit was £11.8bn, up 3.1 per cent. Ebitda was down 0.4 per cent to £14.7bn. Africa, Middle East and Asia …

    Management 17 May 2011, 08:43

  • Ofcom: Luvvies, TV signals can share spectrum

    Who would use wireless mikes outdoors? Er, TV people

    Come the end of 2012, the Programme Makers and Special Events (PMSE) industry won't be restricted to spectrum white spaces in using their wireless microphones; Ofcom reckons wireless mikes and television signals can happily share the same frequencies. The belief, laid out in the regulator's latest statement (19-page PDF/233KB …

    Broadband 17 May 2011, 08:56

  • So many users, so many devices, so many problems

    Meeting desktop needs

    Mobile users are different to the home worker and they're all different to a branch worker, so how do you find out what they need and give it to them effectively. Finding out what end users want from their desktop and comparing it to what you think they need can be a sobering experience. Performance, fast access to data and …

    Desktop Strategy 17 May 2011, 09:00

  • CATS to be saved by BLASPHEMERS after the RAPTURE

    Godly? Book a moggy-rescue heathen ONLINE before 21 May!

    In case you hadn't heard, Judgment Day is pencilled in for 21 May and any Christians among you who hadn't made provision for your pets' wellbeing after the Rapture had better pull your fingers out before you take your place at God's right hand and your poor moggy is left stuck here on Earth staring at an empty bowl. Make no …

    Bootnotes 17 May 2011, 09:20

  • BlackBerry PlayBook Blighty debut date announced

    Retail world Tweets like crazy

    RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will hit our shores on 16 June, almost every UK retailer under the sun is emailing, blogging and Tweeting this morning. You can read Reg Hardware's review of the gadget here. Expect to pay around £400 for the 16GB, Wi-Fi-only model, rising to £480 for the 32GB unit, and £560 for the model with …

    Tablets 17 May 2011, 09:22

  • BAE coughs another $79m over US war-tech violations

    Accepts 'enhanced US review' of UK programmes

    US-centred but UK-controlled weapons globocorp BAE Systems plc has reached a civil settlement with the US State Department regarding violations of American arms-technology export laws. Under the deal announced today the firm will pay a fine of $79m, up to $10m of which may be spent internally on enhanced compliance measures. …

    Business 17 May 2011, 09:38

  • O2 struggles for breath in widespread outages

    London, Sussex and Kent knocked out

    O2's network is suffering outages around the capital and the southeast, with customers unable to make calls, or connect to data services, since just after midnight. The outage seems to be knocking out connectivity in North and East London as well as Sussex and Kent, and started just before one o'clock this morning. Some …

    Mobile 17 May 2011, 09:46

  • Microsoft volume licensing to let you swap iron for clouds

    And back again should you so desire

    Microsoft is relaxing its volume licensing rules to allow customers to move existing servers to the clouds without paying extra. Dubbed "license mobility", the changes come into effect 1 July. The changes are for customers with Volume License deals through Software Assurance for Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server …

    Management 17 May 2011, 10:01

  • BMW tests laser-guided car junction buddy

    Prang-free lane crossing promised

    BMW has developed a laser-guided accident avoidance system to safely guide drivers out of junctions where they cross a traffic lane. You know: you're at a T-junction, turning right. That manoeuvre will put you at risk from cars approaching from the right. That's no problem if you have a clear view. BMW's system is designed to …

    Science 17 May 2011, 10:01

  • Firmware sings of second HTC tablet

    LTE-connected Puccini to run Android 3.0.1

    Deep digging into HTC's firmware has revealed a thus far unknown device, Puccini, said to be a 10in tablet. The data comes from Asian site 911HTC.com. That Puccini is a tablet is suggested by the screen resolution info: 800 x 1280. The data also show it has a 1.5GHz CPU - named as the MSM8660, a look-up revealing it to be a …

    Tablets 17 May 2011, 10:28

  • Google enters bond market, flogs $3bn-worth

    Mmm, lovely shiny Mountain View paper

    Google has made its first venture into the bond market - raising $3bn from big investors. With corporate borrowing costs about as low as they can be it makes sense for Google to grab some cheap money, even though it has some $50bn in the bank or in short-term investments. It also means the company can build a reputation among …

    Business 17 May 2011, 10:33

  • Counter-Strike gamers explore bin Laden bag site

    Compound fractured

    While the US enthusiastically celebrated the execution of Osama bin Laden, one advantageous coder began building a Counter-Strike map based on the bearded bomber's compound. It has been causing quite a stir since its release last week. The first-person shooter map mimics bin Laden's hidden home and surrounding areas in …

    Games 17 May 2011, 10:36

  • Border Agency monitors migrant ITers with inadequate IT

    42,000 intra-company techies brought in - report

    MPs say the UK Border Agency needs better IT to provide data about its points-based system for non-EU workers. Parliament's public accounts committee has found that the UK Border Agency (UKBA) does not have the necessary IT to provide proper management information to control the flow of workers entering Britain from outside …

    Management 17 May 2011, 10:44

  • HP pets network-connected mouse

    Bluetooth not good enough for you?

    What's worse: HP launching a mouse that connects over Wi-Fi, or that the company hosts a show dedicated to add-ons - the HP Personal Computing Accessories Forum 2011, held in Cannes, no less - to do so? Said input device is the industry's first, HP claims. The mouse "offers consumers wireless connectivity and impressive …

    Hardware 17 May 2011, 10:52

  • Phone, slab location data 'is personal' - EU watchdogs

    Don't slurp my snail-trail

    Data identifying mobile phone users' locations should count as personal data and receive a high level of protection, the EU's data protection watchdogs will tell the European Commission, according to a newspaper report. If the Commission adopts the recommendation, provision for the protection of location-revealing data could …

    Government 17 May 2011, 11:01

  • CA antivirus unit sold: Will become 'Total Defense'

    VCs fixin' to sharpen up the toolset

    CA has sold its antivirus division to venture capital firm Updata Partners. Updata plans to form a new firm, provisionally called Total Defense, Inc, once the deal closes in June. Around 60,000 businesses worldwide rely on antivirus technologies from CA's Internet Security Business Unit, the division of the firm that is being …

    Management 17 May 2011, 11:14

  • Popular gamers 'should play for free' – Valve boss

    But MMO pains in the arse to pay $100 extra for voice

    Yesterday I wrote about the desperate need for new ideas to flog digital music. The suppliers need to experiment, and not stand by the bean-counting, unit-sales mentality that's a hangover from the physical world. Valve boss Gabe Newell wants to get away from the subscription straightjacket – and has floated an interesting idea …

    Games 17 May 2011, 11:27

  • Aussie cops grab journo for reporting Facebook vuln demo

    Eat lead, messenger

    A tech writer attending the AusCERT conference in Queensland says he has been arrested and released by Queensland Police over a story written at the conference. Ben Grubb, a journalist for the Fairfax stable of newspapers, flicked off a short Tweet after his arrest: "I've been arrested by Queensland Police for a story I wrote …

    Security 17 May 2011, 11:41

  • Death of laptop reports greatly exaggerated

    Research Reader survey results are in

    Our thanks as always to Reg readers, some 644 IT pros, who took time out to complete our recent survey into mobile computing in business. Our research partner Freeform Dynamics, has parlayed the data into a lovely whitepaper called Mobile Computing Checkpoint: The present and future of flexible working, published for your …

    Enterprise Tech 17 May 2011, 12:00

  • VMware boots up Horizon cloudy app manager

    One app to bind them all

    IT managers don't dislike apps, cloud computing, or virtualization, but they need to rein them in and make employees use them in consistent, secure, and responsible ways. And that is what VMware's "Project Horizon" App Manager is all about. "The operating system becomes less and less relevant," Noah Wasmer, director of …

    Cloud 17 May 2011, 12:00

  • GCHQ man: Powerline networks do interfere with radio

    D Notice Spook not a beardy radio ham, but is moustachioed

    A document prepared by the spectrum manager of secret UK listening agency GCHQ, though disavowed by the organisation, has drawn more attention to the interference kicked out by powerline networking kit. The letter was prepared by [a government employee we have been asked not to name], of government-spy outfit GCHQ, and …

    Broadband 17 May 2011, 12:02

  • Crooks haul Vodafone NZ's ENTIRE Xperia Play stock

    Pickpockets pick 'PlayStation in your pocket'

    New Zealanders will not be getting Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play - aka the PlayStation phone - at least not from Vodafone. Why? The carrier's entire shipment of handsets has been nicked. So says Vodafone New Zealand's official Tweeter, who today posted: "Regret to advise the Xperia Play launch will be delayed. Major security …

    Mobile 17 May 2011, 12:14

  • Brink

    Review Edge of existence

    “Save the Ark, or escape it?” The choice initially offered to players upon loading up Brink, Splash Damage’s latest first-person shooter. What’s the Ark you ask? A last bastion of humanity, following worldwide flooding caused by the rising of the oceans – darned global warming! Hit and miss After a period of peace the Ark …

    Games 17 May 2011, 12:15

  • Clouds and biz intel are top CIO priorities

    Big Blue gets inside the C-suite's headspace

    Chief Information Officers are embracing the move to the clouds, or at least 60 per cent of them are. A survey of 3,000 CIOs by IBM found that three in five are thinking about using cloud-based systems within the next five years – compared to just half that number in the IBM CIO survey of a year ago. Increasingly businesses …

    Management 17 May 2011, 12:19

  • Public: Whack freetards harder (most 'pirates' agree)

    Angry mobs besiege garden sheds, comic book stores?

    Wiggin's annual gigantic digital entertainment survey is upon us, and shows attitudes against online copyright infringers have hardened even further than a year ago. But interestingly, many "pirates" agree with the majority view supporting enforcement measures - and half of those currently pirating would pay real money to …

    Law 17 May 2011, 12:26

  • Tumblr bloggrs ensnared in chain-spam scam

    Bumblrs duped by 'blog deletion' curse

    Tumblr has become the target of a chain letter-style spam that spread rapidly over the micro-blogging service. The fake messages falsely warned that "your blog will be deleted unless you repost this" note, which claimed that Tumblr was drawing up a list of inactive profiles. Totally untrue, but over 130,000 people were taken …

    Security 17 May 2011, 12:38

  • Nvidia snaps out snappier Tesla GPU coprocessors

    All fired up on all 512 cores

    GPU chipmaker Nvidia knows that it has to do more to grow its Tesla biz than slap some passive heat sinks on a fanless GPU card and talk up its CUDA parallel-programming tools. It has to keep delivering price/performance improvements, as well. And that's exactly what it's doing with the new Tesla M2090 GPU coprocessor. Back …

    Servers 17 May 2011, 13:00

  • O2's southeastern crash caused by 'well-organised theft'

    Updated Work of an international gang, seemingly

    O2's ongoing outage was down to a well-organised theft of networking kit, which engineers are struggling to replace while promising to connect customers by close of play. O2 customers in North and East London, Sussex and Kent are still without service following a break-in at one of the operator's unmanned sites. While clearly …

    Broadband 17 May 2011, 13:11

  • Getting data in and out of a cloud service

    Check those pre-nups

    Two problems with getting data in and out of a cloud service: the technology, meaning bandwidth and networking protocols, and contractual obligations. There are limits to what can be done to download terabytes of data faster, but the right tools can certainly make things simpler. And as usual when taking on contracts, cloud …

    Cloud 17 May 2011, 13:27

  • EXPLODING MELONS terrify Chinese

    'Growth promoter' artificial engorgement fingered

    The Chinese authorities are probing a sudden and alarming outbreak of exploding melons, amid suspicions that a 'growth promoter' may be to blame for huge numbers of juicy fruits unexpectedly going bang. According to the BBC, farmers in Jiangsu province have reported the destruction of substantial watermelon assets. Twenty …

    Bootnotes 17 May 2011, 13:29

  • Council of Europe wants to maintain net neutrality

    'Maximum rights, minimum regulations'

    Internet service providers (ISPs) should not alter online traffic to serve faster access to content produced by companies that have helped to pay for better connectivity, draft principles into the governance of internet freedoms say. European internet users are entitled to access to the whole internet in all but exceptional …

    Law 17 May 2011, 13:48

  • When is a database not so relational?

    Deep dive Storage in the cloud

    In the first of two articles on cloud-based data storage, we shall explore the drawbacks of relational databases. There are two types of databases you can use when hosting data in the cloud: a relational database or one that is so not so relational. For example, Amazon offers a choice of SimpleDB (not so relational) or MySQL …

    Cloud Developer 17 May 2011, 14:00

  • Bing to offer Facebook-slurping 'friend search'

    Facts? Links? Boring! Have some mobcrowdthought instead

    Microsoft poked its search engine users again yesterday, to remind them that it now offers personalised results based on the opinions of friends on Facebook. Bing was given the Facebook treatment in October last year, prompting protests from Google's Matt Cutts, who argued that the company was being slipshod with users' …

    Networks 17 May 2011, 14:12

  • Boffin quests for, finds 'earphone Holy Grail'

    Earphones inflate for perfect fit, lower listening volumes

    Whenever I try to wear earphones, I spend more time attempting to fit their rubbery tips snugly in my lugs than I do untangling the ever-knotted spaghetti junction of cable. Designers have battled for years to tackle the issue, but with a "Diaphonic Lens" they may finally have the solution. These miniature balloon-tipped …

    Hardware 17 May 2011, 14:39

  • Chinese telly to get iPlayer technology

    Auntie's streamer chases the dragon

    KIT digital – the owner of ioko, which provides video management software for the BBC's iPlayer* – has signed up to offer a similar service in China. Nineteen Chinese broadcasters and newspapers have signed up to China United Television (dubbed CUTV, not CHUNT). CUTV, run by Shenzhen Media Group, will allow millions of …

    Media 17 May 2011, 14:45

  • Think carefully before you chuck out your desktops

    Desktop Virtualisation Planning for desktop virtualisation

    Desktop virtualisation has its benefits but it is also an important structural shift. This is compounded by other changes likely to take place at the same time, such as a move to Windows 7 or an office move. When the Co-operative Group decided to migrate some of its 18,000 desktops to virtual desktops and thin clients, it also …

    Enterprise Tech 17 May 2011, 15:00

  • Planet with British weather found 20 light years away

    Cold, rainy, inhabitants likely to be hostile

    A group of boffins claims to have spied the "first discovered terrestrial-mass exoplanet in the habitable zone", the BBC reports. The planet in question is orbiting the much-studied star Gliese 581, some 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra. Of the possible worlds circling the red M-class sun, Gliese 581d had already …

    Science 17 May 2011, 15:11

  • DARPA wants weapons-grade military cloud computing

    The clouds of war gather over the Pentagon

    Got your doubts about how resilient and secure cloud services might be? You're not alone: legendary Pentagon tech bureau DARPA has launched a push to toughen cloud tech up and make it fighting fit for the cyber wars of tomorrow. The US tech-warriors have dubbed their armoured cloud project Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds ( …

    Cloud 17 May 2011, 15:52

  • HP's Q2 beats targets, but Q3 and Q4 look tight

    Services biz restructured

    It is a tough day for new CEO Leo Apotheker, who had to move up Hewlett-Packard's reporting of its financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 2011 by 32 hours because someone leaked a memo about belt-tightening and looming layoffs that Apotheker sent to his top brass two weeks ago. HP has revised its revenue guidance …

    Financial News 17 May 2011, 16:45

  • Sky-high web app performance gauge reaches into browsers

    New Relic monitors from back to front

    New Relic has long offered an online service for gauging the performance of web applications on the back-end. And now, its eponymous service can monitor your application on the front-end as well. On Tuesday, the San Francisco-based outfit announced that the service now includes "real user monitoring", using JavaScript to gauge …

    Cloud 17 May 2011, 17:12

  • Otellini: 'Intel won't build ARM chips'

    It's all about the lean, mean green

    If there were any lingering questions as to whether Intel would use its 22-nanometer Tri-Gate process technology to bake chips based on the ARM architecture, the company's CEO has put them to rest. "The short answer is 'No'," Paul Otellini told his audience at Intel's Investor Meeting 2011 in Santa Clara on Tuesday in response …

    Tablets 17 May 2011, 18:04

  • France's official P2P monitoring firm hacked

    Hadopi suspends service after leak

    The French government has temporarily suspended its reliance on the company designated to monitor file-sharing networks for copyright scofflaws following reports that a hack on its servers may have leaked sensitive information. Eric Walter, France's secretary general of internet piracy, made the announcement over Twitter on …

    Security 17 May 2011, 18:26

  • Hack attacks on US could spark military action

    White House draws line in the silicon

    The Obama Administration has put the world on notice that hack attacks directed against US assets could be met with military action. “When warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country,” the White House said in a long-expected policy, titled The …

    Security 17 May 2011, 20:53

  • Facebook simulated entire data center prior to launch

    Zuckerberg's Project Triforce

    Before turning on its new custom-built data center in Prineville, Oregon, Facebook simulated the facility inside one of its two existing data center regions. Known as Project Triforce, the simulation was designed to pinpoint places where engineers had unknowingly fashioned the company's back-end services under the assumption …

    Servers 17 May 2011, 20:57

  • Intel, IBM, and HP back open source against VMware

    The KVM Open Virtualization Alliance

    Some of tech's biggest names are standing up to VMware, creating an industry group meant to accelerate the adoption of an open-source virtualization stack built atop the KVM hypervisor. Known as the Open Virtualization Alliance , the group includes IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and KVM Linux distro leader Red Hat as well as …

    Virtualization 17 May 2011, 21:54

  • Infosmack and geeks on film

    Episode 99 Also, that Amazon crash

    A mixed bag this week from the Infosmack guys, presenters of the world's best podcast about Enterprise Tech. Special guest this week is VMWare's John Troyer and the crew get to talk about video going social, lots of cloud stuff and VMware, of course. Show notes: Episode 99 Banter: Episode 100 next week, be sure to tune in …

    The Channel 17 May 2011, 21:57

  • Dell carves profit from slim revenue growth

    HP it's not

    Dell didn't dive as much as HP. Dell had lower sales than expected during the its first quarter of fiscal 2011, but it boasted a big profit boost, raising its expectations for revenues and earnings for the full year. HP, by contrast, is tightening its belt, while shaving $1bn to $1.5bn off of its revenue projections for the year …

    Financial News 17 May 2011, 22:33

  • Microsoft waves CentOS club at Red Hat

    Open...and Shut The open source enemy of my open source enemy is my friend

    Red Hat is perhaps one of the most understated success stories in the software industry. Each quarter, the company registers roughly 20-percent year-over-year growth, fueled by partners that increasingly cement Red Hat's place at the center of the enterprise data center. Despite repeated efforts, no other Linux vendor has come …

    Software 17 May 2011, 22:51