25th July 2011 Archive
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Higgs Boson hiding place narrows
Masses of new evidence, apparently
The particle physicist’s game of “hot, warm, cold” in search of the Higgs Boson seems to be getting a little warmer with preliminary results announced by physicists at the Large Hadron Collider late last week. Actually, what’s getting closer is an either-or: the Higgs Boson will be identified or it will be ruled out (which …
Physics 25 Jul 00:30
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Cheap as chips: The future of PC virtualisation
A brief history of virtualisation Playing catch-up
VMware was founded in 1998, and until the launch of its eponymous product the next year, the PC’s x86 architecture had been considered to be impossible to fully virtualise. Since that time, although VMware continues to prosper, prices of virtualisation tools have fallen to an all-time low – in fact, most hypervisors are free, …
Enterprise Tech 25 Jul 01:00
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Want to be more secure? Don’t be stupid
Oz spooks outline unsurprising risk mitigation strategies
The best way to defend against most network vulnerabilities is to deal with the simplest attack vectors, according to Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate (DSD). The DSD’s analysis has credibility and clout, because it’s based on analysis of real attacks launched against Australian government networks. And according to its …
Enterprise Security 25 Jul 01:30
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Microsoft previews 'Juneau' SQL Server tools
Tasty Visual Studio upgrade or 'One step forward, two steps back'?
Microsoft has released a third preview of SQL Server 2011, codenamed "Denali" and including the "Juneau" toolset. In the Denali database engine there are new features that supporting high availability, and improve query performance of data warehousing queries. Then there's FileTable, a special table type that is also published …
Developer 25 Jul 04:00
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OCZ samples twin-core ARM SSD controller
Do you need a bit of TLC?
OCZ is sampling a new flash controller that gives a picture of future solid state drives. The company bought Indilinx for its solid state drive (SSD) controller technology in March this year and has now unveiled the Indilinx Everest controller platform. It has a 6Gbit/s SATA III interface, a dual-core ARM processor and a …
Storage 25 Jul 07:56
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Nominet pilots .co.uk domain security pump-up
Lays an egg, hopes chicken will ensue
Dot-UK registry Nominet has started piloting a free service designed to help UK businesses boost the security of their websites' domains. The DNSSEC Signing Service "will allow registrars to quickly and easily implement DNSSEC by relying on Nominet to manage the cryptographic signing process, management of keys and publishing …
Hosting 25 Jul 08:21
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Virgin Tweets a sorry for TiVo series link snafu
DVR = Don't Video Repeatedly?
Virgin Media left serial linkers hanging this weekend after a glitch centred on its highly promoted TiVo-based DVR borked the box's ability to auto-record entire series of programmes. The bug struck on Saturday, but by yesterday evening a workaround had been devised by users posting on Virgin's forum. Not that forcing the box …
reghardware 25 Jul 08:54
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Beeb to fund ad-mungous Local TV for local people
White space plans from the Ministry of Fun
Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Fun Stuff, has proposed filling white space spectrum with Local TV, and the BBC will chip in £40m to help make it viable. The plan calls for a new company to manage a new multiplex, squeezed into 8MHz of white space (locally unused) spectrum and built using £25m of BBC cash. Local TV …
Music and Media 25 Jul 08:59
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Nokia punts NFC touch-data biz cards at £11 each
A better business than selling phones?
Nokia has set up an NFC Hub to sell NFC to businesses, both figuratively and literally, offering everything you need to wirelessly enable your PR material. Not that such enabling comes cheap, at least not from Nokia. An A4 poster will set you back £20, while NFC-enabled business cards come in at £11 each, which seems a bit …
Wireless 25 Jul 09:23
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Survey scams exploit Winehouse's death, Oslo massacre
Crack-smoking and security-cam footage doesn't exist
Online scumbags wasted little time in latching onto the untimely death of singer Amy Winehouse as a lure for survey scams on Facebook. Bogus messages supposedly offering footage of Winehouse smoking crack hours before her death of a suspected drug overdose on Saturday actually lead to pointless surveys that make money for …
Security 25 Jul 09:45
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Dixons to set up concession in Harrods
Ladies who lunch, oil sheikhs ... they all need batteries
Dixons Retail will try to flog PCs and other consumer goodies to tourists and local toffs when it opens a concession in Harrods early next year. The ailing retailer swapped the High Street for out-of-town trailer trading parks in recent years as part of its turnaround strategy, but is looking to raise brand equity by setting …
Channel Register 25 Jul 09:51
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Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.7.2
Lion update emerges
If Mac OS X 10.7 - aka Lion - is giving your Mac a mauling, a big-fixing update may be just around the corner. Apple has released 10.7.2 to developers, albeit those particularly working on iCloud compatibility. iCloud is Apple's Dropbox-style online file sync'n'store service, due to go live in the Autumn. There's no sign of …
reghardware 25 Jul 09:52
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Mobee Magic Charger
Geek Treat of the Week Wireless power for your wireless mouse
Anyone who uses a wireless mouse has been there: the moment when you push or prod it and nothing happens - the battery has died. If you're smart you have as many rechargeables as the mouse takes in there, and if you're really smart you have the same number again sitting in the charger, ready for use. Wirelessly charge your …
reghardware 25 Jul 10:00
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Western Digital edges ahead of Seagate
Seagoing computers counteract rare-earth headwinds
Western Digital, encountering the same adverse headwinds as Seagate, has emerged ahead. In its fourth quarter (Q4) of fiscal 2011, WD reported revenues of $2.4bn, marginally above Q4 2010's $2.38bn. Net income fell from Q4 2010's $265m to $158m, hindered by $35m of costs associated with the Hitachi GST acquisition. For the …
Storage 25 Jul 10:02
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Moonpig gobbled by PhotoBox
Dotcom veteran emblobbed by fellow remote-printer biz
Online greeting card maker Moonpig.com is merging with photo printer PhotoBox. The deal values Moonpig at £120m. Its shareholders will see their stakes rolled over to the new group holding. Equity will be raised from existing shareholders and private investment from Insight Ventures, Quilvest Ventures and Greenspring …
Business 25 Jul 10:07
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Apple recalls 1TB Seagate HDDs
May fail, apparently
Apple is recalling a "very small number" of Seagate-made internal 1TB hard drives fitted in 21.5in and 27in iMacs sold earlier this year. The machines shipped between May and July. Some of the drives have failed, prompting the recall. Apple said it will replace the drives free of charge, though you'll have to take your …
reghardware 25 Jul 10:07
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Kelway has new war chest to fund expansion plans
Stop me before I buy again
Acquisitive London-based reseller Kelway has acquired a new war chest to fuel its expansion plans. VC backer Core Capital is transferring the business into a new limited partnership (LP) fund that will beef up access to cash for the largest businesses in its portfolio. The private equity firm coughed up £5.2m for a 25 per …
Channel Register 25 Jul 10:09
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Dixons store to sell Samsung 10in tablet early
Only place to get the Wi-Fi only version
Want a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 a day before it launches? Then pop down to PC World on London's Tottenham Court Road on 3 August. The retail giant is selling the tablet a day early. Well, almost. The ten-inch tablet will go on sale at 5pm. PC World will be charging £399 for the Wi-Fi only model, on which it has the exclusive …
reghardware 25 Jul 10:22
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Win a week-long test drive of the 2011 Ford Focus
Competition Your chance to drive the car that's packed with tech
Reg Hardware and Ford have teamed up to bring three lucky readers the chance to take part in a week-long test drive of the 2011 Ford Focus. The new Ford Focus is the technology-packed family car we judged to be "possibly the most complete C-Class hatchback on the market, and certainly the most hi-tech" in our review. The …
reghardware 25 Jul 10:28
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Chinese lecturer demands his students acquire iPads
Slab-fondling kids forced to wear suits, makeup in class
A Chinese lecturer has raised a storm by demanding students get an iPad, and that anyone unable to raise the funds over the summer shouldn't bother studying the financial industry. Liang Zhenyu teaches at the Shanghai Maritime University and sent out a tweet (over the Weibo service) explaining that he would be using an iPad …
Bootnotes 25 Jul 10:32
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Ofcom in screeching U-turn on BSkyB, begins probe
Wait 'til the cops are done? No, that would be silly
Ofcom has reversed its decision not to wade into the News Corp and BSkyB row, following public and parliamentary pressure over phone hacking allegations swamping Rupert Murdoch's media empire. In a letter to three MPs on Friday, the communications watchdog's boss, Ed Richards, outlined a change of direction for Ofcom's …
Music and Media 25 Jul 10:41
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Mega-colossal space raincloud found at moist black hole
Soggy quasar's eternal downpour worse than Brit summer
A cloud of water vapour surrounding a quasar 12 billion light-years away has been spotted by two independent research groups, putting a huge mass of water in the very early universe. Two teams of sky-watching boffins spotted the cloud, confirming expectations that water existed very early in the universal life cycle. Until now …
Space 25 Jul 11:00
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Sony slims-down Cyber-shot snappers
Thinnest camera in the world**
Sony has freshened up its Cyber-shot range with two snappers, one of which the company claims is the world's thinnest camera… well, among models with an anti-shake system function, that is. The Sony Cyber-shot TX55 is a 16.2Mp snapper that measures in at a touch over 12mm thick. It takes MicroSD/SDHC cards up to 16GB and …
reghardware 25 Jul 11:03
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Ex-China Mobile exec gets suspended sentence of death
That'll learn him, say bribery-busting beaks
The former deputy general manager of China's largest mobile carrier China Mobile – Zhang Chunjiang – has been sentenced to death with a two-year suspension after he was found guilty of taking bribes. The Intermediate People's Court of Cangzhou also ordered the confiscation of Zhang's personal assets and stripped him of …
Crime 25 Jul 11:18
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Survey results: Cloud descends on IT
Reg Research Complementary commentary
How many times do we hear from pundits and marketing people that cloud computing will change "everything”. The premise is that it will take away the headaches of IT, so we can all have an easier life and save our businesses money into the bargain. The flip side is that you might need fewer IT staff, so it’s unsurprising that …
Cloud Business 25 Jul 11:26
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Grenade-gasm autogun gets Raoul Moat Taser shells
Electric stun rockets on auto: You know you want this
Metal Storm, the Australian weapons firm famous for its "million rounds a minute" superimposed-projectile technology, has partnered with Taser International to produce an electroshock stun version of its rapid-firing multishot grenade-launcher design. The new Metal Storm format projectile will be based on Taser's existing XREP …
Science 25 Jul 11:47
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Winklevoss twins' new Facebook lawsuit rejected by judge
Oarsmen may have to survive for life on just $65m
A judge threw out a second lawsuit filed by the Winklevoss twins late last week, with the Olympic rowers failing to plump up an earlier $65m settlement with the social network and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, alongside business partner Divya Narendra, launched another attack on Zuck's social …
Law 25 Jul 12:10
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Apple Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Part Two
Review The cat scan continues
You find me in better spirits compared to my anxious state during last week’s experimentation with OS X Lion. A weekend of sanity makes quite a difference. That is, sanity achieved through the cathartic process of a clean instal. Swipe your fingers sideways across your Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad to slide forward and back …
reghardware 25 Jul 12:17
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RIM workforce decimated: 2,000 jobs slashed
'These redundancies will eliminate redundancies'
RIM is to cut more than 2,000 jobs around the world as part of the cost-reduction strategy it announced last month. The layoffs will leave around 17,000 employed by the company. RIM explains the process is about "eliminating redundancies and reallocating resources" which requires "workforce reduction" to the tune of 2,000 …
Business 25 Jul 12:22
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Google grabs facial-recognition 'ware firm
Presumably such kit no longer creeps Schmidt out
Google has bought a facial recognition company called pittpatt. Pittpatt was spun off from the University of Carnegie Mellon in 2004 following 10 years of research by Dr Henry Schneiderman, now the company's president and CEO. The company specialises in "reliable facial recognition software for images and video". Given the …
Business 25 Jul 12:33
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Hungry bidders pick up Comet's blood trail
'Sometimes we hunt the same ground'
Restructuring specialists and private equity investors are among the suitors bidding to acquire flagging UK retailer Comet. According to reports in The Sunday Times, US investment house Gordon Brothers and Op Capita, one-time owner of Habitat and MFI tabled offers last week as the first round of the divestment process began. …
Channel Register 25 Jul 12:47
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Amateur claims crack of final Zodiac Killer cipher
Serial murderer's crypto-proclam broken 40+ years on?
An amateur codebreaker claims to have deciphering the final encrypted message of the infamous Zodiac killer. However there's no general agreement that the answer is correct. The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who preyed on couples in Northern California in the years between 1968 and 1970. Of his seven confirmed victims, …
Security 25 Jul 13:07
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Two 'fake Apple stores' shut in China over trading permits
Problem with local gov, nothing to do with Apple
Several fake Apple Stores in China have been shuttered as they did not possess the requisite local business licences they needed to trade. Existence of the phoney retail shops emerged last week amid suggestions that some were so convincing that even staff thought they were employed by Apple. The ensuing media storm around the …
Bootnotes 25 Jul 13:50
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End-to-end service assurance
Reg Research Pipe dream or realistic goal?
It may not always seem like it, but wherever IT is responsible for providing applications or communications to end-users, it takes on the mantle of being a service provider. If, or more normally when, a user calls to report a problem with the app that they use, they’re not calling to report a congested network or server with …
Service Assurance 25 Jul 14:24
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Anonymous hacks Italy's critical-national-IT protection
Evidently the protection isn't critical
Hacktivists have posted "secret documents" stolen from an Italian cybercrime unit. The documents – 8GB of files – were extracted from a system maintained by the Centro Nazionale Anticrimine Informatico per la Protezione delle Infrastrutture Critiche (CNAIPIC), the organisation charged with guarding the country's critical IT …
Enterprise Security 25 Jul 14:36
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LOHAN: She's low orbit and helium assisted
Spaceplane mission backronym sorted
It's official: The El Reg Special Projects Bureau's audacious rocket-powered spaceplane project will henceforth be known as the "Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator", following our reader poll to nail the LOHAN backronym matter once and for all. It just remains to be said that we're not accepting any whining about the word " …
SPB 25 Jul 15:08
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Microsoft hit with lawsuit in Kinect tech spat
Legal process in motion
Microsoft is facing legal action over its gaming hardware after an intellectual property owner claimed to own all rights to tech that tracks players' movement and enables gaming without a controller. Ohio-based outfit Impulse Technologies reckons Microsoft's Xbox Kinect goes against seven of its patents, Patent Arcade reports …
reghardware 25 Jul 15:45
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Facebook iPad app cloaked within iPhone version
If you just can't wait to fondle your slab
Facebook's iPhone client is concealing an iPad application, and a rather good one by all accounts, easily revealed by changing a setting or two while waiting for the official launch. Facebook has said there will be an iPad client, and one based largely on HTML 5, but Canadian student Marvin Bernal discovered that such a client …
Applications 25 Jul 16:20
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Mellanox deep-discounts speedy new Ethernet kit
A half-off deal for bleeding-edge servers
Mellanox Technologies wants customers to try its new 10GE/40GE switches and converged protocol adapters, but it can't just give hardware away like software vendors can. But what it can do is give beta testers a bundle at a steep discount designed to catch the attention of early adopters impatient for the new kit. The deal is …
Servers 25 Jul 17:46
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Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo bow to Apple sales edict
Wall Street Journal, Google knuckle under as well
Booksellers Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo have removed links to their web-based stores from their apps for the iPhone and iPad, and the Google Books app has vanished completely. In February, Apple issued an edict that required all apps offering content for sale or subscription to do so through the App Store, and not through …
Music and Media 25 Jul 18:30
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Microsoft kicks SUSE another $100m
Keeping Red Hat out of Windows shops
The SUSE division of Attachmate has managed to talk Microsoft into shelling out another chunk of change – $100m – to help prop up SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, the Linux distro formerly controlled by Novell, and to help drive Red Hat's rival distro from Windows shops. This is the third reseller agreement that Microsoft has …
Operating Systems 25 Jul 18:57
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Attack on 'Cyberbullying' critic prompts raid by armed cops
Hoax emergency call came from spoofed number
The home of a prominent critic of online bullying was raided by heavily armed police officers after someone phoned in a call falsely claiming that a man who had killed four people was inside, holding three others hostage. The call, made from a computer that spoofed the number displayed on caller ID, prompted a tense, three-hour …
Crime 25 Jul 19:28
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Head fed cyberspook resigns abruptly
US-CERT director gives no reason for departure
The head of a group that helps the federal government ward off computer attacks abruptly resigned Friday, amid a spate of high-profile assaults hitting government agencies and contractors. The departure of US Computer Emergency Readiness Team director Randy Vickers was first reported Monday by InformationWeek, which cited an …
Enterprise Security 25 Jul 21:19
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Google launches Go runtime for App Engine
It's a Go for SDK 1.5.2
Google has released a Go runtime for Google App Engine, adding that homegrown platform-as-a-service specialist programming language to the Python and Java runtimes already available. "This means you can take that Go app you've been working on (or meaning to work on) and deploy it to App Engine right now with the new 1.5.2 SDK …
Developer 25 Jul 22:22
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Amcom palms $AU9m to float uni to the cloud
Western Oz University deal for Perth data centre
Amcom Telecommunications has secured a Au$9m deal to provide hosted cloud services to The University of Western Australia. The three-year contract utilises Amcom's Perth-based data centres to host dedicated cloud services for hundreds of the university's computer servers with over 400 terabytes of storage. Amcom is heavily …
Business 25 Jul 22:34
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CA, Unisys bring “private cloud” partnership to Oz
Cloud crowd more crowded
Unisys and CA, which earlier this year announced that they would offer joint cloud services in North America, are planning a rollout in Australia. The joint services combine CA’s various management products with advisory, planning, design and implementation services from Unisys. Unisys’ Asia-Pac director for data centre …
Business 25 Jul 23:00
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Tilera routs Intel, AMD in Facebook bakeoff
Social Memcached marketing
Facebook may not think of itself as a social marketing company, but for upstart server-chip maker Tilera, the social media giant's internal Memcached bakeoff pitting Xeon and Opteron machines against Tilera boxes is a marketing windfall, indeed. Facebook's Memcached performance paper, being presented at the International Green …
Servers 25 Jul 23:28
