The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

4th August 2011 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Ex-NetRatings CEO's daughter freed from collar 'bomb'

    Device defused after ten-hour ordeal

    New South Wales police have worked for ten hours, with calls to the Australian Federal Police and bomb disposal experts in the UK, to free a Sydney girl from what was believed to be an explosive. The ordeal for Mosman 18-year-old schoolgirl Madeleine Pulver began when a balaclava-clad intruder broke into the family home and …

    Security 4 Aug 2011, 00:00

  • Ultra stealthy spy malware not so stealthy after all

    APT and the tell-tale error message

    A researcher has discovered a flaw in software used to spy on government agencies and contractors that can alert security personnel that their networks have been infiltrated by the otherwise hard-to-detect programs. The discovery by Joe Stewart, Dell SecureWorks' director of malware research, could help administrators detect so …

    Security 4 Aug 2011, 00:01

  • Boffins deduce chip's crypto just by looking at it

    Black Hat Smartcard hacking enters script-kiddie phase

    Hackers have released tools that unlock the software stored on heavily fortified chips so researchers can independently assess their security and spot weaknesses. At the heart of the the release, which was announced Wednesday at the Black Hat Security conference in Las Vegas, is Degate, software developed by Martin Schobert for …

    Security 4 Aug 2011, 04:35

  • Microsoft to pay $250,000 for hot new security defenses

    In search of new ideas

    Microsoft is offering more than $250,000 to researchers who develop new security defenses to protect Windows users against attacks that exploit software bugs. Microsoft's Blue Hat Prize announced on Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference will pay $200,000 for the best “novel runtime mitigation technology designed to …

    Security 4 Aug 2011, 04:37

  • VMware backs down on vSphere 5 virtual memory tax

    Big Blue monopoly lesson

    VMware has adjusted the price of its upcoming vSphere 5 hypervisor, responding to criticism from customers. The server virtualization juggernaut has learned a lesson about pricing that nearly killed IBM in the mainframe market in the 1980s and did kill Sun Microsystems in the 2000s: if you have a monopoly, you can't push the …

    Cloud 4 Aug 2011, 04:49

  • No PS4 or Xbox 720 before 2014

    Gamers 'happy' with current tech, apparently

    The rumour mill about next-gen consoles has been in full swing for a while now, with little sign of slowing. The director of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim threw his hat in the ring this week, claiming the anticipated PS3 and Xbox 360 follow-ups are unlikely to appear before 2014. In an interview with CVG's PSM3 magazine, Skyrim …

    Games 4 Aug 2011, 05:00

  • Björk Biophilia

    iOS App of the Week Violently appy?

    Yeah, I know – the moment you let a bunch of musos loose with new technology they start to come up with waffle like “an extraordinary multimedia exploration of the universe and its physical forces” – when all you’ve really got is a bunch of songs and some fancy graphics. Main interface Click for a larger image Scepticism …

    Phones 4 Aug 2011, 06:00

  • Digital copyright: Not much action, lots of talking shops

    A technocrat's fix to a market problem

    Games, music and movie industries are putting a brave face on this week's deluge of official IP announcements, while anti-copyright campaigners will be delighted a chunk of legislation passed by elected MPs has been struck down by a quango. Britain's permanent government, our bureaucracy, has dug its heels in and managed to …

    Government 4 Aug 2011, 07:00

  • Do you keep your job when your IT is in the cloud?

    Video Very probably yes

    Imagine for a moment that your IT department uses cloud services for storage. And apps. And security. And development. So what do you do now? Heartbroken as you will be to never have to patch another server, what's the future for in-house IT delivery? We've been here before, with outsourcing, and the results weren't pretty in …

    Cloud 4 Aug 2011, 07:44

  • Facebook facial recognition tech 'violates' German privacy law

    Social network dismisses Hamburg's data protection claims

    Facebook has rejected claims that its facial recognition technology violates German and EU privacy laws. Hamburg's data protection authority (DPA) warned (PDF, in German) the dominant social network, which quietly rolled the software into European versions of Facebook earlier this year, that it could be fined if the company …

    Law 4 Aug 2011, 08:46

  • Mobile app malware menace grows

    Android users at front line of attack

    The number of apps on mobile marketplaces contaminated with malware grew from 80 to 400 during the first half of 2011, according to a study by Lookout Mobile Security. Android users are particularly at risk of downloading contaminated apps from markets and download sites. Two of the most commonplace threats, DroidDream and …

    Security 4 Aug 2011, 08:48

  • Zuck's sister leaves Facebook to start new venture

    Randi calls it quits to build Web2.0 marketing powerhouse

    Mark Zuckerberg's big sister Randi, who also happens to be Facebook's marketing director, is leaving her brother's company after a six-year tenure. She handed in her resignation letter yesterday, as reported by All Things Digital. The 29-year-old exec later tweeted about her exit from the world's largest social network, which …

    Cloud 4 Aug 2011, 09:16

  • Brits love their phones, but spend less than ten years ago

    More services, for the same money

    Ofcom's annual report on the state of the UK communications market shows we are all doing more with our phones and tellies but we're not spending any more doing it. Despite the fact that almost a third of UK adults now have a smartphone, or that 93 per cent of us are connecting to the internet over broadband while watching our …

    Broadband 4 Aug 2011, 09:43

  • ICO tells public sector to respond to Twitter

    Tweeted FoI requests now valid...

    The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has told public authorities with Twitter accounts that they must respond to freedom of information (FoI) requests made via the micro-blogging site. It has said in its July 2011 newsletter that, although Twitter is not an ideal channel for submitting or responding to requests, it " …

    Government 4 Aug 2011, 10:14

  • NASA Legonauts set for Jupiter voyage

    Cheeky Yanks do a PARIS

    NASA has rather cheekily taken a leaf out of our Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) project manual and is set to launch three miniature astronauts on its Juno mission to Jupiter. Naturally, this being NASA, a common-or-garden Playmonaut simply isn't up to the job, and the agency tapped Lego for $15k worth of aluminium …

    SPB 4 Aug 2011, 10:15

  • Home Office denies reports of e-Borders closure

    Not chucked out in public cuts

    The Home Office has said that reports of the e-Borders programme being closed are incorrect and that it is still up and running. Earlier this week it was reported in sources including The Scotsman and This Is London that the programme had been dropped as part of the effort, led by the Cabinet Office, to find major savings on …

    Government 4 Aug 2011, 10:17

  • Rogue character space tripped Scottish exam results

    AQL caught out by Excel trying to be clever

    A rogue space in the date field caused almost 30,000 Scottish students to get their exam results a day early, as Excel versions clashed and human checking fell down. The texts telling students their Higher results (the Scottish equivalent of A-Levels) were supposed to go out Thursday morning, having been preloaded onto the …

    Applications 4 Aug 2011, 10:33

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

    Review Bigger, better, thinner, lighter

    10.1? The impression I get with the naming of this much-anticipated grown-up version of last year’s Galaxy Tab is that it has psychological hangups about (ahem) ‘size’. I imagine it loitering down the pub, boasting of its prowess: “It’s not just TEN inches, Al, it’s TEN-point-ONE!” It wants to be the Spinal Tap of Android …

    Tablets 4 Aug 2011, 10:54

  • Dell floats Cloud Hadoop clusters

    Stuffed elephant rides PowerEdge iron

    Dell might not own a lot of systems or middleware software a la IBM, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard, but it wants to sell configured stacks tuned for specific work just like its rivals in the systems racket. The company already peddles pre-configured Ubuntu/Eucalyptus and OpenStack systems for building and managing private clouds …

    Cloud 4 Aug 2011, 11:00

  • Paul McCartney's ex-wife makes phone-hacking claim

    Heather Mills says journo admitted voicemail snoop in 2001

    The former wife of Paul McCartney has alleged that a senior journalist working at Mirror Group Newspapers intercepted voicemails left for her by the Beatles star. Heather Mills told the BBC's Newsnight programme yesterday that the alleged phone-hacking incident took place in 2001, when Macca was her boyfriend. She said the …

    Security 4 Aug 2011, 11:02

  • Anonymous unsheathes new, potent attack weapon

    Better DDoS attacks ahead

    Members of Anonymous are developing a new attack tool as an alternative to the LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon) DDoS utility. The move follows a spate of arrests thought to be connected to use of the LOIC, which by default does nothing to hide a user's identity. The new tool, dubbed RefRef, due to be released in September, uses a …

    Security 4 Aug 2011, 11:17

  • Music biz now runs on Viagra®, not cocaine

    Wrinklie revenue shame

    The UK music business shrank almost 5 per cent last year, with lower concert revenues as fewer major acts played stadiums. So reckons the annual economic survey conducted by the Performing Right Society (PRS), which pegs the UK music industry's income at £3.75bn this year. The headline fall masks some very healthy figures, …

    Media 4 Aug 2011, 11:29

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 due next week

    Fondleslab frenzy

    With Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 launched today in select stores and reviewed here, attention has shifted to its smaller 8.9in brother, which could be in our hands as early as next week. We didn't anticipate the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 so soon after Samsung insisted it wouldn't arrive until "later this year". If the Amazon …

    Tablets 4 Aug 2011, 11:50

  • Government seeks public views on open data, PDC

    When the words open, public and data collide

    Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude launched two separate consultations on open data in government and the planned Public Data Corporation (PDC) this morning. UK taxpayers are being asked to comment on the handling of public data by central and local government. The Cabinet Office is seeking views from British citizens on …

    Government 4 Aug 2011, 12:10

  • Death haunts government petitions site

    Bring me the head of the sysadmin

    The Coalition government's epetitions site has limped online this lunchtime but is struggling to stay up. The site was down this morning, despite a message promising its imminent availability. A spinner at Ten Downing Street promised to get back to us. In the mean time, a bit of repeated clicking reveals over 40 petitions in …

    Government 4 Aug 2011, 12:13

  • PS Vita due in 2012 says Sony

    In Japan for Christmas though

    Sony has disappointed millions of eager gamers by announcing the PlayStation Vita will not be available in Europe or the US in 2011. Sony exec Kazuo Hirai broke the news earlier, saying while the anticipated handheld will still launch in Japan before the end of December, the western markets will miss out, Bloomberg reports. …

    Games 4 Aug 2011, 13:00

  • Google failing to pay Android developers

    Just wait patiently and you'll get your pennies... probably

    Some Android developers aren't getting the money they should, with revenue from web-based sales never finding its way into their accounts because of a problem that's lasted months. The issue first surfaced at the end of last year, with a few developers noticing a mismatch between sales and receipts, but only some sales are …

    Developer 4 Aug 2011, 13:08

  • The curse of Google?: Android licensees fail to cash in

    Brand-slut buyers have no loyalty

    Google's Android is now in almost half the world's smartphones – but licensees are finding that quod eos nutrit eos destruit – or what nourishes them destroys them. Figures from research company Canalys released this week certainly show booming growth in Android devices. Android is grabbing 48 per cent of the smartphone market …

    Mobile 4 Aug 2011, 13:21

  • Cybercrooks exploit interest in Harry Potter ebook site

    Muggles mugged

    Malware-slingers are tapping into the buzz around a new Harry Potter site to mount a variety of scams designed to either defraud, infect or otherwise con would-be victims. Pottermore, currently in beta, has been set up to sell ebooks of the Harry Potter novels, along with additional content such as background details and …

    Security 4 Aug 2011, 14:08

  • Systemax sales grow and profits too

    Profits and sales up

    Systemax's investigation into whistleblower allegations against former exec Gilbert Fiorentino added $7m to its Q2 pre-tax profits but the consumer slowdown dented sales growth. The parent of US retailers Tiger Direct and CompUSA and reselllers Misco and WStore in Europe, has reported profits of $15.5m, up 64 per cent on the …

    The Channel 4 Aug 2011, 14:41

  • Sony S1 and S2 screenshots leaked

    Fondleslab features laid bare

    With Sony's anticipated S1 and S2 tablets preparing for an autumn release, the company has been busy readying support documents, some of which went public prematurely this week. According to the screenshots – grabbed by Carrypad from Sony's support site before their hasty removal – the Sony slabs will ship with the latest …

    Tablets 4 Aug 2011, 15:00

  • Xiotech becomes banking apps bottleneck-buster

    Palms some cash, changes stance

    All change, all change. Xiotech has gained new funding, a new marketing officer, changed its marketing, has benchmarks coming and is setting up a European infrastructure. The new funding has partly arrived in the past month or so, with more coming in the next couple of weeks. The investors are opening their chequebooks on the …

    Storage 4 Aug 2011, 15:29

  • Pierre Cardin joins tablet trend

    Fashionista fondleslab

    Pierre Cardin's entry in to the fondleslab fray is yet another indication of just how in vogue tablets are these days. As far as tech trendsetting goes, the Pierre Cardin Tablet PC is a tad retro given that it runs on Android 2.2. It features a Samsung S5PV210 Cortex A8 1GHz processor, 512MB Ram and comes with 4GB of internal …

    Tablets 4 Aug 2011, 16:19

  • Amazon virtual private clouds go global

    Adds real private links and identity management

    Online retailing giant and cloud-computing pioneer Amazon is rolling out its Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) service to its data centers around the world. At the same time, it's giving customers dedicated private links into the cloudy infrastructure from their own premises, as well as an identity-management front end for the clouds …

    Cloud 4 Aug 2011, 17:25

  • SMART unveils smarter, faster, fatter SSDs

    'How much for the 1.6TB baby? We're not saying'

    Move over Violin, OCZ, Seagate, Intel, et al. SMART Modular Technologies is crowing that it's now number one in the notebook-format flash drive space, having just introduced its new Optimus solid state drive, which it calls "the world's fastest multi-level cell and highest capacity SAS SSD." The 2.5-inch Optimus uses 2-bit …

    Storage 4 Aug 2011, 19:11

  • Apple eyes phallic iPhone, iPod charger

    Wrap your 'buds around this electro-stiffy

    Apple has filed a patent application that describes a kludgey inductive battery-charging system, then adds – almost as an afterthought – a short description of a second, acoustically driven charger. Aside from electric toothbrushes, inductive charging is perhaps best known through the good services of the HP (née Palm) Pre's …

    Media 4 Aug 2011, 19:16

  • Microsoft skewers Google's anti-Android conspiracy claim

    Updated Email shows Google declined joint bid for Novell patents

    Microsoft has hit back at Google's claim that Redmond teamed with Apple and Oracle in some sort of patent conspiracy against Android, revealing that it offered Google the opportunity to join a bid for Novell's patent portfolio, and producing an email in which a Google general counsel declines the offer. On Wednesday, Google …

    Mobile 4 Aug 2011, 19:31

  • Exploit writer spills beans on secret iPhone function

    Black Hat iOS debugger of no use to anyone ... except hackers

    Independent security consultant Stefan Esser made waves earlier this year when a technique he developed for hacking iPhones was adopted by JailbreakMe and other mainstream jailbreaking services. The Register caught up with the German researcher at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas just ahead of his scheduled talk …

    Phones 4 Aug 2011, 20:23

  • New customers drive Teradata to new heights

    Big data opportunity a big unknown

    When announcing its financial performance for its most recent quarter, data-warehousing pioneer Teradata proved that it's continuing to do well despite heavy pressure from IBM, Oracle, EMC, and HP – and also, like its rivals, that its still trying to figure out just how large of an opportunity business analytics on unstructured …

    Financial News 4 Aug 2011, 20:57

  • Optus gets dibs on new BlackBerry Torch and Bold

    iPhone killers set to hit in September

    Optus has pipped rivals to the post in being the first to offer two new BlackBerry smartphones to the Australian market. The carrier will start shifting the BlackBerry Torch 9860 and the first touch screen BlackBerry Bold 9900 from early September. The smartphones feature the new BlackBerry 7 Operating System and a new …

    Mobile 4 Aug 2011, 22:07

  • Cheapskate Aussie net-shoppers safe from GST for now

    Productivity Commission also whacks the infamous ‘Apple tax’

    Australia’s Productivity Commission has released its report into the Australian retail industry, and finds that while this country’s 10% goods and service tax should apply to low-value international purchases made over the Internet, collection would be too expensive. Since the Australian dollar began appreciating in value, …

    Business 4 Aug 2011, 22:09

  • NBN Co gets heavy on social comms

    Microsoft Oz PR head joins exodus to network builder

    NBN Co has opened the door to Microsoft recruits, having previously raided the talent cupboards of Telstra and vendors like Alcatel-Lucent. Microsoft Australia’s head of corporate affairs, a veteran of six years, Cathy Jamieson, announced that she is leaving the house of Gates for NBN Co to take up the newly created role of …

    Business 4 Aug 2011, 23:00

  • Rackspace: 'OpenStack opens doors, wallets'

    Quarterly sales and profits take to the cloudy skies

    The mania around cloud computing in general and OpenStack in particular helped puff up Rackspace Hosting's latest financial report. In a conference call with Wall Street analysts after the market tanked closed on Thursday, Rackspace president and CEO Lanham Napier said that the company's Cloud Builders program – which …

    Cloud 4 Aug 2011, 23:13

  • Martian water slides caught on camera (maybe)

    US spacecraft spies Red Planet flows

    A US spacecraft orbiting Mars has provided tantalizing evidence of liquid water in the form of a series of images that show dark lines appearing to flow down steep ravines. "The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water," said the University of Arizona's Alfred McEwen in a statement released by …

    Science 4 Aug 2011, 23:19