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5th August 2011 Archive

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  • Linus Torvalds dubs GNOME 3 'unholy mess'

    'Head up the a*** behavior'

    Linux daddy Linus Torvalds has dropped GNOME 3 in favor of the Xfce graphical desktop interface, dubbing GNOME 3 an "unholy mess". Last week, on Google+, various penguins discussed the possibility of creating an incarnation of the Linux 3.0 kernel that would masquerade as version 2.6.40 – a 3.0 version number, you see, causes …

    Operating Systems 5 Aug 2011, 00:27

  • Spamford Wallace charged for hacking 500,000 Facebookers

    Forbidden login at 10,000 feet

    One of the first figures to plaster the internet with millions of spam messages before being driven underground has been criminally charged for hacking some 500,000 Facebook accounts, stealing their personal information, and sending 27 million unwanted advertisements. Sanford Wallace, now 43, first figured out a way to evade …

    Security 5 Aug 2011, 00:32

  • ‘Pitstops’ can inhibit viruses

    Boffins propose new idea for blocking HIV, cancer

    A compound dubbed the “pitstop” has been proposed as offering a new way to defend the body against invaders such as viruses and cancers. The joint Australian-German project is looking at cell signalling behaviours as offering the chance to block diseases that work by invading human cells. Cell membranes have to keep nasties …

    Science 5 Aug 2011, 01:00

  • Microsoft preps 13 updates for August Patch Tuesday

    Unloads baker's dozen after quiet July

    Microsoft is fuelling up 13 bulletins for release next week, including an update that guards against critical flaws in Internet Explorer. Another "critical" bulletin affects Windows server operating systems, and addresses a code-execution risk on unpatched systems. Also of note is an update restricted to newer versions of …

    Security 5 Aug 2011, 08:42

  • End user productivity: is technology a help or a hindrance?

    Reg Research The need to look beyond IT

    Judging by the number of supporting technologies that are available, and the claims made for their efficacy, end user productivity issues have long been a thing of the past. But we all know that in real life, it isn’t like that at all. The question remains, though: to what extent can technology help address productivity issues, …

    Software 5 Aug 2011, 08:54

  • Insight blames public sector for sales dip

    Saved by currency tailwind and mid-market push

    A strong currency tailwind lifted Insight Enterprises's second quarter sales to growth in Europe as spending cuts in the public sector started to bite. Favourable forex conversions underpinned a 12 per cent rise in sales to $403m (£248m) but excluding the currency impact, sales were flat with a two per cent dip in hardware …

    The Channel 5 Aug 2011, 09:01

  • STEC stamps its mark on PCIe flash

    Meet Kronos and Kronos Turbo

    STEC has introduced Kronos and Kronos Turbo, their dynamic PCIe server flash duo. Actually STEC is launching triplets as there is a Kronos Bi-Turbo – two Turbos ganged together – and there is also flash caching software. STEC has been absent from the fast-growing PCIe flash card space, one pioneered by Fusion-io in which …

    Storage 5 Aug 2011, 09:05

  • Travelodge blames 'vindictive individual' for email database breach

    Hacker or disaffected worker mystery remains

    Travelodge UK has confirmed that a customer database security breach was behind the recent run of spam emails to its customers. Customers complained in June after receiving spam messages punting suspicious-looking "work-at-home opportunities" to email addresses they only ever used to make reservations with the hotel chain. …

    Security 5 Aug 2011, 09:08

  • Directing Fibre Channel storage traffic over Ethernet

    The benefits of convergence

    Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) has a hard act to follow. Fibre Channel storage fabrics accomplish an amazing feat, making shared storage arrays equivalent to direct-attached disk drives to the many servers accessing them. When servers access data from directly attached disks, the data arrives fast and none is lost en route …

    Data Networking 5 Aug 2011, 09:19

  • Octovo Solis e-book reader lamp

    Accessory of the Week Strike a light

    No question, the Octovo Solis is the snazziest clip-on e-book reader light I've seen, and possibly the one that's the most practical to use too. Strike a light All it is is an oblong unit cut from aluminium with a plastic doobry on the bottom so it will sti neatly atop your reader. There's a rubber pad inside the clip to …

    Tablets 5 Aug 2011, 10:00

  • Fusion-io flash results explode

    Buys IO Turbine on the back of 556% revenue surge

    Fusion-io's first quarterly results since its IPO show revenues exploding, and it is buying IO Turbine for virtual server caching software on the back of that. PCIe interface ioDrive flash memory cards from Fusion-io accelerate server applications because they don't have to wait for data to be fetched from slow and sometimes …

    Storage 5 Aug 2011, 10:00

  • Stream vids to your laptop ON A PLANE ... but prepare to pay

    Bring your own screen along

    American Airlines is to start offering to stream video to passengers' own kit, as long as that kit is a laptop computer and the passenger doesn't mind paying for the experience. The service offers 100 movies and TV shows, priced at $4 and $1 respectively, which can be streamed during flights on the airline's entire fleet of …

    Hardware 5 Aug 2011, 10:03

  • Microsoft vs Google patent ding dong gets stuck on repeat

    Paranoid Android or a naughty, patent-herding Redmond? You decide

    Microsoft and Google are still engaged in a war of words over what Mountain View has claimed is a "conspiracy" against its Android platform. We at Vulture Central recommend you take ringside seats and bring a huge bucket of popcorn for this row, as it shows little sign of slowing down. In the latest round, Microsoft's top …

    Applications 5 Aug 2011, 10:05

  • Murdoch accused of operating illegal US air force

    Microdrone black ops threaten democracy

    Rupert Murdoch may soon have his front door kicked in by the US's Federal Aviation Administration, amid accusations that News Corporation has been operating an illegal air force. According to this report down at Forbes, the media magnate's fondleslab-friendly e-rag The Daily is flying a md4-1000 microdrone (pictured), which …

    SPB 5 Aug 2011, 10:09

  • E-petitions site: Death wish FAIL

    Bloody liberals ruin everything

    The Coalition government's E-petitions website remains open for business today but has been flooded with wishy-washy anti-hanging advocates. Yesterday's launch was marred by downtime and a flurry of pro-death sentence petitions following a campaign by Guido Fawkes and the Daily Mail. But the antis are getting organised and " …

    Government 5 Aug 2011, 10:12

  • Logica profits hit by misers in public sector

    Plan A: still hurting

    Logica is continuing to shift its order book from the public sector toward the commercial markets following a tough first half-year that challenged margins and gave operating profits a pounding. The IT service provider and consultancy's sales for calendar H1 were up 5 per cent to just shy of £2bn and it expects similar growth …

    Financial News 5 Aug 2011, 10:50

  • DOH! Housing contractor loses unencrypted stick down the pub

    Stick was stuffed with tenants' personals

    A contractor who lost an unencrypted memory stick with confidential data during a visit down the pub has landed two London housing bodies in trouble with data privacy watchdogs. The memory stick contained details of over 20,000 tenants of Lewisham Homes and 6,200 tenants of Wandle Housing Association. More seriously, 800 of …

    Government 5 Aug 2011, 11:14

  • PlayStation phone prices plunge

    The Nintendo effect?

    Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play has followed in Nintendo's 3DS footprints, experiencing a dramatic drop in price with some online retailers lowering it by almost 50 per cent. Expansys leads the way, bringing the PlayStation phone down in price from the standard £500 to £289. Other sites such as Play offer it for £299. Top prices …

    Phones 5 Aug 2011, 11:15

  • 12% of UK don't carry cash

    One likes to emulate the royalty you know

    Two-thirds of you don't like using cash, and one in eight has stopped carrying it entirely, according to Barclays, which (unsurprisingly) reckon cards are the way of the future. The research was done by Populus who, at the behest of Barclays and Barclaycard, interviewed 2,000 people and discovered that the average UK wallet …

    Small Biz 5 Aug 2011, 11:16

  • Can you handle LOHAN's substantial globes?

    We invite you to tackle spaceplane launch poser

    The matter of our LOHAN's substantial globes has kicked off a right old debate among you, our beloved readers, as rival viewpoints on just how to launch the Vulture 2 aircraft from beneath helium-filled funbags battle for our attention. To recap, we need to work out just how to launch our audacious Low Orbit High Altitude …

    SPB 5 Aug 2011, 12:02

  • Nikon D5100 16.2Mp DSLR

    Review Making an entry

    Sitting somewhere in the middle of entry-level scale, Nikon’s D5100 represents a considerable leap from its predecessor the D5000 and can be seen in some respects as a smaller, cheaper-built D7000. From its bigger brother it inherits the 16.2 DX-sized CMOS sensor; the Expeed 2 processor with 14-bit Raw shooting, the extensive …

    Hardware 5 Aug 2011, 12:08

  • Ofcom bows to Google lobby

    How Google owned our regulator

    The rubber-stamping of Ian Hargreaves "IP Review" and other news yesterday represents a lobbying triumph for Google, and shows the creative industries they need to learn some lessons. Yesterday Ofcom pleased its political masters by repealing laws passed by Parliament. It may have repealed a dodgy law, but that's beside the …

    Law 5 Aug 2011, 12:10

  • LinkedIn smashes through dire economy with HUGE sales jump

    Social-network-for-suits on fire. But forecast dampens numbers

    LinkedIn posted its first financial numbers on Thursday, after going public earlier this year, and surprised (almost) everyone by pinning a giddy revenue increase of 120 per cent on its Q2 results. The California-based company and Google neighbour just so happened to release those figures on what was a very bad day indeed for …

    Financial News 5 Aug 2011, 12:46

  • Mr Bean prangs £650k McLaren

    Rowan Atkinson 'crawls from burning supercar'

    Blackadder star Rowan Atkinson narrowly "cheated death" last night after pranging his £650k McLaren F1, and crawling from the supercar's burning wreckage. That's more or less the Daily Mail's version of what happened on the A605 at Haddon, near Peterborough, when Mr Bean wrapped his expensive motor round a tree and a signpost …

    Bootnotes 5 Aug 2011, 12:48

  • Finding the black-spots in service delivery

    Regcast And what to do when you clock them

    IT nowadays is so complex that even the best systems, operated by the best people in the game, can have black-spots when you bring them together to deliver a service to your customers. You've no doubt experienced the problem. You're sitting in IT looking at your systems management dashboard admiring the green lights, whilst the …

    Service Assurance 5 Aug 2011, 13:04

  • Spanish unfurl Benny 16 banana bog roll

    Madrid to welcome Pope with open bowels

    Spanish bog roll outfit Renova has come up with a novel way for locals to welcome Pope Benny 16 to Madrid later this month – a limited-editon arse paper combo in a fetching Vatican colour scheme. The company's blurb explains that the Papal toilet roll will be rolled out for the World Youth Day celebrations, running from 16 to …

    Bootnotes 5 Aug 2011, 13:08

  • Kinect space saver on its way

    Reverse Tardis effect

    The problem with Xbox Kinect - aside from a decent range of top-drawer titles - is the inability to play without a large living room and yards of space. Gaming accessories manufacturer Nyko seeks to change all that, though, with this badboy accessory. The Nyko Zoom for Kinect reduces the space required to play Kinect by up to …

    Games 5 Aug 2011, 13:30

  • Police procurement deal means cops pay more

    Handcuffing cops to one supplier means higher prices

    West Midlands Police Authority has cast doubts on Home Office claims about the savings offered by the controversial Sprint ii IT procurement framework and plans to minimise its use. All forces in England and Wales were mandated by government in March to buy commodity hardware and software via Sprint ii – a pan-public sector …

    Law 5 Aug 2011, 13:43

  • Ray of hope for smartphone projectors

    Grain of sand sets shining example

    A components manufacturer claims to have made the industry's smallest aspherical glass lens which has potential to kit-out smartphones with built-in projectors. Of course, the idea is nothing new. Projectors have been implemented in phones before, but never really took off with the additional bulk being among the issues. The …

    Phones 5 Aug 2011, 14:26

  • Cisco warns over warranty discs of EVIL

    Malicious suppository Easter Egg shenanigans

    Networking giant Cisco has warned customers that a CD-ROM it supplied with its kit automatically took users to a site that was a known malware repository. The affected CDs, designed to supply warranty information, were supplied to customers between December 2010 and August 2011. When the disc was opened, or if autorun was …

    Security 5 Aug 2011, 15:04

  • A mixed bag for IT jobs in July

    US economy adds jobs, unemployment micro-ticks down

    The US economy added more jobs than economists had projected in July and the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its latest jobs report that it had also revised the number of net new people added to the workforce in May and June. This number was slightly higher than originally reported, the bureau said. The BLS, which is part …

    Government 5 Aug 2011, 15:24

  • HTC swallows cloud app biz Dashwire

    Splashes $18.5m on deal in between patent battles

    Smartphone maker HTC has taken time out from its long-running patent battle with Apple to bid $18.5m for US web-based application developer Dashwire. The platform allows users to download apps, personalise their phones and access content across multiple devices, and will be integrated into the HTCSense cloud services portfolio …

    Cloud 5 Aug 2011, 15:32

  • Facial recognition tech proves Randi AND Mark are the same Zuck

    World Exclusive Facebook's photo-tagging service uncovers shocking truth

    After spending literally minutes researching photos of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his older "sister" Randi on the interwebs, The Register can exclusively reveal that the siblings are in fact ONE AND THE SAME person. Ironically, we uncovered the shocking truth with the help of Facebook's ground-breaking photo …

    Bootnotes 5 Aug 2011, 15:33

  • NASA's Juno roars off to Jupiter

    Mighty rocket lifts gas giant mission

    NASA's Juno spacecraft blasted off this afternoon from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at the beginning of its five-year journey to Jupiter. The 4-ton Juno rose heavenwards at 16:25 GMT atop a bloody big United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 rocket, boasting a quintet of solid booster strap-ons. Despite this extra lifting grunt …

    Science 5 Aug 2011, 16:33

  • Acer founder: 'Tablets, ultrabooks just a fad'

    Shh! Don't tell Intel

    Those tablets and razor-thin "ultrabooks" that are grabbing all the headlines these days are just passing fads, says the founder of PC-maker Acer. According to a report by DigiTimes, Acer's Stan Shih – yes, he of the "Stan Shih Smile Curve" – says that PCs remain the foundation of the IT industry, and that the industry needs …

    Media 5 Aug 2011, 16:58

  • Apple, Walmart, and you: Making money in mobile

    Open...and Shut Serving the goldfish generation

    Mobile is top-of-mind for every developer and every business, but it's not yet reaching stuffing-of-wallet for much of anyone. The problem, as one friend described it to me yesterday, is that mobile users have the attention span of goldfish. When users are in and out of an app or website in few-second snatches, the chances to …

    Mobile 5 Aug 2011, 18:45

  • Google erects master API for linking web apps

    Intent on Web Intents

    Google is developing an über-API meant to facilitate interaction between web applications, and it plans to integrate the project – known as Web Intents – with its Chrome browser and Chrome OS browser-based operating system. As Google seeks to move all of your applications to the web, the project is an obvious – and necessary …

    Cloud 5 Aug 2011, 18:49

  • Shagbook won't take Facebook thrust lying down

    Pokes back at 'trademark bully'

    The "hottest place to hook up with local singles for no strings attached adult dating" is fighting back against Facebook's demand that it change its name. Shagbook – an outfit based in Windsor, UK – has filed an Answer to Opposition with the United States Patent and Trademark office in response to Facebook's assertion that its …

    Media 5 Aug 2011, 22:51

  • DIY aerial drone monitors Wi-Fi, GSM networks

    Defcon Passwords cracked on the fly

    Hobbyist hackers have built a DIY flying spy drone that's capable of intercepting communications over remote Wi-Fi and cellular networks and beaming them to snoops located half a world away. Short for wireless aerial surveillance platform, the WASP is equipped with a battery of off-the-shelf hacking tools that can secretly …

    Science 5 Aug 2011, 22:54

  • Google points finger at human after robo car accident

    Auto not on auto. Apparently

    One of Google's self-driving cars has driven into another car. But Google says it wasn't driving itself at the time. As first revealed on Jalopnik, a Google robo-Prius hit someone else's non-robo Prius earlier this week. But according to a Google spokesman, the accident occurred while a human was driving the Googly automobile …

    Science 5 Aug 2011, 22:57