18th August 2011 Archive

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Google+ bans real name under ‘Real Names’ policy

Don’t be ~~evil~~ different

First, Google sparked a furor by banning pseudonyms from Google+ under its “Real Names” policy. Its next row, now warming up in Australia, is the banning of real names that happen to lie outside the programmers’ assumptions. An Australian journalist and commentator, who changed his legal name to the mononym Stilgherrian many …

Odds and Sods 18 Aug 01:00
Red Hat: Where recessions are good news

Open...and Shut Economic downturn antidote

While Silicon Valley is still bubbling like it's 1999, tech investor Mark Suster thinks the flailing job market and imploding stock market is a warning to entrepreneurs: raise what money you can as fast as you can, because life is about to get much harder, even for web companies. But at least one company must be looking at the …

Operating Systems 18 Aug 04:00
Better ATM skimming through thermal imaging

Technique automates PIN theft

Security researchers have found that thermal cameras can be combined with computer algorithms to automate the process of stealing payment card data processed by automatic teller machines. At the Usenix Security Symposium in San Francisco last week, the researchers said the technique has advantages over more common ATM skimming …

Security 18 Aug 05:00
David May, parallel processing pioneer

Unsung Heroes of Tech We salute the architect of the Transputer

"It's very distressing - I'm watching almost with disbelief. The Americans cannot get it out of their heads that if you're trying to build machines with lots of processors, you don't assume that they all share a common memory. The world doesn't have a common database. We pass messages to one another." David May, professor of …

reghardware 18 Aug 07:00
Samsung offers eco-econo green DRAM

It's like making a computer out of rainbows

Using through-silicon vias, Samsung is stacking its memory chips higher and reducing energy consumption. It has a 32GB double data rate-3 (DDR3) RDIMM (Registered Dual-Inline Memory Module) using these through-silicon vias (TSVs) to build this 3D chip. The process technology is 30nm and the RDIMM is built from 4Gbit DDR3 …

Storage 18 Aug 07:34
A first glance into Nutanix storage

Once over lightly

What can we expect from the Nutanix Complete Cluster in a storage sense? Here's an instant review of what the documentation tells us. Context The Nutanix product does exactly what HP's P400 VSA does, only more so and in a full-bodied way. It virtualises direct-attached storage ( DAS) across servers to function as a storage …

Storage 18 Aug 07:52
Southwest One made overpayments of £4.6m

Glitch had staff chucking cheques out of town hall windows

A software glitch has led Somerset county council to make overpayments of £3.7m, the authority has confirmed. It was part of a problem affecting Southwest One, the shared service in which the council is involved, resulting from the introduction of a new SAP software system two years ago. Delays with the automated system led to …

Government 18 Aug 07:58
Intel pushes back next-gen Atom release

Cedar Trail trials

Intel has allegedly knocked back the release of its next-gen netbook and nettop chippery, from September to November. Codenamed 'Cedar Trail', the platform comprises chipsets and 32nm Atoms, the 1.6GHz N2600 and 1.86GHz N2800, along with comparable desktop parts D2500 and D2700. The CPUs contain a new graphics core capable of …

reghardware 18 Aug 08:04
iPhone users richer, brainier, more tasteful than Android-ers

Connoisseurs of fine wine, gourmets, lovers etc etc

A massive survey of smartphone users purports to show that iPhone users are sushi-eating leaders, while anyone touting an Android handset prefers steak and following others. The survey comes from Hunch.com, and is compiled from the responses of 15,000 people who volunteered to answer questions on the company's website, so it …

Operating Systems 18 Aug 08:28
Community Linux support for Penguin phones floated

'Let's all pick one kernel and stick with it for a bit'

Plans are afoot to establish a long-term support system for new versions of the Linux kernel to help slide the penguin into more smartphones. One of the Linux kernel's top maintainers has suggested that the Linux community each year picks a version of the kernel that they will commit to maintain for a period of two years, …

Developer 18 Aug 09:03
World+Dog to get keen on consoles next year

PS3 to host 'most active' fanbase by 2015

Consumer spending on games consoles and software will begin to bounce back next year - after a slide of a few percentage points between 2010 and 2011 - thanks, in part, to the Wii U. So says market watcher IDC, which reckons that developed markets, seemingly sated appetite for gaming, will soon be hungry for next-gen consoles …

reghardware 18 Aug 09:06
Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online users suffer outages

'They should call it Office 364, really'

Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online customers stateside suffered a major outage yesterday for more than five hours. The issues first emerged at about 11am Pacific Daylight Time (7pm BST), with users in the US and Canada complaining on Twitter that they could not access email while administrators were unable to manage …

Channel Register 18 Aug 09:08
NetApp misses revenue goal

'We're in unprecedented waters right now'

NetApp made a reduced profit in its first fiscal 2012 quarter, reflecting a sudden US sales drop-off attributed to public sector and financial services buying slowdowns. Revenues for the quarter, which finished on 29 July, were $1.458bn: a healthy 26 per cent increase on the $1.154bn seen a year ago but lower than the Street's …

Storage 18 Aug 09:28
UCAS website collapses - on results day

Who could have predicted such massive traffic? Er ...

'A' level students looking to find a university place through the UCAS website had better get on the phone instead - the organisation has shut down its own website. Despite widespread predictions that this year would be a particularly busy clearing process, UCAS (Universities & Colleges Admissions Service) has been caught on …

Public Sector 18 Aug 09:31
Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader

iOS App of the Week Retailer breaks out of the App Store. Hurrah

Looks like there’s trouble a-brewing in the cosy iOS ecosystem. Amazon has just rewritten its Kindle app as an HTML 5 ‘web app’ in order to circumvent the restrictions of the App Store – not to mention the 30 per cent cut that Apple skims off the top of every sale. It's not the first to do so either. The Financial Times has …

reghardware 18 Aug 10:00
LOHAN seeks mighty thruster for trip to heaven and back

Special Projects to attend International Rocket Week

Our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project is beginning to gain momentum, and we reckon it's about time we looked into the explosive matter of the Vulture 2 rocket motor. Rather handily, a large number of experts in the field will be gathered in Scotland next week for International Rocket Week, and I'll be popping …

SPB 18 Aug 10:00
TalkTalk, Tiscali fined £3m in bogus billing smackdown

Telcos set bailiffs on people who owed them nothing

TalkTalk and Tiscali have been hit with a big fine from Ofcom, after wrongly billing tens of thousands of customers for services they never received. The £3m penalty was slapped on the companies following their failure to clean up their billing systems. The communications watchdog said this morning that the two telcos are …

Telecoms 18 Aug 10:19
White Space: The Next Big Thing in networks

Analysis Among the mystery pub antennas of the Silicon Fens

The white spaces are filling up around Cambridge, so El Reg went up to the Fens to talk to the companies responsible about what white space is for ... and why they're sticking their masts on pubs. Ofcom issued an experimental white space licence permitting low-power transmissions within an 80MHz-wide band around Cambridge in …

Networks 18 Aug 10:25
Skype brings per-minute Wi-Fi to iPad and iPhone

Who here remembers mobile dial-up? Great days

iPhone and iPad users can now be charged by the minute for Wi-Fi access, thanks to the expanded Skype Access service which now includes fondle-slabs and Jesus mobes as well as computers. Skype already offers per-minute access to various Wi-Fi networks around the world, with prices starting at three pence a minute, but that has …

Wireless 18 Aug 10:36
Sage leads bidding for Mind Your Own Business

Geordie move into Antipodes looking good

Sage has been declared preferred bidder for Aussie small biz and accounts firm MYOB. The Geordie firm is bidding A$1.3bn (£823m), which tops offers from Bain Capital and Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts and Co. The two private equity/asset stripper firms were stymied by the downturn in debt markets in recent weeks. The offer is a …

Business 18 Aug 11:01
Gerard Depardieu takes piss on plane, gets tossed off

'Je veux pisser', thunders bottle spatter mishap thesp

Gerard Depardieu was kicked off a flight to Dublin, after the French actor responded to the call of nature by peeing into a bottle and reportedly overspilling an unsteady flow of piss into the aisle. The star of Green Card asked to use the CityJet's loo prior to take-off from Charles de Gaulle Airport, but he had been told to …

Bootnotes 18 Aug 11:23
Op Weeting plods cuff 13th hack in phone-hack probe

Reportedly former NotW showbiz bin-rifler

The Metropolitan police have arrested another man as part of its ongoing investigation into alleged phone-hacking at axed Sunday tabloid News of the World. "On Thursday, 18 August, officers from Operation Weeting arrested a man [H], aged 38, on suspicion of conspiring to unlawfully intercept voicemails contrary to section 1(1 …

Crime 18 Aug 11:32
Outsourcer says rivals faked stolen database offer

'Envious competitor in lame attempt to hurt us'

eBay-style outsourcing site PeoplePerHour says a rival firm faked emails which claimed to be offering the company's customer database for sale. The company initially feared that a disgruntled ex-contractor had swiped customer records and was offering them for sale to rival companies. The rivals declined the offer and tipped …

Enterprise Security 18 Aug 11:41
Data centre networking - the view from your seat

Reg Tech Panel Are you coping with service demands?

Data centre networks provide the infrastructure that allows business services to function. They let users get on with their jobs while allowing systems to be protected according to need. But are the networks in your data centre appreciated or have they become invisible as the organisation demands more from them? Are your …

Tech Panel 18 Aug 12:00
Nokia invigorates old Symbians with Anna

Belle slips out too

Nokia's latest mobile OS, Symbian Anna, is already appearing on new handsets, but today the Finnish phone giant launched an update to bring owners of various other models up to scratch too. Available for N8, E7, C7 and C6-01 users, the patch packs a fresh UI, portrait-aligned Qwerty keypad, split-screen messaging and, where …

reghardware 18 Aug 12:07
Symbian Anna makes her debut

Younger, prettier sister still not allowed out in public

Owners of the latest Nokia phones can now update to Symbian Anna, assuming their operators permit it, but having caught a glimpse of her younger sister they might not be impressed. Anna was announced back in April, and has been available to developers for a while, but can now be installed on N8, C7, C6-01 and E7 handsets. It …

Developer 18 Aug 12:24
iPad sales shove Apple to top of mobile computing tree

Jobs mob looks down on HP, Dell et al

You can see why Apple thinks the iPad is "magical" - the fondleslab has again mysteriously lifted the company's share of the mobile computer market above even HP and Dell. Add iPad shipments to those of MacBooks Air, Pro and standard, and Apple shipped 13.6m mobile computers in Q2 2011, market watcher DisplaySearch says. That …

reghardware 18 Aug 12:24
Fort Knox military cops disgusted with solar patrol carts

Sluggish 'leccy buggies unpopular with bullion base plods

US military police stationed at Fort Knox, home among other things to the United States Bullion Depository, are reportedly none too pleased at having to patrol in rather feeble solar-powered electric golf carts in line with Pentagon efforts to be more environmentally friendly. There's no escape from the long arm of the Fort …

Policing 18 Aug 12:26
Free Ride: Disney, Fela Kuti and Google's war on copyright

Interview Lawrence Lessig's work 'isn't worthy of a Harvard prof'

Wars over creators' rights are pretty old – much older than copyright law. In one of the first "copyfights", in 561AD, about 3,000 people died, writes Robert Levine in his new book Free Ride. St Colmcille and St Finnian clashed over the right to make copies of the Bible, with the King castigating Colmcille for his "fancy new …

Music and Media 18 Aug 12:59
Lenovo chiefs chortle over decision to buy IBM's PC biz

Fat numbers from reorg'd Big Blue boxes

IBM may think it was a grand plan to exit the PC game by flogging its biz to Lenovo, but the Chinese vendor does not concur, as its Q1 sales rises show. The concerted turnaround efforts continued for the seventh consecutive quarter since Lenovo dumped former CEO Bill Amelio, with sales up 15 per cent to $5.9bn and operating …

Business 18 Aug 13:27
Australian bank to run trial with human teller in ATM

Video link, not dwarf or brain in jar

Australian banks may soon be rolling out new video-enabled ATMs which allow consumers to video-chat "live" with remote bank tellers. The manufacturer of the video terminals, NCR Corporation, has confirmed that a "major Australian financial institution" is currently preparing for a consumer trial. "One Australian financial …

Bootnotes 18 Aug 13:41
Tech Data laughs at world market meltdown

Tweaks nose of global macro-economic woe

Tech Data sailed its calendar Q2 sales and profits safely through into the sunny waters of double-digit growth aided by a favourable currency tailwind despite severe undertow from ebbing economies on both sides of the Atlantic. The great IT distie ark managed to grow sales 18 per cent to $6.45bn as operating profits climbed 20 …

Channel Register 18 Aug 13:54
Computacenter guru outlines new Colt not-a-cloud plan

How do you draw a 'delivery platform' on a whiteboard?

Computacenter's former storage boss Matthew Yeager is set to join LSE-listed Colt from next month as chief technologist. After nearly four years at CC, Yeager is heading to Colt, which dropped the Telecom element of its brand last year as it transitions into a cloud services biz or "information delivery platform provider" as …

Infrastructure 18 Aug 14:33
HP confirms faster, paler TouchPad tablet

64GB Wi-Fi model out in two weeks

HP may not be selling quite as many TouchPad tablets as it might want to, but it's certainly not for want of trying. Hot on the heels of last month's launch comes a new, 64GB model. Out in two weeks - in France, at the very least, if not elsewhere - the 64GB model is the one that emerged in early July in a leaked presentation …

reghardware 18 Aug 15:00
Snap said to show iPhone 5s being stacked by bunnies

Panels on parade

Are these handsets behind placed in palettes by workers in cleanroom clothing - aka bunny suits - actually iPhone 5s? A Chinese Twitter post relayed by a Vietnamese website claims they are, and that the snap is proof the new handsel will sport a larger display - hence the seeminly more narrow bezel - than its predecessor. …

reghardware 18 Aug 15:19
Oxford adds woot! to dictionary

Hello? 1994 wants its word back

Today marks the launch of the centenary edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, first compiled by the Fowler brothers in 1911: an event traditionally marked by a press release including words added for the first time. This year's new entries include: woot, retweet, cyberbullying, denialist, gastric band and the …

Bootnotes 18 Aug 15:39
DARPA shells out $21m for IBM cat brain chip

Here, Skynet Skynet

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is moving ahead with IBM in the third leg of its Synapse cat brain chip. That leaves one more leg, a tail, and nine lives to go. Because this is the military, the third leg of the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (Synapse) project at DARPA is called …

Rise of the Machines 18 Aug 16:27
HP to 'spinoff PC biz'

$10bn Autonomy buy rumored

Hewlett-Packard is planning to spinoff its PC business, according to Bloomberg. An HP corporate spokesman declined to comment on the Bloomberg report, and neither would he reveal to us whether the news might be announced during the company's third-quarter earnings call, to be webcast at the close of US markets on Thursday. …

PCs & Chips 18 Aug 17:01
UK man faces five charges for repeated Facebook hacks

Phabricator penetrated

A 25-year-old UK man has been charged with five counts of illegal hacking for repeatedly penetrating the security defenses of Facebook. Glenn Steven Mangham of York was accused of engaging in a hacking spree against Facebook earlier this year. From April 27 to May 9, he allegedly targeted at least three different services used …

Crime 18 Aug 17:37
Nimbula 'cloud operating system' spans data centers

Ex-Amazon man transcends geography

Nimbula – the build-your-own-cloud outfit founded by Amazon's former vice president of engineering – has announced a new release of its Director platform, saying it will allow businesses to run a unified "infrastructure cloud" across geographically separate data centers. In short, this means that those using such a cloud can …

Infrastructure 18 Aug 18:46
Canonical ARMs Ubuntu for microserver wars

Oneiric Ocelot runs un-x86

Canonical is suiting up for the coming microserver wars, confirming that Ubuntu Server 11.10 will run on ARM chips. Just under three years ago when ARM-based netbooks were taking the PC market by storm and iPad tablets were just a gleam in Steve Job's eye, Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distro, made ARM …

Servers 18 Aug 19:19
HP murders webOS tablets, phones

Confirms PC biz spinoff 'discussion'

HP has announced that it will discontinue its webOS TouchPad and webOS phones, just weeks after the arrival of the TouchPad and a little more than a year after the company acquired the webOS mobile operating system from Palm in a $1.2bn purchase. In a press release floated before the company's quarterly earnings call, HP also …

PCs & Chips 18 Aug 19:49
Microsoft, McDonald's absolved of tracking cookie abuse

Redmond and Ronald victorious

A judge has gutted a lawsuit that accused companies including Microsoft, McDonald's, and advertising network Interclick of fraud for the use of code that tracked the browsing history of website visitors, even when they took pains to keep that information private. Wednesday's dismissal of claims under the federal Computer Fraud …

ID 18 Aug 21:50
Compellent swoops in, saves Dell storage

Nearly doubled revenue

Dell's fiscal 2012 second quarter storage revenues, shrunk by lost EMC business, would have shown no growth or even a loss but for booming Compellent sales. Overall storage revenues dropped 20 per cent year-on-year to $502m. The company's numbers indicate that Dell's sales of EMC-sourced storage dropped 61.6 per cent compared …

Storage 18 Aug 21:51
NetComm bags NBN device deal

Ericsson shares the A$1.1bn love

Australian datacomms vendor NetComm has secured an NBN Co device supply contract via core NBN wireless vendor Ericsson. Under the deal with Ericsson, NetComm will provide fixed-wireless LTE devices to connect premises to the NBN Co's LTE broadband network with a three year window to complete. The supply period starts in mid …

Business 18 Aug 22:28
Oz cybercrime laws in need of repair

Sent back under warranty

An Australian Senate committee has recommended that law enforcement authorities should only hand information to agencies from other countries if those countries have privacy protection that matches our own. That’s one of the key recommendations made by the bipartisan committee looking into proposed cybercrime legislation, …

Government 18 Aug 23:30