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6th September 2011 Archive

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  • Single-molecule 'motor' measures just a nanometer

    Don’t drop this on the floor

    It’s not the first single-molecule nano-motor, but it’s the first one to be driven by electricity: a Tufts research team has demonstrated that you can “provide electricity to a single molecule and get it to do something that’s not just random” (as team leader Charles Sykes put it). Previous single-molecule nano-motors have …

    Rise of the Machines 6 Sep 00:30

  • NBN Co awards $879m in network rollout deals

    Transfield and Lend Lease rocking Victoria and WA

    Lend Lease and Transfield Services have secured coveted NBN Co fibre rollout contracts for Victoria and Western Australia worth collectively up to $AU879 million. Lend Lease’s Syntheo JV with Service Stream has been awarded the WA portion of NBN Co’s rollout of passive fibre network over an initial two year period worth $AU174 …

    Business 6 Sep 01:47

  • LaCie CloudBox storage combo

    Review In here and out there

    It’s quite common for hard disk drives to also include an element of on-line backup these days. But even if you buy a big hard disk with 1TB or more of internal storage, the free on-line storage component tends to only be a few gigabytes – it’s really just a taster to try and get you to sign up for a subscription service that …

    reghardware 6 Sep 06:00

  • Jeff Bezos' spaceship self-destructs in test flight

    Amazon kingpin's pocket rocket splatters across Texas

    Would-be spaceman Jeff Bezos' prototype private rocket has crashed and burned after sputtering out during its test flight. "A flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered our range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle," Bezos said on the Blue Origin company website, which if you're not well-up on …

    Space 6 Sep 07:02

  • Gov removes 'general appeal' rights for accused freetards

    Three letters in a year gets you on the Black List

    The government has asked Ofcom to avoid giving alleged copyright infringers a general right of appeal against warning letters they may receive about their online activity in new regulations due out shortly, the telecoms regulator has said. Under the Digital Economy Act (DEA) Ofcom is tasked with writing new regulations to help …

    Law 6 Sep 07:57

  • Children's body busted for email, file cabinet blunders

    Staff forced to attend compulsory ICO workshops

    The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has found that the organisation which investigates the care of Scotland's most vulnerable children had twice failed to protect sensitive child welfare information. In January 2011 the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration (SCRA) sent legal papers containing sensitive …

    Public Sector 6 Sep 08:27

  • Freeview HD will deliver new IPTV channels this month

    Exclusive Mysteries of the >100 data channels revealed

    Dozens of new television channels are coming to Freeview this month, thanks to clever use of the MHEG standard and the connectivity already built into every Freeview HD box. The channels are already appearing on Freeview boxes – at 110, 111 and 120 in the EPG – but rather than broadcasting video streams those channels contain …

    Wireless 6 Sep 08:58

  • Jesus appears, acquires vast following, bitchslaps Justin Bieber

    On Facebook as it is in heaven

    A page created on Facebook called 'Jesus Daily' is proving very popular among people interested in a little heavenly intervention during their social network fix. In fact, the number of 'Likes', comments and 'Shares' for Jesus Daily have surpassed even heavyfringedboywonderthing Justin Bieber's Page in the past three months, …

    Networks 6 Sep 09:19

  • Notebook makers cautious about Ultrabooks

    Initial production runs limited, moles claim

    Notebook makers are playing it cautious with Ultrabooks, it seems, limiting shipments to 50,000 or less as the gauge demand through the remainder of 2011. So say manufacturer moles cited by DigiTimes. Their caution is explained by their experience with past Intel notebook initiatives, most notably for so-called "CULV" - …

    reghardware 6 Sep 09:19

  • Ancient crater lake evidence found on Mars

    Dusty bowl once filled with water, probe images show

    A satellite from the European Space Agency (ESA) has photographed the meandering channels of a dried-out river on the surface of Mars. The Eberswalde crater contains a rare case of a Martian delta (box 3). Channels (box 2) which fed the lake in the crater are very well-preserved. According to the ESA, the delta deposits and …

    Space 6 Sep 09:39

  • Ofcom misses deadline: but on Sitefinder, not 4G

    Not saying it won't go two for two, mind

    Ofcom hasn't slipped the dates on the UK's 4G auctions, at least not yet, but that's not stopped various media titles reporting that things are already going awry. The story popped up last week in Mobile Today, and was repeated in yesterday's Guardian, claiming that Ofcom had pushed publication of the auction details back to …

    Mobile 6 Sep 09:57

  • Hologram Live

    Android App of the Week Liquid wallpaper

    Android’s live wallpapers offer the kind of personalisation that iOS users can only dream about in their most fevered imaginings but I’m still not a fan because they don’t do your battery any favours and more often than not they make it difficult to see what else is on your screen. But now I’ve found one - suggested by a …

    reghardware 6 Sep 10:00

  • French bloke fined for failing to shag missus

    'Not tonight, Josephine'

    A Frenchman has been ordered to pay his former wife €10,000 for failing to fulfil his marital duties in the bedroom department, the Telegraph reports. The 51-year-old's missus filed for divorce two years ago, on the grounds of insufficient sex. A judge in Nice granted the petition, declaring that libido-light "Jean-Louis B" …

    Bootnotes 6 Sep 10:13

  • SETI alien hunters re-open search for volunteer coders

    Help wanted dealing with radio-telescope data

    The project hunting for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is continuing its recruitment of citizen scientists despite the loss of one its key architects. The SETI Institute is starting work to make terabytes of data trawled using its radio telescopes available to members for the public for analysis. SETI is creating …

    Software 6 Sep 10:27

  • No pain, some gain: Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot examined

    Review Love it or leave it, Unity is here

    Ubuntu 11.10, just released as its first beta differs only slightly in its looks from its 11.04 predecessor – a fact that will be welcome news to penguins still reeling from that earlier version's grand re-boot. That earlier release shed GNOME 2.x, ignored GNOME 3.0 and set its brand-new Unity interface as the default. …

    Operating Systems 6 Sep 10:44

  • Dixons drops Motorola Xoom price... again

    Retailer blinks first, before punters

    Dixons has knocked the price of the 32GB Motorola Xoom tablet to £329 - not at all bad when you consider the fondleslab was priced at £500 at launch. And the other 32GB Xoom, the one with 3G connectivity as well as Wi-Fi, is now just £400, down from £580. Both versions run Android 3.0 Honeycomb - though Android 3.1 is now …

    reghardware 6 Sep 10:49

  • 'Poems are the original text messages,' says Laureate

    An old pond / A 8) jumps n / Plop

    Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy wants to bring literature to new audiences, and she argues that children who use test messaging and social networks were honing their poetry skills. “Poems are the original text messages in that they use language in a very concise way and I think they will become more relevant in this century than …

    Entertainment 6 Sep 10:58

  • AndyPad Pro low-cost Android tablet now on sale

    Cheap and cheerful

    The AndyPad Pro - highlighted as a Recommened purchase in Reg Hardware's recent Ten… Budget Android Tablets round-up - has now gone on sale. The 374g AndyPad comes with a 7in, 1024 x 600 screen, a 1.2GHz Cortex A8 chip, 512MB of RAM, 802.11g Wi-Fi, and HDMI and micro USB ports. It also has front- and rear-facing cameras - 0. …

    reghardware 6 Sep 11:09

  • Dell chums up with Baidu for China smartphone charge

    Reckons 200 million registered users can't be wrong

    Dell is partnering with China's Baidu on smartphones and tablets as its fortunes start to flag in Western markets. On Friday, Baidu, China's most popular search engine, announced its Android-based software platform Baidu Yi for smartphones and Dell is shaping up to be its first hardware partner. "We can confirm our …

    Mobile 6 Sep 11:13

  • Claimed DigiNotar hacker: I have access to four more CAs

    Iranian 'Comodohacker' says he can still issue bogus certs

    The digital miscreant known as ComodoHacker has claimed responsibility for the high-profile DigiNotar digital certificate authority hack. Soon after the Comodo forged certificates hack an Iranian using the handle Comodohacker posted a series of messages via Pastebin account providing evidence that he carried out the attack. …

    Security 6 Sep 11:26

  • New NASA site offers solar system and time travel

    Mission data from 1950 to 2050 for your viewing

    NASA is making many a child's dream come true by letting the public take a trip through the solar system – and you don't even have to leave your living room. NASA's new site: Eyes on the Solar System. The space administration is putting actual mission data on an interactive website, Eyes on the Solar System, which lets you " …

    Space 6 Sep 11:50

  • Nokia offers $10,000 for new ring tone

    Must evoke chaos, despair, impending doom

    Nokia is looking for a new ring tone, and offering $10,000 to anyone who can come up with something the next Dom Joly can use to annoy people. The tone can't be entirely original, it must be a variation of the familiar Nokia tones, but the company is hoping for something a little updated and hip to go with its new identity …

    Mobile 6 Sep 11:59

  • Bodycount

    Review Esprit de corpse

    In the ever deepening reservoir that is the FPS genre, most games ultimately fall into one of two categories. There are those which encourage thought, exploration, tactical nous, micro-management of resources and, of course, a good shot. We’re talking the likes of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Half-Life 2, BioShock and even Modern …

    reghardware 6 Sep 12:00

  • Toshiba in Rugby World Cup personal data compo cockup

    Muddied oafs fail to defend open ID goal

    Toshiba has made something of a ruck-up in a Rugby World Cup competition, exposing customer details in the process. UK consumers purchasing new Toshiba laptops were offered a £1 rebate for every point England's Toby Flood scores in the tournament, which kicks off next weekend. Customers were invited to apply by submitting …

    ID 6 Sep 12:19

  • Judge may order Page and Ellison into mediation

    Battle of the Two Larrys could go face to face

    Larry Ellison and Larry Page could be forced into mediation to negotiate a settlement in Oracle's multi-billion-dollar claim that Google's Android tramples Java patents it owns. The US judge hearing Oracle's suit against Google has said he's deciding whether to order both sides into mediation, presided over by a magistrate …

    Business 6 Sep 12:57

  • Battered Sony hires cyber-security chief

    Late of US Homeland Security, Defense and Microsoft

    Sony is beefing up its security staff after the devastating hacking attack in April that crippled the Playstation Network for 23 days and led to the potential exposure of millions of users' account information. The company has picked former US Department of Homeland Security exec Philip R Reitinger to fill the role of senior …

    Security 6 Sep 13:29

  • Everyone knew NoTW 'rogue reporter' bit was untrue

    Including the police, says former tabloid lawyer

    James Murdoch was made aware in 2008 that alleged phone-hacking practices at the News of the World went beyond "one rogue reporter", the former legal manager of News Group Newspapers claimed to MPs today. Tom Crone said that an email with the subject line "For Neville" was "the first piece of evidence we'd seen that showed [ …

    Music and Media 6 Sep 13:46

  • Inside 'Operation Black Tulip': DigiNotar hack analysed

    CA systems falsely told Iranians they were secure

    The Google webmail of as many as 300,000 Iranians may have been intercepted using fraudulently issued security certificates made after a hack against Dutch certificate authority outfit DigiNotar, according to the preliminary findings of an official report into the megahack. Fox-IT, the security consultancy hired to examine the …

    Enterprise Security 6 Sep 14:01

  • Painters wrap Forth Bridge job after 121 years

    English language mourns loss of famous phrase

    The English language is preparing to mourn the loss of one of its most agreeable similes as painters finally apply the last lick of paint to the Forth Bridge. For well over 100 years, chaps armed with buckets and brushes have scaled the famous structure in a Sisyphean endeavour to keep it spick and span. Now, however, after a …

    Bootnotes 6 Sep 14:26

  • Virgin Media to beef up mobile-data backhaul

    Three, Orange, T-Mobile ink £100m deal for extra grunt

    Three, T-Mobile and Orange customers will find it quicker to use the internet on their phones thanks to a new deal between the operators and Virgin Media Business. But the effects may take a couple of years to kick in. Virgin Media has sold use of its UK-wide network of cables to the three carriers in an eight-year £100m deal …

    Networks 6 Sep 14:48

  • Computers Unlimited director exits after dispute

    Chatterton is off ... after just 8 months

    Computers Unlimited group sales and marketing director Mark Chatterton has left following a disagreement over future direction with senior management. Industry vet Chatterton spent around eight months at the Apple distributor, which he joined after stints at wholesalers Office2Office and Northamber. Prior to this he spent …

    Channel Register 6 Sep 15:10

  • 'Satnavs are definitely not doomed', insists TomTom man

    IFA No grim future of joblessness for me!

    With satnav companies announcing revamped apps all over IFA Berlin, you'd be forgiven for thinking that moving onto smartphones and tablets was the game plan for a market that has seen sales plummet in the last few years. TomTom, Garmin and Navigon all saw fit to use the show to announce their updated-in-various-ways apps, …

    Business 6 Sep 15:28

  • Memo to kid coders: Enterprise software exists

    Open...and Shut There's more to life than Google ads

    If you live or spend time in Silicon Valley, it's easy to forget that enterprise software exists, or that it still drives $245 billion in annual revenue, according to Gartner. Google, Facebook, and a rising generation of consumer-facing startups get the media buzz, to the point that young developers have neither an interest in …

    Developer 6 Sep 16:28

  • NASA releases stunning new moon-landing snaps

    No, not taken at a secret Hollywood film studio

    NASA has released a series of photos of Apollo moon-landing sites that are dramatically improved over previous photos taken as recently as 2009. The photos were taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which was launched on June 18, 2009 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, along with the Lunar Crater …

    Space 6 Sep 18:03

  • NSA open sources Google database mimic

    Crypto masters incubate Son of BigTable

    The US National Security Agency is open sourcing a distributed "NoSQL" database based on Google's proprietary BigTable platform. Known as Accumulo, the platform has been in development at the NSA for over three years, and it's built atop Hadoop, the open source distributed file system and distributed number-crunching platform …

    Software 6 Sep 18:08

  • Cisco accused of tailoring tech to aid Chinese abuses

    Falun Gong content easy to spot, marketers boast

    A group accusing Cisco Systems of helping the Chinese government commit human rights abuses against Falun Gong members said it has presented new evidence that the networking giant customized its technology to spy on people tied to the outlawed religious organization. The evidence, contained in an amended complaint filed Friday …

    Government 6 Sep 18:09

  • Torvalds dumps Kernel.org for Github after breach

    Linux 3.1 finds temporary home

    Linus Torvalds has released the most current build of Linux 3.1 via Github, rather than use kernel.org, which is still experiencing downtime. Torvalds said in a post to LKLM.org that the move was simply a way to put the new code out there, rather than an indictment of the situation at kernel.org, which is still suffering after …

    Operating Systems 6 Sep 18:56

  • Sprint joins US feds in anti-AT&T lawsuit

    Lobbyists and politicos rake in Big Phone millions

    Hot on the heels of the US Department of Justice's lawsuit to block the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel has filed its own legal challenge to derail the deal. "Sprint opposes AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile," Sprint's VP for litigation Susan Haller said in a prepared statement released on Tuesday. "With …

    Telecoms 6 Sep 19:58

  • iOS, Mac, Android users still vulnerable to bogus certs

    Apple and Google inaction in wake of DigiNotar breach

    Eight days after the discovery that a fraudulently issued web credential actively targeted Iranians as they accessed their Gmail accounts, millions of people who rely on Google and Apple products remain vulnerable to similar attacks. The inaction of Google in updating its Android operating system and Apple in making changes to …

    PCs & Chips 6 Sep 20:29

  • Cloud Sherpas follow acquisition trail to Sydney

    Buy up local Google app shop Devnet

    Cloud based Google apps service provider Cloud Sherpas has herded up Australian Google app reseller Devnet and will setting up shop in Sydney. The Atlanta based apps company has over 500 managed clients globally and has been targeting the Australasian market for growth and as gateway to Asian expansion. Cloud Sherpas new …

    Cloud Business 6 Sep 21:39

  • HP-UX stretches over new Superdome 2

    32 sockets, 128 cores, no waiting

    HP was awfully quiet about shipping its 32-socket Superdome 2 server last month. Neither have they made much noise about their biannual update for the HP-UX 11i v3 operating system that runs on their Itanium-based servers. Perhaps they were too busy buying Autonomy for $10.3bn and trying to finesse a spin-off of their PC …

    Servers 6 Sep 22:54

  • Oracle uncloaks 'speedier' MySQL installer for Windows

    'A stick in Redmond's eye'

    IT administrators will be able to deploy and update MySQL faster, thanks to the latest installer Oracle has released to customers. MySQL Installer for Windows can simultaneously download and install all MySQL modules, and it includes an updating mechanism for patching. This is the first time the mechanism has used a graphical …

    Applications 6 Sep 23:00

  • In a Perfect World gamers get a US$100m VC fund

    Chinese gaming giant opens wallet

    Chinese online game developer Perfect World has launched a US$100 million venture capital fund. The fund will focus on investing in companies with high-growth opportunities in the technology, media and telecommunications sector and will be managed over a nine year period. "We believe our extensive knowledge in the industry …

    Business 6 Sep 23:09

  • CeniTex contracts lead to police questions

    Rising tide of probity investigations in Oz IT industry

    The Victorian government’s IT strategy seems to be unraveling, with revalations emerging that its flagship whole-of-government agency CeniTex awarded a hosting contract to a company controlled by staff of the organization. CeniTex first received unwanted attention in 2009, when details emerged of extremely lavish payments to …

    Business 6 Sep 23:30