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9th September 2011 Archive

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  • ‘We save trips to the library’ – Google

    Greenwashing the Chocolate Factory’s vast power bill

    Sure, a data centre is a power hog. Sure, Google has more data centres than everybody else. Courtesy of a new interview, we now know just how much electricity is consumed by the Chocolate Factory: 260 megawatt hours in 2010. That’s what Google has said to the New York Times and, given that electricity would be one of the ad- …

    Management 9 Sep 2011, 00:30

  • HP, Microsoft dumped from Dow Jones 'green' list

    $8 billion at risk

    This year's Dow Jones Sustainability Index is out, and the news isn't good for Microsoft and HP – both companies were booted from the highly respected investors' guide to companies that demonstrate "Corporate Sustainability". The DJSI defines corporate sustainability as "a business approach that creates long-term shareholder …

    The Channel 9 Sep 2011, 00:34

  • 'Lost' dollars turn up in gaming outfit

    JJ Abrams backs FactoryMade in digital content play

    Film and TV auteur J.J. Abrams has backed a cross platform entertainment company, FactoryMade Ventures, pitched as a hybrid entertainment, media business development and digital consulting firm. The group will focus on new ventures focusing on original short-form programming, interactive viewing and gaming experiences, in …

    Business 9 Sep 2011, 01:00

  • Vale Michael Stern Hart

    Obituary Project Gutenberg founder is dead

    The man who arguably gave the world its first glimpse of non-Sci-Fi e-books, Michael Stern Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, has died at the age of 64. Hart’s passing was announced in this obituary, posted on the Gutenberg Project’s Website. For those who understand e-books only in terms of the Amazon Kindle, Hart’s name …

    Bootnotes 9 Sep 2011, 02:00

  • Firesheep addon updated to exploit Google info leak

    Your click history revealed

    Researchers have released a Firefox extension that demonstrates the risks of using Google search services on Wi-Fi hotspots and other unsecured networks: With just a few clicks, attackers can view large chunks of your intimate browsing history, including websites you've already visited. The proof-of-concept addon is an …

    Security 9 Sep 2011, 04:24

  • Intel kicks dough to cloud, analytics startups

    Daddy Chipbucks

    Intel Capital, the investment arm of the supplier of chips for most of the world's PCs and servers, is spreading around some of its vast wealth once again, trying to seed the applications that will ultimately drive its processor, chipset, and networking businesses. The latest batch of dough that Intel Capital is investing in …

    Financial News 9 Sep 2011, 04:33

  • PC sales tank on fears of Meltdown, Part Deux

    Gartner: 'Take two tablets and call me in 2012'

    The prognosticators at Gartner have again taken out their box cutters and sliced off the top of their worldwide PC shipment forecasts – and this time they're slashing both this year and the next. The company's models now project that the world will consume 364 million PCs in 2011 – a 3.8 per cent increase over 2010's shipments …

    Hardware 9 Sep 2011, 05:00

  • Onkyo TX-NR609 AV network receiver

    Review Multichannel maestro

    AV receivers have made a concerted effort to keep up with TVs, consoles, set-top boxes and disc players in recent years by incorporating an Ethernet port to play your digital music collection over a network as well as internet radio and extras like Last FM and Napster. Double bass player: Onkyo's TX-NR609 Onkyo's current …

    Hardware 9 Sep 2011, 06:00

  • Big Blue hits DataDirect box with spade

    Rolls corpse behind hedge, introduces new NetApp lovely

    IBM is killing off its DCS9900 disk array OEM'ed from DataDirect Networks, and replacing it with a NetApp Engenio box. Big Blue has issued a withdrawal announcement to customers which reads: Effective October 15, 2011, IBM® will withdraw from marketing IBM System Storage® DCS9900 Model CP2 and selected features. After this …

    Storage 9 Sep 2011, 07:58

  • Hey Commentards! [This title is optional]

    Site news Reg forum tweaks

    Yesterday, we added three new features for Reg commentards. The most obvious - and many of you spotted this already - is that commenters no longer have to write a title to accompany their post. We like headlines but many of you don't, so this is our gift to you. We have introduced a new sorting option - now can you arrange …

    Site News 9 Sep 2011, 08:27

  • Public-sector software and services looking limp

    Outsourcing IT departments the only bright spot

    Resellers punting software and IT services (SITS) to the public sector have been warned to prepare for meagre times ahead with only business process outsourcing providing major pockets of growth. This is according to research veterans at TechMarketView (TMV), who claim that compound annual growth rates (CAGR) across the …

    The Channel 9 Sep 2011, 08:28

  • Parliament has no time for 100,000+ signature e-petitions

    You wouldn't believe how busy we are

    The UK's e-petitions initiative, intended to get the public's issues debated in the Commons, has fallen at the first hurdle, with two petitions on ice due to lack of time. The e-petitions website lets the public start a campaign and invite people to sign to support it. Once signatures go over 100,000 – as has been the case for …

    Government 9 Sep 2011, 08:57

  • Twitter reaches 100 million active users

    Not a little blue sparrow can fall without being tweeted

    The inexorable rise of the actively twittering masses has hit a new high, with 100 million people regularly tweeting their fascinating insights into what they had for breakfast and how happy they are that Beyonce is pregnant. Oh no wait, apparently "active user" just means someone who's logged into Twitter, so make that 60 …

    Networks 9 Sep 2011, 09:12

  • Office and Windows fixes star in quiet Patch Tuesday

    No criticals for once among the backdoor plugs

    September's Patch Tuesday will include five bulletins, none of which are rated as critical. The patch batch marks the first update in recent times that omits any critical bugs but that's not to say it ought to be ignored. Vulnerability scanning and security services firm Qualys says attention should be directed towards flaws …

    Security 9 Sep 2011, 09:38

  • Panasonic DMW-LVF1 clip-on viewfinder

    Accessory of the Week Get an eye-full

    Yes, you can argue that compact cameras, especially premium ones, should have a viewfinder built in. But the fact is, they don't, and while manufacturers are so keen to pitch LCD sizes and resolutions, it seems unlikely that they will anytime soon. Heck, even many compact system cameras lack a viewfinder. Yet there are plenty …

    Hardware 9 Sep 2011, 10:00

  • Office 365, Hotmail and SkyDrive hit by outage

    Microsoft clouds go dark

    A new month and another outage for Microsoft's Office 365 cloud service. This time it had company as Hotmail and SkyDrive were also downed by the same DNS (Domain Name System) issue. Luckily for Europe, outages started in the middle of last night when most of us were tucked up in bed – 4am GMT and lasted for around three-and-a …

    The Channel 9 Sep 2011, 10:05

  • Windows 8 to boot in 8 seconds

    Save our kernel sessions

    Microsoft is touting very fast boot times for Windows 8, thanks to the clever trick of writing the kernel state to disk at shutdown. Rather than write the whole contents of memory to Windows' hibernation file, Windows 8 just writes enough to be able to put the state of driver, services and such back into memory, ready to run, …

    Software 9 Sep 2011, 10:06

  • HP gets ready to make a cloud ... by boiling the ocean

    If only it was Sun, we'd have a headline hat-trick

    The goals of Hewlett-Packard's OpenStack cloud are immodest, perhaps even heretical in a Valley where people casually caution you against "boiling the ocean" – or trying to do everything at once. According to the HP cloud beta announcement page: "HP intends to extend its full spectrum of cloud offerings spanning private, …

    Cloud 9 Sep 2011, 10:14

  • ChaCha promises answers-by-SMS for free, sort of

    Race to the bottom of vanishing old-fashioned market

    US question-answering service ChaCha has launched in the UK, promising to provide for free a service that others have failed to make viable at a pound a time. ChaCha joins AQA and 118118 in offering Brits an answer to any question, submitted by text message for answering by a bot or human depending on the complexity. But while …

    Mobile 9 Sep 2011, 10:29

  • Yahoo! 'f**ked me over'! says! Carol! Bartz!

    May have to put $10m in Purple Palace swear-box

    Breaking up is hard to do for recently fired Yahoo! boss Carol Bartz, who learned she had been sacked via a telephone call from the company's chairman Roy Bostock. It could have been worse: instead of being paid $10m to leave quietly after failing to fix Yahoo!'s ailing business, the firm could easily have dumped Bartz via a …

    Business 9 Sep 2011, 10:43

  • Apple plan to rate shops etc by number of iPhones visiting

    Why has the butcher started selling turtlenecks?

    Apple has patented software that will automatically log the visits of iPhone users to restaurants, stores and business and then use the number of visits by Jesus-mobe owners as an indication of how good/popular/worthy-of-a-high-search-ranking that business is. We've known Apple logged our location before, but this is the first …

    Mobile 9 Sep 2011, 10:57

  • UK, US ink boffinry pact on laser fusion 'star power'

    Hope for self-powering bucket of sunshine in California

    Using nuclear fusion – star energy – to power the world's dishwashers, TVs and servers has long been a twinkling in the misty eyes of physicists, but it inched closer to reality this week as the American National Ignition Facility (strap line: "Bringing Star Power To Earth") struck a deal with the UK company AWE and Oxford-based …

    Science 9 Sep 2011, 11:15

  • Nike auctions Back to the Future trainers

    Replica Air Mags going, going...

    Look, we'd prefer a hoverboard, but we understand that some sci-fi buffs out there have always had their eye on the sneakers Michael J Fox wore in Back to the Future II. We can't have a hoverboard, but you can have a pair of Nike Air Mags. If you win one of 150 auctions on eBay, that is. Nike is selling 1500 pairs of the …

    Hardware 9 Sep 2011, 11:19

  • Waterstone's to take on Kindle and Nook with own reader

    Another chance to buy someone's cash register for them

    Waterstone's is to launch its own ereader in the hopes of competing with Amazon's Kindle next year. The company's managing director, James Daunt, said that he had been inspired by the Nook, US bookseller Barnes & Noble's ereader. A spokesperson for Waterstone's told The Reg he had no comment on the plan, announced by Daunt on …

    Media 9 Sep 2011, 11:27

  • Google brings out new programming language

    Strongtalk duo to pitch Dart at browser app bullseye

    Google has built a brand-new programming language for "structured web programming", one that appears to be suited to browser-based apps. Two of the search giant's engineers will discuss Dart, Google's new language, at the Goto international software development conference next month. News of the new language was posted to the …

    Developer 9 Sep 2011, 11:42

  • Driver San Francisco

    Review Speedy detective work

    Defusing bombs, rounding up drug runners and saving damsels in distress, just a sample of the heroic acts possible while behind the wheel of a high performance vehicle – who knew? Driver San Francisco is a game that rather lacks any semblance of plausibility, yet holds such a penchant for the ridiculous that you'll be amused …

    Games 9 Sep 2011, 12:00

  • Java on the Windows Azure Cloud

    Pros and cons

    Many people are surprised to hear that running Java on Windows Azure is even possible, but there are already large Java-based financial services and scheduling applications running in production. Microsoft has committed to making Java a “first class citizen on Windows Azure”. In this article I explore the motivations behind …

    Cloud Developer 9 Sep 2011, 12:03

  • Galaxy Tab remains illegal in Germany

    Judge: Non-iPad fondleslabs must be rough and complicated

    Sales of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 remain illegal in Germany, a Dusseldorf court decided this morning. Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hoffmann believes that Samsung’s "smooth, simple surfaces" on the 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet copied the minimalist design of Apple's iPad. The court said that Apple's design isn't the only way to …

    Law 9 Sep 2011, 12:04

  • HP PC boss: I'm so loving being spun off

    Tablets? Pff. Dell? They speak with forked tongue

    HP's public statement that it will explore alternatives for its PC business has sent "ripples" across the entire organisation, according to a senior exec. Todd Bradley, global chief of the Personal Systems Group, is on a tour of duty in the US to convince resellers, disties and customers that a spin-off is the best and " …

    The Channel 9 Sep 2011, 12:05

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 banned in Germany

    Court sides with Apple, but ban not pan-European

    The German court has banned the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country, but not across Europe. Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hoffmann, presiding, pointed to a "clear impression of similarity" between the Apple iPad and the Samsung tablet, Agence France Presse reports. Apple claims Samsung copied the look of the popular …

    Tablets 9 Sep 2011, 12:17

  • VMware 'to work with just five storage companies'

    Is EMC's stepchild golden, or red-headed?

    VMware is planning logical storage containers that do away with Logical UNits (LUNs) and NFS mount points - and could stifle storage developments outside a group of five suppliers. VMware's plans were disclosed at a VMworld 2011 presentation (VSP3205) and described by Wikibon analyst David Floyer. They have also been discussed …

    Storage 9 Sep 2011, 12:25

  • Al Gore wants to borrow your Facebook and Twitter accounts

    Plans 72-hour green spam avalanche for your followers

    Would you trust someone else with your Facebook account, giving them enough access to post status updates on your behalf? What if that person was Al Gore and it was all for a good cause? Yes, the latest frontier in online activism has been breached by Gore and the kids over at the Climate Reality Project, who want you to …

    Networks 9 Sep 2011, 12:37

  • Google tells Iranians: Change your Gmail password

    And check for forwarding to the Revolutionary Guards

    Google has issued a blanket instruction advising Iranian users to check if their Gmail accounts might have been hacked as well as to change their passwords. The move follows the compromise of Dutch SSL certificate authority DigiNotar. Hackers created fake SSL certificate credentials for Google.com and many other domains. These …

    Security 9 Sep 2011, 12:43

  • Fujitsu strike to hit back-office across UK.gov

    1,057 to walk out across Revenue, Defence, DVLA, ONS

    Delays in the delivery of driving licences and tax returns could result from a threatened strike by 1,000 of Fujitsu's 10,000 British workers. UK employees of the Japanese multinational will take part in the 24-hour strike starting at midnight on 19 September, after they rejected a pay offer from their Fujitsu bosses. Daily …

    Policy 9 Sep 2011, 13:36

  • W3C announces web-tracking privacy protection group

    Google, Opera do not back Do Not Track

    The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced the creation of a Tracking Protection Working Group to address online privacy concerns, but the task of getting all the players to agree on what standards should be adopted could yet be a sticking point. It said the group had ambitious plans to publish standards as early as mid …

    Networks 9 Sep 2011, 14:01

  • British warming to NUKES after Fukushima meltdown

    Wizz for atomms!

    Despite the massive and often neurotically inaccurate Western media coverage of the Fukushima nuclear accident, British public confidence in nuclear power has increased. In a poll by Populus for the British Science Association, 41 per cent of respondents said the benefits of nuclear power outweighed the risks – up 3 per cent. …

    Science 9 Sep 2011, 14:04

  • Movie model maker pitches steampunk iPhone case

    Prop forward

    Fancy giving your iPhone that steampunk look? Here's a case that will do just that. Created by SFX designer and model maker Paul Marsh, it clips on to the back of an iPhone 4, with suitable spaces for all the buttons, connectors and such. Says Paul: "The master of these cases was built from hand-picked watch and clock parts …

    Phones 9 Sep 2011, 14:18

  • Typo-squatting domains can harvest corporate emails

    Executive butterfingers get slurped by honeypots

    Typo-squatting domains might easily be used to intercept misdirected corporate emails, according to new research. Domain typo‐squatting has long been used as a means to expose butter-fingered users who accidentally misspell a legitimate domain to malware. So-called doppelganger domains take advantage of an omission instead of …

    Security 9 Sep 2011, 14:26

  • Brit tech brings in-stream ads to Canadian TV webcast

    Works on iPads without app, lets you fast-forward

    The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is deploying VoD technology from UK-based YoSpace, enabling targeted adverts to be dropped into the stream like it's 1999. Adverts at the beginning and end of a video stream are old hat, and popping up a text overlay (a la YouTube) is positively primitive, so YoSpace creates a proper …

    Media 9 Sep 2011, 15:13

  • Apollo 17 Moon landing: Shock revelations

    New photographic evidence blows lid on massive cover-up

    The recent release of Apollo landing sites snaps, captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), was a serious kick in the 'nads for the black helicopter brigade and their tiresome insistence that the good old US of A faked the Moon landings. American astronauts did indeed walk on the lunar surface, and that would seem …

    Bootnotes 9 Sep 2011, 15:35

  • Apple finally purges Mac OS of disgraced DigiNotar certs

    iPhone and iPad users still wide open

    Apple has finally purged the imprimatur of disgraced web authentication authority DigiNotar from its Mac operating system. In an update released Friday, Apple removed multiple DigiNotar root certificates from the Lion and Snow Leopard versions of Mac OS X. The move came nine days after the discovery that the Netherlands-based …

    Security 9 Sep 2011, 18:35

  • Unisys gets 'stealthy' with secure virtual terminal

    Military-grade encryption on a USB stick

    Rich people and public sector workers can now get the kind of network security that used to be reserved for military organizations. Unisys is known mostly for its ClearPath mainframes and various outsourcing and other services that it sells to financial, transportation, and retail companies and various governments that buy its …

    Security 9 Sep 2011, 19:44

  • Man sentenced to 14 years for mass credit card theft

    $3 million in losses

    An Indiana man was sentenced to 14 years in prison for selling counterfeit payment cards that caused more than $3 million in losses. Tony Perez III, 21, received the sentence on Friday, five months after pleading guilty to one count each of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He was also ordered to forfeit more than $2.8 …

    Security 9 Sep 2011, 23:48