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12th September 2011 Archive

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  • More job losses on the way as Tata picks up Telstra back office

    Hundreds to go in offshoring frenzy

    In a multi-year, $US50 million deal, Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services is to expand its footprint in Telstra’s back office processing. According to The Hindu Business Line, the deal covers finance and accounting operations, and will replace more than 100 Telstra staff. A Telstra spokesperson contacted by the newspaper …

    Business 12 Sep 00:01

  • Righthaven may have to file for bankruptcy

    And MediaNews won’t renew its contract

    Righthaven’s woes continue to mount: after last week denying that its business model was in trouble, the litigation outsourcing outfit has asked a judge to stay an order granting legal fees to one of its targets. According to this report in Vegas Inc, the request for a stay in granting more than $US34,000 in fees to successful …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 01:00

  • Google Native Client: The web of the future - or the past?

    This time, it's Mozilla v Google

    Chad Austin believes in Google's Native Client because he believes in the web. He sees the web as the ultimate programming platform – something that spans not only disparate devices but the competing interests of the world's corporate tech giants – and he sees Native Client as a way of bringing most any language to the …

    Developer 12 Sep 02:20

  • Coraid delivers flash-in-an-Ethernet-box

    MLCing it for all they're worth

    You can now use Coraid's simpler-than-iSCSI Ethernet protocol with a networked flash storage array. At VMworld 2011 Coraid announced its EtherFlash product, a combination of its EtherDrive SAN enclosure, CorOS v6.0 software, ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) network protocol, and commodity solid state drives (SSDs). EtherFlash delivers …

    Storage 12 Sep 07:30

  • Printable mini-display tech draws power from NFC devices

    Really cool solution seeks problem to solve

    Cambridge-based PragmatIC has produced an NFC-enabled label with a build-in screen picking up power from the device reading the tag, surely worth £600,000 of anyone's money. The technology involves printing a tag with an embedded Near Field Communications transponder, but one that also incorporates a small screen powered by …

    Wireless 12 Sep 07:57

  • BT channel overlord ponders still-bigger empire

    Dissatisfied with diet of organically grown customers

    The CEO of BT's newly integrated reseller firm is aiming to build a £1bn operation in the next three to five years, but said he does not expect organic growth alone to help it get there – acquisitions may be on the cards. As revealed last week, John Thornhill, the boss of telesales outfit BT Business Direct and etailer dabs. …

    Channel Register 12 Sep 08:29

  • Rubbing an iPhone on your face won't cure acne - FTC

    Playing whack-a-mole with snake-oil apps

    The Federal Trade Commission has fined two developers who claimed their mobile apps could cure acne with flashing colour, but there's still plenty of snake-oil on sale. Colour therapy for acne does have medical credentials, but the FTC's ruling is clear that the frequencies generated by a smartphone screen aren't even close to …

    Applications 12 Sep 08:54

  • HP to refund full-price Touchpad and Pre3 buyers

    Fondle-fancying employees left slabless

    HP is coughing up cash for cheesed-off customers that bought its Touchpad or Pre3 at the full price before they were heavily discounted en route to the gadget graveyard. The folks in Palo Alto are offering to honour the difference between the initial buy price and the end-of-life price on the three fondleslabs and the …

    Channel Register 12 Sep 09:22

  • BT trying for fibre 'monopoly', claims TalkTalk chief

    Telcos want to get their hands on BT's pole

    TalkTalk's commercial boss David Goldie has claimed that BT is trying to regain "the monopoly position that it lost many years ago" courtesy of its provision of fibre optic broadband. In an interview with the Observer, Goldie complained that BT was yet to reveal its duct and telegraph pole interim pricing structure for other …

    Telecoms 12 Sep 09:49

  • Dole-office civil servants allowed Twitter but no Facebook

    The fine line between tools and timewasting

    Twitter is fine for civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions but Facebook is strictly banned, the Minister for Employment Chris Grayling ruled in a response to a written question by Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson. As well as tweeting, Work & Pensions department staff are permitted to upload employment information and make …

    Government 12 Sep 09:57

  • Logitech Touch Lapdesk N600

    Geek Treat of the Week Thigh saver

    OK, so if you're having trouble balancing your notebook on your knees, sitting the machine on a large book or a serving tray is free, but Logitech's Touch Lapdesk N600 is rather better. The N600 is a rubber-covered - so your laptop won't slip - plastic slab that's large enough to support anything from a netbook up to a 15.6- …

    reghardware 12 Sep 10:00

  • MS inadvertently offers early peep at September patches

    Kimono hastily snatched closed again 'til Tuesday

    Microsoft inadvertently published details of the patches it plans to publish on Tuesday following a slip-up by its security gnomes last week. Patch Tuesday pre-alerts normally reveal little more than the applications Microsoft intends to update and the severity of the vulnerabilities addressed. However this month the software …

    Enterprise Security 12 Sep 10:13

  • Netflix: Not interested in cloud 'heavy lifting'

    Amazon gets them up in the sky, we bring the rain

    If you're thinking that you might be able to sell Netflix an alternative cloud to Amazon Web Services, or better still, convince the online TV show and movie distributor to go back to building its own infrastructure using an open source cloud stack such as OpenStack in the hopes of saving money, just forget it. Adrian …

    Infrastructure 12 Sep 10:26

  • LOHAN eyes hardcore partner's impressive girth

    Vulture 2 spaceplane needs thrust you can trust

    The dust has settled on our recent trip to International Rocket Week (IRW) and the dramatic launch of the Negligible Altitude Obstreperous Model Initiative (NAOMI) rocket, so it's time to reveal just what the assembled experts thought would be the best power plant for the Vulture 2 spaceplane. Our primary considerations for …

    SPB 12 Sep 10:44

  • Mapping the threat environment

    Interview Evolution of the Botnet

    The threat landscape has changed considerably in the last few years, as the focus expands from network worms to advanced persistent threats. Danny Bradbury speaks to Raj Semani, EMEA CTO at McAfee, to explore how things have changed since botnets first came into being, and Melissa spread across the world. Download the MP3 here …

    Enterprise Tech 12 Sep 10:57

  • Consumerisation of IT: What do the end users think?

    Survey The big bad IT department

    We’re hearing lots of stories about the ‘consumerisation’ of IT – in other words giving users freedom to choose the equipment and online services they need to do their jobs well – and this is the topic of our latest Reg Reader survey. We have already had a ton of responses from IT professionals - hardly surprising, given Reg …

    Tech Panel 12 Sep 11:00

  • Guardian pratfall swaps homepage for US insurance firm

    Proud sub-editing tradition spreads to website team

    The Guardian accidentally directed readers of its site to an American life insurance website this morning for about an hour - a mistake first spotted at about 10am. The US insurance site that surprised Graun readers were redirected to The URL slip-up affected the logo link at the top left of all Guardian pages. Clicking on …

    Music and Media 12 Sep 11:07

  • Two Larrys to go head-to-head in Google-Oracle case

    Page vs Ellison in Larry-tastic Java wrestle

    It's on: Ellison versus Page. The top executives of Oracle and Google have been ordered to get in a room together and try to resolve their multi-billion-dollar Java patent clash like grown-ups, face to face. The Larrys must show up on September 19 at 9am Pacific time, a US magistrate has said in a written court order. The …

    Business 12 Sep 11:14

  • Man City boss quits over cancer email

    It was teh haxorz! Well ...

    Manchester City chief executive Garry Cook has resigned over allegations he sent an offensive email that made light of a cancer sufferer's plight. The email, meant for City's director of football Brian Marwood, reached Dr Anthonia Onuoha, the mother of City defender Nedum Onuoha at a time she was both recovering from cancer …

    Bootnotes 12 Sep 11:28

  • Laptop batteries made of jelly invented

    Wibble-wobble wibble-wobble 'leccy on a plate

    Jelly could be the answer to the problem of cheaper batteries for electronics, according to some boffins over at Leeds University. They've come up with a type of polymer gel that could replace the liquid electrolytes used in rechargeable lithium cells. And of course, because it's jelly-like, it can be moulded into all shapes …

    Physics 12 Sep 11:41

  • Hacker defaces Irish Catholic paper: 'Gotta love false hope'

    'Continue believing in your false religion'

    A security breach has left several sites including the Irish Catholic defaced. Atheistic hackers defaced the paper's site at http://www.irishcatholic.ie/site on sunday with a message mocking religion that also fired barbs at a site admin. The message, headed, You.Got.Taken (screenshot below), states: "The Irish Catholic - …

    Enterprise Security 12 Sep 11:43

  • Four terabytes (but five platters)

    Five goes into four

    Hard drive vendors are having a tough time in getting 4-platter, 4TB drives to market. Seagate has a 4TB GoFlex Desk external drive but this is a 5-platter disk with 800GB platters. Despite announcing 3.5-inch terabyte-per-platter technology in May the company has been unable to get it to product status. Now Hitachi GST has …

    Blocks and Files 12 Sep 12:02

  • Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 Windows 7 tablet

    Review Oak Trail Atom-powered fondleslab, anyone?

    Fujitsu is pitching its latest Windows 7 tablet directly at the enterprise and business markets. That’s a wise move because Windows in its current form is never going to hold a candle to iOS and Android Honeycomb in terms of consumer usability. It also means Fujitsu can load the Q550 down with tricks and treats and not worry too …

    reghardware 12 Sep 12:09

  • Crooks rent out TDSS/TDL-4 botnet to the clueless

    Mercenary zombies for hire to dumbed-down Baron Samedis

    Cybercrooks have set up a web store that offers rented access to compromised machines on the TDSS/TDL-4 botnet. The latest version of the TDSS botnet agent bundles a component that turns compromised machines into a proxy connected to awmproxy.net. AWMproxy - which purportedly accepts payment via PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa …

    Malware 12 Sep 13:03

  • Glow-in-the-dark kittens to help produce cure for AIDS

    Can't your cat liven up parties or fight killer diseases?

    Glow-in-the-dark kittens are science's latest weapon in the war against HIV. The cats, bred at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, are resistant to feline AIDS, glow unearthly green under UV light and are an important step towards disrupting the mechanism by which HIV destroys the human immune system. Feline immunodeficiency virus ( …

    Biology 12 Sep 13:05

  • Unlikely contender tops rankings in Nokia ringtone quest

    If possible, even more annoying than the original

    Many of those entering the competition to create Nokia's next ringtone have pulled out all the stops, but the current front-runner has limited himself to the one marked Vox Humana. Currently at the top of the popular vote, with 26,728 likes, The Great Marvellous is a rendition of Nokia's unmistakable ringtone which has to be …

    Mobile 12 Sep 13:20

  • Leader of Cisco counterfeit ring jailed for 60 months

    Shut up behind real bars though

    The US ringleader of a China-based counterfeit ring that flogged fake Cisco kit stateside has been sent down for 60 months, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has confirmed. One-time Chinese national Chun-Yu Zhao, of Virginia, was found guilty of 16 felonies including conspiracy to commit importation fraud, peddling counterfeit …

    Channel Register 12 Sep 13:37

  • HP to bring 6,000 more TouchPads to UK - for staff only

    See this? You can't have it! Ahahahaha!

    HP is shipping a final batch of 6,000 HP Touchpads to the UK but only employees will be able to nab them, The Register can confirm. It was revealed this morning that HP is offering consumer and biz customers the ability to claim back the delta between the initial buy price and the heavily discounted prices it offered in the …

    Channel Register 12 Sep 13:45

  • 'Amazon Tax' California decision pushed back a year

    Webshopping giant hopes feds will step in

    Amazon's bosses have their fingers crossed in hope that the US government will come round to their way of thinking on sales tax for online retailers after winning a year's reprieve from legislators in California. A new amendment to AB155, the so-called Amazon Tax law that will allow California to collect sales tax from online …

    Business 12 Sep 14:01

  • Sparc T4 chips: Oracle makes stealthy spec change

    Hmm <beard stroke> - what could this mean?

    Oracle is putting its money where its mouth is on the single-threaded performance of the future Sparc T4 processors. Or more precisely, it is putting Sparc customers' money where its mouth is. The Sparc T4 processors went into beta with "select customers" back in July and are due sometime before the end of the year. These new …

    Servers 12 Sep 14:26

  • HP shelves plans to offshore DWP support roles

    Dole queues to be slightly shorter than expected

    HP has abandoned plans to offshore the jobs of IT support staff working on the Adams 2 contract for the Department of Work and Pensions. The saga began in June when HP first revealed it was in talks to transfer some 200 roles based in north-east England to India to help it match the Government's demand to cut costs. The move …

    Government 12 Sep 14:38

  • Team HP: Cloud Police

    Globocorp wants to plug backdoors

    When HP announced it was exploring options for its PC business, the company said it'd move into the more profitable arena of enterprise solutions. From a speech given at HP's yearly Security conference yesterday, the titan is eyeing up cloud security as a big growth area. Policing the cloud and monitoring employee mobiles are …

    Cloud Business 12 Sep 14:56

  • Linux.com pwned in fresh round of cyber break-ins

    Penguin brigade in a flap after latest compromise

    Just a month after kernel.org - the nerve centre of Linux kernel development - fell victim to a malware attack, the Penguinista community is reeling from another bout of security breaches. "Linux Foundation infrastructure including LinuxFoundation.org, Linux.com and their subdomains are down for maintenance due to a security …

    Developer 12 Sep 15:27

  • LightSquared offers low-power olive branch to GPS

    But in a few years we'll turn the knob up again

    LightSquared, the firm which so upset GPS users with their 4G-at-satellite-frequencies plan, has offered to reduce the interference by dialling back the transmission power and clear an exclusive band for precision GPS. The wannabe network operator has already offered to shuffle away from the Global Positioning System, …

    Wireless 12 Sep 16:02

  • Tech Data gobbles Man And Machine distie biz

    IT purveyor to bolster Autocad offerings

    Broadline IT distie Tech Data (TD) is acquiring Man and Machine's (M2M) wholesaling business for an undisclosed sum to bolster its Autodesk operation. Formerly Force 10 before it was acquired by Mensch und Maschine in 2000, the distributor of digital design software and hardware will bolt onto TD's CAD/CAM Datech business unit …

    Channel Register 12 Sep 16:03

  • PostgreSQL revs to 9.1, aims for enterprise

    The elephant in the data center

    The drumbeat of improvements keep coming from the PostgreSQL community that hopes to make that database an enterprise-class alternative to the MySQL and 11g databases controlled by Oracle, the three DB2 databases sold by IBM, and the SQL Server database from Microsoft. With today's delivery of the PostgreSQL 9.1 community …

    Applications 12 Sep 17:38

  • French officials: 'Don't worry about fatal nuclear explosion'

    Radiation leak danger 'very, very low'

    After one person was killed and four injured in an explosion at a French nuclear waste-processing plant, the French government rushed to reassure a citizenry increasingly edgy about nuclear safety. "There is no chemical or nuclear risk as we speak," a French government spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal. "It's an …

    Physics 12 Sep 17:48

  • GlobalSign says 'isolated' webserver was hacked

    Crypto key system appears safe

    Web authentication authority GlobalSign, which voluntarily suspended operations last week while it investigated claims its security was breached, said it has uncovered evidence that one of its servers has been compromised. "The breached web server has always been isolated from all other infrastructure and is used only to serve …

    Security 12 Sep 17:54

  • HTC mulls mobile OS buy – but won’t be rushed

    Android outfit eyes HP webOS new playmate

    HTC is actively looking at buying its own mobile operating system, such as HP’s WebOS, but isn’t in any hurry. In an interview with Economic Observer of China, HTC chairwoman Cher Wang said that she and other members of the board were looking at the options for the company to buy its own OS but that no decisions had been made …

    Mobile 12 Sep 18:45

  • MongoDB 2.0 debuts with shrunken indexes

    '25% smaller, 25% faster'

    The MongoDB community and its 10gen overseers have released version 2.0 of the distributed "NoSQL" database, saying the new incarnation improves concurrency while reducing the size and boosting the speed of indexes. According to a blog post from Eliot Horowitz – chief technology officer at 10gen, the outfit that founded …

    Applications 12 Sep 18:58

  • Apple's new Lion beta bakes in iCloud

    Reg crosses fingers for bugs fixes

    Apple's iCloud has floated a bit closer with the release of a new beta of Mac OS X Lion version 10.7.2 that integrates the cloudy services package into the OS itself. It's been a busy few days for Apple's beta-shippers. Last Friday, they released the latest betas of iTunes 10.5 (beta 8) and iWork for iOS (beta 3), and on …

    Operating Systems 12 Sep 19:43

  • Broadcom breaks piggy bank for $3.7bn NetLogic buy

    Get a grip on MIPS chip

    It's crunch time in the networking and communications chip biz, with Broadcom whipping out $3.7bn to acquire chip maker NetLogic Microsystems to fill a hole in its line. The deal comes on the heels of Intel's acquisition of Ethernet ASIC maker Fulcrum Microsystems back in July, and presages what will likely be more …

    Data Networking 12 Sep 20:54

  • Optus and NICTA look for Android apps

    Tapping student brains trust

    Optus has partnered with innovation hub NICTA in an open call for undergraduate mobile app developers. Launching the “Unleash your App” competition, the duo is looking for students to develop a socially enriching Android mobile app across six targeted application areas. The winner's app will be sold and promoted on the Optus …

    Business 12 Sep 22:00

  • Gravity wave detector gets more sensitive

    Getting rid of quantum noise

    One characteristic of quantum physics is being used to defeat another, with the aim of making more sensitive gravity wave detectors, in an international project with contributions from the University of Western Australia, the Australian National University, and the GEO600 Gravitational Wave Observatory in Germany. A problem …

    Physics 12 Sep 23:00

  • LibreOffice uncloaks online extension cache beta

    Plus: LibreOffice-on-a-stick!

    LibreOffice has opened a new online storage facility to house extensions and templates for its open source productivity-software suite, as well as for OpenOffice software and compatible applications. The site, which is currently in beta, has been set up so that users would have a single point of contact for all open extensions …

    Applications 12 Sep 23:50

  • IBM’s Jeopardy super hired to search healthcare data

    Big Blue supermachine joins real world

    IBM has signed a deal with health insurance provider WellPoint to use Big Blue’s Watson question-and-answer system to help doctors decide what’s wrong with you – and offer possible remedies. The Watson machine – which famously beat humans at the popular US game show Jeopardy! earlier this year – will now be put to task …

    HPC 12 Sep 23:57