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21st September 2011 Archive

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  • Oracle defies the economy – and the curse of Sun

    Preps four new systems

    Declining hardware sales, a rocky global economy, and a tough compare with the prior quarter did not slow down Oracle much in its first quarter of fiscal 2012 ended August 31. But these factors did slow it down a little. However, it was not enough to keep Oracle's profits from rising nicely as the company wrings costs out of the …

    Servers 21 Sep 2011, 00:00

  • TiVo chief downunder ejects to the US

    Kicked upstairs

    The struggling Australian operation of TiVo, operated by Hybrid TV Services, has quietly lost its founding CEO Robbee Minicola, who has moved to a board position with the company and returned to her native USA. The company has yet to issue an official announcement regarding the executive changes, however Minicola confirmed her …

    Business 21 Sep 2011, 00:02

  • Zendesk adds Melbourne

    Melbourne to get own BOFH-in-the-cloud

    Cloud providers are continuing their game of “capture the flag” in Australia, with yet another international provider announcing a local outpost. This time, it’s Zendesk, which provides cloud-based helpdesk software. The company already has Australian customers, including BBC acquisition Lonely Planet, online ad business REA …

    Cloud 21 Sep 2011, 00:30

  • Greenplum appliances swing both ways

    Spinning up data warehouses and Hadoop

    The Greenplum data analytics unit of disk storage giant EMC is tweaking its Data Center Appliances, not only offering a more modular architecture and pricing scheme that lets companies start small and grow their analytics, but also allowing for the mixing of the Greenplum parallel database with Hadoop nodes within the same …

    Servers 21 Sep 2011, 04:01

  • MySQL founder savages Oracle’s move to 'open core'

    Monty yearns for the good old days

    One of the key founders of the MySQL project, Ulf Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, has savaged Oracle’s decision to start selling commercially exclusive extensions to MySQL. In an extensive blog post, Monty said that the so-called "open core" model – where open source code is sold alongside proprietary add-ons – was not the original …

    Applications 21 Sep 2011, 06:34

  • Nissan Micra DIG-S

    Review Diesel economy meets petrol refinement

    Nissan’s fourth-generation Micra didn’t make much of a splash when it launched in the UK last year thanks to the absence of headline-grabbing technical advances. The forgettable styling didn't help, Nissan abandoning the idiosyncratic look of the previous model in favour of something that looked decidedly plain alongside its …

    Science 21 Sep 2011, 07:00

  • Google Android Market fee favours big brands

    Andy Pad maker coughs to using unlicensed app store

    Andrew Kerry, head of the company behind the Andy Pad cut-price Android tablet, has coughed to implementing the Android Market on his product without Google's permission. But, he insists, the move was forced upon him by what he claims is a tacit "tie up" between Google and "big brands" in the tablet space that has "strangled …

    Tablets 21 Sep 2011, 07:22

  • Hynix gets out tiny NAND cell

    Mine's smaller than yours

    While flash fabs are producing 20nm-class product Hynix has gone one better, planning to present a 15nm flash geometry at the next International Electron Devices Meeting. A 20nm-class flash die is made using a process between 29nm and 20nm. The smaller the process, the more flash dies can be obtained from a wafer and, it …

    Storage 21 Sep 2011, 07:30

  • O2 tries to one-up the Apple store with SMB lounge

    Facemail hookup hangout for those who don't have offices

    The O2 Workshop is a small-business drop-in centre, carved out of the company's Tottenham Court Road store, which hopes to provide an Apple-store environment only for suits. Just as Apple stores have become the place for trendy consumers to be seen hanging out, so O2 is providing somewhere for small companies who have given up …

    Small Biz 21 Sep 2011, 07:58

  • Will SaaS make you more efficient?

    If so, how?

    SaaS might give you more availability, it might cut your capital costs, and it might give you a big empty server room in your basement where you can play ping pong after work, but will it make your business more efficient? That's the question IT Support Manager Geoff Stone asked himself when DORMA UK decided that it would …

    Business 21 Sep 2011, 08:10

  • Samsung may try to block next iPhone in Europe too

    Jesus mobe's fifth coming could see fanboi frustration

    Samsung could try to get the iPhone 5 delayed or banned in Europe, a source has told South Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper today. The Korean giant is considering a lawsuit against the next version of the Apple smartphone due in October, in the expectation that iPhone 5 will make use of some basic telecoms technology that …

    Mobile 21 Sep 2011, 08:28

  • Why do these traders get billions to play with, unchecked?

    Because they're supposed to be hedging every bet

    One of the most misunderstood concepts in all of finance is that of “arbitrage”. It looks very much like speculation from afar but it isn't, it's very much the opposite. There are also a lot of people who describe what they do as arbitrage and they're damned liars: they're speculators. Ivan Boesky used to claim to be an …

    Business 21 Sep 2011, 08:39

  • BBC website ditches modules in facelift

    In come fondle-inspired slides and carousels. Really.

    The BBC is the only UK website which ranks in the top 100 sites in the world, and it's getting a fresh look today. The home page is dropping its customisable “modules” in favour of a more modern navigation design, partly inspired by the iPad. The module design was introduced during the reign of Titus The First (in MMVIII AD …

    Media 21 Sep 2011, 09:03

  • Blighty's slow-crawling broadband streets revealed

    Live in Halesworth if you wanna party like it's 1999

    Dial-up speeds of 56Kbit/s may be a thing of the past for many UK residents, but some people throughout the land remain saddled with painfully slow internet connections, courtesy of their local broadband infrastructure. New research published by uSwitch has crowned a Suffolk town as having the slowest average download …

    Broadband 21 Sep 2011, 09:19

  • HTC to bring souped-up Sense to handbag handset

    Rhyme and reason

    HTC has officially unveiled the Rhyme, a sleek handset that comes with the company's freshly updated Sense platform. The Rhyme arrives flaunting a 3.7in display and 5Mp stills'n'video camera as well as a front-facing 0.3Mp webcam. It packs 4GB of storage and 768MB of Ram. The phone runs a 1GHz Qualcomm CPU with Android 2.3, …

    Phones 21 Sep 2011, 09:44

  • Self-planting plant discovered in Brazil

    The ultimate gift for lazy gardeners

    Those Register readers who possess a garden yet are not fond of spending time on their knees clutching a trowel – take heart! Science has found a possible answer to your needs with the discovery of a type of plant which does not merely release its seeds, but actually bends down and buries them in the soil for you. The quite …

    Science 21 Sep 2011, 09:50

  • World's Smallest Camera gives big snappers the finger

    Honey, I shrunk the DSLR

    Hammacher Schlemmer has been zapping tech with Duke Nukem's shrink ray once again, now reducing a digital camera down to the size of a gobstopper. The World's Smallest Camera - as the company actually names it - measures just 26mm square. The 2Mp snapper takes shots at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 as well as 30fps video clips …

    Hardware 21 Sep 2011, 09:52

  • 'Angry Bird in the Sky' spotted by astronomers

    Pic Glowing red space chicken features in 'scope snap

    Astronomers peering through a mighty telescope in Chile have produced this stunning snap of the Lambda Centauri Nebula, also known as the "Running Chicken Nebula": Spot the birdie. Larger version here. The Reg received this as part of an announcement from the European Southern Observatory (ESO), headed "an angry bird in the …

    Science 21 Sep 2011, 10:00

  • Sepaton recruits ex-Quantum CTO

    Analysis Where to now for the 'no tapes' company?

    No-tapes backup data storage company Sepaton (read it backwards) has recruited a new chief technology officer, who comes to it via Quantum and NetApp. Jeff Tofano joined Sepaton this month and runs the grandly-named Office of the CTO, in which resides Dennis Roland, who is the Director of Advanced Technology. Tofano left …

    Storage 21 Sep 2011, 10:19

  • Microsoft bumps up dividend by 25 per cent

    Redmond raises divvy to calm restless investors

    Microsoft is giving its shareholders a 25 per cent boost in its December dividends, forking out $0.20 per share from its cash stockpile. The hike follows a 23 per cent rise in dividend last year, as investors get increasingly irritated with the software giant's sluggish share price. The stock hasn't changed much up or down …

    Financial News 21 Sep 2011, 10:28

  • Mathematicians slam UK.gov plans to fund statistics only

    Strips all proper boffinry of its foundations

    Mathematicians across the UK have written to David Cameron protesting that plans to restrict Maths research funding to Statistics and Applied Probability only is a short-sighted approach that will strip the UK of a generation of science leaders. Twenty-five professors from Cambridge, UCL and York and other major universities …

    Science 21 Sep 2011, 10:42

  • BT bitchslapped for misleading 'Join now' Infinity ad

    ASA ruling after Virgin Media complains to watchdog

    The war of words between Virgin Media and BT has once again landed on the steps of the UK's advertising watchdog, which upheld one out of three complaints brought by Virgin Media against its rival ISP. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that it agreed with Virgin Media's concerns that a BT press ad with the …

    Networks 21 Sep 2011, 10:53

  • Why Samsung won't open the Bada OS box

    Analysis Closed nature is its greatest strength

    The Wall Street Journal reckons Samsung is about to open-source its Bada OS, and then pitch it as a competitor to the increasingly patent-laden Android – but fails to properly explain why the South Korean giant would make such a move. Citing the usual "person familiar with the situation", the WSJ states that Samsung will open- …

    Developer 21 Sep 2011, 11:03

  • Nikon sticks it to Sony Nex with serious snappers

    Premium compacts

    Nikon has revealed its answer to Sony's Nex and other competitors' system camera ranges, with a couple of its own interchangeable-lens mirrorless compacts. First off is the 10.1Mp Nikon J1, which packs a 3in LCD display, HDMI out and built-in flash. Along with 1080p video recording, it boasts features such as 10fps still shot …

    Hardware 21 Sep 2011, 11:14

  • Interoute Communications snaps up Quantix

    Cloud providers merge to form slightly larger cloud

    Interoute Communications has devoured fellow UK cloud provider Quantix as it bids to expand beyond infrastructure services into managed applications. London-based Interoute said it will handle international customers' database applications – including Oracle and SQL apps – by using Quantix's OraCloud platform. The managed …

    The Channel 21 Sep 2011, 11:19

  • Windows 8 secure boot would 'exclude' Linux

    Microsoft wants firmware to only start authorised OSes

    Computer scientists warn that proposed changes in firmware specifications may make it impossible to run “unauthorised” operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD on PCs. Proposed changes to the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware specifications would mean PCs would only boot from a digitally signed image …

    Developer 21 Sep 2011, 11:20

  • Microsoft cloud evaporated by one busted file

    Services failed for hours

    A corrupted file in Microsoft's DNS services brought down its cloud across the world, the software giant has revealed. In a dramatic failure, Office 365 and Windows Live services including Hotmail and SkyDrive fell over for more than three hours earlier this month, causing further embarrassment for Redmond. No customer data …

    The Channel 21 Sep 2011, 11:31

  • Kingston Technology HyperX 240GB SSD

    Review May the SandForce be with you

    Following OCZ’s great success with its SandForce SF2281-based Vertex 3 solid-state drive, it seems everyone is jumping on the SandForce bandwagon now. I recently tested Patriot Memory’s Wildfire SSD from, and today I have the latest addition to Kingston Technology’s HyperX product line. It too uses an SF2281 controller, which …

    Hardware 21 Sep 2011, 12:00

  • Dinosaur-murdering space boulder family found innocent

    NASA discovers alibi for the Baptistinas

    The hunt for the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs is back on, after a NASA mission indicated that the current suspected space rock is not the likely culprit. A study in 2007, which used visible-light data from ground-based telescopes, had suggested that a fragment of a huge ancient asteroid known as Baptistina had been …

    Science 21 Sep 2011, 12:19

  • Apple to unveil white iPod Touch alongside iPhone 5

    No 3G support?

    With the hype over the next-gen iPhone in full swing, all talk of an iPod Touch refresh has been pushed to the side. Well, no longer. According to insiders, the new iPod Touch will be reissued next month with a white body. The information comes by way of MacRumours, which reckons that, apart from the colour difference, a …

    Hardware 21 Sep 2011, 12:22

  • Facebook 'personal' news feed gets algorithm rejig

    Angry faces say that this is not a Plus ... on Twitter

    Facebook has updated its News Feed function and upset some users who have taken to - IRONY ALERT! - Twitter to complain about it. Tomorrow is the big day for Facebook, when it kicks off its annual f8 event in San Francisco. However, ahead of that it announced tweaks to its News Feed feature just hours after Google moved …

    Networks 21 Sep 2011, 12:38

  • GM OnStar cars will upload all data unless owners opt out

    It's coming: Your car will rat you out to insurers

    Cars fitted with OnStar's technology will be tracked even if the owners don't sign up to the service, in a change to the company's policy that will kick in come December. OnStar is a service offered by General Motors USA, which inserts a mobile phone, along with telemetry tracking kit, into cars sold by the company. Owners are …

    Security 21 Sep 2011, 12:58

  • Capital gets trendy address: .London on its way

    But not in time for the Olympics ...

    London could soon get its very own top-level internet address, .london. Official city promoter London & Partners is set to announce later today that it is looking for companies to help submit a bid for .london to global domain name overseer ICANN. Several companies, including .uk manager Nominet, are expected to respond to a …

    Hosting 21 Sep 2011, 13:04

  • Amazon staff toiled in 100°F+ warehouse

    Temps stretchered out, local paper reports

    Low-paid Amazon workers, many of whom were temporary agency contractors, sweated this summer in temperatures above 100°F (38°C) in a shipping warehouse, a US newspaper investigation has revealed. The internet giant laid on paramedics for staff at the Breinigsville, Pennsylvania "fulfillment center", with employees taken to …

    Financial News 21 Sep 2011, 13:18

  • UK firm denies supplying spyware to Mubarak's secret police

    RATs nest found in Egyptian spook HQ

    A UK tech firm has denied supplying spyware technology to the former Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak. Documents uncovered when the country's security service headquarters were ransacked during the Arab Spring uprising suggest that Egypt had purchased a package called FinFisher to spy on dissidents. FinFisher, developed …

    Security 21 Sep 2011, 13:37

  • 1-in-3,200 chance* that a fiery satellite chunk will hit someone on Friday

    Defunct climate probe to make dramatic re-entry

    Small fiery pieces of what was once a climate-monitoring satellite will hurtle towards the Earth's surface this Friday. Unless you live in Greenland, Siberia or Antarctica, watch out for dazzling lights in the sky as red-hot lumps of NASA-grade aluminium descend upon our planet. The space agency predicts that the debris from …

    Science 21 Sep 2011, 14:06

  • Microsoft emits WinPhone seduction pack

    Calling those abandoning the good ship Symbian

    Microsoft has provided a selection of guides showing how easy it can be to code for Windows Phone, including API maps and help with porting existing Qt applications. The free tool pack follows similar efforts to seduce iOS and Android developers, though none are as generous as the free handset offer that Microsoft's Brandon …

    Developer 21 Sep 2011, 14:21

  • Adobe bets on Flash 11 to fend off HTML5 invasion

    Hardware acceleration woos 3D game makers

    Adobe has announced the next version of its Flash Player, repositioning its media platform for a mobile world where it is being increasingly shunned. The company today unveiled the Flash Player 11 and the Flash-based runtime AIR 3, with a heavy emphasis on 3D gaming both in the features and in a roll-call of customers …

    Developer 21 Sep 2011, 14:41

  • Microsoft dumps Gold partner accused of scamming customers

    Leave the badge on the table on your way out

    Microsoft has removed Gold partner status from India-based support firm Comantra amid claims that the firm had been defrauding Redmond's UK customers. The firm is alleged to have masqueraded as Microsoft when cold-calling customers and to have told these customers that it had found fictitious viruses on their PC systems which …

    The Channel 21 Sep 2011, 14:56

  • Boffins step closer to steam-powered Babbage computer

    Analytical Engine designs digitised by Science Museum for steampunk project

    A project to build British mathematician Charles Babbage's mechanical computer has won assistance from the Science Museum in London. The museum has begun digitising Babbage's plans and notebooks so that John Graham-Cumming, the programmer and computer historian behind the project, and his team can begin work. Babbage first …

    Science 21 Sep 2011, 15:04

  • Booze giant's Facebook tie-up sparks ad concerns

    Won't somebody please think of the children?

    Global alcohol retailer Diageo has announced that it is stepping up its multimillion dollar partnership with Facebook, leading to fears of booze adverts reaching young audiences. Diageo said that its current deal with Facebook has seen US sales of Smirnoff, Captain Morgan, Baileys, Crown Royal and Jose Cuervo Margaritas jump …

    Media 21 Sep 2011, 15:24

  • Huawei targets UK with sub-£100 smartphone

    Set Blighty a-Blaze

    Huawei is finally ready to launch a presence of its own in the UK, bringing its promised sub-£100 smartphone to Blighty next month. Unfortunately, the Blaze is rather average, with its 3.2in, 320 x 480 display, 3.2Mp camera and 512MB of storage. This can be expanded by up to 32GB with Micro SD card. Blaze runs Android 2.3 …

    Phones 21 Sep 2011, 15:47

  • Assange™ pens world's first unauthorised autobiography

    WikiLeaks supremo's bid to censor self fails as book goes on sale

    Julian Assange's autobiography is released tomorrow – despite the objections of one Julian Assange. Canongate is the publisher for the first instalment of the memoirs of the WikiLeaks founder. A deal worth $1.5m was signed in December, and Scottish novelist Andrew O'Hagan was dispatched to Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, where …

    Media 21 Sep 2011, 15:50

  • Virtual and real worlds collide in gamers' minds

    Boss levels... with the boss?

    Some gamers are so absorbed by their virtual arenas, that even when they have come back to reality, they continue to act like they're in a videogame, new research suggests. An initial investigation of this so-called Game Transfer Phenomenon, carried out by psychologists at the Nottingham Trent University and Stockholm …

    Games 21 Sep 2011, 16:13

  • Rumor: HP giving Apotheker Das Boot

    Former eBay CEO Whitman to step in?

    It looks like Leo Apotheker's tumultuous time at the helm of IT behemoth Hewlett-Packard could be drawing to a close. Both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that HP board of directors has scheduled a meeting to consider giving Apotheker the boot after only 11 months on the job and replacing him, possibly on …

    Business 21 Sep 2011, 16:59

  • Yahoo! apologizes for blocking Wall Street protest emails

    Spam! mistake! not! censorship! says! Yahoo!

    Yahoo! has admitted that its email filters were blocking news of the ongoing occupation of Wall Street by activists, which is now in its fourth day. An investigation by Think Progress found that emails containing a link to the OccupyWallSt.org website – which contains the latest updates on the protest – were being bounced back …

    Media 21 Sep 2011, 17:32

  • Google preps Chrome fix to slay SSL-attacking BEAST

    20-line patch targets plaintext recovery exploit

    Google has prepared an update for its Chrome browser that protects users against an attack that decrypts data sent between browsers and many websites protected by the secure sockets layer protocol. The fix, which has already been added to the latest developer version of Chrome, is designed to thwart attacks from BEAST, proof-of …

    Security 21 Sep 2011, 17:36

  • RBS megahack maestro sells flats to pay fine

    Crime and punishment

    A high-profile cybercrook who masterminded the $9m RBS Worldpay ATM heist in 2008 has sold two of his St Petersburg flats to pay off his fines. Viktor Pleshchuk received a six-year suspended sentence in September 2010. He avoided prison by agreeing to return his ill-gotten gains, a process he has continued with the sale of two …

    Security 21 Sep 2011, 18:00

  • No more tiers for flatter networks

    Solving the east-west traffic problem

    There is a disconnect between data centre networks and modern distributed applications, and it is not a broken wire. It is a broken networking model. The traditional three-tier, hierarchical data centre networks as defined and championed by Cisco Systems since the commercialisation of the internet protocol inside the glass …

    Network Futures 21 Sep 2011, 18:19

  • Police authority loves Sprint ii buying regime

    Too expensive? Did we say that?

    West Midlands Police Authority (WMPA) has retracted claims that the Sprint ii procurement agreement was more expensive than other options. The controversial single-supplier pan-public sector agreement has been much maligned since police forces in England and Wales were mandated to use it from March. WMPA also questioned …

    Law 21 Sep 2011, 18:34

  • DataStax goes 'open core' with Facebook's Cassandra

    NoSQL meets the enterprise

    DataStax – the outfit that commercialized the Cassandra distributed database originally open sourced by Facebook – will soon release two new software packages based on the "NoSQL" platform. Yes, one is free a "community" package, and one is a for-pay "enterprise" offering. But in moving to an "open core" business model – where …

    Developer 21 Sep 2011, 20:58

  • Adobe rushes out emergency fix for critical bug in Flash

    'Zero-day' attacks already underway

    Adobe Systems has issued an emergency update for its ubiquitous Flash Player that fixes a critical security vulnerability that attackers are actively exploiting to hack end user machines. Code exploiting the universal XSS, or cross-site scripting, bug “is being exploited in the wild in active targeted attacks designed to trick …

    Security 21 Sep 2011, 21:00

  • Oracle 'engineers' SMB database appliance

    'Smaller, tighter package'

    Larry Ellison says that he doesn't care if the company's x64 server business goes to zero. But Oracle has once again launched a database appliance based on x64 servers. The Oracle Database Appliance announced today is one of the four new "engineered systems" that Oracle is promising to launch over the next few weeks, and it is …

    Servers 21 Sep 2011, 21:07

  • Georgia Parole Board blocks Amnesty email campaign

    Servers hosed by 800 messages, it seems

    The Georgia Parole Board has decided that a mass email campaign counts as a denial of service campaign, and is consequently dropping traffic from Amnesty International New Zealand. The human rights organization had launched a campaign in New Zealand calling for clemency for Troy Davis, convicted of killing a policeman and …

    Government 21 Sep 2011, 21:46

  • Aussie e-com start-up buyster gets bought

    US e-tailer Wayfair in dotcom deal

    Australian e-commerce start-up buyster.com.au has been snapped up by US home goods e-tailer Wayfair for an undisclosed sum. Founded in January 2009, buyster is an online home goods retail store featuring over 35,000 products from 600 brands. The company launched as a JV between Rupert Murdoch backed technology investment …

    Financial News 21 Sep 2011, 22:55