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22nd September 2011 Archive

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  • Aussies’ password habits still slack, says study

    Defibrillate me now

    “Through 20 years of effort, we’ve successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess,” is how xkcd puts it*. That’s probably why people don’t change their passwords unless someone forces them to, which is the unsurprising finding emanating from a PayPal- …

    Security 22 Sep 2011, 00:03

  • Microsoft: Mango arrives in two weeks

    Windows Phone 7 facelift imminent

    Microsoft will begin rolling out the Mango upgrade to its Phone 7 platform within the next couple of weeks, according to a senior staffer. Brandon Watson, director for Windows Phone 7, used his Twitter account to broadcast the news that the upgrade would be coming soon. “Boom...no more rumors. Mango to start rolling out on # …

    Phones 22 Sep 2011, 00:26

  • Hackers of Japanese military contractor fluent in Chinese

    83 infected machines in 11 locations

    Software used to breach the security of a Japanese maker of sensitive weapons systems contained simplified Chinese characters, making it difficult for those who don't speak the language to carry out the hack, Japan's biggest daily newspaper reported. A computer screen used by attackers to remotely control infected computers …

    Security 22 Sep 2011, 00:28

  • Schmidt ducks antitrust questions lobbed from Congress

    'I'm not sure Google is trying to maximize profits'

    When Google's Eric Schmidt testified before Congress on Wednesday, the first question came from Senator Herb Kohl, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights. And Schmidt responded with the sort of holier-than-thou attitude you find only at Google. "Google has acquired or …

    Media 22 Sep 2011, 00:31

  • Red Hat swells sales and profits in fiscal Q2

    So much Unix to eat, so little time

    Commercial Linux distributor and virtualization and cloud computing player Red Hat just continues to grow organically like a batch of yeast. Or an open source collective from outer space (well, North Carolina anyway) that feasts on Unix servers. In the second quarter of fiscal 2012 ended August 31, Red Hat's revenues …

    Financial News 22 Sep 2011, 00:35

  • $20m to find 'next transistors'

    SRC and NSF sling semiconductor research dollars

    Research into the use of graphene in semiconductors is one of 12 projects to share $20m in funding from the National Science Foundation and Semiconductor Research Corporation. The Nanoelectronics for 2020 and Beyond competition shared the grants around 24 participating universities, with the aim of developing a replacement for …

    Hardware 22 Sep 2011, 01:27

  • Acid3 browser test drops DOM tripper-upper

    Real-world reflection?

    A browser test that tripped up Microsoft and helped pull the company into greater compliance with web standards has itself been updated for the changing web. Acid3 has been modified so as not to fail browsers which implement certain APIs that are finding more widespread use online. Ian Hickson, W3C HTML spec editor, wrote in …

    Applications 22 Sep 2011, 04:00

  • Mars trips could blind astronauts

    Lack of gravity is the main culprit

    A manned trip to Mars could end up blinding its astronauts suggests research by the American Academy of Ophthalmology. The report says that long amounts of time spent in space damages astronauts' eyes. It puts another obstacle in the way of manned Mars missions, which would be a three-year round trip requiring rocket power …

    Science 22 Sep 2011, 06:49

  • Orange Barcelona Android Qwerty phone

    Review City slicker?

    HTC's ChaCha aside, BlackBerry-style Android messaging phones are a rare and unimpressive breed. And I, for one, am not all that sure about the look, price or point of the Facebook-centric ChaCha. Changing the Android Qwertyphone landscape? But Orange, which has a track record for bringing Android to the huddled masses that …

    Phones 22 Sep 2011, 07:00

  • Scottish Boundary Commission: We don't need no stinkin' PDFs

    Scots publish constituency maps in open format to avoid data drama

    The Boundary Commission for Scotland (BCS) has said it will publish shapefiles of its initial proposals for constituencies after the Boundary Commission for England (BCE) was criticised for not doing so. The BCS said it had "watched with interest" the response to the BCE's publication of its initial proposals for …

    Government 22 Sep 2011, 07:13

  • EU dons kid gloves for Google competition probe

    Investigators to take 'special care' over free service

    Google's business model is forcing EU regulators to take "special care" in their assessment of whether the search giant is abusing its market dominance in breach of EU laws, Europe's Competition Commissioner has said. Joaquin Almunia told the International Bar Association's annual competition conference that the European …

    Law 22 Sep 2011, 07:34

  • Lancs shale to yield '15 years' of gas for UK

    200 trillion cubic feet of gas will net £6bn in tax

    The Cuadrilla Consortium has published its eagerly expected estimate of shale gas reserves in the North West of England. The group reckons it can extract 200 trillion cubic feet from sites near Preston and Liverpool – more than the current national estimates for Poland. Assuming a 20 per cent recovery rate, that's enough to …

    Science 22 Sep 2011, 08:24

  • Google cleared in ad keyword-squatting court case

    But classified ads site bitchslapped for buying up brand keywords

    Google has been cleared of misleading web users in a court case brought by an Australian watchdog that accused the Chocolate Factory of mixing adverts into search results. However, Trading Post – the country's top online classified advertising site – was rapped for buying ads on Google using keywords for brands it didn't own. …

    Financial News 22 Sep 2011, 09:00

  • Twitter discovers MMS for photo tweeting

    That took a while...

    Twitter users can now pump pictures directly into their tweet stream using the Multimedia Messaging Service that has been languishing, barely used, for years. In the UK the service is already working on O2, Vodafone and Orange. Once one has registered a phone number with the networking site, photographs sent to the Twitter …

    Mobile 22 Sep 2011, 09:10

  • Sage sells off US healthcare biz

    UK software firm offloads US unit, gives back to its shareholders

    British software firm Sage is selling off its US healthcare unit to a private equity firm for £205m so it can focus on its core American customer base. The proceeds from the sale will be given back to shareholders through a share buyback programme, the Geordie small business provider said. The sale is expected to be completed …

    Financial News 22 Sep 2011, 09:30

  • Flipboard

    iOS App of the Week News, from source to 'pad

    Flipboard has been around for a year or so now, and has garnered all sorts of awards along the way. However, it was updated recently and has just gained the tech industry’s ultimate accolade: that of being imitated by Google, which is reported to be developing a "Flipboard killer" under the codename ‘Propeller’. Your own, if …

    Phones 22 Sep 2011, 10:00

  • US military satellite to get attack-warning equipment

    Guarding against mysterious inopportune accidents

    A US military satellite is to be fitted with equipment which will enable it to detect hostile action and inform ground controllers what's going on, according to reports. In space, nobody can hear your victim scream ... yet Lieutenant General Ellen Pawlikowski of the US Air Force told reporters including those of Aviation …

    Security 22 Sep 2011, 10:30

  • EMC exec flames El Reg

    Flame Veep lashes out at our coverage

    Smack! Our story about Nexenta at the VMworld 2011 Hands-on Lab (HoL) created a frisson, more than that in fact, and an impassioned EMC exec who was quoted in the story sent in this rebuttal comment. It's forthright stuff. Here it is: Disclosure – EMCer here Chris, I know you need to create high drama to drive views to your …

    Storage 22 Sep 2011, 10:44

  • OnLive pushes game stream service to UK punters

    Cloud play

    Cloud-based game service OnLive opened its gates to the UK public this morning, providing access to over a hundred titles and offerings exclusive deals for punters with BT internet connections. The service has been active in the US since June 2010. To date, UK players have had access to the service through its US servers, and …

    Games 22 Sep 2011, 10:54

  • Surviving the Facebook app 'swamp' with Azure

    Cloud platform, cloud client. Is Facebook and Microsoft Azure the perfect fit?

    “Developing with Facebook is like building a house on a swamp,” says Microsoft’s Nathan Totten. He should know. He used to work at social media company Thuzi, and when the company needed to write a C# Facebook application, he and his colleague Jim Zimmerman were so disappointed by the existing C# SDKs that they built their own …

    Cloud 22 Sep 2011, 11:01

  • Former HP exec to run Citrix EMEA

    Carlos Sartorius set to fill the big seat in EMEA

    Citrix has lured HP's global networking head Carlos Sartorius to run its EMEA operation. Sartorius has a CV listing exec roles at Motorola, Avaya, Orange Business Services and most recently HP, where he managed the networking operation in EMEA from the end of 2009 and was only pushed upstairs to a global role in June. "Carlos …

    Business 22 Sep 2011, 11:09

  • Ministers kill off failed £12.7bn NHS IT revamp

    Doomed project's costs doubled

    GPs and hospitals have been told to look locally for IT help as the government finally spikes a £12.7bn nationwide NHS computer system. The failed project intended to store everybody's records, institute a national email system for the NHS and make X-rays and prescriptions available electronically. It was touted as the world's …

    Policy 22 Sep 2011, 11:22

  • Bargain-basement botnet kit – yours for just €5

    German hacker serves up the 'people's bot'

    Bargain-basement cybercrooks have begun selling a cut-price botnet tool on underground forums for just €10 or less a pop. The so-called Aldi Bot is a functional botnet builder that requires minimal configuration beyond entering the name of a command-and-control server, which comes with the tool. The malware – which was …

    Security 22 Sep 2011, 11:29

  • Ford spins pop-out anti-prang door shield

    Close to the edge

    Time was when many car doors were fitted with a rubber doohickey to stop drivers and passengers opening them too rapidly and scratching the paint or denting the car they were parked next to. The notion fell out of favour in the 1990s, but now Ford has revived it in a slightly more hi-tech form. Prosaically dubbed the Door …

    Science 22 Sep 2011, 11:38

  • TalkTalk still the most whinged about telco

    Ofcom numbers show provider is most bemoaned in the second quarter

    TalkTalk has retained its tarnished crown as the telco consumers complain most about, according to Ofcom's sums. The communications watchdog continues to receive oodles of gripes about the nation's providers, an average of 360 a day, and TalkTalk is the most unloved with 0.8 complaints per 1,000 users on its landline services …

    Mobile 22 Sep 2011, 11:41

  • Acer Ethos 5951G 15.6in Core i5 notebook

    Review Holey moley, a detachable touchpad

    The Acer Ethos 5951G laptop, with its matt black casing and blue activity LEDs, looks rather purposeful. I continued to be impressed by the cosmetics as I hefted the 3.3kg slab onto my lap even though a closer look revealed the brushed finish on the lid was nothing more than plastic, rather than the implied aluminium skin. …

    Laptops 22 Sep 2011, 12:00

  • Attention metal thieves: Buy BT, get 75 MILLION miles of copper

    Analysis Telco is worth less than its expensive assets

    British Telecom is, as a telecoms company, worth minus £30bn. Yes, that's a negative number there. And yet it is literally sitting on top of billions in assets. It all starts with this point made in relation to cable theft: BT’s network relies on more than 75 million miles of copper cable People are stealing the cable, as we …

    Broadband 22 Sep 2011, 12:14

  • HP may NOT spin off PC biz

    'We just decided to screw our share price for a laugh'

    In another world, Mark Hurd is getting out of the shower amid a haze of steam as CEO of HP – the sex pest claims were never made and he is still at the helm of the tech titan. Such is the fanciful turn of events at HP over the last 13-and-a-bit months, starting with a disgraced Hurd being cleared of sexual harassment but …

    The Channel 22 Sep 2011, 12:30

  • Local radio stations band together against DAB

    'It's a car crash waiting to happen'

    Ofcom's DAB consultation is supposed to be about measuring coverage and assigning multiplexes, but more than 50 local radio stations have teamed up to voice their frustration over the whole process. The consultation was published back in June, including questions about how FM and DAB coverage should be measured and whether …

    Mobile 22 Sep 2011, 12:45

  • Isle of Man floats government IT into the cloud

    Patient records, email and more held in private system

    The Isle of Man government has set up a cloud-based infrastructure for its public services, moving more than 1,000 applications including email, financial accounting, customer relationship management and health services to the service. It was implemented over five months and involved the deployment of an EMC VPLEX virtual …

    Policy 22 Sep 2011, 13:02

  • EC: New principles agreed for out-of-print book licensing

    Rights-holders can 'opt out'

    Libraries, publishers, authors and collecting societies have agreed principles that will shape future licensing agreements on digitising out-of-print books, the European Commission said. Out-of-print books are works that are copyright-protected but are either no longer being published or are not generally available to the …

    Law 22 Sep 2011, 13:15

  • Cyberspy attacks targeting Russians traced back to UK and US

    Re-writing the script

    Security researchers at Trend Micro have discovered a sophisticated cyberspy network geared towards attacking systems in Russia and neighbouring countries. Cyberespionage efforts against either human rights activists or high-tech Western firms have been going on for a few years. Examples include the Operation Aurora attacks …

    Security 22 Sep 2011, 13:31

  • Gartner: Apple rivals can't touch iPad

    Forecast for Android slashed by 28 per cent

    Pretenders to Apple's fondleslab crown will not overcome the domination of the iPad any time soon if the beancounters at Gartner are to be believed. In one of their less challenging predictions, the analysts said that rivals remain so far behind Apple and its shiny slates that the US giant will have a "free run" of the market …

    Tablets 22 Sep 2011, 13:45

  • HP storage hobbled by board's indecision

    Opinion Instability at the very top

    The future of HP's vibrant storage business has been made uncertain by HP CEO and board shenanigans, culminating with the latest uncertainty over CEO Leo Apotheker. Before his dismissal, former CEO Mark Hurd relaid the foundations of the storage business by hiring David Donatelli away from EMC, buying iSCSI SAN supplier …

    Storage 22 Sep 2011, 14:00

  • Yoof survey: 'Internet as vital as air'

    Students and yuppies rate web as essential

    A third of college students and young professionals feel that the internet is as important as air, food, water or shelter, according to a new survey. Cisco's 2011 Connected World Technology Report (PDF) found that 32 per cent thought the web was as important as the necessities of life, while over half of students and 62 per …

    Software 22 Sep 2011, 14:15

  • Brit ISPs shift toward rapid pirate website blocking

    Exclusive Agree to act, just not how

    Leading UK ISPs are now privately agreed on the principle of restricting access to websites in response to hastily obtained court orders, according to sources close to discussions that took place in Westminster this week. The shift follows the landmark Newzbin2 ruling in July, which affirmed the responsibility ISPs have to …

    Law 22 Sep 2011, 14:22

  • Web surfers stumble upon new planets

    Amateur astronomers sift Kepler satellite data

    Humans have leap-frogged computers by identifying planets outside our solar system that the machines missed. The internet users detected the rocky Earth-like planets in their spare time by scanning the data from the Kepler satellite on the site PlanetHunters. Astronomers at Yale University have announced the discovery of the …

    Science 22 Sep 2011, 14:44

  • CERN's boson hunters tackle big data bug infestation

    It's the software or the science that's been wrong

    Tens of thousands of bugs have been eliminated from the program CERN's atom-smashers are using to identify Higgs boson – just don't expect an answer to life the universe and everytime anytime soon. CERN says it has squashed 40,000 bugs living in ROOT, the C++ framework it is relied upon to store, crunch and help analyse …

    Developer 22 Sep 2011, 15:01

  • Cache IQ adds another NAS accelerator

    NAND cache to make filers go with a flash

    Start-up Cache IQ is adding its caching product to the existing roster of plug-in filer accelerators. Asserting that it's the industry's "first smart NAS acceleration device", which will amuse Avere and Alacritech, Cache IQ's RapidCache appliance sits in the Ethernet data path between NAS NFS-using arrays and accessing servers …

    Storage 22 Sep 2011, 16:02

  • Autodesk shifts design apps to the cloud

    Looks for customers it doesn't know it has

    Autodesk is planning to take the bulk of its software onto cloud services in the next three years, beginning with AutoCAD WS. “The collaborative aspects of cloud working are going to revolutionize the design field,” Andrew Anagnost, vice president of suites, web services and subscription at Autodesk, told The Register. He …

    Cloud 22 Sep 2011, 16:23

  • Work begins on radical Gordon super flash-computer

    One of Intel's secret Xeon E5 testbeds, perhaps?

    Supercomputer maker Appro International has finally begun building the "Gordon" flash-heavy supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, which was funded by a $20m grant from the National Science Foundation nearly two years ago. The machine is a testbed to analyze what happens when you get the I/O and floating point …

    HPC 22 Sep 2011, 16:28

  • Memo to open source moralists: Put a sock in it

    Open...and Shut Tech is amoral. Thank God

    Those who look to technology for their religious fix are going to be sorely disappointed, despite the fact that a recent article in The Economist highlights a range of priestly types who see Christian principles throughout the open-source software movement. Perhaps. The problem is that different people see these exact same …

    Software 22 Sep 2011, 16:40

  • LightSquared to magic away GPS interference in 2 weeks

    US Space Commander begs to differ

    LightSquared has signed a deal with Javad GNSS that will see GPS filters capable of resolving interference issues, within two weeks. That's remarkable, not least because US Air Force Space Commander William Shelton recently claimed that such filters would cost billions and take decades to install, if they could be made to work …

    Broadband 22 Sep 2011, 16:58

  • Inconvenient truther hints at multiple iPhone October

    Al Gore: 'new iPhones' imminent

    The use of the letter "s" by a former US vice president has fueled speculation that Apple is poised to release more than one iPhone model this October. Speaking at The Discovery Invest Leadership Summit this week in Johannesburg, South Africa, Apple board member Al Gore reportedly referred to "the new iPhones coming out next …

    Mobile 22 Sep 2011, 18:27

  • Microsoft turns to FBI in hunt for Rustock ringleader

    Targets Cosma2k after botnet victory

    Microsoft lawyers have sealed their victory over the operators of what was once the world's biggest source of spam after winning a court case giving them permanent control over the IP addresses and servers used to host the Rustock botnet. The seizure was completed earlier this month when a federal judge in Washington state …

    Security 22 Sep 2011, 19:07

  • Facebook suggests sharing everything all the time

    Your life as a 'product'

    Mark Zuckerberg says new features on Facebook will allow the sharing of everything automatically and give people access to your entire life history. Speaking at the keynote of the F8 developers conference in San Francisco Zuckerberg said that applications will become more social – a polite way of saying they’re posting …

    Media 22 Sep 2011, 19:09

  • HP expected to hand Whitman full fat CEO role

    Apotheker set for nightflight to Frankfurt?

    Meg Whitman will be handed the reins at HP for the long term, multiple reports said today. However, the expected ousting of accident prone current boss Leo Apotheker in favour of the former eBay boss turned gubernatorial candidate, has done little to steady investors' faith in the firm, with its shares down almost 5 per cent …

    Business 22 Sep 2011, 19:32

  • Teradata update chews up, spits out columns

    Plus: SQL-MapReduce alliance appliance

    Data warehousing pioneer Teradata is turning up the dial on its eponymous parallel database to 14, adding in slew of new features that include the ability to process columnar data as well as the more standard-row-based chewing in relational databases. The company has also released an appliance running the hybrid row/column …

    Servers 22 Sep 2011, 20:21

  • OpenStack adds web dashboard to 'floating Linux kernel'

    Devil code does authentication too

    OpenStack – the open source "infrastructure cloud" project founded by Rackspace and NASA – has released a new version of its platform, adding over 70 tools to the existing code while unveiling two new creations: a web "dashboard" for both administrators and users, and an authentication system that spans the platform. Codenamed …

    Cloud 22 Sep 2011, 20:38

  • Finance software bug causes $217m in investor losses

    Dev pays $2.5m for hiding decimal-percentage flaw

    A developer of financial software has agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle charges stemming from his concealment of a bug that caused about $217 million in investment losses. Barr M. Rosenberg, 68, of Sea Ranch, California, developed the quantitative investment modeling software and put it into production in 2007 to help …

    Developer 22 Sep 2011, 20:46

  • HP dumps Apotheker for Whitman

    'After careful and thoughtful deliberation'

    HP has named Meg Whitman as its new president and chief executive officer, parting ways with Leo Apotheker, who took the reins at the IT giant just ten months ago. In a press release, the company also said that non-executive chairman Ray Lane – a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers – is now …

    Business 22 Sep 2011, 21:09

  • Faster-than-light back with surprising CERN discovery

    Where’d that neutrino come from? The future

    Only weeks since mathematicians proved it couldn’t be done, CERN boffins have put the smile back on sci-fi fans’ faces everywhere by discovering neutrinos travelling faster than light. The astonishing results, reported by Reuters and others, came as the result of the OPERA experiment in which 15,000 beams of neutrinos were …

    Science 22 Sep 2011, 21:39

  • Junior tech moguls rock rich list

    Australia breeds geeky gurus

    Atlassian’s founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar have made the top five of BRW magazine’s annual Young Rich List, with combined riches of $AU360 million, up from $AU314 million last year. Tech entrepreneurs delivered a strong presence in the 2011 list with around 25 percent of the 100 junior tycoons making their …

    Business 22 Sep 2011, 22:30

  • Data on the couch: how analysing customers gives companies the edge

    Digging for victory

    It used to be that quality and price were the key differentiators but increasingly these days organisations are relying on business analytics – the methodical exploration of the organisation’s data to measure performance – to deliver competitive advantage. The original poster child for business analytics is the Tesco Clubcard …

    Data Warehousing 22 Sep 2011, 23:00

  • China links with Taiwan undersea

    Cable set to be completed early 2012

    The first cross-strait cable linking Taiwan and China has been given the green light. The JV has been launched by Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom who holds a 50% stake and China's China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom. Chunghwa Telecom has invested NT$100 million ($US3.4m) in the project and the three Chinese companies have …

    Broadband 22 Sep 2011, 23:00

  • Three more charged in Anonymous hack spree probe

    Trans-Atlantic sweep continues

    Federal prosecutors filed charges against three men accused of carrying out website attacks as part of an extended campaign linked to the Anonymous hacking crew. Cody Kretsinger, 23, of Phoenix was accused of participating in a hack of the Sony Pictures website that exposed the names, email addresses, and passwords of thousands …

    Security 22 Sep 2011, 23:26

  • Dell, Intel rope Texas-sized 10 petaflopper

    Xeon E5 and many-core MIC inside

    Intel has scored its first big win for its Many Integrated Core (MIC) x86 coprocessor, code-named "Knights Corner," in a hybrid supercomputer that will be installed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas in January 2013. The 10-petaflops supercomputer will be nicknamed "Stampede", and will be right …

    HPC 22 Sep 2011, 23:29