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27th September 2011 Archive

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  • Apple vs Samsung: on and on and on

    Oz judge asks for more time to consider ban

    Samsung looks like having to delay the Australian launch of its Galaxy 10.1 even longer, with a federal court judge saying she needs more time to consider the case. In previous hearings in Australia, the launched had been delayed until at least the end of this week. However, justice Annabelle Bennett has indicated a brief …

    Business 27 Sep 2011, 00:30

  • World takes notice as SSL-chewing BEAST is unleashed

    Google, Microsoft, Mozilla patch cracks in net's foundation of trust

    With the decrypting of a protected PayPal browser cookie at a security conference Friday, it became official: the internet's foundation of trust has suffered yet another serious fracture that will require the attention of the industry's best minds. Within hours of the demonstration by researchers Juliano Rizzo and Thai Duong, …

    Security 27 Sep 2011, 00:47

  • Oracle rises for Unix server push

    SPARC T4 systems: Same skins, new brains

    Oracle is taking the fight to Unix market leader IBM with its eight-core SPARC T4 processor and systems with rack, blade, and clustered systems – a full data center press. The SPARC T4 processors, with an S3 core, were developed under the code-name "Yosemite Falls" and offer better performance than Oracle expected. They will …

    Servers 27 Sep 2011, 01:05

  • Whitehall: 'Don't bin whole NHS IT programme... yet'

    Cabinet Office wonks eye up two NPfIT features

    A team from the Cabinet Office has recommended that the Department of Health (DH) gives more time to two elements of England's NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) dealing with the provision of key information systems. The Major Projects Authority (MPA), set up last year to scrutinise expensive projects throughout central …

    Government 27 Sep 2011, 07:28

  • FalconStor founder found dead

    Obituary Ousted CEO in suspected suicide

    ReiJane Huai, the founder and ousted CEO of FalconStor, has been found dead after a suspected suicide. According to Newsday, Huai was taken in an injured state to North Shore University Hospital, in Manhasset, NY, on Monday morning and pronounced dead. The New York Post reported that Huai had shot himself in the chest on the …

    Storage 27 Sep 2011, 08:13

  • Sonos Play:3 network music player

    Review The best starter streamer bar none?

    Sonos wireless music systems have always been deeply desirable but they have also always been rather expensive. Now Sonos has released a one-box player aimed at those of us who don’t own our own Caribbean island. Boom box To be honest, the £259 asking price doesn’t get you a wireless music system, it gets you one that has …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 08:28

  • Samsung welcomes WinPho 7.5 with Omnia W

    Mango ringer in-bound

    Samsung has thrown the first of its Windows Phone 7.5 'Mango' hats in the ring, announcing a fresh Omnia to join its WinPho range. The Samsung Omnia W comes with a 3.7in OLED display rocking a resolution of 800 x 480. It runs on a 1.4GHz processor and includes 8GB of internal storage, 512MB of Ram, a 5Mp camera and a 1500mAh …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 08:35

  • Apple Thunderbolt Macs have chips for optical links

    Circuitry, yes - but what about optical ports?

    Got a new Mac with a Thunderbolt port? Then it is compatible with upcoming optical cables, Intel has revealed. According to a spokesman from the chip giant, which devised Thunderbolt, a technology originally codenamed 'Light Peak', the circuitry in the latest Macs will support optical connections, Macworld reports. But, we …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 08:56

  • Ex-NASA man stuffs OpenStack with Paxos

    Uncork some Googly BigTable compute for cloudy goodness

    One of the NASA brains behind the project that became OpenStack is taking the wraps off a start-up that promises an enterprise-grade cloud using open source. Josh McKenty today unveiled Piston Cloud Computing, a start-up that fuses Google-class algorithms with enterprise security and compliance policies to deliver what McKenty …

    Cloud 27 Sep 2011, 09:02

  • Taxmen extend biz record check pilot

    Root around for extra SME revenue

    More small and medium businesses (SMB) will have their records scrutinised by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) as its record-checking programme has been extended. However, penalties for inadequate records will only be issued in the most extreme cases until the process is refined. Full guidance will be issued before penalties of up …

    Small Biz 27 Sep 2011, 09:28

  • HeyTell voice messenger

    Android App of the Week The text message gets vocal

    Like the mutant offspring of the text message and the walkie-talkie, HeyTell is perfect for anyone who wants to relay vocal messages but who doesn’t want the palaver of having an actual conversation. Once you have selected a contact in the app, you simply hold the talk button down, speak and a voice message is sent to them. It …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 10:00

  • Cumulo Ethernet: Building Ethernet cloud fabrics

    Expert Clinic Scaling up: what are the effects?

    Scaling up Ethernet for the cloud means longer wires and many more of them, plus many more switches. What are the effects of linking all this gear together? Do new risks emerge? Can we get economies of scale? What about security with multiple users of network links? Is ordinary Ethernet good enough? Three experts put forward …

    Data Networking 27 Sep 2011, 10:12

  • Microsoft mulls OEM distie shake-up

    Redmond pushes firms out on beauty parade

    Microsoft has pushed its OEM software franchise out to tender among new and existing distributors amid a consumer market meltdown. The global process usually takes place every year but in recent times has typically resulted in little change, with a total of eight wholesalers carrying the OEM line-up in the UK. However, with …

    The Channel 27 Sep 2011, 10:30

  • Plex flexes media server pecs

    Let me be your one true content aggregator

    Watching some of the world’s largest companies - Apple, Amazon, Google, Netflix, etc - duke it out in a digital media distribution Battle Royale is fun. It forms a not insignificant portion of my weekly entertainment. But every so often, it is worth taking the time to look at up-and-coming companies. Plex is one such up-and- …

    Servers 27 Sep 2011, 10:30

  • Android outsells Apple 2:1

    But BlackBerry is the real loser

    New numbers from market tracker Nielsen show that more than half of smartphone punters who acquired their handset in the past three months opted for Android. The precise figure is 56 per cent, which compares well with Nielsen's Android's overall market share of 43 per cent. It shows that Google's OS is gaining ever more …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 10:36

  • Ed Miliband signs up for another hour of insults from Twitter

    #askEdM: Labour leader will face the Great British Public

    Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband has signed himself up for another hour of pasting and personal insults from the Twittersphere by agreeing to answer questions on the #askEdM hashtag for an hour on Wednesday afternoon. As part of the Labour party conference – and a drive to engage with voters – Ed will be online and …

    Policy 27 Sep 2011, 10:45

  • Amazon to kindle Fire tablet tomorrow

    Based on BlackBerry tab?

    Amazon's Kindle tablet will be called the Fire and be based on the same core technology as RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, it has been claimed a day ahead of the retailer's big announcement. That's according to Tech Crunch, which claims that while the Fire will be shown off on stage by CEO Jeff Bezos, punters won't get their mitts …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 10:46

  • Lewd voicemail hack on MP prompts probe

    What's the story, moaning Tory?

    A prankster hacked into an MP's parliamentary voicemail and left a sexually offensive message for callers, the Mail on Sunday reports. Tory MP Claire Perry told the paper that the voicemail of her landline was changed so that callers were asked whether they had recently engaged in a sex act, which she declined to describe. …

    Security 27 Sep 2011, 11:01

  • Google+ chases MySpace for second place

    Jury still out on chocolate-flavoured network

    Google+ unsurprisingly saw a spike in visitors after Mountain View opened the new social network to all-comers last week. It had previously been in a so-called "field trial" since being launched by Google in June this year, but anyone wanting access to the service could do so on an invite-only basis. According to Hitwise, …

    Media 27 Sep 2011, 11:11

  • Three offers UNLIMITED data to all its customers

    AYCE for £3 a month

    Network Three has extended its all-you-can-eat data offer to every mobile customer - for an extra £3 a month. With the generous data deal widened to include those on The One Plan, as well as PAYG patrons through a £15 bundle pack, the company must have deemed it unfair on all remaining contract customers and has now opened the …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 11:14

  • Interference-dodging app sidesteps Wi-Fi band-hoggers

    Dumb cards detect and avoid rival signals from other protocols

    Airshark is an experimental application bringing detect-and-avoid frequency-hopping to previously dumb Wi-Fi cards, without the addition of any new hardware. Created by three boffins at the University of Wisconsin, Airshark uses the limited intelligence of existing Wi-Fi cards to spot other protocols hanging out in the 2.4GHz …

    Mobile 27 Sep 2011, 11:22

  • Sonex calls in administrators

    Parent of 15 Sony Centres runs out of cash

    Sonex Communications has called in the administrators to seek a way forward for its 15 ailing Sony Centres. The firm called in BDO LLP on 13 September after running into financial difficulties, but is continuing to trade with, as yet, no staff redundancies, according to a spokeswoman at Sony. "Sony Europe will be examining …

    Media 27 Sep 2011, 11:32

  • Spotify tethers future to Facebook

    Social network membership mandatory for subscribers

    This is a story with huge implications for the future of the web. Even if you don't use Facebook or Spotify - I don't - and couldn't care less, you can nevertheless start to see how business relationships will develop. Last week's alliance between Facebook and Spotify turns out to be a much better deal for Facebook than …

    Media 27 Sep 2011, 11:43

  • David Caminer, creator of the first business computer

    Unsung Heroes of Tech We salute the architect of LEO

    Business without computers would be unthinkable today. Spare a thought then for those who first made the connection; who not only realised that a computer could be used to run a company, but who also knuckled down to build a system from the ground up and put it to use driving a huge commercial enterprise. This pioneering work …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 12:00

  • Hands on training with SQL Azure

    Trevor gives MVA course a twirl

    Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) is Microsoft’s online training facility. Like any such endeavour, you read articles, watch movies and take a self assessment at the end to see how much you remembered. From an educational standpoint, it sits somewhere between an actual MCP exam and the sort of "product information"tests you have …

    Cloud 27 Sep 2011, 12:15

  • YouView to adopt Freeview channel list rules

    Scheme to minimise EPG envy?

    Would-be standard IPTV platform YouView wants to order channels in its electronic programme guide (EPG) according to rules used by Freeview, an approach that puts the UK's main terrestrial channels at the top of the list. The Freeview EPG channel order is specified by Digital Multiplex Operators Ltd (DMOL), which mandates so- …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 12:18

  • Should your system offer Mr, Ms ... and Mx?

    Analysis Time to phase gender out of your databases

    Last week the Australian government announced new rules for declaring a gender on passports. This week UK authorities revealed they are conducting their own review of gender on passports. What are the implications for systems design and management? The Australian move follows increasing pressure from transgender and intersex …

    Policy 27 Sep 2011, 12:28

  • Ex-Microsofties' IE6 kill squad hits UK

    Former IE team members aid aging web apps

    A team of ex-Microsoft staffers have set up shop in Blighty to finally wean British netizens off IE6. Browsium has arrived after just a year of doing business in the US. It is making and selling a plug-in for IE8 and 9 called UniBrows, which runs your legacy IE6 apps while letting you ditch IE6. The idea is that UniBrows lets …

    Software 27 Sep 2011, 12:46

  • Second-hand E-m@iler spews old emails, passwords

    You mean somebody actually used it for email?

    A Mac developer was surprised to discover both emails and stored passwords on a second-hand Amstrad E-m@iler Plus he picked up at a charity store. The E-m@iler Plus was a quirky phone with internet and email capabilities launched by Lord Alan Sugar's Amstrad in 2002. The low-cost technology relied on a premium-rate number to …

    Security 27 Sep 2011, 13:00

  • Brit web firms tweet way out of slump

    Social media, weak pound blessed by bosses

    Tweeting and faffing with Facebook are helping British internet businesses avoid the economic slump, according to a survey by Sage Pay. Brit web stores grew an average 49 per cent in the past 12 months, and three-quarters of them reported using social media to drive sales, according to the poll's findings. Sage Pay, a payment- …

    Business 27 Sep 2011, 13:30

  • 'Delayed' Facebook iPad app claims lead coder casualty

    'Feature complete', still no release, so developer takes job at Google

    The release of a Facebook iPad app remains in stasis despite the fact that it has been worked on for the best part of a year. Now a lead developer at the social network has quit the firm and vented his frustrations about the delay. Jeff Verkoeyen initially wrote on his blog, as spotted by TechCrunch, that he had ditched his …

    Software 27 Sep 2011, 13:45

  • Tosh puts 1TB in the palm of your hand

    End of STOR.E

    Toshiba has slimmed down its handheld external drives by using a thinner two-platter spinner inside. The STOR.E Art 4 is no more. Toshiba's arty-looking and thickish 2.5-inch external disk drive has gone. In its place are two Canvio drives; one black and basic, the other in multiple colours with included backup software. …

    Storage 27 Sep 2011, 14:00

  • Clouds overshadow 'shrinking' UK server market

    Analyst: Vendors face 6pc hardware revenue drop

    The UK server market is forecast to shrink next year as the corporate refresh nears it end of cycle and more SMEs turn to cloud computing instead of buying hardware. This is the view of the landscape in 2012 according to the number-crunchers at IDC, which downgraded previous estimates of a 2.1 per cent revenue decline for the …

    Cloud 27 Sep 2011, 14:21

  • B&W connects iOS devices through collaborative playlist app

    Social work

    Bowers & Wilkins has shown its eye for social scenarios, after unveiling an iOS app for building playlists with content streamed from multiple devices. While several apps already exist that enable general music streaming, the Zeppelin Air App is apparently the first to let users share music in collaborative playlists between …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 14:29

  • Violin strings out fresh flash trio

    Will arrays be music to CIOs' ears?

    Shared flash array supplier Violin Memory is announcing three new products, beefing up both the capacity and performance of its products. The existing 3000 range consists of two 3U rackmount enclosures: the 3200 is a 10TB product offering 220,000 sustained write IOPS from its single-level cell (SLC) flash, while the 3140 is a …

    Storage 27 Sep 2011, 14:39

  • Power cut knocks Miliband off-air mid-speech

    Blue Screen for Red Ed

    A live broadcast of Ed Miliband's Labour party conference speech fell off the airwaves when a power failure cut him off mid-sentence. The political get-together, held in Liverpool, was being shown on Sky.com and on BBC TV – but the video streams cut out for approximately 10 minutes just before 3pm BST. According to Sky …

    Policy 27 Sep 2011, 14:50

  • Elon Musk's SpaceX to build 'Grasshopper' hover-rocket

    100ft-tall booster to lift, land back on pad

    SpaceX, the upstart start-up rocket company founded by famous techwealth kingpin Elon Musk, is to build and test-fly a "Grasshopper" hover rocket based on the massive first-stage fuel tank of the company's Falcon 9 vehicle, capable of carrying ten tonnes of cargo or seven people into orbit. As yet SpaceX is not discussing the …

    Science 27 Sep 2011, 15:01

  • Lenovo, Compal snuggle up to build notebook plant

    Firms invest $100m into joint venture

    Lenovo has moved to beef up its manufacturing base by forming a joint venture with Chinese ODM Compal Electronics to build notebooks and all-in-one desktops. Under the terms of the initial $100m (£63.7m) investment from the firms, Lenovo will own a 51 per cent stake and Compal the remainder. Another $200m may be invested by …

    The Channel 27 Sep 2011, 15:13

  • Rich List tech baron 'retreats to Switzerland'

    His Itopia reseller biz enters administration

    Troubled London-based VAR Itopia Group has gone into administration, The Reg can confirm. As revealed in recent weeks, the reseller minnow, which was started by Sunday Times Rich List regular Robin Lodge, ran into financial difficulties and was facing a winding-up petition from wholesaler Computer 2000 over unpaid debts. A …

    The Channel 27 Sep 2011, 15:33

  • 2009 game footage appears in ITV show as 1988 IRA vid

    Whoops

    An ITV documentary rehashing well-known links between terrorist/freedom-fighter organisation the Provisional IRA (PIRA) and one-time Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi has drawn fire for seemingly presenting a sequence of game video masquerading as real footage. During the documentary, Exposure - Gaddafi and the IRA, which was …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 15:49

  • Facebook's complexity will be its doom

    Open...and Shut Farewell, 'Wal-Mart of the internet'

    Facebook released some impressive updates to its ubiquitous social platform at last week's F8 developer conference. It also managed to scare the pants off even the most ardent Facebook admirers. Like me. But the fear, at least in my case, is less about Facebook's relentless invasion of users' privacy, and more about how its …

    Media 27 Sep 2011, 15:59

  • Apple confirms iPhone event on 4 October

    Let's talk... you listen

    Apple has started to send out invites for an announcement on 4 October and, judging by the familiar app icons in the email artwork, accompanied with the tagline "Let's talk iPhone", the event will be all about unveiling the next Apple handset. The invites confirm widespread rumours that the early October event would indeed be …

    reghardware 27 Sep 2011, 16:10

  • WikiLeaks memoir races to 537th on bestseller chart

    644 copies of Assange bio fly off shelves in 3 days

    A moist Jemima Khan once described WikiLeaks' Líder Máximo as "the new Jason Bourne" – but Julian Assange just isn't selling like the Robert Ludlum hero. Despite heavy publicity, Assange's "unauthorised biography" sold just 644 copies in three days. This placed the ghost-written memoir 537th on the best-seller list, the …

    Media 27 Sep 2011, 16:12

  • Axiom to boot out NetApp at Oracle

    Analysis El Reg peers into crystal ball of storage

    It's surely axiomatic: Oracle will replace the NetApp E Series-sourced 6000 line of storage arrays with the Pillar Axiom. Oracle dislikes OEM supply deals, seeing no good reason to send part of a customer's purchase money to another supplier. The company has bought the Pillar Data startup, which was funded by Oracle CEO Larry …

    Storage 27 Sep 2011, 16:29

  • Ellison rides SPARC T4 SuperCluster into data centers

    Four star general purpose, sir!

    Just putting out four new entry and midrange servers based on its new eight-core SPARC T4 processor is not sufficient to get SPARC/Solaris customers fired up about buying gear from and paying system maintenance to Oracle. Every CIO wants to know – in fact needs to know – that there is headroom in their systems in case their …

    Datacenter 27 Sep 2011, 17:00

  • Cray ships Mongolian cluster...

    Seriously: It's an XE6m

    Yak yak yak. Supercomputer maker Cray has landed an XE6m minicluster deal in Mongolia. In Ulaanbaatar, to be specific, at Mongolia's National Agency of Meteorology and Environmental Monitoring, which does weather forecasting and climate modeling for the central Asian nation, where hominids have argued about the weather for …

    HPC 27 Sep 2011, 17:12

  • Zombie mobile Linuxes mate

    MeeGo and LiMo cadavers elope

    The two leading mobile Linux flops are merging, according to a reputable source: LiMo and MeeGo are throwing their lot in together to produce one unified mobile Linux flop – or perhaps there is an afterlife, after all. FT Deutschland reckons the mating dance of the two zombies will be announced tomorrow. The FT positions it as …

    Software 27 Sep 2011, 17:31

  • New flash RAM tech promises 99% energy drop

    Faster, lower power – what's not to like?

    Nanotechnology boffins are exploring a new type of nonvolatile memory that not only has the potential of being faster than today's flash RAM, but also requires 99 per cent less energy. Called ferroelectric transistor random access memory – FeTRAM, for short – the scheme is based on a new type of transistor that combines …

    Hardware 27 Sep 2011, 18:30

  • Microsoft’s Mango update falls from tech tree

    Update to dribble out over the next month

    Microsoft as begun rolling out the version 7.5 "Mango" update to its Phone 7 OS – but only 10 per cent of the user base will be getting it at first. Redmond is staggering the launch, with those 10 per cent of customers getting the update this Tuesday, and another 15 per cent within the next two weeks. In all, 98 per cent of …

    Mobile 27 Sep 2011, 18:44

  • Facebook wants to poke politicians 'who share our goals'

    Mr. Zuckerberg's money goes to Washington

    Facebook is looking to get a firmer grip on Washington by bankrolling its own Polticical Action Committee, which will back politicians it wants to be friends with. Facebook told political blog The Hill that the committee "will give our employees a way to make their voice heard in the political process by supporting candidates …

    Government 27 Sep 2011, 19:07

  • New York drops $400m to lure next-gen wafer bakers

    'We don't have earthquakes here very often'

    New York governor Andrew Cuomo wants to make his state a high tech employer – and taxpayer – and has now primed the political pump with $400m in investments to go along with the $4.4bn that five chip companies plan to spend in the state over the next five years as they research 450mm wafer technology. What Cuomo wants – and …

    Business 27 Sep 2011, 19:25

  • Mac security update leaves users open to ugly Flashback

    One threat down, another to go

    Apple has updated the malware protection built into its Mac operating system to flag a recently discovered trojan that hijacks users' machines by masquerading as a benign document. Malware disguised as an Adobe Flash installer, meanwhile, remained unchecked. The file quarantine, which Apple snuck into a prerelease version of …

    Security 27 Sep 2011, 20:16

  • HPC 2.0: The Monster Mash-up

    Pt 1. Big Data. Oh yes

    Blog IBM recently invited a handful of really smart HPC-centric industry analysts (and me too, for no apparent reason) to spend the day talking about where the market is going and how IBM intends to address it. It was truly a conversation, rather than the typical vendor PowerPoint-palooza where they simply run through every …

    Data Warehousing 27 Sep 2011, 20:53

  • Apple loses bid to trademark 'multi-touch'

    But 'app store' fight with Microsoft kept alive

    The US Patent and Trademark Office has rejected Apple's appeal to obtain a trademark for the term "multi-touch". "Simply because the applied-for term has been used in association with a highly successful product does not mean the term has acquired distinctiveness," concludes the USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board in an …

    Law 27 Sep 2011, 22:07

  • Turnbull storms Paris with NBN’s doom

    Killing the Australian network at long distance

    In the midst of a blitzkrieg tour through Germany, Paris and the UK seeking tête-à-tête meetings with some of Europe’s leading telco brains trust including Ofcom, Australia’s shadow communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull delivered a typically caustic attack on Australia’s NBN project to a packed Broadband World Forum in Paris …

    Broadband 27 Sep 2011, 22:30

  • Revolution speeds stats on Hadoop clusters

    R language teaches 'meaningful' math to elephants

    Revolution Analytics, the company that is extending R, the open source statistical programming language, with proprietary extensions, is making available a free set of extensions that allow its R engine to run atop Hadoop clusters. Now statisticians that are familiar with R can do analysis on unstructured data stored in the …

    Cloud 27 Sep 2011, 22:38

  • Wales says no to outing Wikipedia users on Facebook

    Social networking updates on activity ‘creepy’

    Wikipedia is not planning to link into the new Facebook Open Graph, network co-founder James Wales says, since it is “slightly weird and creepy.” In an interview with the Huffington Post, Wales said that the site isn’t interested in signing up for Facebook’s Like buttons or similar software from social networking sites like …

    Media 27 Sep 2011, 23:13

  • iPad maker Foxconn catches fire, claims no casualties

    Just another troubled day for Chinese workers

    A dramatic fire that billowed black smoke from the roof of Chinese gadget-assembler Foxconn has been extinguished without casualties or interruption in service. So reports Reuters, citing Foxconn officials who said that the fire, reported earlier today, broke out in electrical cables on the roof of one building. All was under …

    Business 27 Sep 2011, 23:14

  • Microsoft delivers fatal blow to yet another botnet

    Kelihos, we hardly knew ye

    Microsoft said it delivered a fatal legal blow to Kelihos, a botnet that stole sensitive personal information stored on computers it infected, and was capable of delivering almost 4 billion spam messages per day. The takedown was achieved in part by obtaining a secret court order shutting down 21 internet addresses, including …

    Security 27 Sep 2011, 23:15