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17th October 2011 Archive

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  • Vivid commits to east coast rollout

    Vocus to manage backbone

    4G network operator vividwireless remains committed to extending its network coverage across the Eastern states over the next year, and has signed data centre and dark fibre provider Vocus Communications for a multi-year IP transit deal. Vocus will provide international internet access and domestic communication services via …

    Business 17 Oct 00:13

  • And they're off! Day one at the solar races

    WSC El Reg pursues early leaders

    Yesterday, 37 solar cars set off from State Square in Darwin, NT for the start of the 3,000km 2011 World Solar Challenge across the Australian continent. El Reg's Special Projects Bureau was there to wave them off... ...and then join the race down the Stuart Highway. The first compulsory checkpoint was at Katherine, a …

    SPB 17 Oct 03:46

  • Why so shy on pay-by-wave, Nokia?

    New site pushes NFC but the elephant is holding a purse

    Nokia has launched a new website promoting Near Field Communications without any mention of the pay-by-wave systems that have got everyone else so excited. The site lists all the things one might want to do with an NFC handset, such as sharing pictures, pairing devices and reading passive tags to get local information, but …

    Networks 17 Oct 08:00

  • Voda in 3G blackhole probe by ASA

    Ad watchdog called in over service outage outrage

    Serious network problems in Glasgow have left Vodafone customers with a dicky 3G service for at least six months, according to a complaint the Advertising Standards Agency is investigating. “A smartphone without 3G is an expensive paperweight and I am fed up paying £30 a month for this one,” writes one pissed-off Glaswegian at …

    Networks 17 Oct 08:29

  • House of Marley Exodus headphones

    Geek Treat of the Week The beat goes on

    As soon as I saw the Exodus headphones I wanted them, and now that I’ve heard them – well, I’m just jammin’ till the jam is through. House of Marley is a new brand set up by Bob Marley’s family, and it’s kicking off with an extensive collection of headphones ranging from the £20 in-ear Smile Jamaica set, up to the £250 noise- …

    reghardware 17 Oct 09:00

  • MIT boffin: Salted disks hold SIX TIMES more data

    Magic dust for hard drives is table salt

    A Singapore researcher claims that disk drives could hold six times more data by adding table salt to a bit-patterned media (BPM) process. This sounds bonkers but there is a pukka press release issued by Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) which describes Dr Joel Yang's work. Bit-patterning is a …

    Storage 17 Oct 09:29

  • Sesame Street YouTube page hijacked by smut pushers

    Big Bird occupies Wall St children's channel

    Deviant hackers broke into the Sesame Street channel on YouTube on Sunday to replace child-friendly movies of fluffy puppets with hardcore porn. Click to, er, enlarge The filthy flicks were only available for about 20 minutes before YouTube realised the error – that Kermit and Miss Piggy had not finally taken their …

    Music and Media 17 Oct 09:41

  • Samsung demands iPhone 4S ban in Japan and Oz

    This patent war is not over yet

    Despite setbacks in three patent battles with Apple last week, Samsung has come out fighting today by filing for preliminary injunctions on the iPhone 4S in Japan and Australia. The Korean electronics firm wants to halt sales of the new Jesus-mobe in both countries, and to ban sales of the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 in Japan. It's …

    Hardware 17 Oct 10:02

  • OpenSUSE 12.1 delivers Fedora punch with GNOME 3

    Review Linux herd joiner

    The big news in openSUSE 12.1, whose first beta has recently dropped, is the arrival of GNOME 3 – in this case GNOME 3.2. Unlike Fedora, which is already into its second GNOME 3-based release, openSUSE had – thanks to its release schedule – stuck with GNOME 2 for its last release earlier this year. OpenSUSE 12.1 embraces …

    Developer 17 Oct 10:23

  • Back to the Future DeLorean to go under the hammer

    Bid for the famous time machine

    Doc Brown may have used his tool kit on the car many a time, but the DeLorean from Back to the Future is now going under a different kind of hammer. The time-travelling vehicle is up for auction later this year, wealthy fans of the film series will be excited to know. While seven cars were used over the course of the trilogy, …

    reghardware 17 Oct 10:30

  • Public sector cloud looms, but who wants it?

    Local gov CIO: 'What's this thing even for?'

    It appeared to fall off the radar for a while, but the plan for the G Cloud has gone back to the top of the government's IT agenda. The intention to create a formal framework for the public sector procure cloud computing services was first floated in the Journey to Digital government paper in April 2009, remained prominent for …

    Infrastructure 17 Oct 10:42

  • 1m iPad 3s being built this quarter, says analyst

    Apple's contract manufacturers have started punching out parts for the iPad 3. So says market watcher Jeff Fidacaro of US-based Susquehanna Financial, a stock broker. Citing "supply chain checks", he reckons Apple is now planning to produce 12-14m iPads during the current quarter. Last time he checked, the total was 11-13m of …

    reghardware 17 Oct 10:54

  • Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S Android smartphone

    Review Ahead of the curve?

    Sony Ericsson’s first Xperia smartphones could hardly be called stylish but the new 2011 models are a different kettle of fish. The latest, called the Arc S is quite simply gorgeous. Along with the original Arc and the new Xperia Ray, the Arc S may well qualify as one of the prettiest handsets ever made. Slimline tonic: Sony …

    reghardware 17 Oct 11:00

  • Self Service BI: Would you, should you?

    Expert Clinic Reg Readers say Yes!

    We asked last week for your expert views on the state of self-service business intelligence. Let us set the scene: Analysts at Gartner (and Forrester, and elsewhere) have predicted that 2011 will be the year of self service business intelligence, as users demand tools to help them access and understand company data. The users …

    Desktop 17 Oct 11:11

  • iPad baby baffled by paper magazine

    Video Infant QA test result: 'This sucks'

    Youth is not wasted on the young. But apparently paper is, and so are static and archaic publishing models that don't involve pinching and poking. This baby is so used to an iPad that old-fashioned dead-tree media is just baffling. Somebody get this baby an Android tablet and some Arduino boards, tout de suite. Tip of the …

    Hardware 17 Oct 11:31

  • Virgin Media broadband in two-day wobble

    Outage fix due Tuesday

    Virgin Media customers in London and the South East have been rocked by internet outages that cut them off from big sites including Wikipedia, Yahoo! and the Guardian yesterday and this morning. Reg readers bombarded our inbox to report pockets of dicky service, which seemed to start on Sunday morning and is still ongoing for …

    Networks 17 Oct 11:43

  • RIM hopes to distract punters with free pretties

    You don't need connectivity to play Bejeweled

    RIM is to hand out free apps to appease its beleaguered customers, along with free technical support so next time the network collapses a human being can tell you you're screwed. The free apps include SIMS 3 and N.O.V.A as well as the aforementioned Bejeweled and a dozen other time-wasting distractions. They'll be available …

    Mobile 17 Oct 12:02

  • Firefox preps native Android interface

    Web beast promises snappy response

    The Firefox interface on Android is going native – for snappier performance and to gobble less memory. Mozilla has decided the Firefox UI for Android will be built using native code instead of the XML-based language Mozilla had used, called XUL. It seems Firefox will continue to use the Gecko layout engine. Director of …

    Applications 17 Oct 12:16

  • Bog builder pushes out poo-powered motorbike

    Plopper on the chopper

    Japan's leading toilet manufacturer has really pushed the float out with its promotional activities, creating a poo-powered motorcycle with its own built-in lav-look seat. The Toilet Bike Neo runs on biofuels such as compressed livestock waste and household wastewater, so while the design looks like a portaloo on wheels, it …

    reghardware 17 Oct 12:23

  • Boffins whip up SELF-WIRING chip

    Electrons steered through new nanomaterial

    Boffins have developed a new nanoscale material that could potentially allow computers to rewire themselves according to the user's needs. Scientists at Northwestern University decided to look at the problem of teeny-tiny circuits in ever-shrinking electronic devices in a new way, by coming up with a material that can be a …

    Hardware 17 Oct 12:32

  • Survey: '4 million' Brits stung by ID theft

    Average cost to victims reaches £1,190

    Consumers continue to be complacent about identity theft despite growth of the crime, which has claimed four million victims in the UK alone. The warning from the Metropolitan Police Service comes at the start of National Identity Fraud Prevention Week, which begins today. The seventh edition of the annual event aims to …

    ID 17 Oct 12:46

  • Leo DiCaprio slated to play Turing in biopic

    Superboffin's life told with a blockbuster budget

    Warner Bros has outbid other film studios to secure the rights to a script on the life of Alan Turing. The Time Warner studio paid an unspecified seven-figure sum for the rights to The Imitation Game, by first-time screenwriter Graham Moore. Moore's screenplay is an adoption of Alan Turing: The Enigma, a biography of the …

    Entertainment 17 Oct 13:04

  • Apple: 4m iPhone 4S handsets sold, thank you very much

    Kerching

    Apple sold 4m iPhone 4S handsets this past Friday and over the weekend, it claimed today. That meets the expectations of the more bullish market watchers forecasting sales on Friday. That's in addition to the 25m folk who downloaded iOS 5 for existing iDevices, Apple said. Well, those who were eventually able to upgrade to …

    reghardware 17 Oct 13:30

  • Gartner: Acer's glory days may be over

    Shipments slide despite rallying PC market

    Gartner reckons the inventory debacle at Acer may have permanently cost the vendor its position near the summit of the PC market. According to Q3 worldwide numbers from Gartner, Acer sales into the channel declined 23.2 per cent in a market that grew 3.2 per cent. As a result, the Taiwanese giant remained in fourth spot …

    Channel Register 17 Oct 13:32

  • MacBook case fabs kick up a right stink

    Production hit by neighbours' odour complaints

    Taiwanese parts supplier Catcher Technology has been forced to close down some of its production systems in China's Suzhou province after local residents complained to the authorities about "odours" coming from its factories. The move is the latest sign that the Chinese government is starting to take environmental fears over …

    Environment 17 Oct 14:13

  • Three questions that could put out Amazon's Fire

    US politician probes Bezos' Silk Road

    A US congressman is pushing Amazon for details of its cloud-based browsing, Silk, specifically asking what data the company is gathering and how it intends to make use of it. In an open letter (2-page PDF/263KB, short and to the point) Congressman Edward Markey asks Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos specifically what information is …

    Cloud 17 Oct 14:33

  • Bushfire halts solarcar race in its tracks

    WSC Frustrating wait for teams

    Great excitement on day 2 of the 2011 World Solar Challenge - a bush fire halted the 3000km race across Australia for several hours. The leading pack of solarcars, Tokai, Nuon and Michigan, were holed up early afternoon at a roadhouse called Wauchope, about 1100km south of Darwin, after police shut the road. The bush fire, " …

    SPB 17 Oct 14:53

  • Appro notches up another Los Alamos super deal

    Riding a Mustang to $10m

    Supercomputer maker Appro International has lassoed itself another supercomputer win at the US Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. Los Alamos would no doubt have preferred that Advanced Micro Devices had gotten more of its 16-core "Interlagos" Opteron 6200 processors out of its GlobalFoundries wafer-baking …

    Servers 17 Oct 15:04

  • Verizon users must 'opt in' for privacy

    You are the product, even if you're paying for the service

    US operator Verizon Wireless is to log, and sell, customers' browsing and location history, unless the customers specifically opt out of being tracked at every turn. Only anonymised data will be sold, according to an email sent out to customers and an update of the telco's privacy policy, but internally Verizon will use …

    Mobile 17 Oct 15:36

  • IBM big iron OSes treated to spit and polish

    Windows on zBX, clustered z/VM, and virtual z/VSE

    Mainframe hardware got a refresh at the high end last year and in the midrange this year, but that is it for this level of big iron from IBM for a while. However there are plenty of enhancements the company will add to its mainframe operating systems to keep its largest customers happy – and therefore happy enough to pay the …

    Virtualization 17 Oct 16:03

  • Steve Jobs memorial brings out tech titans... and Bono

    Larry Page forgot to put invite in his Google wallet

    Tech world supremos Larry Page, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Apple's Tim Cook and Scott Forstall made an appearance at the secret memorial for Steve Jobs held in Stanford University yesterday. U2's Bono, media baron Rupert Murdoch and, er, Stephen Fry were also in attendance. The ceremony in the Stanford chapel …

    Bootnotes 17 Oct 16:32

  • US telcos agree to warn users before they bust their tariff

    You are now leaving the Land of the Free

    US network operators have bowed to public pressure, and the FCC, by agreeing to send out notifications every time a user pops their bundled allocation of minutes, messages and data. Some operators already offer the service, but within the next 12 months every US operator will have to send subscribers a (free) text message when …

    Mobile 17 Oct 17:04

  • WD: Thailand floods worse than feared

    'Significant impact' on hard drive production

    WD is expecting flooding in Thailand to "significantly impact" disk drive availability this quarter after the situation deteriorated. The HDD giant last week confirmed that facilities close to Bangkok were closed as it dealt with the natural disaster. Rival Seagate is also evaluating the extent of the damage on sub assembly …

    Storage 17 Oct 17:32

  • Microsoft updates Intune to patch cloud pitch

    Offers incentives for partners to push code

    Microsoft has updated its Intune management suite, adding support for third party application patches and better hardware-management capabilities. Launched seven months ago, the updated version of Intune allows IT managers to remotely install and update .EXE, .MSI, and .MSP files, with trial users getting 2GB of Azure cloud …

    Infrastructure 17 Oct 18:42

  • Pumped-up radio telescope seeks new moniker

    Public help sought for unimaginative boffins

    The prosaically named Very Large Array radio-telescope installation is getting a substantial upgrade – and the boffins who tend it have decided that it needs a new name to go with its formidable facelift. The Very Large Array – or VLA, for short – is a group of 27 radio antennas located in the desert about 50 miles west of …

    Space 17 Oct 18:43

  • US military debated hacking Libyan air defenses

    Obama urged to keep Ferrari in garage for time being

    The Obama administration intensely debated whether to hack the computer networks that run Libya's air-defense system in the days leading up to the US-led strikes against Qaddafi forces, The New York Times reports. Administration officials and some military officers ultimately rejected the idea, citing the precedent it might set …

    Security 17 Oct 19:43

  • SGI inks reseller deal with Cloudera

    Hadoop clusters stacked and racked, data not included

    Silicon Graphics is chasing elephants – stuffed elephants, that is – and it has enlisted Cloudera as a partner in its big-data safari. Technically speaking, Silicon Graphics doesn't have to launch a Hadoop cluster business so that companies can do the kind of analytics that search engine giants such as Google and Yahoo! do on …

    Cloud 17 Oct 20:34

  • LibreOffice plans ports to iOS, Android, cloud

    French government says 'oui' to open source

    The Document Foundation, which is developing the LibreOffice software suite, has demonstrated the business software working entirely in the browser for cloud applications, and has announced that it will also port it to Android and iOS. The LibreOffice Online cloud software is built around HTML5 Canvas and the GTK+ framework …

    Cloud 17 Oct 20:39

  • Wireless industry bows to 'bill shock' rules

    FCC, consumers win a round

    Bowing to pressure from the US Federal Communications Commission, mobile service providers have agreed on a set of guidelines designed to prevent unexpected wireless charges that induce what's become known as "bill shock". The guidelines are a response to a set of rules proposed last October by the FCC. Although no members of …

    Mobile 17 Oct 22:03

  • IBM's mainframe upgrade cycle weakens

    Power Systems, software fill in most of the gap in Q3

    With IBM missing Wall Street's expectations for revenue growth in its third quarter by $103m, a sell-off in after-hours trading was already underway and will no doubt be in full swing when the market opens up tomorrow. Wall Street just doesn't get Big Blue. What the Street's moneymen don't realize is that IBM doesn't care …

    Financial News 17 Oct 23:31