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18th October 2011 Archive

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  • Duck and cover: ROSAT is the next re-entry

    More space junk heads Earthwards

    Space-watchers are looking skywards again as another large piece of space junk approaches re-entry. The 2,400 kg German ROSAT is due to re-enter sometime between October 21 and October 24, according to DLR, the German space agency. It is also predicted to be a “dangerous” re-entry, with the DLR saying that 30 individual pieces …

    Science 18 Oct 2011, 00:00

  • Hacktivists pose growing threat to industrial computing

    DHS warns nation about Anonymous

    Members of the Anonymous hacking collective are increasingly interested in attacking industrial control systems used to automate machinery used by factories, power stations, water treatment plants, and other facilities critical to national security, the Department of Homeland Security warned last month. In a memorandum (PDF) …

    Security 18 Oct 2011, 00:03

  • NBN Co outlines next year of target sites

    Aussie fibre wannabees bless, curse rollout list

    NBN Co, the company building Australia’s National Broadband Network, has announced the next years’ worth of rollout plans. With 28 new locations added to the company’s announced rollout plans, the organization has more than doubled its published footprint plans. Its list of upcoming sites is certain to come under criticism, …

    Networks 18 Oct 2011, 00:44

  • Solarcars: meet road trains

    WSC Day 3 at the solarcar races

    After yesterday's excitement over bush fires at the World Solar Challenge, the race kicked off again at 8am, with 24 teams still competing entirely under their own steam. The rest, including plucky UK contender Durham, surely the greenest team in the race, with just seven members, have had to put their cars on trailers at …

    SPB 18 Oct 2011, 01:22

  • Telstra shareholders pass deal with Oz government

    Vote defuses NBN “ticking package”

    Telstra shareholders have, with some quibbles from the floor, approved the proposed $AU11 billion deal between the carrier, the government, and NBN Co. Under the deal, some aspects of which which are still being mulled by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Telstra will receive $AU11 billion at net present …

    Government 18 Oct 2011, 01:49

  • 4chan founder bashes Facebook, Google+ on identity

    Web 2.0 Summit Facebook = the fast food of identity, Moot moots

    The founder of internet forum 4chan and media-sharing service Canvas has accused Facebook and Google+ of fundamentally misunderstanding how we use identity. Chris Poole – aka “moot” – told delegates at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that Google+ made a serious mistake in its Circles function, a mistake repeated by …

    Media 18 Oct 2011, 04:09

  • Apple iPhone 4S

    Review Enough of an upgrade?

    Apple’s design language is easily recognisable: clear glass or plastic that’s spray-painted from the inside, a frequent use of aluminium, stainless steel and any colour so long as it’s white or black. But the new iPhone takes this familiarity further, by making the iPhone 4S almost identical to last year’s iPhone 4. Apple's …

    Phones 18 Oct 2011, 06:00

  • Nimble's iSCSI is more than a flash in the can

    Comment Disk drive array is revamped

    In a world of flash-based and tiered-storage startups, Nimble Storage has gone back in time and re-invented the single-tier iSCSI disk drive array. Sure it has a flash cache, but it's all about being a go-faster iSCSI array rather than being a flash play. We wrote about Nimble a month or two ago. A recent briefing from its …

    Servers 18 Oct 2011, 07:33

  • Scottish council leaks names, salaries, info of 900 people

    Dumfries and Galloway's FoI accident was on its website for 2 MONTHS...

    Dumfries and Galloway council mistakenly disclosed personal information on about 900 current and former staff as part of a response to an enquiry made under the Freedom of Information Act. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said the council accidentally published a spreadsheet which contained the names, salaries and …

    Security 18 Oct 2011, 08:03

  • Nevex reverses cache rules to accelerate apps

    Tells the cache what to cache

    Canadian startup Nevex has launched a product which speeds applications by two-tiered solid state caching, which can be faster than just flash caching. It means companies can get flash speed without having to load app data and file into a more expensive pure flash array. This seemingly paradoxical idea works by having …

    Servers 18 Oct 2011, 08:29

  • Dorma using SaaS to be more efficient

    Broadcast Is it working?

    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 …

    Cloud 18 Oct 2011, 08:33

  • Another piece of analytics puzzle snaps home

    Blog IBM Buys Platform

    For the last couple of years, I’ve been yammering about how enterprise analytics (or Big Data, or Predictive Analytics) is going to be the next big thing in business and thus enterprise computing. The major vendors, including IBM, Oracle, HP, and Microsoft, are on board along with pioneers like SAS and Teradata. Everyone is busy …

    Data Warehousing 18 Oct 2011, 08:46

  • My Council Services

    Android App of the Week Hello, I’d like to complain about...

    My Council Services is an interesting little app designed to let people conveniently report issues with public services or the immediate environment to their local council. To use the service you have to register with your name, e-mail address and mobile phone number. In the UK, your details are held by public-sector IT …

    Phones 18 Oct 2011, 09:00

  • US dating site has no 'goodwill' trademark rights in UK

    No UK customers, no dispute, High Court rules...

    The High Court rejected claims made by US online dating company Plentyoffish Media that it was entitled to assert rights over UK-registered trademarks because it had high UK visitor numbers to its website. Justice Birss QC said that because Plentyoffish Media did not have any customers in the UK it did not own any "goodwill" …

    Business 18 Oct 2011, 09:19

  • Apple and Samsung discuss... CPU production deal

    Korean spin suggests A6 producer not picked

    Samsung and Apple may be suing each other left, right and centre, but that hasn't stopped them talking about chip production partnerships. Yes, Apple and Samsung continue to discuss silicon projects, according to a unnamed source "from an Apple parts supplier based in Korea" cited by the Korea Times. Local supplier of parts …

    Phones 18 Oct 2011, 09:27

  • Dell ditches EMC after 10 years

    Will push own storage kit after ending relationship

    Dell has officially stopped reselling EMC kit and will instead push its own storage kit. Let battle be joined. This means Dell will not sell Dell-branded EMC OEM and resold EMC CLARiiON, Celerra, Data Domain and VNX products. However, Dell will support existing customers with these products. It will resell capacity upgrades ( …

    Storage 18 Oct 2011, 09:38

  • Hundreds of Mr A N OTHERs discovered on payrolls

    Don't take it personally... your bosses aren't

    If you take a look at employers' PAYE paperwork, the UK's most popular surnames are getting a run for their money - by an army of Mr Unknowns and Mrs Dummys. According to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), employers frequently send in PAYE forms with the wrong data on them, leading to incorrect amounts of tax being taken from their …

    Small Biz 18 Oct 2011, 10:01

  • VMware profits more than double in Q3

    Looks like Microsoft, slurps cash like Microsoft

    Server virtualization and soon-to-be cloud juggernaut VMware continues to steamroll over its virtualization rivals and bankroll revenue growth and stunning profit growth this year. In the third quarter ended in September, VMware posted sales of $941.9m (£597.9m), up 31.9 per cent from the year ago period. Software licence …

    Servers 18 Oct 2011, 10:19

  • DeLorean goes electric for 2013 roll-out

    Lightning not required for retro auto

    Great Scott! Doc Brown's DeLorean has jumped back to the future production line and will roll out across roads from 2013. The Delorean Motor Company of Texas - which previously has focused on selling the car secondhand, and providing servicing and spares - is to produce an all-electric version of the famous gull-wing door …

    Science 18 Oct 2011, 10:21

  • HTC's iPhone, iPad ban bid derailed by US judge

    Prelim decision rules no patents infringed

    Legal blows continue to rain down on Google's Android partners. In a preliminary ruling, the US International Trade Commission said Apple isn't infringing the patents of rival HTC Corporation. The ITC is a popular venue for intellectual property cases because it can stop the import of goods, which was what HTC wanted it to do …

    Business 18 Oct 2011, 10:41

  • Ingram slams 'soft' Euro retail market

    Staff face axe as Q3 profits take a hit

    Ingram Micro is forecasting modest fiscal Q3 growth aided by a currency tailwind on the back of weakened consumer demand in Europe and biz woes in Oz. Ahead of reporting the numbers next week, the world's largest IT distributor expects sales to be $8.9bn (£5.65bn), "growing modestly in local currencies" on a sequential and …

    The Channel 18 Oct 2011, 10:49

  • Connected TV watched in 42m homes

    US, Euro punters mad for IPTV

    Across the US and Europe, 42m homes are already accessing internet services through their TVs, market watcher Strategy Analytics reckons. Given the rise of Netflix, Hulu and other such services, it's no surprise to learn that the Americans are leading the move from broadcast television to IPTV. SA spoke to 4800 punters over …

    Hardware 18 Oct 2011, 10:50

  • Sony BDP-SX1 portable Blu-ray player

    Review Take your discs out for a spin

    Just as DVD players inevitably shrank to become portable, so have the Blu-ray successors. Whether this actually makes difference to you depends on how many Blu-ray discs you have and how much you might want to watch them away from home. Worth the disc? Sony's BDP-SX1 The BDP-SX1 is not the first portable Blu-ray player but …

    Hardware 18 Oct 2011, 11:00

  • Paul Ceglia loses another lawyer in Facebook spat

    Alleged half-owner of social network WLTM loyal ambulance-chasers

    A firewood salesman who is locked in a legal spat with Facebook in a dispute over ownership of the dominant social network has lost another lawyer working on his case. Paul Ceglia reportedly instructed his now erstwhile lawyer Jeffery Lake "not to comply" with a court order issued by a judge in August. Lake, who has withdrawn …

    Law 18 Oct 2011, 11:14

  • Canon's fresh 18Mp DSLR flirts with film-makers

    Dual-processors leave the mark

    Canon today unveiled its latest digital SLR refresh, with an 18.1Mp full-frame snapper aimed at pro sports and studio photographers. The Canon EOS-1D X, a replacement of the EOS-1D Mark IV and EOS-1Ds Mark III, is what the company calls "the film-maker's DSLR", as it features 1080p video recording with manual exposure, focus …

    Hardware 18 Oct 2011, 11:15

  • Yahoo! tech! boss! quits!

    Stata is Purple Palace's new in-house entrepreneur

    Yet more corporate chess pieces have been moved at Yahoo!, which yesterday replaced its CTO Raymie Stata with Ash Munshi. According to All Things Digital, Stata hasn't turned his back on the flailing firm, instead preferring to take on the role of "entrepreneur in residence". Yahoo said Stata was simply returning to his " …

    Business 18 Oct 2011, 11:29

  • FSF takes Win 8 Secure Boot fight to OEMs

    Punters urged to bombard PC makers

    PC makers are being lobbied to install Windows 8 on machines in a way that will afford users the freedom to boot Linux or any other operating system. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is urging PC users to sign a statement demanding that OEMs which implement Windows 8's UEFI Secure Boot do so in a way that allows individuals …

    Hardware 18 Oct 2011, 11:43

  • HP disties warn of price hikes

    Enterprise kit rebate overhaul blamed

    Prices on HP server, storage and networking kit could rise when planned rebate cuts for enterprise distributors that sell to the largest resellers kick in next year. The removal of back-end margin paid on sales to top-tier Gold partners, otherwise known as named accounts, was due to be implemented across Europe from 1 November …

    The Channel 18 Oct 2011, 12:01

  • iPhone 4S: Our *hit list

    Hype swipe gripe

    Apple's new phone, and OS, is out and positively reviewed by our colleagues at Reg Hardware, but we're also hearing about some less-popular features and omissions worthy of attention. It's only been on the market a few days, but the new tracking feature of iOS 5 has already broken up one marriage, and threatens friendships of …

    Mobile 18 Oct 2011, 12:14

  • Hackers expose Citibank CEO's privates

    Revenge strike against cuffing of Occupy Wall St protesters

    Hacktivists have published a dossier of personal information on the head of Citigroup in retaliation for the cuffing of protesters at an Occupy Wall Street demo. Members of a group called CabinCr3w, a hacking gang affiliated with Anonymous, revealed phone numbers, an address, email address and financial information on Vikram …

    Security 18 Oct 2011, 12:29

  • Google leads shoppers into pay-by-wave future

    Cards, mobiles and soon 50,000 tills at Macy's at the ready

    Macy's is to join the growing list of American retailers who'll accept payment with the tap of the telephone, or card, but no one is talking about the latter these days. Google is doing a sterling job pushing Americans to accept proximity payments, in the form of Google Wallet. Having signed up some iconic names including Toys …

    Broadband 18 Oct 2011, 12:40

  • Apple iOS 5.0 downloads drive all-time UK net traffic high

    Data rate doubles to 80Gb/s peak

    BT said its UK internet infrastructure was pumping data at a rate of up to 80Gb/s more than usual on the night Apple released iOS 5. Wednesday, 12 October 2011 saw not only the debut of iOS 5.0 but also the highest ever volume of traffic through the telco's broadband network, which feeds not only its own customers but those of …

    Broadband 18 Oct 2011, 12:46

  • App Store groupthink is bad news for small devs

    Open.. and Shut 'Long tail' model debunked

    Two years ago The Register's Andrew Orlowski, writing for the New Statesman, poked crater-sized holes in the notion that "long tail" economics were good for musicians. In 2011, it's equally clear that the long tail* is bad business for app developers, brands, and, well, everyone. The internet has not diffused the ability to make …

    Developer 18 Oct 2011, 13:01

  • Man 'drinks 2 pizzas' before skidding off road

    Kentucky fried brains

    A Kentucky man is facing drugs charges after driving into a ditch before telling officers he'd "drunk too much pizza" for lunch. Officers were called to the intersection of La Costa Road and Stonybrook Drive in Louisville on Saturday to investigate a vehicle which had found its way into a ditch. Local news outfit WLKY reports …

    Bootnotes 18 Oct 2011, 13:15

  • Facebook flashplodders lose appeal against 4-yr jail stint

    'Abuse of modern technology for criminal purposes'

    Appeals brought by two young men nabbed for inciting violent disorder via Facebook during the England riots in August have been dismissed. The Court of Appeal threw out the sentence disputes this morning. Jordan Blackshaw, 20, of Vale Road in Marston near Northwich, was sentenced to four years in jail after appearing before a …

    Law 18 Oct 2011, 13:29

  • COMPAREX swallows Indian firm IRIS

    Microsoft LAR eyes Asian expansion

    Microsoft large account reseller COMPAREX has acquired Indian software and IT services firm IRIS Unified Technologies for an undisclosed sum. The deal follows the formation of a sub in the country's capital Delhi earlier this year and underpins the reseller's push into Asia-Pacific. "I want to stress my belief that India has …

    The Channel 18 Oct 2011, 13:45

  • Fast SANs seek speedy networks

    The race is on

    The fastest storage area network (SAN) on the planet needs the fastest server-storage network links available. So what are they? There are three candidates: Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand. Ethernet SANs Ethernet SANs use the iSCSI storage protocol and link servers and storage across Ethernet. Examples are HP’s P4000 …

    Enterprise Tech 18 Oct 2011, 14:00

  • The effect of a comms meltdown

    Reader Study Just how bad is it?

    What a week it's been for mobile communications and productivity! The meltdown of RIM's Blackberry infrastructure and difficulties getting the service back up and running show just how much we are becoming reliant on (or should that be addicted to?) our mobile gadgets and communications services. Meanwhile, we’ve seen issues …

    Tech Panel 18 Oct 2011, 14:00

  • Team Philippines solar car in self-combustion drama

    WSC Bush not the only thing burning in Oz outback

    Day three of World Solar Challenge and the big news point was a solarcar catching fire at Tennant Creek, NT. The Register's eyewitness on the scene, Richard Flint, racing manager and driver of the Durham Uni team, reports: Whilst we were setting up to charge the batteries with the array, we noticed some activity around another …

    SPB 18 Oct 2011, 14:06

  • Robot resolves Rubik's Cube in record time

    Welcome your Lego-made masters

    Robots can beat humans at Jeopardy, fly our planes and even go to war for us, so they'll surely take over the world eventually. First thing's first, though - they'll have to beat our Rubik's Cube record. Oh wait, one just did. Behold the CubeStormer II, a robot constructed from four lego Mindstorms NXT kits and packed with the …

    Hardware 18 Oct 2011, 14:07

  • Vodafone turns its back on '360

    Mobile brand does a 180

    Vodafone will be pulling the plug on its Vodafone 360 brand at the end of 2011, giving up on the dream of being a one-stop shop for customer services and identity aggregation. Vodafone 360 was launched just over two years ago, and since then has been downgraded from a hardware platform to a software app, been pushed out to …

    Mobile 18 Oct 2011, 14:19

  • VMware ramps crusade to make sysadmins redundant

    VMworld Europe Control freakery stretched to vFabric Java frameworks and more

    Having already made major revisions to its ESXi hypervisor, vSphere add-ons, and vCloud extensions in the 5.0 releases that came out over the summer, VMware isn't making any blockbuster announcements at VMworld Europe in Copenhagen this week – unless you count some management tools for infrastructure and platform clouds that …

    Cloud 18 Oct 2011, 14:20

  • Vodafone customers fume over iPhone 4S delays

    But I pre-ordered, wail fanbois

    UK iPhone lovers who chose to pre-order the iPhone 4S from Vodafone, so they could use the souped-up Jesus mobes before anyone else, have been left fuming as shops fill with stock while their promised iPhone packages have yet to arrive. One such user is Johny, a Reg reader, who wrote in to say: The whole iphone 4S launch on …

    Mobile 18 Oct 2011, 14:40

  • Breathe life into your cyber security campaign

    How to make users sit up and listen

    Ah, another day, another government initiative designed to educate users about cyber risk. The Canadian government has declared October “Get Cyber Safe” month. It has a web site, too, which advises users on how to avoid getting pwned. The advice list includes updating your malware signatures and not giving out your password. …

    Compliance 18 Oct 2011, 15:00

  • Never mind the flash cache: EMC is flush with cash

    Storage biz slurped $5bn in Q3

    EMC damn near sold $5bn (£3.2bn) worth of hardware, software and services in 2011's third quarter and is on track for an almost $20bn (£12.7bn) revenue haul this financial year. The happy Hopkinton, Massachusetts, firm reported revenues of $4.98bn, up 18 per cent from Q3 2010's $4.21bn, and higher than the previous quarter's $ …

    Financial News 18 Oct 2011, 15:20

  • Brits forced to join waiting list for iPhone 4S

    Hurry while stocks la... oh, too late

    Brits will have to reserve a iPhone 4S if they want to ensure they'll get hold of the slightly souped-up Jesus mobe within the next few days - but chances are they won't make the waiting list anyway. To deal with high demand and limited stock, Apple has introduced a system whereby a punter can hit Cupertino's website, reserve …

    Mobile 18 Oct 2011, 15:39

  • Intel pitches stalking smartphones

    ERIC Super-snoop mobes want to know your every move

    Intel CTO Justin Rattner wants your phone to follow your every move, know where you want to go and what you do when you get there and basically fling at you a non-stop stream of information relevant to what's going on in your life. Rattner's second keynote at the European Research and Innovation Conference (ERIC) in Ireland …

    Mobile 18 Oct 2011, 16:00

  • Gartner predicts global double-dip recession

    But enterprises will continue to invest in IT

    Analysts at Gartner are prophesying a global double-dip recession that will test the mettle of corporate CIOs and squeeze budgets, but predict that businesses will continue to invest in IT. "The second recession is about to hit," Peter Sondergaard, senior veep for research at Gartner told an audience of around 8,500 industry …

    Cloud 18 Oct 2011, 16:31

  • Blow for McKinnon as extradition treaty ruled 'not biased'

    Mum fears Pentagon hacker's fate is sealed

    Extradition arrangements between the US and UK are not biased against British suspects, a review of the controversial extradition treaty concluded on Tuesday. The ruling is a setback for supporters of alleged Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon and others who have campaigned against the 2003 treaty, which they continue to argue is …

    Law 18 Oct 2011, 17:00

  • HP pushes out OS update for 'defunct' tablet

    TouchPad gets WebOS 3.0.4

    HP has pushed out an WebOS update for its TouchPad, a tablet seemingly stuck twixt life and death. According to an HP blogger, the update features "improved performance… better support for the camera [and] improved messaging". HP has "made connectivity with non-HP phones possible", and its WebOS engineers have "touched [up] …

    Tablets 18 Oct 2011, 17:11

  • RIAA-led mob threatens innovation, Senator warns

    Web 2.0 Summit Content industry using 'cluster bomb' on tech sector

    Attempts by the content industry to pass legislation like the Protect IP Act are the greatest threat to technology innovation, a senior US Senator told delegates at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco. Ron Wyden, the senior Democratic senator for Oregon, was scathing in his criticism of organizations such as the RIAA for their …

    Law 18 Oct 2011, 17:24

  • Apple 'prepping smaller iPad'

    Jobs said 'no seven-inchers', but rumor mill says otherwise

    Apple may be prepping a smaller, lower-cost iPad, perhaps as both a defensive parry to Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire and a less-pricey offering to cost-conscious emerging markets. Such are the conclusions to be drawn from a report on Tuesday that both Taiwan's AU Optronics and Korea's LG Display have provided Apple with 7.85-inch …

    Tablets 18 Oct 2011, 17:29

  • HP fortifies VirtualSystem arsenal

    'vBlock killers' add Hyper-V, HP-UX

    HP is expanding its line of preconfigured, virtualization-ready VirtualSystem machines and offering financing and design and implementation services for the more fully fluffed up CloudSystems – which are VirtualSystems gussied up with cloudy management software and self-service portals. The VirtualSystems take some of the …

    Servers 18 Oct 2011, 17:34

  • Michael Dell declines to eat his Apple (humble) pie

    Web 2.0 Summit 1997 'shut it down' advice explained

    On the day Apple releases its quarterly results, which are broadly expected to make it the most valuable company the world, Michael Dell attempted to explain his infamous comment that Apple should be shut down and sold off. In 1997, Dell was speaking at a Gartner symposium and was asked what advice he would give to the new …

    Hardware 18 Oct 2011, 19:43

  • Stuxnet-derived malware found infecting SCADA makers

    Duqu trojan in the wild since December

    Organizations involved in the making of systems that control oil pipelines and other critical infrastructure have been infected with malware directly derived from the Stuxnet worm that targeted Iran's nuclear program, security researchers said. Parts of newly discovered malware are almost identical to Stuxnet, and were written …

    Security 18 Oct 2011, 19:53

  • Apple slips, moneymen pounce

    Quarterly financial results miss projections

    Apple has released its financial results for its fourth fiscal quarter, and in doing so it handed conservative Wall Street prognosticators a rare win: Cupertino failed to meet or exceed analysts expectations for the first time in many a moon. On Monday, Fortune averaged a number of independent analysts's predictions and came …

    Financial News 18 Oct 2011, 21:04

  • OPERA review serves up a feast for physics geeks

    Superluminal neutrinos and silly science writers

    Let’s get the “big news” out of the way first: there’s a lot of excitement due to one paper published on Arxiv.org, which asks whether the CERN OPERA experiment – the one that seemed to detect superluminal neutrinos – took into account the “satellite reference frame” in its calculations. So the short version of the paper is …

    Science 18 Oct 2011, 21:26

  • Will litigants chase Oz smut-watchers?

    Copyright trolls linked to adult content biz

    What started out looking like another industry strategy to hunt down BitTorrent users via their ISPs for mass lawsuit is turning into a PR problem for its proponents. Earlier in October, the local Whirlpool broadband discussion group was set a-buzz by stories emerging on Australian site Delimiter that a previously-unknown …

    Law 18 Oct 2011, 22:30

  • Intel mocks PC slowdown, laughs at skittish economy

    Q3 a record for sales and profits

    Worries about the global economy, the IT spending environment, and a slowdown in PC sales – none of it mattered one tiny bit for Intel as it completed another record-breaking third quarter. In the third quarter – which ended on October 1 this year, and not September 25 as it did last year – the chip giant posted $14.2bn in …

    Financial News 18 Oct 2011, 23:45