The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

21st October 2011 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Numara crafts SaaS offerings, preps Oz hosting

    Targets a channel that’s ‘under pressure’

    Having bedded down its acquisition of local partner Salamander Services, Numara Software is now looking at how to put forward cloud-based services suitable for its channel model. The basic premise will be for Numara’s existing suite of service desk, migration, asset management and remote control software will be replicated: …

    SaaS 21 Oct 00:30

  • Microsoft betting on ultrabooks to boost Windows growth

    Company also praying for tax holiday

    Microsoft has some interesting areas in which it hopes to profit in the future, and in a call with reporters and analysts after announcing its most recent financial results, Redmondian execs gave strong hints as to what’s worrying it now. While the business division saw strong sales, the Windows team reported two per cent …

    Financial News 21 Oct 01:05

  • Seek may float Chinese asset

    Recruitment really does pay

    The Bassat brothers, founders of online recruitment giant Seek, may be extending their midas touch with another IPO. Media reports suggest that Seek will be floating a portion of its Chinese recruitment business Zhaopin on Nasdaq. The Australian Financial Review reports that Macquarie Capital, which holds 38 percent of the …

    Business 21 Oct 02:41

  • Printable transistors usher in 'internet of things'

    Updated Billions of systems, printed dirt cheap

    Thinfilm, a Norwegian developer of printable memory, has co-announced with California's PARC a development that takes a big step towards the day when every manufactured object will report in to the internet. Yes, the "internet of things" – the buzzword of the decade. Thinfilm and PARC's breakthrough is a technology that can …

    Hardware 21 Oct 04:01

  • Skype lets hackers track your BitTorrent downloads

    Internet stalking courtesy of P2P

    Scientists have devised a stealthy and low-cost way to track the internet protocol addresses of tens of thousands of Skype users, and link the information to their online activities such as the sharing of specific files over BitTorrent. The method, which is laid out in a recently published academic paper, works even when Skype …

    Security 21 Oct 05:11

  • Apple's iPod: ten years old

    The gadget that changed the music industry

    Apple's iconic iPod digital music player will be ten years old on Sunday. The first model, which contained a 4200rpm, 1.8in Toshiba 5GB hard drive for storage, was announced on Tuesday, 23 October 2001, though didn't find its way into buyers' hands for another couple of weeks or so, on 10 November. Design original Early …

    reghardware 21 Oct 06:00

  • WD: Thai flooding should speed EU decision on Hitachi

    Deal good for everyone, says disk drive giant

    WD believes the flooding in Thailand puts greater impetus on the European Competition Commission to green-light its proposed acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. The acquisition of Samsung's HDD biz by Seagate was cleared by competition regulators this week as they were notified of the deal by the vendor a day …

    Storage 21 Oct 07:00

  • Android grabs quarter of tablet market

    Sorry, RIM, almost all of the rest is Apple's

    World tablet sales hot up during Q3, it was revealed today. Shipments almost quadrupled year on year, from 4.4m units in Q3 2010 to 16.7m tablets in Q3 2011. So said market watcher Strategy Analytics, this morning. Neither SA nor anyone else would be surprised that Apple remained top dog, though with a much-reduced share of …

    reghardware 21 Oct 07:02

  • Watchdog mauls Euro database of 'pirates'

    Who can peek at the naughty list?

    The European Commission must explain in more detail the specifics of the operation of a database it plans to create that will hold personal data on suspected intellectual property (IP) rights infringers, an EU data protection watchdog has said. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) said that in order to comply with …

    Government 21 Oct 08:00

  • RIM's BBX has all the logic PlayBook should have had

    BBX converges BlackBerry and QNX, and beefs up enterprise features

    RIM is a frustrating company right now. The massive outages that affected BlackBerry email users on three continents last week may have been a miracle of bad timing, just after the iPhone launch, but they were only the most publicised of a string of more avoidable mistakes which are leaving users and developers at the end of …

    Wireless 21 Oct 08:31

  • LG LSM-100 Mouse Scanner

    Accessory of the Week Page-grabbing pointer pusher

    Building a document scanner into a mouse is one of those odd notions that seems daft at first but makes sense when you actually think about it. A mouse is something you always have on your desk, and decent scanning tech is now small enough, kind of, to be crammed within. Why clutter up your desk with a flatbed or a bulky …

    reghardware 21 Oct 09:00

  • HP's chief techie departs, will not be replaced

    Robison rides off into the sunset

    HP's chief technical officer, Shane Robison, is out. Robison, an EVP as well as HP's CTO, and member of HP's executive council, will leave on 1 November, having spent 11 years at HP. He will not be replaced: HP CEO Meg Whitman appears to be pulling strategy, research and development closer to HP's portfolio of businesses. The …

    Business 21 Oct 09:32

  • Intel Ivy Bridge set for Spring 2012 debut

    Skinny CPUs for skinny laptops

    'Ivy Bridge', Intel's next generation of processor technology, will be unveiled toward the end of Q1 2012 rather than the early part of the year. At its annual developer conference in September, Intel executives talking about Ivy Bridge's release unanimously used the phrase "early next year". That's usually code for the first …

    reghardware 21 Oct 09:42

  • Retro couch is quite the space invader

    Arcade furnishings

    Check this crazy piece of furniture out. Behold the Retro Space Invaders Couch from Firebox. Created by Russian Designer Igor Chak, the pixelated sofa is made from leather and comes with memory foam cushions for added comfort. With furniture like this, bachelors are bound to score. As the couches are handmade to order, they' …

    reghardware 21 Oct 09:43

  • Channel vet to steer Ingram Micro's enterprise biz

    Jon Bunyard to replace outgoing Cathi Low

    Channel veteran Jon Bunyard is to head up Ingram Micro's enterprise business unit from the end of the month after current incumbent Cathi Low steps down. Bunyard was boss at CCD, the distribution arm of Computacenter, which Milton Keynes-based Ingram acquired in late 2009 as the broadliner builds a mid-market enterprise biz …

    Channel Register 21 Oct 10:02

  • BOFH: Hordes unleashed... by a RAM upgrade

    Episode 16 Fault #45113: Company Corrie email list is down

    It’s the same old story – you make some tiny change and before you know it they're oozing out of the woodwork. You know who I'm talking about – the idiots. They notice that your signature uses Garamond instead of Times Roman and before you know it they're on the phone wanting to know if there's a new corporate stationary …

    BOFH 21 Oct 10:14

  • Samsung Galaxy Nexus comes up short on sub-pixels

    Don't smile, it's PenTile

    Bad news, folks. The sexy looking Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the world's first Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone, has an inferior OLED display. Close-up photography of the phone's 4.7in panel taken by website FlatPanelsHD reveal the Galaxy Nexus' OLED uses Samsung's PenTile pixel layout. A Samsung PenTile panel up close …

    reghardware 21 Oct 10:26

  • Crowd-pleasing study in capitalism conspiracy controversy

    Boffins reckon banks ruled a lot of the world

    In what many took to be fodder for the capitalism-is-a-conspiracy theorists, boffins have claimed that about 150 companies, mostly banks, are controlling the majority of the economic power. It's the sort of statement that many have made in the wake of the global financial crisis and during the ongoing anti-capitalist protests …

    Business 21 Oct 10:32

  • Google+ slips into bed with Reader

    Lonely heart web slurper needs some lovin'

    Google is overhauling its neglected web and news aggregating tool Reader, unsurprisingly to bring it more into line with the company's newfound love for all things social. This also means that Reader will soon be wrapped in Google+, er, goo. It's getting a new design, noted Google software engineer Alan Green in a blog post …

    Networks 21 Oct 10:42

  • Judge: Top Gear did not libel Tesla

    Tesla grrrrs

    BBC merchandise cash cow Top Gear did not libel e-car maker Tesla, the English High Court ruled this week. In March, Tesla sued Top Gear over Jeremy Clarkson's 2008 coverage of the Tesla Roadster. The presenter said on air at the time that the e-car would run out of power after just 55 miles, well below Tesla's claimed 200- …

    reghardware 21 Oct 10:59

  • US radio evangelist: Apocalypse now

    And publishes weekend listening schedule...

    Reg readers are advised to get their earthly affairs in order today as the long-predicted Rapture should sweep the good sheep up to heaven sometime after lunch. The prediction is, of course, from Oakland-based radio evangelist Harold Camping, who nailed 21 October as Rapture day back in May. Camping marked his calendar just …

    Bootnotes 21 Oct 11:02

  • Hackers crack PlayStation 3 hardware, again

    Jailbreak jinx

    Sony's hacking headaches continued today with claims that a new PlayStation jailbreak USB dongle is about to flood the market. According to Eurogamer's Digital Foundry blog, the threat of piracy is set to plague Sony again, as there is now a dongle available in Indonesia that allows users to bypass the console's security …

    reghardware 21 Oct 11:05

  • Reshaping data centre networks

    On-demand Managing weak links

    We think a lot about the network that connects the client to the server room, but maybe not enough about the network inside the data centre. At least, until now. Our recent Reg poll shows that the problems of network consolidation, distributed apps and all that spaghetti stuff sticking out the back of your servers is …

    Hardware 21 Oct 11:11

  • Big Dane study finds no mobe cancer link

    Tumour doomsayers barking up wrong tree

    A Danish study has found there is no increased risk of brain cancer from mobile phone usage. Researchers at the Danish Cancer Society examined cancer rates in a sample of over 350,000 long-term mobile contract customers, and compared them against a sample of 3.2 million of the general population. There was no increased …

    Biology 21 Oct 11:29

  • Batman: Arkham City

    Review The best superhero game. Ever.

    Hung upside down over a vat of acid or strapped to a conveyor belt inching towards a blast furnace, Batman could always rely on technology to help him pull off an unlikely escape. That is if he... could... just... reach... his... utility belt, of course. 'If this is a consular ship, then where is the ambassador' It's a …

    reghardware 21 Oct 11:40

  • Web block would 'spark arms race' against pirates

    ISPs tear into file share ban efforts

    "Communications systems are inherently designed to deliver communication," stated Mita Mitra, BT's Internet Policy overseer, yesterday while debating one of the most controversial aspects of the 2010 Digital Economy Act: that BT and other ISPs should be responsible for blocking websites that infringe copyright. "It's a big …

    Networks 21 Oct 11:43

  • Reg hacks confront really wide Oz load terror

    Down Under's Stuart Highway: The shocking, lane-swallowing truth

    During our coverage this week of the World Solar Challenge, live from Down Under's Stuart Highway from Darwin to Adelaide, some of you weren't too impressed with our account of meeting a big truck bearing an improbably large mining vehicle – some kind of monster Tonka Toy with wheels the size of a two-storey house. Such loads …

    Bootnotes 21 Oct 12:00

  • Acer cuts losses and inventory in Q3

    Taiwanese vendor moving into recovery position

    Acer losses narrowed in its third quarter ended September but the bust consumer sector and inventory woes still weighed heavy on its bottom line. The troubled Taiwanese titan reported prelim losses of NT$1.1bn (£22.9m) compared to profits of NT $4.29bn (£89.3m) for the three month trading period a year earlier. Sales fell 28 …

    Channel Register 21 Oct 12:09

  • Smartphone black market fuels knife robberies

    Top cop slaps punters without a mobe passcode

    The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) reckons demand for smartphones on the black market has in part fuelled a rise in knife robberies. According to a study of crime reports in the UK, police forces in England and Wales recorded nearly 15,000 robberies at knifepoint in the year to June, up 7 per cent on the previous …

    Crime 21 Oct 12:14

  • Quote of the Week: 'Phone bills shouldn't cost more than the rent'

    QuotW Plus: 'There's a nap for that'

    This was the week when neither rumours of a new smaller iPad nor the huge sales of the iPhone 4S were enough to stop Apple's fourth fiscal quarter earnings from dipping below estimates. Samsung and Google teamed up to launch the Samsung Galaxy Nexus/Nexus Prime along with the hotly anticipated Android OS 4.0, nicknamed Ice …

    Bootnotes 21 Oct 12:29

  • Privacy blunders by UK biz soar, websites least trusted

    Surprise! Public confidence in data protection declines

    Data security breaches within the private sector are rapidly increasing, the UK's Information Commissioner warned today. Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said that the number of such violations reported to the ICO was up 58 per cent so far in 2011/12, compared with the same period last year. The watchdog revealed …

    ID 21 Oct 12:41

  • Get out there and take some risks, says Woz

    IP Expo The wizard of Wozniak wishes you luck

    Steve Wozniak gave a pitch at IP Expo yesterday in which he spoke about the early days at Apple, taking risks in technology, and Fusion-io, his latest gig. Woz is now chief scientist at PCIe flash supplier Fusion-io, and one of its chief marketing attractions. Like all successful tech people who have broken a mould, he said it …

    Channel Register 21 Oct 13:02

  • Jobs: 'I'll spend my dying breath destroying Android'

    Threatened $40bn war over rival mobe OS, slated Google

    Never one to pussyfoot around his deep hatred for rivals and traitors, Steve Jobs chucked some choice epithets at Google boss Eric Schmidt and his products after the Apple-Google rift opened in 2007. Android made Jobs furious, according to snippets from a new biography Steve Jobs as reported by AP. When the Google mobile OS …

    Mobile 21 Oct 13:26

  • Sony's 3D VR goggles will empty your wallet

    Launch date and prices revealed

    Sony's head-mounted vision goggles will hit UK shelves this December at the whopping price of £800. The HMZ-T1, which we first saw at CES 2011, apparently gives users a full 3D experience, packing 5.1 surround sound headphones and two 1280 x 720 OLED screens. According to Sony, it's like watching a 750in screen from a 20m …

    reghardware 21 Oct 14:02

  • Toshiba demos monster hi-res tablet display

    Packin' in the pixels

    Toshiba has raised the bar for LCD quality, revealing a 6.1in panel with a pixel density of 498 pixels per inch. Even Apple's "retina display" iPhone 4S screen only manages 326ppi. At a viewing distance of 27cm, Apple claimed, and with that pixel density, the eye can't detect individual pixels. Some users claim they can, but …

    reghardware 21 Oct 14:03

  • Gov: DAB must battle on, despite being old and rubbish

    While BBC agrees to pay for digital albatross

    Britons' digital albatross, DAB radio, might be antique and sound terrible, the culture minister said this week, admitting the 2015 switchover date looked “ambitious”. It’s the first time a politician of ministerial level has acknowledged issues with DAB. But there’s no changing course, he said. “They often suggest that DAB is …

    Wireless 21 Oct 14:04

  • Boffins crack e-commerce encryption

    Poked XML-based service coughs secrets

    German computer scientists have cracked components of an encryption system used to securely exchange data between e-commerce and banking systems. Boffins from the Ruhr University of Bochum (RUB) have devised a technique partly based on analysing error messages returned when carefully modified cipher text is submitted to a web …

    Enterprise Security 21 Oct 14:29

  • Reg hack desperately seeks deeply frustrated pensioner

    You never call, you never write...

    We enjoyed your letter of the 9th. And would love to chat further. Discretion assured. ®

    Site News 21 Oct 14:54

  • Feds: Cyberpunks spied on Nasdaq directors

    Nasdaq hackers' malware plot confirmed

    The same hackers who cracked into Nasdaq's computer systems last year apparently planted malware that allowed them to spy on publicly traded companies. The stock exchange previously said neither its trading systems nor its customer data were exposed by an attack that focused on a web-based app called Directors Desk. However an …

    Enterprise Security 21 Oct 15:04

  • Netbook shipments slump in face of tablet rise

    Bullish forecasts reversed

    Tablets outshipped netbooks in Q2 2011. So says market watcher ABI Research, which recorded shipments of 7.3m netbooks in Q2 - down 13.1 per cent on Q1's 8.4m units - and 13.6m tablets. ABI said it reckons some 32m netbooks will ship in 2011 as a whole - 16.m of during H2. That is down 17.5 per cent on 2010's total shipments …

    reghardware 21 Oct 15:27

  • Chinese giant halts rare earth shipments to hike prices

    This is the stuff mobiles, lasers, magnets, cars are made of

    China's largest rare-earth producer, the state-owned Baotou Iron and Steel Group, is stopping rare earth shipments for a month in an attempt to drive up prices. There are 17 rare earth elements which - despite their label - are actually quite common in the Earth's crust until you want to extract them: you'll find they're so …

    Energy 21 Oct 15:32

  • Dowler family bags £2m payout over phone-hacking saga

    Updated Murdoch hopes settlement 'underscores' his 'regret'

    News Corp has agreed to cough up £2m to the family of Milly Dowler after individuals working for the now-defunct Sunday tabloid the News of the World were found to have hacked into the murdered schoolgirl's phone. News International, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, confirmed the settlement in a joint statement with the …

    Crime 21 Oct 15:42

  • Thai floods flush storage channel clean

    Disties hit the brakes, stores raise prices

    Distribution giant Computer 2000 has put disk drives on manual allocation to spread supply among its customer base while other distributors have completely frozen sales while they review the impact of the flooding in Thailand. The Far East country has been hit by the worst flooding in over half a century, with the world's …

    Channel Register 21 Oct 15:59

  • Groupon IPO seeks $11.4bn valuation

    Price range of $16 to $18 a share confirmed

    Groupon confirmed in a regulatory filing today that it is seeking an IPO of around $11.4bn, significantly lower than the $25bn IPO the e-coupon site was pursuing in June this year. The company is offering 30 million shares of Class A common stock at $16 to $18 each, which means Groupon could raise as much as $540m, or $260m …

    Financial News 21 Oct 16:14

  • Zuckerberg's HTML5 Trojan horse play

    Open ... And Shut Facebook penetrates Apple/Google territory

    Apple has become the world's most valuable company by filling us with childish wonder at (and ravenous lust to buy) its Jesus phone, but Facebook seems sure to surpass Apple's $350bn-plus market cap by providing the social fabric for all internet traffic. But first the social giant needs to figure out mobile. And fast. It's …

    Mobile 21 Oct 16:35

  • Buy a $1m storage brute, get a free iPad app

    IBM talks up XIV benchmarks, cloud files

    IBM released so many system and storage announcements this week that it was difficult to zoom in on the most interesting ones: there were 55 in all. We'll focus on the high-end array and cloud file storage items in this convoy of news. Big Blue has improved the Easy Tier's automatic placement of data in tiers on its high-end …

    Channel Register 21 Oct 17:04

  • World's stealthiest rootkit gets a makeover

    Now, TDL4 harder than ever to eradicate

    One of the world's more advanced pieces of malware has just gotten a makeover that could make it even more resistant to takedown efforts, security researchers said. An analysis of recent updates to the TDL4 rootkit, which is also known as TDSS and Alureon, shows that components including its kernel-mode driver and user-mode …

    Malware 21 Oct 18:41

  • Meteor shower falls from Halley’s Comet on Saturday

    Watchers checking for Moon explosions

    Professional and amateur astronomers will have their eyes on the skies this weekend, watching for the annual Orionids meteor show as our planet passes through the tail of Halley’s Comet. The annual show lasts around a week and reaches its peak this weekend, when the Earth and Moon pass through the cone of debris left by Halley …

    Space 21 Oct 18:42

  • Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

    Climate skeptics dealt 'clear and rigorous' blow

    A massively thorough study – funded in part by a pair of US oil billionaires who are opponents of climate-disruption remediation – has come to the conclusion that the earth is, indeed, warming. In fact, it's warming just as much as more-limited studies conducted by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, …

    Energy 21 Oct 21:43

  • Cloud buyers keeping storage sales strong

    Boom times for hardware and software sales

    Analyst house IDC is predicting demand for public and private cloud architectures will means strong growth for storage sales. According to a new survey, spending by public-cloud service providers will grow 23.6 per cent annually until 2015, while enterprise demand for private cloud networks will grow 28.9 per cent per annum …

    Cloud Business 21 Oct 21:57

  • Cable employee admits replacing Superbowl feed with porn

    NSFW We interrupt this dramatic touchdown for this lewd clip

    An Arizona man has admitted he was the one who interrupted the 2009 Superbowl broadcast to thousands of cable subscribers and replaced it with footage from an X-rated porno flick, according to published news reports. Frank Tanori Gonzalez pleaded guilty to two counts of computer tampering in a plea agreement that called for him …

    Security 21 Oct 22:09

  • 'Occupy Wherever' movement goes transgalactic

    To Mordor and beyond

    Although the Occupy [insert location here] anti-oligopoly movement appears to be losing a bit of its vigor, one enterprising website – Geeks Are Sexy – is attempting to breathe new life into the discriminating 99–per center's hoped-for zeitgeist. GAS – perhaps better known for such photo spectaculars as "Anna Fischer's …

    Odds and Sods 21 Oct 22:39