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1st November 2011 Archive

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  • Victorian government moves to mollify IT channel

    Reverses cuts to supplier numbers

    The Victorian government has announced an expanded eServices panel of IT suppliers, in a move that should relieve the industry’s fury at cuts to the industry panel announced in July. The state government’s previous attempt to lop 65 suppliers off its IT services panel had provoked an industry backlash, particularly from …

    Business 1 Nov 00:30

  • Perth music app developers score $1.1m

    Japan drives international chart toppers

    Australian-made iOS app darling Filter Squad has hit one million downloads for its Discovr app and has promptly closed $1.1m in seed funding. Discovr is essentially a smart recommendation engine that allows you to find music based on your existing field of preferences. Discovr is currently a number one app in 28 countries and …

    Applications 1 Nov 01:00

  • Researchers propose simple fix to thwart e-voting attack

    Running hash makes insider fraud easier to detect

    Researchers have devised a simple procedure that can be added to many electronic voting machine routines to reduce the success of insider attacks that attempt to alter results. The approach, laid out in a short research paper (PDF), augments the effectiveness of end-to-end verifiable election systems, such as the Scantegrity …

    Security 1 Nov 04:00

  • HP systems group honcho bails after Meg flip-flops

    CTO Phil McKinney: 'Not the traditional retirement'

    HP has lost the CTO from its PC division after Phil McKinney announced he was leaving the company for semi-retirement. McKinney, who has been with the company for nine years, made the announcement days after Meg Whitman announced that HP would keep its PC arm after all. He says in his blog that he’ll be focusing on public …

    Business 1 Nov 04:30

  • Pete Townshend condemns Apple as 'digital vampire'

    The Who's windmiller barters own bollocks for musicians' aid

    Pete Townshend, noted windmill guitarist and child pornography investigator, has called Apple's iTunes a "digital vampire", likened it to big-bucks bailout beneficiary Northern Rock, and admitted that yes, he did once want to cut Steve Jobs' balls off. Townsend managed that invective triptych while delivering the inaugural …

    Music and Media 1 Nov 05:00

  • Boston University

    SCC team profile Can Terriers hit tera-scale?

    Boston University is another first-time SC11 Student Cluster Challenge competitor. The application submitted by the BU Terriers made me laugh out loud – it was very well written and genuinely funny. This team has personality, and it’ll be great to have them in Seattle. They’re not so great on the follow through, however; not …

    SC 2011 1 Nov 06:49

  • University of Colorado

    SCC Team Profile Can veteran team finally Buffalo the competition?

    The Colorado Buffaloes are one of five teams returning to the fifth annual Student Cluster Challenge in Seattle next month during SC11. Like Purdue, Colorado has participated in every challenge but has yet to take home the gold medal. (There aren’t any gold medals awarded. Pity.) The Buffaloes have won some awards and plaudits …

    SC 2011 1 Nov 06:51

  • Purdue University

    SCC team profile Fifth time the charm for veteran team?

    In five years of Student Cluster Challenge (SCC) action at the annual Supercomputing Conference, Purdue has yet to hoist the championship trophy over their collective heads. (There isn’t a championship trophy, but there should be.) They’ve had an impact, winning the Green Award for most flops/watt in 2008 and 2009, but they …

    SC 2011 1 Nov 06:52

  • Nizhny Novgorod State University

    SCC team profile Russian bear returns to student cluster fray

    This year’s SC11 Student Cluster Challenge will see five returning teams and three teams that are new to the competition (that’s eight total for those keeping track). One of the returning teams is the pride of Russia, the team from Nizhny Novgorod State University (NNSU). NNSU is one of Russia’s premier research universities; …

    SC 2011 1 Nov 06:52

  • University of Texas

    SCC team profile Confident? Cocky? Time will tell

    This is the second year the University of Texas Longhorns will compete in the Student Cluster Challenge at the annual Supercomputing Conference. They brought a lot of personality to the competition last year with a “TACC to the Future” theme combining one of their sponsors (University of Texas Advanced Computing Center) with the …

    SC 2011 1 Nov 06:54

  • Sony Tablet S

    Review Wedge hardware

    Sony may be late to the Android tablet party but it has turned up with something rather unusual and hopefully different enough from the iPad to not suffer the attentions of Apple’s hyperactive legal department. A slice of Honeycomb: Sony's Tablet S Called the Tablet S, the Nvidia Tegra 2 bits and pieces inside may be as …

    reghardware 1 Nov 07:00

  • Computer 2000 taps Widget UK boss to run retail biz

    Foreman fits the bill

    Computer 2000 has lured Widget UK boss Jo-Anne Foreman to head up its retail biz in the UK. She is due to pick up the reins at TD Consumer Electronics from 12 December, reporting to C2000 commercial director Dave Watts. “The establishment of our Retail and Consumer Electronics division is an important strategic investment for …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 07:29

  • 97% of Three's network traffic is data

    Your country is calling streaming

    Ninety-seven per cent of the traffic carried on the Three network is data, according to a company blog posted this afternoon. Do people even make phone calls anymore? The British Telco angled themselves as a 3G data network when they started in 2003 and that's now one of their big selling points: usually offering bulkier data …

    Mobile 1 Nov 08:01

  • UK.gov threatens to 'pull plug' on smart meter rollout

    Hard-up punters unimpressed, Whitehall nervous

    Concerns were raised during a committee hearing in Parliament yesterday over the government's £12bn plan to rapidly roll out smart energy meters in the UK by 2019. A gap exists in communicating the benefits of smart meters to taxpayers on lower incomes, the House of Commons Public Accounts committee was warned. "Poorer …

    Wireless 1 Nov 08:20

  • World heading for massive jobs slump

    We need to employ our way out of economic misery

    The early signs of another jobs slump are already apparent, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The body now estimates that employment in advanced economies won't return to levels seen before the global financial crisis until 2016. “We have reached the moment of truth. We have a brief window of …

    Financial News 1 Nov 09:01

  • Return of the SALTY DISK BOFFINS

    Can't resist resistive RAM

    Micron is getting into a spin over STT-MRAM and getting into bed with a Singaporean research institute to develop it. The background is that NAND is facing increasing problems over write endurance and write power as the process size reduces from 29-20nm to 19-10nm ... and then below 10nm. The problem is exacerbated as bits are …

    Storage 1 Nov 09:21

  • Wooden Mars ark voyagers set to step out on Earth

    'Nauts to end 520-day simulated interplanetary odyssey

    A group of six men who have spent the past 17 months sealed up inside a spaceship simulator near Moscow - in order to investigate the problems which might arise on a mission to Mars - are about to regain their liberty. Life aboard the wooden space ark. The denizens of the Mars-vessel complex, which features wooden interiors …

    Space 1 Nov 09:38

  • Airbus brews Scandium smackdown for carbon Dreamliner

    A riveting chapter in Boeing and Airbus' rivalry

    Having made its first commercial flight on October 26, with a chartered promotional flight to Hong Kong, the new 787 Dreamliner enters regular airline service today. This is of course a great excuse for us to talk about the competition between the differing technologies and market visions favoured by rival aerospace colossi …

    Physics 1 Nov 10:02

  • Behold: The Gecko-robot wall-climbing tank!

    Vid Does whatever a spider-pig (lizard) can

    Boffins have taken their inspiration from the gecko to develop a tank robot that can scale completely smooth walls and shuffle along ceilings. Researchers from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, looked at the little sticky pads on the toes of geckos and recreated the van der Waals forces - very weak, …

    Rise of the Machines 1 Nov 10:14

  • Beeb measures Blighty in doormats

    Auntie's improbable units dept strikes again

    The BBC's improbable units department was in fine form last week when it decided to quantify the land area of the United Kingdom in doormats. In this illuminating piece on just how may noughts a trillion has, Auntie notes that Blighty's 244,820 sq km area is the equivalent of 1,000,000,000,000 doormats, based on a standard …

    SPB 1 Nov 10:29

  • Asus eyes Android, Windows 8 tablets in 2012

    Can it be the iPad rival it wasn't in 2011?

    An interesting snippet emerges from Asus' latest financial results presentation: it expects to sell rather fewer tablets in the Christmas period that it did during Q3. Asus' Eee Pad shipment outlook reveals the company shipped 400,000 tablets - Eee Pad Transformers in the main - in Q2, followed by 800,000 more in Q3. These, …

    reghardware 1 Nov 10:30

  • Darth Vader mounts defence of doomed empire

    'We shall double our efforts,' gasp worried Dixons staff

    Dixons Retail is turning to the dark side this Christmas by hiring jackbooted camp war mongerer Darth Vader to star in a marketing campaign. The parent of Currys and PC World wants to make hard-pressed shoppers aware of improvements in customer service at its chains, though Vader is a strange choice as he couldn't muster his …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 10:43

  • Android voice assistant shootout

    Android App of the Week Special Battle of the Siri substitutes

    In the absence of anything shiny, the hoi polloi and the media focused on Siri as the The Big Idea at the iPhone 4S launch. Android has supported basic voice commands for ages, but there are now a number of Siri-wannabes in the Market. But are they of any use other than as a bit of mild amusement? That depends on the use you …

    reghardware 1 Nov 11:00

  • Too many states are crushing net rights, says Foreign Sec

    LCC Hague not vague on need for uncensored web

    Too many countries are interfering in their citizens’ right to internet freedom, the Foreign Secretary told the London Conference on Cyberspace (LCC). “[These states] are seeking to go beyond legitimate interference or disagree with us about what constitutes ‘legitimate’ behaviour,” William Hague said. “Some governments block …

    Government 1 Nov 11:12

  • Don't lose sleep over cloud crypto hole, says Amazon

    Virtually insignificant

    Amazon has played down the significance of a recently discovered vulnerability affecting its flagship Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform. Interlinked security shortcomings created a theoretical mechanism for hackers to issue rogue admin requests, such as stopping virtual machines in an EC2 virtual environment or …

    Cloud 1 Nov 11:21

  • Half of Britain now owns a smartphone

    Android in the hands of a quarter of the population

    Almost half of the UK population now owns a smartphone, and Google's OS, Android, is leading the race. According to research from market watcher Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, smartphone sales are on the rise. App-friendly handsets now make up 69.1 per cent of all mobile phone purchases, it said. And 43.8 per cent of Britons own …

    reghardware 1 Nov 11:33

  • Fasthosts downed by dicky Dell switch

    UK website hosting cluster rocked by outage

    A number of websites were taken offline yesterday, and remained down this morning, after a load of servers run by Gloucester-based hosters Fasthosts fell over. Services on the hosting side are back up now, but the outage provoked angry responses. It was a faulty Dell switch that took the servers out, Fasthosts CEO Andy Burton …

    Hosting 1 Nov 11:37

  • Canada founded on 'relentless pursuit of beaver'

    Determined pioneers pursued warm and furry prey

    A Canadian politician has rather deliciously insisted that vast tracts of his nation were opened by "the relentless pursuit of beaver", an agreeable concept that for some reason conjures an image of Silvio Berlusconi furiously paddling a kayak through white water rapids in pursuit of a fleeing supermodel. The description of …

    Government 1 Nov 11:44

  • Archiving and the cloud

    Deep dive SNIA works up some best practices

    Cloud is everywhere. Every day we read news about new cloud applications and new cloud providers. But will it really solve all our problems? When we need more processing power or software services, we use Software as a Service (SaaS) providers. What if we need more storage space? We use Data Storage as a Service (DaaS) …

    Infrastructure 1 Nov 11:53

  • HTC Sensation XL hip-hops onto UK shelves

    Big Beats for Blighty

    HTC's supersize Sensation has landed in Three stores across the UK today. The HTC Sensation XL can be picked up from £34 per month, although to get it with Three's data-weighted The One Plan, and customers will have to fork out £40 every month. Alternatively, it can be purchased on pay-as-you-go for £450. Large and narrow, …

    reghardware 1 Nov 11:54

  • Seagate flings twirling terabyte platters at world

    Floods won't halt Barracuda refresh, we're told

    All change on the Barracuda front: despite the disastrous floods in Thailand, Seagate will ship its terabyte-per-platter Barracuda desktop drives this month. At the same time it's phasing out its slower rotating Barracuda Green drives and says it will transition the Barracuda XT to hybrid flash and hard disk technology. Back …

    Storage 1 Nov 12:01

  • Flooded fabs to ship 48m fewer disks in Q4

    Camera and car makers also capsized

    Disk drive shipments are set to plummet by nearly 28 per cent in Q4 – 48 million fewer units than a year ago – in the wake of the devastating flooding in Thailand, says beancounter iSuppli. The ripple effect of the worst flooding in the country for more than half a century is also likely to be felt across many sectors of IT …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 12:11

  • ITU showcases protoboffins, hands them £6k each

    ITU Telecom World 'Children are the youth of tomorrow'*

    The ITU's Youth Challenge flew 45 young people to Geneva to pitch their innovative ideas, with six of them pocketing around £6,000 each to develop those ideas into products. The yoof came to the ITU Telecom World to spend three days learning how best to pitch their ideas, and a lot about how the telecommunications industry …

    Telecoms 1 Nov 12:22

  • Blogger freaks after airport lackey fondles checked-in vibrator

    TSA forced to perform 'removal action' on employee

    Air travellers in the US can rest easy that they can happily pack sex toys in their luggage after the Transportation Safety Administration began a "removal" action on an errant employee. The TSA found itself impaled on the horns of a dilemma last week when Jill Filipovic, a New York-based lawyer and blogger, revealed that a …

    Policing 1 Nov 12:31

  • Hague: Web risks turning into city of ghettos

    LCC UK seeks net protection pact from biz and govts

    The UK seems to be hoping for some sort of lasting agreement from its gathering of governments and businesses at the London Conference on Cyberspace (LCC). Speaking at the conference, Foreign Secretary William Hague said it was time to “build on our common interests, developing firm ideas and proposals with real political and …

    Government 1 Nov 12:41

  • Activists tell gov to shove its net censorship plans

    LCC Hands off our smut and private parts

    As various bods gather in London for a conference on cyber-security, leading online rights campaigners have penned a letter to Foreign Secretary William Hague urging the government to maintain freedom and privacy while promoting security. "We call for the UK government to seize this opportunity to reject censorship and …

    Government 1 Nov 12:52

  • The Register Guide on how to stay anonymous (part 1)

    How websites use your browser to sell you for cash

    It has been a year since I have talked about securing browsers against privacy invasion. In that time, things have got worse, not better. In addition to the threat of malware and malicious scripts, we have the frightening new evercookie. Leaving the criminal misuse of tracking for a later date, there is plenty to worry about …

    Security 1 Nov 13:00

  • Battlefield 3

    Review Bangers and crash

    Even the staunchest opponent of all things games would have been hard pushed to avoid the determined advertising campaign waged on us by EA of late. TV spots, billboards, websites, magazines, sides of buses, newspapers, even logos on tanks in one recent London stunt, all liberally displaying brand Battlefield. To say the war …

    reghardware 1 Nov 13:03

  • Ofcom tarts up telco report with pretty coverage maps

    All show, but where's the detail?

    Ofcom has published the first of its triennial reports on the UK's communications infrastructure, but more importantly there are pretty maps too. The regulator is required to provide a detailed study of the UK's telecommunications to the Ministry of Fun every three years. The report is supposed to include details of what …

    Telecoms 1 Nov 13:12

  • The data boom and bust cycle

    Broadcast Don't buy more, manage it better

    More data more often than not means more disks. It was ever thus - but in these cash-strapped times, just buying more kit is no longer an option. But is it really that easy to stop the growth/spend cycle and make what you’ve already got work harder? Could you solve everything by throwing a bit of elastic cloud storage into the …

    Storage 1 Nov 13:24

  • Lovely ‘leccy car breaks out of Oz

    Move over Tesla?

    It’s the kind of thing that a conference organiser dreams about: a product launch that goes around the world. That’s what last week’s Electric Vehicle Conference in Brisbane got when a local collaboration launched an Australian-built e-sportster. The companies behind the yellow prototype electric sports car are machinery firm …

    reghardware 1 Nov 13:28

  • Netflix, Amazon ink video streaming deals with Disney

    Interwebulator Walt beams up 'money for old rope' line

    Netflix and Amazon have extended existing content deals with Walt Disney Company in a clear sign that the meeja world wants online video streaming to become big business Stateside and, presumably, beyond. The separate agreements also open up Disney's access to a nascent marketplace, allowing the media firm to sell licences to …

    Entertainment 1 Nov 13:34

  • Why can't civil servants keep a grip on their BlackBerrys?

    MPs told mandarins let RIM kit slip

    Butter-fingered civil servants are continuing to hurl away their personal tech devices, figures released to the House of Commons yesterday show, with BlackBerrys particularly prone to going walkies. Labour's Gareth Thomas MP asked tabled questions to a number of ministers about whether their departments had "lost any (a) …

    Government 1 Nov 13:46

  • French nuke biz slapped in mystery cyberattack

    Blame Canada China North Korea oh, who knows

    French nuclear power group Areva may have fallen victim to an operating system-level electronic attack, which was first detected in September. Conflicting French media reports suggest hackers had access to Areva’s network as far back as two years (Slate France, here) or that the problem only affected "non-critical" data and …

    Security 1 Nov 14:01

  • Cops should help us slay trolls, says Facebook wonk

    LCC But wait, there's a real crime happening over there

    Police forces need to be better equipped to deal cybercrime and online misbehaviour, a couple of web grandees have declared. Lord Richard Allan, director of European policy for Facebook, said that firms providing services online had some ways to tackle bad behaviour on their websites, but needed a hand from law enforcement. “ …

    Policing 1 Nov 14:16

  • Calyx owner Better Capital stages reseller roll-up

    VC building mid-market Microsoft and Sage software specialist

    Private equity house Better Capital has merged seven specialist mid-market software resellers under the m-hance brand with a single management team. Microsoft ERP and CRM dealer Gyrosoft, the hosting and software development biz at MentecPlus and the mid-market client list from MS Dynamics and Sage dealers Sys-Care and Avant- …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 14:29

  • £2.8m bank Trojan slurp ringleaders jailed

    Scotland Yard, Feds nab malware-armed raiders

    The two ringleaders of a gang that siphoned more than £2.8m from bank accounts were jailed on Monday following an investigation by the Met's Central E-Crime Unit (PCeU). Ukrainian nationals Yuriy Konovalenko, 29, and Yevhen Kulibaba, 33, both resident at the same address in Chingford, Essex, were each jailed for four years and …

    Crime 1 Nov 14:29

  • Google explains 'why' ads target user's Gmail

    How our bots drill into your ONLINE BRAIN

    Google has begun telling users of its Gmail service exactly why it is serving up specific ads that creepily refer to the content detailed in individual email correspondence. "Our advertising system is designed to show the right ad to the right person at the right time," said the world's largest ad broker in a blog post penned …

    ID 1 Nov 14:42

  • Facebook, Twitter just tools in Arab Spring

    LCC Yemeni activist: We quite like radio and SMS, actually

    Twitter and Facebook didn’t start the revolutions in the Middle East, but they did accelerate them, according to Yemeni activist Atiaf Alwazir. Speaking at the London Conference on Cyberspace, Alwazir told delegates that people were the real agents of change in the region, but the internet has helped to speed up their …

    Networks 1 Nov 15:18

  • Yahoo! beds! down! with! cookie! sniffing! Interclick!

    Smell my cheese, er, money

    Yahoo! is buying advertising network Interclick, which is best known in these pages, at least, for winning a lawsuit brought against its cookie respawning and history sniffing techniques. The Purple Palace, which is bereft of a CEO and still struggling to find revenue from its display ads business in the US, said in a …

    Business 1 Nov 15:33

  • Hyperscale networks need holistic management

    End-to-end services for virtual machines

    If large-scale storage networks were managed in the same way as city road traffic systems the result would be catastrophic, with traffic jams, delayed delivery and lost messages. Network Fabric management, unlike road traffic management systems, has both real-time traffic management and an end-to-end view to find faults fast and …

    Data Networking 1 Nov 15:44

  • Nokia sets release date for Lumia 800

    Mango here we come

    Nokia's Lumia 800 has been given an official launch date here the UK, with punters able to pick one up from 16 November. Nokia confirmed that its "first Windows Phone" - as it was dubbed when the company launched the Lumia 800 last week - will touch down in Blighty a day ahead of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus. The device rocks up …

    reghardware 1 Nov 15:46

  • Battlefield 3 is EA's fastest selling videogame. Ever

    Server issues continue, though

    Battlefield 3 has become the fastest-selling videogame in EA's history, with ten million units leaving the publisher's distribution centres since last week's release. Half of those were picked up by gamers in the space of a few days. EA confessed the high sales caught it off-guard and with so many gamers trying to access its …

    reghardware 1 Nov 15:52

  • Miley Cyrus hacker let off with probation

    TrainReq spared after ratting out former hacking cohorts

    Josh Holly, the self-confessed Miley Cyrus hacker, has avoided jail for unrelated computer crimes, receiving three years' probation at a sentencing hearing on Monday. Holly, 22, from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, pleaded guilty last April to possessing about 200 stolen credit card numbers as well as running a celebrity MySpace …

    Crime 1 Nov 16:03

  • Chip sales shrink a bit in September

    Japan recovering, Thailand an unknown

    The semiconductor supply chain is bracing for impacts from the flooding in Thailand, but sales were good through the end of September, according to statistics compiled by the Semiconductor Industry Association. Global semiconductor sales hit $25.8bn, up 2.7 per cent sequentially from August. That's the positive spin. The …

    Channel Register 1 Nov 16:14

  • Cameron loves net freedom – as long as no one's rioting

    LCC 'Gov doesn't own, run or shape the internet'

    UK Prime Minister David Cameron has insisted that government “doesn’t own the internet, run the internet or shape the internet”, despite having said that he was considering shutting down social media during the London riots. Cameron said in a speech to the London Conference on Cyberspace (LCC) today that the task of the …

    Cloud Business 1 Nov 16:29

  • Calxeda hurls EnergyCore ARM at server chip Goliaths

    Another David takes aim at Xeon, Opteron

    Calxeda, formerly known as Smooth-Stone in reference to the river rock that the mythical David used in his sling to slay Goliath, doesn't think the server racket can wait for the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture (announced late last week) to be designed and tested in the next few years. And that is why Calxeda has spent the past …

    Servers 1 Nov 16:45

  • HP Project Moonshot hurls ARM servers into the heavens

    Redstone clusters launch Calxeda chips

    Hewlett-Packard might have been wrestling with a lot of issues as CEOs and their strategies come and go, but the company's server gurus know a potentially explosive business opportunity when they see it. That is why HP has put together a new hyperscale business unit inside of its Enterprise Server, Storage, and Networking …

    Servers 1 Nov 17:01

  • Open Rights Group denies Netflix is coming to the UK

    Company itself begs to differ with Citizen Jim

    Parliament's Business Select Committee heard some interesting news today, as they mulled the Hargreaves Report’s recommendations. Executive director of the Open Rights Group Jim Killock told MPs that the UK’s copyright laws were deterring investors and new businesses. Alas, he could have picked a better example. Killock said …

    Cloud Business 1 Nov 17:21

  • Native Gmail app coming to iPhone, iPad?

    Android advantage may soon be undermined

    The word on the street is that a Gmail app for iOS is about to hit Apple's App Store. If true, not only would iPhone and iPad Gmailers benefit, but Android device makers would lose one of their advantages over Apple's iDevices. This tantalizing tidbit comes from the personal blog of TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler, who reports …

    Mobile 1 Nov 17:27

  • The Silicon Valley mirror-tocracy

    Open ... And Shut Are these startups relevant to anyone outside the bubble?

    In the latest round of Silicon Valley navel-gazing, CNN's recent airing of Black in America gets technology prophet and pundit Michael Arrington on the record as not "know[ing] a single black entrepreneur." Well, maybe he doesn't. After all, for all the talk about Silicon Valley as a meritocracy, the truth is that it's more of …

    Small Biz 1 Nov 17:41

  • Asian countries dominate global spam deluge

    Dirty Dozen rankings acquire eastern flavour

    Asian countries collectively relayed more than half (50.1 per cent) of the world's spam last quarter. Although the USA remains the single worst offender, lax security in Asian nations meant many of the botnet drones spewing junk mail were located in countries such as South Korea and India. Asian countries disgorged 50.1 per …

    Spam 1 Nov 17:58

  • Activision banned me from Call of Duty gig, says exotic performer

    'She appears in WHAT kind of films?!?!'

    Dutch adult entertainment star and - apparently - avid gamer Kim Holland was uninvited from a VIP Call of Duty bash after Activision discovered what she does for a living. The erotic artiste was overjoyed at her emailed invitation to a party celebrating the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Who wouldn't be? Guests who …

    reghardware 1 Nov 18:25

  • Biden: The internet ain't broke, let's not fix it

    LCC US rejects calls for 'national barriers on information'

    US Vice President Joe Biden has made it clear that America is not interested in the sort of global internet rules that China and Russia have been calling for. China, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan proposed a voluntary "code of conduct" for information security to the UN in September. Countries following the code would have …

    Cloud Business 1 Nov 18:29

  • Chinese orbital docking starts long march to space station

    US commie hunt jumpstarted taikonaut takeoff

    China has successfully launched an unmanned capsule into orbit and is beginning to maneuver it into place for the nation’s first orbital docking. State media reports that a Shenzhou-8 capsule successfully blasted off from China’s launch platform in the Gobi desert atop an upgraded Long March-2F rocket, watched by Chinese vice …

    Space 1 Nov 18:43

  • Samsung demands iPhone 4S source code in Aussie row

    Yes, but what has France to say?

    Samsung is demanding the source code of the iPhone 4S firmware, while Apple wants copies of Samsung's contract with Qualcomm and both companies are looking to France in their Australian case. France is important, as that's where the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is based and where Samsung agreed to …

    PCs & Chips 1 Nov 20:05

  • Bill Gates strangled Microsoft's 'tablet for creatives'

    Windows, Office cannibalization concerns killed the Courier

    New details have emerged about who, why, and how Microsoft killed off its Courier dual-display tablet 18 months ago. The simple answers: Bill Gates, Windows, and abruptly. In a fascinating 3,000-word tale of woe and intrigue, Cnet's Jay Greene details the life and death of the Courier, and the internecine Microsoftian warfare …

    PCs & Chips 1 Nov 20:10

  • Critical Windows zero-day bug exploited by Duqu

    Trojan used booby-trapped Word file to spread

    The Duqu malware used to steal sensitive data from manufacturers of industrial systems exploits at least one previously unknown vulnerability in the kernel of Microsoft Windows, Hungarian researchers said. The zero-day vulnerability was triggered by a booby-trapped Word document that was recently discovered by researchers from …

    Malware 1 Nov 20:15

  • AT&T to offer first LTE phones this Sunday

    HTC and Samsung get the nod

    AT&T has announced that the first two phones for its nascent LTE network – the HTC Vivid and the verbosely monikered Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket – will be available this Sunday, November 6. In addition, AT&T's LTE service will expand on that date to include Boston, Washington DC, Baltimore, and Athens – the city in Georgia, …

    Mobile 1 Nov 21:04

  • Adobe buys Auditude

    Acquisition strategy increasingly Googlesque

    Adobe continues to spend up expanding its advertising business with the acquisition of Auditude, an online video ad management platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but speculation suggests the transaction was worth around $US100 million. Palo Alto based Auditude has raised nearly $US40 million in the past four years …

    Business 1 Nov 21:27

  • OpenBSD 5.0 reveals MAD-themed release

    What hath Alfred E. Neuman wrought?

    The OpenBSD Foundation has released version 5.0 of the popular operating system and has made it available for download – or for purchase via CD if you want the bonus party pack. The latest release includes better memory-control systems across a variety of architectures, new drivers for SCSI and 10GB Ethernet systems, and …

    Operating Systems 1 Nov 21:58

  • Curtin Uni inks instrument contract for WA radiotelescope

    Poseidon Scientific to build kit for Murchison array

    Curtin University has awarded a $AU1.3 million contract to Fremantle-based Poseidon Scientific Instruments to supply electronics packages for the Murchison Wide-field Array telescope. The MWA is part of a boom in radio-astronomy in Australia’s radio-quiet northwest. The region is also the site for Australia’s bid for the …

    Business 1 Nov 22:00

  • NZ ISP piracy law kicks in

    Download notices expose appalling musical tastes

    New Zealand’s first crop of internet content stealers will soon receive copyright infringement notices under the recently introduced ‘Skynet’ law. Around 75 internet users have been issued notices by their ISPs for illegal downloads. It is understood that the bulk of the piracy infringements were detected by the Recording …

    Law 1 Nov 22:30

  • Canberra ATM cracker refused bail

    Cash machine blagger stays in slammer

    A chronic gambler from the ACT has been denied bail over charges that he stole money from ATMs in late October. The 23-year-old, Luke Angus McLaren, is facing charges of theft and unauthorised modification of data, after posing as a technician, opening machines at the Belconnen Westfield mall, and according to police, …

    Policing 1 Nov 23:00

  • Cray results suffer from AMD delays

    History repeats itself, but won't threepeat

    Advanced Micro Devices has made business tough for supercomputer maker Cray once again. But it won't get a third chance. If Cray had its way, Advanced Micro Devices would have been shipping its 16-core "Interlagos" Opteron 6200 processors in volume for a few months already. But the 32 nanometer ramp at AMD wafer baker …

    HPC 1 Nov 23:03

  • Riverbed joins OpenStack gang

    Signs on dotted line

    Riverbed has become the latest vendor to take formal membership of the OpenStack community. The move is hardly surprising, since earlier this month Riverbed announced that its Whitewater appliances were being extended to include OpenStack and Azure clouds. Announcing its decision to join OpenStack, Riverbed said its focus …

    Cloud 1 Nov 23:30

  • Army of 'socialbots' steal gigabytes of Facebook user data

    Updated Social networks prone to large-scale infiltration

    A small array of scripts programmed to pass themselves off as real people stole 250 gigabytes worth of personal information from Facebook users in just eight weeks, researchers said in an academic report to be presented next month. The 102 “socialbots” included a name and picture of a fictitious Facebook user and used …

    ID 1 Nov 23:32