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16th November 2011 Archive

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  • Windows 8 aims to make security updates less painful

    Fewer restarts, less desktop clutter

    The next version of Microsoft's Windows operating system will introduce changes that are designed to make automatic updates less disruptive by eliminating popup notifications and reducing the number of times machines must be restarted. In a blog post published on Monday, Microsoft Program Manager for the Windows Update Group …

    Operating Systems 16 Nov 00:35

  • Hot Intel teraflops MIC coprocessor action in a hotel

    SC11 Sweet nothings whispered about Xeon E5 performance

    Intel did not make any announcements of new processors or coprocessors at the SC11 supercomputing conference in Seattle, but it came about as close as it could without actually doing it. Rajeeb Hazra, general manager of high performance computing at Intel, hosted a lunch briefing with journalists to show off two things. The …

    PCs & Chips 16 Nov 02:04

  • Microsoft moving embedded systems to Windows 8

    Win 8 for smart devices, CE for dumb ones

    Microsoft has outlined its strategy to bring Windows to the world of embedded systems, ranging from ATMs to the humblest embedded sensors. Within three months of launching the mainstream versions of Windows 8 client and server, Redmond promises a version of the OS for smart embedded devices, dubbed Windows Embedded Enterprise …

    Operating Systems 16 Nov 02:07

  • Confirmed: Animal Logic will animate Lego

    $AU48 million worth of CGI

    Sydney uber-animation house Animal Logic has secured the production for Warner Bros new animated feature film project based on Lego. The announcement confirms an earlier Variety story that Warner would greenlight the project, and will see around $AU48 million being spent in NSW which will include commitments to industry …

    Music and Media 16 Nov 03:07

  • Sony HMZ-T1 3D head mounted display

    Review Strap-on movies for your pleasure

    Watching a movie with Sony’s strap-on Personal 3D Head Mounted Display is one of the more extraordinary cinematic experiences you can have. Imagine the intensity of large screen IMAX somehow ciphered through display panels more befitting a digital camera. It’s like watching TV in a sensory deprivation tank: weird, uncomfortable …

    reghardware 16 Nov 07:00

  • Fourteenth century timekeeper turns up in Queensland

    What was a bit of brass to a child is a lot of brass to Bonhams

    The second-oldest known British scientific instrument in existence is going to auction next month after spending decades in a farm shed in Queensland. The “equal hour horary quadrant” – a timepiece for calculating time of day from the sun – is dated 1396, carries the badge of Richard II, and seems to have ended up in Australia …

    Bootnotes 16 Nov 07:45

  • Bishop to bless road salt supplies for added winter safety

    'The hoarfrost also as salt the LORD poureth on the earth'

    Supplies of road salt held at council depots in Lincolnshire are to be blessed by senior church figures in the hope that this will help in the expected winter battle against snow and icy roads. The Louth Leader has the story, reporting that no less an ecclesiastical figure than the Right Reverend Christopher Lowson, Bishop of …

    Bootnotes 16 Nov 08:03

  • Xio Storage CEO on his 290-mile commute

    Comment Leaders have to be smelled, not just heard

    I am stunned. Xio's new CEO has said he'll spend at least half his time at Xio's headquarters. Is he for real? We're told that this is better than previous CEO Alan Atkinson's turnout; he didn't have a Colorado base despite moving Xio to Colorado Springs. The new boss, John Beletic, has homes in Dallas, Texas, and Telluride, …

    Storage 16 Nov 08:21

  • London councils to spunk £25m on SAP deal

    Sadistic demand to model it on 'typical local gov'

    Haringey and Waltham Forest councils have advertised for a framework contract to deliver an SAP solution valued at between £12m and £25m. In a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union the two London councils say the eight-year deal will cover a wide range of services. They include software development, project …

    Government 16 Nov 08:39

  • Cable broadband making more money than cable telly

    Easier piping stuff than providing it, says Virgin Media

    Virgin Media makes the bulk of its money from its cable customers in the UK according to the company's quarterly filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And a mild increase in revenues from its cable broadband business fuelled the last quarter for the telecom and media company. For the three months ended …

    Telecoms 16 Nov 08:58

  • Samsung pulls Galaxy Tab Android 3.2 update

    Wi-Fi only tablet loses... Wi-Fi

    Samsung has yanked the Android 3.2 Honeycomb update it posted last night for the Wi-Fi only version of its Galaxy Tab 10.1in after it quickly emerged that the software disables Wi-Fi. Certainly, that's happened to a fair few folk who did perform the update before the software was pulled. That said, not everyone appears to have …

    reghardware 16 Nov 08:59

  • Fusion plays its card: The Ten of Terabytes

    Single PCIe card could hold ALL MUCH KNOWLEDGE

    Fusion-io has crammed eight ioDrive flash modules on one PCIe card to give servers 10TB of app-accelerating flash. This follows on from its second generation ioDrives: PCIe-connected flash cards using single level cell and multi-level cell flash to provide from 400GB to 2.4TB of flash memory, which can be used by applications …

    Storage 16 Nov 09:12

  • Nokia exec confirms 2012 Windows 8 tablet release

    Firm wants to be the BMW of smartphones

    Nokia will indeed release a Windows 8-based tablet next year, the head of the Finnish phone firm's French operation has confirmed. "In June 2012, we will have a tablet that runs on Windows 8," Paul Amsellem told French newspaper Les Echos. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop hinted earlier this month that such a gadget might be in the …

    reghardware 16 Nov 09:27

  • Bagged salad contained decomposed AVIAN CORPSE

    Bloke failed to notice, served it to missus anyway

    A Tesco's baby leaf and rocket salad harboured a gruesome interloper – a decomposed bird carcass. Somerset man Paul Streeter unwittingly served up the grisly corpse to his girlfriend and children, after emptying the bagged salad into a bowl and serving it to them with a pizza. Streeter said his girlfriend cut into the bird …

    Bootnotes 16 Nov 09:31

  • Call off the hunt! Ex-Xio sales boss found in flash biz

    Start-up SolidFire lures Glasgow

    The mystery of why Xio's storage head took a hike and where he went is solved: Mark Glasgow jumped ship to join flash start-up SolidFire, which, having got $21m in fresh funding, can afford to pay him. SolidFire launched its clustered flash memory arrays in the summer, and they feature thin provisioning, compression and …

    Storage 16 Nov 09:46

  • HP unwraps Ultrabook

    Biz-centric box for the curve-averse

    HP will release its first Ultrabook next month, though it will pitch the product at business rather than consumers. The HP Folio 13 is an 18mm-thick, 1.5kg 13.3in machine with a 128GB SSD and a choice of Intel Core i Sandy Bridge processors. Not exactly Apple MacBook Air or Acer Aspire S3 svelte, is it? The keyboard is …

    reghardware 16 Nov 09:50

  • New 'nauts move into International Space Station

    Russian rocket delivers them intact

    The Russian Soyuz TMA-22 that's carrying a new batch of crew members for the International Space Station (ISS) has successfully docked and offloaded its passengers. NASA TV broadcast the docking live at 4.24AM GMT, nine minutes ahead of schedule. The Russians made it look easy this time, which must be a relief after …

    Space 16 Nov 09:59

  • UK broadband speeds crippled during 'rush hour'

    Too much traffic on the line

    Broadband download speeds in the UK dramatically fall at peak times, according to new research by online comparison site uSwitch. The outfit said that between 7pm and 9pm, download speeds drop off by an average of 35 per cent when most people are accessing the internet from home. It based the company's findings on more than …

    Wireless 16 Nov 10:11

  • NFC in a SIM: They might just have done it

    Inside Secure demonstrates NFC in every phone

    It's not the first time the claim has been made, but this time it's backed, and demonstrated, by a reputable manufacturer, so every phone could be getting NFC soon. Inside Secure is an established player in the smart card industry, and promises to demonstrate a SIM with embedded Near Field Communications circuitry at the …

    Wireless 16 Nov 10:21

  • Time to dig out the CV: NASA 'naut applications now open

    Got a PhD? Pilot licence? American? Apply within

    In October NASA announced it will recruit a new batch of astronauts - and today the application process opened. If you're an American citizen, preferably with a science PhD and a test pilot licence, you have until Friday, 27 January, 2012 to get your CV over. NASA has nine to 15 positions available and its training centre is …

    Space 16 Nov 10:31

  • Five... great network games for iOS

    iGamer Unreal tournaments

    If the thought of multi-player games in iOS conjures up images of two people huddled over an iPad, fingers battling for screen space, think again. Sure, there are multi-player games like that, but there are many more which don’t involve invading each other’s personal space. You can hook up two devices using Bluetooth, connect …

    reghardware 16 Nov 10:35

  • Apple elects new chairman, cosies up to Mickey Mouse

    Levinson hoisted, Disney CEO jumps on board

    Apple has elevated long-time director Arthur Levinson to chairman of its board in another sign of post-Jobsian change at the fruity firm. The Jesus-mobe maker didn't actually have an official chairman of the board when Steve Jobs came back to Cupertino in the 1990s, although to all intents and purposes Jobs was the chairman. …

    Business 16 Nov 10:41

  • Too rude for the road: DVLA hot list of banned numberplates

    What idiot would buy PE12 VRT anyway?

    The Register has obtained a list of the rudest words you'll never see on car number plates: the official list of banned registration marks from the Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Authority (DVLA). We almost don't want to sully the pure reputation of our website by publishing all the combinations of letters and numbers on our …

    Government 16 Nov 10:50

  • Reg man the most-flamed recruiter in the UK?

    FoTW Dom Connor IS 'the unemployment problem', readers declare

    Last week's article by Dominic Connor on how some techies really, really need some help with their CVs hit a number of nerves. Image via Shutterstock It's quite possible that this single piece will earn Dominic The Reg's annual most flamed writer award for 2011. Now, we know you're busy people, so here are some of the …

    Small Biz 16 Nov 11:00

  • Thai floods pour cold water on Dell's stiff growth

    Enterprise, beam us up!

    Dell practically wrote off any chances for meaningful top line growth this year, blaming the uncertain global economy and the disk drive drought crisis. The Texan tech titan last night reported flat sales for Q3 at $15.4bn (£9.77bn) and warned Wall St to expect more of the same in the final three months of its fiscal 2012. " …

    Channel Register 16 Nov 11:09

  • HP revamps Envy laptop line

    New look, more power

    HP has restyled its 15in and 17in Envy laptops, kitting them out in a "timeless design that includes an all-metal chassis with rounded edges in a classic black and silver finish". Performance comes from quad-core Intel Core i7 CPUs, up to 16GB of DDR 3 memory, plus AMD Radeon HD discrete GPUs with 1GB of GDDR 5 video memory …

    reghardware 16 Nov 11:15

  • Drama as Thai frogmen struggle to save world PC market

    Elite navy divers sent in to salvage flood-hit disk fabs

    The Thai government has dispatched a crack squad of navy divers in a bid to glean WD factory equipment currently lost below metres of flood water. It is now more than a month since the flooding devastated parts of the country with 562 people confirmed dead, four million households affected and 14,000 factories inundated – …

    Channel Register 16 Nov 11:19

  • Sunderland hires IBM to build cloud infrastructure

    Part of its 'economic masterplan' for digital domination

    The UK city of Sunderland is continuing its bid to be the most digitally connected in the country with a cloud computing platform for its city council. Sunderland has recruited IBM to build the new city-wide cloud infrastructure, which the council insists will be good for individuals and businesses as well as the council …

    Government 16 Nov 11:29

  • Sony to target Sky, Virgin with net telly channel

    PSTV inbound?

    Sony is exploring how to expand its existing IPTV efforts into a fully-fledged service to compete with cable and satellite TV. The Japanese firm has approached various media companies about gaining the rights to stream Sony's TV channels, as well as other already-established ones, over the web in the US, According to people " …

    reghardware 16 Nov 11:30

  • Official: Facebook filth flood nowt to do with Fawkes virus

    Ordinary indecent criminals

    Facebook has blamed a scam that tricks users into pasting rogue code into their browsers for the sudden torrent of filth in users' walls. Users of the social network were shocked to see pornographic photoshopped images of Justin Bieber, images of an abused dog and other disturbing content on their friends' Walls as a result of …

    Malware 16 Nov 11:41

  • US stealth bombers finally get nuke-nobbling super bomb

    15-ton steel pencil ready to spike underground factories

    Long-delayed plans to equip American stealth bombers with super-heavy penetrator bombs – similar to those employed by British bombers against hardened Nazi targets in WWII – have finally been completed, offering the US a possibly timely option to destroy deeply buried nuclear weapons factories. Bombs away makes bombs go away …

    Government 16 Nov 11:51

  • Stripper nicked for 'nicking knickers' with kids in tow

    'I can't believe this is happening ... again'

    A Florida stripper faces shoplifting and child cruelty charges after allegedly topping up her lingerie drawer for free with her kids in tow. Ashley Fleischmann was allegedly spotted on CCTV at the Burlington Coat Factory in Orlando lifting several items from the smalls department, before leaving without paying, the Orlando …

    Bootnotes 16 Nov 12:02

  • Gov justifies e-petitions as MPs mull upping debate threshold

    100,000 online votes too small a barrier to cross

    The Coalition government's e-petitions website has been defended by the team working on the Cabinet Office's digital-by-default agenda, after politicos considered upping the 100,000-votes-to-get-it-debated-in-the-Commons threshold. In a post on the government digital service blog, Peter Herlihy - delivery manager for the GovUK …

    Government 16 Nov 12:11

  • Acer Aspire S3 Core i7 Ultrabook

    Review First among equals?

    The Acer Aspire S3 is a major new entrant to the emerging market for ‘ultraportables’ – ultra-thin but powerful notebook PCs with reduced components to keep the space and weight to a minimum. It won’t suit everyone, but if you like the idea of a portable Windows computer than can be carried in one hand or tucked under your …

    reghardware 16 Nov 12:16

  • Japanese telco to splurge £2bn a year on LTE

    NTT Docomo to roll out network and mobiles by 2015

    Japan's largest mobile phone operator plans to spend a total of 880bn yen (£7.26bn) to rollout its LTE network and launch LTE-enabled phones. The sum will be spent up to fiscal 2015, NTT Docomo chief exec and president Ryuji Yamada said at a mobile conference in Hong Kong, Reuters reported. The carrier, already the biggest …

    Wireless 16 Nov 12:21

  • TalkTalk gears up to 2012 YouView roll-out

    Test in Q1, launch in the Spring

    YouView, the UK's 'IPTV Freeview', is "on track" to launch in 2012, participant telco TalkTalk has said. TalkTalk, posting its interim financial results, said: "Development within the YouView team is progressing well, and within TalkTalk we are making great progress on provisioning capability. "We are on track to offer a …

    reghardware 16 Nov 12:24

  • Chinese boffin uses panda poo for world's priciest cuppa

    Mmm, a truly extinctive aroma....

    A Chinese biologist has collected five tons of panda crap which he plans to use to make cancer-fighting tea, which will sell at a cup-dropping $36,000 a pound. An Yashi, a lecturer from Sichuan, reckons the panda scat is chock full of cancer combating substances, making it an ideal fertiliser for green tea - already famously …

    Bootnotes 16 Nov 12:31

  • Two bosses axed in Azlan makeover

    Enterprise distie cuddles up to vendors

    Azlan made two senior managers redundant as part of a planned restructure. The enterprise wing of Computer 2000 is moving from a structure based on vertical markets to one that is based on vendor partners. An HP, IBM and Cisco division will be put in place as a starting point. As a result, unified comms marketing director …

    Channel Register 16 Nov 12:39

  • Jobs mulled building own mobile network for iPhones

    World's most famous control freak wanted to bypass telcos

    Telecoms execs will be shifting nervously in their seats today as news filters out of a near miss for their business models. Steve Jobs wanted to ditch the mobile operators and make his own network for iPhones when he thrust them upon the world in 2007, says John Stanton, a wireless industry pioneer. Stanton was speaking in …

    Mobile 16 Nov 12:39

  • Proposed US piracy legislation labelled draconian by Schmidt

    'Laws hit our bottom line! And besides, it's censorship'...

    Google chairman Eric Schmidt has lambasted the US government's attempts to stop online piracy, saying the proposed new laws are "draconian". America's lawmakers are trying to stem the tide of web piracy and keep their entertainment behemoths happy with two new pieces of legislation. The Stop Online Piracy Act is currently …

    Law 16 Nov 12:51

  • The Register Guide on how to stay anonymous (part 3)

    Part 3 Browser privacy at work

    Enterprise browser usage is a messy subject. The enterprise is not what it once was; the days of the homogeneous Windows empire are past. Not only are alternative operating systems like Apple's OS X gaining traction in the enterprise, but the desktop is no longer a browser administrator's only concern. The consumerisation of …

    Security 16 Nov 13:00

  • DOOMSDAY 2012 MEGA VOLCANO 'UNLIKELY' - NASA

    'There's no way to be sure though'

    US space agency NASA, in its self-appointed role as 2012 apocalypse denier to the world, has issued another statement regarding a terrifying catastrophe which in its opinion will not befall the Earth and the human race. This time the possible planetary catastrophe is the menace posed by gigantic so-called "supervolcanoes", …

    Energy 16 Nov 13:09

  • Goldman Sachs slapped over iPad price-cut call

    Investment banker talking 'absolute nonsense'

    Apple is unlikely to slash the price of its fondleslab this Christmas as margins are too low, despite a warning from Goldman Sachs that the premium is out of kilter with hard-pressed consumers and sales could suffer this Xmas. Investment analyst Bill Shope has warned clients to think the unthinkable and closely monitor unit …

    Channel Register 16 Nov 13:21

  • New iPhone and Android mobes secure enough for spooks

    Platforms to get some serious security packages to rival BlackBerry

    Feds and spooks will shortly be able to use iPads and Androids for government business, as new software aims to seal and protect leaky open Android and iPhone platforms. A security revamp for Android and iOS handsets would mean that a whole range of techie tools could get used for US Federal business; currently only BlackBerry …

    Government 16 Nov 13:32

  • Mozilla stirs netizens against US anti-piracy law

    Dancing cats take-down threat

    Mozilla is rallying netizens to take action against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), otherwise known as the internet blacklist legislation. Mozilla's urging people to spread the word about the damage SOPA - better known as known as H.R.3261 - could cause to the internet and free speech. As well as its Protect the …

    Law 16 Nov 13:41

  • Data Protection Directive revamp: UK looking sidelined?

    Opinion Economic protectionism could mean more than privacy

    The EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission, and the German Federal Minister for Consumer Protection, Ilse Aigner, have come forward with a joint statement claiming that proposals to reform the 1995 Data Protection Directive will be published by the end of January 2012. It is clear …

    Small Biz 16 Nov 13:49

  • Equipping pre-teens with web mobes spreads beyond West

    Four in five eight-year-olds tote mobiles in Cairo

    Egyptian parents are most eager to connect their children, with four out of five furnishing their eight-year-old children with mobiles, but the rest of the world isn't far behind. The figures come from the GSMA, representing the GSM industry, which polled 3,500 families across Japan, India, Paraguay and Egypt to see how …

    Mobile 16 Nov 14:01

  • Avere destroys NetApp benchmark after just 13 DAYS

    Rival plots SPECsfs2008 payback

    Well, that didn't last long: just 13 days. Filer accelerator Avere has shown it has real teeth by sinking them into NetApp's ankles and pulling it off the top of the SPECsfs2008 NFS benchmark hill by achieving a new record SPECsfs2008 score. Avere's appliances use multiple solid state and spinning disk tiers as caches for …

    Channel Register 16 Nov 14:14

  • IPhone overtakes BlackBerry in the corporate world

    Mobile workers would be 'distraught' without handsets

    Mobile workers are giving up almost an hour every working day in sleep and exercise time, thanks to being able to work on the mobile devices which almost half of them had to pay for. The figures come from iPass, provider of single-log-on services for remote workers, which gathered the data by surveying 2,300 of its customers …

    Small Biz 16 Nov 14:23

  • BT, Fujitsu in final pole dance rehearsals

    Pair get ducts in a row for infrastructure sharing

    BT is still ironing out "points of detail" with Fujitsu over the national telco's pricing and product development plans to open up its duct and pole infrastructure (PIA). The telco finally caved in to regulatory and ISP pressure by bringing down the prices of PIA for rival operators to gain access to its pole and telegraph …

    Networks 16 Nov 14:31

  • Object storage suppliers: We want your big data

    Claim to be fast and cheap

    As the general big data trend gathers momentum, the various object storage suppliers are trumpeting their technology's advantages over file systems, saying they can store and protect vast volumes of data more efficiently and with faster access. Henry Baltazar, a senior analyst in The 451 Group, says: "Object storage, and cloud …

    Storage 16 Nov 14:41

  • Facebook says it's winning against Justin Bieber smut onslaught

    Scrubs punters' walls clean of bogus celeb porn

    Facebook said it is well on the way to cleaning up a noxious slurry of porn and pictures of dead animals left by a spam campaign that targeted users' walls this week. The attack - which resulted in punters being greeted by an avalanche of photoshopped pornographic images of Justin Bieber - involved tricking users into pasting …

    Cloud Business 16 Nov 14:51

  • SCC11: LINPACK results released

    Shocker in Seattle, Longshot comes through

    The results from the LINPACK portion of the Student Cluster Competition in Seattle have been released. This brief (barely three minute) video reveals all, including a short discussion of the LINPACK rules, the winner, individual team results, and the last odds as voted by Register readers. Knowledgeable readers who made their …

    SC 2011 16 Nov 14:52

  • Army raygun to boost power with starlight de-twinkling tech

    Cool astronomer tool to make laser blasts extra hot

    The US Army, in the process of building an enormous raygun on a lorry, has decided that it will enhance its laser cannon of the future by the use of adaptive optics - a crafty technology employed in telescopes by astronomers to eliminate the effects of the atmosphere on starlight. Under the High Energy Laser Technology …

    Government 16 Nov 15:07

  • Boffins reckon Mars quite blustery actually

    Shifting sand dunes caused by wind, not carbon dioxide frost

    A new geophysical study of Mars' sand dunes has claimed that the Red Planet may be a windy place after all, despite the evidence of previous experiments. The shifting red sands of the planet have up till now been attributed to carbon dioxide ice sublimation, since boffins believed that strong winds weren't a possibility in the …

    Space 16 Nov 15:21

  • Just trolling: It's OK to poke fun at Christians, says ASA

    Film ad claimed monsters can smell God botherer blood

    The fact that trolls can smell Christian blood is well-known, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has ruled, and a reference to it in a fake job advert used to promote a film was unlikely to cause widespread offence, it said today. After receiving two complaints about the advert "Troll Hunters Required" listed in The …

    Music and Media 16 Nov 15:44

  • Star Wars 3D holo displays becomes a reality

    Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope

    Boffins are one step closer to making R2-D2's holographic projector tech a reality, through a 3D display which makes images appear in mid-air with a rapidly moving laser beam. Produced by Japanese outfit Burton and based on developments from AIST and Keio University, the display is able to produce around 50,000 'pixels' per …

    reghardware 16 Nov 15:55

  • Brandjacked Google+ page slings insults at Bank of America

    Who really occupies identity street?

    America's biggest banking institution had its brand dragged through Web2.0rhea, after an imposter pretended to be the Bank of America on a newly-created and quickly deleted Google+ page. As noted by TalkingPointsMemo.com, the fake profile was apparently created just a day after the Chocolate Factory launched its Google+ Pages …

    Business 16 Nov 16:01

  • Boffins discover prehistoric moth's dayglo green warning

    You eat me, I'll kill you...

    Boffins have reconstructed how a 47-million-year-old moth fossil looked while alive: a psychedelically-coloured insect whose wings both camouflaged it and warned away predators. An artist's impression of the original colours of the moth. Credit: McNamara, ME et al. PLoS Biology The moth once had yellow, green, blue and …

    Biology 16 Nov 16:19

  • Politicians call for Modern Warfare 3 censure

    Will no one think of the children (who shouldn't be playing it anyway)?

    Four MPs have tabled a motion calling of Parliament to express "deep concern" about how videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 allows players to "engage in gratuitous acts of violence against members of the public". The MPs are Keith Vaz (Labour, Leicester East), Bob Russell (Lib Dem, Colchester), Sir Alan Meale (Lab, …

    reghardware 16 Nov 16:36

  • Cloud's new rules promise old-school satisfaction

    Open... and Shut Common ground for IT groups

    Cloud computing is big business, in part because companies are happy to shell out lots of cash to buy themselves time and development flexibility. In this quest to displace the operations bottleneck that exists within enterprises, developers are taking on more of the operations role for themselves and to reduce this new burden …

    Cloud Business 16 Nov 16:41

  • Bethesda promises fix for Skyrim Xbox graphics glitch

    Multi-platform patches coming

    Games developer Bethesda insists it will address all reported bugs in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim through a patch for all platforms. Despite glowing reviews, a fair few bugs have begun to annoy players. Dealing with the problems One issue affects those who installed the game on their Xbox 360 consoles: graphics that don't look …

    reghardware 16 Nov 17:06

  • Sharon Stone greets returning US troops ... with a web vid

    Not the most welcoming she's ever looked on screen

    A wave of frenzy failed to greet Hollywood star Sharon Stone when she officially welcomed home US troops from serving duty in Iraq and Afghanistan today - with a video posted on Facebook. It would seem that these days a sleb need only offer such a heart-warming message via a social network. In 1954 it was very different when …

    Music and Media 16 Nov 17:19

  • Huge potentially inhabited water lake found on Jupiter moon

    Europa ice-cap now best known prospect for alien life

    In major extra-terrestrial news, scientists have announced the first discovery of at least one huge body of liquid water beyond planet Earth, offering confirmation at last of a potential offworld habitat for alien life. The water in question - roughly enough to fill one of the North American Great Lakes - has been spotted …

    Space 16 Nov 18:00

  • Nekkid Tech: The Fab Four

    Podcast Watching porn on an iPad

    So we used to run episodes of Infosmack, an enterprise storage podcast, on The Reg. But then the founders went their own ways - creative differences or something - and we went ours. Infosmack co-found Greg Knieriemen has returned to the fray with a new show, called Nekkid Tech - it's kinda similar, but with a wider remit that's …

    Hardware 16 Nov 18:23

  • Facebook vows 'consequences' for extreme porn scammers

    Updated Responsible parties already identified

    Facebook officials have tracked down the scammers responsible for deluging the social network with images depicting bestiality, self-mutilation and other depravity and is vowing to seek swift justice. As previously reported, Facebook has blamed the torrent of extreme smut on a "self-XSS vulnerability in the browser" that …

    Security 16 Nov 18:52

  • Google 'obstructed' Senate hearing on copyright

    See no evil, do no evil

    Google "obstructed" a bipartisan congressional committee into copyright, claimed Lamar Smith, the head of the House Judiciary Committee in hearings today. Smith also raised Google's defiance over rogue sites selling controlled substances. Google continued to run keyword auctions on pharmaceutical sites for six years after it …

    Government 16 Nov 19:01

  • Amazon's new Kindle Fire stripped naked

    Divining the entrails of the low-cost iPad competitor

    Amazon's Kindle Fire – arguably the most-anticipated fondleslab since Apple's iPad – was released on Tuesday, and already the techno-haruspicationists at iFixit have torn one apart and examined its entrails. The Kindle Fire – can we just start calling it the Fire? thanks – is already a hit among developers and has caused a …

    Mobile 16 Nov 19:03

  • Virtualisation: just a lot of extra software licences?

    Counting the cost

    A colleague of mine recently remarked that x86 virtualisation makes no sense to any organisation that is cost conscious. I am an early adopter of virtualisation and wanted to know what he meant. “When using virtualisation, you are paying for far more software licences than you would if you were to take the time to implement …

    Enterprise Tech 16 Nov 19:31

  • Microsoft takes fight to Google over cloud apps defections

    Redmond strike team offering big bounties and more

    Microsoft is so riled up over Google Apps that it has a team called Google Compete offering major inducements to convince customers to stay with Office, according to defectors and the search company itself. At this week’s Google Atmosphere conference, several defectors who had adopted Google cloud apps said that they were …

    Cloud Business 16 Nov 20:27

  • Oz cloud outfit wins angel backers

    Baxter and Bell take on the cloud

    Australia's burgeoning cloud investment has had another top-up with OrionVM getting angel dollars from two technology heavyweights. PIPE networks co-founder Stephen Baxter and micro-computing architect Gordon Bell have tipped in an undisclosed investment in the company and will providing mentoring guidance. Founded by a group …

    Business 16 Nov 21:33

  • IBM pushes BlueGene/Q to 100 petaflops

    SC11 Weather boffins buy Power 775 super nodes

    If all things had gone well and as expected with the IBM "Blue Waters" contract with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, the Power 775 supercomputer nodes and their homegrown networking infrastructure would have been the big event at the SC11 supercomputer conference in Seattle this …

    HPC 16 Nov 21:57

  • BIND security update protects against serious server crash

    Updated Attacks may already be underway

    The Internet Systems Consortium is advising BIND users to update immediately to protect against a bug that may already be under attack to crash vulnerable servers. The ISC says an unidentified network event caused BIND 9 resolvers to cache an invalid record, and when subsequent queries requested the invalid record, the servers …

    Enterprise Security 16 Nov 22:17

  • Primus joins AGIMO panel

    Selected for Melb data hosting digs

    Primus Australia has secured a spot on the Federal Government's Data Centre Facilities Panel, offering services from its Melbourne based data hosting facilities. The five year panel created by the Australian Government Information Management Office’s (AGIMO), was established under the Federal Government’s Data Centre Strategy …

    Cloud 16 Nov 22:30

  • Too many cooks spoil the data warehouse broth

    Cut your staffing costs

    In many organisations the costs of data warehousing are expressed on the balance sheet as the hardware, software and administration costs that support the operation. In practice, many hidden costs are associated with the data warehouse with the structure of an organisation. So says Mark Thomas, IBM’s Infosphere and data …

    Data Warehousing 16 Nov 23:00

  • Kindle Fire gets root access

    Bug, feature, or ‘don’t really care’?

    You’d have to think that Amazon doesn’t really care whether people give themselves root access to its e-readers, since the Kindle Fire has been “rooted” two days post-launch. A post to the XDA Developer forum signed death2all110 demonstrates that someone using the Android Debug Bridge and SuperOneClick 2.2 can get root access …

    Hardware 16 Nov 23:00

  • Amazon gooses HPC cloud with Xeon E5s

    SC11 Passes the Linpack speed test

    Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing unit of the online retailing giant, has been peddling special HPC instances of its EC2 cloud for more than a year now. This week, in conjunction with the SC11 supercomputing conference in Seattle, the company announced that it has beefed up its HPC cloud with the new Xeon E5 processors …

    HPC 16 Nov 23:25