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21st November 2011 Archive

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  • CSIRO opens tender for Pawsey petascale powerhouse

    Vendors to beat a path to Perth

    The CSIRO has opened the tender for petascale iron for the Pawsey Centre, and is conducting an industry briefing in Perth on November 30. Listed in the RFP, which is open until 6 January 2012, are a petascale supercomputer and realtime computer; HSM storage and tape library; networking, including a firewall, border router, and …

    HPC 21 Nov 00:01

  • Teacher investigated over mysluttyteacher smut site

    Genuine school miss, real cop fingered in web sauce probe

    A California teacher has been suspended while authorities investigate claims she ran a series of porn websites from a school computer in partnership with a local retired cop. Heidi Kaeslin, 35, has had her school-issued Mac confiscated by the Lincoln Unified School District, the Stockton Record explains. Officials are …

    Entertainment 21 Nov 08:27

  • Scotland Yard e-cops 'fighting to save Xmas'

    Digital detectives smash 2,000 bent shopping websites

    UK cybercops have managed to dismantle more than 2,000 fraudulent shopping websites that have ripped off thousands. The Met's Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) hopes smashing the online rogue traders will make online shopping in the run-up to Christmas much safer. The dodgy sites targeted by the action purported to sell a …

    Small Biz 21 Nov 08:57

  • Hire-car data scraper becomes Catcher in the Rye

    Big Blue 'ware used to spot kids headed for trouble

    Software used to target ads for rental cars has been successfully applied to keeping British youngsters in education or employment after leaving school. The predictive risk modelling software from IBM was turned to an unusual use by the Kent-based Medway Youth Trust after an employee had a brainwave. Aware that it is easier …

    Applications 21 Nov 09:14

  • Truly unlimited mobile for $19: How can it be true?

    Crafty, seamless WiFi auto-logon - that's how

    Next year Americans will be able to get unlimited mobile calling, and data, for $19 a month with Republic Wireless, in a deal which is nearly, but not quite, perfect. Republic Wireless achieves its remarkable pricing by offloading as much traffic as possible, voice and data, onto wi-fi networks. But not its own wi-fi networks …

    Networks 21 Nov 09:27

  • Spyhunting US pols to crawl up Huawei and ZTE's ass

    Ex-FBI congressman burnishes microscope

    US lawmakers have launched an investigation into the threat of cyber espionage from Chinese telecoms firms operating in the US, singling out Huawei and ZTE. The House of Representatives committee on intelligence said yesterday that it was focused on the threat to America's security and critical infrastructure coming from "the …

    Data Networking 21 Nov 09:43

  • CableJive DockBoss Plus

    Geek Treat of the Week Android fans - now you can use iDevice docks too

    Reg Hardware is always inundated with speaker systems for the iPhone and iPod in the run-up to Christmas, but there are still relatively few sets of speakers designed to dock Android phones. Yes, most iPod and iPhone speaker-docks do have an 3.5mm aux port that will allow you to connect almost any audio source – but a mere …

    reghardware 21 Nov 10:00

  • Riders of the Bearded Sage

    Stob Is that a dead parrot in your pocket, or are you just trying to please me?

    Ever since Richard Stallman hit the news ... Whoa there, Verity! Not so fast. Let me check I have this straight. We are talking about the gun-toter who wrote that definitive episode of Frost that everybody is supposed to have seen. Murder in the Cathedral I think it is called. Right? No. You are probably thinking of Eric …

    Verity Stob 21 Nov 10:11

  • Chief rabbi: Steve Jobs' Apple lust spreads misery, despair

    'iPhone, iPad, I, I, I,' says tablet-blasting Sacks

    Steve Jobs has created a consumer society that makes many of us sad because we don't have the latest iPhone, said the UK's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Speaking at an interfaith gathering attended by the Queen, Sacks compared the iPad to the tablets of the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from the mountains. “The …

    Developer 21 Nov 10:20

  • Virtualised storage: the perfect space-saving solution

    Make the most of your disks

    In case you have been living under a rock for the past month or so, we are in the middle of a hard drive shortage. Now that we can’t simply add more drives at will, storage utilisation has suddenly become important again. It should not have taken this crisis to shine a light on this topic; we are reminded at regular intervals …

    Network Futures 21 Nov 10:30

  • Coder creates Siri proxy

    Voice control for all your toys?

    An enterprising coder has created a proxy server for Apple's Siri, the voice assistant integrated into the iPhone 4S but driven by an Apple server. Siri Proxy sits between the 4S on a Wi-Fi connection and the internet bridge to Apple's guzzoni.apple.com server, which interprets the voice recording and squirts back the decode …

    reghardware 21 Nov 10:31

  • SQUID calls 'virtual photons' into real existence

    Hyperdrive mirror plucks light from the quantum vacuum

    While “vacuum fluctuations” – one of the stranger predictions of quantum physics – have been observed for some time, a team comprising scientists from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the University of University of New South Wales have gone one step further, creating their own photons out of empty space. Here’s …

    Physics 21 Nov 10:39

  • Making sense of SharePoint 2010

    Customising, extending and sharing

    Adoption of Microsoft SharePoint is growing rapidly, with Microsoft reporting “double-digit growth” in its latest financials, yet it remains widely misunderstood. What can you do with SharePoint, what is the difference between the free SharePoint Foundation and the full product, and what are the pros and cons? Microsoft calls …

    Desktop 21 Nov 10:48

  • Amazon Kindle Fire: $199 to buy, $202 to make

    Subsidised tablet's parts priced

    Amazon's Kindle Fire e-book reader tablet costs more to manufacture than the online retailer is charging punters for it. According to a take-apart conducted by market watcher iSuppli, the bits inside the Fire total $201.70. That comprises $185.60 for the parts, $16.10 for Amazon's contract manufacturer to put them all together …

    reghardware 21 Nov 10:52

  • Nokia's Great Lost Platform

    Special Report Could've been a contender...

    Nokia has undergone a dramatic convulsion this year, abandoning its two smartphone software platforms, and allying itself with Microsoft. The company’s software was widely seen as uncompetitive, and hadn’t moved with the demands of the market. Nokia has also missed out on the most explosive hardware growth area in recent years. …

    Mobile 21 Nov 11:00

  • Keep it simple with one-size-fits-all networking

    No more crossed wires

    This isn’t the sort of thing that sysadmins usually admit to, but I have recently developed a grudging sort of respect for cable monkeys. This is a difficult statement to make: sysadmins despise cabling. All too many of us think it is beneath us, our time is too valuable to be spent on such mundane tasks, cabling is a waste of …

    Enterprise Tech 21 Nov 11:11

  • EA sued over broken Battlefield pledge

    Free game AWOL

    EA is facing court action after unhappy fans accused the publisher of reneging on a promise to include a free copy of Battlefield 1943 with the PlayStation 3 version of Battlefield 3. US law firm Edelson McGuire has filed a class action suit against EA on behalf of unhappy PlayStation gamers in a bid to get them the free copy …

    reghardware 21 Nov 11:14

  • 'Occupy Flash' web hippies aim to rid world of Adobe plugin

    Anti-Flash mob not actually occupying anywhere, though

    An "Occupy Flash" website is urging PC users to rip Adobe's ubiquitous media player off their computers and embrace HTML5. The Occupy Flash site describes its goal as ridding the world of Adobe's Flash Player plug-in because, it says, HTML5 has won the future of the web. Adobe earlier this month admitted it is no longer …

    Developer 21 Nov 11:21

  • Apple to outship HP in 2012 says analyst firm

    Tablets keeping PC biz on growth trajectory

    Market watcher Canalys has bullishly forecast that Apple will begin to ship more personal computers than current market leader HP at some point during H1 2012. The caveat: you have to include iPad shipments in the total. Apple could out-ship HP during Q4, Canalys reckons, but it admitted the fruit-flavoured firm may have to …

    reghardware 21 Nov 11:26

  • Bill Gates summoned in antitrust case that WILL NOT DIE

    Unkillable legal zombie reaches out of grave once again

    Microsoft chairman Bill Gates will be quizzed in court today in the antitrust suit that will not die - the one first brought by Novell against the firm in 2004. Novell accuses MS of unfairly restricting competition for Novell's WordPerfect and Quattro Pro programs, a word processor and a spreadsheet app that it owned for a …

    Law 21 Nov 11:32

  • Swearing fine quashed as teens have heard it all before

    Fair f*cking shout, your honour

    Shouting obscenities in public should no longer be considered offensive as teenagers and coppers have heard it all before. The judgment, which may or may not be decried as a fucking outrage by the police and other legal authorities, came from the court of appeal last week. Denzel Harvey, 20, was appealing against a £50 fine …

    Policing 21 Nov 11:43

  • Why have VCs hosed down an obscure startup with cash?

    Our man ponders on the secret that has money men drooling

    Lookout provides mobile phone protection and management services in a friendly Mozy pre-EMC kind of way, kind of like a helpful uncle, but its revenue potential seems to be making VCs salivate. Look at this funding history: $5.5m in A-round in December 2009 $11m in B-round in May 2010 $19.5m in C-round in December 2010 $ …

    Developer 21 Nov 11:52

  • Bug silences Samsung Galaxy Nexus

    Ice Cream Sarnie smartphone experiences audio freeze

    It looks like Vodafone was right to hold off on the release of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone, which went on sale last week, is infuriating punters with a particularly annoying bug. The glitch sees the handset drop the audio volume of its own accord. The phone goes suddenly silent, without …

    reghardware 21 Nov 11:53

  • Man sues boss for 'condemning him to eternal damnation'

    666 sticker was portal to hell, argues Christian

    An American man has brought a wrongful dismissal suit over his former employer's attempt to make him wear the number of the beast - in the guise of a safety record sticker. Billy E Hyatt alleges that he was fired from the Pliant Corp plastics factory in northern Georgia for refusing to wear a sticker declaring the factory had …

    Bootnotes 21 Nov 11:59

  • RIM BlackBerry Curve 9360 Qwerty smartphone

    Review Thumbs up?

    There’s been a rash of activity from RIM recently, with a range of subtly different BlackBerry models designed to appeal to different segments of the smart phone market. The Curve 9360 is towards the budget end but still packs in a full Qwerty hard keyboard, 5Mp camera and the latest version of BlackBerry’s OS. Budget BBM …

    reghardware 21 Nov 12:00

  • Inside the mysterious US satellite hacking case

    Analysis Ground station denies hack, US cyber general baffled

    The cause and perpetrators behind interference against two US scientific satellites remains unknown to American military commanders more than three years after the mysterious event. The Congressional US-China Economic Security and Review Commission said in its latest annual report that two US-maintained environment-monitoring …

    Enterprise Security 21 Nov 12:09

  • New 'plasma lamps' to replace fluorescent bulbs, LEDs

    Boffins bid for spinout riches on flat, bendy glow-sheets

    Boffins hope to be rolling in cash after finding a new way to use plasma to make light bulbs. The research team, which was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, has made wafer-thin, flexible sheets of light by putting plasma in an array of micro-cavities in a sheet of aluminium foil, and now hopes to build a …

    Physics 21 Nov 12:19

  • Swedish political party pledges War On Wolves

    Midlands footballers worried by anti-lupine pogrom plan

    A new political party has launched on a single issue platform: all wolves must die. At least within the borders of Sweden. Swedish hammer of the wolves, Gunilla Gronvall, has shrugged off accusations of disingenuity to dub her new grouping the Nature Democrats. Gronvall insisted her movement didn't have a problem with wolves …

    Bootnotes 21 Nov 12:29

  • YouTube-linked microwave shows vids as it nukes

    Cook time equals play time

    Students have found a way to spice up microwave meals by attaching a tablet to their radiation-oven, playing YouTube videos while the food cooks. The µWave uses the Arduino open source prototyping platform to read the cook time, which it sends to a server over an Ethernet connection. The server searches for a YouTube clip of …

    reghardware 21 Nov 12:34

  • Japanese boffins demo sound-powered vibe lights

    Son et lumière, literally. Plus: The Song of e-Money

    Boffins at the University of Tokyo have been demonstrating LED lights driven by directional sound waves, but reckon the technology for delivering electricity has even better applications. The installation consists of LEDs hung on wires around a large room, each LED being accompanied by a brace of microphones which pick up …

    Physics 21 Nov 12:39

  • Women love phone cams, for snapping pics of cute babies

    God dammit, some of us just like gadgets!

    The précis of a recent survey for AdAge by JWT Intelligence, titled "Always On Women: A Survey of how women are using technology today" will have many women spitting blood. The advertising industry is not known for being an engine of social progression, but this survey comes across as more than a little patronising. Let's go …

    Bootnotes 21 Nov 12:50

  • Atomic time boffins build better second-watcher

    NPL and precision on the final frontier

    US researchers recently named the atomic clock at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London the most accurate atomic timepiece on the planet. Experts from the University of Pennsylvania found that NPL-CSF2 loses just one nanosecond every two months. It's a badge of honour for NPL, the birthplace of the first …

    Physics 21 Nov 13:00

  • Kindle Fire demand hits iPad rivals not iPad

    Two-horse race being run

    Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet is being portrayed as the first real competition Apple's iPad has had, but initial evidence from potential tablet buyers suggests it's Apple's rivals who really need to worry. US market research company ChangeWave polled just over 3000 North American consumers this month and found that a staggering …

    reghardware 21 Nov 13:06

  • NASA nuclear Mars tank launch delayed by one day

    Will search for red-planet life, and burn it with a laser

    The launch of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), which contains the Curiosity rover, has been delayed by a day to November 26. NASA said today that it was taking the extra time to allow the team to remove and replace a flight termination system battery. Liftoff will now take place sometime during the one hour and 43 minute …

    Space 21 Nov 13:13

  • Kindle hackers give Nook a thorough rooting

    Fondleslab exposed to nerdy fiddling

    Gadget enthusiasts have managed to root the Nook Tablet. The Android-based device, only unveiled by Barnes & Nobles in the US last week, was pwned by the same group of developers who previously rooted the Amazon Kindle Fire. In both cases rooting the devices gives users the ability to install apps themselves, rather than been …

    Developer 21 Nov 13:24

  • Azlan hits pause in top table's musical chairs

    New bosses named

    Azlan has confirmed its revamped management line-up that will lead the business from the start of next month. The enterprise distie is overhauling the internal structure and making two senior managers redundant as it creates business units based on HP, IBM and Cisco rather than vertical technologies. As a result, Mark Wheeler …

    Channel Register 21 Nov 13:25

  • Spanish firemen grapple naked stairs sex Brit

    Left dangling by her ankle after rumpy-pumpy tumble

    A 49-year-old British tourist was rescued by "surprised" Tenerife firemen after an energetic shag ended with her dangling naked by her ankle from a flight of holiday apartment stairs. The unfortunate victim of decidedly unsafe sex - named only as "AMAM" - was indulging in "frenzied" rumpy-pumpy with her husband on a landing of …

    Bootnotes 21 Nov 13:31

  • Virtual server farm goes titsup TWICE in a month

    Punters blast Fasthosts

    UK hosting firm Fasthosts has suffered its second outage in a couple of weeks as its virtual private servers went down on Sunday afternoon. According to Reg readers, the VPS service had already gone offline on October 31 for around 30 hours and has now been down since yesterday afternoon. Fasthosts system issues page on their …

    Small Biz 21 Nov 13:43

  • Google guru blasts Android virus doomsayers as 'charlatans'

    Says iOS perfectly safe from security 'scammers', too

    Google's open-source program manager has launched an entertaining rant against firms offering mobile security software, accusing them of selling worthless software and of being "charlatans and scammers". Chris DiBona, Google's open-source programs manager, argues that neither smartphones based on Google's Android nor Apple's …

    Developer 21 Nov 13:50

  • UK.gov ends 'speed dating' romps with tech suppliers

    Maude: Enough of one-night stands, we need relationships

    Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has labelled the public sector's old way of procuring IT products as a "speed dating approach" and added that UK.gov needed to learn from its European neighbours such as Germany and France. Maude was speaking at a Crown and Suppliers conference in Whitehall this morning that was attended …

    Channel Register 21 Nov 13:52

  • Fujitsu parades 16-core Sparc64 super stunner

    SC11 Top of the FLOPS

    Ahead of the SC11 supercomputer conference in Seattle last week, recently awakened supercomputing giant Fujitsu rolled out the kicker: a commercialized version of the K supercomputer that is at the top of the flops charts in the world right now. A whole lot of details on the Sparc64-IXfx processor and the PrimeHPC FX10 systems …

    HPC 21 Nov 14:01

  • Floods really will bring armageddon in 2012, insist resellers

    We're not just using Thai disaster to mark up disks

    PC shortages are affecting the UK earlier than expected but the rapid swing from inventory overload to relative hardware famine has led to some customers dismissing resellers' warnings as sales opportunism. The channel has been awash with stock all year as consumer demand fell off a cliff. However PC makers forecast shortages …

    Channel Register 21 Nov 14:17

  • Royal Mail fights to address website outages

    Upgrade knocks stamp service offline

    Parts of the website for the Royal Mail still aren't operational today, after the site reportedly went down over the weekend. Using the website at the time of publication was very slow going, and Reg readers said that the Smartstamp service for printing postage was offline. The website wasn't carrying any message for …

    Small Biz 21 Nov 14:26

  • Gov web boss: Our sites look like bleak council estates

    Vows to ape Google, make pages more sexy

    The Cabinet Office's freshly uploaded digital boss Mike Bracken is on a mission to sex-up government services online. At the moment, he views Directgov as a "pretty bleak" landscape and illustrated his point at the supplier's conference in Whitehall this morning by providing a photograph of what appeared to be a rundown …

    Developer 21 Nov 14:38

  • Tech Data battens down hatches for miserable Xmas

    Dark talk despite profit rise in Q3

    Tech Data is cutting costs to reflect the leaner economic climate and in anticipation of modest single digit sales growth over the Christmas quarter. The distie giant today reported a seven per cent sales climb to $6.6bn (£4.2bn) for the third quarter ended 31 October, helped by a currency tailwind and a 10.6 per cent profit …

    Channel Register 21 Nov 14:44

  • Rumoured iPhone 5 'will have 4in screen' against Jobs' wish

    Shock new claim: Fanboi-beating rod extended

    iPhone 5 will grow 8mm in length to accommodate a new 4in screen, according to rumours on iLounge that conjure the shape of the next Jesus mobe out of the mists of speculation. According to the site's sources, the iPhone 5 is likely to have the same flat edges as the 4, which means that we won't get the teardrop-style tapered …

    Mobile 21 Nov 14:49

  • Flashing upstarts tempt tech titans' throbbing disks

    Blocks and Files If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em instead

    Should mainstream disk array vendors buy the flash startups, which are going to take their lunch money, now or later? Spend time with Kaminario, Nimble Storage, Pure Storage, SolidFire and Violin Memory, drink the Kool-Aid, hear them talk the talk and see them walk the walk. You'll think to yourself: "This is solid stuff, pure …

    Storage 21 Nov 15:04

  • No chance now to save Phobos-Grunt Mars mission

    Duff Russian probe continues to stubbornly circle Earth

    The window to contact the stranded Phobos-Grunt and send it on its mission to the Martian moon has now closed. The craft could still fly by the Red Planet, but it will no longer be able to complete its exploration of the Martian moon Phobos and return to Earth, space industry sources told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti …

    Space 21 Nov 15:18

  • Is your small biz the best at mobile boffinry? Prove it

    Top, er, prizes up for grabs in new DTI contest

    Are you working for the UK's most innovative mobile company? Would you like the legal right to say so? Then you're in luck, as that's the prize in a new government competition. The Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) is running the compo, which is open to small and medium enterprises (less than 250 people). The winner doesn't …

    Small Biz 21 Nov 15:34

  • Breaking news: Man lands on Moon!

    How Facebook shares skew the news with old tat

    Facebook's frictionless sharing apps are dredging up decade-old news stories and putting them at the top of national news sites. A story about an overworked Oxford student's suicide currently tops the most shared and most viewed lists on the Independent's website despite dating from 1997. “Sean, 12, is the youngest father” ( …

    Developer 21 Nov 15:43

  • Reg reader ratings go worldwide

    Your chance at last to press the Orgasmic button

    A short note. In 2008, we introduced reader ratings to some Register stories and then to all stories on the site. For some reason the feature was available to UK readers only - although the ratings bar appears globally on Reg Hardware and Channel Reg. Today, we introduce the ratings sliders to the bottom of all Reg stories …

    Site News 21 Nov 16:18

  • Seafaring boffin bots in record-breaking bid to chart Pacific

    Wave-powered robo-boat probes launched by Java granddaddy

    James Gosling's wave-powered robot company has launched four bots on a record-breaking epic across the Pacific. Liquid Robotics unleashed the Wave Gliders from San Francisco Bay on November 17, on what it claimed will be the longest journey ever attempted by an unmanned ocean vehicle. Liquid Robotics is shooting for a Guinness …

    Developer 21 Nov 16:22

  • Flood-hit WD takes half-billion kidney punch from Seagate

    'We'll still consummate our desire for Hitachi GST'

    Beset by Thai floods, WD has just been hit by an amazing arbitration court decision which means it has to pay Seagate $525m - if the decision survives appeal. The decision was made by a single arbitrator in a pending confidential arbitration case in Minnesota, which was instituted by Seagate against Western Digital and a …

    Channel Register 21 Nov 16:44

  • San Diego Baywatch rules out exploding dead whale

    Hoff namesake fears huge rotting carcass will kick up stink

    A dead beached whale in San Diego is going to be sticking around for another few days as authorities wait for better tides to help them shift the 50-foot (15m) cetacean. The fin whale, which was discovered on Saturday at 2pm local time by workers from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, probably won't be shifted until …

    Biology 21 Nov 16:58

  • Sony signs Voda as Vita connecta

    Names 'preferred' cellco

    Sony shook hands with Vodafone today, naming the network its "preferred provider" of 3G for the PlayStation Vita in Europe. The 3G version of PS Vita - which launches in the UK on 22 February next year - will come with a Vodafone SIM card and a PSN voucher for a free copy of WipEout 2048. While Vodafone is yet to announce …

    reghardware 21 Nov 16:58

  • Ice Cream Sandwich WILL get Flash

    Information furnished by singing fat lady, however

    Android version 4, AKA Ice Cream Sandwich, will get a Flash player for its browser later this year, but it will be the last mobile platform to have one - from Adobe at least. Adobe has already said it won't be developing any more versions of the embedded Flash player for mobile devices, and when the first Android 4 device (the …

    Mobile 21 Nov 17:26

  • Larger Kindle Fire coming soon, say moles

    Holiday surge to be followed by spring sproing?

    If you're thinking of plopping down a brace of Benjamins for a 7-inch Kindle Fire this holiday season, you might think of waiting a couple of months for the 8.9-inch version, which looks increasingly likely to be released next spring. According to the lastest rumor from the Taiwanese market-watchers at DigiTimes, unidentified …

    Mobile 21 Nov 18:11

  • AMD smacks Xeon 5600s with Opteron 6200s

    Analysis Xeon E5 counterattack imminent

    Advanced Micro Devices is currently winning the core count battle in the x86 server-chip war with the just-announced and now shipping "Interlagos" Opteron 6200s, which cram 16 cores into a big fat G34 socket. That's the same G34 socket that the prior generation Opteron 6100s used, so adopting the new chip is a snap for those …

    Channel Register 21 Nov 19:07

  • Smart meters blamed for Wi-Fi, garage opener interference

    Utility not doing enough, advocate says

    Smart meters issued by an electric utility in Maine are interfering with a wide range of customers' electronic devices, including wireless routers, cordless phones, electric garage doors, and answering machines. The Central Maine Power Company has received complaints from more than 200 customers since the meters were installed …

    Security 21 Nov 19:37

  • eBay slurps Hunch to match ads with shoppers

    Hoping 'Taste Graph' will suit customers’ palates

    eBay has bought data-mining firm Hunch in a move to increase the effectiveness of personally targeted ads on the online auction house’s sales site. Hutch was set up in 2009 by Chris Dixon, Tom Pinckney, and Matt Gatti, and uses a mixture of data mining and predictive modeling to build individual “Taste Graphs” of personalized …

    Music and Media 21 Nov 20:07

  • 'Organized' hack targets AT&T wireless subscribers

    'Auto script' attack fails to breach accounts

    Hackers used automatic scripts to target AT&T wireless subscribers in an unsuccessful attempt to steal information stored in their online accounts, company officials said. In an email sent to targeted subscribers, AT&T warned of an “organized attempt” to break into their accounts. The advisory was sent to less than 1 per cent …

    Security 21 Nov 20:57

  • iiNet buys a slice of Canberra for $60m

    TransACT gets sold for a song

    Acquisition-hungry ISP iiNet has snapped up the pioneering triple-play fibre network TransACT Communications for $AU60 million, just a fraction of the value of the carrier’s network asset investment. Speculation over the sale of TransACT had been mounting in recent weeks, as reported by The Register, with iiNet firmly mooted …

    Business 21 Nov 21:28

  • Manning to get day in court

    America’s biggest alleged leaker to face first hearing

    December 16 has been named as the date for the first hearing in the military trial for PFC Bradley Manning, a mere 18 months after he was first arrested. The date for the Article 32 hearing for Manning, who was incarcerated on suspicion of being Wikileaks’ source for the “diplomatic cables”, was announced by defence attorney …

    Law 21 Nov 21:31

  • Robot ostrich spy outpaces world’s fastest sprinters

    Two legs good, four legs bad

    Researchers are building a prototype design that would enable a two-legged robot modeled on an ostrich to run at around 50mph. In simulations, it can already outpace human sprinters. Dubbed FastRunner – presumably to counter any “neep, neep” Road Runner jokes – the robot is being developed by teams at the Florida Institute for …

    Rise of the Machines 21 Nov 21:53

  • Oracle says HP is paying Intel to prop up Itanium

    Weekend at Bernie's Larry's

    The legal spat between Itanium system maker HP and software and now systems maker Oracle has heated back up, with Oracle filing papers in California's Superior Court alleging that HP was paying Intel to keep the Itanium processor alive. This is sure to surprise readers of El Reg. Or, rather, not. The only way HP would ever …

    Channel Register 21 Nov 22:19

  • Not so fast: Italian boffins say neutrinos not faster than light

    Pistols at dawn at Hotel Gran Sasso?

    A team of 68 scientists led by the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy claims to have refuted the OPERA faster-than-light neutrino result, even as the OPERA researchers are generating a new buzz by releasing their newer, more-finely-calibrated short-pulse tests that seem to confirm their original statement. Over the …

    Physics 21 Nov 22:30

  • BSA marks down SOPA: ‘must try harder’

    Pirate hunter worries about anti-freetard laws

    SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is increasingly looking like an orphan: the Business Software Alliance has decided the legislation is looking over-the-top. The BSA has taken a moment away from its anti-software-piracy mission to express concerns at the SOPA’s scope and the proposed processes. “Due process, free speech, and …

    Law 21 Nov 23:00

  • Ex-BT exec secures NBN Co COO role

    Coveted Oz role goes to international player

    NBN Co will be importing its first chief operating officer from the UK with the appointment of former BT executive Ralph Steffens to the role. Moving to Australia at the end of November and working in the Sydney office of NBN Co, Steffens will report to CEO Mike Quigley and have overarching responsibility for the construction …

    Business 21 Nov 23:30