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24th November 2011 Archive

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  • Victorian Ombudsman whacks state’s IT spending

    Best practice? We’ve heard of it

    Ten out of ten ICT projects examined by the Victorian Ombudsman, George Brouwer, were flops. His report, tabled in the Victorian Parliament yesterday, was an “own motion” study instigated by the Ombudsman’s office (rather than in response to a complaint from the public). Each of the ten projects examined ran over budget, with …

    Public Sector 24 Nov 00:02

  • ‘We know where dark matter is hiding’ claim boffins

    WIMPs are bigger than we thought

    Physicists from Brown University are claiming to have set a lower limit for the mass of dark matter. Their analysis of data from the NASA Fermi Gamma-ray space telescope, to be published in Physical Review Letters on December 1 (pre-press copy here), suggests a lower mass limit of 40 GeV (giga-electron volts) for dark matter …

    Physics 24 Nov 00:30

  • Software maker sorry for trying to silence security researcher

    Withdraws legal threats over mobile 'rootkit' claims

    A Silicon Valley software maker has withdrawn legal threats against an Android developer who claimed the company's diagnostic application amounted to a rootkit that posed a privacy threat to millions of handset owners. In a statement issued on Wednesday, Mountain View, California-based Carrier IQ apologized to Trevor Eckhart …

    Malware 24 Nov 00:47

  • Cisco to HP: 'Stop suing former staffers'

    Not a way to build loyalty

    Cisco’s chief legal officer Mark Chandler has publicly admonished HP for using legal action to stop former staff from working for the competition. Chandler said that in the last two years HP had threatened legal action against three former staff members who sought to work at Cisco, citing non-compete clauses in their contracts …

    Business 24 Nov 03:11

  • Apple MacBook Pro 13in Core i5 laptop

    Review More of the same but different

    Guilty, your honour. In mitigation, I would like to assure the jury that I do not automatically adore everything with Apple branding on it, nor have I any intention of jacking off over a Steve Jobs biography. I just happen to like the current range of Apple MacBook Pro notebook computers, that’s all. Is it such a crime? …

    reghardware 24 Nov 07:00

  • Flex your tech for remote working goodness

    Live Today Half Man Half Laptop

    Remote workers need support and training. The IT department needs to secure their devices and fix them when they go wrong. Consumer devices need to be integrated, and business systems need to be re-engineered. But that's not all. Research shows that remote working demands a whole new set of skills from the staff - time …

    Site News 24 Nov 07:30

  • Groupon BUSTED for bulging breasts bargain boob

    24-hour deadline violated BAAPS

    A Groupon advert for cut-price breast enlargement must not appear again, The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled today. The 24-hour deadline on the deal, which offered a discount of £3,000 on breast and nose jobs, may have rushed deal-seekers into breast enlargement they had not properly considered, said the ASA. In a …

    Small Biz 24 Nov 08:32

  • NHS minister's bombshell: I get emails from dead people

    'Zombies' raise merry hell in my inbox, says MP

    UK health minister Simon Burns has provoked fury from anti-cuts campaigners by comparing the people who email him to zombies. Burns blurted the jibe in the House of Commons yesterday while responding to a fellow MP who had taunted him regarding his policies. Burns accused his opponent of "simply joining the ranks of …

    Government 24 Nov 09:03

  • Bare gums couldn't chew up storage rivals, says Hitachi biz

    'A correlation' now seen between rhetoric and action

    Hitachi Data Systems has admitted its channel organisation lacked the "teeth" to take on the lions of the storage plains but plans are afoot to give it more bite. Regional veep and GM Stephen Ball joined in June and has since lured Dell UK channel boss Paul Harrison to run a biz development team with Computacenter (CC) …

    Channel Register 24 Nov 09:17

  • Brocade gives Wall Street the finger

    Better than expected results

    The SANs are okay... Brocade beat pessimistic Wall St estimates about its fourth quarter (Q4) earnings and outlook for the next quarter, showing that there is more life in the Fibre Channel and Ethernet vendor than analysts gave it credit for. Revenues in the fourth quarter ending 29 October were $550m, a 9 per cent rise on …

    Channel Register 24 Nov 09:32

  • WinPho sceptics cut Lumia 800 sales estimates in half

    Nokia huffs, sticks fingers in ears

    One swallow doesn’t make a summer – and week’s worth of phone sales doesn’t make a comeback. Nokia has responded to gloomy analysts sniffing at the initial consumer response to its first Windows phone. In a statement, Nokia says it’s had its highest-ever first-week sales from the Lumia 800 – but analysts say it will ship fewer …

    reghardware 24 Nov 09:47

  • Hailo

    iOS App of the Week Taxi grab

    Back in my student days, I used to work late-night shifts on a taxi service called ComputaCab. It was really hi-tech for the time, with a control room full of computer screens and a bunch of scruffy kids answering the phone lines and booking the cabs. Ah, the good old days… Well, the students will have to look for other ways …

    reghardware 24 Nov 10:01

  • Irish biz rife with fake sites slurping victims' privates

    Volunteer hit squad tells of thugs sneaking onto servers

    Irish websites have become a prime target for phishing fraudsters over recent months with multiple incidents of fraudsters setting up counterfeit banking sites on compromised but otherwise legitimate websites. Of the 441 security incidents reported this year by the Irish Reporting and Information Security Service (IRISSCERT, …

    Enterprise Security 24 Nov 10:11

  • Watch crim crackdowns on live Plod blog

    RT @PCTodd1978 Hv U arrestd that burglar yet m8?

    Durham constabulary is planning to use social media to enable people to follow what is happening in their immediate neighbourhood in real time. It is developing a new website along with web technology firm C2 Software that will provide a channel for people to view its activities through Twitter feeds from police on the beat, a …

    Policing 24 Nov 10:21

  • Exoplanet ranking suggests INTERSTELLAR WAR imminent

    Too late to recall idiotic message beamed at alien star

    An international team of boffins has ranked the various extra-terrestrial planets and moons known to humanity in order of ability to sustain life. It's bad news for the human race, as the planets of the Gliese 581 star system are near the top of the list: and if an intelligent race is present there, we have already mortally …

    Space 24 Nov 10:24

  • Server makers start pushing Opteron 6200 tin

    Where's Acer? And Oracle and Fujitsu?

    The 16-core "Interlagos" Opteron 6200 processors marched into the x86 server chip war nearly two weeks ago, and Advanced Micro devices made its sales pitch against Intel's Xeon server lineup. The question now is: who is actually making servers selling Opteron 6200 processors? To put it simply, the answer to that question is …

    Servers 24 Nov 10:32

  • Rampaging Brit looters cost Dixons £4m

    Chain's losses narrow but widen at group level

    Dixons Retail has fared relatively better than High Street rivals after trading results today showed that its fiscal half-year losses narrowed substantially in the UK. The firm posted underlying losses of £3.9m in the 24 weeks to 15 October, down from £10.7m a year ago - but the consumer meltdown, which forced a Best Buy …

    Channel Register 24 Nov 10:41

  • US gov spunks $200K on busted weather app

    iPhone version a bargain at $56,000

    The US Department of Labor spent more than $200,000 (£129,000) creating a mobile application telling people to drink four cups of water every hour, and didn't even manage to get a BlackBerry version working. The money was spent with UK-owned Eastern Research Group, who produced the "Heat Safety Tool" for Android (at $96,000), …

    Mobile 24 Nov 10:51

  • EA retreats, offers free Battlefield 1943 after all

    PS3 gamers to get promised freebie

    EA has changed its tune and pledged to give all PlayStation 3 Battlefield 3 customers a free copy of Battlefield 1943, all to avoid embarrassing legal entanglements. The company issued a statement to say: "There have been some misunderstandings around Battlefield 1943 and Battlefield 3... to address this we are making …

    reghardware 24 Nov 10:51

  • What should a sci-fi spaceship REALLY look like?

    Saucers, flying caravans and floating oil rigs...

    People making sci-fi movies have it easy. If you’re designing alien technology, not even the most determined pedant could claim with any authority to know how a real Imperial TIE fighter might look. The TIE fighter (as imagined by George Lucas). If you’re making a film about war, or journalism, or (especially) computer …

    Space 24 Nov 11:00

  • 2016: Death of the wallet as NFC tap-cash arrives at last

    Or is it 2014? Analysts bicker over e-cash future

    Forrester research reckons 2016 will be the year when electronic cash takes off, thanks to PayPal, but over at ABI they're saying 2014 will see Google Wallet filling virtual pockets. Forrester's research is based on conversations with 10 "senior executives", while the ABI prediction comes from its "Mobile Wallet Strategies" …

    Wireless 24 Nov 11:11

  • Obama steps in as Britney Spears wrestles Page on Google+

    Oops Larry, I did it again

    Pop princess Britney Spears now has the most followers on Google+, which President Barack Obama's team just signed up to. Until yesterday, Mountain View Chocolate Factory boss Larry Page had the most people following him on the social network with 744,579 "friends" in his circle. The Hit Me Baby One More Time star has nearly …

    Music and Media 24 Nov 11:21

  • LG runs up third-gen Prada phone

    iPhone is so last year, dahlinks

    Fashionistas, take note: LG will be releasing a third-generation Prada-branded smartphone early in 2012. Expect a minimalist black handset and a monochrome interface if the previous Prada phones are anything to go by. LG says the Prada 3.0's predecessors sported "avant garde" technology, but in reality they were behind-the- …

    reghardware 24 Nov 11:28

  • Fujifilm announces 'new breed' of bridge camera

    Super macro inbound

    Fujifilm has announced an addition to its premium X series of snappers with what the company calls "a new breed of bridge camera". The Fujifilm XS-1 comes sporting a 12Mp EXR CMOS sensor with the ability to switch between High-Res, Wide Dynamic Range and High Sensitivity/Low Noise settings. But its the new Fujinon lens that …

    reghardware 24 Nov 11:29

  • UK's first stealth jumpjet rolls off line – but we don't want it

    First of three supersonic Harrier replacement orphans

    The first ever supersonic stealth jumpjet to be built for the British armed forces has rolled off the assembly line. There's just one snag: Britain decided last year that it would no longer have jumpjets, meaning that the aircraft will never serve with the Royal Navy or RAF. Regular readers will no doubt recall that ever …

    Government 24 Nov 11:32

  • Apple crushes High Street in UK web shopping stakes

    Second best by traffic ... not sales

    Apple overtook Tesco, Argos and M&S this year to become the second most popular online retail site in the UK. Only Amazon UK beat them for hits in the latest quarterly figures published by IMRG HitsWise. The frenzy around the launch of the iPhone 4S in September probably drove up the number of people clicking on the Apple site …

    Financial News 24 Nov 11:42

  • HTC forecasts stormy future, laments Apple S3 defeat

    Disgraced acquisition carpeted for 'holistic evaluation'

    Taiwan smartphone maker HTC has written off any hopes for sales growth this quarter citing cooling demand in a weakened global economy and fierce competition from rivals. At the same time, HTC confirmed it is re-evaluating its acquisition of S3 Graphics from VIA after the graphics biz lost a patent dispute against Apple this …

    Channel Register 24 Nov 11:49

  • Ten... top PlayStation Network game downloads

    Product Round-up Cheap thrills

    Games are expensive these days, with contemporary titles often commanding in excess of £50. Some people even paid thousands for an early copy of Modern Warfare 3. But why should you fork out so much for games on disc when there's plenty of much cheaper and no less entertaining offerings available through your console's network …

    reghardware 24 Nov 12:00

  • Levelling the EMC Lightning playing field

    Opinion Another way to avoid lock-in

    Here's a blogger saying an open industry standard will not be the best way to level the storage array/server flash card playing field and prevent EMC locking in Project Lightning customers, writes Chris Mellor Certainly he has his own interests here but the general argument is worth paying attention to, in my view. If you …

    Blocks and Files 24 Nov 12:03

  • Actual computer hacking by UK media: Suspect cuffed

    Not just voicemail - proper technical stuff

    An inquiry into computer hacking by the UK media resulted in the arrest of its first suspect, a 52-year-old from Milton Keynes. The as-yet-unidentified middle-aged man was arrested on Thursday morning by officers from Scotland Yard as part of Operation Tuleta, an investigation into computer hacking by the press that is running …

    Policing 24 Nov 12:11

  • Punters go postal with erratic Royal Mail site

    Update 'How very sorry we all are', say posties

    The Royal Mail's electronic redirection website was finally restored on Thursday, days after problems affected the postal service's website on Sunday. A Register reader has come forward with evidence to show that he was presented with the personal details of another user when he logged into the redirection site on Saturday, …

    ID 24 Nov 12:21

  • Bloke pays inked tribute to Top Gear

    'The best tattoo of James May on a leg I have ever seen'

    There's a long tradition of fans getting their idols etched into their flesh, but Top Gear presenter James May hasn't until now featured heavily on the list of hero-worship tattoos. Cue this YouTube vid (some NSFW language), flagged up recently to astounded PistonHeads forum members: Initially, we thought the whole thing …

    Music and Media 24 Nov 12:31

  • Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

    US debates 'sweaty hambeasts', overpaid tall people on airplanes

    Americans struggling home from Thanksgiving have yet another etiquette nightmare to deal with: what to do when the gargantuan passenger next to you spills over and annexes most of your seat. The dilemma has been highlighted by the case of Arthur Berkowitz, who was forced to stand for seven hours on a flight from Anchorage, …

    Bootnotes 24 Nov 12:37

  • Ubuntu savaged by rivals infected with fondleslab fever

    Help, the penguins are revolting!

    The penguins are on the march: they are leaving Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu and migrating towards other Linux distros, fresh data suggests. Distrowatch's annual web rankings claim Ubuntu's top spot has been snatched by Mint during the last 12 months. In the past month alone Ubuntu's been kicked to fourth place by Fedora and …

    Developer 24 Nov 12:41

  • Rogue Russian Mars probe communicates - but in gibberish

    Experts mull mission to asteroid or Moon instead of Mars

    The European Space Agency managed to get telemetry data from lost Martian probe Phobos-Grunt last night, but hasn’t been able to decode the messages. The ESA made three attempts at communication with the stranded spacecraft overnight, but just one of the tries was successful, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported. …

    Space 24 Nov 12:45

  • Sweeping net filters trample ISPs' rights, says Euro beak

    Can't be forced to sniff all traffic

    Europe’s Court of Justice has affirmed that blanket monitoring of internet communications breaches fundamental rights. The Court of Justice of the European Union was adjudicating a complaint by a Belgian ISP and copyright royalty collecting society SABEM. A lower court, the aptly named Court of the First Instance, had ordered …

    Hosting 24 Nov 12:51

  • We talk to Moon designer about ULTIMATE sci-fi ship

    Gavin Rothery points out successes, skewers failures

    Gavin Rothery was visual effects supervisor on the British sci-fi smash Moon, and has been a creative force on a welter of hit video games, and so has a lot to say on the subject of spacecraft design. So much, in fact, that I couldn’t bear to just cut a couple of quotes into my article on sci-fi spaceship design. So, here, in …

    Space 24 Nov 13:00

  • Apple pulls games subs app DAYS after approving it

    Big Fish yanked out of iTunes pond with 'no explanation'

    Days after ushering Big Fish into the iTunes store, opening the way to subscription gaming on the iPad, Apple has yanked out its app without a hint of explanation. The application provided access to a monthly service allowing unlimited access to Big Fish games, and Apple even saw the press release prior launch, the company has …

    Developer 24 Nov 13:11

  • San Diego woman strips to bikini to look for her chihuahua

    Refuses to dress till she finds her Chispita

    A San Diego woman has done absolutely nothing for her hopes of finding her beloved chihuahua after pledging to strip and stay stripped until the mislaid canine is found. Arlene Mossa Corona spent yesterday morning in a white bikini top and purple bottoms parading round the intersection of La Jolla Village Drive and Gensee …

    Bootnotes 24 Nov 13:21

  • Cheshire councils to axe 70 IT jobs

    Begin 3-month consultation on shared IT staff

    Cheshire West & Chester and Cheshire East councils are to launch a consultation on the future structure of their shared ICT service in December. The councils estimate that this could lead to about 70 of their combined 217 IT staff members being made redundant. Cheshire East council said that the objective of the consultation …

    Government 24 Nov 13:32

  • Fake Steve Jobs tells kids: 'Do what you want to do'

    Counterfeit iPhones, now bogus biographies

    The Chinese have been counterfeiting iPhones, iPads and even Apple stores for years, but now an enterprising Taipei publisher has gone one further and attempted to make a quick dollar in China and Taiwan by leeching off the greatest Apple asset of all: Steve Jobs. Ecorebooks has put out the made-up looking 25 lessons that …

    Music and Media 24 Nov 13:41

  • Struggling tech resellers face winter of annihilation

    Bloodbath predicted after glum Xmas

    Reseller insolvencies are predicted to remain at record highs during the December quarter as the UK economy hangs on the edge of a second recession. As exclusively revealed by El Reg in the summer, Graydon stats showed that 175 channel firms went to the wall in the first half of 2011, up 43 per cent on a year earlier, reaching …

    Channel Register 24 Nov 13:51

  • Ofcom: ISPs can cripple the web as much as they please

    Throttling good, net neutrality bad, says watchdog

    UK regulator Ofcom won't force operators into net neutrality pacts, being happy to rely on competitive pressure to keep the web open, but it does want transparency for customers. Ofcom's basic position is that network operators can do whatever they like, as long as they let their customers know what they're doing. Anyone …

    Hosting 24 Nov 14:02

  • Terry Pratchett computer sniper-scope: Spec-ops mini version

    Secret supertroops want version for solo shooter

    Famous Pentagon boffinry powerhouse DARPA has made a new announcement on its "One Shot" programme, which ensures that a million-to-one shot will – as on Terry Pratchett's Discworld* – hit the target nine (well, six) times out of 10. Seems that Chad on the right there may be out of a job, these days. The existing One Shot …

    Government 24 Nov 14:16

  • Apple eyes set on Sharp IGZO tech for iPad 3 screen

    Brighter, more energy efficient panels ahoy!

    Apple's iPad 3 may not be thicker than its predecessor after all, thanks to a smart display tech from screen partner Sharp. With the new tablet expected to sport a 2048 x 1536 display - double the pixel count in each axis compared to the current iPad's 1024 x 768 screen - a number of analysts and pundits predicted the iPad 3 …

    reghardware 24 Nov 14:22

  • HMV plays catch up with video on-demand service

    Modern storefare

    HMV has modernised its content delivery efforts, launching a video-on-demand rental service for PC and Mac. HMV On-Demand is nothing special, offering standard rental prices of £3.99 for new films, with a 24p discount for older titles. There's a lot to choose from, though, with content from all major film studios and 30 …

    reghardware 24 Nov 14:23

  • Thanksgiving menaced by virus-laden fake iTunes vouchers

    Malware-hunters finger scam

    Supposed iTunes gift certificates doing the rounds in the run-up to Thanksgiving are actually loaded with malware. Spoofed emails purportedly offering $50 vouchers for the iTunes Store, which arrive with email subject lines such as "iTunes Gift Certificate", come with an attachment supposedly containing a certificate code. In …

    Malware 24 Nov 14:31

  • Richard Branson plans submarine tours of dead whale corpse

    Snaps up bloated blubbery body, tows it offshore

    San Diego's dead beached whale was towed offshore last night, with the help of billionaire Richard Branson. Branson's Virgin Oceanic fund agreed to fork over the readies for the project in exchange for the corpse of the whale, which it plans to study. Rather than taking the body off to a landfill, as originally planned, the …

    Biology 24 Nov 14:46

  • How digital audio ate itself and the music industry

    Special Report Part One: The birth of a new science

    Digital audio began life with high ideals and worthy engineering feats, with its extended dynamic range came the promise of noise-free recording. This is a story of how it first charmed and then choked the industry it was designed to enhance. 1987 DIE roster and HHB newsletter – click for full page downloads It's a long and …

    Music and Media 24 Nov 15:00

  • SHARKS tempted by BIKINI CLAD Thanksgiving BABES

    Experiment to ruin dreams of evil billionaires everywhere

    Half-naked women will swim with great white sharks in an experiment conducted by a marine biologist to understand the fish's hunting patterns. Dr Ryan Johnson told ABC News's Nightline programme that he wanted to dispel what he considers to be rotten myths about the powerful sea creatures. He has dived with sharks countless …

    Biology 24 Nov 15:16

  • Scientists probe Earth's core, make mystifying discovery

    Colossal magnet we live on perhaps a Silicon roundabout

    Scientists carrying out extreme boffinry into the makeup of the Earth's liquid core have announced that they are very puzzled to find it is not made of what they had thought it was. The great bulk of the liquid outer core of the planet, of course, is made of molten iron. That's just as well for us and all life on Earth, as the …

    Energy 24 Nov 15:26

  • Hybrid clouds 2012: the private cloud myth lives

    Marketeer snake oil for scared CIOs

    Hybrid clouds are all the rage in cloud computing today, with Gartner naming them "a major focus for 2012", even as hybrid clouds constitute fully 20 per cent of enterprise clouds today. But are they really anything more than a new face on private clouds? Marten Mickos, chief executive of private cloud company, Eucalyptus …

    Cloud Business 24 Nov 15:46

  • Dell fastens shrink ray tech onto new file vault

    Plays Ocarina for backup box in 2012

    Dell appears to have a new disk backup array in development, with a launch likely in the first half of 2012. After sounding out various sources, we think that Dell is developing a backup-to-disk product that complements the existing data reduction products in its portfolio and uses Ocarina deduplication technology. Dell used …

    Storage 24 Nov 16:01

  • Jew or not Jew app withdrawn from iTunes

    French anti-Racism campaigners force Apple to nix app worldwide

    Apple has pulled an app that asked users to judge how Jewish they were after a lawsuit was brought against it in Paris. The app 'Jew or not Jew' has been taken out of all of Apple's app stores globally, after French anti-racism campaigners complained. Apple took the app out of the French app store on 14 September, out of the …

    Music and Media 24 Nov 16:15

  • Huawei builds channel red army in Europe

    Signs distie deal with SDG for UK, France and the Netherlands

    Huawei has penned a distribution deal with SDG to punt its enterprise kit to resellers in the UK, France and the Netherlands. The Chinese firm continues to build its ranks internally by bringing on board industry big-hitters – including former Cisco channel exec Dominique Vanhamme – to run its EMEA partner network. It brought …

    Channel Register 24 Nov 16:31

  • Nokia promises not one but two Lumia 800 power fix patches

    Software updates in December, January

    Nokia has pledged to release a software update early next month that will begin to fix the rapidly depleting battery woes some Lumia 800 owners have experienced. In a Nokia support forum posting made today, the company said: "A software update in early December will include improvements to power efficiency, while a second …

    reghardware 24 Nov 16:33

  • Apache developers scramble to fix proxy flaw

    Admins, nail down your systems

    Apache developers are working on a fix of a flaw in its web server software that creates a possible mechanism to access internal systems. The zero-day vulnerability only rears its ugly head if reverse proxy rules are configured incorrectly and is far from easy to exploit ... but it is nonetheless nasty. A possible patch for …

    Enterprise Security 24 Nov 16:46

  • Microsoft pitching Kinect control tech to telly makers

    Gesture politics

    Microsoft has contacted television manufacturers to discuss integrating Kinect's motion control tech into future tellies. That's according to sources "familiar with the subject" who claim the software giant is aggressively pushing Kinect into as many living rooms as possible, The Daily reports. It is also said that Microsoft …

    reghardware 24 Nov 16:53

  • Dyson sinks £1.4m into Cambridge engineering chair

    Intellectual vacuum

    Vacuum-maker James Dyson has plunged over a million pounds into funding engineering research at Cambridge University. And he doesn't just want the funded boffins looking at vacuum cleaners. One of the billionaire's stipulations for the post is that it will encourage speculative research into areas that may not be commercially …

    Science 24 Nov 17:10

  • Cabinet Secretary: FOI Act is stifling free policy debate

    'Virtually everything subject to a public interest test'

    Sir Gus O'Donnell told a committee of MPs on Wednesday that FOI laws had a "very negative impact on the freedom of policy discussions". "The problem with the Freedom of Information Act is that virtually everything is subject to a public interest test," Sir Gus told the Public Administration Select Committee. "When I give …

    Biology 24 Nov 17:30

  • 'Rebel' biologist and neo-Darwinian skeptic Lynn Margulis dies

    Obituary Science loses a great mind

    Biologist Lynn Margulis has died, aged 73, at her home in Massachusetts. The prolific writer was at times considered a controversial figure in the scientific community for her views on Neo-Darwinism. Her final place of work was at the University of Massachusetts, whose faculty Margulis joined in 1988. Prior to that she taught …

    Biology 24 Nov 17:31

  • Three labs, one (big) cluster

    Top 15 system to manage nuke stockpile

    We spent a few minutes at an Intel SC11 hospitality event in Seattle talking with Matt Leininger, Lawrence Livermore National Lab Deputy of Advanced Technology Projects, about the U.S. DOE National Nuclear Security Administration’s Tri-Lab procurement. The ‘Tri’ name signifies that three national labs that work on nuclear …

    HPC Blog 24 Nov 18:00

  • 1,000 Chinese workers strike at Apple and IBM supplier

    Cupertino singled out on forced overtime, conditions

    Around 1,000 workers at a Chinese plant that manufactures components for Apple and IBM downed tools this week in protest against enforced overtime, a rights group has claimed. The disgruntled staffers - about a third of all employees - at Jingmo Electronics Corporation (JEC) in south China's industrial district of Shenzhen …

    Channel Register 24 Nov 19:09

  • Westpac unchiefs the information officer

    Comment Tumbril calls for the PHB

    In a move that will send a thousand chills running down a thousand spines, the Australian bank Westpac has sent the janitor down the hall to the office marked “CIO” with a screwdriver and removed the brass plate. In a management restructure announced yesterday, the CIO job ceased to be: in essence, the PHB* has been …

    CIO 24 Nov 21:36

  • Graphene circuits from an inkjet printer

    Magic material gets yet another surprising application

    Long gone are the days when the inkjet printer was the consumable that people bought for school projects and family photographs: a group of researchers from Cambridge University has added graphene-based transistors to the list of things that you can take from the output tray. The researchers, led by Andrea Ferrari of the …

    Science 24 Nov 22:30

  • Regulator unloads on ASX over buggy IT

    Next time, make it work

    In its annual review of the Australian Securities Exchange’s performance, Australian corporate regulator ASIC has criticized the exchanges handling of IT. On October 27, the ASX suffered an outage that lasted from shortly after the opening bell through to 2pm. The ASX has said only that the outage was due to a “software glitch …

    Business 24 Nov 23:03