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1st December 2011 Archive

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  • Ciena picks up AAPT network build

    Ethernet business services in the pipeline

    TNZ-owned AAPT has announced that it will be deploying kit from Ciena to support an upgrade to its carrier Ethernet services. The carrier says it expects growing demand for high-capacity business Ethernet services, particularly as the National Broadband Network rolls out. Its new deployment will also be available to other …

    Business 1 Dec 00:16

  • Duqu attackers: master coders, Linux rookies

    Amateur goofs doom global wipe of C&C servers

    The Duqu malware that targeted industrial manufacturers around the world may have been spawned by a well-funded team of competent coders, but their command of Linux led to some highly amateur mistakes. According to a report published on Wednesday by researchers from Kaspersky Lab, the unknown attackers attempted a global …

    Malware 1 Dec 02:01

  • Barnes & Noble hires Microsoft’s legal nemesis

    Patent fight! Will David Boies slap Redmond yet again?

    Barnes & Noble has hired David Boies to join its legal team in a fight with Microsoft at the US International Trade Commission over alleged Android patent infringements. Boies, chairman of the Boies, Schiller & Flexner law firm, represented the US Department of Justice back at the turn of the millennium in its successful …

    Law 1 Dec 02:12

  • Viewsonic PLED W500 portable projector

    Review Travelling light

    Some pieces of kit take a long time to review. Particularly if they're very nice pieces of kit that you're reluctant to return to the PR agency. The Viewsonic PLED-W500 is just such a piece of kit. Take away display: Viewsonic PLED W500 portable projector I've always liked projectors – the big screen, the sense that you're …

    reghardware 1 Dec 07:00

  • Letting GPUs run free

    Blog No single system silo = big step forward

    One of the most interesting things I saw at SC11 was a joint Mellanox and University of Valencia demonstration of rCUDA over Infiniband. With rCUDA, applications can access a GPU (or multiple GPUs) on any other node in the cluster. It makes GPUs a sharable resource and is a big step towards making them as virtualisable (I don’t …

    HPC Blog 1 Dec 08:02

  • Technology v support: Amazon's premium challenge

    Good enough is the bottom line

    In order to compete in the public cloud with the Amazon juggernaut, rivals like Rackspace and Alcatel-Lucent are turning to value-added services to try to turn commoditised cloud computing into premium offerings. It's unclear whether this will work. Once customers get habituated to "low cost and more than good enough", it's …

    Cloud Business 1 Dec 08:31

  • DWP cuts spending with top IT supplier HP by 4%

    Supplier only netted paltry £629.4m

    The Department for Work and Pensions has cut spending in 2010-11 with HP and BT, but increased it with Atos Origin. HP Enterprise Services remains the Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) second largest supplier, despite a drop in the government's spending with the firm. It received £629.4m in 2010-11, according to figures …

    Channel Register 1 Dec 09:01

  • Fuel taxes don't hurt the world's poor - they don't have cars

    Only bad for poor people in rich countries

    People with lots of cash in their pockets are much harder hit by a hike in petrol taxes then those living in poorer countries, a professor of environmental economics and his team of international researchers have argued. Prof Thomas Sterner at the University of Gothenburg said the reason for his claim is simple: people living …

    Environment 1 Dec 09:19

  • Printed-out dissolving bones, teeth work well in rats

    Ready for slotting into people in a decade, seemingly

    Scientists have developed a way to make bones and teeth using an inkjet printer. The printed bones are doing well in rats and rabbits and the engineering team at the Washington State University predict that their bony print-outs could be in mainstream use in human medicine in as little as 10 years. The engineering team led by …

    Biology 1 Dec 09:37

  • 08 Wizard

    iOS App of the Week Cut the cost of premium-rate calls

    I’d heard about apps and programs that could be used to look up alternatives to premium-rate 08 numbers, but had never really bothered with them before as – apart from my bank – I didn’t really think that I made all that many calls to premium numbers. However, the last bill for my home landline number included a tenner’s worth …

    reghardware 1 Dec 10:00

  • STEC thrusts fat solid disk with godlike stamina

    Enterprise SSD can keep it up for longer

    STEC has launched a super long-life SSD capable of having 33PB written to it over a five-year period. Flash cells wear out and so solid state drives (SSD) have a limited working life as the amount of writing activity mounts up. Multi-level cell (MLC) flash has a shorter working life than single-level cell (SLC) flash. This …

    Channel Register 1 Dec 10:17

  • Acer: $499 Ultrabooks in 2013

    A year to get cheap... ish

    Acer says it's going to cut Ultrabook prices. But you're going to have to wait until Q2 2012 for the skinny notebooks to become cheaper - and a year for them to get really low-cost. Company president Jim Wong apparently said Acer will knock $100-200 (£64-128) off the $999 (£637) pre-tax price tag in the second quarter of 2012 …

    reghardware 1 Dec 10:21

  • BUSTED TWO: Carrier IQ monitor-ware on iPhones too?

    Chpwn finds agent in /usr/bin

    Blogger and iPhone hacker Chpwn believes that the controversial Carrier IQ software isn’t confined to Android devices. In this blog post, he says a look at the /usr/bin folder reveals Carrier IQ’s agent software, identified as IQAgent in iOS 3, and either awd_ice2 or awd_ice3 on iOS 4 or iOS 5 devices. At this point, Chpwn …

    Developer 1 Dec 10:32

  • Inside the shadow world of commercialised spook spyware

    Exclusive 'We'll penetrate commsats, undersea cables, Skype ...'

    Western and Chinese high-tech companies are competing aggressively to sell, install and manage intrusive and dangerous internet surveillance and communications control equipment for the world’s most brutal regimes, a six-month investigation has found. During 2011, investigators from Privacy International, a London-based NGO, …

    Developer 1 Dec 10:52

  • National Air Traffic Services lands desktop virtualisation

    Interview Head of IS swoops in to explain how

    You think you have a stressful job? Try Gavin Walker. He’s the man in charge of the tech and comms infrastructure (Head of Information Solutions) at NATS, the artist formerly know as National Air Traffic Service Control Services. Yes, the people who know where all the planes are over the Atlantic and the UK. We went to the …

    Enterprise Tech 1 Dec 11:11

  • Skyrim update makes dragons FLY BACKWARDS

    Magic mishaps, other glitches introduced by bug-fix

    The highly anticipated The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim update rolled out this week and while it has fixed a number of known bugs, players are still reporting major setbacks with the game. Developer Bethesda's update for Skyrim takes the game to version 1.2 and was supposed to fix various problems, including major lag and game …

    reghardware 1 Dec 11:17

  • Crack GCHQ's code and become the next James Bond

    Signals snoopers' challenge to wannabe spooks

    GCHQ has launched a code-breaker challenge as part of its attempts to unearth fresh talent from unconventional sources. The signals intelligence agency's ‘canyoucrackit’ challenge invites would-be codebreakers to crack a visual code at canyoucrackit.co.uk. The campaign will be supported in social media channels, including …

    Developer 1 Dec 11:23

  • Official: Lenovo adopts Windows Phone

    MS OS handsets out in 2012

    Lenovo has confirmed rumours that it plans to enter the Windows Phone business, with handsets due in the latter half of next year. Lenovo's LePhone Product Manager, Yue Chen, broke the news in an interview with iMobile, saying: "We are indeed currently considering a Windows Phone-based LePhone product, and we already have a …

    reghardware 1 Dec 11:40

  • Kepler spots Earth-sized exoplanet ideal for barbecues

    Scorching hot world's year is less than three days, too

    The Kepler mission has turned up yet another catch for the exoplanet zoo: a planet with an orbit a little over one-tenth that of our Mercury, that zips around its star in 2.8 Earth days. With that proximity, Kepler-21b isn’t much of a candidate for “habitable zone” nominations: outdoor cooking would be the order of the day. …

    Space 1 Dec 11:43

  • Acer UK disties expect big things of new boss

    Prepared to put annus horribilis behind them

    Distributors have backed incoming Acer UK boss Neil Marshall to turn the ailing operation around and confine the channel-stuffing saga to history. As revealed first by El Reg, Marshall was parachuted into the UK organisation after previous incumbent Bobby Watkins was shown the door following a staggering drop in sales. An …

    Channel Register 1 Dec 11:45

  • Christmas gamma burst stupendo-explosion DEATHMATCH

    Festive 2010 burst was fit to herald Gamma Ray Jesus

    Dramatic news from the world of astro-boffinry today as two theories go head to head in the quest to explain a cosmic explosion of unparallelled power sighted in the skies last Christmas. This stellar stupendo-explosion was no measly supernova of the sort which may have given rise to the Bible story of the guiding star which …

    Space 1 Dec 11:46

  • Samsung, Google release Galaxy Nexus bug fix

    Update to sort audio drop-outs

    The official fix for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus' annoying spontaneous volume drop bug is being beamed out to owners of the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone. Samsung and Google posted the update late last night. The new firmware, which can be downloaded through the handset's System Updates settings, is a 1MB download, we …

    reghardware 1 Dec 11:48

  • HTC Sensation XE

    Android smartphone with Beats Audio bass booster

    HTC’s original Sensation hit the ground running in the spring, bringing with it a dual-core processor - the first time HTC had used one - and one of the firm's best ever cameras. This new version beefs up the processor and adds Beats Audio technology to improve the sound. All that makes for a big old slab of a phone: it's 126 …

    reghardware 1 Dec 12:00

  • Apple: Siri isn't anti-abortion

    Voice command app accused of hiding clinics

    Apple is not using its voice search app Siri to save unborn foetuses, a spokeswoman told the New York Times yesterday, flatly denying rumours that the service had a political agenda. Claims that the iPhone 4S's voice assistant app Siri was anti-abortion surfaced on the web this week after tests by bloggers suggested that it …

    Software 1 Dec 12:26

  • Tesco: buy a DVD, get the download free

    No such thing as a free launch

    Buy a DVD or Blu-ray Disc from Tesco tomorrow, and it will give you free access to the downloadable version hosted by Tesco-owned online movie service Blinkbox. The deal only applies to Clubcard holders, however. There's another catch: it only applies to certain films, 26 in the first batch. The list of titles available …

    reghardware 1 Dec 12:31

  • Lovefilm dumps Flash, BLINDS Linux fans with Silverlight

    Tough love when it comes to streaming movies online

    Lovefilm has sensationally ditched Flash in favour of Microsoft's Silverlight technology, in a move that snubs Linux users and appeases film studios. The Amazon-owned company revealed yesterday that it had effectively been strong-armed by the movie industry into agreeing to dump the Flash software it had been using to stream …

    Music and Media 1 Dec 12:44

  • Nokia is past its best-by date, warns analyst

    Standard & Poor's: Glory days unlikely to return

    Nokia shareholders hoping for the golden days to return are waiting in vain, a gloomy prognosis from analyst research from Standard & Poor's concludes. ‘Nokia glory days are unlikely to return,’ say the analysts. The reason? Twofold, really. One is that S&P think Nokia can’t differentiate itself from rivals sufficiently; all …

    Financial News 1 Dec 13:02

  • Clandestine US 'space warplane' extends orbital mission

    Black budget robot carries on its unknown task

    The second of the US Air Force's mysteriously-missioned X-37B spaceplanes is going to continue its clandestine operations in orbit past its intended nine months. X-37B. Credit: USAF The spaceship, dubbed a 'secret space warplane' by the Iranians, has been in orbit since March 5, although the mission and its cargo are on a …

    Government 1 Dec 13:16

  • iPhone 4S owners love Siri, hate the battery life

    Apps, iCloud - we've heard of 'em

    Apple, do more with Siri but for feck's sake sort out the iPhone 4S' battery life. Those are the key messages for the company if feedback from a couple of hundred owners of its latest handset, collated by market watcher ChangeWave, is anything to go by. Siri is clearly the feature most punters like best, with 49 per cent of …

    reghardware 1 Dec 13:21

  • Northern Ireland's top cops 'hacked by NotW' - new claim

    NI minister's PC also an alleged target

    Senior police officers and a Cabinet minister may have been targeted for computer hacking by unscrupulous journalists at News International. This is according to Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). At the time of the alleged hack, he was chief constable of the Police Service of Northern …

    Malware 1 Dec 13:32

  • Vodafone Android app babysits lazy parents' kids

    Won't someone think of the children ... oh, they did

    Vodafone has launched an app to help middle-class parents who've equipped their offspring with Android handsets to control what their ankle-biters see and hear. Using the free-to-all Vodafone Guardian app a parent can limit specific applications to specific times, as well as restricting outgoing calls/texts and ignoring …

    Applications 1 Dec 13:46

  • Geek seeks cash for Top Trumps-style CPU game

    Ha! My Z80A beats your 6502

    Nowadays, Top Trumps packs are filled with licensed brand tat, but readers keen to re-live the days when TT's decks were full of real stuff, like supercars, jet fighters, locomotives, missiles and such, will be able to do so with a new tech-inspired set, if one Harry Mylonadis gets his way. Or, rather, if he gets $3500 (£2232 …

    reghardware 1 Dec 13:54

  • Alibaba! and! friends! offer! to! swallow! Yahoo! whole!

    Group mulls bid of $25bn for the entire company

    China's Alibaba Group is mulling over a total slurp of Yahoo! for about $25bn, along with private equity partners and Japanese mobile carrier Softbank. Those chatty sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that the group – which would also include Bain Capital and Blackstone Group – had not finalised its bid yet. Jack Ma …

    Financial News 1 Dec 14:01

  • Zynga lowers valuation to a bargain $10bn

    Virtual bumpkin game maker braces for rocky market

    Social network gaming firm Zynga may seek a lower price than expected for shares in its initial public offering, valuing the company at $10bn. In its latest Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, the company said a third-party analysis in the third quarter had decided the company was worth $14.05bn, up from the …

    Financial News 1 Dec 14:19

  • Parallels bags Microsoft .NET brainiac to float clouds

    Mac love not the only fruit worth picking

    Parallels, the virtualization shop putting Windows desktop apps on Macs, has dipped into Microsoft's brain bank for a new chief technology officer. Microsoft technical fellow Mike Toutonghi is joining Parallels after nearly 20 years at Redmond. He was just one of 22 technical fellows at the world's largest software company. …

    Cloud Business 1 Dec 14:39

  • Smartphone-shot movie guns for cinema release

    Used a Nokia, so gimme the Oscar

    The majority of films shot on cameraphones end up in YouTube's vaults, lost forever among grainy videos of gigs and scenes of animals doing stupid things. However, if amateur filmmakers took things more seriously, their footage could end up in cinemas across the country. Director Hooman Khalili is bidding to do exactly that. …

    reghardware 1 Dec 15:05

  • Assange: 'iPhone, BlackBerry, Gmail users - you're all screwed'

    Whistle blown on mass surveillance industry

    Surveillance companies can use your iPhone to take photos of you and your surroundings without your knowledge, said a representative from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at a panel chaired by Julian Assange™ today. Companies also sell products that will let them change the messages you write, track your location and nick …

    Security 1 Dec 15:24

  • ICO 'too scared' to clobber press for data breaches

    Ex-employee: 'I was told media too big for a teeny watchdog'

    A senior investigator for the Information Commissioner's Office has told the Leveson inquiry he was warned off pursuing the press for data breaches by his bosses. Alexander Owen, also a former police officer, had been looking into possible breaches of the Data Protection Act by a south London private investigation agency when …

    Music and Media 1 Dec 15:42

  • Ranting Iranian TV fined £100k for shoddy interview

    Ofcom repeats threat to revoke 'news' channel's licence

    Despite ranting for months that it was going to be pulled off the air, Press TV has actually been hit with a fine of £100,000 for shoddy reporting, as expected. But that has not stopped the channel claiming Ofcom has reversed its decision, and convincing The Guardian of that too: proving the maxim that if you state something …

    Music and Media 1 Dec 16:02

  • Lord British: Games consoles 'fundamentally doomed'

    Shock claim from respected developer

    The creator of the popular Ultima RPG series has forecast that the games console is heading for extinction. Richard Garriott - aka Lord British - is a respected figurehead in the games industry and he reckons the future is bleak for console manufacturers. "I think we might get one more generation, might, but I think …

    reghardware 1 Dec 16:10

  • Toads predict earthquakes: Official

    React to positive airborne ions, boffins explain

    Scientists believe they have a plausible explanation for Italian toads' apparent ability to sense the imminent earthquake that struck the city of L'Aquila on 6 April 2009. By chance, Dr Rachel Grant of the UK's Open University was monitoring a toad population at San Ruffino Lake, around 74km from the quake's epicentre. As we …

    Biology 1 Dec 16:18

  • More than $60bn spunked on cyber-security in 2011

    Investors, defence contractors, tech firms frolic in cash bath

    Global cyber-security spending is on track to exceed $60bn for 2011, according to a study by management consultants PwC. The growing tide of cyber threats, coupled with greater vulnerabilities due to the more pervasive use of technology – particularly mobile devices and cloud computing – are fueling a growth in cyber-security …

    Developer 1 Dec 16:42

  • Consumers go console crazy for Crimbo

    Record sales for games world

    Shoppers are splashing the cash in advance of Christmas and manufacturers of games consoles have been laughing all the way to the bank, with both Nintendo and Microsoft reporting record sales. Americans went console crazy last week on what is known as Black Friday, the first Friday after Thanksgiving when Yanks are encouraged …

    reghardware 1 Dec 16:47

  • AT&T hits back: 'T-Mobile USA merger will be great, actually'

    FCC's condemnation of proposed union not fair, says telco

    AT&T have hit back at a staff analysis from the FCC slamming its proposed merger with T-Mobile USA, saying the regulator "cherry-picked" facts to support its views. The Federal Communications Commission published its report on the proposed union yesterday, despite AT&T's protests, and accused the firms of trying to mislead it …

    Business 1 Dec 17:16

  • IBM, Micron tag team on 3D memory breakthrough

    Vertical DRAM juices bandwidth, efficiency

    The Hybrid Memory Cube consortium formed by Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology this October is leveraging IBM Microelectronics' 3D wafer-baking expertise to get HMC memory to market in two years. IBM said on Thursday that it has come up with manufacturing breakthroughs to create the conduits that link stacked blocks of …

    PCs & Chips 1 Dec 18:06

  • US Senator demands answers from Carrier IQ

    Al Franken calls smartphone tracker on the carpet

    Senator and former late-night funnyman Al Franken has called on Carrier IQ to explain why its diagnostic software, buried in the bowels of 141 million smartphones, isn't a massive violation of US wiretap laws. In a letter sent to Larry Lenhart, CEO and president of the Mountain View, California-based software maker, Franken …

    Security 1 Dec 18:15

  • Boffin's bot spots red light jumpers before they kill

    Predictive code warns of moron motorists

    A team at MIT has developed a computer algorithm that claims to predict which cars will run a red light at traffic intersections. The system, developed at the MIT Aerospace Controls Laboratory, uses cameras to track a car’s progress towards a red light, matching its speed, deceleration, and road position, and then predicts …

    Science 1 Dec 19:44

  • Apple files avatar automation, emotion patents

    Choose your preferred facial expression for 'FOAD'

    Apple has applied for a pair of patents that describe creating digital avatars based on photos of a user's face, and then embuing those avatars with changeable elements that users can choose to express different emotions. The filings say that the resulting avatars could be used "in various applications, including but not …

    Applications 1 Dec 20:46

  • Adobe takes on Efficient Frontiers

    Suits up for Google battle

    Adobe is building up its anti-Google fire power with the inclusion of advertising services outfit Efficient Frontier into its armoury. The new advertising asset will sit snugly with last month’s acquisition of Palo Alto based video advertising company Auditude, data management company Demdex, purchased earlier this year, and …

    Business 1 Dec 21:37

  • Chrome passes Firefox in global browser share

    Google has gaggle of South American fans

    The latest data from internet-monitoring firm StatCounter shows that Chrome overtook Firefox in November as the world’s second-favorite web browser. Number one? Still Internet Explorer. As predicted, the company reports Chrome’s market share rose to 25.69 per cent in November, squeaking past Firefox, which was at 25.23 per …

    Applications 1 Dec 21:41

  • Copyright Act could defang infringement notices: iiNet

    Day two of the ‘iiTrial’ in the High Court

    Yesterday’s proceedings in the ongoing “iiTrial” High Court appeal turned up an interesting problem in the copyright holders’ wish to turn ISPs into their enforcers: a savvy and funded user group could use Australia’s copyright law to prevent ISPs from issuing notices against them. This issue emerged during submissions by …

    Law 1 Dec 22:00

  • Cudo still dealing daily to Kiwis

    Not ready to pull out of NZ yet

    Australian group buying site Cudo has poured cold water on claims that its operation across the Tasman is in peril. Speculation surfaced this week in the New Zealand Herald claiming that Cudo’s nine month old New Zealand operation may be close to shutting down due to reported concerns from its local partner MediaWorks. In New …

    Business 1 Dec 22:30

  • Does your smartphone run Carrier IQ? Find out here

    Apple, AT&T, Sprint confirm; Nokia, RIM, Verizon deny

    The roster of confirmed smartphone manufacturers and network providers using the controversial Carrier IQ tracking software has grown to include Apple, AT&T, Sprint, HTC, and Samsung. Verizon, Nokia, and Research in Motion, meanwhile, have denied reports saying they employ it. In a statement that was widely reported on Thursday …

    Security 1 Dec 22:56

  • NASA busts booster booster

    Confiscates BLOODY BIG rocket after Web sale

    An RL-10 rocket booster – the kind that just lifted the Martian Space Laboratory on its trip to the Red Planet – has been confiscated by NASA after being offered for sale on the Internet. New Scientist says NASA’s Office of Inspector General has revealed the confiscation in its semi-annual report. The Pratt and Whitney engine …

    Space 1 Dec 23:30