8th December 2011 Archive

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UltraViolet: Hollywood's giant digital gamble is here

Boxing Day launch for UK

Hollywood's big plan to update the industry for the digital era - UltraViolet - comes to the UK on 26 December, the consortium behind it has revealed. It will be an inauspicious start, represented by just one new movie release, but there's no mistaking the ambition of the project. Three years in the planning, UV is Hollywood's …

Music and Media 8 Dec 00:02
Greenplum previews unified Hadoop biz-intel stack

Time to buy MapR and dust off the Aviion brand

Upstart data-warehousing appliance maker Greenplum said on Wednesday that it is getting set to mash up its data-warehousing software with its OEMed distribution of the Hadoop big data muncher to create a single über data platform that it is logically calling the Unified Analytics platform. But what the company did not announce …

Cloud 8 Dec 00:54
China pad peddler wins iPad name from Apple

Cupertino and local channel face legal barrage

Apple and its Chinese resellers are facing a wave of legal action in the wake of a court ruling which found that Cupertino does not own the trademark to the iPad name in China. The case stemmed from a $1.5bn claim by Hong Kong monitor manufacturer Proview International, which registered the IPAD trademark during an ill-fated …

Law 8 Dec 01:49
Acer Aspire 5749 budget 15in laptop

Review How much performance does 400 quid get you?

Acer’s Aspire line has become synonymous with affordable computing power, providing an air of quality even towards the lowest end of the pricing scale. With an asking price of £399, the 15.6in Aspire 5749 isn’t going to break the bank and it certainly won’t be shattering records, but can so little money buy reasonable …

reghardware 8 Dec 07:00
Cabinet Office extends G Cloud deadline

Suppliers get more time to bid for public sector cloud biz

The Cabinet Office has extended the deadline for suppliers to apply to join its G Cloud framework by three weeks to 19 December. It said that it has received 532 expressions of interest to its invitation to tender, which was published in October, but wants to give even more companies an opportunity to apply. The £60m …

Cloud Business 8 Dec 08:03
EC data protection proposals could open up Zuck's 'social graph'

Will Facebook be required to allow info transfer to *gasps* Google+?

Draft proposals on the European Commission's "general data protection regulation" have been leaked online. The authenticity of the 116-page document (PDF) was corroborated by the EC, which The Register contacted on Wednesday afternoon. Version 56 of the draft proposal was issued by Brussels on 29 November this year, and …

Law 8 Dec 08:27
Criminal Records Bureau checks to go online

Status check removes need for fresh papers for each job application

The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) is to introduce an online status checking service for employers to verify that potential employees have been cleared for relevant jobs. It is intended to save people from having to request a new certificate every time they apply for a new role. The move is one of the measures announced by …

Government 8 Dec 09:02
Oedipal shower romp wins crap sex award

Mum abuses son 'with a bar of soap', author David Guterson explains

US author David Guterson has walked off with this year's Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for an admirable contribution to the genre in his novel Ed King. The book is ominously described as "a re-imagining of the Oedipus myth", and the judges were particularly impressed with "the part where a mother has sex with her …

Entertainment 8 Dec 09:23
Insurance and IT firms agree rules on sharing price details

Blabbing pricing intentions to each other looked fishy to OFT

Six insurance companies and two IT software and service providers have agreed to change the way price information for motor insurance is shared following concerns that previous practices were violating competition laws. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said that the insurers shared price details about future motor insurance …

Law 8 Dec 09:43
KitchenPad

iOS App of the Week Book the cooks

The big problem when preparing the Christmas mega-feast is synchronising the timings for all the different dishes. My oven just has a single timer on it, so KitchenPad’s ability to create multiple timers is just what I need. The app has two main screens: the first provides a neat graphical display of the burners on your stove …

reghardware 8 Dec 10:00
NASA rover finds evidence of water flowing on Mars

'Sort of thing that makes boffins leap out of their chairs'

NASA's famous robot rover Opportunity, still prowling the haematite steppes of the Meridiani Planum on Mars seven years after setting down, appears to have discovered concrete evidence that liquid water once flowed across the surface of the red planet. There (once was, probably) water in them thar red hills! A bright vein …

Science 8 Dec 10:00
Amazon: The Microsoft of the cloud

Open ... and Shut Will AWS eat all the competition?

Is there a cloud market, or is there an Amazon market? Even as the cloud market booms, it's an open question whether there is room for anyone besides Amazon to benefit. Even as Microsoft dominated desktop computing over the past two decades, Amazon seems set to own the public cloud for years to come, notwithstanding attempts …

Developer 8 Dec 10:21
Apple preps TV enabled iMac ahead of own-brand telly

Siri to control the UI

All the rage - well, among PC makers, if not consumers - in the early 1990s, the PC TV is set to make a comeback, courtesy of Apple. Enter Brian Blair of US financial services company Wedge Partners, who told investors this week that Apple's next iMac will be a "slimmer all-in-one PC with TV capabilities", BGR reports. Blair …

reghardware 8 Dec 10:33
Mythbusters cannonball ‘myth-fires’

Misses target, hits houses and car

If non-US readers have ever wondered how far the Alameda County bomb disposal range (beloved of Discovery Channel show Mythbusters) is from homes, it seems it’s at least close enough for a misdirected cannonball to hit a house. And then another house, a hill and a car. Mythbusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are red- …

Physics 8 Dec 10:42
Why are Android anti-virus firms so slow to react on Carrier IQ?

Analysis Release of ~~eradication~~ 'detection' apps 1 month on raises questions

Some Android anti-virus firms have begun releasing Carrier IQ detection apps, but only after the controversial software became a talking point on Capitol Hill ... and a month after a security researcher first discovered it. BitDefender released Carrier IQ Finder, an app that identifies the presence of the controversial mobile …

Mobile 8 Dec 11:02
Steve Jobs' last design: New Apple HQ pics

Doughnut of doom

Those who think that Apple is a strange cult will only have their suspicions confirmed by the recently released renderings of Apple's new Cupertino HQ published online yesterday. We've seen hazy pics of the building before, but the official images have just been posted on the Cupertino Council's website as part of the …

PCs & Chips 8 Dec 11:14
Retailer reveals Nokia Lumia 710 UK debut date

Not before Chrimbo

Nokia's second Windows Phone handset, the Lumia 710, will be available over here on 6 January 2012, one online retailer reckons. The Digital Phone Company - who we've never heard of - has posted that date on its website. Other suppliers listing the 710, such as Expansys and Clove, are not yet stating release dates, and …

reghardware 8 Dec 11:17
Fusion-io: SSDs are useless ... Let's build one

Developing super-speed SSD – SCSI Express accelerates SSD interface

After knocking SSDs for poor performance, Fusion-io is now building one itself – but throwing out existing speed-limiting SSD interfaces designed for disk drives. A preview device, running at 95,000-plus IOPS, was shown at HP's Discover event in Vienna last month. Fusion-io has criticised SSDs for poor performance, saying: …

Channel Register 8 Dec 11:34
Taxpayers to cough more for multi-billion pound failed NHS IT project

CSC will reportedly continue work despite ginormous cockups. DoH!

A contract extension costing the taxpayer up to £2bn has reportedly been granted to Computer Sciences Corporation, even though the botched NHS IT project the American company had been working on was axed by the health secretary in September. According to a story in The Times (behind paywall) this morning, CSC has cheerily told …

Government 8 Dec 11:47
Laptop bags: 15-inchers

Xmas Gift Guide For folk with large luggables

Fed up of lugging your laptop around in a tatty old backpack? Fancy something a little more stylish? Feel your other half ought to carry a pack that's more chic? Here are five of the best bags for 15in laptops that Reg Hardware saw during 2011. We'd recommend any of the following bags, but our favourite is listed on the next …

reghardware 8 Dec 12:00
Nokia to sell off luxury phone brand

Gem-encrusted blower biz on block

Nokia is planning to sell off Vertu, its wholly-owned luxury-phone brand, which sells basic mobile phones with classy cases to the overpaid. The FT reports the news, which Nokia hasn't yet confirmed, but the paper reckons Goldman Sachs has been appointed to oversee the sell-off, which is likely to see the UK-based Vertu put …

Mobile 8 Dec 12:16
Domesday Book put on touchscreen at Bletchley Park

If Minority Report had been about medieval peasants ...

The first Domesday book was published on vellum in the 11th century. 900 years later when the BBC wanted to mark the anniversary of Britain's oldest surviving dataset, they gathered a whole new clutch of information about Britain in photos, videos and text, and because it was 1986 saved it all on laser discs. Unfortunately the …

Storage 8 Dec 12:39
Patchy app development security slammed

Eight out of 10 tested apps riddled with flaws

Eight in 10 applications failed to pass stricter security testing standards in test by application security assessment firm Veracode. Veracode tightened up its testing procedures so that apps prone to cross-site scripting and SQL injection errors automatically failed. This zero tolerance policy reflects that fact that these …

Applications 8 Dec 12:47
WD to research flash in Taiwan

New R&D centre

Disk drive supplier Western Digital is planning a solid state drive (SSD) research and development centre in Taiwan. Digitimes reports it could be located in Hsinchu and employ some 50 local technicians. It would focus on enterprise SSD applications, and would complement WD's existing R&D centre at its headquarter offices, …

Storage 8 Dec 13:03
Tech firm deals collapse on fears of double dip

Mergers and acquisitions down 20 per cent in November

Tech M&A activity across Europe dropped by one-fifth in November compared to the previous month amid biting concerns over the state of the economy and a potential slide into a second recession. According to market voyeurs Regent Partners, the 20 per cent fall was accompanied by a continued fall in the value of deals on the …

Channel Register 8 Dec 13:22
TomTom axes 10% of workforce

Overhauls R&D groups

Sat-nav maker TomTom is axing 10 per cent of the workforce and reorganising the R&D budget to speed up the time it takes to get products to market. The move is part of a restructuring programme designed to slash costs by some €50m and counter a 23 per cent slowdown in consumer sales reported in Q3. "We will reduce the number …

Hardware 8 Dec 13:43
iOS finally gets Palm compatibility

As long as apps are wrapped up warm

Love the iPhone, but still in love with Palm OS? You can have it all as StyleTap is standing ready to wrap up your Palm OS apps with an Apple-friendly iOS coating. The StyleTap wrapper is like a one-application emulator, bundling an instance of Palm OS with every application to work around Apple's draconian restrictions, but …

Mobile 8 Dec 14:02
The pace of change parts 1, 2 and 3

On demand Or, what cloud means for your company

Vendors are always talking about cloud this and cloud that, as if you're all the same. Well, maybe to them, you are but wavy company in every sector has different needs for IT, and so different needs for cloud technology. The Reg got together with UK cloud provider Star to create a Regcast - or, to be more accurate, three …

Cloud Business 8 Dec 14:18
New account of Flight 447 disaster published

Computer rashly let pilots take over

Lack of manual flying experience contributed to the crash of a fully functional commercial airliner two years ago, killing all 228 people aboard. Air France Flight 447 crashed while flying through an Atlantic storm in July 2009, the worst ever French aviation accident. The black box recorders were not recovered for almost two …

Bootnotes 8 Dec 14:43
Facebook tries to grow up by undergoing corporate rejig

Be private and communicate to your stalkerbase... bitch

Facebook has reportedly overhauled its corporate structure in (probably) a sly nod to Google and (more likely) as a strategic move ahead of the company's expected IPO. According to All Things Digital, citing unnamed sources, the dominant social network has slotted its design, product and engineering teams into working more …

Financial News 8 Dec 15:02
Judge Dredd vs Zombies

Review 'I am the Law'

Cop of the future Judge Dredd has been pounding the streets of Mega City One since 1977, but it took host comic 2000AD's acquisition by software developer Rebellion in 2000 to see the lawman to star in a decent videogame. Dredd has appeared on the PC, the PlayStation and the Xbox, and now he's meting out justice, shot by shot, …

reghardware 8 Dec 15:06
Small biz owners plan for stingy Xmas celebrations

Workers forced to pull their own cracker

More than half of small biz owners are cancelling Christmas – well the annual festive lunch to be specific – as cash is in short supply. This is according to research by the Forum of Private Business, which states a new wave of Scrooges have emerged in the current climate who are unwilling to shower staff with cheap wine and …

Small Biz 8 Dec 15:22
Ofcom sets out ambitious plans for 2012/13

Spectrum auctions, Olympic Games and live complaints system

UK communications regulator Ofcom has set out its plan for the next year, and wants to know if anyone disagrees with its priorities. Among the plans for next year is the promise of complaints submission through its website, so X Factor viewers won't have to hold their ire until the morning. The regulator will also take a look …

Wireless 8 Dec 15:43
Feds probe alleged World Cup bid email hack

We wuz robbed

Federal investigators are investigating claims that email accounts of the US bid team for the 2022 World Cup were hacked of part of an alleged dirty tricks campaign that may also have affected the 2018 bid process. FBI agents questioned members of England's failed 2018 bid team last month as part of a wider investigation over …

Crime 8 Dec 16:03
Former Ingram Micro MD joins distie TD Maverick

Plumping up the European market

Channel veteran Julian Klein has pitched up at AV distie TD Maverick as European development director. Klein has been out of the market in a full time capacity since he departed Ingram Micro in 2009 where he was MD for two years though has worked as a consultant at various firms. “It took a while for us to find the right …

Channel Register 8 Dec 16:22
Microsoft welcomes OSI open source to Win8 store

GPL blocked at the door

Most, but not all, open-source apps are being welcomed by Microsoft into the Windows 8 Windows Store. The Store’s App Developer Agreement (here) allows developers to build their apps for download and installation on Windows 8 machines using any open-source licence as long as it has been approved by the Open-Source Initiative ( …

Developer 8 Dec 16:33
Brocade has 2-year Fibre Channel headstart on rival

Cisco you laggard ...

Brocade is making 16gig Fibre Channel hay while Cisco is still lagging up to two years behind, having made a wrong bet with FCoE. Brocade's chief technology officer, Dave Stevens, presented at an investors' meeting attended by Aaron Rakers of Stifel Nicolaus, who reports that Stevens: "highlighted a faster-than-typical …

Storage 8 Dec 17:04
North America makes entry into dino fatty league

73-tonne dino is US's biggest yet

Seems like Americans have been fatties for longer than we thought. The heaviest creature to have walked on land lived in New Mexico circa the Late Cretaceous period, according to an article by Montana State Uni researchers. Until now Alamosaurus sanjuanensis was only thought to have lived in South America. But after …

Biology 8 Dec 17:19
Digital certificate authority suspends ops following breach

Hackers access database, gain control over website

Websites belonging to a Netherlands-based issuer of digital certificates were unavailable following reports hackers penetrated their security and accessed databases that should have been off limits. Dutch telecommunications giant KPN issued a statement (translation here) that said it temporarily shut the website of it's Gemnet …

Enterprise Security 8 Dec 17:44
Cloudera gets proactive with Hadoop management

Updated Lets loose freebie control freak

Cloudera might have been the first company to try becoming the Red Hat for stuffed elephants, but with MapR, Hortonworks, IBM, Oracle, DataStax, and EMC all trying to commercialize Hadoop, Cloudera has to keep on its toes and perhaps even balance on a ball. That's because the underlying Hadoop data muncher is an open source …

Cloud 8 Dec 18:20
Broadcom bullish in 802.11ac and in-car Ethernet

No need to rip-and-replace Wi-Fi yet

Broadcom has been outlining its plans for the next year, including a big push into the 802.11ac wireless arena and a new venture for in-car Ethernet. The company has decided to push the forthcoming 8012.11ac Wi-Fi standard in its consumer electronics hardware lines, touting a near doubling of the range of 802.11n systems, more …

Wireless 8 Dec 21:30
Netflix set to make your video history public

That Jenna Jameson phase will haunt you

Netflix has been given the legal green light to integrate information of customer’s video viewing habits on social networks following the passing of a bill by the US House of Representatives. The bill, HR 2471, effectively lifts 23 year old restrictions imposed under the Video Privacy Protection Act, which forbids the …

Music and Media 8 Dec 21:42
OpenDNS puts crypto in beta

DNSCrypt tries to block snooping

While the world slowly implements DNSSec in the backbone of the Internet, OpenDNS has put forward its solution to securing the user-side of DNS, with the preview version of a DNS encryption tool. DNSCrypt only works on Macs at the moment. According to OpenDNS, the idea is to encrypt all users’ DNS requests, preventing nasties …

Security 8 Dec 22:00
Some aspects of NBN anti-competitive, says PC

It’s a monopoly, what did you expect?

In the kind of decision that will go down in the annals of the astonishingly obvious, Australia’s Productivity Commission has found that some aspects of the National Broadband Network might be considered anti-competitive. The report, by the PC’s Australian Government Competitive Neutrality Complaints Office, was sparked by …

Mobile 8 Dec 22:45
Google splashes $US300m on HK data centre

Oompa-Loompas for Honkers by 2013

Google’s first Asia Pacific data centre is currently under construction in Hong Kong and looking for staff. In September 2011, Google announced that it had acquired 2.7 hectares of land in the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in Kowloon, for the anticipated construction of data centre facilities. On December 8, Google revealed …

Cloud 8 Dec 23:00
Iran displays video footage of captured US spy drone

Lodges official complaint over airspace violations

Iranian state television has shown video of what it claims is a US spy drone that was hijacked by its army's electronic warfare unit. The government has shown footage of what appears to be a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, which the Iranians claim was flown from Afghanistan over the northern city of Kashmar when it was taken …

Government 8 Dec 23:07
Wind farms get better forecasts

First win for UNSW under new IP arrangements

The University of NSW has announced the first fruits of its new intellectual property regime, in the form of software designed to improve wind power forecasting. Forecasting is important for wind farm operators, since the weather can trigger very rapid changes in wind power output. A Brisbane-based energy market modeling …

Business 8 Dec 23:30