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19th December 2011 Archive

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  • Shoppers love fondling iPads to fill out sex health survey

    'Rate my NHS' poll suddenly popular when shiny tech appears

    A survey conducted using iPads has helped an NHS cluster reach out more people in quicker time for their views on local health services. The Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire NHS cluster gave researchers iPads that had a special software installed and asked them to gather opinions at Eden shopping centre in High Wycombe. The …

    Applications 19 Dec 2011, 08:06

  • Somerset buses bin paper tickets, sniff journey-logging chips

    The future is smartcard bus passes

    Somerset county council is to introduce smartcard electronic ticket reading machines for bus passengers with free passes issued by the authority. The implementation will cover people are eligible for the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS), run by the Department for Transport in conjunction with local …

    Applications 19 Dec 2011, 09:02

  • Whitehall: Govt-related private email, texts will be uncloaked

    Civil servants told messages can targeted by Freedom of Info requests

    Messages in private email accounts, text messages and other messaging systems can be disclosed under freedom of information (FOI) laws if they relate to public business, the FOI regulator has confirmed. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has published new guidance [6-page 156KKB PDF] making it clear that FOI laws …

    Government 19 Dec 2011, 09:23

  • Oracle, Cisco crow new database flash dash record

    Best 2-CPU server result ever - with Violin's chips

    Oracle claims a world-record TPC-C result with its database running on a Cisco server and not an Exadata system, although doesn't mention that two Violin memory flash arrays were needed. A Cisco UCS C250 extended memory server with two six-core Xeon X5690 processors, 384GB of DRAM, and two Violin Memory flash arrays (5.3TB V- …

    Storage 19 Dec 2011, 09:47

  • Vote for the year's best games

    Reg Hardware Awards 2011 State of play

    Ladies and gentlemen, the annual Reg Hardware Awards are here and, once again, we need your help finding the best - and the worst - consumer electronics and infotech products of 2011. This week, we're calling for your nominations for our Gaming category, which gathers together our Game of the Year, Antique Code Show All-time …

    reghardware 19 Dec 2011, 09:54

  • Zombie Microsoft antitrust case shuffles to retrial

    Jury 'hopelessly' deadlocked

    Novell's reanimated antitrust case against Microsoft's Word is reported to have hit "hopeless" deadlock, with Novell pushing for a fresh trial. A jury in Salt Lake City hearing the $1bn case can't make up its mind whether Microsoft broke the law, according to The Wall St Journal. According to the WSJ, after a brief …

    Applications 19 Dec 2011, 10:21

  • Saudi prince opens wallet, buys $300m slice of Twitter

    Stake bought with billionaire royal's loose change

    Saudi prince and billionaire investor Alwaleed bin Talal has snaffled a $300m (£194m) stake in Twitter. The prince, along with his investment vehicle Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), bagged the strategic stake after "several months of negotiations and comprehensive due diligence". "Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our …

    Developer 19 Dec 2011, 10:43

  • BT's gift to Google: A patent war over ads and Android

    Music, Maps, Adwords and mobile OS land Google in court

    It's open season now. BT is the latest company to sue Google, alleging patent infringement, but this latest barrage extends beyond Google's Android software - it touches to other Google services too. These include maps, music, social networking and its advertising services, including Adwords, claims BT. Although only the six …

    Developer 19 Dec 2011, 11:01

  • Sony creates paper battery

    Pulp friction

    Sony boffins have built a battery out of paper. The so-called "bio battery" uses enzymes to catalyse the breakdown of glucose stored within the cellulose that forms the paper's wood pulp fibres. The battery has a structure that keeps reaction elements separate to encourage the flow of hydrogen ions and, to keep the reaction …

    Hardware 19 Dec 2011, 11:07

  • Belkin LiveAction Camera Grip

    Geek Treat of the Week Get a grip….

    Hats off to Belkin for coming up with some really neat iOS-oriented gadgets just lately. Following on from its kitchen stands for the iPad, it has now come up with some handy little photographic accessories for the iPhone. The first one to arrive is the LiveAction Camera Grip, with an external microphone and remote control unit …

    Hardware 19 Dec 2011, 11:33

  • Blast at Apple gear factory hurts 61

    Workers hospitalised after Shanghai plant explosion

    An explosion at an Apple supplier's factory injured 61 workers and put 23 of them in hospital. The blast shook a Ri Teng Computer Accessory plant in Songjiang in Shanghai at 3pm on 17 December, according to a filing with the Taiwan stock exchange by Ri Teng parent Pegatron. "While the cause of the explosion is under …

    Phones 19 Dec 2011, 11:44

  • Laptop bags: netbooks and tablets

    Xmas Gift Guide Small screen carriers

    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 laptop bags for tablets, netbooks and Ultrabooks that Reg Hardware saw during 2011. We'd recommend any of the following bags, but our …

    Laptops 19 Dec 2011, 12:00

  • Cops seek clues to $1.7m tablet snatch

    22 pallets of BlackBerry PlayBooks lifted

    Thieves made away with $1.7m worth of RIM BlackBerry PlayBook tablets last week in Chesterfield, Indiana. The 7in tablets were being taken to Ontario, Canada from a warehouse and distribution facility in Plainfield, Indiana, local police said. The 22 pallets of kit were in the back of a lorry owned by Brightpoint, a company …

    Tablets 19 Dec 2011, 12:12

  • Ailing HMV sees tech sales' bright spot among dire music biz

    Behold, His Master's Voice Fondleslab

    Struggling music retailer HMV has reported that its technology sales jumped 42 per cent, after it refitted more than half of its stores to focus on punting fondleslabs. The company, which owns 252 shops throughout the UK, is slowly morphing its stores into retail outfits that also sell tech gear in an effort to survive on the …

    Media 19 Dec 2011, 12:22

  • The Best of El Reg 2011 now on Kindle

    Vulture picks over remains of 2011 to make enormous twizzler

    Worried about spending the Festive period picking over the remains of finger buffets or over bred, under cooked turkeys? Spend it picking over the last year in tech instead, with The Best of the Reg, 2011, the choicest morsels of our coverage mechanically reconstituted, and twizzled direct to your Kindle device of choice. The …

    Site News 19 Dec 2011, 12:45

  • Bah, humbug! Virgin Media censors Charles D**kens

    EPG in ginormous Hitchc**k-up!

    Some Virgin Media telly customers attempting to tune in to various programmes over the weekend were greeted with ludicrous censoring of well-known names, such as Charles D**kens and Jarvis C**ker. The cockup was reported by The Media Blog, which posted various screenshots sent in by bemused viewers using Virgin Media TV's on- …

    Mobile 19 Dec 2011, 13:07

  • Comet Lovejoy survives brush with fiery solar death

    Space rock improbably flies through the heat of the Sun

    Suicidal comet Lovejoy has survived its brush with death in the furnace of the Sun, emerging from behind the star in one (smaller) piece. Most space boffins thought that the comet, composed of ice and rocks, couldn't survive its trajectory so close to the heat of the Sun - and expected Lovejoy to disintegrate. But instead, …

    Science 19 Dec 2011, 13:28

  • AT&T gives up on T-Mobile pre-merge purge

    Telco mulled flogging assets to save deal

    Talks to sell off some of AT&T's assets to make its merger with T-Mobile USA seem a little less anticompetitive have reportedly stalled. People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that one of the options to get regulatory approval for the deal - offloading assets to make the end company less of a behemoth - …

    Financial News 19 Dec 2011, 13:49

  • Samsung hauls Apple into court over emoticon patent :-(

    Now the big guns are coming out in smartphone war

    Samsung has opened a new offensive in its ongoing patent dispute with smartphone arch-rival Apple. Fresh claims, filed in Germany, charge Apple with violating a pair of patents relating to the implementation of the WCDMA 3G telecom standard and another two patents relating to smartphone utilities, one of which involves the …

    Developer 19 Dec 2011, 14:02

  • A Brief History of Virtualisation, now on Kindle

    Share a little time, and money, with El Reg

    If you've ever wondered what time-sharing, multics and Unix have to do with today's hypervisor technologies, or why you should consider the global environment when planning your virtual machine strategy, then you'll want to read The Register's A Brief History of Virtualisation, on Kindle. El Reg's Liam Proven takes us from IBM …

    Virtualization 19 Dec 2011, 14:15

  • Creepy photo-tagging tech slotted into Google+

    'Find my face' feature lands

    Eric Schmidt may have been creeped out by the idea of using huge facial databases to identify individuals online, but that hasn't stopped Google from debuting its own version of the technology. Google+, Mountain View's own take on social networking, is now loaded with a photo-tagging and "find my face" feature that punters …

    Developer 19 Dec 2011, 14:36

  • Benchmarks are $%#&@!!

    Secrets and solutions from a reformed benchmarketer

    At SC11 I ran into Henry Newman, CEO of HPC consulting firm Instrumental Inc. After exchanging the usual pleasantries and deeply offensive personal insults, we got to talking about some of the recently released benchmark results – and how irrelevant most of them are to the real world. In the course of the conversation, Henry …

    HPC 19 Dec 2011, 15:00

  • Parody is illegal, say barmy bureaucrats

    Our prisons are full of oppressed satirists, apparently

    The IPO chose Office Party Friday last week to unveil 15 more proposals on intellectual property reform. This is traditionally the most alcoholic workday of the year - and ministers might need another stiff drink as they digest the surprises that ideologically fanatical bureaucrats have been preparing for them. Among the …

    Media 19 Dec 2011, 15:32

  • iPad scammers pwn Lady Gaga's Facebook page

    We're plastic but we'll still have fun...

    Fraudsters have hit gold after they managed to successfully plant an iPad-themed scam on the Facebook fan page of Lady Gaga. The page has 45 million fans, so only a minute percentage need to click for scammers to tap into an Xmas-themed windfall. The bogus messages claim the pop-star is running an iPad competition on the back …

    Security 19 Dec 2011, 16:03

  • US gov split over new domain explosion

    NTIA is on ICANN's side for once ...

    ICANN is receiving mixed messages from the US government over its plans to dramatically expand the number of top-level domains available on the internet. The Federal Trade Commission on Friday became the highest-profile objector to the so-called new gTLDs program, saying it threatens to increase fraud and phishing. "A rapid, …

    Hosting 19 Dec 2011, 16:33

  • OpenText lures new CEO from SGI

    Barrenechea back to software

    Supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics has lost its president and CEO, Mark Barrenechea – a longtime executive with a specialty in the software business – to enterprise content management software provider OpenText. SGI announced last Wednesday morning that Barrenechea would be stepping down at the company, which makes shared …

    Software 19 Dec 2011, 16:51

  • Fusion-io board gets ex-HP hotshot

    IT giant's old chief technology officer

    Shane Robison, the ex-HP chief technology officer, has joined the board of server flash seller Fusion-io. Robison, age 58, parted company with HP at the beginning of November, shortly after Meg Whitman replaced Leo Apotheker as HP's CEO. He will serve on the Fusion-io board's Audit Committee and Nominating and Corporate …

    Storage 19 Dec 2011, 17:21

  • Saudi prince buys $300m sliver of Twitter

    Tiny-revenue microblogger really worth $10bn?

    A Saudi prince whose investment company claims to have a fondness for free speech has plopped $300m into the coffers of Twitter, the 140-characters-at-a-time social networking service widely touted as an enabler of this year's Arab Spring. "Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities …

    Software 19 Dec 2011, 18:36

  • Android gets 'flashy', 'social' holiday treats

    Adobe gifts Flash 11.1 as promised, dev goodies unwrapped as well

    The final major update of Adobe's Flash Player for mobile devices, version 11.1, has appeared for Android 4.0, aka Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). Needless to say, there's no Flash 11.1 update for iOS mobile devices – Adobe's interactive multimedia platform is not welcome on Apple's phones and fondleslabs. Flash Player 11.1 for ICS …

    Software 19 Dec 2011, 20:18

  • Virgin Oz plans onboard WiFi rollout

    DIY content streaming on your gadgets

    Virgin Australia passengers could soon enjoy the wonders of airborne WiFi under a joint development project with Lufthansa Systems. The companies have signed a letter of intent to produce and deploy BoardConnect, which will cover both devices and the back-end system, with launch planned for mid-2012. BoardConnect will give …

    Business 19 Dec 2011, 20:33

  • Oracle gooses Studio compilers for Solaris, Linux

    Puts on Tuxedo 11g for enterprise apps

    Having cranked Solaris Unix up to 11, software giant Oracle has now revved up a new companion set of compilers that work with the new operating system as well as the current Oracle Linux clone of Red Hat's Enterprise Linux. The Solaris Studio 12.3 C, C++, and Fortran compilers might bear the Solaris brand and they may have …

    Developer 19 Dec 2011, 20:53

  • Channel Seven cleared by ACMA for use of RIP Facebook pics

    If you die make sure your privacy settings are on high

    The Seven Network has been cleared of violating privacy provisions of the television code, after the network broadcast pictures and messages sourced from a memorial Facebook tribute page for a murdered woman. The Australian Communications and Media Authority investigated whether the broadcast of material sourced from Facebook …

    Media 19 Dec 2011, 22:00

  • IT'S OFFICIAL: AT&T, T-Mobile deal is dead

    Big Phone's colossal $4bn cockup concludes

    AT&T's planned $39bn acquisition of T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom is dead – and it's costing AT&T $4bn to kill it. "AT&T Inc. said today that after a thorough review of options it has agreed with Deutsche Telekom AG to end its bid to acquire T-Mobile USA, which began in March of this year," the company said in a statement …

    Business 19 Dec 2011, 22:18

  • Plastic semiconductor makes solar cells more efficient

    Quantum ‘dark state’ helps capture wasted energy

    It sounds paradoxical, but reducing the amount of energy captured in a silicon solar cell can make it more efficient, according to University of Texas researchers. The research by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu addresses the problem of “hot electrons” – electrons created in a silicon solar cell that are too energetic to be useful and …

    Science 19 Dec 2011, 22:30

  • Voda Oz to trial NBN Services

    Maybe fixed networks will work better…

    Vodafone Australia has announced its first trial customer connections on Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), hooking up households in Armidale. The mobile carrier had announced it was signing onto as an NBN retailer earlier this year. Voda says it is delivering FetchTV and trialling femtocell services in the service …

    Business 19 Dec 2011, 23:00

  • Red Hat grabs gobs o' green in Q3

    Ho-ho-hopen source

    Linux operating system and middleware software distributor Red Hat continues to power through its fiscal quarters, even while the European economy is choppy and several key industries – government and financial services being two important ones – are under pressure. In its third quarter of fiscal 2012, which ended in November …

    Financial News 19 Dec 2011, 23:44