28th December 2011 Archive

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Facebook suggests you get out more - and it'll tell you how

It knows what you did last summer and next summer

In another move by Facebook to predict user behaviour, the human herding site has introduced Suggested Events: a feature that will offer bright ideas for what you should do on Friday night. Zuckerberg knows how your little mind works. Suggested Events will replace Friends' Events in the lefthand column of the Facebook home …

ID 28 Dec 09:42
Cisco: We are NOT lagging behind Brocade

Blocks and Files FCoE ahead of 16GBit/s FC, sniffs boss

A Cisco boss fired a warning shot across Brocade's bow after the rival networking biz bragged that it had a two-year lead over Cisco in the 16Gb/s Fibre Channel arena. Cisco's product manager for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), J Michel Metz, took exception to boasts made by Brocade's chief technology officer Dave Stevens …

Storage 28 Dec 10:33
Boycott forces Go Daddy U-turn on anti-piracy law backing

Ditches SOPA support as punters transfer domains in protest

Hosting provider and registrar Go Daddy has done an abrupt about-face on its support for the controversial US Stop Online Piracy Act following calls for a boycott of its services. "Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA," the company said in a statement late Friday. As we reported last week, Go Daddy customers were being …

Hosting 28 Dec 11:29
NASA to place twin probes in Moon orbit as you snog beneath mistletoe

Formation-flying washing machines in spaaaace! Excellent

NASA has announced that it expects to place two formation-flying space probes into orbit around the Moon on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft are intended to map the lunar gravitational field with unprecedented accuracy, giving the boffinry community many useful …

Space 28 Dec 11:33
2012 Games Preview

What to put on your play list

What are you most looking forward to next year? Euro 2012 and the Olympics? Quad-core fondleslabs? The extra bank holiday? Ridley Scott's Prometheus? Sequoia blitzing 20 petaflops? Something entirely different, perhaps? Or maybe you're just too busy cramming your underground bunker full of bottled water and dried fruit ahead of …

reghardware 28 Dec 12:00
Wi-Fi desk rodents break free from oppressive cabling

A mouse without wires! It's a Christmas miracle

A reference design for a wireless mouse has received Wi-Fi Direct certification, making it the first rodent to achieve such fame, though not, perhaps, the very first to ditch the wire. The design comes from Ozmo, a company which has spent the last four years burning through $40m in VC cash trying to prove that Wi-Fi can do …

Wireless 28 Dec 12:39
China pumps CCTV into Freeview HD boxes

All the news the Chinese want you to see

China has launched three TV channels onto Freeview HD, so now those few who are equipped with compatible, and connected, Freeview boxes can see how China sees the world. The channels are delivered using the Vision IPTV platform, so aren't broadcast at all despite appearing in the EPG. The three channels (which cover news, …

Entertainment 28 Dec 13:29
Apple's TV killer 'on shelves by summer 2012'

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again

One of Steve Jobs' final ambitions was to revolutionise television. And if supply-chain moles are telling the truth, we'll get to see what exactly the great man had in mind in a few months, when Apple's new iTVs start rolling off the production line. The new Apple TVs - reportedly full sets rather than just set-top boxes - …

Entertainment 28 Dec 14:16
It's going to be a White (Space) winter after all

First database of available frequencies gets January go-ahead

The FCC has announced that the world's first White Space database will go live on 26 January 2012, allowing unlicensed devices to find unused frequencies, as long as they're in Wilmington, North Carolina. The FCC has, as expected, granted the first database to Florida-based Spectrum Bridge, who recently completed a set of …

Wireless 28 Dec 15:31
Jobs' 'nuclear war' is not doing Apple any good - analyst

Rivals will evade patents with crafty workarounds

Apple's patent wars will start to hurt shareholders if Apple continues to pursue its lawsuits against Samsung, HTC and Motorola, an analyst has said. Kevin Rivette, a managing partner at 3LP Advisors LLC, told Bloomberg that even if Apple won its patent battles, it was playing a losing game. Legal fees aside, the " …

Business 28 Dec 16:26
Mighty WAN pumper offered in the struggle to cope with Big Data

A pipe so fat it can satiate even the biggest boxes

Companies may be excited about doing Google-style analytics on all aspects of their business with Hadoop and other "big data" tools, but big businesses are bracing for bigger phone bills as big data is starting to generate big traffic across the distributed operations of enterprises. This is music to the ears of Infineta …

Data Networking 28 Dec 17:19
Mozilla isn't a charity case - and Google's $300m will do nicely

Open ... and Shut Paying for Google search in Firefox is just business

Some people seem to think Google gave Mozilla a sweetheart deal when it renewed its search agreement for Firefox. At roughly $300 million per year, it will fund quite a bit of open-source development at Mozilla, but this isn't a case of Google going soft during the Christmas season. It is, as Mozilla veteran Asa Dotzler argues, …

Business 28 Dec 18:02
Intel gets Atoms out ahead of CES

Dual-cores for dying markets

Intel says shipments have started on its latest lines of dual-core Atom processors, formerly known as Cedar Trail, and that it’s aiming them at the netbook and healthcare markets. The new processors - announced ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month - are fused with Intel’s Graphics Media …

PCs & Chips 28 Dec 19:27
Akamai seizes Cotendo for US$268m

First we sue, then we buy you

Akamai Technologies is set to buy cloud based technology provider Cotendo for $US268 million, with the transaction expected to be closed in the first half of 2012. Akamai's tenth acquisition since it was founded in 1998, Cotendo specialises in web and mobile acceleration services from a network of 30 global distributed points …

Business 28 Dec 21:02
Stratfor attackers prep to publish emails

That’s if you trust the Pastebin posts

Someone claiming to speak – or at least post – on behalf of Antisec has published a threat on Pastebin that they are planning to release e-mails obtained in the Stratfor Global Intelligence break-in. This post, which along with some Twittter posts has further fuelled the media frenzy surrounding the attack, states that the e- …

Security 28 Dec 21:30
Early Bell recordings live again (kind of)

Optical scan mimics stylus on 125-year-old wax disks

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories says it has reconstructed sounds recorded in Alexander Graham Bell’s laboratory in the late 19th century. Rather than trying to construct a machine to play the recordings, stored at the Smithsonian Institute, the researchers have recovered what has to be described as muddy and …

Science 28 Dec 22:00
Microsoft mum on leaked Phone OS plans

Apollo upgrade plans for stellar sales

Microsoft has told The Register that it has no comment on an apparently leaked copy of upgrade plans for its mobile phone operating system. The presentation, leaked to Wmpoweruser.com, predicts an upgrade to the current Mango platform in the second quarter of 2012 – dubbed Tango. Described as “products with the best prices,” …

Operating Systems 28 Dec 22:17
Microsoft announces ASP.NET zero-day vuln

Workaround ahead of patch

Just in case anybody’s got a BOFH working at the moment, pay attention: Microsoft has released a security advisory covering a zero-day vulnerability in ASP.NET. “The vulnerability exists due to the way that ASP.NET processes values in an ASP.NET form post causing a hash collision,” the advisory says. The vulnerability exposes …

Security 28 Dec 22:33