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4th January 2012 Archive

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  • Fujitsu creates antivirus virus for Japanese government

    Code seeks out and destroys malware and botnet systems

    Fujitsu has developed code for the Japanese government that will destroy malware and collect information on its creators. The government decided to investigate the possibilities of such code in 2005, and three years later the Defense Ministry's Technical Research and Development Institute awarded Fujitsu a ¥178.5m ($2.3m) …

    Security 4 Jan 00:26

  • Space soldiers save satellite from FLAMING DEATH

    The little engine that could rescues $2bn military bird

    The US Air Force Space Command's 14-month effort to save a $2bn military communications satellite overcame failed thrusters, threatened explosion, space debris, and destructive radiation, thanks in great measure to tiny thrusters with a mere 0.05 pounds of oomph. It wasn't easy, as airforce-magazine.com reports in a blow-by- …

    Space 4 Jan 01:41

  • US military's non-lethal weapon plans revealed

    Laser aircraft disruption, sonic scuba repeller, blinders, more

    Details of the US military’s wish-list for non-lethal devices have been published online and show some interesting new technologies, as well as some more familiar ones that are to be beefed up. The non-lethal weapons (NLW) book was posted online by researchers at Public Intelligence, and covers both existing weapons currently …

    Security 4 Jan 01:52

  • HTC Sensation XL

    Review Beats drums up another Android

    Following on the Sensation XE, HTC’s other Beats Audio-enabled handset is certainly bigger, but it comes out looking the weaker of the two in almost every criteria except size. Beat dis: HTC's Sensation XL Android smartphone With a 4.7in display, the Sensation XL is the last stop before Samsung’s mammoth 5.3in Galaxy Note …

    reghardware 4 Jan 07:00

  • Saudi hackers plaster 14,000 credit card privates on web

    Raid on Israeli sites exposes up to 400,000 punters

    A Saudi Arabian hacking group claims it has leaked information on up to 400,000 Israelis, including names, addresses and credit card details. The data dump follows a reported attack on Israeli websites and has already led to fraudulent use of the sensitive info. Credit card biz Isracard said it had issued 6,600 of the 14,000 …

    Security 4 Jan 08:03

  • PCIe flashers bash storage networks

    Blocks & Files They slow you down, man

    A sea change in storage industry thinking is occurring: storage networks are now seen as slowing down access to data. The PCIe flash DAS hare beats SAN and NAS tortoises every day of the week. We can call PCIe flash "storage memory" if we wish, but it's basically very fast direct-access storage, a closely-coupled data bucket. …

    Blocks and Files 4 Jan 09:02

  • Cops get 3D laser scanners for motorway crash sites

    £2.7m from DfT for new tech will help tackle closures after smash-ups

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has awarded 27 police forces across England £2.7m worth of funding for the implementation of 3D laser scanning technology. The government hopes that the technology will shorten motorway closures after crashes as the scanners will save time by quickly making a 3D image of the whole crash site …

    Policing 4 Jan 09:29

  • UK space agency to boldly send techies ... behind a desk

    Blighty advertises for boffins, IT workers and admin staff

    The UK space agency has launched a 'jobs feed' on its website to keep Brits up to date with all the career opportunities relating to exploration above and beyond Earth's skies. Of course, the jobs won't actually be in space since the UK boffinry agency doesn't at the moment contribute astronauts for manned missions - this …

    Space 4 Jan 10:02

  • Xio sends its new Admiral Nelson into storage offensive

    Now drive biz says it's part-owned by Seagate

    Xio's new CEO John Beletic has moved quickly to put his stamp on the company by appointing a new marketing boss - Richard Nelson. Xio Storage makes the HyperISE, a sealed container of flash drives and disk drives that operates with near solid state performance for five years or more, self-healing any failures inside the …

    Channel Register 4 Jan 10:33

  • Asus promises to open Prime bootloader

    Blames current encryption on Google and DRM

    Asus has pledged to release a tool that will unlock the bootloader built into its Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet, possibly from 12 January, the date on which it will be pushing out the gadget's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update. The Taiwanese firm blamed its decision to encrypt the Prime's bootloader in the first place …

    reghardware 4 Jan 10:33

  • Weak Sony PS Vita sales prompt price-cuts

    3DS sets an example

    Sony's PlayStation Vita experienced a rapid decline in sales during its second week on Japanese shelves, prompting suggestions the company may have to reduce the console's price. Several retailers are unofficially doing so already. According to sales rankings provided by local market watcher Media Create, during the week …

    reghardware 4 Jan 10:52

  • Exotic Russian rock CAME FROM OUTER SPACE

    Alien quasicrystal find sheds light on solar system birth

    Atom-bothering boffins have proved that a crystal previously only found in labs also occurs naturally - in outer space. The scientists have found evidence that a 'quasicrystal' uncovered in Russia was actually part of a meteorite that fell to Earth rather than a material that was formed naturally on our home world. …

    Space 4 Jan 11:02

  • Comet 'sold 94,000 pirate Windows CDs', claims Microsoft

    Updated Redmond sues retail chain over counterfeit disc allegations

    Microsoft has accused high-street retailer Comet of pirating 94,000 Windows Vista and Windows XP recovery CDs and selling them to consumers. The software giant announced this morning that it had filed a suit against Comet Group PLC, accusing the group of manufacturing counterfeit discs at a factory in Hampshire and selling …

    Developer 4 Jan 11:21

  • EMC Isilon stiffens penetration into NAS arena

    Waggles rising revenues at rival NetApp

    EMC is making great progress attacking the scale-out NAS market with Isilon and trying to cap NetApp's growth there. NetApp has introduced ONTAP 8.1, its scale-out NAS clustering product, since EMC bought Isilon in late 2010. However, EMC ownership has boosted Isilon sales, as the chart from Stifel Nicolaus shows: Isilon's …

    Channel Register 4 Jan 11:51

  • Dizzy: the Ultimate Cartoon Adventure

    Antique Code Show Eggsemplary gaming

    Resident Evil is considered a classic by many. But did you know that the design of the first three games was popularised ten years prior by a little eggy wegg? Dizzy was never actually conceived as an egg. His rotund form emerged merely as a way for Philip and Andrew Oliver to more easily spin the little fellow during his …

    reghardware 4 Jan 12:00

  • Anonymous hunts neo-Nazis with WikiLeaks-style site

    Loads of alleged donors, right-wing players to send those pizzas to

    Members of Anonymous have re-doubled their offensive against German neo-Nazis. The hacktivists of Operation Blitzkrieg this week launched a WikiLeaks-style website that aims to expose members of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) and other extremist groups, Der Spiegel reports. Nazi-leaks.net (German) already …

    Bootnotes 4 Jan 12:23

  • Virtual sanity: How to get a grip on your home PCs

    Sysadmin blog Set up once, use again and again anywhere

    Virtualisation can have a role in the home computing environment. Personal computers are kind of crap at migrating (or duplicating) your settings, applications and data from one system to another. Virtualisation can remove some of this grief. In the consumer space, Windows PCs come preloaded with crapware. The shiny new …

    Sysadmin blog 4 Jan 12:41

  • Germans increase office efficiency with 'cloud ceiling'

    Worker output boosted by illusion of open sky overhead

    So you thought you had deployed every form of office technology that could possibly increase the productivity of your company's cripplingly expensive salaried employees? You were wrong. Remorseless German boffins have discovered a way to make office workers still more efficient using - quite literally in this case - cloud …

    CIO 4 Jan 13:02

  • Nokia Ace to launch from $100m mountain of ad cash

    Microsoft and co bet big on new WinPhone

    Microsoft and its partners will start spending money like water in the next three months, following the launch of the Nokia Ace, according to sources cited by Betanews. The site says $100m in cash will be spent by AT&T, Microsoft and Nokia to push the Windows Phone handset into American hands in the second quarter of 2012. …

    Mobile 4 Jan 13:21

  • Apple shoots for Premier League soccer streaming rights

    iTunes 1, Sky 0?

    Apple will push for further global domination by taking on Sky, the BBC and multimedia rival Google in the billion-pound fight for the rights to transmit Premier League football. With bidding for the 2013-2014 season and beyond set to take place before the end of the current, 2011-2012 soccer season, there have been …

    reghardware 4 Jan 13:30

  • Samsung confirms refreshed Galaxy Ace for UK

    Power up

    Samsung has given its Galaxy Ace handset a facelift, unveiling its beefed-up successor, the Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus, and saying the smartphone will come to Blighty. The Ace Plus comes with a faster 1GHz processor, runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread spruced up with the company's TouchWiz UI. Memory wise, there's 3GB storage, …

    reghardware 4 Jan 13:34

  • Ubuntu hoists skirt, flashes 'concept' gadget at CES

    Desktop Linux goes TV - or tablet?

    Ubuntu shop Canonical has promised to make a splash at the annual gadget jamboree, the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, next week. The Linux specialist will unveil "an exclusive Ubuntu concept design" that will be announced at show. The minimal reveal, announced here, will accompany the display of the latest …

    Developer 4 Jan 13:42

  • Samsung Ultrabook specced up by retailer

    CES premiere?

    Samsung's upcoming Ultrabook, the Series 5 line member NP530U3B-A01, has been specced up on a US retail site ahead of its formal launch - which will presumably take place next week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The 13.3in, 1366 x 768 machine is based on a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M CPU and comes with 4GB of DDR 3 …

    reghardware 4 Jan 13:48

  • Pastebin on the mend after DDoS battering

    Were hacktivists the real target?

    Popular text file sharing service Pastebin.com has returned online following a denial of service attack on Tuesday. The site, which allows users to anonymously upload (potentially large) documents and share them, has become a favourite resource for hacktivists from Anonymous and elsewhere over recent months. Anonymous uses …

    Developer 4 Jan 14:14

  • Yahoo! bags! CEO! from! PayPal!

    Ex-prez drafted in to steer web biz to glory

    As rumoured all over the web this morning, PayPal president Scott Thompson has been snapped up by Yahoo! for the role of chief executive. Yahoo!'s acting CEO Tim Morse has returned to his job as chief financial officer. Thompson had been with eBay subsidiary PayPal since 2005 and served as president from 2008. "Scott brings …

    CIO 4 Jan 14:34

  • Samsung pushes premium dual-docking systems

    Galaxy S and iPhone have sound relationship

    Samsung has unveiled a couple of audio docks that offer compatibility for Samsung Galaxy S smartphones and their popular rival, the Apple iPhone. The highlight of these is the DA-E750, a high-end audio box that packs a dual-docking system for handsets from both manufacturers. The DA-E750 comes with hybrid vacuum tube …

    reghardware 4 Jan 14:52

  • Videogame piracy figures show decline

    2011 torrent abuse exposed

    Videogame piracy may be in decline, according to a study investigating which games were illegally downloaded the most last year. The annual report from TorrentFreak sees Crysis 2 take the centre podium in the PC realm after it was illegally downloaded roughly 3.92 million times. Modern Warfare 3 was close behind, followed by …

    reghardware 4 Jan 14:56

  • Analysts: Samsung will show us the MONEY on Friday

    Q4 take expected to rise to $4.1bn on smartphone sales

    Samsung will be announcing a healthy profit in its quarterly results, according to market-watchers, who reckon the Korean electronics giant has powered through the period with strong smartphone sales. The company, which is constantly jockeying with Apple for the title of top mobe-maker, has seen its star rise somewhat …

    Financial News 4 Jan 15:02

  • Nokia posts car-to-phone comms app

    MirrorLink debuts on Symbian Belle

    The Connected Car Consortium's MirrorLink technology - it allows an compatible in-car entertainment system to show what's on your phone's screen and control the handset over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or USB - is now available to folk with Symbian Belle devices. Nokia today posted an 18-quid app, Nokia Car Mode with MirrorLink. The …

    reghardware 4 Jan 15:19

  • At least 10 days till hot Phobos-Grunt chunks rain down

    Earliest estimate for fallout from doomed Russian Mars probe 'may change'

    Any fragments of the doomed Russian Mars probe Phobos-Grunt that don't burn up in the fiery explosion of its fuel tanks hitting the atmosphere are likely to fall to Earth on 15 January. Russian Air and Space Defence Troops' spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin gave Russian news agency Itar-Tass the date but added that it might still …

    Space 4 Jan 16:02

  • China Telecom piggybacks EE to create UK network

    Service for Chinese speakers in Blighty to launch 2012

    China Telecom is following through on its promise to launch a UK network in 2012, piggybacking on Everything Everywhere's network for the 400,000 Chinese speakers in the UK. The virtual network is scheduled to launch in the next three months, and will be run by China Telecom Europe - a wholly-owned operation with aspirations …

    Mobile 4 Jan 16:25

  • IBM buys Green Hat for virty dev tools

    Red Hat would complete the set

    Setting up systems to do software testing is almost as annoying as setting up systems to run in production, or maybe it is more annoying because of the multiple scenarios you have to test before you throw the code over the wall into the data center. That is why IBM has bought Green Hat, which is neither a cuckold (in China …

    Virtualization 4 Jan 17:01

  • Brits got Kindles for Christmas

    More e-book readers given as prezzies than tablets

    Ask punters what they got for Christmas and a rather large number of them say they got a Kindle. Pollster YouGov asked that very question of 2000-odd UK adults and found that one in 40 of us received an e-book reader as a gift or bought one for ourselves over the festive period. Given that the adult population of the UK is …

    reghardware 4 Jan 17:06

  • Google grabs yet more patents from IBM war chest

    Instant message take-back IP among new lawsuit ammo

    Google continues to fill up its sack of patents, once again with the help of IBM, bagging scores of patents from the tech titan. The Chocolate Factory already loaded its litigation guns with 2,053 patents from IBM in two transactions in July and August last year, and now records at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) …

    CIO 4 Jan 17:33

  • Android Market tops 400,000 apps, climbing fast

    Fart App Index™ parity with iOS unclear

    Google's Android Market now has over 400,000 apps, and the pace of new code additions is accelerating. News of this milestone was announced by the mobile-app marketplace watchers at Distimo, in Utrecht, The Netherlands, which says that the 400,000 line – which counts only currently active apps – was crossed this past weekend …

    Mobile 4 Jan 18:27

  • Apache lets fly Hadoop 1.0 data muncher

    This ain't no Dumbo

    The Hadoop project at the Apache Software Foundation is beating its chest for delivering the v1.0 version of the open source MapReduce data analysis tool, its Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), and other related code. While software version and release numbers can sometimes be arbitrary, they are often also symbolic, and …

    Cloud 4 Jan 19:33

  • Judge sets date for Google v Oracle showdown

    Springtime for Ellison in California

    A pretrial order from the California courts has set the dates for the forthcoming trial between Oracle and Google over the rights and wrongs of Java’s intellectual property rights. The trial will commence on or after 19 March, according to court documents, and will be split into three sessions: copyright infringement liability …

    Law 4 Jan 20:41

  • Mobile carriers face big ticket spectrum costs

    800 Mhz set to make the govt a motza

    Australian mobile carriers are turning activist in the lead up to the Federal Government’s final determination on the pricing for retaining their 800MHz mobile licences. According to a draft determination issued by communications minister Stephen Conroy late last year mobile network operators Telstra, Vivid Wireless and …

    Business 4 Jan 21:31

  • Lunar mineral turns up in Oz

    Tranquillityite spotted in WA rocks

    Until now, the mineral tranquillityite – consisting of iron, zirconium, yttrium, titanium, silicon and oxygen, and almost completely useless – has only been observed in rocks brought back from the glory days of the moon landings. Now, a team of scientists in Western Australia has found it for the first time in Earthbound samples …

    Science 4 Jan 21:33

  • New CEO Rometty tweaks IBM exec lineup

    Kern retires, looks for CEO position elsewhere

    Ginni Rometty was tapped to be IBM's president and CEO last October and took the reins from Sam Palmisano, still the company's chairman, on January 1. Rometty previously ran IBM's sales and marketing group, and before that ran a chunk of the Global Services behemoth, and is not keen on making any big changes to the playbook …

    Business 4 Jan 21:52

  • Civil society NGOs under threat, says Access

    A call for help

    Attacks on the freedom-of-speech community worldwide seemed to grow in 2011, according to umbrella organization Access. The group, whose members include civil society NGOs around the world, says the security and “cyber warfare” skills available to activists don’t match the skills available to their attackers – whether they are …

    Public Sector 4 Jan 22:00

  • Quickflix bolstered by streaming

    Gaining digital ground

    Quickflix’s move to digital streaming in December has sparked 10 percent of its subscribers to choose streaming as part of their package. The IPTV aspirant reported that it was experiencing overall strong growth with the number of total subscribers, including trialists, reaching 110,697 by the end of 2011. This represents an …

    Business 4 Jan 22:30

  • Study finds piracy withering against legal alternatives

    People just aren’t prepared to be screwed

    A study has found that people are perfectly prepared to pay for online content, provided that the alternatives aren’t too harsh. The data, from respected think-tank American Assembly, shows that illegal file sharing among family and friends is relatively common – but that people would prefer to use a legal alternative if one …

    Music and Media 4 Jan 22:50

  • PayPal dispute ends in 'violin destruction'

    T&C hell, or a warning about how to buy old instruments?

    Like just about every collectable, violins are subject to fakery and claims of fakery – something that a person claiming to be a seller on the site alleges has led to the destruction of what the poster claims was a $2,500 instrument in a PayPal dispute. According to a post on the blog Regretsy the violin was smashed in …

    Odds and Sods 4 Jan 23:00