The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

23rd January 2012 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Telstra gets core spot in new Asian cable

    Huawei set to build ASSC-1

    Telstra has signed on as a foundation customer on a nascent Perth to Singapore submarine cable system which is being built by ASSC-1 Communications Group. The privately-held Australian cable developer was granted a telecommunications carrier licence by ACMA on 18 October 2010. The project will begin construction in the first …

    Business 23 Jan 03:26

  • Quickflix builds up content entourage

    HBO jumps on the IPTV stream

    Australian IPTV aspirant Quickflix has secured a coveted content deal with HBO, the wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc, allowing Quickflix to stream over 500 hours of content from the HBO catalogue. The HBO deal caps off a series of premium content deals secured in the last quarter of 2011, including a licensing …

    Business 23 Jan 04:00

  • Vodafone manages to fight off £3bn tax bill, claws back cash paid

    What happens in India never happened in India

    Vodafone's acquisition of Hutchison Essar is not liable to Indian taxation, a court has ruled, as the 2007 transaction took place outside the sub-continent - despite Essar being based there. Vodafone and Hutchison successfully argued at the Indian Supreme Court that as neither company is headquartered in India they don't have …

    Financial News 23 Jan 08:01

  • Dell and LSI now sporting impressive new set of MRAMs

    Hello boys

    Dell and LSI are using a new type of memory in servers, RAID controllers and routers, presaging the replacement of NAND flash. It is a form of non-volatile memory called MRAM for Magnetic RAM. MRAM has been in development for some time and is now being used for journal memory functions by Dell and LSI, according to Everspin …

    Channel Register 23 Jan 08:27

  • Hospitals snap up cloudy storage as disk space runs out

    Overwhelmed with patient data, NHS trust runs into EMC's arms

    With an HP system nearing the end of its usefulness and a thirst for more storage, St Helens and Knowsley teaching hospitals trust decided to switch to a cloud array for its patient data. "Performance has been improved in some cases four or fivefold, in terms of data system responsiveness," says Phil Corrin, deputy chief …

    Channel Register 23 Jan 09:04

  • Romanian who hacked NASA spared cooler stint

    If you can't do the time, well, do the crime anyway

    A Romanian hacker who admitted breaking into NASA's network has avoided jail, receiving a three-year suspended prison sentence instead. Robert Butyka, 26, from Cluj-Napoca, Romania, still faces a civil lawsuit over disputed damages of $500,000 against the space agency's computer systems in a case due to be heard in March. …

    Crime 23 Jan 09:27

  • Dixons cuts Ice Cream Sarnie ready Xoom to £225

    Catch it if you can

    Cut-price 32GB Android tablet, anyone? Dixons is now pricing the 32GB Motorola Xoom at £249 - if you can find one. And, according to readers, keying in the discount code 'Tablet 10' at the checkout will get you ten per cent off the sale price, taking the tablet down to £225. The catch: word is getting out, and the cut-price …

    reghardware 23 Jan 09:59

  • UK.gov marches on with solar 'leccy cash slash by spring

    Grid feed-in payback cut is energy minister's Plan A and B

    If the Government loses its appeal against a High Court ruling on its plan to reduce solar incentives from December 2011, then it will apply the reduction from 3 March 2012, it has said. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has confirmed the contingency plan it is putting in place if it loses its appeal against a …

    Government 23 Jan 10:02

  • RIM's co-CEOs quit in top exec shake-up

    Will it be too little, too late?

    A Research in Motion management shake-up has swapped out its co-CEOs for a new top exec following a challenging period for the gadget maker. Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, RIM's co-chief executives, have stepped aside after 20 years at the trouble biz, and the company on Monday named Thorsten Heins as president and CEO. …

    Financial News 23 Jan 10:17

  • Russia and NASA plan to COLONISE the Moon

    'We want to do more than just step on it'

    Russian, American and European space agencies are in talks to create a human colony on the Moon, according to Russian news source Rianovosti. Artist's impression of the Moon station from Nasa's Global Exploration Roadmap Russia wants to build either a space base on the surface of the Moon itself or a space station that …

    Space 23 Jan 10:37

  • Software AG plots Valley invasion by Terracotta army

    Colour us red, white and blue, says top Euro biz

    Europe's second largest software company, Software AG, is reorganising in the US with a huge focus on the West Coast around big-data purchase Terracotta. Chief executive Karl-Heinz Streibich told The Reg that sales growth in his company's US operation had to catch up to levels in the European homeland. Streibich is creating a …

    Cloud 23 Jan 11:01

  • Bonfire of the brands: ICANN's top-level domain selloff

    Is small biz priced out of the market?

    Despite what in the final months seemed to be stiff competition, ICANN went ahead with its new generic domain names, letting companies register .whatevertheycanthinkof from 12 January. The generic top level domain names, or gTLDs, are something that ICANN has emphasised are necessary to let more businesses onto the net in what …

    Small Biz 23 Jan 11:17

  • Power7 chips going for a song in Big Blue January sale

    Getting rid of inventory?

    Power Systems, the line of big iron packing Power7 CPUs, was one of the bright spots in IBM's server business in the fourth quarter - so a price cut on Power7 processor cards and processor core activations might be one of the last things you would expect out of Big Blue. But this week, that is precisely what the company did. …

    Servers 23 Jan 11:32

  • Filesonic cleans up after Megaupload bust

    Rapidshare whistles... STONED and GUILTY? Not us

    Filesonic, one of the top 10 file-sharing sites on the net, has disabled file-sharing features and restricted access to its cloud locker service following the Megaupload takedown. The site Uploaded.to has followed suit. But others are whistling nonchalantly. Rapidshare, which wants to reposition itself as an above-board personal …

    Cloud 23 Jan 11:43

  • Networks nag Nokia to lower Lumia levy

    Competitive charge

    Nokia's upcoming Windows Phone handset, the Lumia 710, has been deemed too expensive by UK networks. And they have pressured the Finnish outfit to lower prices in order to compete more effectively with rival low-end smartphones. While the Lumia 710 is more powerful than most budget handsets in question, sales of the Lumia 800 …

    reghardware 23 Jan 11:44

  • Trevor and chums tackle IT certification

    Podcast HR under the spotlight

    Trevor Pott, along with his friends and colleagues, explores the benefits and pitfalls of training and certification. Do they think certificates are a good thing and worth the paper they're printed on. Or are they just a way for the less talented to get a bigger pay cheque? Listen using the player below or download the MP3. …

    CIO 23 Jan 11:48

  • IPTV UK: what's on tonight?

    IPTV Week Worth watching yet?

    2012 looks like it stands a good chance of being the year that IPTV really starts to go mainstream, with more services and a good range of content appearing built in to TVs and other devices, not to mention the web. And, of course, the launch of YouView will help raise the profile of IPTV still further in the UK. World+Dog …

    reghardware 23 Jan 12:00

  • Europe exposes its stiff data protection law this week

    Time for Facebook, Google et al to lobby hard

    Stringent proposals for the revision of Europe's outdated 1995 data protection law are to be revealed by officials this coming Wednesday. The European Commission's vice-president Viviane Reding said in a speech in Germany on Saturday that the new regulation on handling sensitive data will, among other things, require internet …

    Law 23 Jan 12:13

  • IPTV Week: Complete Coverage

    IPTV Week As Netflix launches in the UK, we put the spotlight on net telly

    IPTV - television channels delivered over the internet rather than the airwaves - is in its infancy in the UK. Amazon's Lovefilm has been streaming to the web and to gadgets from games consoles to tablets to TVs for some time, and now it's up against some stiff competition: from the US, Netflix is now up and running in the UK …

    reghardware

  • Acetrax joins Inview VoD squad

    IPTV Week Second-tier set-tops to get IPTV

    Inview, the company behind the Radio Times Extra - the erstwhile Teletext Extra - electronic programme gudie and TopUpTV is to add video-on-demand service Acetrax to its IPTV platform. Acetrax will be added to the Inview UI in the middle of the year. Inview's current 14-day EPG: the new release, due later this year, will …

    reghardware 23 Jan 12:19

  • 'Hannibal' leaks '100,000 Facebook logins'

    Then demands Middle East cyber-war truce

    The tit for tat between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel hackers escalated at the weekend after a hacker called Hannibal claimed to have leaked the Facebook login details of "100,000 Arabs". Pro-Israel Hannibal warned on 13 January that he had access to “about 30 million e-mail [accounts] of Arabs”, adding that he would leak …

    Security 23 Jan 12:32

  • Public sector imperatives

    Reader Research Sneak peek of poll results

    We’ve just had a little look at the results so far from our currently running public sector poll. As a reminder, the aim of the exercise is to flush out insights, tips and tricks that can be of use to those involved in reporting and performance management in a public sector environment. The poll so far is confirming the need …

    Public Sector 23 Jan 12:44

  • DreamHost nightmare attack sparks passwords reset

    Hackers inappropriately touched customer database

    US-based hosting firm DreamHost is advising customers to change their passwords following a database breach. The firm warned on late on Friday that hackers had compromised customer FTP/shell access passwords. DreamHost began the process of resetting customer passwords over the weekend, a process that hit a few hiccups along …

    Enterprise Security 23 Jan 13:03

  • SharePoint gods peek into colleagues' info – poll

    Security is for other people

    SharePoint admins are abusing their privileged status to sneak a peak at classified documents according to a poll that shows consistent abuse of security in Microsoft's business collaboration server. A third of IT administrators or somebody they know with admin rights have read documents hosted in Microsoft's collaboration …

    Software 23 Jan 13:22

  • Ofcom says ITV "breached audience trust"

    IPTV Week Videogame clip shown as real footage

    ITV was blasted by Ofcom this week for breaching broadcast rules, after the watchdog responded to a documentary programme in which a videogame clip was depicted as reality. Exposure: Gaddafi and the IRA caused a stir last year after it was revealed to have used scenes from Arma 2, which it claimed to be real-life footage of …

    reghardware 23 Jan 13:22

  • Car gadget cuts off driver's smartphone

    Hands on the wheel, son

    Scosche has addressed in-car safety with its latest device, a plug-and-play solution to limit smartphone activity while a user is behind the wheel. The Scosche CellControl connects to a vehicle's OBD-II interface. It also pairs with a smartphone app through Bluetooth. When the device detects the vehicle is in motion, it tells …

    reghardware 23 Jan 13:33

  • ITV wrist-slapped for showing video game as IRA attack

    Not fined for YouTube rip and bungled riot coverage

    ITV has escaped a fine for using video game footage to illustrate IRA activities, and portraying the wrong riot, but will tighten up procedures to stop it happening again. The offending footage was supposed to show the IRA successfully shooting down a British Army helicopter, and was captioned "IRA Film 1988", but actually …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 13:44

  • iPad 2, iPhone 4S finally jail-broken

    Tut, what took you so long?

    The Apple iPad 2 and iPhone 4S have finally fallen to jail-breakers. The move allows the more adventurous to install any app of their choosing, not just those approved by Apple to appear on the App Store. For the technically minded the development opens up the possibility of examining the device's filesystem or installing …

    Security 23 Jan 14:03

  • Android hackers mull rooted mobe app marketplace

    As if things weren't complicated enough

    Android hackers are discussing the creation of a specialist app store, listing software for rooted handsets and other things that even Google won't allow. Google is the limp-wristed liberal of certification authorities, allowing just about anything into its Android Marketplace. But it's that "just about" that has annoyed some …

    Applications 23 Jan 14:21

  • Fans teased with Doc Who PS3 promo

    Vworp! Vworp!

    Looking forward to the next attempt to make a decent Doctor Who videogame? Past attempts have generally not passed muster, but The Eternity Clock might just the one that finally gets it right. Well, if today's newly posted trailer is anything to go by. Have a ganders: Mixing modern graphics, voice audio recorded by Matt …

    reghardware 23 Jan 14:25

  • Live Music law to decriminalise trumpet-playing

    Bill passes through Commons

    A private member's bill that will make the promotion and performance of live music in small venues easier was passed by the Commons on Friday, which means it's now almost certain to become law. The bill repeals some of the worst red tape introduced in the 2003 Licensing Act, which empowered bureaucrats, curtain-twitchers and …

    Law 23 Jan 14:43

  • Tablet, e-reader ownership doubles over Xmas

    Volumes of demand

    Tablet and e-book reader ownership almost doubled in the US over Christmas. Think-tank the Pew Research Centre spoke to a thousand or so grown-ups in the States this month and discovered that while ten per cent of the adult population owned an e-book reader in December 2011, in January 2012 the figure had risen to 19 per cent …

    reghardware 23 Jan 14:55

  • Plus is king now: Google shutters more products

    I'm+ sorry+, what+ was+ that+? I+ can't+ hear+ you+

    Larry Page's first nine months as the second-time-around Google CEO has been defined by his attempts to cut out the rot at Mountain View while pollinating the company's entire online estate with social goo. That effort continued on two fronts late last week. First, Google confirmed it was axing six more of its products. …

    Applications 23 Jan 15:03

  • Japanese manufacturers cut domestic disc, telly production

    Demand falling, costs rising

    Japanese manufacturers have started to take production abroad, with Hitachi and Mitsubishi announcing an end to their domestic arrangements for television sets and compact discs, respectively. Hitachi's plant in Gifu, which churns-out roughly 100,000 tellies a month, will now produce projectors and chipsets instead, with both …

    reghardware 23 Jan 15:17

  • Man vanquishes robot cop in hand-to-hand combat

    Droid 'hurled through door', fleshies mete out beanbag justice

    The ongoing Rise of the Machines to their inevitable dominance over humanity faltered last week, when a police robot tangled with a human being in hand to hand combat - and was handed a severe beating. The mechanical law officer in question had been sent into a home in Connecticut to deal with an unnamed man, reportedly a …

    Rise of the Machines 23 Jan 15:18

  • World music sales slide despite digital dividend

    Downloads on the up

    Digtal music sales rose eight per cent worldwide during 2011. Good news for Apple, owner of the download-centric iTunes Music Store, but not for CD sellers: the industry as a whole saw revenues slide three per cent. Industry organisation IFPI said recorded music sales revenues fell from $16.7bn in 2010 to $16.2bn in 2011. …

    reghardware 23 Jan 15:22

  • HP, RIM, ARM among thousands in ICANN dot-brand ban

    If your name's on the list, you're not coming in

    ICANN's decision to open the floodgates to hundreds of new generic top-level domains last week is expected to create a land-rush of "dot-brand" internet addresses. To date, fewer than six companies, notably including Canon, Hitachi and Deloitte, have publicly expressed their intention to acquire a branded gTLD. But domain …

    Hosting 23 Jan 15:43

  • Fujitsu and Unite shake hands on pay, pensions deal

    Ongoing row defused as striking staff appeased

    Staff at Fujitsu’s UK sites in Manchester and Crewe have ended their long-running dispute with the electronics giant after bosses agreed to bump up salaries and sort out other quibbles including pensions. Trade union Unite released a canned statement on Friday welcoming the agreement, which settles a dispute dating back to …

    Financial News 23 Jan 15:58

  • Anonymous tweets for hack targets

    Who do we go after next? asks V-masqued mob

    Hacktivist guild Anonymous has taken to Twitter to ask followers for tips on who the group should attack next. Still reeling over the arrest of Megaupload mogul Kim Dotcom, Anonymous posted the following tweet: After several people suggested the group throws punches at social network sites, it responded: “Lulz at people …

    reghardware 23 Jan 16:07

  • Sourcefire jumps into anti-malware market

    Cyber-outbreak defence tech to shore up big biz

    Sourcefire, the security biz behind the commercial versions of the open-source Snort intrusion-detection software, is bowling itself at enterprises and touting tech designed to quickly detect and block malware outbreaks. FireAMP offers a malware discovery and analysis tool that offers visibility of threats and outbreak control …

    Security 23 Jan 16:28

  • Furious freetards blitz the wrong SOPA

    'Don't care if you inspect farmers - STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING'

    Angry copyfighters barraged a small Scottish food certification agency with abuse last week - in the belief they were protesting against hated US anti-piracy legislation. The Scottish Organic Producers Association - whose website is at sopa.org.uk - was perplexed when it found itself on the receiving of dozens of nasty and …

    Law 23 Jan 16:39

  • Gov.uk loses 2 top techies, needs some new ones

    Glam jobs up for grabs at DWP and Cabinet Office

    The government's second-in-command techie is leaving this month for a job with storage giant EMC. Bill McCluggage held the post of deputy government chief information officer (CIO) at the Cabinet Office for three years, before announcing his decision to move in November. He will start his new job at EMC UK on 1 February. His …

    Government 23 Jan 17:01

  • Bletchley Park flogs Alan Turing first day covers

    Enigma codebreaker puts his stamp on 2012

    Computing pioneer and Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing is to be commemorated next month in a series of limited edition first day covers for stamps designed to celebrate the centenary of his birth and help raise some more funds for the renovation of Bletchley Park. The covers, essentially snazzy envelopes specifically designed to …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 17:26

  • Micron bought the ashes of crashed Virtensys

    Analysis Payout for stockholders will be $0

    Far from backers celebrating anything like a fourfold payout after Micron bought Virtensys, it turns out the sad reality is that Virtensys was close to collapse and Micron is buying the ashes of a crashed startup. Stockholders will get nothing as the firm avoided a disastrous implosion by the skin of its teeth. The picture we …

    Storage 23 Jan 17:41

  • Intel upsets apple cart, snaps up QLogic's InfiniBand biz

    Time for AMD to eat Mellanox

    The high-performance networking market just got a whole lot more interesting, with Intel shelling out $125m to acquire the InfiniBand switch and adapter product lines from upstart QLogic. Intel has made no secret that it wants to bolster its Data Center and Connected Systems business by getting network equipment providers to …

    HPC 23 Jan 17:47

  • Joyent rakes in $85m to build out SmartOS clouds

    Going global

    Joyent has built a sophisticated infrastructure cloud founded on the open-source Solaris environment with the hopes of taking on Amazon's EC2 – and now it has a big pile of cash with which to globalize that cloud. Joyent, which was founded in 2004 by David Young, the company's CEO, and Jason Hoffman, the company's CTO, and …

    Infrastructure 23 Jan 17:58

  • MPAA threat sparks White House petition for bribery probe

    Politicians should remember who bought them, MPAA CEO warns

    Chris Dodd, ex–US senator and current CEO of the Motion Picture Ass. of America, may face a White House investigation after he made an extraordinary outburst that appeared to threaten politicians who had the audacity to take the entertainment industry’s money and then abandon SOPA/PIPA online-piracy legislation. “Those who …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 18:04

  • Google+ funny numbers mask falling growth

    Open ... and Shut Friends with Posh and Becks

    Google has always been about crunching big numbers. But only recently has it begun to apparently fudge them. That's the impression one gets when looking at Google's attempt to convince the world that Google+ has been a runaway success. Even as Google missed analyst sales and profit estimates for the first time in Larry Page's …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 18:32

  • Survey: Android set to beat iOS in battle for coder love

    Google OS racing to top of app developers poll

    Android is set to become the number one choice for mobile application developers in the next 12 months as the Google platform pushes ahead of arch rival Apple, according to the latest research from Ovum. The analyst house interviewed over a hundred developers globally, asking them which platform they preferred and then …

    Developer 23 Jan 19:02

  • YouTube tops one hour of video uploads per second

    4 billion views per day – Nyan Cat rejoices

    Google has announced that uploads to YouTube now total one hour of video every second. "Can you imagine how many 'Nyans' that is?" the company ask in a blog post announcing the milestone, referring to the mind-numbing "Nyan Cat" video that has been watched over 60 million times. On a separate website, "One Hour Per Second", …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 19:33

  • Potent proton pulse to BOMBARD EARTH Tuesday morn

    Sunspots get angry, planes get rerouted

    Late Sunday, the sun aimed a huge coronal mass ejection (CME) at our planet, along with a "solar energetic particle" event – the largest since September 2005 – which is expected to cause a solar storm of highly energetic protons to hit us on Tuesday at 9am Eastern Time, plus or minus seven hours. The solar storm, according to …

    Space 23 Jan 21:20

  • Mellanox chops 10-gig Ethernet switch, adapter prices

    Updated Making it up in volume

    Mellanox Technologies is not happy about the 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch and adapter ramp, and it is doing something about it: slashing its own prices. In the wake of its acquisition of InfiniBand switch-maker Voltaire, Mellanox last year launched its SwitchX converged Ethernet and InfiniBand ASICs for 10GbE and 40GbE switches …

    Data Networking 23 Jan 21:28

  • Group buying stalls in Asia

    Deal sites storm the exit doors

    The Asia Pacific group buying market is in consolidation mode due to intense competition, according to a new report from Daily Deal Media. According to the new report 798 daily deal sites shut down globally in the second half of 2011. In Asia the contraction was profound with 1,348 Asian daily deal sites swithcing to becoming …

    Business 23 Jan 21:37

  • Telstra opens fibre to competitors

    FTTP in South Brisbane, housing estates goes wholesale

    Telstra has managed to avoid having Australia’s competition regulator set the prices of its fibre-to-the-premises networks, with minister Senator Stephen Conroy announcing a regulatory exemption for the carrier’s South Brisbane fibre network. Several Telstra greenfields fibre sites (where the carrier has installed fibre in new …

    Government 23 Jan 22:00

  • Rara and Rdio take on Aus music industry

    Digital radio players turn it up to 11

    The Australian radio industry is enjoying an international invasion of digital music streaming upstarts, with the launch of Omnifone backed Rara.com and the music project from the Skype founding crew, Rdio. As revealed by El Reg in November, a slew of digital radio outfits were hitching rides down under, with Spotify hiring …

    Music and Media 23 Jan 22:30

  • Laser used to cool semiconductor

    Next: the quantum physics case-mod

    Lasers heat things up, right? – unless you happen to hit upon the right resonance, in which case it seems you can use lasers to cool things down. Koji Usami carries out the experiments at the Quantop laboratories at the Niels Bohr Institute. Credit: Niels Bohr Institute In an announcement that could be filed under either …

    Physics 23 Jan 23:00

  • US Senator's Twitter account back after hack

    Anti-SOPA activists play 'occupy @ChuckGrassley'

    The office of US Senator Chuck Grassley has confirmed that his Twitter account was taken over and used to launch anti-SOPA messages on Monday, US time. According to Reuters, at least eight messages were sent by someone claiming to be part of Anonymous while the Senator was flying from Iowa to Washington. In this video, the …

    Security 23 Jan 23:05