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31st January 2012 Archive

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  • US Senator: 'Retest airport scanner safety'

    X-ray pervscanners harmless? New bill says 'Prove it'

    A top Republican lawmaker is poised to introduce a bill in the US Senate that would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to hire an independent lab to study the health effects of backscatter x-ray passenger-screening machines – aka pervscanners – at airports, and to ensure that ticket-holders know of their rights to …

    Law 31 Jan 2012, 01:08

  • Steerable bullet aims for mass army deployment

    Sniping’s not just for Special Forces anymore

    Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory are developing a steerable bullet designed for general military use, giving the standard squaddie the capabilities of an advanced sniper. Bullets that can adjust their flight have been under research for some time, and DARPA is three years into research into a steerable .50-caliber …

    Science 31 Jan 2012, 01:16

  • Show us the big data money: Isilon gets Hadooped

    One-stop Hadoop/Isilon/Greenplum shop

    EMC is betting big on big data analytics and has integrated the Hadoop filesystem into its Isilon scale-out filer offering and enabled its Greenplum analytics product to use Hadoop data. Hadoop is an object-style distributed and scalable open source filesystem (HDFS) implemented across a cluster of datanodes and a single …

    The Channel 31 Jan 2012, 05:01

  • Cocktail Audio X10 CD copier and music streamer

    Review A rip-roaring trade?

    The Cocktail Audio X10 is a compact hi-fi component with a network connection for internet radio, audio streaming from shared devices and file transfer. It’s fitted with a 500GB or 1TB hard disk, which serves as your music library, either for existing digital audio files that you copy to it or CDs ripped using its slot-loading …

    Hardware 31 Jan 2012, 07:00

  • Council fined £140k for leaking kids' sensitive info

    First Scottish organisation fined by information commissioner

    The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined Midlothian council £140,000 for disclosing sensitive personal data about children and their carers to the wrong people on five separate occasions. The commissioner said that the five breaches, which took place between January and June 2011, were all serious. One of them …

    Security 31 Jan 2012, 08:02

  • When a DNS outage isn't an outrage

    Sysadmin blog Proper IT support and a snappy postmortem make all the difference

    A little over a decade ago I registered my very first personal domain name. This domain was not registered for a client or an employer. This was a domain name all my own. When I picked my DNS provider I picked one who was affiliated with the local technology magazine, and I picked them because they were Canadian. It was the …

    Servers 31 Jan 2012, 09:03

  • Newzbin barrister struck off for owning site he represented

    Fined for not 'fessing up and for Twitter outburst

    A barrister has been struck off and fined after failing to disclose that he was the owner of a copyright-infringing website that he represented during trial - and for posting abusive Twitter messages. David Harris had represented Newzbin during part of a 2010 High Court hearing into whether the website was liable for copyright …

    Law 31 Jan 2012, 09:43

  • iPads propel Apple to PC market top slot

    Client computer market would have shrunk without tablets

    Apple is now the world's leading personal computer seller, having pushed past HP in Q4 2011, market watcher Canalys said today. Apple shipped 15m iPads and 5m Macs - 20m units that together amount to 17 per cent of the 120m PCs that shipped around the globe during the final three months of 2011. Take the iPads out of the …

    Tablets 31 Jan 2012, 09:54

  • AirDroid

    Android App of the Week Remote control for your smartphone

    If you've ever wanted to manage your Android phone from your computer's desktop then AirDroid is the answer to your prayers. Installation and use are blindingly simple. Point a web browser to the handset's IP address of your local network - it's provided by the app - then type in the supplied password and you're in. You can …

    Phones 31 Jan 2012, 10:00

  • New Nimbus flash motor nibbles just 5 watts per terabyte

    500TB of silicon will cost lot more than an E-Class Merc

    Flash array pioneer Nimbus has doubled the capacity of its non-volatile memory slabs with a fault-tolerant data vault that scales to half a petabyte. Sounding rather like a swanky Mercedes-Benz motor, Nimbus's E-Class storage vehicle follows on from its S-Class Fibre Channel, iSCSI, InfiniBand, NFS and CIFS-access flash arrays …

    Storage 31 Jan 2012, 10:21

  • Dim-but-rich buyers targeted with million pound laptop

    Hang on, it's only a Samsung...

    Can this be the world's most expensive laptop? Certainly anyone mad enough to cough up almost £1m for this Samsung Series 7 notebook will only get themselves a machine with a standard spec: 2.2GHz Core i7 CPU, 8GB of memory, 15.6in screen, AMD Radeon HD graphics and all the other stuff you'd expect to find on a mainstream …

    Laptops 31 Jan 2012, 10:27

  • NHS unfurls condom app – for iPhone-toting teens

    Droid lovers will have to source their own love gloves

    Kent's NHS Trust is hoping that youngsters' love of iPhones, coupled with a new app, will lead to a fall in teen pregnancies in the county. The Community NHS Trust has created software that will guide lust-prone, iPhone-owning young people in Kent towards stashes of free condoms. The GPS-enabled iPhone app displays Kent's " …

    Applications 31 Jan 2012, 10:39

  • Man recreates ZX81... in Lego

    Eight-bits and pieces

    You can pick up the real thing cheaply enough on eBay, but that hasn't stopped retro-computing fan and Lego nut from knocking up a version out of the plastic bricks. The result is larger than the real thing, but sports all the ports - including the parallel port round the back that was responsible for the infamous 'Ram Pack …

    Hardware 31 Jan 2012, 10:42

  • No 'Xbox 720' in 2012, says MS exec

    Rien ne vas plus, says French Xbox bloke

    World+Dog wasn't expecting the 'Xbox 720' - or whatever Microsoft's next console will be called - to go on sale this year, but a company executive has confirmed it anyway. And Microsoft France's Cedrick Delmas also hinted that we might not even see the new machine at June's E3 games industry show. There has been many a rumour …

    Games 31 Jan 2012, 10:57

  • Apple lures Dixons boss Browett to run global retail biz

    Takes Cook's dollar to expand store empire

    Channel bully boy Apple has nabbed Dixons chief exec John Browett to head up its worldwide retail biz. Browett - who has presided over the struggling UK consumer giant since 2007 - will step down from the board on 20 February and leave on 20 April. He will be replaced by group operations director Sebastian James, will be …

    The Channel 31 Jan 2012, 11:14

  • Sky to open net telly channels to all

    Pay to view over the internet

    Sky is to enter the IPTV arena with an internet-hosted TV service of its own. The station will launch before July this year, the satellite broadcaster pledged, and it'll see many of Sky's existing channels, including Sky Movies, being streamed over the net to a range of devices. Sky promised owners of "PCs, Macs, laptops, …

    Hardware 31 Jan 2012, 11:22

  • Lightning crashes: How to manage server flash caches

    Step change in complexity

    What does it mean for a storage array to manage server flash drives as will happen with EMC's Project Lightning? Let's look at an EMC VNX doing FAST VP (Fully-Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools) tiering of data on the one hand and a VNX supporting connected server flash drives on the other. In-array tiering With in- …

    The Channel 31 Jan 2012, 11:31

  • Motorola slices out Razr smartphone bootloader lock

    'Developer Edition' handset in-bound

    Motorola is to offer Europeans a version of its new Razr smartphone with an unlocked bootloader. The Android 2.3 Gingerbread-running Razr Developer Edition will be made available directly from Motorola through its online shop for €499 (£418) and buyers are warned that the handset will come "without any warranty". It also …

    Phones 31 Jan 2012, 11:36

  • New Blighty crime map will track crooks' punishment

    UK.gov also talks up new national cybercrime fighting force

    UK citizens can now gawp at the amount of crime committed around nightclubs, railway stations, parks and other hotspots on a revamped website launched by the Home Office. The same site will also eventually track arrests and charges brought against wrongdoers. Home Secretary Theresa May announced the new service in a speech on …

    Law 31 Jan 2012, 11:43

  • German court rejects Samsung tablet appeal

    Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales ban to remain in force

    Apple's demand that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 be banned from sale in Germany has been once again confirmed by a German court. The Dusseldorf regional court rejected an attempt by Samsung to overturn the previously imposed ban. Apple's victory doesn't actually amount to much because Samsung had already pulled the original …

    Tablets 31 Jan 2012, 11:46

  • Ten... A3 inkjet printers

    Product round-up Poster campaigners

    The most probable reasons for printing A3 documents are 1) posters or folded A4 newsletters, and 2) large photos. The types of printer needed for these two requirements are different. For posters and newsletters you want a machine intended primarily for plain paper print and it will save time if it can print duplex. For photos, …

    Hardware 31 Jan 2012, 12:00

  • US shoots down key Rambus patent

    Barth trio invalidated, multimillion income stream dries up

    Legal attack dog Rambus has suffered another blow to its memory technology licensing business after a US patent office appeals board declared three Barth patents invalid. Reuters reports that the three Barth patents refer to PC memory controllers and have been used by Rambus to collect millions of dollars in licensing fees …

    Law 31 Jan 2012, 12:13

  • Top RIM jobs were too powerful and had to go - inquiry

    BlackBerry biz shakeup demanded by independent review

    Research in Motion (RIM) has handed out a largely moot independent report revealing that it shouldn't have had its CEOs as chairmen of the board. The six-page dossier [PDF] was published on the BlackBerry maker's website late on Monday - a week after the Canadian biz lost its long-term co-CEOs-and-chairmen Mike Lazaridis and …

    Business 31 Jan 2012, 12:27

  • NASA launches Facebook game for space nerds

    Cram up for tough Web2.0 rocket quiz

    NASA has created its first ever multiplayer online game, Space Race Blastoff - and it's now available on Facebook. The game puts space brainiacs to the test, by asking players to correctly answer questions about NASA's history, technology, science and pop culture. Those well-versed in the US space agency will be awarded with " …

    Science 31 Jan 2012, 12:45

  • Phoenix IT Group to axe over 300 jobs

    Heads roll and real estate cut in cost-cutting drive

    Phoenix IT Group is to axe more than 300 jobs as part of a company-wide reorganisation. As previously revealed by El Reg, the IT services firm murdered the ICM brand and placed the system integration, comms, hosting, managed services and business continuity operations under the Phoenix banner from January. The LSE-listed firm …

    The Channel 31 Jan 2012, 13:04

  • Paris Metro brings a bit of style to NFC

    Philippe Starck designs last Navigo card

    The Paris Metro will be getting new payment cards next year, cards which pave the way to board-by-bonk phones by being compatible with the NFC standard. Not that the Paris transport authority, the STIF, is saying much about the technical capabilities of the new card. The French are much more interested in the fact that it was …

    Broadband 31 Jan 2012, 13:19

  • Panasonic chucks rugged compact cams into the wild

    GPS, compass, barometer and more on board

    Panasonic's new Lumix digicam, the DMC-FT4, could be the ultimate camera for outdoors types. The gadget packs in not juts a 12.1Mp sensor with a 1080p HD video recording capability, but also its own GPS pick-up, a compass and altimeter and a barometer. Well tough: the Lumix DMC-FT4 In short, it'll pack your pictures with …

    Hardware 31 Jan 2012, 13:28

  • BSkyB snaps up fewer new subs in Q2, still rakes in cash

    Promises 1,300 new jobs, drills into superfast fibre market

    BSkyB has once again seen the number of new subscribers signing up to the broadcaster's products fall, compared to the same period a year before. The telly giant, while announcing its second-quarter results this morning, said it added 100,000 customers during the three-month period ending 31 December 2011. Compare that figure …

    Financial News 31 Jan 2012, 13:43

  • Angry Birds boss: Piracy helps us 'get more business'

    Slams music biz's 'terrible' attempts to crush pirates

    Music industry chiefs must have been pleased to hear that the maker of pig-squishing iPhone game Angry Birds has learned from its mistakes in combating piracy. Contrasting the music industry's ignore-then-crush approach to piracy to his own softly-softly approach with Angry Birds, Rovio chief Mikael Hed told assembled music …

    Business 31 Jan 2012, 14:01

  • iPhone doc will detect cancer, diabetes - boffins

    Touch screen literally meets bleeding-edge science

    A drop of blood or saliva can be analysed using an ordinary touch screen - and once boffins perfect the identification of biological molecules, then diagnosis by iPhone – or indeed any smartphone – isn't far off. The work is being done in South Korea, where researchers at the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have …

    Science 31 Jan 2012, 14:22

  • US judge rejects Oracle's fraud claim against HP

    That whole Itanium death thing rumbles on through the courts

    A US judge has dismissed an Oracle fraud claim against HP in the companies' ongoing legal battle over the Itanium platform. Last year, Oracle discontinued its software support for Itanium chips, alleging that Intel had made it clear the microprocessors' time was nearly up and that it would now be focusing on its x86 chips. HP …

    Law 31 Jan 2012, 14:37

  • EU snaps on glove, starts formal antitrust probe of Samsung

    Korean firm may be abusing 3G standards with Apple lawsuits

    The European Union has formally started an antitrust investigation of Samsung over its use of standards-related 3G patents in its patent battles around the world. The Korean firm has brought lawsuits against Apple in a number of European countries, alleging patent infringement of 3G intellectual property it holds. However, 3G …

    Law 31 Jan 2012, 14:43

  • Virus-slingers abuse WordPress vulns, dose punters with exploit

    Blogs also infected with information-harvesting Trojan

    Malware-spreaders are hacking into vulnerable WordPress-powered sites in order to drive traffic towards pages loaded with exploits. Hundreds of websites based on WordPress 3.2.1 have been compromised so that surfers directed to the Wordpress-built sites via email links are exposed to the Phoenix exploit kit, M86 Security warns …

    Security 31 Jan 2012, 14:58

  • iPhone 5 rumoured to be packed with pay-by-bonk tech

    NFC will have punters running for the tills

    Rumours - fuelled by comments from a MasterCard chief and an iOS developer - suggest that this year's next-gen iPhone could be packing a wireless pay-by-wave chip. The built-in near-field communication (NFC) gizmo would allow the iPhone 5 to make contact-less payments at the tills - a system that has been around on Android …

    Mobile 31 Jan 2012, 15:34

  • Cyberwar report: Israel, Finland best prepared for conflict

    Analysis Do GCHQ and the NSA have some catching up to do?

    Israel, Finland and Sweden are more prepared than larger nations to fight a conflict in cyberspace, according to a McAfee-backed cyber-defence study. The cyber-security report (click to enlarge) The study, Cyber-security: The Vexed Question of Global Rules, is based on interviews with experts in the nascent field by by …

    Security 31 Jan 2012, 16:01

  • Baby Bills, Windows 8 and a Microsoft 'Zynga' stealth project?

    MicroBite 33 Nerds on the rise in a Redmond revolution

    A cultural revolution is creeping through Microsoft. With a reorganisation in full swing and job cuts rumoured, the future looks uncertain for an entire class of marketing types and MBAs at Redmond: the software giant's officers seem intent on resetting the corporate clock to year zero to recapture the spirit of Bill Gates. …

    Developer 31 Jan 2012, 16:28

  • Google dings missive to lawmakers: 'We're misunderstood'

    Chocolate Factory promises it's not locking your privates in a vice

    Google has responded to US politicos who demanded answers after the advertising giant announced it was "simplifying" its privacy policies across its huge online estate. In a letter to eight members of Congress, Google's director of public policy, Pablo Chavez, explained he was hoping to "correct some of the misconceptions" …

    Law 31 Jan 2012, 16:54

  • Muscle chip strength leaves ARM shouldering meaty profit

    High-end RISC cores boost $773m revenue headline

    ARM, the eponymous designer of the chip architecture, had a stonking 2011 with revenue and profits up as it tightened its hold on both embedded and generic computing. Revenue for the last quarter of 2011 was up by more than 20 per cent on the previous year, to £137.8m, while profit before tax jumped more than twice that …

    Financial News 31 Jan 2012, 16:58

  • Google Professor appointed in Paris

    Dr Oompa Loompa will see you now

    Google has created a sponsored academic post in France, the Google@HEC chair at the HEC Paris business school. It's "a worldwide first for Google", according to the Chocolate Factory's PR department. France views itself as the birthplace of creator's rights and the cradle of culture, and it has led the European fulminations …

    Media 31 Jan 2012, 17:29

  • SeaMicro adds Xeons to Atom smasher microservers

    Now sporting brawny and wimpy cores

    For the past 18 months, SeaMicro, the upstart maker of microservers that are based on Intel's Atom processors, has heard from x86 competitors trying to keep it out of hyperscale data center server deals that the Atom cores are too wimpy to do heavy lifting workloads. But now, the SM10000 line of microservers – actually more like …

    Servers 31 Jan 2012, 18:15

  • Nekkid Tech: Our chefs boil biz data into clouds

    Podcast Turning up the heat on dependable storage

    Greg Knieriemen saw off the hordes at the New England Area VMware User Group and debated burning topics from virtualisation to sex equality in tech, thus serving up another piping hot podcast pie for El Reg readers last week. This time around, Greg and trusty sidekick Ed Saipetch (@edsai) chat to Mark Twomey (@storagezilla), …

    Storage 31 Jan 2012, 18:47

  • Red Hat now supports RHEL 5 and 6 for a decade

    Live longer and prosper more

    Companies that like Red Hat Enterprise Linux but hate changing Linux versions because of the hardware and software qualification process just got an excuse to be lazy for the next decade. Red Hat has announced that it will extend the production life of its latest RHEL 6 releases and the prior RHEL 5 releases by an extra three …

    Servers 31 Jan 2012, 18:58

  • Why I'd pay Apple more to give iPad factory workers a break

    Open ... and Shut Time to 'think different' on production line demands

    Last quarter Apple churned out extraordinary profits: $13.06bn of them. But according to a New York Times article, Apple achieved these amazing profits on the backs of Chinese workers, who are subjected to punishing work conditions to ensure high-quality iPhones and iPads at the lowest possible price. While the company claims …

    Hardware 31 Jan 2012, 19:23

  • Amazon France leaks iPad 3 release date?

    Today's fondleslab rumor 'pour les nuls'

    Amazon France may have leaked the release date for Apple's next iteration of its überpopular fondleslab, the iPad. The wonderfully named and self-proclaimed "Savior of Apple Blogging" AppleBitch.com noted on Tuesday that the Gallic online books-and-everything-else etailer has two iPad 3 books in its catalog: Ipad 3 pour les …

    Mobile 31 Jan 2012, 19:31

  • Obama washes hands of O’Dwyer piracy extradition case

    Not my fault, blame the DOJ

    President Obama has said he has nothing to do with the decision by US authorities to extradite British student Richard O’Dwyer on copyright charges for linking to pirated content. On Tuesday, Obama took part in a Google+ hangout and answered questions submitted and voted on by the public. The top-ranked question, given the …

    Government 31 Jan 2012, 19:33

  • SGI slings out departmental filer box

    Modular InfiniteStorage

    SGI has produced a modular version of its InfiniteStorage product for the departmental NAS market that comes as a storage server or a JBOD. SGI's InfiniteStorage line is a set of high-end storage arrays delivered as RAID-ed arrays or simple JBODs (Just a bunch of disks). They range from the entry-level 4100 – with up to 122 …

    Storage 31 Jan 2012, 21:02

  • Woolworths cuts off Dick

    Quick slice better than a slow death

    Woolworths has rung the death knell for bricks-and-mortar electronics retailing in Australia, as it announced that it is divesting its iconic Dick Smith electronics chain. The company has decided that gadgets won't ever match groceries, booze and gambling, and yesterday outlined plans for a $AU300 million restructure of the …

    Business 31 Jan 2012, 21:34

  • The IEEE and the Electric Universe

    A podium isn’t endorsement says Victoria chapter

    The IEEE’s outpost in Victoria is to play host to an airing of the fringe “Electric Universe” theory today. If Melbourne-dwelling members have time, they can pop over to Engineering House at North Melbourne to hear one Wal Thornhill expound the theory under the title The Electric Universe – A Practical Engineer’s Cosmology ( …

    Bootnotes 31 Jan 2012, 22:00

  • Quickflix adds Android with Samsung

    A Galaxy of mobile TV

    Samsung Galaxy slab-fondlers will soon get access to movies and TV shows, with IPTV aspirant Quickflix inking a deal with Samsung Australia. As well as Galaxy Tab and Smartphones, the arrangement will see Quickflix stream movies and TV shows to Samsung’s range of internet connected Smart TVs and Blu-ray players. Samsung …

    Media 31 Jan 2012, 22:15

  • Telstra upgrades coverage in West Australia

    Footprint to pass half-a-million square kilometers

    Telstra is tipping infrastructure investment equivalent to $AU106 million into the state of Western Australia as part of an extension to regional mobile phone coverage. Following a competitive tender Telstra has secured the contract to build the Regional Mobile Communication Project (RMCP). The tender has been funded by a …

    Business 31 Jan 2012, 22:30

  • NASA: Solar system may have alien origin

    The case of the missing oxygen

    The latest data from NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) probe has found a curious disparity in the distribution of some of the key elements of our solar system, notably why there is so much oxygen in it. IBEX, launched in 2008 to study the composition of interstellar space, has been gathering data on the amount of …

    Science 31 Jan 2012, 22:37

  • iiNet swallows Internode a month early

    Didn’t touch the sides

    iiNet has announced that its acquisition of Internode has been completed a month ahead of schedule. The $AU105 million purchase first announced in December was subject to “administrative conditions” which iiNet says have “now been satisfied” (suggesting, perhaps, that the usual business of trying to work out whether a company’ …

    Business 31 Jan 2012, 23:00

  • Surprise: Neil Young still hates digital music

    ‘Piracy is the new radio'

    Neil Young, who a few years back famously described Apple as the “Fisher-Price” of sound quality, is giving his “I hate digital music” can another kick, claiming that even the late Steve Jobs listened to vinyl rather than his own company’s inventions. Speaking to Peter Kafka and Walt Mossberg at the “Dive Into Media” …

    Media 31 Jan 2012, 23:30

  • RIM's cartoon superheroes inspire caustic Tweet-storm

    Just 'a bit of fun', responds beleaguered BlackBerry biz

    RIM's latest marketing stunt has succeeded in attracting a high degree of attention – but not necessarily of the type that the struggling company may have intended. As 2011 drew to a close, RIM asked BlackBerrians to tweet their "Bold" New Years' resolutions to the hashtag #BeBold, and last Friday the company introduced a …

    Mobile 31 Jan 2012, 23:44