6th February 2012 Archive

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TV giant HBO invests $AU10m in Quickflix

'Hug it out b***h' downunder

Ambitious Australian IPTV company Quickflix has secured an international investment coup with a $AU10 million cash infusion from Home Box Office (HBO). The investment will give the Time Warner subsidiary a strategic stake in the ASX listed Quickflix. HBO will also appoint a representative to the Quickflix board. Quickflix …

Business 6 Feb 02:01
CA wins copyright wrangle against ISI

Don't nick the source code kids

CA Technologies has won a protracted legal battle against Sydney based software company Independent Systems Integrators ( ISI). In late 2010, CA claimed that ISI had infringed the source code in two of its computer programs and had also breached confidence in documents relating to the computer programs. The Federal Court of …

Law 6 Feb 03:00
EMC crashes the server flash party

Lightning strike with thunder to follow

The perfect server flash storm hitting storage arrays has generated EMC's well-signalled Lightning strike; VFCache has arrived, extending FAST technology from the array to the server. Project Thunder is following close behind, promising an EMC server-networked flash array. This is a major announcement and we are covering it in …

Storage 6 Feb 05:01
Indian court grabs back 122 GSM licences from operators

Firms devalue to the tune of $25bn

India's Supreme Court has ruled that the 2G licences awarded in 2008 were not fairly distributed, and has snatched 122 of them back from the operators who were using them. The court has decided the first-come-first-served approach adopted by then-telecoms minister Andimuthu Raja was "totally arbitrary and unconstitutional", …

Mobile 6 Feb 07:02
MYSTERY as QLogic hurls InfiniBand from train

Comment Reg storage desk baffled in the case of the fibre fracas

Storage networking and InfiniBand supplier is giving up on InfiniBand and selling that business line to Intel for $125 million. QLogic is in a seemingly permanent duel with Emulex, from which it was spun-out in 1994, for dominance in the Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA) market and also the so far un-dynamic Fibre Channel …

Storage 6 Feb 07:30
Hackers may be able to 'outwit' online banking security devices

Investigators probe malware threat to 2-factor authentication

Hackers may already able to use malware to outwit the latest generation of online banking security devices, security watchers warn. An investigation by BBC Click underlines possible shortcomings in the extra security provided by banking authentication devices such as PINSentry from Barclays and SecureKey from HSBC. Using such …

Crime 6 Feb 08:01
Huawei-Symantec sneaks out of US back door

Has it been booted out?

Huawei-Symantec, the joint venture between Huawei and Symantec, has effectively stopped trading and is leaving the United States. This follows the US government's blockade of several of its acquisitions, including parent Huawei's deal to snap up 3Leaf Systems, which it sought to acquire in May 2010 for $2m and its attempted …

Channel Register 6 Feb 08:29
Doctors sick of anonymous-coward NHS feedback commentards

Welcome to the internet, doc

A leading GP has declared that the general public are too rude about doctors on the internet in a complaint that may amuse those of us more familiar with the culture of "Internet feedback". In an interview with eHealthInsider, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, of the British Medical Association's GP Committee said that patient comments about …

Government 6 Feb 08:58
New dole system is 'digital by default', like it or not

Claimants who do not comply will be 'nudged' by 'back office' workers

Universal credit – the government's "new and improved" benefits system – will be the first major government service to be digital by default. This is according to Steve Dover, director of major programmes at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Dover says: "There will be a back office to deal with the more vulnerable in …

Government 6 Feb 09:39
Facebook's IPO unveils plans to invade China

Social network would love to tap that

Not content with almost total domination in Western markets, social networking behemoth Facebook could be planning an assault on China if it can just do a deal with the authorities there, its latest regulatory filing has revealed. The firm’s IPO filing with the SEC last week provided commentators with a wealth of interesting …

Financial News 6 Feb 09:58
Motorola: refurb tablets shipped with former owners' data intact

Whoops

Motorola Mobility has admitted that some refurbished Xoom tablets were sent out to their new owners with previous users' data still present in the gadgets' memory banks. The company, which is waiting for a thumbs-up from the Feds before it can be swallowed by Google, offered its profuse apologies for the snafu. Some 6200 …

reghardware 6 Feb 10:05
Boffins find prehistoric croc species with 'mate-attracting' skin helmet

'Shieldcrocs' mingled with dinosaurs

Bone-bothering US boffins have identified a new species of prehistoric crocodile, nicknamed "Shieldcroc" because of a flat ornamental skin shield on its ginormous head. Rather cartoony artist's rendition of Shieldcroc. Credit: Henry P. Tsai, University of Missouri The hard-headed Aegisuchus witmeri is one of modern-day …

Biology 6 Feb 10:17
PSN renamed Sony Entertainment Network

SEN-sible name change?

The PlayStation Network is to undergo a major rebranding this week when it is integrated into an all-new Sony Entertainment Network. On Wednesday, 8 February, PSN account holders will find their details transferred to the SEN, tying Sony's digital entertainment offerings together in one sensibly-named platform. "PlayStation …

reghardware 6 Feb 10:30
Twitter snaps up Google Asia exec

Service could be set for greater expansion in the region

Micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter is stepping up its efforts at international expansion and has pinched a senior Google executive in a clear sign the company could be looking to target Asia in the coming months. Shailesh Rao was managing director of Google India and also headed up the web giant’s display advertising business …

CIO 6 Feb 10:44
EMC server flash rival slams VFCache

Fusion-io thinks Lightning misses target

EMC's VFCache server cache doesn't quite hit the mark. Although it validates server flash use, caching is not enough. That's the view of Fusion-io chairman, CEO and co-founder David Flynn. Fusion-io leads the server PCIe flash market and its boss appears to think EMC's approach misses the target. Flynn said he welcomed the …

Servers 6 Feb 11:02
IT budgets plunge in North America, Europe

Rise in the East and Latin America

If you were expecting for IT spending to go up this year and for new projects to get going – and perhaps to get a pay raise – the consensus is building that this is not going to happen. That's the bad news. The good news would seem to be that instead of being asked to do more with less, IT shops will be asked to do a lot more …

CIO 6 Feb 11:14
iOS 5 'crashes more apps' than Android

Is it an upgrade problem, or a user problem?

Recent data has shown that iOS apps crash more often than apps running on the Android platform. The data comes from Crittercism – monitoring software that records app crashes as a percentage of app launches and makes money by sending reports and diagnostics to the app's creators. After looking at data taken about app crashes …

Applications 6 Feb 11:32
Micron grabs almost-retired COO for chief

Mark Durcan will take over as CEO after death of Steve Appleton

Chip-maker Micron Technology has named a new CEO following the death of Steve Appleton on Friday in a plane crash. Micron named former chief operating officer Mark Durcan, who had been standing in as chief following the accident, as the new CEO for the firm. Just two weeks ago, Micron had said that Durcan was planning to …

Business 6 Feb 11:35
Apple TV surfaces on Best Buy

Spec leak - or fishing expedition?

US electronics retailer Best Buy has begun asking punters if they'd be interested coughing up $1499 for a 42in HD TV from Apple. A customer survey form reprinted by the Verge pitches the notion of a 42in, 1080p LED-backlit telly running iOS. The telly, the form suggests, might provide access to iTunes downloads and rentals, …

reghardware 6 Feb 11:37
Amazon lures Microsoft WinPhone chief with Kindle

Etailer claims third Redmond scalp

Microsoft's man rallying developers and partners to buy into Windows Phone is reportedly jumping ship to help push Amazon's cross-platform Kindle push. Brandon Watson is head of the Developer Experience team working on Windows Phone 7, which leads developer marketing and developer platform products. Watson is reported to be …

Business 6 Feb 11:47
Samsung Series 7 Chonos 15.6in Core i7 notebook

Review NOT a MacBook clone

Surely someone is having a laugh. Having read nothing but five-star reviews of this luxury notebook on other sources, I find myself surprised to be staring at a four-star product on my desk. Four stars is pretty good, you know, but that’s one less than five. All in good time: Samsung's Series 7 Chronos What am I missing …

reghardware 6 Feb 12:00
MPs rattle telcos to help kill extremist material online

Update ISPs once again asked to police interwebs

Internet service providers must do better at removing violent material from websites, a group of MPs thundered today. The Home Affairs select committee published a report this morning that highlighted how extremist groups and individuals use the internet "to promote violent radicalism". MPs were told by a series of witnesses …

Government 6 Feb 12:13
Analyst touts iPad 'transformer' after CEO confab

Dual dock ports, clip-on keyboard for laptop-like use?

Will the Apple iPad 3 be an 'homage' to the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, complete with clever clip-on keyboard accessory? One financial analysts comments, posted after a meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, suggests it might be. Enter Citigroup researcher Richard Gardner, who late last week said he'd been chewing the fat with …

reghardware 6 Feb 12:19
Apple vs Amazon in ereader format smackdown

iBooks enlists kiddies on the EPUB3 front

Format wars are a mixed blessing for consumers. Whether it's Betamax versus VHS or Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD, the consumer ultimately wins because companies have to advance superior technologies. But problems arise if the format you backed loses the war - and your device becomes next year's expensive doorstop. A new fight is …

Developer 6 Feb 12:34
Scientists weave battery into clothing

Uses jumper leads?

Scientists charged into the fashion industry this week, unveiling a flexible battery that can be woven into fabric and used to boost the juice of everyday gadgets. The lithium-ion cells were produced by a group of boffins from the Polytechnic School of Montreal. The team claims their bendy power cells are the first wearable …

reghardware 6 Feb 12:41
Google and Facebook remove 'offensive' content from Indian sites

Internet firms comply with court order

Facebook and Google have removed content from Indian domain websites in response to a court order to get rid of "objectionable content". The Indian subsidiaries of the internet firms were in court in New Delhi on Monday in a civil suit against the firms, and other web giants, brought by Muslim petitioner Mufti Aijaz Arshad …

Law 6 Feb 12:47
Job-seeking Marriott hacker gets 30 months' porridge

Nabbed and jailed after Secret Service sting

A job-seeking Hungarian hacker who tried to land work with Marriott by hacking into the hotel chain's network before "offering" to sort out the resulting mess has been found guilty of hacking and attempted extortion and jailed for 30 months. Attila Nemeth, 26, admits sending Trojan-infected emails to workers at the hotel late …

Malware 6 Feb 13:03
Schools IT supplier RM swings to full year loss after sales dive

We knew about gov budget cuts but we didn't really get it...

Ailing specialist education IT supplier RM has admitted it reacted too slowly to government budget cuts in schools after revealing massive losses in fiscal 2011 ended 30 November. The firm posted a loss before tax of £23.4m for the 14 months to nOVEMBER 2011 – including restructuring costs and excess property provisions. This …

Channel Register 6 Feb 13:17
BTJunkie closes shooting gallery

'My life is officially ruined'

Popular torrent search engine BTJunkie – nothing to do with BT – is voluntarily closing, according to a notice posted on the site, without offering a reason. The site has indexed other torrent trackers since 2005, and was the fifth most popular Torrent site. "It's the end of an era", reckons one piracy fansite. BTJunkie users …

Music and Media 6 Feb 13:44
Windows Phone 8 to get NFC, HD and Skype

Rumours confirmed, details emerge

Following a leaked video which showed Windows Phone top dog Joe Belfiore listing the features adorning the next version of Windows Phone, beta testers have come clean on what we should expect. The video was intended for device manufacturers, but got into the hands of PocketNow, which promptly shared the details. The …

Mobile 6 Feb 13:58
Ofcom proposes fall in BT Openreach charges to rivals

Updated Just wait for that nice Brussels man to agree

BT will be forced to cut the prices of the access charges it applies to the company's broadband and telephone lines when leasing them out to other providers, Ofcom said today. The communications watchdog, which regulates BT's Openreach division because the business has a dominant market position in Blighty, submitted its " …

Telecoms 6 Feb 14:18
Apple tells authors: All your ~~books~~ iBook files are belong to us

But you can export them as PDFs if you want

In a legal rewrite pushed out Friday, Apple has made its iBooks publishing agreement sound slightly less evil by clarifying just what you can do with the content you create on its iBook Author software. Yes, all iBooks are locked to the iBook store but you can export those files as PDFs. As The Reg pointed out at the time of …

Music and Media 6 Feb 14:39
Apple kicks China's most popular browser out of iTunes

Bans Qihoo apps from its store ...

Qihoo, maker of the most popular web browser in China, has had all of its products kicked out of iTunes, though it's far from clear which breach of the rules is responsible. The company's web browser, security suite and instant-messaging client have all disappeared from the Chinese iTunes store, leaving the company with with …

Music and Media 6 Feb 15:01
Printed jaw lets woman swallow again

Let's eat, Grandma

3D printing techniques have been taken to jaw-dropping heights after an 83-year-old woman was given a replacement mandible. She becomes the first patient ever to be fitted with a printed lower jaw. Given the old dear's age, and the fact that her lower jaw was so badly infected, traditional surgery was deemed too much of a risk …

reghardware 6 Feb 15:19
Google tells French watchdog 'non' on privacy tweak halt

'At no stage did any DPA suggest pause was necessary'

Google has rejected calls from the European Union's watchdog to delay imminent changes to the Chocolate Factory's privacy policy. The company's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, wrote a letter to France's data protection authority in response to an earlier missive sent by the EU's Article 29 Working Party last week. " …

Government 6 Feb 15:36
An NT-powered Windows Phone? Not so fast...

MS mulls partying like it's 1996....

Sources close to Microsoft have confirmed the veracity of last week's Windows Phone leaks – but say no decision has been taken to base the mobile platform on the Windows 8 kernel. The information that leaked last week concerns 'Apollo', the next-but-one release of Windows Phone. It's all genuine, but should be thought of as …

Operating Systems 6 Feb 15:57
Android dominates first-time smartphone buyer biz

Apple strong in upgrade arena

Punters picking their first smartphone are more likely to select an Android handset. When they come to upgrade, however, there's a good chance they'll defect to the opposition. So suggests market data from US research company NPD, released today. NPD looked at sales data for Q4 2011, focusing not simply on the number of …

reghardware 6 Feb 16:04
UK gov rejects call to posthumously pardon Alan Turing

Wartime codebreaker's 'absurd' conviction must stand

The UK government has turned down a call to posthumously pardon Alan Turing. A petition to pardon the war-time codebreaker for a 'gross indecency' conviction attracted more than 23,000 signatures, prompting the tabling of early day motion in the House of Commons last week. Turing was arrested and eventually convicted for …

Government 6 Feb 16:23
iPhone 4 incapable of handling Siri, says chip chap

Cough up for 4$ or somehow stagger on without blabberware

Siri won't run on iPhone 4 because the phone's chip can't handle it, an analyst at the Linley Group has said. The news is a blow to iPhone 4-ers hoping for an upgrade to the voice-activated virtual assistant and is also a surprise to anyone familiar with the I-hacked-my-iPhone-4-to-run-Siri stories. Linley Gwennap of the …

Applications 6 Feb 16:59
Avast false alarm hits Steam's weekend gamers

'I am sworn to carry your burdens'

Freebie anti-virus scanner Avast falsely identified an executable associated with the popular Steam gaming platform as a Trojan on Sunday. The snafu, which persisted for around 90 minutes, meant that SteamService.exe was wrongly identified as a Trojan (specifically Trojan-gen) and sent to quarantine. Judging by posts on Steam …

Malware 6 Feb 17:23
Anonymous releases law firm's emails about Haditha killings

Hacked lawyers who defended Marine over Iraqi deaths

Anonymous has leaked a trove of emails relating to the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha after hacking into a law firm's systems. The hacktivists claim to have made off with a 2.6GB email spool after breaking into the systems of Puckett Faraj, the law firm that represents Frank Wuterich, 31, the Marine staff sergeant at …

Security 6 Feb 17:58
Resellers smack down Microsoft's 'single-digit' price rise claim

Channel sources: Volume licensing lift will be closer to 20 per cent

Microsoft says that a planned overhaul of volume licensing pricing due in the summer will be capped at single digit percentage rises. Redmond said that Open, Select and Select Plus agreements struck in the UK after 1 July would be aligned to euro prices and charged based on the exchange rate with sterling. "Based on the …

Channel Register 6 Feb 18:18
Cisco recalls suicidal UCS blade servers

Goodness gracious, great MOSFETs afire

Cisco Systems warns that its high-end B440 blades for its "California" Unified Computing System have a potentially disastrous defect that could result in one or more board failures, and emit a flash of light that could perhaps give system administrators heart attacks. Last week, Cisco put out a field notice to customers using …

Servers 6 Feb 18:36
Symantec: 'NetBackup 7.5 speeds backup 100X'

Cuts 25-hour chore down to 15 minutes

Symantec says backup is a multi-point product mess, with big data blowing backup-window timing out of the water, and so it has souped up both BackupExec and NetBackup to cover more backup and restore use cases. The sexy news – well, as sexy as backup news can be – is that the latest release of NetBackup is said to be 100 times …

Storage 6 Feb 19:03
Shrunken Intel process boosts SSD performance

The new 520 Series more than doubles 510's IOPS

Intel has announced a boosted follow-on to its 510 SSD: the 520 Series, with more than double the IOPS performance and a top-end model with almost twice the capacity. The 2.5-inch 520 is a client or PC SSD, and is built from 25nm 2-bit MLC NAND; the 510 used a 34nm process. Like the 510, it has a 6Gb/s SATA interface, but its …

Storage 6 Feb 19:17
Upgrade eliminates Atlantis from Google Earth

Data glitch explanation won’t satisfy true believers

The latest update to Google Earth has resolved the software error that caused some to suspect the lost city of Atlantis had been found in the Atlantic Ocean. For the last three years, Google Earth has shown what appears to be a grid on the sea floor between the Canary Islands and the mid-Atlantic ridge that bisects the ocean. …

Music and Media 6 Feb 19:34
Boffins uncloak G-rated teledildonic breakthrough

Remotely kiss a cow, kiss a bunny, kiss your loneliness goodbye

A team of robot reseachers have developed a prototype of internet-based remote kissing devices that – for reasons unexplained – comes in two versions, one a cartoonish bunny, the other a cow. The bunny, well, The Reg can accept, seeing as how a juvenile oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus might be some folks' idea of kissable …

Rise of the Machines 6 Feb 21:36
NewSat scores $US180m in new contract win

Aus satellite gets popular

Australian satellite operator NewSat has secured another contract, this time worth $US180 million, for capacity on its yet-to-be-launched Jabiru -1 satellite. MEASAT Satellite Systems has booked capacity for 15 years across multiple transponders covering South Asia and South East Asia. The Jabiru-1 is a large Ka-band next …

Business 6 Feb 21:39
The hole in the copy-proof fence

The Optus TV Now decision

The value of live sports sponsorships isn’t going to collapse overnight, regardless of the dire predictions made in the wake of last week’s decision in the Optus TV Now case. The judgment, that TV Now is legal, has been greeted with the usual response from the plaintiffs (the Australian Rugby League and the Australian Football …

Music and Media 6 Feb 22:00
VMTurbo control freak spans more clouds

Allocating virty resources, free market–style

There are a lot of different ways to allocate resources in a world that has a scarcity of just about everything except wise guys. You can do command and control from the top down, as many governments have tried and many systems management tools do as well. Or you can take the free-market approach by creating pools of resources …

Cloud 6 Feb 22:02
‘Oldest animals’ show up in Namibian dig

Ancient sponge the granddaddy of us all

For now, anyhow, the starting date for highly-organised life has gained a new record, with a dig in Namibia yielding up sponge fossils dated somewhere between 100 and 150 million years earlier than anything else yet found. While the tiny sponges, turned up by British and African researchers in sites including Namibia’s Etosha …

Science 6 Feb 22:30
Chip sales definitely not down – but almost – in 2011

Semis take a December dive

The chip biz didn't do as badly as many had feared it might last summer, closing out 2011 with $299.5bn in worldwide sales, up four-tenths of a per cent from the record $298.3bn revenue level set in 2010. All the news was not good, however, since global semiconductor sales took a big hit in December, according to stats …

PCs & Chips 6 Feb 23:43