8th February 2012 Archive

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Hong Kongers protest over end to all-you-can-eat tariffs

SmarTone on the receiving end of user fury

Hong Kong dwellers have staged a mini-protest outside one of the stores of SmarTone against the cellco's response to new rules from the local regulator which will force all network operators to scrap unlimited data tariffs. Local newspaper The Standard reported that the group of angry customers gathered outside a SmarTone …

Mobile 8 Feb 00:03
Laser boffins blast bits onto hard drive at 200Gb/sec

Superheating drives forego magnetic write heads

A team of scientists have published a new way of using heat to store data magnetically, which could increase the speed of hard drives over a hundredfold. Conventional drives use electromagnetism to selectively change the polarity of points on a drive, representing a one or a zero. But according to research published in Nature …

Storage 8 Feb 00:51
'App Economy' has created 466,000 US jobs

Thanks to Apple, Google, Facebook...

Although Apple may be facing mounting criticism for outsourcing its manufacturing beyond US shores, creating 700,000 jobs in China and elsewhere, one tech-industry advocacy group claims that Apple, the Android ecosystem, Facebook, and lesser lights account for roughly 466,000 US jobs in what it calls the "App Economy". " …

Developer 8 Feb 01:15
SGI to restructure (again) after fiscal Q2 loss

Blame Europe, Xeon E5 product transitions

It is becoming more apparent why supercomputer and server maker Silicon Graphics' former president and CEO Mark Barrenechea decided to exit stage left back in December. While the company was growing gear sales, it was heading deeper into the red ink as old machines came off maintenance and new machines await their ramps this …

Servers 8 Feb 01:30
Australian sports get busy with copyright special pleading

Chewing on the government's ear

Australia’s sports administrators, usually busy trying to steal each others’ audiences, have discovered the spirit of cooperation in the face of the Optus TV Now Federal Court decision. The prime minister has confirmed that the Australian Rugby League, Australian Football League, Cricket Australia, Tennis Australia, and the …

Law 8 Feb 03:31
Ten... Freesat TV receivers

Product round-up Orbital options for the digital switchover

Whether you’ve cut the cord and churned away from Sky, or need to survive the digital switch-over without recourse to Pay-TV or aerial, it’s worth considering Freesat. The gratis satellite TV service matches Freeview for SD channels, and offers a smattering of high-def plus the BBC iPlayer, hardware permitting. It’s a good bet …

reghardware 8 Feb 07:00
Apple won't rule out all singing, all dancing iBooks on Kindle

But they must be free. And will need an Android app

Apple has come under fire for keeping all products of its new interactive book-making tool within its walled garden. According to a tough End User License Agreement, any iBooks created by the iBooks Author software can only be sold through the iBookstore so Apple can help itself to a 30 per cent cut. But an unusually chatty …

Music and Media 8 Feb 08:03
Move over cybercrims, DDoS now protesters' weapon of choice

Attackers swap rifles for machine guns with laser sights

Ideological hacktivism has replaced cybercrime as the main motivatation behind DDoS attacks, according to a study by Arbor Networks. Up until last year, DDoS attacks were typically financially driven – either for reasons of competition or outright extortion – but the activities of Anonymous and related groups have changed that …

Security 8 Feb 08:31
Heathrow facial recognition tech stalled by borders fiasco

Airport's scanner rollout to miss Olympics target

Heathrow airport may now not get facial recognition technology at all five of its terminals in time for the Olympics as planned, according to the Financial Times. Plans for BAA to install 'e-gates' facial recognition technology at the airport to allow registered non-EU nationals to use electronic self-service immigration …

Security 8 Feb 09:01
Coke-snorting cop bots to replace sniffer dogs

Roboplod finds could count as evidence in court

Sniffer dogs can get tired, but fibre-optic sniffer robots don't have the same problem. And they are just as good at detecting cocaine, says Tong Sun, a professor of sensor engineering at City University London. Prof Sun and her team won a £140k grant on Tuesday to work on the coke-detecting robots that they foresee will …

Rise of the Machines 8 Feb 09:28
Nokia axes 4,000, shifts smartphone manufacturing East

Factories hit in cost-cutting drive

Having reviewed operations at its manufacturing facilities in Hungary, Mexico and Finland, Nokia has decided to halt its assembly lines there. Smartphones will still be customised at the three sites, but the gear itself will be built in Asia. The change will affect 4,000 jobs between the factories – loading custom firmware …

Mobile 8 Feb 09:59
NFC leader Inside Secure to IPO this month

It's no Facebook, but it does actually design stuff

Inside Secure has filed for an initial public offering, looking to raise almost €80m a day after it celebrated shipping 20 million chips, and signed up a major handset manufacturer. The filing is with the NYSE Euronext Paris, and Le Figaro reports that it will involve raising up to €79.3m in order to pay for more research and …

Wireless 8 Feb 10:17
Logitech rolls out touch-sensitive mouse

Buttons, wheels out; taps, swipes in

Logitech will next week release its answer to Apple's Magic Mouse: an input doohickey with a touch-sensitive skin. The Touch Mouse M600 uses said surface to read taps, swipes and scroll gestures. The M600 is wireless - it uses Logitech's proprietary 2.4GHz tech - and optical. Out this month, the Logitech Touch Mouse M600 …

reghardware 8 Feb 10:33
HP may be going the server flash route

Company won't confirm it, but the G8 looks pretty flashy

HP's new G8 servers will sport lots of flash, according to a knowledgeable HP fan. The ProLiant G8 is the successor to the popular G7 servers and will be known as the Gen8 ProLiant. Our information is that it or versions of it will use flash memory to support 50 per cent more transactions and 30 per cent more virtual machines …

Channel Register 8 Feb 10:41
Huawei's Ascend P1 headed to China in March

Update: Home market gets first dibs on P1 S's chunkier sister

Chinese electronics giant Huawei could be set to launch its P1 as early as next month, according to reports. Huawei senior vice president Yu Chengdong took to Twitter-like service Sina Weibo to reveal that the first devices could be on sale in China by the end of March, according to Tech Sina (Chinese) – although the exec …

Mobile 8 Feb 10:59
T-Mobile's Full Monty speed 'capped at 1Mb/s'

Cellco denies, confirms cap

T-Mobile's unlimited tariff, The Full Monty, has come under scrutiny after reports surfaced that the cellco may have placed a speed limit of just 1Mb/s on the package. The price plan, launched this month, aims to compete with Three's The One Plan by offering T-Mobile customers a fully unlimited package for £41 per month. …

reghardware 8 Feb 11:11
Amazon 'rolling out a retail store in Seattle'

Apple Store-inspired Kindle-pushing boutique rumoured...

Amazon could be about to open a bricks-and-mortar store in Seattle aimed at selling the Kindle - according to rumours on blog goodereader. Amazon execs are impressed by Apple's trendy hangouts shops, said the goodereader source, and want to get a piece of the boutique retail pie. The Seattle store would test out the concept …

Music and Media 8 Feb 11:14
Russians drill into buried 20 million-year-old Antarctic lake

Will boffins find prehistoric life - or secret Nazi files?

Russian scientists have drilled through to a 20-million-year-old lake under Antarctica, which, depending on who you listen to, could harbour alien life forms, prehistoric microbes or Hitler's secret hideout. An artist's cross-section of Lake Vostok. Credit: US National Science Foundation Lake Vostok, the subject of much …

Biology 8 Feb 11:33
Samsung reveals Tocco Lite 2 release details

Budget blower inbound

Samsung revealed it will launch the successor to its popular Tocco Lite handset this March, with the budget blower targeting the social network generation. No surprise there, then. The Samsung Tocco Lite 2 packs a 3in, 320 x 240 touchscreen. Features include a built-in music player, a 3.2Mp camera, Bluetooth 3.0 and micro SD …

reghardware 8 Feb 11:45
Virgin Media finally turns an annual profit

Only took five years since beardie rebrand

Virgin Media pulled in annual revenue that was just shy of £4bn, the company reported this morning. The telco recorded an operating cash flow of £1.6bn, while net income for the year ended 31 December 2011 sat at £75.9m - that's the first time Virgin Media has racked up an annual profit from its business. It took the company …

Financial News 8 Feb 11:47
Toshiba 14in USB LCD Mobile Monitor

Review Panel beater?

It sounds like a great idea: a 14in LCD monitor that connects using USB. Perfect for tablets, netbooks and mobile phones, right? Well no, because it doesn’t work with them. That’s not to say Toshiba’s Monitor is entirely without merit. It’s a neat looking device, similar in size to a slim laptop and weighing the same as a …

reghardware 8 Feb 12:01
Apple's new TV allegedly spotted... in Canadian office

Will be controlled by Siri, waving, unicorns

Prototypes of the hotly anticipated Apple TV are sitting in the offices of telcos in Canada, reports newspaper The Globe and Mail. The report adds that the new TVs will feature voice-control through Siri, gesture control and video chat. Apple has sent out the prototypes of its "iTV" device to help it cut deals with local …

Business 8 Feb 12:13
Greenpeace releases meaningless 'Cool IT' rankings

Analysis Hippies' 'leaderboard' apparently made using dartboard

International hippie* collective Greenpeace has issued a "Cool IT leaderboard" of apparently randomly selected major firms which it has assigned meaningless self-generated scores intended to indicate how eco-friendly the companies are. The list includes Google (top ranked with a score of 53 out of a possible 100) and other …

Energy 8 Feb 12:25
Yahoo! chairman! falls! on! his! sword!

Bostock and three directors quit ailing web biz to save it

Yahoo!'s chairman and three other board members are stepping down as the once-mighty web firm continues its drawn-out internal shake-up. Chairman Roy Bostock announced the purge in a letter to shareholders, saying the directors had chosen not to stand for re-election to the board "in order to accelerate the company's …

Business 8 Feb 12:42
Halliburton latest biz to dump BlackBerry for iPhone

But our developers are raking it in, screams RIM

Citing better application support, oilfield services giant Halliburton will be handing out iPhones in future - despite RIM's claims that its app developers have never had it so good. Halliburton is the latest in a long line of companies shifting away from the former default choice of RIM's BlackBerry infrastructure. For …

Business 8 Feb 12:58
Android's Chrome finish comes too late for Flash coating

Adobe confirms Flashless browsing

Google may have got its Chrome browser running on Android, but Adobe is standing by its decision not to port Flash to any new mobile browsers, not even Chrome. Flash content works fine in Android's embedded browser, and Adobe has previously said that it will be porting Flash to Android 4 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich), but that port …

Mobile 8 Feb 13:17
Nokia: No Belle download for Apple users

Even if they have its own Mac OS X updater app

Nokia has told Mac-using owners of handsets capable of being upgraded to its Belle operating system they need to switch to a PC to apply the update themselves. The Finnish phone giant posted the latest incarnation of the OS formerly known as Symbian yesterday for a series of older Nokia handsets. Alas, the new code is only …

reghardware 8 Feb 13:27
Marlinspike asks browser vendors to back SSL-validator

Analysis 'Convergence' open source dev needs vendors to balance the load

Moxie Marlinspike is encouraging browser developers to support an experimental project to shake up the security of website authentication by moving beyond blind faith in secure sockets layer (SSL) credentials. The Convergence open-source project is designed to address at least some of the main shortcomings that underpin trust …

Security 8 Feb 13:38
Olympus goes retro with µFT snapper

Mirrorless magic

Olympus extended its array of Micro Four Thirds cameras today, launching the E-M5, a retro-style snapper based on the classic design of the company's OM range of 35mm SLRs. The E-M5 is the first model in the firm's new OM-D collection and adds a number of features as yet unseen in the company's other Micro Four Thirds cameras …

reghardware 8 Feb 13:47
LinkedIn offers MORE SECURE hobnobbing option

Social-network-for-suits finally gets some SSL love

LinkedIn is now gradually rolling out secure browsing for its social-networking-for-suits service. The company confirmed in a blog post yesterday that the site will encrypt web traffic over SSL. However, unlike Google, which uses HTTPS by default on its stuff, LinkedIn is offering it as an option for its users. Facebook and …

Music and Media 8 Feb 14:02
Now HDS joins server flash party

Still no comment from HP

Hitachi Data Systems intends to join the server flash storage party, throwing its NAND hat into the ring to speed application I/O and increase the virtual machine population. It is joining EMC, NetApp and possibly HP. Dell has said it is doing something too, leaving IBM as the only unknown. Here is an HDS' statement from …

Servers 8 Feb 14:17
Glad to be hybrid: Office 365 flits from cloud to cloud

Interview Public and private partnership

“The hybrid cloud environment is a great place for Office 365,” evangelises Simon May, appropriately enough a tech evangelist at Microsoft UK. May began his professional life with an eight-year stint at a global financial institution where he covered plenty of tech ground, from desktop and server support through to IT project …

Small Biz 8 Feb 14:30
Indonesian train roof fare-dodgers given the brush off

Foul-smelling brooms purge carriages of surfing commuters

Indonesian train operators have come up with yet another ingeniously cruel system designed to discourage fare-dodging commuters from blagging a free ride on the roof of their carriages - this time involving brooms covered in putrid gunk. Fresh from the success of its plans to dislodge the pesky roof-dwellers with small …

Bootnotes 8 Feb 14:39
Virident flasher claims Oracle database streak record

Solid disks thrust into willing 80-core NEC box

Exit Exadata, Fusion-io and Violin Memory - so to speak: the Oracle database random IO speed record has been smashed by an 80-core NEC server fitted with eight Virident flash drives. A single Xeon-based 80-core NEC Express 5800/A1080a GX server, fitted with eight 1.4TB Virident FlashMax solid-state drives (11.2TB of flash …

Servers 8 Feb 15:01
Mozilla explains user-tracking proposal for Firefox

Telemetry has no UUID, Metrics Data Ping might

In a story published yesterday your humble Reg writer wrongly confused Mozilla's Telemetry project with the open-source outfit's so-called Metrics Data Ping proposal. Mozilla has been in touch to clear things up. The org's global privacy and policy boss Alex Fowler kindly explained the differences between the two systems to us …

Desktop 8 Feb 15:14
Revealed: Apple's plea for fairness in mobile patent war

Letter to telecoms body begs for level playing field

In November Apple wrote to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute suggesting an overhaul of the whole FRAND system of licensing patents fairly and reasonably. The letter was sent to the Director General of ETSI, the premier standards body within Europe, and signed by Apple's VP of intellectual property - it's …

Mobile 8 Feb 15:31
Quarter of Wolfram Alpha brainteasers come from Siri

Apple's smart-arse software relies on boffinry website

A quarter of traffic to the intelligent computational engine Wolfram Alpha comes from Siri, Stephen Wolfram said in a New York Times article. The robot-loving physicist (who once said that all science needed to know could be found by studying the behaviour of cellular automata) launched the knowledgable super-brain in 2009. …

Rise of the Machines 8 Feb 16:01
Resellers: Microsoft price hike was 'demanded by Euro country bosses'

Insiders say UK channel exploited weak pound to fuel deals on continent

Microsoft's planned overhaul of volume-licensing prices was in response to cries of frustration from its European country managers unhappy their UK counterpart were benefiting from the regional disparity to win biz on the continent, channel sources claim. As The Register recently revealed, the software giant is aligning …

Channel Register 8 Feb 16:04
New driver-snooping satnav could push down UK insurance premiums

TomTom signs up with Motaquote to stuff spy in GPS box

The idea has been hovering in the ether for some time, but TomTom is the first satnav firm to sign on the dotted line and bring insurance to drivers through their GPS. The Dutch company has joined up with Motaquote insurers to offer UK drivers "Fair Pay" insurance, where customers pay lower premiums because their satnav …

Business 8 Feb 16:18
Cray puts super stake in the big data ground

Crunch this

Big data may or may not pan out for the users, but it is a bit of a boom for IT vendors, who are scrambling to prove their data analytics chops and go for the easiest money in the market these days. And to that end, supercomputer maker Cray is setting up a dedicated division to chase big data biz. The division, called YarcData …

HPC 8 Feb 16:37
Apple's Hong Kong store rolls out iPhone 'reservation' system

Yes, sir, but have you booked an appointment?

Apple has been forced to restrict iPhone sales in its Hong Kong store to discourage the recent epidemic of scalpers. Fanbois looking to get their hands on a SIM-free version of the hugely popular 4S or older models must now request a reservation between the hours of 9am and 12pm to give them a chance of picking up the device …

Business 8 Feb 16:56
Sony posts PlayStation firmware patch

Bye-bye, PSN; hello, SEN

Sony's latest PlayStation firmware - version 4.10 - is now available for download, with the Sony Entertainment Network ready for PS3s from here on. As announced earlier this week, Sony has renamed the PlayStation Network in an effort to streamline all of the company's online services into one sensibly-named bracket. Aside …

reghardware 8 Feb 17:02
Ancient cave girl genome could crack Man's genetic puzzle

Boffins pore over 500GB of data plastered online

Nearly 500GB of data from the DNA of an ancient girl has been published for the first time. The genetic information - made available for wider analysis by intrigued boffins - was extracted from her finger bone and tooth, which were unearthed in the Denisova Cave in Siberia in 2008. “It's a tiny little bone,” said Professor …

Biology 8 Feb 17:09
Chrome to weed out dodgy website SSL certificates by itself

Ditched online checks like 'seat belt that snaps when you crash'

Google will drop online checks for revoked website encryption certificates in future versions of its Chrome browser after it decided that the process no longer offers any tangible benefits. For about a decade now, browsers check the validity of a website's secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate by polling online revocation …

Security 8 Feb 17:23
Nekkid Tech: The Great Backup Industry SMACKDOWN

Podcast Plus, adopt a needy cloud

Last week, Greg Knieriemen turned the heat up on Marc Farley, StorageIO's Greg Schulz and the legendary StorageZilla. This time, Greg hosts special guest Jim McNiel, CEO of FalconStor Software (@jimmcniel), who gives us the skinny on the future of tape, back-up software lock-ins and cloudy convergence. This week we discuss …

Storage 8 Feb 18:07
Sir Paul McBeatle to offer free iTunes concert

B.Y.O. Bottom, should you desire a kiss

Sir Paul McCartney, late of Wings, will celebrate the release of his latest album with a live concert streamed over Apple's iTunes this Thursday at 7pm, Pacific Time. Unfortunately for our UK readership, that'll be 3am for British fans of the 69-year-old song stylist – and we can only guess that such an hour is a wee bit late …

Music and Media 8 Feb 18:56
Toshiba may be getting excess WD disk biz

Rumour mill spits out Tosh as buyer

We are hearing that Toshiba is buying Western Digital's "excess" 3.5-inch disk drive business, clearing the way to the completion of the WD's acquisition of Hitachi GST . The Hitachi GST acquisition has been blocked by EU and Chinese regulators due to competition concerns. The EU has required WD to offload some 3.5-inch hard …

Storage 8 Feb 20:29
Path runs screaming from privacy snafu

We meant to copy your address book but we didn’t think you’d mind

After sparking an outcry – and arguably putting itself on the wrong side of privacy laws outside America – ex-Facebooker and now CEO of Path, Dave Morin, has blogged an apology. The furor surrounding the application broke with this blog post, in which a Path fan analysed the app’s behavior and discovered that it copied a user’ …

Security 8 Feb 21:10
Telcos to shape up under new code

Comms Alliance lays down the law

Australian carriers, voice services and ISPs will be forced to take their obligations to the rights of consumers seriously under a new revised consumer code from industry group, the Communications Alliance. The new Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Code has been submitted to the Australian Communications and Media …

Telecoms 8 Feb 21:30
Solarflare turns network adapters into servers

When a CPU just isn't fast enough

Solarflare, a maker of 10 Gigabit Ethernet server adapter cards for performance-obsessed companies like stock exchanges, hedge funds, and supercomputer centers, is turning its network interface cards into servers, more or less. Solarflare is doing this by adding field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to the NICs and special …

HPC 8 Feb 21:51
US Navy preps railgun for tests

Bedding down BAE Systems prototype

The US Navy’s Office of Naval Research is preparing to test a prototype railgun delivered by BAE Systems under a $US21 million contract signed in 2010. The industry prototype – a kind of dream machine for Mythbusters’ fans – is due for tests in coming weeks at a facility in Dahlgren, Virginia. The ONR’s aim is to develop a …

Physics 8 Feb 22:00
Eolas claims royalties for browser apps and plug-ins

Berners-Lee warns of disaster for internet

Eolas Technologies has begun its trial against Adobe over two patents that, it claims, gives it the rights to embedded browser applications and plug-in and AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) web development techniques. The case, which began this week in the notoriously patent-happy US District Court for the Eastern …

Law 8 Feb 22:04
iRobot Warrior-bot goes on sale this Spring

For the geek who has everything

iRobot has confirmed it’s ready to start manufacture and sale of its Warrior 710 robot early this year. The 345lb Warrior system is a four-tracked beast capable of 8mph carrying a payload of 150lb, with a pincer-equipped robotic arm that can reach up over 11 feet and lift 220lb. It’s an evolution of the Warrior X700 that …

Rise of the Machines 8 Feb 23:56
Cisco stabilizes switching and routing in Q2

Raises dividend, remains cautious

Networking - and some would say data center bellwether - Cisco Systems turned in a better-than-expected fiscal Q2 ended in January, with revenues up 10.8 per cent to $11.53bn and net income up a very good 43.5 per cent to $2.18bn. "We are moving ahead of our competitors and our industry peers," proclaimed Cisco CEO John …

Financial News 8 Feb 23:56