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17th February 2012 Archive

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  • You gotta fight for your right ... to net neutrality

    Mike D kicks it with the SEC and carriers

    Beastie Boys chief protagonist Mike D has put his weighty beats into the net neutrality debate, forcing US wireless carriers to allow shareholders to vote on the issue. The US Security and Exchange Commission announced this week that wireless carriers including AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Sprint Nextel would be forced to …

    Networks 17 Feb 00:22

  • Oracle claims 70X speed-up with MySQL Cluster 7.2

    New cluster capable of a billion queries a minute

    Oracle has released its latest GPL update to its MySQL cluster, with huge speed boosts promised, better support for web users added, and new support for NoSQL integration. MySQL Cluster 7.2 will be able to process a billion queries per minute and 110 million updates per minute, Oracle claims, giving users a 70X increase in …

    Developer 17 Feb 00:52

  • Feds to carmakers: 'Rein in high-tech dashboards'

    Facebooking at highway speeds not a good idea

    The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued its first-ever guidelines designed to curb driver-distracting dashboards stuffed with electronic gadgets, gimcrackery, and gee-gaws "These guidelines are a major step forward in identifying real solutions to tackle the issue of distracted driving for …

    Government 17 Feb 01:29

  • Texan TSA crew accused of nude scanner ogling scheme

    Love Field pervs taking airport name too literally

    An investigation into the actions of TSA staff has uncovered a series of complaints from self-described “semi-attractive” female travelers who claim they were targeted for scanning based on their figures, and not on the likelihood of them being terrorists. CBS News investigated formal complaints to Texas authorities made by …

    Law 17 Feb 01:42

  • Vocus doubles revenue and data centre space

    Big data drives growth

    Dark fibre and data centre provider Vocus Communications has doubled its revenue in the first half of 2012 reflecting the company’s shift from a niche provider of wholesale Internet into a core provider of infrastructure based telecommunications services. Revenue for the first half of 2012 was $AU21.9 million, up 57 percent …

    Business 17 Feb 01:55

  • Twitter gets hit with defamation suit downunder

    Social media's scarlett woman Marieke Hardy starts chain reaction

    Twitter has been hit with a potentially ground breaking defamation suit from wrongfully accused Australian Twitter ‘stalker’ Joshua Meggitt. Meggitt has been embroiled in an elaborate drama with TV personality and prolific social media maven Marieke Hardy. Last year Hardy wrongly alleged that Meggitt was behind a hate blog …

    Law 17 Feb 04:33

  • Steelseries SRW-S1 PC gaming steering wheel

    Review Taken for a spin

    Admittedly, until recently my idea of a racing game was Super Mario Kart as I don't play too many driving games. However, the Steelseries SRW-S1 steering wheel certainly had me intrigued enough to want to take it for a spin. Custom job: Steelseries' SRW-S1 gaming steering wheel Optimised for Simraceway and littered with …

    reghardware 17 Feb 07:00

  • Philips intros dual-view telly tech

    Seeing double

    Philips went tellytastic today and revealed a vast range of TV sets, several of which include the dual-view display mode that essentially makes splitscreen gaming redundant. The Philips 6000 and 7000 series are double sided Ambilight LED-lit tellies with Smart TV, built-in Wi-Fi and dual screen capabilities. Similar to the …

    reghardware 17 Feb 07:30

  • Southwest One gets £10m IBM loan amid 'staggering' losses

    Joint venture is failing on several fronts, Somerset council leader says

    The leader of Somerset county council, Ken Maddock, has said that Southwest One is failing to deliver, that its accounts show "staggering losses" of £31.5m and "failures to hit modest savings targets". Southwest One was set up in 2007 as a joint venture between IBM, Somerset county council, Taunton Deane borough council and …

    Channel Register 17 Feb 08:02

  • Netherlands plans to make 'copyrighted material easier to use'

    EU copyright law 'too rigid', says state committee

    The Dutch Government is proposing to make it easier to use copyrighted material without infringing copyright owners' rights and plans to do this "unilaterally" of the EU, according to media in the Netherlands. Bernt Hugenholtz of the Dutch state committee on copyright law said people should be able to use copyrighted works to …

    Law 17 Feb 09:01

  • Revealed: Inside Apple-bothering Proview's crumbling factory

    Ailing IPAD-trademark-row biz ideal setting for next zombie flick

    New pictures have emerged of the Shenzhen manufacturing base of Proview, the Taiwanese monitor maker currently winning an iPad trademark battle with Apple, and they don’t look good. Chinese news site Caixin went to Guandong Province in south-west China to find out more about Proview and arrived at its flagship factory in the …

    Business 17 Feb 09:27

  • Freecom Mobile Drive Sq 500GB external HDD

    Accessory of the Week Designer drive

    This stylish mobile hard drive from Freecom is described by its manufacturer as "almost square", which is another way of saying it’s rectangular. Regardless, the rounded corners, "almost square" form-factor and sandblasted stainless steel finish give an aesthetic attractiveness that’s lacking in many an external hard drive. …

    reghardware 17 Feb 10:00

  • Apple lands slide-to-unlock patent blow on Motorola

    Android mobe maker needs Ice Cream Sandwich ASAP

    Motorola's Android handsets are infringing Apple's slide-to-unlock patent, in Germany at least, though an appeal may be lodged. Apple hasn't said it will enforce the Munich ruling - a permanent injunction - as it would need to post a bond against failure at appeal, but the judge is clear that Motorola needs to find a different …

    Mobile 17 Feb 10:17

  • Russian cosmonauts take six-hour stroll in space

    Vid To do list: Space station housekeeping, search for aliens

    Two cosmonauts successfully completed a six-hour spacewalk around the International Space Station (ISS), captured on their helmet cams, at 22.46 GMT last night. Flight Engineers Oleg Kononenko and Anton Shkaplerov were busy with a number of housekeeping tasks, including moving the Strela-1 crane from the Pirs docking …

    Science 17 Feb 10:37

  • 'The full harm to Apple cannot be calculated'

    Quotw Plus LightSquared's rage as the FCC 'changes its mind'

    This was the week when MySpace, which some of you may remember as once being a social network, came back from the dead thanks to its reinvention as a "meaningful social entertainment experience around content" with a million new users signing on since December last year. Google locked up its Wallet service for now, after two …

    Bootnotes 17 Feb 11:03

  • Ageing Mario blamed for Nintendo's woes

    Busted flush?

    Mario has been blamed for Nintendo's less-than satisfactory turnaround in 2011, after a Japanese newspaper claimed the mascot hampers the company's ability to evolve into the digital age. The "curse of Mario" has hindered Nintendo's progress into a new market of DLC and smaller indie games, Sankei News reports. "As the game …

    reghardware 17 Feb 11:12

  • Node.js Native breakthrough: cloudy C++ on steroids

    Cancer or performance buster?

    Cancer or not, Node.js is attracting plenty of interest, and just like smoking cigarettes at school Node.js is seen as the cool thing to do. Started by Ryan Dahl in 2009, this server-side scripting environment has in less than three years attracted enough coverage to persuade Microsoft, the world's largest software company, …

    Developer 17 Feb 11:21

  • Baidu plunges into mobile: First China, then THE WORLD

    Chinese search giant wants to rub Google's face in it

    Baidu rounded off a busy week on Friday with the Chinese search giant promising to ramp up its mobile search and social media offerings, after decent fourth quarter financials. CEO Robin Li said on an earnings call that the firm would look to monetise its mobile traffic in order to maintain the strong momentum which saw it …

    Broadband 17 Feb 11:40

  • Intel pushes Ivy Bridge out a little further

    Ultrabook refresh holds its breath

    Intel is set to delay the launch of its next-gen processor, Ivy Bridge. While some of Intel's new chips will still surface in products this April, mass Ivy Bridge release will not happen until much later in 2012, DigiTimes reports. Poor sales of current-gen Sandy Bridge machines is apparently to blame, although plans may have …

    reghardware 17 Feb 11:54

  • BOFH: Moon landings, Pong and the case of the smoking server

    Episode 2 Embrace, extend, exterminate ...

    "It's about your assistant," the Boss says, looking around carefully as he nods me into his office. "Yes?" "He told me something yesterday. Something disturbing." "Oh, I wouldn't believe everything he says, he's prone to making outrageous statements. I mean the goat lived and the charges against him were dropped." "What …

    BOFH 17 Feb 12:00

  • Two thirds of Brits crippled by mobile phone loss terror

    Nomophobic neighbourhoods

    Nomophobia is on the rise in the UK, with 66 per cent of the population suffering from a fear of being without their mobile phones. The condition, which takes its name from an abbreviation of "no-mobile-phone phobia", refers to the anxiety felt when batteries die or blowers go missing. The number of sufferers has risen from …

    reghardware 17 Feb 12:12

  • 'Exploitative' Proview slammed by trademark judge ... in 2010

    Court said monitor biz deliberately tried to injure Apple

    Taiwanese monitor maker Proview’s refusal to honour a deal to sell Apple the IPAD trademark in China smacks of a conspiracy driven by greed, according to a Hong Kong judge who ruled in Apple’s favour back in 2010. The Hong Kong High Court documents from back then, published by All Things Digital, reveal that Judge Hon Poon had …

    Law 17 Feb 12:26

  • PARIS soars to Guinness World Record

    Highest paper plane launch ever – official

    Fans of our Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) mission will doubtless want to join us in raising a glass today to our Vulture 1 aircraft – now officially the holder of the record for the highest launch of a paper plane in the history of aviation. Yes indeed, PARIS has been awarded a Guinness World Record, and we have a …

    SPB 17 Feb 12:44

  • Spotify v. Pure Music

    Review On-line tunesmiths sounded out

    Spotify began as the cool on-line portal that set a high benchmark for music streaming services. It’s now a fast growing, song spewing giant but it is not alone, as entertainment corps and smaller contenders want a piece of the action too. Philips Streamium with Spotify Spotify competes with long-established internet music …

    reghardware 17 Feb 12:54

  • Google swings new mobile unlock patent punch at Apple

    Updated Android overlord designs two-icon widget

    Here's a potential way out for Google after Apple's recent win on its slide-to-unlock patent in Germany. A patent application for unlocking mobile devices that Google filed in August 2010 was published earlier this month – which means it will now form full prior art for other patent applications worldwide. The paperwork details …

    Software 17 Feb 13:02

  • Two UK airports scrap IRIS eye-scanners

    Border Agency puts multimillion-pound system under review

    The UK Border Agency's multi-million-pound hi-tech eye-scanner programme is in danger of being scrapped, with two airports ditching the service and registration now closed. A UKBA spokeswoman told The Register that the system was "under review", but Manchester and Birmingham airports have already stopped using their scanners …

    Policy 17 Feb 13:21

  • Anglo-French nuke pact blesses 4th-gen reactors

    UK wants to take ASTRID home

    The UK is borrowing heavily on French nuclear energy know-how in a pact signed today. France and the UK will extend co-operation to R&D and training in several areas, but the most interesting is the commitment to develop 4th Generation (Gen IV) nuclear reactors on the French ASTRID prototype. ASTRID Advanced Sodium …

    Science 17 Feb 13:43

  • Big Blue wrings hands over channel cloud skills gulf

    Better wise up: Market estimated to be worth $143bn by 2013

    IBM UK's latest channel chief says the readiness sell to cloud services among its reseller network remains incredibly varied. Richard Potts took the helm recently as veep of the business partner and mid-market sales, replacing former incumbent Jacqueline Davey, who is moving to Madrid to fill a role as IBM's veep of Europe …

    Channel Register 17 Feb 14:02

  • Modern Warfare 3 shoots onto Steam for free

    Weekend of weaponry anyone?

    Activision is offering Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 completely free on Steam this weekend, with access to the full range of multiplayer features on show. While the game hardly struggles for numbers, with over 6.5m MW3 copies shifted in the first 24 hours on sale, the move will allow unconvinced gamers a chance to load their …

    reghardware 17 Feb 14:15

  • EU shoves telly signals aside for next-gen mobile broadband

    LTE: A-roaming we will go

    Every country in Europe will be required to clear TV transmissions out of the 800MHz band by the end of 2012 in the hope of enabling cross-europe roaming for LTE phones. The edict comes from the European Parliament, which hopes that if the range is cleared in time then countries will adopt matching band plans to enable roaming …

    Mobile 17 Feb 14:33

  • FTC tears into Apple, Google over kids' privacy - or lack of

    'Impossible' to know data collected by apps, watchdog fumes

    US regulators have told smartphone software makers to do more to protect the privacy of kids using their apps - or face the watchdogs' wrath. In a report that acknowledged the "tremendous" growth of mobile software, the Federal Trade Commission said app developers are not making "simple and short" declarations of their privacy …

    Developer 17 Feb 15:04

  • Chinese woman sparks net craze with virgin website

    No, Sir Richard, it's not one of yours

    A 38-year-old virgin has become the talk of the web in China this week after she set up a site devoted to her near four decades of abstinence - and urged the nation’s youth to join her in saying no to hanky-panky before marriage. Shanghai Daily reported that singleton Tu Shiyou from Hubei Province set up the “virginity website …

    Bootnotes 17 Feb 15:28

  • Apple's Messages beta will self-destruct on Mountain Lion launch

    OS X 10.8 clue found in test-drive IM app's code

    The beta build of Apple's new Messages app for Macs, released as a free download yesterday, will self-terminate unless you buy Mac OS X Mountain Lion when it comes out in the summer. So don't get too used to it if you're not going to upgrade your operating system. Of course if you rushed to download the beta Messages app …

    Applications 17 Feb 16:03

  • T-Mobile clams up over Full Monty 'speed-cap' claims

    All sausage no sizzle?

    T-Mobile has rejected claims that its Full Monty tariff has a 1Mb/s speed cap, but has refused to discuss whether there is a higher limit on the plan. The operator served up the Full Monty over two weeks ago, as a rival to Three's all-you-can-eat One Plan, but has been dogged by claims that there is a cap on the speed at which …

    reghardware 17 Feb 16:13

  • Elonex to set up tech fab in Coleshill, create 400 jobs

    Gets wodge gov cash to haul in Chinese manufacturing kit

    Elonex is importing manufacturing equipment from China to a facility based in Coleshill, just outside Birmingham, in order to assemble tech products locally. The move has been subsidised by a £2m government grant, a £6m government-guaranteed banking facility and £2m from Elonex shareholders. The 140,000 ft2 production and R&D …

    Channel Register 17 Feb 16:33

  • Yelp values itself at a modest $840m

    Online reviews site's IPO expected soon

    Online reviews site Yelp priced itself up yesterday for an upcoming, but as yet unspecified, IPO date, modestly telling the markets that its worth up to $840m. Yelp, which first filed to go public in November last year, is hoping that investors will pay between $12 and $14 for its shares, showing once again that they believe …

    Financial News 17 Feb 17:02

  • Oracle v SAP has to take June retrial or wait till next year

    Judge: Take last two weeks of June ... or August 2013

    A US court has told Oracle and SAP that they can have their retrial in the last two weeks of June or wait until next year. Oracle is seeking the retrial in the case, which found that SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow had illegally downloaded Oracle software and support data, because an appeal granted reduced damages. Oracle was …

    Business 17 Feb 17:18

  • Man surfs slopes at night in LED suit

    Glowboarding

    Filmmakers lit up the world of extreme sports this week with footage of a pro snowboarder in an LED light suit, gliding through snow in the dead of night. Fashion photographer and director Jacob Sutton took to the slopes of Tignes in south-eastern France with snowboarder William Hughes to create this dazzling piece of art, …

    reghardware 17 Feb 17:38

  • IBM puts AIX 5.3 on extended life support

    Venerable i5/OS V5R4 sunsetted, too

    Two of IBM's oldest and most popular operating systems for its Power-based servers are being put out to pasture after years of service. Last week, IBM said that it would be offering service extension on AIX 5.3, the operating system that was announced way back in July 2004 concurrent with Power5-based System p5 and i5 iron. …

    Operating Systems 17 Feb 17:41

  • Telcos in Canada: Ethics, monopolies and regulation

    Sysadmin blog How the Canadian regulator forces Big Biz to play ball ...

    Telecommunications Politics in Canada is pretty standard. There are people worried that our regulator – the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) – has succumbed to regulatory capture. There is the common burden of institutional inertia and there are the usual sorts of shenanigans involving various …

    Servers 17 Feb 18:01

  • NetApp rides stiff rise in sales but profits droop

    Third quarter improves thanks to virtualisation

    NetApp saw off its last quarter's major account weakness and grew third quarter revenues to $1.57bn, though profits dropped 35.5 percent. Total revenues of $1.566bn compare to $1.268bn a year ago, up 23.5 per cent, while profits of $120m compare to third quarter fiscal 2011 profits of $186m, reflecting a tougher competitor …

    Virtualization 17 Feb 18:27

  • Is HP's Gen8 good news for HPC?

    HPC blog Raw speed not always top consideration in enterprise servers

    HP trotted out its newest line of x86-based Proliant systems this week. These new boxes, fueled by Intel Sandy Bridge processors, will sport speedy PCIe 3.0 slots, custom HP disk controllers (for tri-mirroring and error correction), and provide a wide range of features aimed at improving system flexibility and manageability. Our …

    HPC 17 Feb 19:04

  • Apple antagonist Proview unveils its own iPad

    Striking resemblance to another Apple icon

    Chinese shell-of-a-company Proview Shenzhen, embroiled in a trademark dispute with Apple over the name "iPad", held a press conference in Beijing to plead their case and to show the assembled journos an assortment of marketing materials for their own iPAD. The Proview iPAD has no resemblance whatsover to Apple's fondleslab, …

    Law 17 Feb 19:05

  • Anonymous knocks FTC site offline

    Smacks several consumer sites with anti-ACTA activist action

    At least two US government websites were knocked off the web earlier today by Anonymous, claims the group's "official" Twitter account AnonymousIRC. At time of writing, the US government's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website was back online and functioning as normal. But two other US consumer sites - the National Consumer …

    Media 17 Feb 19:36

  • Ex-Akamai man: Stop being faithful to your CDN

    Open ... and Shut You need multiple relationships to perform well

    Many of the benefits of cloud computing are lost in translation as enterprises attempt to force the "new wine" of cloud's flexibility into the "old bottles" of traditional data centers. By running a cloud environment within one's data center, the full benefits of infinitely scalable and flexible infrastructure fade, as Amazon …

    Virtualization 17 Feb 20:02

  • CloudOn brings Office to UK iPad users

    Microsoft silent on free app

    After a rocky start, CloudOn is now opening its free application, which allows limited use of Microsoft’s Office suite on an iPad, to UK users. The application works in synchronization with the online file sharing service Dropbox, and allows users to view and edit Word documents and PowerPoint presentations, as well as to …

    Applications 17 Feb 20:31

  • Last year's iOS sales surpassed all Macs ever sold

    If at first you don't succeed, go mobile

    Apple sold more iOS devices in 2011 than the total number of Macs sold in all 28 years since the original Macintosh 128k first hit store shelves in late January 1984. "The iOS platform as a whole reached 316 million cumulative units at the end of last year," Horace Dediu writes on his Asymco blog. "The iOS platform overtook …

    Hardware 17 Feb 20:40

  • Embattled Foxconn raises wage slaves' salaries

    Double that of three years ago

    China's Foxconn contract-manufacturing group, which for years has come under fire for alleged workforce abuses, has responded in part by giving its workers raises of from 16 to 25 per cent. According to a Bloomberg report, the raises kicked in on February 1 – just one week after a scathing article in The New York Times wrote …

    Business 17 Feb 23:01

  • Japanese boffins fire up 802 teraflops ceepie-geepie

    Another Xeon E5 machine, with some FPGA special sauce

    Upstart supercomputer maker Appro International has started up another Xeon E5-based supercomputer, this one a hybrid CPU-GPU Xtreme-X machine installed at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. The deal at Tsukuba was announced last September at about the same time that Intel was widely expected to launch the "Sandy Bridge-EP" …

    HPC 17 Feb 23:12