The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

20th March 2012 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Victorian Taxi Directorate exposes 400+ email addresses

    Slaps head and promises to use CC: or BCC: next time

    The Victorian Taxi Directorate has earned the ire of people it was trying to placate, after it put more than 400 email addresses in the “To:” field of an email it sent to ask about its complaints resolution process. The email, sent yesterday, said “The Victorian Taxi Directorate (VTD) is committed to continually improving its …

    Security 20 Mar 03:34

  • Facebook 'cloaking' flaw allows unexpected snooping

    Eggheads label flaw a 'zero-day privacy loophole'

    University College London research student Shah Mahmood and Chair of Information Communication Technology Yvo Desmedt have told a conference of what they call a “zero day privacy loophole” in Facebook. Details of the loophole, which the pair name “Deactivated Friend Attack” was presented at the IEEE International Workshop on …

    Security 20 Mar 03:59

  • AMD aims lower with Opteron 3200s

    Shooting down Xeon E3s for dedicated hosting

    It's World Hosting Days in Germany this week, a conference that bills itself as the biggest trade show devote to hosting and Internet service providing, and x86 chip maker AMD is using the opening day of the event to showcase its "Zurich" Opteron 3200 series processor aimed at single-socket servers. Last fall, in the wake of …

    Servers 20 Mar 04:12

  • Spider venom to be tested for pesticide potential

    Boffins want to create artificial spider peptides to eliminate crop-eating bugs

    Australia's Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) has asked researchers to replicate peptides, the nastiest bits of spider venom, in the hope they make pesticides to which insects do not develop resistance. “We know that products from spiders have a wide range of insect-killing abilities that prevent insects …

    Science 20 Mar 05:03

  • Asian online shopaholics to drive internet economies

    UK still number one though...

    Asian nations including India and China are set to drive unprecedented levels of internet-related economic growth among G-20 countries in the next four years, although the UK will remain top dog, according to new research from the Boston Consulting Group. The management consultancy took a look at how large a slice of GDP the …

    Business 20 Mar 05:17

  • Twisted Metal

    Review Crash and burn

    David Jaffe's vision for car-based deathmatching has always split gamers down the middle. Its love-it-or-hate-it mix of crass humour, barely there vehicle handling and everything but the kitchen sink approach to weaponry won't appeal to everyone. Nevertheless, Twisted Metal still garnered a sizeable following in its heyday. …

    reghardware 20 Mar 07:00

  • Fragmentation bomb wounds Android in developer war

    Devs losing interest in the li'l green guy

    A new study conducted by IDC and mobile-developer platform and services company Appcelerator has determined that as Google's open source Android operating system becomes more and more fragmented, fewer and fewer developers are putting it on their "must-code-for" list. "We've seen a steady erosion of interest in Android" among …

    Developer 20 Mar 07:01

  • UK drivers' privates fondled overseas in new outsource plan

    Transport bosses mull granting access to sensitive data

    Transport for London (TfL) has proposed that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency's (DVLA) vehicle keeper data - which includes names, addresses and registration plate numbers - should be accessed outside the UK by contractors working on the capital's congestion charge scheme. The congestion charge is run by IBM, which was …

    Cloud Business 20 Mar 08:01

  • Dot Hill dismounts NetApp, searches for new hard partners

    Disk box biz suffers Q4 droop after contract exit

    OEMing drive arrays to mainstream vendors is a risky business because big contracts can go away just like that, leaving you with a damaged revenue stream and losses. That's what's happened to Dot Hill, which has exited a NetApp supply contract. Revenues for the last 2011 quarter (Q4) were $47m, 28 per cent down on the year-ago …

    Channel Register 20 Mar 08:29

  • BBC iPlayer added to Xbox

    Gesture at the telly

    Microsoft has added BBC iPlayer to the Xbox. Various sites last week expressed their surprise about the upcoming the release, but it's one Microsoft and the Corporation signalled back in October 2011, as Reg Hardware reported at the time. Other IPTV services promised back then include Channel 4's 4OD and Channel 5's Demand …

    reghardware 20 Mar 08:45

  • Oz billionaire says CIA backs Greenpeace

    Anti-coal campaign apparently a cunning plot to help US miners

    Australian Mining Magnate Clive Palmer has declared the CIA is behind a Greenpeace campaign that aims to slow the growth of Australia's export coal industry. Palmer was recently declared a Living National Treasure, alongside Kylie Minogue among others. Like others in his industry he is also firmly opposed to two new Australian …

    Science 20 Mar 08:58

  • Blighty's 'leccy power plant reform deals gas a winning hand

    Energy biz encouraged to splash cash, says gov

    The most significant reforms to the electricity market in 30 years will include measures designed to provide "long-term certainty" to gas investors, the government has said. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey, who plans to publish a new gas generation strategy in the autumn, said that the announcement reflected the " …

    Energy 20 Mar 09:03

  • Tape eats dust of spinning rust, says object data biz

    All except Hitachi Data Systems

    Object storage suppliers tend to look at tape storage like a real ale fan looks at cheap fizzy lager: "I'm not going to touch that!" Object storage suppliers such as Caringo, Cleversafe, HDS, ByCast (NetApp), Scality and others boast that their technology is self-healing and more scalable than file-system-based approaches. …

    Storage 20 Mar 09:33

  • Confirmed: iPad 3 runs hotter than iPad 2

    Heat cam shows five-degree difference

    Thermal camera imagery has confirmed what iPad 3 owners already knew: the new Apple fondleslab runs hotter than its predecessor did. The guys over at Dutch-language site Tweakers.net took an infrared camera and snapped the tablets alongside each other. Both iPads were set running GLBenchmark to thrash their CPUs, and after …

    reghardware 20 Mar 09:53

  • The Register obtains covert snaps of Google's new London offices

    Exclusive Lapdancing booths, Teletubbies-style roof garden and all

    Undercover Register snappers have penetrated Google's new London offices to bring you an early look at the type of working conditions the Chocolate Factory offers its London-based Ooompa Loompas. First off, there's a pom-pom creating room ... The results of their work are then placed inside the "conference teepee" to be …

    Music and Media 20 Mar 10:01

  • Now CHINA complains of surge in cyber-attacks

    MASSIVE pot calls kettle black

    China is claiming attacks on public and private organisations from outside of its borders have rocketed in the past year - from five million computers affected in 2010 to 8.9m in 2011. State-run newspaper China Daily reported the figures from (deep breath) the government’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical …

    Government 20 Mar 10:22

  • Giant planet pileups in far-flung star systems: Computer says yes

    Boffins crack stellar 'celebrity' migration riddle

    Top brainboxes armed with a British supercomputer say that they've cracked the riddle of just why it is that massive planets - spied across the vasty interstellar gulfs in recent times - tend to prefer certain orbits around their faraway parent stars. "Our models offer a plausible explanation for the pile-ups of giant planets …

    Space 20 Mar 10:41

  • Seagate strikes trillion bit HAMR blow

    Trillion bits per square inch

    Seagate has demonstrated heat-assisted magnetic recording technology with 1 trillion bits per square inch, a 30 per cent improvement in Toshiba's production record of 744Gbit/in2 with its MQ01ABD drive – a 2.5-inch, 5400rpm, SATA II drive. Seagate's highest production areal density is thought to be the 3TB Barracuda, a 3- …

    Storage 20 Mar 10:43

  • New iPad sales hit 3 million in first 4 days

    GLOWING DELUGE of fondleslabs poured upon happy shiny world

    The glow-screened 3.1million pixel iPad has been flying off shelves even faster than either of the two previous iPads on its opening weekend. Apple has announced sales of 3 million new iPads in the four days since the tablet's launch in 12 countries on 16 March. It took the first iPad seven weeks to reach sales of 1 million. …

    PCs & Chips 20 Mar 10:59

  • Blizzard ponders World of Warcraft for iPad

    MMO to go mobile?

    Blizzard has hinted it may bring World of Warcraft to smartphones and tablets, saying it believes a developer would be "foolish" not to be planning such a move. "We're certainly looking into it," said senior WoW producer John Lagrave in an interview with Eurogamer. "We won't do it until we think it's decent. But it's …

    reghardware 20 Mar 11:04

  • Mobile biz bigwigs crack heads over Wi-Fi roaming charges

    The tech was trivial, now paying for it gets tough

    The Wireless Broadband Alliance has joined forces with mobile operator clique GSMA to put the most important part of Wi-Fi roaming in place: ensuring that everyone gets billed properly. Last month the alliance demonstrated how a telco could authenticate a customer roaming onto its Wi-Fi network using credentials stored in the …

    Mobile 20 Mar 11:14

  • Trial finds EIGHT WAYS to defeat Google, PayPal and other SSOs

    Multiple flaws in web service single sign-on

    US security researchers have unearthed flaws in the single sign-on (SSO) services operated by a number of portals, including Google and PayPal. Idiosyncratic methods of integrating the APIs, SDKs and sample code supplied by identity providers are creating exploitable security shortcomings, according to a study by two …

    ID 20 Mar 11:32

  • Symbian smacked by Windows Phone

    Nokia deals the blow

    Microsoft's smartphone operating system, Windows Phone 7, is now outselling Symbian - and it's all thanks to former Symbian stalwart, Nokia. In February 2011, Symbian accounted for 12.4 per cent of the UK smartphone market. A year on and its share had drooped to 2.4 per cent. WinPho, on the other hand, has risen to 2.5 per …

    reghardware 20 Mar 11:38

  • Tiny pile of Windows 8 ARM slabs slated for October

    This is only a test, people

    It’s not the timing but the numbers that are really interesting when it comes to Windows 8’s planned delivery. Bloomberg reports Microsoft is planning to “finish work on Windows 8 this summer” with the client operating system going on sale “around” October. People of few words, it’s often said, are more direct: Bloomberg …

    PCs & Chips 20 Mar 11:47

  • N7Player

    Android App of the Week Got music covered

    It’s not often that I come across an application that displaces a default choice on my phone within minutes of me downloading it, but the N7Player music player is just one such. I think it’s brilliant. Before I go on, let me make one thing clear: I’m an obsessive about album cover art. I go to great, some would say unhealthy …

    reghardware 20 Mar 12:00

  • GiffGaff gaffe charity spaff to quell miffed riffraff

    Begging for forgiveness cheaper than building redundancy

    GiffGaff, the O2-owned mobile network that collapsed for eight hours last week, will give £10,000 to a customer-selected charity to say sorry, and promises free calls next time its service goes titsup. The outage started at 10am on Friday when leaking water took out the operator's authentication and billing server aka the …

    Mobile 20 Mar 12:16

  • Adobe can't penetrate punters' tight wallets: Users holding out for CS6

    Sales at Digital Media unit down by $100m

    Adobe's first quarter profits took a bashing as customers of its legacy desktop software deferred purchases in anticipation of forthcoming Creative Suite 6 and Creative Cloud. The maker of reassuringly expensive software saw net income slide 21 per cent to $185.2m for the first quarter ended 2 March. Total sales edged up 1.3 …

    Channel Register 20 Mar 12:27

  • Is private cloud the next step for the data centre?

    I can see clearly now

    The Register has constructed a lovely survey about Private Cloud, which will form the basis of a freely available report that will be published in the coming weeks. The survey is, admittedly quite a chunky, one-pager and will take maybe 10mins of your time. [We do quite a lot of studies with our readers and they’re all …

    Cloud 20 Mar 12:48

  • Big Media drags 142,000 through UK's courts IN A YEAR

    Comment And the strange hypocrisy of the BBC's rivals

    Not one Hollywood studio or record label company has ever incarcerated anyone merely for not paying for media consumption. A few years ago the entertainment industry filed civil suits against individuals, but received so much criticism it stopped. Now they target industrial-scale pirates, or push for milder sanctions such as …

    Music and Media 20 Mar 12:59

  • WTF... should I pay to download BBC shows?

    Feature Project Barcelona peeves the freetards

    The outgoing Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, recently announced plans for Project Barcelona, a download store for material from the BBC archives. At the moment, you can watch most BBC programmes for seven days after broadcast, free of charge using iPlayer. In a few cases, a whole series may be available for a …

    reghardware 20 Mar 13:07

  • US teens confess to 60-a-day texting FRENZY

    SMS and IM are hot, phone calls and email are not

    A rise in boys and older teens texting has pushed the average number of text messages American youngsters send to 60 a day, ten more than in 2009. That means the average American teenager awake from 7am until 10pm sends a text every 15 minutes. The survey by Pew Research quizzed 799 UA teens aged between 12 and 17 about their …

    Mobile 20 Mar 13:18

  • WD intros 'world's first' 2TB portable HDD

    SuperSpeeder

    WD has outed what it claims is the world's first portable hard drive with a 2TB capacity. The drive is part of WD's My Passport line, and sports a redesigned shell - available in a choice of five colours - and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connectivity. Bundled software allows you to password-protect the drive's contents and to …

    reghardware 20 Mar 13:23

  • BT fibre-to-the-cabinet rollout penetrates 73 more exchanges

    No pulsing optical light to shine on premises this time

    BT has named the next 73 exchanges to be upgraded to its broadband fibre technology with all of them running optic cable as far as the street cabinets. None of those exchanges will be kitted out to provide the national telco's fibre-to-the-premises broadband network, however, which will soon offer downstream speeds of 330Mbit/ …

    Telecoms 20 Mar 13:38

  • Braben sticks knife into secondhand games market

    'It's killing single-player titles'

    Elite co-creator and Raspberry Pi backer David Braben reckons the secondhand games market is detrimental to the development of core-gamer and single-player titles because most retailers won't give them long-term sales support. "I know publishers who stopped games in development because most shops won't reorder stock after …

    reghardware 20 Mar 13:50

  • Russian cops cuff 8 in Carberp Trojan case

    Alleged to be millionaire phishing gang

    Russian police have arrested a group of eight men suspected of making millions in electronic banking fraud using the Carberp Trojan and other strains of malware. The men are suspected of being part of a Moscow-based gang that is targeting Russian nationals, and which has raked in 60m rubles (£1.3m) since October 2011. The …

    Crime 20 Mar 14:02

  • Horny VIKING MICE raped and pillaged Euro pipsqueaks

    Tiny raiders revelled in 10th century rampages

    Virile Norse mice rampaged through Scotland, Ireland and Iceland impregnating locals and mixing their Viking mouse genes in the native rodent populations, according to research published by the BMC Evolutionary Biology journal. Artist's impression of a Viking mouse in an ill-fitting helmet Boffins found that the spread of …

    Biology 20 Mar 14:28

  • Integrator Tieto slashing 1,300 jobs

    Plans to save €50m to compete with services rivals

    Finnish IT services house Tieto is axing 1,300 jobs in a bid to wipe €50m from its overheads. The cuts, equating to 7 per cent of the workforce, come weeks after the firm flogged its UK operation to Sopra Group for an undisclosed sum and amid plans to expand the consultancy and system integration (CSI) practice. Kimmo Alkio, …

    Channel Register 20 Mar 14:58

  • Xoreax grids up Windows to goose apps

    SETI@Redmond

    Grid computing is nothing new, but Xoreax, a company that created a set of tools to distribute the job of building and compiling applications across a network of PCs and servers, has come up with a new twist on the idea. It's called process virtualization, and when implemented in a more general purpose "virtual supercomputer" …

    Infrastructure 20 Mar 15:34

  • LightSquared hits FCC right where it hurts

    Offers let-out clause, but it won't be easy

    LightSquared has issued a formal response to the threatened suspension of its licence, accusing the FCC of political bias and riding roughshod over precedent and Constitutional rights. The damning response runs to more than 400 pages (PDF, comprehensible but very long), but mostly reiterates the arguments that LightSquared won …

    Wireless 20 Mar 15:58

  • French data watchdog bends Google over for rigorous frisking

    CNIL demands answers to 69 questions on privacy

    This month Google - in the face of widespread criticism in Europe - implemented changes to its privacy policy even though French info watchdog CNIL declared that the tweak would violate the EU's data protection law. Now CNIL has written to Mountain View demanding answers to 69 questions that it hopes will clarify "the …

    Law 20 Mar 16:19

  • Only Amazon Kindle Fire can grab share from Apple's iPad

    Battle of the A brands to heat up UK slab space

    Apple may cede some fondleslab market share in 2012 but this will likely be largely at the hands of Amazon rather than traditional PC vendors. At least this is the view peddled by beancounter IDC, which has forecast that 4.3 million tablets will be shipped into UK channels this year, up 42 per cent on 2011. Research manager …

    Channel Register 20 Mar 16:20

  • Bankrupt DRAMurai survivor seeks cash-laden Samsung rival

    Elpida fab and tech could help bidder crush Korean firm – report

    Japan's Nikkei paper is reporting (paywall) that Japan's sole and now bankrupt DRAM manufacturer, Elpida, is soliciting bids to rescue it from bankruptcy, with Micron and Intel identified as potential white knights for the stricken DRAMurai chip-maker. There will be a 2-stage bidding process, with round one this month followed …

    Storage 20 Mar 16:38

  • Report: Feeble spam filters catch less junk mail

    Weaker products or EVIL GENIUS malware-flingers?

    Enterprise spam filters are blocking less junk mail, according to independent tests from Virus Bulletin. During a comparative of 20 corporate email filtering products, several missed more than twice as much spam as in previous editions of the VBSpam tests. Virus Bulletin reckons the drop in performance might be down to …

    Spam 20 Mar 16:59

  • Foxconn is world's 10th biggest employer: 1.2 MILLION on payroll

    iPad-maker's worker ants still outnumbered by NHS at 1.7m

    iPad-maker Foxconn is the world's 10th biggest employer, and can count staff members over half those of China's Red Army, according to a new piece of research by the BBC. Altogether 1.2 million people are employed in the Taiwanese assembly and electronics company, which churns out the world's most popular gadgets including the …

    CIO 20 Mar 17:19

  • Supercomputers sold like hotcakes in 2011

    Shoppers waffle on smaller HPC systems

    Sales of supercomputers last year were a bit better than the prognosticators at IDC expected, with sales up across all types of systems by 8.4 per cent to $10.3bn. IDC's earlier projections had called for sales to jump by 7.2 per cent from the $9.5bn level set in 2010. According to IDC's definition, any high-performance …

    HPC 20 Mar 17:40

  • Verizon unveils offspring surveillance service

    Don't trust your kids? Track 'em down with Family Locator

    Verizon Wireless had added a new service that puts a 21st century spin on Orwell's Big Brother, ushering in a brave new world of surveillance monitored by Big Mother and Big Father. The service, entitled Family Locator and available to subscribers on Verizon's Family SharePlan for an extra $9.99 per month, enables helicopter …

    Mobile 20 Mar 17:44

  • Avere attacks filer VDI boot slowdown

    Boot storm delay goes away

    NAS accelerator supplier Avere can make NetApp VDI boot storm delays go away, and it has the numbers to prove it. By placing a multi-tiered, solid state and hard drive caching Avere FXT filer accelerator in front of a NetApp filer, VDI boot storm files are transferred to the FXT and served up to booting devices faster and at a …

    Storage 20 Mar 18:01

  • Symantec buys mobile app management firm

    Plans to hoover up BYOD bucks

    Symantec has bought privately held mobile application management firm Nukona. Terms of the deal, announced Tuesday, were undisclosed. The purchase, along with the earlier acquisition of mobile device management firm Odyssey Software, will allow Symantec to develop and market products that support the growing trend of allowing …

    Enterprise Security 20 Mar 18:28

  • Big data enters open-source hype cycle

    Open ... and Shut Riches for some, mostly not VCs

    As breathless projections go, IDC's big data market forecast may be in for a serious asthma attack. The venerable analyst firm pegs the brave new world of big data at $16.9bn by 2015. Yet it's unclear just how new this market is and whether anyone but big data start-ups are really cashing in on the gold rush. Is it the open …

    Developer 20 Mar 19:05

  • Microsoft fires Bing execs after biz probe

    Duo downed for 'mismanagement of assets'

    Two senior Microsoft executives have been fired after an internal investigation into the use of corporate resources. "We can confirm that as the result of an investigation, Eric Hadley and Sean Carver's employment with Microsoft has been terminated for violation of company policies related to mismanagement of company assets …

    Business 20 Mar 19:17

  • EMC-Isilon swallows software storage firm Likewise

    Hot little NAS-enabler

    EMC's Isilon business unit has splashed out and bought a fast-growing startup, Likewise, whose software both EMC and other OEMs and enterprises use to NAS-enable Unix- and Linux-based storage devices. VC-funded Likewise Storage Services (LSS) says it offers a consistent security model for file-based access and cross-platform, …

    Storage 20 Mar 19:28

  • Google cools data center with bathtubs, dishwashers

    No, not toilets or urinals – yet

    Google has partnered with a local water-treatment utility to cool a massive data center using greywater – that's water recycled from residential bathtubs, showers, washing machines, and the like. The data center in question is located in Douglas County, Georgia – that's the Georgia of Sherman's March to the Sea, not the …

    Servers 20 Mar 21:23

  • EMC wants to be the Linux of big data

    Opens up Chorus tool, borgs agile coders Pivotal Labs

    To broaden its reach in the big-data arena, disk-array maker EMC's Greenplum division, which peddles data warehousing and Hadoop appliances and software, announced that it will open source its Chorus management and collaboration tools. EMC also has acquired Pivotal Labs, experts in agile programming, to help it build better big- …

    Cloud 20 Mar 21:44

  • Testicle-boiling new iPad ignites fanboi fury

    US watchdog backs 116°F sizzling slab outrage

    US consumer organization Consumer Reports has backed punters’ assertions that the new iPad can overheat in normal use. Owners of the fondleslab have been complaining on various Apple forums (this discussion, for example, runs to 21 pages) that the device can become “burning hot” under various conditions. As one user wrote: “ …

    Hardware 20 Mar 21:59

  • TPG surges, plots IPTV future

    Riding high on rush to bundles

    TPG, fast becoming the standard-bearer of Australia’s “tier two” ISPs, has announced a 17 percent lift in EBITDA to $AU131.9 million and is preparing to follow iiNet into the IPTV set-top-box market. The company also announced a reorganization under which the TPG brand will focus on consumer and SME products, while the PIPE …

    Networks 20 Mar 22:08

  • Fruit Ninja bites into multi-platform games tech

    Oz developer behind Fruit Ninja acquires Spanish C++-to-lotsa-platforms tool Mandreel

    Australian wunder-game developer Halfbrick Studios is in acquisition mode, snapping up Spanish games technology developer Onan Games. Gaming indie Halfbrick, attained fame via the success of its Fruit Ninja title in addition to mobile titles such as Jetpack Joyride, Monster Dash and Age of Zombies. Onan Games, based in …

    reghardware 20 Mar 22:30

  • Elsevier's backpedalling not stopping scientist strike

    What do we want? Open science access

    Dutch publishing house Elsevier is facing increasing pressure from the scientific community, with the company's 2,000 journals now being blacklisted by over 8,600 academics. In January, following an angry blog post by British mathematician Tom Gowers, academics started to sign a public petition refusing to submit, edit, or …

    Science 20 Mar 22:37

  • HP poised to merge printer, PC divisions?

    Whitman fires up blender, sharpens axe

    HP's boss-for-six-months Meg Whitman is about to make her first big strategic move since she took the reins at that reeling company, merging its Imaging and Printing Group and Personal Systems Group. So says AllThingsD, citing the ever-loquacious "sources familiar with the matter", who also said that current PSG headman Todd …

    Business 20 Mar 22:43

  • Hong Kong scientists claim 'self-charging' graphene battery

    Can you harvest energy from the environment?

    Scientists from Hong Kong Polytechnic claim to have demonstrated a graphene-based battery that harvests ambient energy and turns it into electricity. The claim, however, has been questioned by another member of the university. In their paper, published on Arxiv here, the researchers say they were able to get around 0.35V for …

    Science 20 Mar 22:45

  • Oracle systems group slammed again in Q3

    Engineered systems will start to fill gaps soon

    Oracle has gotten its software business back on track and is fixing to get its systems house in order soon as well, the top brass at the software giant and hardware maker have declared. In the financial quarter ended on leap day, Oracle's sales rose by 3 per cent to $9.04bn, driven by higher than expected sales of new software …

    Servers 20 Mar 23:25