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22nd March 2012 Archive

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  • Chrome beats IE market share for one day

    IE took Sunday off, needs to improve weekday performance too

    Google's Chrome took the crown as the world's most-used web browser last Sunday, March 18th. But as the world suited up to go back to work on Monday, Internet Explorer re-gained the lead. So says online service StatCounter, although the service also urges us all to take its data with a grain of salt. That's because while it …

    Software 22 Mar 00:14

  • Senator demands Congressional vote on ACTA

    'No vote, no ratification' of anti-piracy treaty

    Democratic senator and stalwart campaigner on internet issues Ron Wyden (D-OR) has introduced an amendment to ensure that the purportedly anti-piracy ACTA treaty currently being ratified in Europe is put to a legislative vote in the US. "The President may not accept, or provide for the entry into force with respect to the …

    Government 22 Mar 00:18

  • S!ngtel axes staff, sends them to Huawei

    One carrier's loss is another vendor's gain

    The restructuring of the S!ngTel army, which included the introduction of a Digital L!fe division, appears to be gathering pace with a reported five hundred Singapore workers being axed this week but offered a reprieve with employment from contractor, Huawei Technologies. Reuters reports that Sino Huawei Technologies, the …

    Networks 22 Mar 00:34

  • Zynga gets more drawsome

    Buys gaming doodler OMGPOP

    Zynga’s acquisitive ways have resulted in the purchase of emerging social gaming developer Omgpop, the creators of the popular doodling app Draw Something. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, reports speculate that the price tag was in the US$200 million range and if correct make it Zynga’s largest acquisition ever …

    Business 22 Mar 01:25

  • Watch a 747 refit in just 105 seconds

    Qantas has released a time-lapse video of an interior refit of a 747-400

    Australia's flag carrier Qantas has released a video showing, in just 105 seconds, how it rips the guts out of a 747-400's passenger cabins, spruces them up, repaints the plane and then sends it back to work. We'd have liked it to run a little longer and offer more detail, but the results are still rather fine. Watch Video …

    reghardware 22 Mar 03:47

  • CA reveals ARCserve DDOS threat

    Forced upgrades on the way for some users?

    CA Technologies has found a nasty flaw in flagship backup software ARCServe. The flaw goes all the way back to version 10 of the product, which has just reached v.16. CA says the problem “can allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service condition“ and “ … occurs due to insufficient validation of certain network …

    Security 22 Mar 04:17

  • Japan's LCD biz survives quake and tsunami

    Sorry, you're just not relevant enough

    The Japanese LCD monitor industry will be breathing a sigh of relief after analysts trumpeted its remarkable resilience in the months following the twin disasters of massive earthquake and tsunami which struck in the north east region of Tohoku a year ago. However, it’s not all good news, as a supply chain disaster was only …

    Hardware 22 Mar 04:36

  • Android store spotted in China ... selling iPhones

    Google and Apple finally make friends

    It was only a matter of time. An unsanctioned Android store has been spotted in China sporting the trademark robot logo, but it’s selling iPhones. According to the Isidor’s Fugue blog, the random shop has popped up in Zuhai city, Guangdong province – the same district where Apple is currently tussling with Asian monitor …

    Networks 22 Mar 04:38

  • August DTV700B portable Freeview TV and DVR

    Review Mobile home entertainment?

    The portable screen market is now dominated by compact DVD players, smartphones and tablets, so if you want a teeny telly for watching live programmes on the go, there isn’t a massive choice. One contender is the DTV700B, a newly upgraded version of August’s low-cost 7in portable digital TV. August DTV700B: Don’t expect …

    reghardware 22 Mar 07:00

  • Tech Mahindra to swallow Satyam in BILLION dollar deal

    Indian outsourcers can't get enough of each other

    The wonderful world of outsourcing is about to get a little bit smaller after Indian tech giants Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam announced their intention to merge, creating India’s fifth-largest IT and outsourcing group by revenues. In reality it is Tech Mahindra in the driving seat, as the outsourcing giant bought a …

    Business 22 Mar 07:25

  • Electronic patient records rollout cocks up hospital clinics

    Yet another Cerner Millennium balls-up, at North Bristol trust

    Electronic patient records system led to problems including wrong patient notes being supplied and incorrect clinic lists. The rollout of the Cerner Millenium electronic patient records system has led to a series of clinical incidents at North Bristol NHS trust. The trust began deploying Cerner in December 2011 as a …

    Government 22 Mar 08:03

  • If Nominet has spoken, you can't come here – High Court

    Rulings on registration abuse can't be re-tried in court

    Those registering '.uk' domain names are not entitled to a fresh hearing in court to assess whether they have abusively registered those domains if the issue has already been determined through an industry dispute resolution service, the High Court has ruled. Nominet is the body responsible for .uk addresses and it operates a …

    Law 22 Mar 09:04

  • Quantum offers a cheap massage to hot cloud data

    Virtual dedupe route to backup

    Quantum says it has created the first virtual deduplication appliance, and Xerox is punting a cloud backup service through 45,000 resellers that uses it bundled with Quantum's virtual machine backup. The DXi V1000 appliance is bargain-basement DXi deduplication technology delivered as software in a virtual machine. It can be …

    Virtualization 22 Mar 09:31

  • Space probe in orbit above Mercury sees signs of polar ice

    First rock from the Sun yields secrets at last

    Space boffins reviewing data from a probe craft orbiting Mercury, innermost planet of the solar system, say they have seen signs of glaciers lurking within shadowed craters at the poles. Gad, it's a barren, heavily cratered desert out there. Except for the icebergs. The revelations come from NASA's MErcury Surface, Space …

    Space 22 Mar 09:35

  • Samsung chirps Angry Birds Space exclusive

    Clucking hell, game's on iTunes too

    You'd have throught World+Dog was thoroughly fed up of flinging cartoon birds at cartoon piggies, but Samsung doesn't. It hopes Angry Birds fans will flock to its Galaxy Note tabphone now it's associated the latest version of the game. Samsung chirped today that it is "the exclusive mobile partner for the launch of Rovio’s …

    reghardware 22 Mar 09:54

  • El Reg user forum opens to public, HTML for all (mostly)

    Site news Why we rejected BBCode

    As of now all commentards with five or more posts accepted for publication can create topics in our new El Reg forums. We have made this easier to find: the signpost link is in the secondary nav bar on the front page. At the same time we've opened simple HTML formatting to all commentards who have had five posts accepted for …

    Site News 22 Mar 10:01

  • iPhone 5 gets a 5in screen

    Credibility, pockets to be strained

    The iPhone 5 will sport a five-inch - 4.6in to be precise - screen. Well, that's if you believe the claims of an unnamed industry source - almost certainly a bod from either Samsing or LG - quoted by a South Korean newspaper, Maeil Business. Big screens are in, apparently. When questioned, punters say they favour screen sizes …

    reghardware 22 Mar 10:10

  • New iPad can't get its Wi-Fi up

    Fanbois need to stroke fondleslab the 'right way'...

    Users of Apple's new iPad are experiencing Wi-Fi issues, with some claiming to have found a new grip of death. Meanwhile, those opting for LTE are discovering just how expensive the alternative is. The Wi-Fi problems are sporadic, but numerous owners of the new iPad report putting it next to their laptops and finding the …

    Wireless 22 Mar 10:19

  • Hacktivists nicked more data than CYBER-CROOKS in 2011

    Social crusaders account for 58% of data breaches

    Hacktivism had a massive effect on the overall data breach scene last year. More than half (58 per cent) of data stolen last year can be attributed to hacktivism – hacking to advance political and social objectives – according to the latest edition of the Data Breach Investigations report from Verizon.  The figures contrast …

    Enterprise Security 22 Mar 10:41

  • GridIron jiggles MLC flash box, penetrates million IOPS barrier

    Won't blab on sordid details...

    A start-up called GridIron says its MLC flash technology has broken though the million IOPS barrier, leaving existing products maxing out at 800,000 IOPS behind. Multi-level cell (MLC) flash is cheaper and slower than single level cell (SLC) NAND. Some SLC flash array products reach the million IOPS mark: the TMS RamSan-630 …

    Storage 22 Mar 11:01

  • 6,000 sign e-petition to put Turing on £10 note

    National hero would replace Charles Darwin

    Mathematician, computer scientist and Nazi code-breaking hero Alan Turing could soon join Her Maj on the Bank of England’s new £10 note. Nearly 6,000 people have signed a government e-petition calling for the computer pioneer’s mug to appear on the tenner here. The petition comes in the centenary year of Turing’s birth. …

    Government 22 Mar 11:14

  • Ex-Dell man Boyce to head up Computer 2000 sales patch

    Set sights on becoming £2bn distie by 2015

    Computer 2000 is bringing on board Martin Boyce as sales director to fill the gap left by previous incumbent Peter Hubbard, who was made top dog earlier this year. Talking at the distie's vendor summit in London, former Dell veep Hubbard confirmed that Boyce, currently chief operating officer at Asbis Enterprise and also …

    Channel Register 22 Mar 11:29

  • TalkTalk is yet again the most griped about telco in Blighty

    ISP still on Ofcom's naughty step

    TalkTalk, for the fifth consecutive quarter, is the most whinged about telco in the UK, Ofcom confirmed today. The communications watchdog said that TalkTalk's landline and fixed broadband services received more gripes from punters than any other of the big ISP operators in Blighty. It found that between October and December …

    Telecoms 22 Mar 11:44

  • Commodore outs Linux-running Amiga Mini desktop

    Poor man's Mac Mini?

    Commodore's Amiga OS was rapidly out-evolved by the Mac OS, and the latest Amiga hardware seems caught behind the Apple curve too. Enter the Commodore Amiga Mini, a squat, compact desktop PC that owes its looks to the Mac Mini - of three years ago. Like 2009's Mac Mini, its footprint is 197 x 197mm square, and it's 75mm tall …

    reghardware 22 Mar 11:50

  • Apple iPhoto

    iOS App of the Week Touch up your snaps. Literally

    Apple’s iPhoto has a relatively modest set of editing tools but – as you might expect from Apple – wraps them up in an attractive and easy-to-use interface that leaves most other photo-editing apps looking positively antiquated. Collate your photos in albums on the iPhoto bookshelf The app is only available on the iPhone 4/ …

    reghardware 22 Mar 12:00

  • Toshiba outs monster 13in tablet spec

    Tegra-powered portable TB

    Toshiba showed off a concept 13.3in tablet last month - here's our report on the gadget - but it said little about the device's specs. Now it has. Showing the monster fondleslab off for a second time, in Germany, Toshiba has revealed that the unit has an Nvidia Tegra 3 chip on board, plus 32GB of Flash storage, a 5Mp rear …

    reghardware 22 Mar 12:22

  • Supermodel-fiddling tool Photoshop CS6 flinged in free beta

    Hide those blemishes, play with video editing

    Adobe has lobbed out its latest refresh of Photoshop as a free download for Windows and Mac users. Photoshop CS6 beta will run for a limited time until the product launches in the summer. It's not first time Adobe has released a major product as a free public download - Lightroom and a few previous versions of Photoshop have …

    Developer 22 Mar 12:34

  • Lovefilm: video streaming outplays disc rentals

    IPTV nation

    Lovefilm says it streamed more films and TV series than it rented DVDs and Blu-ray Discs during February. The Amazon-owned service even claimed that adding games into the mix failed to lift the rental tally above the number of videos streamed. With games included, the number of videos streamed topped the number of rentals by …

    reghardware 22 Mar 12:38

  • HP's PC-printer lovechild is cash boon for resellers

    Bad news for veeps but better rebates for partners

    HP's decision to stitch together its PC and printer businesses is likely driven by cost cutting but it could bring financial benefits to channel partners. In a move first mooted by former CEO Carly Fiorina but not implemented before Mark Hurd placed his butt on the hot seat, HP yesterday confirmed the formation of the Printing …

    Channel Register 22 Mar 12:46

  • Nvidia shows off first 'Kepler' GPUs

    Updated PCs first, server GPU coprocessors in Q3

    Graphics chip and PC and server processor wannabe Nvidia is lifting the skirt a bit on its next-generation "Kepler" graphics processing units today as it starts talking about the feeds and speeds of its new GeForce graphics cards for desktop and notebook PCs. As Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang explained when he outed …

    HPC 22 Mar 13:02

  • Scammers exploit new Dr Who girl with Twitter smut video

    Grumble flicks, yes, but sans Time Lord's gal pal

    Filthy-minded scammers wasted little time latching onto the news that Jenna-Louise Coleman will join Doctor Who in the TARDIS later this year. The BBC announcement on Wednesday unsurprisingly made the name of the 25-year-old actress a trending topic on Twitter. Porno spammers latched onto this trend by mentioning "Jenna-Louise …

    Malware 22 Mar 13:23

  • Report: Nokia, Apple battle over ultra-tiny nano-SIMs

    Mobe-makers in race to grab cash-laden standard

    Nokia is reportedly fighting the Apple-based proposal for a nano-SIM with designs of its own, aimed at preventing Cupertino scooping the patent fees which come with ratification. Despite repeated enquiries, Nokia has failed to provide any confirmation or denial of the Financial Times's report (behind paywall) that Nokia – …

    Mobile 22 Mar 13:41

  • Cybercops traced Toulouse massacre suspect through IP address

    Slain soldier's ad for motorcycle had key role in manhunt

    The IP address of a computer used to view a motorbike sales ad posted by an early victim of the Toulouse gunman played a vital role in narrowing down Mohamed Merah as the main suspect in a series of attacks that have horrified France, it has emerged. French soldier Imad Ibn-Ziaten posted a video of the motorbike he wanted to …

    Crime 22 Mar 14:01

  • Micro Direct leaves string of channel creditors out of pocket

    Liquidator Grant Thornton to hold cash confab

    Manchester-based e-tailer Micro Direct has left a trail of unsecured creditors in its wake, who are owed £880,000. The firm was the subject of a winding up petition by Micro-Peripherals in June over unpaid bills worth £70,000, but at the time distributor and channel sources claimed the online reseller once had a solid payment …

    Channel Register 22 Mar 14:17

  • Half of Apple fanbois would bank with the iPad titan

    Foxconn-rebranding biz already has your cards and cash

    One in 10 punters polled in the US and UK admitted they would bank with Apple if the iPad maker decided to move into the money sector. Among Apple product owners, 43 per cent of those quizzed would consider dumping their current banks for the iPhone biz. Two thirds of the 5,000 surveyed fanbois said they'd switch to a notional …

    CIO 22 Mar 14:33

  • NASA's Dawn probe spies 'Snowman' on asteroid queen Vesta

    Her dark materials

    Excited NASA boffins have released new and intimate snaps of Vesta, giant queen of the asteroid belt, obtained by the radical ion-engined deep space probecraft Dawn. Behold the abominable snowman of the Asteroid Belt. Dawn launched from Earth back in 2007, bound for the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Unlike most …

    Space 22 Mar 15:02

  • 8,400 email addresses spaffed by Student Loans Company

    Hands out cash, everyone's contact details

    The Student Loans Company (SLC) has apologised after inadvertently leaking the email addresses of about 8,400 students this week. Anyone who had got half-way through filling in an application form on the SLC site was sent a motherlode of personal data on Monday: emailed reminders to complete the electronic paperwork included …

    Enterprise Security 22 Mar 15:32

  • PCIe flash riddle of next-gen HP ProLiant record smasher

    Reg man drills into benchmark claims

    HP may have a PCIe flash-based gen-8 ProLiant coming that will be a TPC benchmark record-breaker. This tempting nugget of possible news comes from an HP blogger. Your humble El Reg hack was looking into flash usage by HP and came across this claim in an HP Connect blog entitled Gen8 Dynamic Workload Acceleration: Solid State …

    Storage 22 Mar 16:01

  • Mass Effect 3 crooks trick gamers with fake 'alternate ending'

    Bioware to cough actual alternate finish next month

    Scammers are targeting gamers left unsatisfied by the controversial ending of popular video game Mass Effect 3. Gamers dissatisfied by the conclusion of the recently released final chapter of the Mass Effect trilogy of video games, which completes the story of main character Commander Shepard, are invited to download an " …

    Music and Media 22 Mar 16:28

  • Google mulls bribing operators to stuff its Wallet into pockets

    ISIS and Project Oscar not sure they need Chocolate Factory...

    Network operators may be offered a cut of Google's Wallet as the Chocolate Factory struggles to find ways to get customers to embrace pay-by-bonk. Bloomberg has been chatting to "people with knowledge" who claim Google will offer financial incentives to Verizon and AT&T in the hope of getting them to join Sprint in offering …

    Wireless 22 Mar 17:02

  • Verizon spectrum deal savaged in Senate hearing

    Wall Street versus 'We, the People'

    Critics of Verizon's proposed spectrum-acquisition deal have told a congressional hearing that if the deal is approved, the effect will be disasterous for competition, consumers, rural communities, and of course, today's favorite political football: jobs. "Verizon, in its filings at the Commission, suggests its gain of …

    Telecoms 22 Mar 20:10

  • Microsoft tarts up custom Mustang Muscle Microserfmobile

    For the geek who has everything (except taste)

    For the last few months, Microsoft has been working with auto shop West Coast Customs to build the ultimate Windows-powered muscle car, and have taken the design so far that even the most ostentatious rapper might say "Steady on," possibly adding a "Yo" or two. The team of mechanics took an off-the-shelf 2012 Mustang and …

    Developer 22 Mar 20:26

  • Atmospheric DOUBLE-WHAMMY: fertilizers deplete ozone, add to warming

    Cape Grim news

    A new study poses a problem for biofuel proponents and agriculture alike: excessive and careless use of fertilizers has been fingered as the driver of growing atmospheric nitrous oxide concentrations. The study, published in Nature (abstract here), drew on the 40 years of atmospheric samples collected by CSIRO (the …

    Science 22 Mar 21:28

  • 440m2 screen has fewer pixels than iPad

    Sydney horse racing track gets slightly grainy mega-ultra-jumbo-tron

    Punters who trot off to Sydney’s Rosehill Gardens will soon be able to watch horse racing on a 40 by 11 meter screen. Construction on the new screen started in January and is scheduled to conclude in time for a race meeting on March 31st. The screen rests on a four-tier steel frame and is so heavy that piles have been sunk …

    Hardware 22 Mar 21:57

  • Facebook said to bag 750 IBM patents in IPO prep

    Buying protection from inevitable lawsuit onslaught

    Facebook has reportedly acquired 750 patents from IBM in the run-up to its IPO, presumably to protect itself from future patent-infringment litigation. So says "a person with knowledge of the transaction", speaking with Bloomberg. The acquisition would vastly increase Facebook's patent cache, which currently stands at "at …

    Business 22 Mar 22:38

  • Amazon, Eucalyptus team on cloud compatibility

    Not exactly 'private EC2', but close

    Amazon has made it pretty clear that it does not believe in private clouds – except its own, on which it sells outsiders capacity through its Amazon Web Services. But if companies want private clouds, it has to do something. And that something is to give the nod to Eucalyptus Systems, a maker of a private cloud stack that clones …

    Cloud 22 Mar 23:11

  • DataStax adds search to Cassandra NoSQL

    Structure Data 2012 Solr powered distributed database

    At the Structure Data 2012 conference in New York this week, DataStax, which as commercialized the Apache Cassandra NoSQL database originally created by Facebook and open sourced as an Apache project, has bolted on search to the data store and a plug in that lets it also search and index application logs. The new search …

    Applications 22 Mar 23:16

  • LibreOffice will have roadmap for cloud service next month

    Releases last build of 3.4 fork

    The Document Foundation (TDF), which produces the leading open source office software suite LibreOffice, is on schedule for the release of its plan to offer a cloud version of its software next month. The team released the last update to its 3.4 build on Thursday and is now focused on developing version 3.5 further, but the …

    Cloud 22 Mar 23:25

  • IT departments need productivity plan: Gartner

    Users will make your life hell with "Shadow IT" if you don't do more

    Pockets of IT activity beyond the IT department are inevitable and clever IT folk will find a way to embrace it gently and then hatch plans to become so marvellously responsive that you deliver things users would otherwise build for themselves. So says Mark McDonald, Ph.D., a Group Vice President and Head of Research in …

    Business 22 Mar 23:29