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27th March 2012 Archive

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  • Climate change linked to EXTREME weather surge

    Global warming = 'loaded dice'

    A pair of climate scientists has examined the thorny question of whether the cluster of recent extreme weather events has been caused by increasing global temperatures. Their answer? No proof, but it seems likely. Dim Coumou and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research say that the jury is still …

    Science 27 Mar 00:49

  • James Cameron back from dive to world's deepest point

    Sadly, no pacifist aliens found in the abyss

    Filmmaker James Cameron has made it back from his first excursion into the deepest point on the Earth's surface, the bottom of the Challenger Deep at nearly 36,000 feet below the ocean waves. Cameron is the third person to make it to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, and the only person to make the trip alone. His submarine, …

    Science 27 Mar 00:55

  • Apple's Tim Cook visits China, meets officials

    Groups petition Apple CEO over labour practices again

    Apple boss Tim Cook has made his first visit to China as CEO, something his illustrious predecessor never managed to do, but faced renewed calls from NGOs and unions to improve pay and working conditions at the tech giants’ suppliers. Cook apparently dropped into the Beijing Joy City Apple Store to much excitement and …

    Business 27 Mar 03:06

  • Decision delayed for 100-petabyte Oz research storage cloud

    RDSI host universities and vendors must wait for crucial meeting

    Australia's Research Data Storage Infrastructure Project (RDSI) has delayed the announcement of its preferred vendors by a month. There's nothing sinister about the delay, which RDSI Director Dr Nick Tate said is attributable to the fact that the new date – April 27th – means a meeting of the Council of Australian University …

    Cloud 27 Mar 03:12

  • Female Chinese astronauts must have no scars, straight teeth

    Shenzhou-9 mission will have two women on board

    More than a quarter of the astronauts on China’s next manned space mission will be women, but they were selected according to a strict set of criteria which rules out any with pronounced body odour or bad teeth. China Daily reported that China’s next wo-manned mission will see the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft blasted into the skies …

    Science 27 Mar 03:37

  • Twitter a poor predictor of movie success

    Weak link between good reviews and real-world success could mean marketing rethink

    Twitter users' reviews of movies are kinder than those found on other social networks, but none are good predictors of how a film will fare at the box office. That's one of the findings from a study of movie-related Tweets, plus posts to IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, by a trio of Princeton students. Why Watching Movie Tweets Won' …

    Music and Media 27 Mar 04:43

  • Apple New iPad 3 Wi-Fi + 4G

    Review My generation

    Let's face the elephant in the room first. The 'New iPad Wi-Fi + 4G' as Apple calls it - I'll use iPad 3 - may be branded 4G but that's eff-all value to us Brits. The tablet's cellular radio doesn't work with the frequencies being proposed for UK 4G communications. But let's be honest, that doesn't matter, for a couple of …

    reghardware 27 Mar 06:00

  • Scality opens Ring for close scrutiny

    First object storage to be openly performance tested

    It seems to be a world first: public and independent assessment of object storage performance compared to hard disk drive (HDD) block-based SAN arrays. The object storage supplier is Scality and the assessor is tech analyst ESG, which finds that Scality's Ring has performance comparable to, if not better than, high-performance …

    Storage 27 Mar 07:01

  • Sitting down all day is killing you

    Get off your butt and make some tea if you want to live

    A study of more than 220,000 people aged 45 or more has come to a startling conclusion: sitting down all day is killing you. The 45 and Up study compared mortality rates among those who sit for many hours a day and those who spend less time perched on their posterior. The study used “... questionnaire data from 222 497 …

    Science 27 Mar 07:11

  • OFT warns wallet-raiding debt collectors over web ads

    Regulator cooks up rules on false or misleading claims

    Debt management companies have been warned over their use of the internet and social networking when promoting themselves or their services to consumers. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said the firms risk losing their consumer credit licences if they offer misleading information to consumers through the mediums. The …

    Music and Media 27 Mar 07:28

  • EC tears duvet off Universal-EMI mega-music romp

    Eurocrats snap on glove, prepare to probe takeover

    As expected, Eurocrats are anxious to probe the mega-merger of Universal EMI, fearing the effect on digital music markets. The merger sees the world's largest record label (and the largest music publisher) Vivendi-owned Universal Music, take over the fourth-largest label EMI – with the EMI publishing business spun out to Sony …

    CIO 27 Mar 08:02

  • Oz regulator to Apple: Don’t call it 4G if you can’t connect

    Updated: Apple will refund Caveat emptor starts now

    As with most jurisdictions that aren’t America, Apple’s new iPad, which is only associated with the number “4” as in “4G”, can’t connect to 4G networks in Australia. That’s disturbed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which is taking Apple to court over the issue. The ACCC, appointed enforcer of …

    Networks 27 Mar 08:03

  • Cleversafe pumps up object store, slaps on big data sticker

    Cheaper boxes for bigger data

    Object storage supplier Cleversafe is claiming its new arrays have the lowest cost/TB of any disk-array on the market, and the lowest watt per terabyte too. Cleversafe targets unstructured data storage applications, with a big data marketing tag, and has a dispersed storage scheme for its object storage. This is based on data …

    Storage 27 Mar 08:31

  • Norfolk lobs out top council gigs on Twitter

    Fancy a contract? Tweet us if you're keen

    Norfolk county council has started publishing all of its contract tenders on Twitter. The council, which believes it is one of the first councils in the country to tweet tender opportunities, has taken to the microblogging site in effort to make it easier for local businesses to bid for council contracts. The @NCCContracts …

    Channel Register 27 Mar 09:03

  • Size DOES matter: Nokia snubs Apple's royalty-free nano-SIM

    Finns happy with their smaller package

    Apple has reportedly offered to waive its patent fees in order to get its new design of SIM accepted as a standard, removing a roadblock to adoption which never really existed. The news comes from patent-watcher Florian Meuller, who claims to have seen a letter from Apple's lawyers to the European Telecommunications Standards …

    Mobile 27 Mar 09:18

  • Everything Everywhere's 4G monopoly stalled by Ofcom

    Rivals get extra month to land fresh blows

    Ofcom has extended the deadline for those responding to its proposal for Everything Everywhere to deploy 4G early, giving the competition more time to get its retaliation in. Responses were required by 17 April, but anyone who wants to have their say can now submit comments until 8 May. The proposal is to allow EE to deploy a …

    Mobile 27 Mar 09:38

  • Wii U graphics said to be no better than current consoles

    No notch up for Ninty?

    Nintendo's next-gen console, the Wii U, will present visuals to match, not exceed, current-generation rivals. The new machine's display resolutions and textures will be no better than those supported by the Xbox 360 or PS3, it has been claimed. “So far, the hardware has been on par with what we have with the current …

    reghardware 27 Mar 09:58

  • Spooked spooks made Symantec end Huawei fling - new claim

    Affair thwarted info sharing with US spies

    Security biz Symantec called time on a joint venture with Chinese telecoms equipment goliath Huawei because it feared the tie-up would prevent it from gaining access to classified US intelligence on cyber-threats, according to a new report. The New York Times cited “two people briefed on the deal” as saying Symantec’s …

    Government 27 Mar 10:01

  • Mobe hackathon contest spits out Wi-Fi-by-bonk app wonder

    Updated Developer hothouse sucks cash out of NFC

    The weekend's NFC hackathon turned out 17 working applications, 16 of which could just about have been done with barcodes, and one which will see two strangers going into business together. The event was sponsored by mobile PR outfit* Isobar** and Telefonica (under its O2 brand), and took place at Shoreditch Studios – proudly …

    Developer 27 Mar 10:18

  • BMW recalls 1.3m motors over fire risk

    Seven-year glitch

    BMW has recalled more than a million cars across the globe because a battery cable they contain might malfunction. It it did, it could cause a fire, the company said. Some 109,000 vehicles in Britain could be affected by the wire flaw. The issue relates to the covering of a battery cable in the boot of 5 and 6 Series BMWs …

    reghardware 27 Mar 10:22

  • Judge orders O2 to name suspected smut burglars

    Ben Dover wins battle to halt backdoor leakage

    A top judge in Blighty has ordered telco Telefonica to hand over the names of O2 broadband customers suspected of sharing porn online. In the High Court Mr Justice Arnold handed victory to copyright-chasing law firm Golden Eye International and the British smut-flick house Ben Dover Productions. Telefonica (the parent company …

    Law 27 Mar 10:38

  • Dijit

    Android App of the Week Remote control app plus Griffin Beacon IR blaster

    It’s two-for-one this week as I take a look at the Dijit remote control app and Griffin Technologies' Beacon accessory, which connects to your phone over Bluetooth and then operates your home entertainment kit.   Devices get basic layouts, such as this one for a Sky+ box (left) but you can rearrange the controls (right) …

    reghardware 27 Mar 11:00

  • Goldman Sachs in email muppet hunt

    'Toxic and destructive' leak sparks grep binge

    Goldman Sachs has launched an investigation into its corporate email following accusations from a former senior employee that there is a “toxic and destructive” culture at the merchant bank. Greg Smith, a former exec at the bank, alleged that employees privately referred to clients as “muppets” in internal email conversations …

    Enterprise Security 27 Mar 11:16

  • Force Google to black out searches in new privacy law - MPs

    Web giant could be compelled to obey banning orders

    Google should be forced to block content via its search results where a court in Blighty has found that such material breaches an individual's privacy, MPs and peers cautioned in a lengthy report published today. The cross-party bunch of politicos called on the government to consider a new law that would compel Google to stop …

    Law 27 Mar 11:40

  • Devs spanked for touching vulnerable open-source packages

    Broken code often reused while fixes left on the shelf

    Developers are sucking buggy open-source programming frameworks off the web unaware that newer fixed versions exist, according to a new report. Packages of the Google Web Toolkit, the Spring Model View Controller, and Apache's Struts and Xerces have been downloaded millions of times despite the fact they contain known …

    Developer 27 Mar 12:02

  • Cameron flaunts footage of pristine, featureless bottom

    Fails to ram robot fist into it (with Rolex on wrist!)

    Celebrity mega-auteur James Cameron, fresh from his partially successful submarine mission to the deepest recess of the oceans, has stunned the interwebs with the release of some video showing the "featureless" seabed which he reached after such great efforts. Here's a press-conference vid including the footage: Cameron, …

    Science 27 Mar 12:14

  • Egypt ponders smut suppression

    Nerds to cancel holiday plans?

    Nerds planning the ideal vacation destination may soon be forced to strike Egypt off the list. The nation's government plans to impose a ban on internet pornography. The country's Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology has taken preliminary steps to outlaw e-rotica, forming a committee to investigate the …

    reghardware 27 Mar 12:16

  • Friends Reunited rebrands as memory bank for oldsters

    Old school is, er, cool

    Friends Reunited is relaunching itself as a "share the memories" site, inviting users to remember and post about everything from Winston Churchill to the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di and chewing on the sickly fruitiness of Refresher bars from the school tuck shop. The social network was launched in 2000, hit a peak of …

    Networks 27 Mar 12:38

  • Bio student thrown in the clink for Muamba Twitter rant

    Troll earns 8-week stint for mocking footie ace

    A Welsh biology student was jailed today for tweeting racist abuse at footballer Fabrice Muamba after the Bolton midfielder collapsed during a match. Liam Stacey, 21, tweeted "LOL **** Muamba. He's dead!!!" as medics tried to revive the 23-year-old player, who had suffered a heart attack during an FA Cup quarter-final match …

    Networks 27 Mar 13:03

  • AMD plots an end run round Intel with SeaMicro's 'Freedom'

    Analysis Can clouds and virt move the battle off the chip?

    As last week was winding down, Advanced Micro Devices took control of upstart server maker SeaMicro, and guess what? AMD is still not getting into the box building business, even if it does support SeaMicro's customers for the foreseeable future out of necessity. Further: Even if AMD doesn't have aspirations to build boxes, the …

    Virtualization 27 Mar 13:18

  • Spain donates Enigma gear that kick-started Brit code-breaking

    Gift unlocks overlooked chapter in Bletchley Park boffinry

    A pair of historic Enigma machines used during the Spanish Civil War have been donated to Britain. The machines played a role in an untold chapter of British wartime code-breaking history: the early 20th-century kit encoded messages that, once intercepted, helped boffins crack German military encryption at Bletchley Park in …

    Government 27 Mar 13:42

  • The Register channels jobs into jobs channel

    Editorial initiative

    Recently we slipped out a new editorial channel to cover work issues. It's called "Jobs" and you can find a link on the main nav bar which appears at the top of every page of The Register. This is a small launch designed for now to pop all articles we write about jobs, training and IT education into the one place. Also in …

    Jobs 27 Mar 13:54

  • AVG nukes stalking ads at press of BIG SHINY BUTTON

    That's the way the cookies crumble

    AVG is adding active “Do Not Track” technology to its security suites in a move designed to give consumers more control over their online privacy. AVG's new Do Not Track icon lets users keep an eye on stalkers... (click to enlarge) The technology – available as a free service pack to AVG's free and paid-for consumer …

    Enterprise Security 27 Mar 14:02

  • 'Ugly' MongoDB defies NoSQL death rumour

    Open ... and Shut Big data that suits you

    Someone clearly forgot to tell the MongoDB crowd that they lost. Ever since an anonymous poster on HackerNews called the MongoDB baby "ugly", I've been watching to see if MongoDB's early rise would taper off and fall. After all, my own company, Nodeable, has had to switch from MongoDB to Cassandra due to some significant …

    Developer 27 Mar 14:35

  • Plastic that SELF-REPAIRS using light unleashed by prof

    Holy Grail of materials paves way for self-healing cars

    Self-repairing plastic that can heal cuts and scratches on its own surface has been presented at a meeting of the American Chemistry Society. Inspired by human skin, the new material could make for self-healing cars and smartphones, that change colour when damaged and can close over "wounds" of its own accord. Professor Marek …

    Rise of the Machines 27 Mar 15:11

  • Harry Potter e-books go on sale

    Downloadiarmus

    Fans of JK Rowling's student sorcerer will be pleased to know the Pottermore Shop - the only place to buy Harry Potter e-books and audio books - is now open for business. It may be behind times in terms of e-commerce - the last book was published nearly five years ago - but Rowling's seven novels have finally made it into the …

    reghardware 27 Mar 15:13

  • Zombie LulzSec brags of exposing loved-up privates

    Reborn hack gang claims military dating site raid

    A group claiming to be the re-animated corpse of the LulzSec hacking group is getting its lulz from messing up the love lives of army personnel. The personal details of tens of thousands of servicemen and women may have been exposed following a hack on a US-based military dating website. "LulzSec Reborn" posted a message on …

    Enterprise Security 27 Mar 15:28

  • Panasonic talks up TV for the blind

    Spoken menus for the optically challenged

    Panasonic has announced that its 2012 Viera TVs will speak out to blind and optically challenged folk and tell them what the sets are showing. The Japanese giant claimed it is the first telly maker to do so. The system is a take on the audio navigation feature seen on a number of DVD and Blu-ray releases, which hides away the …

    reghardware 27 Mar 15:37

  • Microsoft partner centre: X-IO storage bricks really stack up

    Hyping up Hyper ISE

    The Microsoft Partner Solutions Center is raving about X-IO's ISE storage brick performance, saying it outperformed all other storage systems that the centre has tested over the past three years. The centre found: In a joint test with the Redknee telecom application and Microsoft SQL Server, X-IO’s ISE (Intelligent Storage …

    Storage 27 Mar 17:02

  • Privacy campaigner blasts FTC's federal limpness

    Data-gobblers won't go on a diet on their own

    The American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is making a mistake by leaving web and data companies to regulate themselves, privacy campaigner the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said today. Responding to the FTC's report Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change (PDF) published yesterday, EPIC said the …

    ID 27 Mar 17:28

  • Arista juices switch with x86 server, FPGA, atomic clock

    Not a God box – but close

    Upstart switch-maker Arista Networks, founded by serial entrepreneur Andy Bechtolsheim, is at it again, mashing up new kinds of iron to tackle problems in the data center. This time, Arista is bundling an atomic clock, a baby x86 server, flash memory, and field programmable gate arrays into its Ethernet switches to create what …

    Data Networking 27 Mar 18:20

  • Solar power towers overpower PV panels by 20X

    MIT researchers reap rewards of cheapo photovoltaics

    A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed 3D mounting techniques for photovoltaic cells that can increase power output per footprint by up to 20 times over that of fixed flat panels. "Our findings suggest that harnessing solar energy in three dimensions can open new avenues towards …

    Energy 27 Mar 18:54

  • High school student expelled for dropping F-bomb in tweet

    Principal sees red after witty tweet

    An Indiana student has been expelled from school after sending a profane – if rather witty – tweet from his personal account. "Fuck is one of those Fucking words you can Fucking put anywhere in a Fucking sentence and it still Fucking makes sense," it read. Austin Carroll, formerly of Garrett High School, claims he sent the …

    Public Sector 27 Mar 19:49

  • Amazon names date for Kindle Touch touchdown

    Yeah, but what about the Fire?

    Amazon has announced the release data for the second of its latest-generation Kindles in the UK: the Kindle Touch. The gadget will go on sale on 27 April priced at £106. A version with 3G connectivity as well a Wi-Fi will cost £169. Both sport the same 6in E Ink Pearl display seen on the Kindle 4 - aka the Kindle Touchless - …

    reghardware 27 Mar 21:06

  • Hollywood studios line up to kick Kim Dotcom

    Valcom, Microhits launch civil suit

    In what could almost be seen as a vote of no-confidence in the FBI’s battle with Megaupload and founder Kim Dotcom, two content owners are filing civil lawsuits against the company and its extravagant boss. According to Hollywood Reporter, the two litigants are Microhits (owner of recordings by Frank Sinatra, Nina Simone and …

    Business 27 Mar 21:13

  • RightScale: Hybrid clouds on the rise

    Like sex in high school

    "The hybrid cloud is a little bit like sex in high school," explains RightScale CEO Michael Crandell. "Everybody is talking about it, but not everybody is doing it – except us." After drilling down through usage statistics in its customer base, RightScale has figured out that across its user base, 87 per cent of the compute …

    Cloud 27 Mar 21:43

  • Visa shows off data centre 'moat'

    Why have an air gap when you can have a water barrier?

    Credit card company Visa has boasted that one of its US data centres possesses the ultimate security feature – a moat designed to trap would be ram-raiders from accessing the facility. As reported by USA Today and Fast Company, which both seem to have been invited to the facility, the company’s Operations Centre East (OCE) can …

    Hardware 27 Mar 21:55

  • Los Alamos fires BLOODY BIG MAGNET

    Even better: it didn’t smash itself to bits

    They call it their own “moon shot”, but there isn’t – unfortunately – any “oh wow” visual when you fire a 100-plus Tesla magnet: just a powerful new instrument to use in physics and materials science. At the end of last week, the Los Alamos National Laboratory held its breath and pressed “ok” to see if its planned magnet run, …

    Physics 27 Mar 22:30

  • UC interoperability still a bad joke: Gartner

    Analyst blasts vendors for dumping problems on VARs, crimping BYOD

    Unified Communications systems still don’t play together nicely, and Ken Agreess, a Research Director with Gartner IT Professionals Research, says vendors’ attitudes of asking value-added resellers to fix problems they create is a “failure”. Agress made his assessment in a blog post penned after attending the Enterprise …

    Data Networking 27 Mar 22:32

  • RIM punts annual investors meeting until 'later this year'

    Red flags a-wavin'

    Reeling Research in Motion has raised another red flag, postponing its annual investors' confab until an unspecified date later in the year. That presentation to investors is normally held at the BlackBerry World get-together, which is scheduled to be held this year from May 1 through 3 in Orlando, Florida. This year, it …

    Mobile 27 Mar 22:41

  • European Parliament votes against ACTA legal review

    Quick vote this June could kill treaty

    The European Parliament (EP) has voted overwhelmingly not to refer the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) for judicial review, but instead to strike while the iron is hot and vote on the treaty this June. The EP's International Trade Committee voted 21 to five against referring the controversial treaty to …

    Government 27 Mar 22:48

  • Sky boffins: The Moon is not Earth's only natural satellite

    'Minimoons' drop by, have a pint, overstay

    The Moon is not alone in its role as the Earth's natural satellite, although its companions are tiny fellows who usually don't stay long. "At any given time there is at least one one-meter-diameter object orbiting the Earth," three astronomers write in the abstract of their article, "The population of natural Earth satellites …

    Space 27 Mar 23:53