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28th March 2012 Archive

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  • Fujitsu gets cloudy with home-grown logistics apps

    Use our SaaS, dump your code

    Japanese conglomerate Fujitsu Group is once again turning some internal applications it has created to run its own business into a cloudy application that companies can pay to use to run their operations. In Tokyo today, Fujitsu took the wraps off LOMOS/TM-SaaS, a set of logistics programs that helps run inventory operations …

    Cloud 28 Mar 2012, 00:05

  • Google I/O conference sells out in 20 minutes

    Profit-hungry scalpers flock to eBay

    Tickets for Google's annual I/O developer conference have sold out in less than 20 minutes, and scalpers have already taken to eBay to cash in on the show's popularity. Google has run the I/O conference since 2008, and this year's show is scheduled to take place in San Francisco on June 27 through 29 – the first time the show …

    Developer 28 Mar 2012, 00:10

  • Zuckerberg flies to Shanghai for Apple Store visit

    Facebook founder goes walkabout in China

    China is apparently the place to be this week as first Apple CEO Tim Cook and now Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg were spotted in the People’s Republic. It remains to be seen whether his trip was business or pleasure but judging by the snaps posted on microblogging site Sina Weibo by hordes of Facebook fanatics, Zuck …

    Business 28 Mar 2012, 05:04

  • ZTE winds down Iran biz after espionage claims

    Chinese telecoms equipment firm not touting for new business

    Chinese handset giant ZTE has been forced to clarify that it’s no longer touting for new business in Iran, but remained vague about allegations that it sold the country’s largest telecoms firm a nationwide internet and phone surveillance system. Shenzhen-headquartered ZTE sold the state-run Telecommunication Co. of Iran (TCI) …

    Security 28 Mar 2012, 05:07

  • Australia urges miners to become data miners

    New electromagnetic survey offers a chance to go deep with big data

    Australia is offering mining companies new data sources they can use to find mineral deposits that cannot be detected by prospecting on the surface of the earth. The data comes from Geoscience Australia (GA), the agency charged with collecting and publishing geoscientific data. GA has for many years collected all mining …

    Management 28 Mar 2012, 05:52

  • Motorola Motoactv GPS fitness tracker

    Review For the wandering weight watcher

    Motorola may be pitching its "world's first" GPS fitness tracker as the ultimate fusion between exercise and music, but I reserve that accolade for mosh pits. In fact, I'm more inclined to agree with Henry Ford who once said “Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don't need it: if you are sick you should not take it.” …

    Hardware 28 Mar 2012, 06:00

  • Apple Oz offers refunds for confused 4G iPad owners

    Box-besmirching stickers rejected

    Apple Australia will offer a refund to those who purchased the New iPad under the misapprehension it could hook up to 4G networks in Australia. The company made the offer today in Australia’s Federal Court, where it was responding to a case brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) sought to stop the …

    Hardware 28 Mar 2012, 06:17

  • F1 team wins CAD copyright war, wakes up to £700k hangover

    Court battle over blueprints used to build rival cars

    The High Court said Aerolab had breached the confidence of team Force India and that team Caterham (previously Lotus) had infringed its rival's copyright. The judge rejected claims from Force India that Caterham/Lotus and its chief technical officer, Mike Gascoyne, were liable for breach of confidence. Gascoyne previously worked …

    Law 28 Mar 2012, 07:04

  • Actively cooled rocket primed for easy re-entry

    German SHEFEX II mission trials new heat shield, sharp-edged design

    A German spacecraft featuring an angular design and active cooling of the heat shield looks set to launch in April. The Sharp Edged Flight Experiment (SHEFEX II) appears on the Andøya Rocket Range’s April rocket launch schedule (PDF). The SHEFEX website also mentions a Spring 2012 launch. SHEFEX I tested the basic concepts of …

    Science 28 Mar 2012, 07:04

  • China wants global ecommerce crown

    Gov to 'guide' industry to £1.4tr in sales by 2015

    China has revealed ambitious growth plans to lead the word in e-commerce, quadrupling web sales to reach 18 trillion (£1.4tr) by 2015, but laid out a strict new set of policy measures to get there. A lengthy missive sent from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) outlines the country’s 12th ‘five year plan …

    Business 28 Mar 2012, 07:05

  • London wage slaves face hour of Cloud discharge a day - official

    Free Wi-Fi rolled out on Overground platforms

    Passengers travelling on London Overground are to get free internet access after the body that runs the train network, London Overground Rail Operations Limited, signed a deal with The Cloud to roll out Wi-Fi at its stations. The contract will give travellers one hour of free online access every day, at any station on the …

    Broadband 28 Mar 2012, 07:32

  • Scality shoves sparkling file system into its RING

    Fourth major release

    Scality has added a file system in the fourth major release of its object storage RING, and it is planning to add NFS heads down the road, the object storage company says. This is being driven by the unstoppable rise of unstructured data and the predominance of filesystem-based access to it. The traditional object storage cry …

    Storage 28 Mar 2012, 08:01

  • Oxford Uni chucks big brains at ivy-covered cybersecurity hub

    CompSci bods join academics at new money-spinner

    Oxford University boffins launched an interdisciplinary Cyber Security Centre on Monday. The new research hub aims to boost academic research into infosecurity. The Oxford Cyber Security Centre aims to research threats such as cyber terrorism and cyber crime, as well as running studies on the trustworthiness of electronically …

    Security 28 Mar 2012, 08:29

  • 'Thermal cloak' designed, could solve major chip, spacecraft issues

    Nuclear Mars cruisers, mega nano-electronics (... hmm)

    Top boffins in France have come up with a radical new take on the "cloaking" and invisible-shed physics breakthroughs of recent years. They have designed a technology which instead of bending microwaves or light can shield an object from heat - or concentrate heat upon it. Can't crack their shields! More power to the heat …

    Science 28 Mar 2012, 08:56

  • Who killed ITV Digital? Rupert Murdoch - but not the way you think

    Comment Snobbery and Tranmere Rovers dunnit, not smartcard pirates

    After 25 years of watching the Murdoch TV empire unfold, the battle plan to beat him should be fairly obvious. You buy the best content - the most popular sport and movies - and raise lots of capital, and make watching it easy. Then you dig in for a very long fight. In other words, this is the entertainment-business-as-usual. …

    Media 28 Mar 2012, 09:18

  • Microsoft to upgrade Windows Kinect kit

    Suite spot

    Microsoft announced a second Kinect for Windows release this week, adding more advanced skeletal tracking, localised speech recognition and a new video suite application. Kinect for Windows 1.5 sees the addition of Kinect Studio, an app to let developers record, play and debug clips of users getting jiggy with their …

    Hardware 28 Mar 2012, 09:22

  • Amazon sets date for Kindle Touch UK touchdown

    Touchscreen kit arrives on 27 April

    The Kindle Touch will be out in the UK from 27 April, and is available to pre-order on Amazon from today. At a cost of £109 (with free delivery), the Wi-Fi Kindle Touch has a multi-touch E Ink display – making it a step-up from the button-clicking vanilla Kindle. The Kindle Touch has a two-month battery life and text to speech …

    Media 28 Mar 2012, 09:43

  • Novatech pushes affordable Ultrabook

    Yours for 430 quid

    UK system builder Novatech has hopped on the Ultrabook bandwagon with a new range of 14in skinny notebooks dubbed the nFinity series. The line-up starts with a second-gen Intel Core i3 chip, 2GB of Ram and a 64GB SSD drive. That'll set you back a mere £430. For more va-va-voom, there's the Core i5 and i7 models, which come …

    Laptops 28 Mar 2012, 09:51

  • Whitehall's G-Cloud: Hype or hope?

    Special report Big-swinging reform or buzzword bingo?

    According to the British government, the cloud will make everything better. The UK gov is rolling out something called G-Cloud, which according to No 10 means faster and more flexible IT procurement based on a list of open systems and approved standards. The punchline for the British taxpayer is that services will be delivered …

    The Channel 28 Mar 2012, 10:01

  • Hasbro fails to win Asus Transformer Prime ban

    Tablet vs toy robot... FIGHT

    Asus' Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet-cum-netbook has not ridden roughshod over toy giant Hasbro's intellectual property rights, a US court has suggested. Hasbro, which flogs a series of plastic robots that can "transform" into cars, aircraft, lorries and such, sued the Taiwanese company in December 2011, claiming that its …

    Tablets 28 Mar 2012, 10:09

  • HTC One X priced up for UK punters

    Tempted by the Tegra 3 talker?

    HTC's upcoming Tegra 3-based smartphone, the One X, was made available for pre-order this week as networks revealed their tariffs in a bid to pull in the punters. The Taiwanese manufacturer's first five-core beast can be ordered from Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4U free from £36 a month on two-year contracts. It can be …

    Phones 28 Mar 2012, 10:12

  • That latest student craze sweeping China: Supercomputing wars

    HPC blog Dozens of universities battle for cluster contest slot

    In a Wall Street Journal article last Friday, a bit of light was shone on China’s entry into the upper echelon of supercomputing nations over the past few years. In 2007 China had only 10 systems on the Top500 list. But like TV’s George Jefferson adding dry cleaning stores, China has been movin’ on up - it now has 74 of the top …

    HPC 28 Mar 2012, 10:14

  • FBI nabs AWOL soldier for stealing Paul Allen's debit card

    Feds unseal charges alleging bank fraud against Microsoft biz baron

    An alleged US Army deserter has been charged with stealing the identity of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to run a bank fraud scam. Brandon Price, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, allegedly conned Citibank call centre workers into changing Allen’s address to that of Price’s modest home – as well as changing the phone number …

    Security 28 Mar 2012, 10:29

  • UK copyright exchange man: Nontrepreneurs are just stingy

    Former Ofcom deputy chair is deaf to special pleading

    More can be done to streamline digital copyright licensing, says Richard Hooper, who has been appointed by the government to investigate it. However, in a sharp rebuke to the Shoreditch nontrepreneurs – and by implication the government – he said many of the whinges the study has so far heard from webtastic startups about the …

    Government 28 Mar 2012, 10:46

  • Dell pulls Magirus out of the trenches for data centre assault

    UK arm finally gets the call up

    Magirus has finally penned a distie deal with Dell in the UK more than a year after landing a similar contract on the continent. The agreement, which kicks off in April, covers Dell's data centre kit including enterprise servers, storage and connectivity gear. "Dell's portfolio helps companies cut operational expenditure," …

    The Channel 28 Mar 2012, 10:52

  • Angry Birds Space

    iGamer High jinks in low gee

    Such was the original's stellar success it's no wonder resisting the pull of Angry Birds Space is proving more difficult than escaping an event horizon. Ask the ten million or so folk who've apparently downloaded it since last Friday, and they'll tell you. You simply can't mess with universal laws - you're going to get sucked in …

    Games 28 Mar 2012, 11:00

  • 'Special relationship': Oracle bags UK.gov contract renewal

    Cabinet Office sticks to big biz for Whitehall database – with some caveats

    Database giant Oracle has bagged a renewed contract to supply its technology to Whitehall in a deal that the Cabinet Office claimed would save £75m for taxpayers by 2015. The California multinational is one of the biggest provider's to government, Francis Maude's department said when announcing the agreement this morning. It …

    Government 28 Mar 2012, 11:13

  • Terrifying TV chimera born from Sharp, Foxconn lords' fling

    Hon Hai spunks billions into struggling LCD biz

    Foxconn owner Hon Hai Group has given limping Sharp a crutch by buying a stake in the Japanese electronics maker and pouring a few billion yen into its LCD business. Taiwanese Hon Hai will hand over ¥66.9bn ($806m, £507m) for a 9.9 per cent stake in Sharp - and will fork out another ¥66bn for a 46.5 per cent stake in the joint …

    Media 28 Mar 2012, 11:25

  • What system builders need to know about solid state drives

    Get the best from flash technology

    If you are building systems using solid state drives (SSDs), you need rock-solid reliability and performance – and you won't get it from consumer-grade flash. But how do you know if the drives you choose are enterprise-grade? A supplier may say its SSD is enterprise quality but can you be sure this marketing claim is true? You …

    The Channel 28 Mar 2012, 11:37

  • Adobe reels in game coders with a quick free Flash

    Then taxes apps that bank more than $50k

    Adobe is allowing programmers to use "premium features" in Flash Player 11.2 for free to kickstart take up among games makers. After unleashing the Flash build and AIR 3.2 upon the world, Adobe announced that premium functionality in Player will be available free of charge to content published before 1 August and there will be …

    Developer 28 Mar 2012, 11:58

  • Sony pushes PlayMemories picture suite to PS3

    Customise content on the console

    Sony will launch PlayMemories Studio for PlayStation 3 this week, an app that allows users to edit photos and video clips on their console. Tablets? Who needs 'em? PS3 owners who download the app can view, edit and share content, as well as manage it directly on external devices using the PS3 gamepad. The program features …

    Software 28 Mar 2012, 12:07

  • FTC, RockYou settle after 32 MILLION passwords pillaged

    We will, we will, fine you

    An online gaming biz has been left with a $250,000 bill in a settlement with the US government over a hack that exposed 32 million email addresses and passwords. The Federal Trade Commission said that RockYou had agreed to settle charges that it failed to protect the privacy of its customers despite "touting" its security …

    Law 28 Mar 2012, 12:19

  • Apple IP details tech for 'iTV' innards

    Cupertino HD TV to get FFS, FFS

    Apple was granted a further 19 US patents to its colossal archive of intellectual property this week, with the standout blueprint sure to be related to its rumoured 'iTV' product. The new IP deals with display tech for large screen LCDs: FFS. No, that wasn't a pent-up expletive burst of frustration over Cupertino's patenting …

    Hardware 28 Mar 2012, 12:22

  • Republicans shoot down proposed ban on Facebook login boss-snoop

    House legislation on jobseekers' rights breach shot down

    US House representatives from the Republican party have shot down a Democrat effort to pass a law stopping companies from demanding access to jobseekers' and employees' Facebook accounts. Yesterday, Democratic Congressman Ed Perlmutter introduced an amendment to the Federal Communications Commission Reform Act in the House …

    Jobs 28 Mar 2012, 12:39

  • ONS: Growth forecast for Blighty worse than expected

    Stats-crunchers revise down final 2011 quarter numbers. Ouch

    A week after the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his Budget statement to Parliament, the Office for National Statistics has confirmed that the British economy shrank more than expected in the last quarter of 2011. The ONS published official data today that showed that the limping services sector dragged the economy down …

    Financial News 28 Mar 2012, 12:58

  • UK public sector IT jobs rebound - for permies

    Web devs feel the outsourcing squeeze

    A quick note on the UK tech jobs scene in February, sourced from Computer People. The recruitment firm's IT Monitor service reports 13,024 permanent IT vacancies advertised during the month - slightly up on January. The public sector and media and creative sectors were bright spots, with vacancies up 28 per cent and 12 per …

    Jobs 28 Mar 2012, 13:13

  • Dotcom hike will net MEEELLIONS of bucks for Verisign, ICANN

    Domain prices to soar by a third in draft deal

    The cost of a .com domain name is expected to rise by at least 31 per cent over the next six years, due to new price-increasing powers granted to registry operator Verisign by industry overseer ICANN. ICANN last night published a proposed draft of a new .com Registry Agreement, which it had negotiated privately with Verisign …

    Hosting 28 Mar 2012, 13:32

  • Sarkozy hails 'success' of Hadopi's pirate cops

    Soft stick approach to copyright infringement working?

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy has hailed the success of the Hadopi copyright police. In a new report, Hadopi says its "soft stick" of a graduated response regime is working, and has released some statistics to support its claim. In an official statement, Sarkozy said the report "consolidates the undisputed pioneering role of …

    Media 28 Mar 2012, 14:02

  • No conclusions on EU's Google probe for weeks

    Antitrust chief: 'We won't be rushed! Besides we're on hols'

    The European Commission's antitrust chief has said that the body won't be pressured into an early decision on its investigation into Google over web search dominance. The EC started the probe in November 2010 after other web firms complained that Google was abusing its dominance as a search engine behemoth. Critics accuse the …

    Government 28 Mar 2012, 14:29

  • Staggering Kelihos zombie army smacked down AGAIN

    Resurrected spam-spewing network sinkholed by security bods

    A resurrected incarnation of the infamous Kelihos botnet has been taken out. The takedown operation – mounted by Kaspersky Lab's experts, along with the CrowdStrike Intelligence Team, Dell SecureWorks and members of the Honeynet Project – follows six months after the original spam-spewing and credential-stealing botnet was …

    Security 28 Mar 2012, 14:52

  • 100 EARTH-LIKE PLANETS orbit stars WITHIN 30 LIGHT-YEARS!

    Billions more across the galaxy - stand by for aliens

    In an announcement with massive consequences for the human race, astronomers say there are "probably about one hundred" planets within just 30 light-years of our solar system which could support life along Earthly lines. By their calculations, there are tens of billions of such worlds in our galaxy, suggesting that even if life …

    Science 28 Mar 2012, 14:58

  • Europe to assemble crack cyber-intelligence nerve centre

    ... as MEPs propose fresh hacking laws

    Brussels hopes to establish a European Cybercrime Centre within the continent's police agency Europol by the start of January. The centre proposed by the European Commission will focus on thwarting online banking fraud, attacks against smartphones, and large-scale coordinated assaults on public services and infrastructure. …

    Security 28 Mar 2012, 15:37

  • Egenera bags new OEM agreement with Fujitsu

    Virty server control freakery for BX900 blades

    Blade server and virtualization pioneer Egenera, which has transformed itself from a system-maker to a system management software vendor, has inked another reseller agreement with long-time partner Fujitsu, this time peddling its PAN Manager tools instead of the BladeFrame systems that put Egenera on the map more than a decade …

    Servers 28 Mar 2012, 15:53

  • HDS channel boss: We must become relevant to resellers

    Even if it means working with only a chosen few

    Hitachi Data Systems wants to make itself relevant to the channel by working deeply with fewer partners on specific biz plans. The Japanese storage firm has undergone a shakeup during which regional veep and GM Stephen Ball pitched up last summer and 11-year Computacenter veteran Neill Burton joined in January. Burton, UK and …

    The Channel 28 Mar 2012, 15:55

  • Nimbus flashes flash cache cash at NetApp stars

    Upstart biz woos bigwigs to boost sales'n'tech

    Shipping flash array vendor Nimbus Data has recruited three NetApp execs to strengthen its engineering and build out its sales reach - as competing flash array startups get ready to ship product. John Harechmak becomes VP for systems engineering and was NetApp's systems engineering director for virtualisation products. Before …

    Storage 28 Mar 2012, 16:01

  • EU mobile biz barons agree to slash roaming charges

    Brussels strikes cheaper deal with operators

    Mobile phone operators in Europe will be forced to cap prices for roaming charges when customers use their devices abroad, Brussels' officials confirmed today. A preliminary deal was struck between members of the European parliament, council representatives and the European Commission on bringing in rules across the 27-state …

    Mobile 28 Mar 2012, 16:28

  • Plan ahead to make virtualisation work

    Head for a better life

    The road to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions, and never more so than when it comes to virtualisation. Many companies embark on virtualisation because they think it will make IT better, cheaper and faster. There is no denying that it helps initially, reducing costs through consolidating servers and making other …

    Service Assurance 28 Mar 2012, 16:44

  • Nokia threatens to elbow Apple's rival nano-SIM off a cliff

    Finns refuse to license vital patents in mobe tiff

    Nokia will refuse to license its SIM patents if telecoms body ETSI approves Apple's alternative tiny design, upping the stakes in the battle for the next-generation itty-bitty SIM. Nokia believes that the adoption of Apple's nano-SIM would contravene ETSI's own rules on a tiny SIM design, thus absolving the Finnish mobe maker …

    Mobile 28 Mar 2012, 16:58

  • MIT's building-block dev kit goes NFC

    Wireless connectivity for idiots

    MIT's App Inventor, the drag 'n' drop development kit spun out from the Googleplex, will be demonstrating its NFC credentials next week, with a new tool to be released soon afterwards. The demonstration was spotted by NFC Times, and will take place tomorrow at MIT's Enterprise Forum event, as part of a panel on the Internet of …

    Broadband 28 Mar 2012, 17:27

  • China passes the US in free iPad app downloads

    Actually paying for them? That's another story...

    It's official: China has more cheapskate iPad fanbois than any other country on earth. According to a report released Tuesday by the app store analysts at Distimo, last month was the first time that the US fell from number one in free iPad-app downloads, dethroned by China. During February, Chinese iPad users downloaded over 1 …

    Applications 28 Mar 2012, 17:57

  • Sality botnet takedown plans posted online

    Updated Valid attack could seize infected machines

    A self-describer "law-abiding citizen" has posted attack plans against the Sality botnet on the Full Disclosure security mailing list, along with a tongue-in-cheek warning not to enact them since that would be illegal. "It has come to my attention that it is not only possible but easy to seize control of version three of the …

    Security 28 Mar 2012, 17:57

  • Speaking in Tech: Enterprise... but with clothes on

    Podcast Like to tap that IaaS? El Reg's consumer and biz tech-cast is baaaack

    Host Greg Knieriemen and his trusty sidekicks – storage and virtualisation Hoosier Ed Saipetch and new media strategist Sarah Vela – are back with a hilarious and brand spanking-new podcast that brings all the latest in enterprise tech all wrapped up in an easy-to-digest chat. This week Greg and his cohorts rock out to the …

    Cloud 28 Mar 2012, 18:01

  • Cisco snarfs ClearAccess for remote broadband apps

    Making service provider play

    Networking giant Cisco Systems has added another arrow to its quiver and is aiming at the service provider market with the acquisition of ClearAccess, a maker of what is called TR-069 software. ClearAccess makes a platform called ClearVision, which is a suite of remote troubleshooting applications that adhere to the Broadband …

    Applications 28 Mar 2012, 18:03

  • Google offers Oracle slice of Android profits for patents

    Small payment and 0.515% of revenues until 2018

    Google has proposed terms its on-going patent spat with Oracle over Java's contribution to Android by offering Ellison's crew a payment for past infractions and a miniscule slice of further revenues from the operating system, should Google be found to be in violation. According to court papers (PDF) filed on Tuesday, Google is …

    Software 28 Mar 2012, 21:12

  • Funding deal saves Australian synchrotron

    A measly $AU100 million keeps the particles moving

    A funding package worth $AU100 million was announced yesterday to keep the Australian Synchrotron operational. The joint arrangement between the federal government, Victoria’s state government and New Zealand comes nearly a year after the state government pulled the funding needed to keep the 3GeV facility operational. …

    Science 28 Mar 2012, 22:06

  • Multi-color laser created by UCSB scientists

    Excitons with extra zing could make networks sing

    A group of University of California Santa Barbara researchers is touting a new technique to create multi-coloured lasers. The coherent light of lasers is created by pumping a suitable material with energy. The energy is absorbed by electrons in the material, which move briefly to a higher-energy state; when they shed that …

    Science 28 Mar 2012, 23:01

  • Microsoft to open source ASP.NET Web API and Web Pages

    Outside developers invited to submit patches and new code

    Microsoft has announced it will release the source code for ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web Pages, and will also invite third-party developers to contribute code to the products. The news was slipped out in a blog post by Scott Guthrie, a Corporate Vice President in the Microsoft Server and Tools Business. The post says the …

    Software 28 Mar 2012, 23:04

  • Red Hat accelerates through $1bn in sales

    Shadowman fills pockets

    "We think of Linux as a competitor in the student and hobbyist market but I really don't think in the commercial market we'll see it in any significant way." Bill Gates, 2001 You can't blame Red Hat for wanting to rub it in a little bit as it busted through its first $1bn year. Yes, El Reg knows that numbers are not barriers, …

    Financial News 28 Mar 2012, 23:35

  • ARM-Android to outship Windows-Anything by 2016

    Rise of the 'droids

    Windows might be on the rise in the world of embedded systems, but if IDC's prognostications are right, then Windows is about to get its kernel handed to it with the rise of Android on what the market researcher dubs "smart connected devices." By IDC's reckoning, makers of PCs, tablets, and smartphones shipped some 916 million …

    Operating Systems 28 Mar 2012, 23:38