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10th April 2012 Archive

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  • Chinese military contractor hits back at hacktivist Hardcore Charlie

    Allegations the firm was hacked are "groundless"

    A Chinese military contractor has strongly denied recent allegations that it was hacked by the Anonymous-affiliated ‘Hardcore Charlie’, but the hacktivist has responded by leaking more documents including US military data which he claims the firm has shared with Vietnam, Ukraine and Russia. Beijing based China National Import …

    Security 10 Apr 00:02

  • Intel introduces 'Ivy Bridge'–ready chipsets

    Four USB 3.0 ports, no waiting

    Intel has announced that its new 7-series "mainstream" chipset family is now available and being used by OEMs in mobile and desktop systems for the current 2nd Generation Core processors today, and will be ready to support the "Ivy Bridge" 3rd Generation Core processors when they appear later this quarter. In addition to the …

    Hardware 10 Apr 00:17

  • CSIRO patent-trolls ALL OF AMERICA!

    Evil Aussie tax on Wi-Fi

    With a skillful combination of nationalistic dog-whistling and misinformation, Ars Technica has created a storm of outrage against Australia with the claim that the country’s CSIRO has patent-trolled its way into American WiFi users’ pockets. At issue is the recent settlement which brings the Commonwealth Scientific and …

    Networks 10 Apr 01:00

  • US government service improves after virus takes out email

    Customers enjoy return to human contact after malware attack

    A virus attack which hit the US Economic Development Administration (EDA) was so severe the agency pulled the plug on its email systems. Twelve weeks later the agency is yet to fully restore email and has only a rudimentary web site in place. But as the Washington Post reports, some of the agency’s staff and customers have …

    Policy 10 Apr 01:08

  • Halfbrick links with GetJar

    Fruit Ninjas get virtual dosh

    Australian gaming developer Halfbrick is working on strategies to monetize its hit games such as Fruit Ninja with indie app store GetJar. The gaming house will be developing virtual currency integration in its games with GetJar’s Gold Virtual Currency programme. GetJar Gold is backed entirely by advertising spend rather than …

    Business 10 Apr 01:38

  • Dark matter hits you once a minute

    We all get whacked by WIMPs

    Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPS) hit you about once a minute, according to a new paper titled Dark Matter collisions with the Human Body. That’s not something to be unduly worried about, as the paper suggests billions of WIMPs pass through our bodies every minute without so much as nudging a particle. That they do …

    Science 10 Apr 01:58

  • Culture jammers connect Lego clones with 3D printer files

    "Reverse engineering as a civic activity"

    Sy-Lab and The Free Art and Technology (F.A.T.) Lab, a self-described “organization dedicated to enriching the public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media”, have released a set of 3D printer files that will “enable complete interoperability between ten popular children’s construction …

    Bootnotes 10 Apr 02:40

  • Foxtel gets foxed by ACCC

    Green light for Austar merger, red light for IPTV

    Foxtel’s ambitious IPTV plans have been significantly thwarted following the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s conditions which will allow Foxtel’s AUS$1.9 billion takeover of pay- TV operative Austar to go ahead. While Foxtel has passed its last hurdle in the acquisition with the green light from the regulator …

    Networks 10 Apr 03:58

  • HTC struggling as profits drop 70 per cent

    Taiwanese handset maker crosses fingers for One series

    HTC’s fortunes took another turn for the worse on Friday after the Taiwanese handset giant revealed that first quarter net profits dipped a massive 70 per cent from the same period last year, as the firm continues to struggle against the likes of Samsung and Apple. Profits stood at NT$4.5 billion (£95m) for the first three …

    Business 10 Apr 03:59

  • HP opens up public cloud beta in May

    Cooks up block storage, database clouds

    Contrary to earlier reports, HP is not yet ready to launch its first public cloud, and it is not rolling the HP Cloud Services in May as HP execs had hinted last month. What HP is doing, however, is talking a bit more about its public cloud – including new block storage and database services – and telling everyone that it is …

    Cloud 10 Apr 04:01

  • HotLink's SuperVisor hooks deeper into VMware

    vCenter bosses around Xen, KVM, and Hyper-V

    HotLink, the startup that came out of stealth last year with a kind of über-visor for managing incompatible hypervisors all from the same console, is beefing up its integration with VMware's vCenter management console. Lynn LeBlanc and Richard Offer, the founders of FastScale Technology, a company that created some very clever …

    Virtualization 10 Apr 04:01

  • China sets up association to handle rare earth disputes

    Minerals have become a big deal to tech industry

    The Chinese government has set up a new association for companies in the rare earth industry which will be tasked with promoting development and handling international trade disputes in the increasingly fractious sector. State-run Xinhua reported on Sunday that the body will feature 155 members including heavy weights such as …

    Business 10 Apr 05:25

  • Ten... Living Room Gadget Treats

    Gizmo Week For laddies who lounge

    Once, living rooms were the places kept solely for entertaining guests. Now they’re games rooms, home cinemas – and places to crash when you’re just too exhausted from all the fun to do anything else. But kitting out your living room isn't just a matter of picking a TV and a console. There's a host of gadgets you can bring …

    reghardware 10 Apr 06:00

  • India gobbling up chips to the tune of £5.8 BILLION

    Mobile, LCD TV and PC production fuelling demand

    India’s semiconductor consumption is set to grow 20 per cent this year to reach revenue of over $9bn – the fastest growing market in the world thanks to an explosion in mobile phone, LCD TV and PC production. The new figures, which come from Gartner’s latest update to its Semiconductor Consumption forecast, reveal a booming …

    Business 10 Apr 06:33

  • Amplidata smashes the object pedal against the metal

    Feel those IOPS blow your girlfriend's headscarf off

    Amplidata has pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor with its AmpliStor XT object storage system. It's increased throughput, raised the IOPS rate and dropped latency, saying these things make its product better suited to big unstructured data applications. This move follows Scality's ESG performance work but has obviously …

    Storage 10 Apr 07:03

  • Facebook's facial recog bots can't eat your face without your say-so

    EU watchdog: Software must obtain consent to process your image

    Social networking sites need to obtain users' "informed consent" before suggesting to other users that those individuals feature in photos that they are uploading to the site, an EU privacy watchdog has said. The Article 29 Working Party said, though, that the networks can process the images legitimately without the consent of …

    Law 10 Apr 07:36

  • TITANIC 'UNLIKELY' TO SINK AGAIN, says prof - apparently

    Science PRs plumb new depths as centenary approaches

    Amazing news on the science wires this morning as - by an amazing coincidence, just ahead of the centenary of the tragedy ocean collision plunge sinking of famous real-life blockbuster movie ocean liner Titanic - we read the headline: Titanic Disaster 'Unlikely to Happen Again'! That might seem obvious as the Titanic remains …

    Science 10 Apr 08:00

  • Forensic snoops: It doesn't take a Genius to break into an iPhone

    Analysis Cop tools easily bypass 4-digit passcodes

    Forensic tools against smartphones allow basic 4-digit phone passcodes to be bypassed in minutes. However, more complex passcodes are far more difficult to defeat and might even leave some information of seized Androids or iPhones outside the range of many tools, according to computer forensics experts. A YouTube video – …

    Security 10 Apr 08:22

  • Councils get online arsenal to battle billion-pound bloodsuckers

    All hands to repel freeloaders

    Local authorities will be able to use a set of online products to help them fight housing tenancy, council tax and blue badge parking frauds, under new government guidelines. The tools have been created as part of the "Fighting fraud locally" strategy. The strategy was the result of an eight-month review led by the National …

    Security 10 Apr 08:51

  • Toshiba to demo vid streaming without any work by the CPU

    Mighty card 'can replace two dedicated servers'

    Toshiba's NPEngine hardware directly streams video from SSDs to IP networks without using host server CPU cycles or memory. Tosh claims the dedicated hardware delivers up to 64,000 x 40Gbit/sec video streams – way more than the 20,000 or so an average 2U server is said to be able to stream. The Toshiba hardware, a server card …

    Data Networking 10 Apr 09:13

  • Sony 2011 losses are TWICE as bad as expected

    US gov squeezing its assets firmly

    Sony has more than doubled its forecast for losses in fiscal 2011 to ¥520bn ($6.4bn, £4bn) after figuring out it will owe an extra ¥300bn ($3.69bn, £2.32bn) in taxes in the fourth quarter. The Japanese firm said today that it had to pay the additional tax on assets that were mainly in the US. "Due to the recording of this …

    Financial News 10 Apr 09:39

  • RIM: BlackBerry sales to US gov still on the rise

    We're still best at being boring

    The White House and American government departments are still buying BlackBerrys, RIM's senior VP of security told Bloomberg, claiming that RIM had increased its share in the federal contract market. RIM's BlackBerry, one of few handsets to be security-approved by the Feds, is the top seller in US federal markets, said Scott …

    Government 10 Apr 10:00

  • Sony waves hello to Vaio lappy with gesture control

    Swipe your screen

    Sony has unveiled its latest notebook refresh, the Vaio E series 14, a lightweight laptop with gesture control. The Vaio E series packs an Intel Core i3 processor with 4GB of DDR3 memory and a 1GB AMD Radeon HD graphics chip. There's also 500GB of hard drive storage, a DVD drive, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, and an HDMI …

    reghardware 10 Apr 10:24

  • Whisky IN SPAAAAACE: Zero-G Scotch is matured aboard the ISS

    Up, up and Islay – how space research benefits humanity

    A Scottish whisky distillery has sent its malt where no whisky has been before – into orbit above the Earth. Ardbeg head distiller Dr Bill Lumsden in his lab The unmatured malt rocketed to the International Space Station on a Russian Progress cargoship in October last year to start an experiment on what microgravity-matured …

    Science 10 Apr 10:41

  • Renault Twizy budget e-car

    First Look Get your knickers in a Twizy

    Some vehicles are more suited to certain geographical locales than others. Case in point: Renault's new two-seater electric runabout may not make much sense in central Manchester on a cold, dark, drizzly December evening. On the other hand, on a sunny afternoon on a Mediterranean island it could be right at home. Lucky, then, …

    reghardware 10 Apr 10:48

  • Anonymous plans DDoS attack on GCHQ in snoop law protest

    Analysis Hacktivists hard at work as Home Office site staggers back online

    The Home Office website is back online following a weekend of disruptive denial-of-service attacks by Anonymous. The hacktivist collective also launched traffic-flooding assaults against the official website of the UK prime minister, number10.gov.uk, and the UK's Ministry of Justice as part of a protest against the UK's …

    Security 10 Apr 11:22

  • US ecosystems basically unaffected by global warming, studies show

    Streams fail to dry up as expected at test sites

    Scientists monitoring water flow in streams at test sites across the USA have found, unexpectedly, that the global warming seen in the late 20th century had basically no effect on most of the ecosystems they studied. The world in general is thought to have warmed up by approximately half a degree C from 1980 to the year 2000, …

    Science 10 Apr 11:37

  • TED

    Android App of the Week Mental giants toss their orbs... on vid

    TED - or Technology, Entertainment and Design - is a series of conferences run by a private not-for-profit organisation called the Sapling Foundation. In its own words, it was formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading". So what we have here then is a collection of 1200-odd - with more being added each week - video lectures …

    reghardware 10 Apr 11:49

  • Learn everything you need to know about System Center 2012

    Relax with the MVA videos

    Among Windows systems administrators System Center 2012 is arguably the most hotly anticipated software release in nearly a decade. Microsoft is at last taking the fight to VMware, and it is expending the resources necessary to ensure that sysadmins are prepared. One branch of the strategy is making good use of Microsoft …

    Jobs 10 Apr 12:00

  • Google answers less than half of watchdog's privacy tweak questions

    What was that? We didn't hear you...

    Google only partially responded to French data protection regulator CNIL late last Thursday about the company's controversial privacy policy tweak in March. The world's largest ad broker asked for more time to answer the 69 questions put to it by the watchdog, which had been tasked with investigating the company's actions by …

    Security 10 Apr 12:17

  • What's happening in data management today?

    Live broadcast Never mind the data buzzwords

    On April 19th at 12:30 BST, our host Jon Collins will be joined by a band of experts to discuss the current state of data management, and how new approaches work with old principles to solve the business problems of today. The studio band are Günter Richter from the Information Management Group, Martha Bennett from Freeform …

    Business 10 Apr 12:40

  • Microsoft-Accenture venture to fluff Azure clouds

    Hope finally floats for Redmond

    Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud is leaking out of Redmond through a joint venture with Accenture. Windows' desktop and server cloud computing outfit has signed an agreement for Accenture and its Avanade subsidiary to become just the second and third companies to sell, host and deliver Windows Azure services to customers. …

    The Channel 10 Apr 13:03

  • Cisco and NetApp to fling cheaper mini FlexPods at small biz bods

    Bolt-N-buy blockening

    Cisco and NetApp are broadening the market for their FlexPod converged server-storage-networking-and-software systems with an entry-level system designed for 500 to 1,000 users. A FlexPod is an architectural blueprint listing validated components that can be bought and bolted together to provide a system with defined capacity …

    The Channel 10 Apr 13:27

  • Iran's plan to UNPLUG the INTERWEBS back from the dead

    Analysis But web free of smut (and dissent) is probably just a pipe dream

    Iran's plans to unplug consumers from the internet – replacing the network with an insular walled-garden intranet restricted to the Islamic republic – are unlikely to come to anything. A story about a supposed alternative 'clean' alternative network has been doing the rounds, alleging that the repressive state was building a …

    Government 10 Apr 14:01

  • Mega-star HD 10180 could have more planets than the Sun

    Rock star just 127 light years away has bigger entourage, says boffin

    Headline-hogging HD10180, the Sun-like star that fired the imaginations of alien-lovers everywhere back in 2010, may be the biggest planetary system ever detected. Artist's impression of the planetary system around HD10180. Credit: ESO/L Calçada A new study is claiming that there may be nine planets circling the main …

    Science 10 Apr 14:27

  • UK retailers start taking Nokia Lumia 900 orders

    Windows of opportunity

    Nokia's next Windows Phone, the Lumia 900, was made available for pre-orders today, with British punters able to pick one up free on contracts starting from £36 a month. The Finnish firm's third Windows Phone 7 handset bulks out the battery from 1450mAh to 1830mAh and ups the screen size from 3.7in to 4.3in. The display …

    reghardware 10 Apr 14:34

  • EMC VSPEX storage torpedo could sink FlexPods

    Comment Top-secret kit rumoured to be aiming to unseat Cisco offering

    The consensus among storage insiders is that NetApp and Cisco's FlexPods are in EMC's sights with its coming VSPEX validated bundle of bits. El Reg storage desk thinks the thing may be FlexPod-like. So rather than being a "product" like the VCE Vblock, VSPEX may be an architectural template or reference document specifying a …

    Storage 10 Apr 15:04

  • Toshiba prices up 13in monster tablet

    Fresh 7- and 10-inchers too

    Toshiba will out its 13.3in, 1600 x 900 monster Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich tablet in the US this coming June. It'll have new 7.7in and 10.1in fondleslabs out then too. All three will be part of its Excite range over there - Europeans have to make do with more prosaic model numbers instead. The 998g, 10mm-thick Excite 13 …

    reghardware 10 Apr 15:11

  • Nationwide Building Society website goes on the blink

    Customers suffering intermittent access

    Customers of the UK's Nationwide Building Society have suffered intermittent service to the bank's website since this morning, and the access problems are ongoing. But though access to the website continues to be patchy, a Nationwide spokeswoman was adamant that service on the internet bank had not been disrupted: "Customers …

    Financial News 10 Apr 15:27

  • Lenovo readies Yoga Ultrabook-cum-tablet for Blighty

    Windows 8 wonder priced up

    Lenovo today heralded the UK arrival of the IdeaPad Yoga - an Ultrabook with a display that folds right round to turn the machine into a tablet. The 1.5kg machine sports a 13in, 1600 x 900 IPS LCD touchscreen to match that of the Toshiba Excite 13. But it's a chunky 17mm thick - average for an Ultrabook, bulky for a tablet …

    reghardware 10 Apr 15:34

  • Sharp bags partners for LCD biz, forecasts bigger loss for 2011

    May be handing over control of loss-making display plant

    Sharp has found two new partners to help with its LCD factory as it forecasts an annual loss of ¥380bn ($4.7bn, £2.97bn). The company's new forecast for the fiscal year to the end of March is up from a previously expected loss of ¥290bn ($3.57bn, £2.25bn). The full results will be reported later this month. "We have adjusted …

    Financial News 10 Apr 16:02

  • Big Four US carriers vow to switch off stolen smartphones

    Operators team up with FCC to draw up stolen smartmobe blacklist

    In order to combat rising cases of phone theft, America's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is planning to create a national database of stolen smartphones with the goal of ensuring that the mobes never work again. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski is meeting police chiefs from New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland and a …

    Law 10 Apr 16:28

  • Citrix kicks down door, breaks up OpenStack cloud party

    Open ... and Shut CloudStack's anti-Amazon, Rackspace-free Apache play

    Two years ago, Rackspace went after Amazon in a big way, launching an open-source cloud initiative called OpenStack. Since that time, more than 150 companies have signed up to the anti-Amazon party. Last week, however, one big participant decided to leave OpenStack to create an after-party that by many accounts fixes a slew of …

    Developer 10 Apr 17:01

  • Shuttle Discovery to buzz Washington DC at 1,500 feet

    Updated Farewell flyover scheduled for next Tuesday

    Stateside Reg readers in our nation's capital will be treated to a farewell flyover of the Space Shuttle Discovery between 10am and 11am on Tuesday, April 17. No, NASA fans brokenhearted about the shuttle program's demise, it won't be flying on its own power – or, actually, gliding without power, as its in-atmosphere runs were …

    Science 10 Apr 17:50

  • Woz warns that patent palaver will stifle startups

    Still unsure about Tim Cook's reign

    Apple cofounder and number-one fanboi Steve Wozniak has warned that the current land rush for patents is going to stifle innovation and could cripple the next generation of startups. "I care so much about the young person that has some technical knowledge and wants to start their own business," Wozniak told the Australian …

    Law 10 Apr 18:50

  • Oracle forges Xeon E5 racks and blades

    Larry don't need no stinkin' microservers

    Oracle has launched five new servers – three rackables and two blades – based on Intel's new Xeon E5-2600 two-socket server processors. HP and Dell tried to jump the gun and get ahead of Intel's launch of the Xeon E5-2600s with their respective ProLiant Gen8 and PowerEdge 12G machines. But Larry Ellison's Oracle, a relative …

    Servers 10 Apr 19:54

  • OnLive goes legit with licensing downshift for virtual Windows

    Updated Microsoft investigating VDI licensing

    Microsoft has claimed a partial victory in getting OnLive to change its Windows-on-an-iPad service to comply with Windows 7 licensing terms. OnLive set up a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) system, offering users of the iPad and other hardware to use a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) version of Windows 7 on their devices. …

    Virtualization 10 Apr 23:19

  • Wellcome Trust backs boffins in open publishing row

    With a sting in the tail

    The Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest non-government funders of science, has reiterated its open-access policy, in a move seen as supporting the growing scientists’ revolt against major academic publisher Elsevier. So far, more than 9,000 scientists worldwide have attached their names to a boycott of Elsevier, which …

    Science 10 Apr 23:34

  • Matt Groening reveals location of Simpsons' Springfield

    Mmmmmmmm ... actual place

    Simpsons creator Matt Groening has revealed the location of Springfield, the setting for The Simpsons. In an interview with The Smithsonian, Groening says The Simpsons live in Springfield, Oregon, the setting for the radio and television drama Father Knows Best. Groening says he liked Father Knows Best as a child and, growing …

    Bootnotes 10 Apr 23:50