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23rd April 2012 Archive

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  • Higher ground: plants seeking colder temperatures

    Flowers take up mountaineering

    A study conducted by the University of Vienna and published in Science has found that all across Europe, plants are moving to higher altitudes. Billed as the first pan-continental study of the impact of climate change on Europe’s flora, the research warns that while the scientists found more species being observed on mountain …

    Science 23 Apr 00:10

  • US okays release of bird flu research

    Ferret-killer research deemed to have public health benefits

    US authorities have recommended that two controversial papers describing a genetically-engineerd form of the H5N1 virus, commonly known as bird flu, can be published. As we reported in March, The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) considered a paper by Dutch Scientist Dr. Ron Fouchier and recommended that …

    Science 23 Apr 01:00

  • Microsoft automates Office 365 installs

    Deployment Toolkit 2012 released, helps Windows 7, 8 rollouts too

    Microsoft has updated its automated software development tools to the new Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2012, and in a sign it wants to push its cloudy productivity has added the ability to automate Office 365 deployments. Details are sketchy at present, but the download page for the software promises “Comprehensive tools …

    Software 23 Apr 01:30

  • Megaupload case near collapse: report

    Farce piled upon farce

    An American district court judge has cast doubt over the whole Megaupload trial, telling the FBI the criminal charges against Kim Dotcom may never make it to trial. The New Zealand Herald is reporting that during a hearing in Virginia the judge, Liam O’Grady, doubted if “we are ever going to have a trial in this matter” when …

    Hosting 23 Apr 02:00

  • Google Street View comes to Israel

    Security officials insist only public areas snapped

    Google has launched its Street View product in Israel, after what the Jerusalem Post describes as “meetings with Israeli security officials” that ensured “Street View only shows public areas.” Google itself is focussing on the virtual tourism potential of the service's Israeli incarnation, announcing it in a post titled …

    Cloud 23 Apr 02:45

  • China hits back at US cyber snooping allegations

    Satellite exports to China will be tightened

    The war of words between the US and China escalated at the weekend after the People’s Republic vigorously denied allegations from the Pentagon that its rapid rise as a space superpower has been made possible in part thanks to “successful spying”. The US report prepared by the departments of State, Commerce and Defence …

    Policy 23 Apr 06:51

  • Vodafone agrees to Cable and Wireless buy

    £1bn deal to boost UK enterprise business, cut costs elsewhere

    After many weeks of negotiations, Vodafone Europe has agreed to acquire Cable and Wireless Worldwide (CWW) for a sum that values the latter company at £1,044m, or £0.38 per share. The deal comes after Tata last week dropped out of a bid for CWW, which then gave Vodafone a deadline of Noon GMT today (April 23) to make a bid …

    Business 23 Apr 06:51

  • Sony and Nokia still a hit with Asian consumers

    At last some good news for the under-fire duo

    Nokia and Sony remain two of the most powerful brands in Asia despite high profile problems affecting both companies which have sent their market share, revenues and global reputation plummeting in recent months, according to a new piece of research. Market consultancy Nikkei BP Consulting evaluated 60 global brands in eight …

    Business 23 Apr 06:58

  • Woman cuffed for smuggling iPhones in beer bottles

    Empties packed fruity contraband

    A Chinese woman has been stopped at the border after trying to smuggle more than 200 iPhone 4S devices from Hong Kong into the Apple-mad nation hidden inside empty beer bottles. The woman was caught red-handed by customs officials at the Sha Tau Kok border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen and claimed she was taking the bottles …

    Policy 23 Apr 06:58

  • Online criminal records checks to save Surrey council £300k

    Will slash CRB process from 6 weeks to a few days

    Surrey county council has launched a new system to conduct Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks in an effort to cut costs and improve efficiency. The local authority said that the new system, which is being provided by technology firm Atlantic Data, will save up to £300,000 over three years and speed up CRB processes. Under …

    Government 23 Apr 07:02

  • Turing's rapid Nazi Enigma code-breaking secret revealed

    Maths homework kept in GCHQ vault for 70 years

    Blighty's communications eavesdropping nerve centre GCHQ has issued two papers written by superboffin Alan Turing on the maths behind code-breaking. The documents, held in secret for 70 years, laid the foundations for the quick and efficient decryption of Nazi Enigma-scrambled messages - a breakthrough that lopped about two …

    Government 23 Apr 07:26

  • EU-US name-swap deal actually gives passengers MORE privacy

    Better than interim deal ... but still keeps your data for 5 years

    The European Parliament has approved a controversial new agreement allowing the EU to exchange airline passenger information with the US, it has announced. The EU said that the agreement (37-page/138KB PDF), which sets out the conditions under which passenger name record (PNR) data can be transferred, would provide "legal …

    Government 23 Apr 08:04

  • Plumbers of the interwebs vow to kill IP hijacking

    Task force to send 'Rover' out to wild web galaxy

    The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) aims to strengthen the basic protocols of the internet, with a way to stop route, or IP, hijacking. IETF experts say the proposed fix is simpler to implement than previous suggestions. IP hijacking exploits a fundamental weakness of the internet, Data and messages sent across the …

    Hosting 23 Apr 08:31

  • Happy 30th Birthday, Sinclair ZX Spectrum

    Retro Week The story of an historic micro

    The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was launched 30 years ago today. At the Churchill Hotel, Clive - now Sir Clive - Sinclair stood before reporters and a barrage of camera flashbulbs to unveil the machine, the successor to the popular ZX81, on 23 April 1982. Comparing the new machine to the BBC Micro Model A - released the previous …

    reghardware 23 Apr 08:39

  • Asus: Ice Cream Sandwich Transformer Pad out in May

    Dixons exclusive for tablet-cum-laptop

    Asus UK has confirmed that the Transformer Pad TF300T - farewell, Eee branding… - will be out over here late next month, though not on widespread availability until the end of June. The Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich tablet will retail for £399, but that includes the machine's clip-on keyboard-cum-battery extender. Asus said it …

    reghardware 23 Apr 09:02

  • From the Department of WTF: New USB tampon flash drive

    Thieves will probably give it a miss

    There's not much to say about this one. It's a flash drive... and it looks like a tampon. Presumably the idea is that it will be ignored if a thief rifles through your backpack, handbag or briefcase. Tampon-shaped USB stick The company flogging it has a taste for the bad pun... so prepare for the worst if you point your …

    Storage 23 Apr 09:23

  • HP, Microsoft hop into bed for VS3 private cloud kit romp

    For the sysadmin who needs 6,000 VMs, stat

    System integrators had better polish up their resumes, because every IT vendor wants to sell preconfigured systems with servers, storage, networking, and management software – all pre-integrated and ready to have software poured onto their virtual machines to start doing real work in hours. Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft have …

    Cloud 23 Apr 09:39

  • Taxan touts tablet for bathing beauties

    Shower and tell?

    Thanks to Japan's Kaga Hightech Co., better known for its Taxan brand, we can now enjoy our tablets in the bath. Step forward the Méopad Aqua, a 7in, 1-024 x 600 fondleslab with all the usual accoutrements and an unusual one: it's waterproof. It's ready, then, for use in the kitchen, the company claimed, or by the bath. The …

    reghardware 23 Apr 09:51

  • LG 3D phone revamp hits Europe

    Guess what, it's lighter, slimmer...

    LG continued to push glasses-free 3D tech onto European punters - but not Brits, apparently - today with the Optimus 3D Max, a slimmer, enhanced version of the company's first-gen 3D smartphone. The LG Optimus 3D Max - revealed at MWC 2012 alongside the firm's Tegra 3-based handset the Optimus 4X HD - boasts a 1.2GHz dual-core …

    reghardware 23 Apr 09:58

  • Adobe Cloud offers leg up over Creative Suite's price wall

    Monthly subscription for casual turtleneck types

    Adobe has launched its mighty Creative Suite in to the cloud, potentially giving designers and illustrators a slightly more affordable way to access its reassuringly expensive tools. On Monday the company unveiled Creative Suite 6, which is available for the first time on a subscription basis from the Creative Cloud, also …

    Cloud 23 Apr 10:02

  • CSC axes another 640 UK IT workers

    NHS computer bungle biz slashes Blighty workforce by over 1,000

    Bungling IT services firm CSC is to lay off a further 640 IT workers in the UK on top of the 500 bods it is shaving from its NHS account. "We can confirm that we have started a formal 90-day consultation process in the UK which could reduce the number of people working in our UK business by an anticipated number of 640 people …

    CIO 23 Apr 10:17

  • IBM fires Power-powered Penguins at x86's weak spots

    Linux-only servers to gobble piece of a $10bn pie

    Big Blue has not made any huge proclamations to date, but it is not exactly a secret that the people in charge of IBM's Systems and Software Group want the Power7 processor and its follow-ons to grab a larger share of the systems racket. To that end, Big Blue is reviving a Linux-only variant of its Power Systems lineup with …

    Virtualization 23 Apr 10:42

  • Adonit Jot Flip precision tablet stylus

    Geek Treat of the Week A fine line

    "If you see a stylus, they blew it," Steve Jobs famously said. He was referring to the fact that the iPad’s multi-touch display and UI is designed to be used with fingers rather than an input device and that, in his view, a stylus is superfluous. That may be true for the bulk of tablet apps, but there’s no doubt that for those …

    reghardware 23 Apr 11:00

  • Microsoft lobs out first Skype for Windows Phone

    Now does straight-up video calls

    Microsoft has delivered the first version of Skype for Windows Phone. Available through the Windows Phone Marketplace, the free app eats up 6MB of space and works on devices from version 7.5 and higher. Since releasing the beta in February, Microsoft has added the ability to make video calls in portrait mode along with friend …

    Broadband 23 Apr 11:18

  • Martha Lane Fox hits caps lock, yells at small biz websites

    UK web champ thinks Blighty can do better online

    Martha Lane Fox, known affectionately as the "Government Digital Champion", has announced (another) initiative to get Brits online: "an exciting vision" called Go ON UK. Launching Go ON today, Lastminute.com co-founder Lane Fox said that she wanted to "make the UK the world’s most digitally capable nation where no one – old or …

    Small Biz 23 Apr 11:41

  • Lovefilm, Netflix 'no competitive constraint' on Sky Movies

    Ofcom: satellite broadcaster has more power

    Sky has too much money and subscribers to be threatened by the likes of Lovefilm and Netflix, the telecoms and media watchdog Ofcom has said. "It does not appear to us that the current streaming VoD services offered by Lovefilm or Netflix are substitutes for Sky Movies," Ofcom said. "Rather than being substitutes for Sky …

    reghardware 23 Apr 11:44

  • Microsoft mulls backside display for mobiles

    Rear guard action

    Microsoft has considered mobiles with multiple screens. A recently granted patent shows plans for an additional low-power display on the rear of our devices. The concept sees an E Ink-like display integrated across the entire backside of future mobile hardware. This is said to give vendors an opportunity to free space on the …

    reghardware 23 Apr 11:46

  • Northamber coughs £6.35m to snap up its warehouse

    Blows nearly half cash reserves on Surrey-based premises

    Veteran distie Northamber is a lot less cash rich after stumping up £6.35m to buy the freehold of its warehouse in Weybridge, Surrey. The lease was set to run for another two and a half years, but the oldest IT trade wholesaler in the UK said that in recent weeks the current owner of the premises had initiated a sale on the …

    The Channel 23 Apr 11:56

  • Ofcom probes Sky News over Canoe man email hacks

    Watchdog mulls public interest defence

    Broadcaster Sky News is being investigated by Ofcom over its admission that it hacked into emails for a story in 2008. "Ofcom is investigating the fairness and privacy issues raised by Sky News' statement that it had accessed without prior authorisation private email accounts during the course of its news investigations," the …

    Security 23 Apr 12:01

  • Reader experts thrash LOHAN's mighty rod

    Why not a launch rail for the Vulture 2 spaceplane?

    There's some lively debate going on down at the Reg forums LOHAN mosh pit regarding whether using a metal rod launch system for our Vulture 2 spaceplane really is the way to go. We're delighted that you lot have taken the time to do a bit of head-scratching on what is one of the critical mission decisions. Our biggest concern …

    SPB 23 Apr 12:18

  • PC World, Currys, Dixons websites all go titsup

    Not enough fibre

    The websites of Dixons Retail Group electronics stores have gone down today - knocking over Currys, PC World and Dixons.co.uk. The sites have been offline since breakfast, but there's been some confusion about the cause of the outage. Initially visitors to the Currys' site had a "503 Unavailable Error" page pop up, then a …

    The Channel 23 Apr 12:18

  • Telegraph website falls over in outage riddle

    Updated Breaking news

    The website for UK daily newspaper The Telegraph has gone titsup today, and had been out for about an hour at the time of writing. The site currently returns a 404 error page on all its pages, including the landing page, which says "Sorry. We cannot find the page you are looking for". A request for comment on the outage had …

    Hosting 23 Apr 12:36

  • Getting rich off iPhone apps is b*llocks, say UK devs

    MPs told sales can't cover costs while Apple coins it

    Almost no apps cover their development costs and software services only make money in "extremely unusual" cases, some proper engineers have told MPs. A panel of engineers and boffins drawn from the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing poured cold water on the idea of …

    Small Biz 23 Apr 12:46

  • Security bug stalls new dot-word TLD land grab AGAIN

    ICANN's domain explosion backfires, fizzles out

    Domain name overlord ICANN has been forced to delay its new top-level domain (TLD) expansion by another week as its techies attempt to analyse the fallout of an embarrassing security vulnerability. Its TLD Application System (TAS), which companies worldwide have been using since January to confidentially apply for gTLDs such …

    Hosting 23 Apr 13:01

  • How to wrestle storage in virtual server bear pits

    Deep Dive Training server admins into server-and-storage admins

    Server virtualisation is no longer just a topic for server admins; it also affects the management of storage and networking equipment. And the introduction of server virtualisation means that all of a sudden server operations people have to learn how to deal with storage. This can create administrative complexity, as …

    Virtualization 23 Apr 13:28

  • Amazon Kindle Touch touches down early

    Reader revival

    Amazon's Kindle Touch has gone on sale a week ahead of schedule, with the second of the company's latest-gen Kindles now available from select retailers. Of course, Amazon.co.uk fronts the Kindle Touch sales, where customers can pick up a Wi-Fi only version for £109 or a 3G model for £60 more. Other outlets include John Lewis …

    reghardware 23 Apr 14:00

  • Enterprise apps to bring bespoke BACK FROM THE DEAD

    Sysadmin blog Yo SME sysadmins, break out your Hammer pants, it's the '90s again...

    The '90s saw a boom in the development and acceptance of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software. Ever since, various analysts and pundits have predicted the marginalisation of custom software development. In the SME space, it has been hard to argue; the past two decades have seen COTS software dominate. But with the emergence …

    Servers 23 Apr 14:02

  • Facebook beds silent-bonking mobe coupon biz Tagtile

    App-gobbling spree continues with NFC upstart

    While the world was watching the Instagram deal, Facebook was also buying up a rather more innovative startup which hopes to provide all the profitable bits of NFC without the fluff. Tagtile, a small startup acquired by Facebook last week for an undisclosed sum, offers coupon-based loyalty schemes based on a mobile phone …

    Small Biz 23 Apr 14:29

  • Sony updates iPod docks with Bluetooth playback

    Hi-fi fo fum

    Sony has unveiled two new iPod docks, one with wireless Bluetooth capabilities and the other with a USB port for MP3 playback. The CMT-V75BTiP and the CMT-V50iP both sport docks compatible with the iPod, iPhone and iPad, as well as a subtly hidden CD player for those still attached to their physical music collection. The CMT …

    reghardware 23 Apr 14:56

  • Solaris shops bunged cash to upgrade old duffers

    Oracle spring cleans Sparc base

    If you have an old Sparc-based system from Sun Microsystems or Fujitsu in production, Oracle wants to pay you some cash to trade in that old box for more modern Sparc Enterprise T or M gear. Oracle slipped out the Trade In, Trade Up promotion a month ago, targeting its installed base of musty tech as well as that of sometime …

    CIO 23 Apr 15:03

  • DARPA overjoyed that its hypersonic glider came apart, blew up

    REAL inventors and scientists cause explosions

    Maverick Pentagon crazytech agency DARPA has awarded itself a firm pat on the back after a detailed examination of its second HTV-2 test flight last year, in which the high-tech Mach 20 glider was destroyed 9 minutes into the trial and crashed into the Pacific. Down we go, into the wild blue yonder “The greatest achievement …

    Bootnotes 23 Apr 15:33

  • LightSquared pays off $56m debt with Brit biz Inmarsat

    What could possibly be up mobile broadband wannabe's sleeve?

    Troubled wannabe mobile broadband operator LightSquared has settled with its only significant debtor Inmarsat, although it still lacks any plan to pay back its own investors. LightSquared has paid off the British satellite business to the tune of $56.25m (£35m). In return, for the next two years Inmarsat won't collect its …

    Business 23 Apr 16:01

  • EMC 'poised' to gobble flashy upstart Xtremio

    NetApp also perusing the menu - report

    EMC is apparently closer to buying Herzliya, Israel headquartered Xtremio, with NetApp sniffing around as well, according to Israeli financial news site Globes. This possibility first popped up publically in March. Globes' sources say EMC execs, such as CFO David Goulden and VMware's CTO Dr Stephen Herrod, have visited Israel …

    Storage 23 Apr 17:02

  • VC Horowitz: 'Why we only made $78m on $1bn Instagram sale'

    Duo banked return that was 312 times their $250k stake

    Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen's high-tech venture fund Andreessen Horowitz has made out handsomely on Facebook's $1bn purchase of Instagram. Andreessen's partner Ben Horowitz reckons the duo have made 312 times their original investment in the zero-revenue smartphone photo sharing site after committing $250,000 two years …

    Small Biz 23 Apr 17:36

  • Chinese web tat bazaar takes profit hit, 'invests in quality'

    Alibaba admits 25% profit droop in Q1 results

    Chinese e-commerce biz Alibaba (1688.HK) has taken a hammering in the last three months as profits fell 25 per cent compared to the same period last year. A chill in the Chinese economy, combined with investment aimed taking the tat-flogging site more "upmarket" have brought profits down, said Alibaba execs in their pre- …

    Financial News 23 Apr 18:02

  • Microsoft and Facebook in $1bn pass the IP parcel play

    Old vet and new media upstart bond - looks like trouble

    Microsoft and Facebook concluded a significant round of pass the patent parcel today as the soon-to-IPO social network gained rights to a bundle of IP formerly belonging to AOL. The companies have carved up the $1bn patent pile that Microsoft secured from AOL earlier this month, strengthening both their respective IP positions …

    Financial News 23 Apr 18:16

  • Courier mishap sends woman's corpse to shopping club

    Box marked perishable

    A mix-up at a freight forwarding firm meant a dead woman's torso was diverted from a research facility in Florida and shipped to a wholesale shopping club in Massachusetts instead. Staff at the headquarters of BJ's Wholessales Club's HQ in Westborough, Mass, were initially unconcerned when the comparatively large package …

    Bootnotes 23 Apr 18:52

  • Intel lets loose with 3rd gen Ivy Bridge tri-gate chips

    Claims massive OEM push for Core i5 and i7 systems

    Intel has released its first chips using tri-gate memory technology with the Core i5 and i7 series, dubbed Ivy Bridge, which it claims puts it years ahead of "the competition" – the chip giant's traditional name for AMD. The quad-core processors are Chipzilla's first 22nm range, and Intel claims the combination of reduced die …

    Hardware 23 Apr 19:10

  • Dell fuels up Precision workstations with Xeon E5s

    Ivy Bridge rocketsled to launch next month

    Intel has got its Xeon E5 processors out the door for boxes with one or two sockets and is getting ready to start the "Ivy Bridge" generation of desktop processors, and so it's no surprise Dell is revamping its Precision workstation lineup. The direct vendor is keeping momentum going in this fast-growing segment of the desktop …

    HPC 23 Apr 19:34

  • Facebook prospectus shows jump in users, fall in profits

    SEC requirements are a bitch

    Facebook's latest pre-IPO filing shows the social network giant ramped up to 901 million users, who produce 3.2 billion likes and comments a day. Oh, and it said its net income slipped on the year as operating expenses ballooned. The updated S1 filing covered the period up to March 31, and bombarded potential investors with …

    Financial News 23 Apr 21:00

  • Apple sued for every touchscreen device by Flatworld prof

    Finger-based tech man makes massive money grab

    A Pennsylvania professor is gunning for a slice of all of Apple's touch-based product revenues, after claiming they infringe a patent for a museum screen technology he developed 15 years ago. Slavoljub Milekic, a professor in cognitive sciences and digital design at the Univeristy of Arts in Pennsylvania, said he developed a …

    Financial News 23 Apr 21:24

  • Teradata gets partly cloudy to rein in big data

    Forges SAS in-memory analytics beast

    Capacity planning on data warehouses is every bit as much of a nightmare as it is for other kinds of servers and their workloads. That's why Teradata is taking a page out of the cloudy infrastructure sales manual and offering customers the ability to buy capacity on their data warehouse appliances on a utility basis. Teradata …

    Cloud 23 Apr 22:09

  • Google farewells apps in spring clean

    Bye-bye Blackberry Sync, Picasa for Mac and Linux

    Mac users, it seems, haven’t embraced the ability to sync to Picasa to any great degree, with Google removing the platform from its Picasa service in its latest round of app spring cleaning. Picasa Web Albums for Mac and Picasa Web Albums Plugin for iPhoto have both been unplugged from the machine-that-goes-ping, along with a …

    Software 23 Apr 22:44

  • Arctic Ocean may be releasing its methane

    New source of greenhouse gas identified, but not yet explained

    A group of researchers has expressed concern that the Arctic may contribute more methane to the atmosphere than previously estimated. While working out the past history of climate change is relatively straightforward (especially for the past fifty to one hundred years, for which we have direct measurements), predicting its …

    Science 23 Apr 23:15

  • Gore, Bush, and Berners-Lee rock into 'net Hall of Fame

    Internet Society ready to roll

    The Internet Society has begun its own hall of fame for the bad boys and girls of the information superhighway. The internet glitterati are organized into three categories: Pioneers Circle, Innovators and Global Connectors. Inductees include Al Gore, Linus Torvalds, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the delightfully named Randy Bush, …

    Hosting 23 Apr 23:45