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25th April 2012 Archive

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  • Facebook wonk among 'digital' advisers to Cabinet Office

    No room on board for Google or telcos, though...

    Facebook's head Brussels' policy wonk Richard Allan is among the names joining a digital advisory group created by the Cabinet Office. Francis Maude's department confirmed that the collective would unsurprisingly be chaired by digerati darling Martha Lane Fox, who carried out a review of the government's online services in …

    Government 25 Apr 2012, 00:01

  • Super Micro grows despite Xeon E5 delay, disk shortages

    The Romley server romp begins

    Motherboard and system maker Super Micro has been anticipating the bump in revenues from Intel's "Sandy Bridge" family of Xeon E5 chips and their related "Romley" server designs for nearly a year, and finally the Romley romp has begun. In the company's third quarter of fiscal 2012 ended in March, revenues rose by 2.5 per cent …

    HPC 25 Apr 2012, 00:20

  • Nikon recalls camera batteries

    EN-EL15 battery “overheats and deforms the camera body”

    Nikon has issued a recall for the EN-EL15 Lithium Ion battery, an accessory for its D800, D800E, and D7000 digital-SLR cameras, and the Nikon 1 V1 advanced camera. In a service advisory statement present on Nikon’s US, European and Australian websites, the company says the battery “may contain a sub-standard component” which “ …

    Hardware 25 Apr 2012, 00:26

  • Billionaire astro mining venture long on hype and timescale

    First launch in 2014, mining in 2022

    The much-hyped launch of Planetary Resources has been held in the august surroundings of the Museum of Flight in Seattle; so now we've got some details how feasible are the plans? According to the roadmap laid out the first phase of the project will kick off with the launch of the Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft, which is …

    Science 25 Apr 2012, 00:32

  • Ten... eight-bit classic games

    Retro Week An Antique Code Show Special

    I live with geeks, and when they aren't at hackfest they are in the front room playing Vindicators and Spyhunter on a Friday night. I think they only tolerate my presence because my dad works at CERN and I used to be able to program Turbo Pascal before all that PCP melted my frontal lobe. One topic of conversation I use to …

    Games 25 Apr 2012, 06:00

  • Speaking in Tech: Cisco haters, Kim Dotcom and virtual networking

    Podcast Plus: Ed smacked down for technical fouls

    They're baa-ack.... It's another enterprise and consumer tech cast hosted by The Dude of enterprise tech, Greg Knieriemen, cloud and storage playa Ed Saipetch and web2.0 maestra Sarah Vela. Storage architect Chris Evans is a guest on the show this week as they discuss Kim Dotcom, the Nexus Galaxy, and whether virtual and …

    The Channel 25 Apr 2012, 07:01

  • Cloudy crypto SSO firm: Passwords must go

    Infosec 2012 Ping Identity: Forget 'insecure and annoying' logins... and buy our kit

    Cloudy crypto firm Ping Identity is pushing the benefits of using cloud-based technologies to reduce, and perhaps even eliminate, password headaches. The firm is using the Infosec show to promote Ping One, launched in late March as a way of offering ID-as-a-service. Ping Identity is also talking up the potential for single …

    Security 25 Apr 2012, 08:02

  • WIN an HTC One X with Reg Hardware

    Competition Eight of the beauties to give away

    Reg Hardware has buddied up with HTC to offer you the chance to bag one of its flagship new phones, the HTC One X, a handset we called "a quad-core corker" in our review of the beast. Packing a 1.5GHz penta-core Nvidia Tegra 3, a massive Gorilla glass screen and big beats from the Dr himself its unquestionably the must have …

    Mobile 25 Apr 2012, 09:00

  • SSH firm aims to untangle crypto key hairball

    Infosec 2012 Fo' SHHizzle

    Secure Shell (SSH) certificate management – a key internet protocol used for remote access and file transfer for nearly 20 years now – can become quite a tangled issue if there isn't a clear management policy in place, and SSH Communications Security, one of the security exhibitors at Infosec, claims it has a solution. SSH is …

    Security 25 Apr 2012, 09:01

  • Uni plagiarism site buckles under crush of last-minute essays

    'The internet ate my homework'

    Student-sniffing site Turnitin went down in the UK for 24 hours over Monday and yesterday, leaving last-minute essays piled up in the plagiarism spotter's inbox. Turnitin is a software service that checks through student essays for instances of plagiarism based on searches over the net, and some universities now require …

    Hosting 25 Apr 2012, 09:22

  • Tablets are the future of the PC, says researcher

    Fondleslabs to eat into laptop sales, boost desktops

    Ask Frank Gillett, a researcher with market watcher Forrester, whether tablets are going to dominate how people interact with content and the internet - what most folk do with laptops and such - and the answer is a resounding 'yes'. He reckons that "tablets will become the preferred, primary device for millions of people …

    Tablets 25 Apr 2012, 09:24

  • IT Department seeks clowns and jugglers

    It's a circus out there

    Working in IT can sometimes feel like working in a circus. You're expected to juggle the priorities of the business, often based on who shouts loudest or who has the most clout. And you’ve got to walk the tightrope of budget management with your business, IT vendors and the inevitable consultants telling you to deliver more with …

    Business 25 Apr 2012, 09:30

  • FIVE-day ZoneEdit outage freezes thousands of sites

    Mystery glitch knocks out DNS config

    Hundreds of thousands of websites have been hit by an unexplained outage at DNS services provider ZoneEdit, with users seeing five full days of downtime. While the 600,000 customer domains ZoneEdit looks after were all apparently still resolving during the outage, users were been able to log into their accounts to make updates …

    Management 25 Apr 2012, 09:41

  • Olympic champ ad blitz dents Virgin Media despite £1bn sales

    Crosses finishing line with record revenue in Q1

    Virgin Media spent a whopping £52.6m on marketing costs in the telco's first quarter ended 31 March. The company ran TV, print, online and billboard ads featuring the likes of Olympian Usain Bolt and Virgin Group's Richard Branson. However, VM said the extra publicity spend, which climbed a massive 49 per cent during the …

    Financial News 25 Apr 2012, 10:01

  • Internet's first 'Hall of Fame' REVEALED

    Which net shlebs do you think made the red-carpet list?

    The Internet Society has announced its inaugural Internet Hall of Fame featuring web stars who've helped literally make the internet. Publication of the list, which will become an annual event, has seen the likes of TCP/IP daddy Vint Cerf inducted alongside Van Jacobson who helped make TCP/IP scale and prevent the web’s …

    Bootnotes 25 Apr 2012, 10:18

  • Wannabe infosec kingpins: Forget tech, grab a clipboard

    Ditch the debugger, bone up on biz risk management

    Budding chief information security officers (CISOs) would be better off boning up on business, communication, and risk management skills than getting bogged down in detailed discussions about technology, according to a panel of senior security professionals. The overwhelming message from the InfoSecurity Summit 2012 in Hong …

    Management 25 Apr 2012, 10:37

  • Panasonic DMP-BDT320 3D Blu-ray player

    Review Disc spinner with a new twist

    Panasonic’s DMP-BDT320 is both fabulous and frustrating. Leading the brand’s mainstream Blu-ray brigade, and positioned as an understudy to the audiophile grade DMP-BDT500, it packs a towering performance into a chassis barely 27mm tall. It also comes with a new-style remote control that tries far too hard to be clever. Box …

    Hardware 25 Apr 2012, 11:00

  • Sony cloud-based sync'n'store service goes live

    PlayMemories takes on Dropbox et al

    Sony launched its cloud-storage service PlayMemories Online today, with registered Sony Entertainment Network users handed 5GB of space free. PlayMemories lets punters upload image and movie content to the cloud, accessing it again from their PC, PlayStation 3, TV or mobile device. A free app is available for the latter, …

    Broadband 25 Apr 2012, 11:04

  • Tim Cook rejects Apple's old business model of suing everyone

    CEO just wants to settle and get back to rebranding Foxconn kit

    Apple head honcho Tim Cook has indicated that he'd be willing to settle the wide-ranging, ongoing patent disputes raging over smartphones and fondleslabs - provided of course that his adversaries admit everything and pay up. When asked about the fruity firm's Great Patent Wars during last night's earnings call, Cook said that …

    Management 25 Apr 2012, 11:16

  • Official: Britain staggers into double-dip recession doom

    Programmers, telly producers lose brave battle to save Blighty's economy

    Britain has slipped back into recession, preliminary figures released by the Office of National Statistics showed this morning. The UK economy shrank by 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2012. That's the second consecutive GDP nosedive, which technically means fears of the country falling into a double-dip recession have …

    Financial News 25 Apr 2012, 11:28

  • Wannabe-human bots face 2012 Turing Test in Turing's old office

    Bletchley Park chosen to mark 100th anniversary of boffin's birth

    An artificial intelligence software contest devised as an experiment by mathematician Alan Turing will be held this year in his old office at wartime code-breaking HQ Bletchley Park. The location was chosen to mark the centenary of his birth in 1912. During the Turing Test a computer program must use natural language and hold …

    Developer 25 Apr 2012, 11:42

  • Fifa fans kick up fuss over Euro 2012 team substitutions

    EA accused of red carding complaints

    Fans of EA's Fifa football franchise have seen red after 24 teams were left out of its Euro 2012 DLC release, which has also been dogged by bugs, according to disgruntled gamers. Teams that appear not as themselves but as similarly-styled groups of players include tournament host Ukraine, and Slovakia and Wales, with players …

    Games 25 Apr 2012, 11:46

  • Can Windows 8 bag Microsoft 20 more years at the top?

    Live chat Argue the toss live online @ 2pm BST on Friday

    Microsoft opened the 1990s with two pieces of software that paved the way to its total domination of home and business PC computing: Windows 3.0 and 3.1. Microsoft's operating systems arrived at a seminal point in digital history: the rise of Intel, whose chips changed the economics of the PC, and the demise of a fractured …

    Windows 8 25 Apr 2012, 12:01

  • US doc finally fingers elusive G-spot

    83-year-old corpse flashes Earth-moving button

    A retired US doctor reckons he's finally nailed the elusive Gräfenberg Spot – the alleged nerve bundle in the vagina's front wall which can legendarily provoke a profound earth-moving experience. To pin down the G-spot, Adam Ostrzenski of the Institute of Gynecology in Florida flew to Poland last September and performed a " …

    Science 25 Apr 2012, 12:17

  • Jeremy Hunt clings on as SpAd quits over News Corp emails

    Culture Sec's adviser 'went too far' in BSkyB bid affair

    UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt came under intense pressure to quit today following James Murdoch's revelations at the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics. He told MPs at lunchtime in Parliament that he did not want "to jump on a political bandwagon" but added that he did want to "set the record straight" on News Corp's failed …

    Government 25 Apr 2012, 12:27

  • Crytek: Schemes to strike second-hand games biz 'awesome'

    First person only

    Cult games developer Crytek this week shouted its support for next-gen consoles that take means to prevent second-hand games being played, calling such a prospect "absolutely awesome". No shizzle, Sherlock. It would say that, wouldn't it? The sentiments follow recent rumours that Sony and Microsoft's upcoming console releases …

    Games 25 Apr 2012, 12:28

  • Iran cuts off oil plants hit by mystery data-destroying virus

    Lockdown as officials drill into malware riddle

    Malware discovered at an Iranian oil terminal forced Iran to disconnect key oil facilities on Sunday. Authorities said an unnamed data-deleting virus prompted them to disconnect the main oil export terminal on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. The websites of the Iranian oil ministry and the National Iranian Oil firm went dark …

    Security 25 Apr 2012, 12:44

  • Ex-BP engineer cuffed 'for deleting Deepwater spill texts'

    Allegedly destroyed evidence during oil disaster cleanup

    A former BP engineer has been arrested and accused of covering up how badly the Deepwater Horizon oil spill clean-up was going by deleting text messages. Kurt Mix was cuffed in the US on the charge of obstruction of justice, for which he could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000 (£309,617). “The …

    Management 25 Apr 2012, 13:02

  • Google Drive stalls on LAUNCH DAY

    Blocks and Files Error: Disk not ready yet

    For this Mac user, Google Drive is just spin. Despite the fact that Google has made the announcement, it seems that the cloudy storage service is still being rolled out. The Google blog may say: "You can install Drive on your Mac or PC", but many of us cannot. It's too bad as I was looking forward to trying it. Point your …

    Cloud 25 Apr 2012, 13:32

  • Smartphones finally outsell featurephones ... in Japan

    You took your time, lads

    Forget China – Japan proved that its domestic mobile market is one of the most mature on the planet with new stats showing smartphone sales passed feature phone sales for the first time ever in February. Market-watcher comScore surveyed over 4,000 Japanese mobile subscribers to compile its latest MobiLens report for the three …

    Mobile 25 Apr 2012, 14:03

  • Sage Pay card stroker goes titsup for NINE hours

    1,000 email addresses leaked in outage apology

    Sage Pay's card payment system choked up yesterday for nine hours in an intermittent outage that affected its 30,000 customers in the UK and Europe. Sage first alerted customers to an error at 1.39pm yesterday afternoon, then finally posted the all-clear after 10pm last night. A Reg reader also flagged up another snafu by the …

    Small Biz 25 Apr 2012, 14:14

  • Hanging's too good for 'em - so what do you suggest?

    Reader alternatives to capital punishment invited

    Our report last week that there's no evidence capital punishment has an effect on the murder rate in the US of A prompted a lively reader debate on the subject of execution. Just about the only clear conclusion that came from the tussle is that once you've been strapped to a gurney and administered a fatal chemical cocktail, …

    Law 25 Apr 2012, 14:39

  • LG back in black after six-month cash bleed

    Business picks up in tellies and mobes

    After two quarters of losses, LG Electronics has pulled itself out of the doldrums with a net profit of ₩243bn ($213m, £131m) in the first quarter of this year. The Korean electronics firm lost ₩16bn ($14m, £8.6m) in the same quarter last year and ₩112bn ($98m, £60.6m) in the fourth quarter of 2011. Appetite for its new …

    Financial News 25 Apr 2012, 15:01

  • HTC to produce exclusive Facebook smartphone, bitch

    Wall flower?

    Talk of a Facebook phone resurfaced today amid familiar rumours that the Zuckerberg-owned firm has joined forces with phone-maker HTC to produce an Android handset heavily customised for social networkers. The jointly-developed smartphone is expected to launch in Q3 2012 at the earliest, unnamed "industry sources" say, …

    Phones 25 Apr 2012, 15:07

  • Major science fiction publisher to zap DRM

    E-books unencumbered

    Specialist Sci-Fi publisher Tom Doherty Associates, best known for its Tor, Forge and Starscape imprints, is calling time on DRM.. From today, its e-book offerings will be free of digital rights management shackles, TDA said. As well as TDA's US output, the move will apply to Pan Macmillan, which offers Sci-Fi titles in the …

    Tablets 25 Apr 2012, 15:08

  • SAP still not a force in cloud after sales cash drizzle

    Q1 not quite the deluge of euros software biz hoped for

    German software maker SAP AG is facing an uphill battle to become a force in the cloud market after revealing subscription-based sales amounted to just €29m (£23.7m) in Q1. This represents year-on-year growth of 625 per cent on the opening three months of 2011 but that's clearly from a minuscule base. Total revenues were up …

    Cloud 25 Apr 2012, 15:33

  • LinkedIn edges closer to China with new Hong Kong gaff

    Social network for suits has eyes on the holy grail

    Business social networking site LinkedIn took another step towards expansion in China this week with the opening of an office in neighbouring Hong Kong, its ninth in an Asia Pacific region which is home to more than 25 million of its members. This follows office openings in Singapore and Japan last year and the launch of the …

    Business 25 Apr 2012, 16:01

  • Microsoft takes on Spotify with sound of Woodstock

    Zune successor on show at E3?

    Microsoft will unveil its Zune platform successor at E3 2012, a Spotify-like music service codenamed 'Woodstock', it has been claimed. Details of the platform were leaked by insiders today, who say Microsoft's latest music offering won't require any browser plug-ins and will integrate heavily with Facebook, The Verge reports …

    Hardware 25 Apr 2012, 16:16

  • Symantec trims targets as subscriptions put off payday

    Salem's lot not quite so big

    Symantec's customers are cutting back on purchases and the company's revenues are going to be lower this quarter. Why is demand for its products lower? The company announced preliminary results for its fourth fiscal 2011 quarter as there is an unexpected shortfall. It announced expected revenues of $1.68bn – below the issued …

    Financial News 25 Apr 2012, 16:34

  • Intel came a-knockin' for Cray super interconnects

    'Once a Crayon, always a Crayon'

    The news that supercomputer maker Cray was selling off its interconnect hardware business to chip giant Intel was a bit of a shocker yesterday, and the top brass at Cray got on the horn with Wall Street bright and early this morning to explain the deal a bit more. First of all, Peter Ungaro, president and CEO at Cray, …

    HPC 25 Apr 2012, 17:04

  • Acer Q1 profit falls

    Not yet time for turnaround time

    Acer's recovery at the end of last year was short lived as Q1 sales and profits moved south. Revenues and operating income declined 11.4 per cent to NT$113bn and NT$138m respectively in the three months, which the firm described as being "in line with expectations". Profit after tax fared worse, crashing 72.1 per cent to NT$ …

    The Channel 25 Apr 2012, 17:58

  • Ted Nugent fined for failing to kill bear

    Probably won't kill Obama either, Secret Service says

    Ted Nugent – the hunter, "conservative activist" and rock guitarist whose Marshall amps probably go up to 12 – has been fined for failing to finish off a black bear he wounded with a bow and arrow. Nugent, 63, winged the creature during a 2009 hunting trip in a US national forest in southeast Alaska for his reality TV show Ted …

    Bootnotes 25 Apr 2012, 18:03

  • Unisys grows in Q1, swings to profit

    Services fills hardware gaps

    Mainframe and services seller Unisys saw some growth in the first quarter, with sales up 1.9 per cent to $928.4m thanks to a bump in services bookings and despite a slight downtick in hardware sales. The company swung from a $39.4m loss in the year-ago quarter to a $13.4m profit this time around. In the quarter, technology …

    Servers 25 Apr 2012, 18:32

  • EU privacy body slams ACTA as 'unacceptable'

    Law would threaten privacy AND data

    The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has issued its findings on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the results aren't good. The review of the treaty found that the text as it stands poses and "unacceptable" risk to the rights of EU citizens and requires highly intrusive monitoring of internet user's …

    Media 25 Apr 2012, 18:39

  • Dr. Web disputes Flashback Mac Trojan bot army estimates

    Much bigger than Symantec says

    Efforts by Apple and anti-virus vendors to kill the vast botnet assembled by notorious Flashback Mac Trojan may be much less successful than previously thought. Symantec last week suggested the Mac botnet shrank from a peak of 670,000 to 140,000 following the release of clean-up tools. But the Russian anti-virus firm Dr. Web …

    Security 25 Apr 2012, 18:43

  • VMware confirms ESX source code had been stolen and published

    Penetration from Hardcore Charlie

    VMware has confirmed that software posted online is part of the source code for its ESX hypervisor and has warned that more code could be released. The code was posted by a hacker calling himself Hardcore Charlie and may come from military contractor China National Import & Export Corp (CEIEC), which he claimed to have …

    Virtualization 25 Apr 2012, 22:05

  • AARNET upgrade touted as SKA lure

    Link with Southern Cross will bring dual 100Gbps links by 2016

    Australia and New Zealand’s bid for the hotly contested Square Kilometre Array (SKA) contract has been bolstered with a significant network stimulus via Southern Cross Cable Networks and AARNET. The network alliance, branded SXTransPORT, between AARNET, Australia’s research and education backbone network and Southern Cross …

    Networks 25 Apr 2012, 22:39

  • Swiss researchers demo ‘Avatar-like’ robot control

    Controlled by thought, kinda

    A partially-tetraplegic patient in Switzerland has controlled a robot 100 km distant via a head cap sensing electrical signals from his brain. According to the Associated Press, the experiment is the first time a “mind control” interface has been used by a partially paralyzed person, and without invasive implants. From his …

    Science 25 Apr 2012, 23:00

  • Micro Focus accuses NSW Police of software piracy

    Wants $AUD10m in unpaid licences

    UK software company Micro Focus is suing New South Wales (NSW) Police Force for unauthorised use of its ViewNow product, which ABC program 7:30 reports is used to access a critical database that contains information on most of the Australian state's citizens. Micro Focus' Australasian Managing Director Bruce Craig told the …

    Policy 25 Apr 2012, 23:14

  • Clouds rain money for Citrix in Q1

    Some of it spills out of the net income bucket

    Citrix Systems's acquisition strategy over the past decade has clearly paid off, with the company making yet another transformation and carving itself out niches in virtualization, network and application acceleration, and now cloudy infrastructure and now giving it a strong revenue stream. In the first quarter ended March, …

    Cloud 25 Apr 2012, 23:25

  • UK retail wiz makes $61m by turning up at Apple

    Ex-DSGI boss gets ID card, car space, pile-of-stock

    The former boss of UK retail chain Dixons found himself - almost - $61m richer on Friday as he sat down at his new desk at Apple. Filings at the SEC show that John Browett took up his new role as senior vp for retail at Apple last Friday. The filings were flagged up by MacRumours amongst others, and can be viewed at the SEC …

    The Channel 25 Apr 2012, 23:27

  • White House threatens veto of CISPA surveillance bill

    Obama lowers the boom on snoop law

    The White House has said that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), currently before the US House of Representatives, lacks enough privacy protections in its current form and will probably be vetoed if passed. A statement from the White House Office of Management and Budget said that, while the importance …

    Security 25 Apr 2012, 23:56