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9th May 2012 Archive

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  • Microsoft makes good with a 23-fix Patch Tuesday

    Busy Wednesday for BOFH

    It'll be all hands to the pumps in IT departments around the globe as Microsoft has issued this month's round of patches. There are 23 flaws to be fixed. The seven patches include three critical issues, affecting Microsoft Windows, Office, Silverlight, and the .NET Framework. One patch, MS12-034, sorts ten flaws, some of which …

    Security 9 May 00:48

  • VMware CTO reveals future directions in VMUG vid

    Speech in Italy says acquired techs 'don’t work well enough together yet'

    VMware Chief Technology Officer Steve Herrod has told an Italian VMUG meeting the VMware’s cloud infrastructure suite is still only loosely integrated and that the company has plans to do better. The video of Herrod’s speech has come to light through a Microsoft blog written by Dave Northey, a staffer at Microsoft Ireland, who …

    Platform 9 May 01:44

  • Let’s send 3D printers TO THE MOON

    Sci-Fi fuelled big ideas group wants “moonshot ecosystem”

    Science Fiction author Neal Stephenson has inspired the creation of a new project, dubbed Hieroglyph, which aims to promote discussion about big ideas humanity will actually build. The group is a response to Stephenson’s essay Innovation Starvation in which he bemoans the world’s “inability as a society to execute on the big …

    Science 9 May 02:39

  • Broadcasters get cash for vacating LTE spectrum

    Clearing the air for Australia's 2014 spectrum auctions

    Australia's free-to-air TV broadcasters and the publically-owned ABC have been handed an additional $53.5m to help shift them off the highly lucrative 2.5 GHz spectrum band. Clearing this spectrum band will open the flood gates for the government to auction licences for high bandwidth mobile broadband networks such as LTE. …

    Public Sector 9 May 04:22

  • AMD's Hondo APUs ready for Windows 8 Q4 launch - report

    Chip giant's tablet-friendly silicon on the way

    Chip giant AMD is set to debut its 32nm Trinity APUs in notebooks later this month, while the firm’s tablet-friendly Hondo chips will hit the streets in the fourth quarter to coincide with the much-anticipated launch of Windows 8, Digitimes has learnt. Citing “sources from notebook players”, the Taiwan-based tech title said …

    Hardware 9 May 04:40

  • Asia Likes Facebook, but friends in China are harder to find

    India has stronger adoption than Indonesia ... for now

    Facebook has added a whopping 20 million users to its South East Asia fan base over the past six months, bringing it ever closer to the magic figure of one billion globally, but Zuck and co. will be jealously eyeing China where home grown rivals continued to rapidly expand their social fiefdoms. Social media agency We Are …

    Business 9 May 04:45

  • Sony Vaio L VPCL22V1E 3D PC

    Review All-in-one with finger fun

    Finding the all-in-one Sony Vaio L Series with a 1TB hard disk isn't as easy as it might have been. The reason you'll need to be keep a keen eye on the specs is, according to Sony, due to a shortage of hard disks – a consequence of the flooding in Thailand. Indeed, the Vaio L series models soon to go on sale on Sony’s web site …

    reghardware 9 May 06:00

  • Microsoft makes carbon neutrality pledge

    Divisions will be responsible for offsetting own emissions

    Microsoft’s efforts to improve its less than stellar environmental credentials have received a boost with the news that the entire firm will be going carbon neutral as of 1 July. Announcing the decision, which kicks in at the start of Redmond’s new financial year, COO Kevin Turner said the commitment would cover all of the …

    Business 9 May 06:04

  • Twitter turns to feature phones for world domination

    Low-bandwidth web app sets up Facebook face-off beyond developed nations

    Twitter has thrown a bone to users stuck with feature phones, odd and/or old browsers or low-bandwidth connections to the Net by updating its mobile webapp. And along the way it may also have made an important strategic move to capture users in the developing world. The new mobile.twitter.com pictured below is said to require …

    Business 9 May 06:42

  • NHS rolls out open-source test results service for renal patients

    UK-wide system lets kidney patients see results before doctors do

    Patients of 53 renal units across the UK are accessing results and clinical letters through a secure online system, often meaning they get the information faster than their GPs. Renal PatientView is used by 19,000 patients who have opted in to accessing their results online. The system also lets patients add their own data - …

    Government 9 May 07:02

  • MPs: Unified EU patent court framework would hurt small biz

    Good in theory, but extra red tape will choke Blighty's SMBs

    A new court framework that would rule on validity and infringement cases stemming from proposed new unitary patents in the EU would be "prohibitively expensive" for small UK businesses to use, a committee of MPs has said. In a report analysing plans for the development of a new unified patent court (UPC), the House of Commons …

    Small Biz 9 May 07:32

  • FalconStor accelerates dedupe, drives finances over a cliff

    Comment Reliably cranking out continuing losses

    FalconStor is cranking out $19m to $20m revenues per quarter, punctuated by regular Q4 spikes, but continually makes losses. Why isn't it a healthy business making steady profits and growing? It is a storage software supplier selling a virtual tape library (VTL), continuous data protection and other products. Its co-founder …

    Financial News 9 May 08:03

  • Kelvin MacKenzie blasts 'footie rights warehouse' BSkyB

    Battle for the Johnstone's Paint Trophy taken to Ofcom

    The latest onslaught against media baron Rupert Murdoch comes from an unlikely assailant. Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie says he'll lodge a complaint with Ofcom over BSkyB's exclusive ownership of football rights. MacKenzie briefly ran BSkyB as its MD, after leaving the Currant Bun in 1994, and has often defended Murdoch's …

    Music and Media 9 May 08:32

  • Apple's HTML5 bet against Android extermination

    Open ... and Shut To be closed, one must support 'open'

    Harvard professor Clayton Christensen has more than 500 billion reasons to think he's wrong to suggest Apple is in for rough sailing, but he's not backing down. The father of disruption theory - a theory that Apple's former chief executive Steve Jobs claimed had a huge impact on his thinking - believes that Apple's end-to-end, …

    Developer 9 May 09:02

  • Advertising prefect spanks Virgin

    'I must not say my broadband is the fastest in the UK.' Whack. 'I must not...'

    Virgin Media must not claim it delivers "the UK's fastest broadband", the nation's advertising watchdog has judged. The cableco said it offered exactly that in a magazine ad published earlier this year. The ad invited punters to "get the edge in gaming" with Virgin's 50Mbps offering. However, rival provider BT took umbrage …

    reghardware 9 May 09:13

  • Speaking in Tech: VMware polishes post-PC virty tools

    Podcast This time it's virtual...

    It's time for another Speaking in Tech enterprise and tech biz roundup, with The Dude of enterprise tech, Greg Knieriemen, cloud and storage meister Ed Saipetch and web2.0 insider Sarah Vela. Our special guest this week is John Mark Troyer, the director of social media evangelism at VMware. This week we discuss.. The flood …

    Virtualization 9 May 09:19

  • Virgin Media site goes titsup in Pirate Bay payback attack

    Anonymous claims takedown victory

    Virgin Media's main website dropped off the interwebs on Tuesday with hackivist collective Anonymous claiming responsibility for the DDoS attacks in response to the company's recent cut-off of The Pirate Bay. The telco said it had to down its "customer-facing" website for about an hour last night, after it was hit by …

    Music and Media 9 May 09:37

  • Jetting off abroad? Pack protection ... for your Wi-Fi

    Feds warn of malware attacks on hotel net surfers

    A US government agency is warning travellers to be wary of malware that installs itself via pop-up browser windows on hotel internet connections. The malicious dialogue boxes typically pose as software updates to legitimate software products, an advisory from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) explains. "The FBI …

    Malware 9 May 10:01

  • US court tosses out Proview's IPAD trademark gripe

    Monitor biz and Apple told to end spat in China

    A US judge has thrown out the case brought by Proview that accused Apple of tricking it into selling the "IPAD" name for less than it should have. China's Proview filed the case in February, claiming that Apple had deliberately created a special company called IP Application Development (IPAD) just to talk Proview into handing …

    Law 9 May 10:17

  • Scandal ad slingers cough up $100k in 'Facebook clickjack' case

    Marketing biz 'earning $1.2m a month' settles out of court

    A marketing firm accused of running campaigns via a web of unscrupulous affiliates – who flooded Facebook with spam – has agreed to clean up its network. The business's owners settled a lawsuit brought against them and have denied any wrongdoing. Delaware-based Adscend Media allegedly made $1.2m (£743k) per month1 from …

    Spam 9 May 10:42

  • HP intros not-quite-Ultrabook Sleekbook laptops

    Reserves Ivy Bridge chippery for new Envy Spectre

    Not happy with the Ultrabook brand, or the notebook moniker? HP has a third: Sleekbook. What is a Sleekbook? It's an HP laptop that doesn't quite meet the specifications Intel has demanded any laptop vendor using its Ultrabook trademark must adhere to. Take HP's Envy 4, which comes with one of Intel's second-generation - …

    reghardware 9 May 10:48

  • Head over Heels

    Antique Code Show Cute creatures and perfidious puzzles

    Inspired no doubt by two years pondering the literal semantics of Tears For Fears' 1985 hit, Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond's Head Over Heels was an absolute masterful exploration game for the 8-bit era. Drawn in the same isometric vein as Knight's Lore and Ritman and Drummond's own Batman - no, not Arkham City, although I'd …

    reghardware 9 May 11:00

  • RIM's new BlackBerry Curve 9320 tempts teens

    One-way Curve

    RIM churned out another BlackBerry this week: the Curve 9320, a low-cost Qwerty handset pitched at yoof. The 9320 sports bog-standard specs that include a 2.4in, 320 x 240, a 3Mp camera and 512MB of Ram. It also runs RIM's soon-to-be-superseded BlackBerry OS 7.1, but an update to the forthcoming BB10 is unlikely. Still, …

    reghardware 9 May 11:01

  • Leaked Twitter accounts 'mostly banned spammers'

    Tweet site downplays dump of 55,000 passwords

    Twitter has downplayed the significance of a data dump that leaked the login details of 55,000 twits. Most of the usernames and passwords copied into a string of five Pastebin posts on Monday are either duplicates or belong to blocked spammers, according to the micro-blogging site. A spokesman said it was in the process of …

    Spam 9 May 11:12

  • Samsung outs Ivy Bridge notebooks

    Desktop replacements

    Two new 15.6in laptops are inbound from Samsung, each bearing an unannounced Intel Ivy Bridge processor, a third-gen Core i7 quad-core to be (a little) more precise. Both members of the Series 5 550P family will also arrive with 8GB of memory, DVD-RW drives and 300Mbps (2x2) 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi. The two laptops' …

    reghardware 9 May 11:21

  • BT outage kills phone lines in Eastbourne and Brighton

    Sussex hospital, businesses, schools cut off

    BT phone lines were down for 20,000 customers in Brighton and Eastbourne this morning, cutting phone contact to businesses and homes and even preventing a patient from getting through to the Royal Sussex County Hospital. A power cut in the Eastbourne Telephone exchange caused the landline outage that was first logged just …

    Telecoms 9 May 11:24

  • Cloud data fiasco forces bosses to break out the whiteboards

    Atlassian team-tracker outage caused by disk failure

    Workers relying on Atlassian's cloudy team-tracking software have reverted to whiteboards and spreadsheets after a service outage made key project data vanish. A Reg reader contacted us to say firms using Atlassian’s JIRA service had lost their all data, and said Atlassian had been unable to recover it despite a week of trying …

    Platform 9 May 11:43

  • Hated Visual Studio 11 beta in HIGH-ENERGY colour blast

    I can C clearly now the grey has gone

    Microsoft is breaking out the paints and giving the next Visual Studio a dash of colour after its drab John Major-inspired beta was branded hideous, monstrous and depressing by thousands of coders. VS11: Radiating blue energy The company said it has "increased the 'energy' level of the Visual Studio 11 themes" in the Visual …

    Developer 9 May 12:01

  • Queen unveils draft internet super-snoop bill - with clauses

    Her Maj opens Parliamentary session with clear nod to CCDP

    The Queen has detailed the government's upcoming programme of law-making on a grey day darkened by the gloom of a double-dip recession and plans to massively increase surveillance of the internet in the UK. Opening the new session of Parliament, Her Majesty confirmed on Wednesday that "draft clauses" would be introduced to …

    Law 9 May 12:12

  • Cisco hits the roof in Olympics marketing dash

    Not just 3D, but Fry-D™

    Cisco has thrown open its Olympics hospitality suite, giving partners and customers both a panoramic view of the Olympic Park and an up-close, 3D view of Stephen Fry loitering on a London Underground platform. The networking giant is the London 2012 Network Infrastructure Supporter, meaning it is the only comms vendor to be …

    Data Networking 9 May 12:32

  • UK recession rattles Sage's cage as revenue growth flattens

    Abacus-sliding software pushers post H1 figures

    The Sage Group is keeping close tabs on the UK economy amid fears of the "exposed risk of a renewed recession". The mid-market British accounting software maker hit out after posting first half revenues of £661.2m, up 2 per cent for the period ended 31 March excluding results of the disposed US healthcare biz. Sales included …

    Channel Register 9 May 12:44

  • PHP devs lob second patch at super-critical CGI bug

    If at first you don't succeed, compile, compile again

    The developers of PHP have released updates to thwart fresh attacks against systems that use the scripting language to dynamically generate web pages. All users are encouraged to upgrade to PHP 5.4.3 or PHP 5.3.13, as appropriate, after a serious security bug in PHP-CGI-based setups was disclosed. Developers attempted to fix …

    Malware 9 May 13:02

  • Carmageddon coder seeks gamers' cash for revamp

    Driving licence to kill

    Fans of 1990s gore-racer Carmageddon had their engines heated up this week when developer Stainless Games called for public funding to help it reincarnate the franchise. The team's KickStarter campaign went live today, asking for a minimum of $400,000 (£248,154) which will be used to develop Carmageddon: Reincarnation without …

    reghardware 9 May 13:24

  • Telefonica touts new free VoIP app to cut off rival Skype

    Telco bets future of mobile on TU Me

    Telefonica, owner of the O2 brand, has launched VoIP service TU Me across all its territories, and for all punters with an iPhone, as the telco bets on the future direction of mobile use. The new service comes out of Telefonica's purchase of Jajah, and follows on from trials of "O2 Connect" last year. However the VoIP call and …

    Mobile 9 May 13:32

  • Miniature woolly mammoths once roamed Crete

    Dog-sized hippos, dumbos also wandered holiday paradise

    Minute woolly mammoths roamed the Greek holiday island of Crete 1 to 2 million years ago, boffins have claimed after examining fossilised teeth and a leg bone. Standing 1.13m (3ft 8") tall and weighing 130kg (20st 4lbs), the furry, curly-tusked creatures would have been about one-third the size of the full-blown mammoths who …

    Biology 9 May 13:48

  • US TV overlords retreat from White Space invaders

    This town is big enough for the both of them

    The US National Association of Broadcasters has asked the courts to dismiss its own appeal against the FCC's decision to permit the exploitation of radio White Spaces - and not before time. The appeal was lodged in 2009, when the use of White Space was fiercely debated, but these days there are White Space devices being …

    Wireless 9 May 14:28

  • T-Mobile punters can now buy Orange broadband

    (and not pay extra)

    Everything Everywhere is offering T-Mobile customers Orange home broadband for the same price as its ruddy-hued subscribers pay for it. Prices start at £5, but punters will have to pay a £13.50 line rental fee on top of that. And how fast will it be? Good question - even Orange doesn't appear to know the answer. Orange's FAQ …

    reghardware 9 May 14:53

  • Three kingpin: Mobe termination-charge cuts can't hurt us

    Get on with 4G auction already, pleads UK cell challenger

    Cuts to mobile termination rates (MTRs) are hurting the company that campaigned to get them cut – but not half as much as they are hurting its competitors. Three network's chief financial officer Richard Woodward said today he reckoned he'd be £130m better off if regulator Ofcom hadn't cut the rate. The termination rate is …

    Mobile 9 May 14:58

  • Apple orders 10in iPad, moles claim implausibly

    Rounding error?

    Taiwanese contract manufacturer Pegatron, which already makes iPhones and iPads, has landed orders for the iPhone 5 and a ten-inch iPad, it has been claimed. The handset is said to be cued to ship in September, the tablet in Q4, "Taiwan-based supply chain makers" tell Digitimes. Getting Pegatron to produce iPhone 5s seems …

    reghardware 9 May 15:13

  • Yahoo! director! bows! out! after! CEO! CV! blunder!

    Board sets up three-man team to investigate Thompson

    The Yahoo! director who led the search for CEO Scott Thompson has said she won't be standing for re-election to the board as a new committee is appointed to look into his padded CV. Patti Hart, whose educational background also had a discrepancy revealed by activist investor Third Point, said that "after careful consideration …

    Business 9 May 15:27

  • Sony pops top on 13Mp Xperia

    Takes smartphones into LTE territory too

    Sony unveiled two LTE-supporting Xperia smartphones today, although with the UK still blighted by a lack of 4G, they'll only be big in Japan for the time being. Which is a shame because the Xperia GX is quite the powerhouse. Its sibling, the Xperia SX, is apparently the world's lightest LTE handset too. Come on, Blighty - the …

    reghardware 9 May 15:32

  • PayPal beds Softbank to spawn mobile cash in Japan

    New joint venture will make Japanese mobes into wallets

    PayPal has launched a joint venture with Japanese internet and mobile firm Softbank to build a digital payments business in the country. The two firms will invest ¥1bn each – making up a total of $25m (£15.5m) – in PayPal Japan. The new venture will be led by six directors – each of the two firms will nominated three – and …

    Business 9 May 15:54

  • Biz prof disses Big Data as a fetish for info hoarders

    HPC blog Not a good model for success, says doc

    When it comes to Big Data, I’m as geeked out as the next guy – if not a little more so. For the last three years or so, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen (and plenty of people who won’t) that Big Data and enterprise analytics are the "next big thing" both in business and computing. Today, it’s widely accepted that Big …

    HPC Blog 9 May 16:02

  • Billion-dollar high-tech ghost town to run itself without humans

    Uninhabited 'smart city' will be boffins' playground

    A site in New Mexico, near the city of Hobbs in Lea County, has been chosen as the place to build a shiny new city with all the latest mod cons, smart tech and cool gear, but there's not going to be anyone there to enjoy them, the Associated Press reported. US firm Pegasus Global Holdings is constructing the billion-dollar …

    Rise of the Machines 9 May 17:03

  • Dell gives microservers an Ivy Bridge boost

    Cloudy things come in smaller thermal packages

    Dell's PowerEdge server line is once again trying to get out in front of Intel, announcing that its PowerEdge-C family of microservers are revved up with the new Ivy Bridge Xeon E3 processors, which the chip giant is launching soon. Dell might plunking the forthcoming E3-1200 v2 processors, which are baked using Intel's 22nm …

    Infrastructure 9 May 18:04

  • SSD sweetheart STEC swings to Q1 loss

    First mover disadvantages for industry pioneer

    If ever you needed a salutory tale about the perils of sitting on your laurels, then STEC, once EMC's SSD darling and pioneering enterprise flash high flier, can provide it in spades. First movers have got to be fast and STEC was unconscionably slow. The company's Fibre Channel interface Zeus-IOPS solid state drives (SSDs) …

    Financial News 9 May 19:00

  • Red faces abound as boffins build gamma ray lens

    Focusing on targets near and far

    Scientists have disproved a chunk of theoretical physics by building a series of lenses capable of focusing gamma rays. A team at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) research center used twin silicon wafers to bend a stream of gamma rays, something that had been thought to be impossible. The team posits, in an article in the …

    Science 9 May 20:04

  • Amazon takes on Microsoft Azure head-on

    Ballmer-less elastic SQL Server and .NET frameworks

    If you are thinking about deploying .NET applications on a platform cloud and whacking them against an SQL Server database embedded in that platform cloud, Microsoft's The Cloud Formerly Known As Azure is not your only option. Amazon Web Services has fired up its own analog to Azure. The two new services, Amazon RDS for SQL …

    Infrastructure 9 May 20:04

  • WD bigshots spin superfast disk roadmap

    Hybrids and tech transitions

    Western Digital's disk drive roadmap has hybrids and tech transitions coming to shrink I/O latency and regain fast areal density growth. At an exec summit in Vienna on 8 May, WD discussed coming hard disk drive (HDD) technologies without pre-announcing products and with some unattributable thoughts around hybrid flash and hard …

    Storage 9 May 20:06

  • Papua New Guinean tongue saved from extinction?

    Recently deceased language preserved online

    An anthropologist from the University of Virginia is using a hybrid of modern communications platforms to resurrect Arapesh, a defunct language from Papua New Guinea. University of Virginia linguist Lise Dobrin has used Facebook, Skype and mobile apps to create a digital archive, consisting of transcribed audio recordings and …

    Science 9 May 21:00

  • Kim Dotcom to hit the big screen

    Megaupload founder about to get downloaded

    Kiwi Kim Dotcom is to be given the Hollywood treatment in a documentary feature production with the working title of Mega Conspiracy. The Hollywood Reporter reveals that the project will be co-produced by Dotcom’s long time buddy and associate Alex Mardikian, actor-producer Donovan Leitch and New Zealand filmmaker Fergus …

    Music and Media 9 May 22:09

  • Cisco hits the targets in fiscal Q3

    Ready to fight Huawei in China or anywhere else

    Cisco Systems hit its revenue and profit targets for the third quarter of its fiscal 2012 ended in April. But the networking giant and systems player will probably take a few lumps because of the candor of CEO John Chambers. He freely acknowledges uncertainty about parts of the global economy as well as tough competition from …

    Financial News 9 May 22:37

  • WiFi Alliance pimping Passpoint

    Make public hotspots easier to use, bake DRM into kit

    The WiFi Alliance’s Passpoint program is finally set to arrive in devices, with the organization announcing that the first kit certified to use Passpoint will start shipping next month. The Alliance will also begin certifying hotpsot providers in June. Passpoint is designed to make public WiFi more easily accessible to users …

    Networks 9 May 22:45

  • Researchers propose solution to ‘bufferbloat’

    New fix for age-old problem

    Your network is fast, but your download isn’t: it might not be your provider or the server, because in the middle there are too many buffers in the way. The problem is ancient, even though the term that labels it (“bufferbloat”) was only coined in 2010. In a paper posted at the Association for Computing Machinery, two …

    Networks 9 May 23:15

  • Navman outsources satnav hardware to US vendor

    CalAmp sets up R&D shop in NZ

    US based wireless gear provider CalAmp will establish an R&D center in Auckland, New Zealand, following a US$25 million supply deal with Navman Wireless. The five-year supply agreement will see CalAmp provide the New Zealand company with around $25 million of fleet tracking products. Under the deal, CalAmp also acquired $6 …

    Business 9 May 23:30