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16th May 2012 Archive

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  • Button batteries BURN KIDS FROM INSIDE

    Where’s that dead CMOS battery you replaced last week?

    The next time you replace a button battery, do take care to dispose of it thoughtfully lest your kids swallow it and end up subjecting their innards to a damaging electrical current. So warns the journal Pediatrics, through a new study titled Battery-Related Emergency Department Visits in the United States, 1990–2009. The …

    Science 16 May 00:11

  • Casablanca to screen for free on Facebook

    Not the beginning of a beautiful friendship outside the USA

    Seventy year-old flick Casablanca is set to get a free outing in a new medium: Facebook. Warner Brothers will show the film at 7:00 PM on May the 16th, Pacific Standard time. The screening appears to be a promotion for the film’s birthday and its inclusion in a new series of e-books for film buffs from the studio. But if you …

    Media 16 May 00:52

  • South Australia plans digital evidence review

    Laws mentioning “telegram and telegraph” may not cover Internet adequately

    Law reform advocates in South Australia are leading a push to have the rules of evidence reviewed to take new computer and communications technology into account. Showing just how persistent out-of-date laws can become, the South Australian Law Reform Institute (SALRI) says it’s probably time to get rid of evidence rules …

    Policy 16 May 01:04

  • Graphics shocker: Nvidia virtualizes Kepler GPUs

    GTC 2012 VGX revs virty desktops, fluffs gamy clouds, changes everything

    You game-console makers who still want to be in the hardware business, look out. You console makers who don't want to be in the hardware business (this might mean you, Microsoft), you can all breathe a sigh of relief: after a five-year effort,­ Nvidia is adding graphics virtualization to its latest "Kepler" line of GPUs. The …

    Virtualization 16 May 02:11

  • Apple places massive DRAM order at Elpida plant - report

    Memory-hungry fondleslabs and iPhones the culprits

    Apple has taken a punt on bankrupt Japanese DRAM manufacturer Elpida, placing orders for a whopping 50 per cent of the firm’s production of chips at its Hiroshima facility, according to Digitimes. Industry sources told the Taiwanese tech title that Cupertino is keen to source the DRAM chips from Elpida to power upcoming iPhone …

    Data Center 16 May 03:55

  • China steps up crack down on hi-tech exam cheats

    No, you may not take that tablet into the exam hall...

    The Chinese ministry of education has been forced to update its rules prohibiting cheating in college entrance exams to take account of the increasingly ingenious hi-tech methods used by desperate students and their parents to succeed in the hugely important exams. State-run news agency Xinhua said the government made 15 …

    Policy 16 May 05:22

  • Stuxnet ≠ cyberwar, says US Army Cyber Command officer

    AusCERT: What is cyberwar anyway?

    While “cyber* operations” are becoming an increasing focus of both government and private research, legal frameworks are failing to keep pace, the US Army Cyber Command operational attorney Robert Clark has told the AusCERT security conference in Queensland. As noted earlier by F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen in his keynote address …

    Security 16 May 05:31

  • Telstra denies IPTV shift

    Ellis review results hold staff in suspense

    Telstra has strongly rejected claims that the company will move away from the IPTV market, in a response to The Register's report last Monday that it was reviewing its IPTV strategy and considering moving its 300,000+ T-Box customers to Foxtel. The carrier refuted claims that it will move away from the IPTV market, with …

    Networks 16 May 05:34

  • 75,000 Raspberry Pi baked before August

    Distie says Arduino sales 'overtaken in an instant'

    RS Components, one of two distributors for the Raspberry Pi, says the 75,000 of the tiny computers are burbling through the manufacturing supply chain and will be ready for release “in July to August”. Speaking at a press event in Sydney today, ANZ Country Manager Jeremy Edward said many buyers of the computer come from within …

    Hardware 16 May 05:50

  • Nokia Lumia 900 WinPho 7 smartphone

    Review Bigger and better?

    So you’re trying to revive the fortunes of what was, until a few weeks ago, the biggest mobile phone manufacturer on the planet. You’ve launched a handset or two with a new operating system and they’ve gone down quite well. So what next? How about taking one of those handsets and releasing a near-identical one, different only in …

    reghardware 16 May 06:00

  • Microsoft touts 400% Asia growth for Office 365

    SMBs make the leap online but Google benefiting too

    Microsoft is trumpeting impressive 400 per cent growth in adoption of its Office 365 online productivity suite by Asian SMBs over the past three quarters, although analysts pointed out that Google is still taking business from Redmond worldwide. Office 365, Microsoft’s “Office in the cloud” play, was launched initially in …

    Cloud 16 May 06:47

  • IT bungle left dole office unable to check benefits for months

    Tech delay hit DWP's Work Programme

    Late delivery of IT to support the Work Programme left it without a system to carry out automated checks on whether people - who had been placed into work by the programme's 18 prime contractors - had stopped claiming benefits. A report by the public accounts committee, which draws similar conclusions to a National Audit …

    Government 16 May 07:07

  • One in two punters don't mind cookie-spewing stalking ads

    Survey: Do not track, or do if you want

    Nearly half of UK internet users are happy for advertisers to track their online activity in order to deliver more targeted ads, according to new survey figures. As many as 45 per cent of 2,001 internet users aged 16 or over said they were happy for advertisers to track their online behaviour in order to deliver personalised …

    Business 16 May 07:31

  • Hitachi GST releases skinny spinner

    Slim slow slider

    Western Digital's latest acquisition, Hitachi GST, has released a skinny single platter drive for consumer electronics devices. The CinemaStar Z5K500 is a 7mm thick disk drive featuring 250GB, 320GB and 500GB capacities, with a maximum areal density of 630Gbit/in2, a 32MB cache, a 6Gbit/s SATA interface and a 7,200rpm spin …

    Storage 16 May 08:02

  • Only global poverty can save the planet, insists WWF - and the ESA!

    Analysis Windfarms for all, but without using steel or concrete

    Extremist green campaigning group WWF - endorsed by no less a body than the European Space Agency - has stated that economic growth should be abandoned, that citizens of the world's wealthy nations should prepare for poverty and that all the human race's energy should be produced as renewable electricity within 38 years from now …

    Science 16 May 08:19

  • O2 dips toe into Groupon's pond with tat discounts

    Polls punters for special offer ideas

    Taking a leaf out of Groupon's book, O2 is asking its "Priority Moments" customers which firms it would like O2 to negotiate deals with, tapping the social networks to discover that most O2 users like Nandos regardless of their demographic. Priority Moments is O2's group-buying effort, using the O2 brand to negotiate discounts …

    Mobile 16 May 08:38

  • Facebook starting to go big in Brazil. Hmm ...

    Plus: Monaco and Iceland have more accounts than people

    Facebook's user base is plateauing across Europe and the US and the site has seen losses as well as gains in the developing world, the latest statistics from Social Analytics firm Socialbaked show. Facebook membership increased by 0.88 per cent in the US in the last six months and by 1.52 per cent in the UK. By contrast, the …

    Networks 16 May 09:01

  • Google+ dying on its arse – shock new poll

    Bet-the-company wager goes south

    Google has bet the company on Google+, but it’s dying on its arse. A study by traffic analysts RJ Metrics suggests that public engagement with the social network is weak, and failing to gather momentum. "The decay rate here is very concerning," says the report, summarised here. "Users are less and less likely to make …

    Networks 16 May 09:21

  • EMC rounds up rival arrays, beats 'em into submission

    You will work with each other

    EMC VMAX arrays will team up competing drive arrays with a new version of the VMAX Enginuity OS. Much like the existing HDS VSP and NetApp V-Series, Enginuity v5876 will enable VMX to virtualise third-party arrays behind a VMAX head using EMC Symmetrix Federated Tiered Storage (FTS). The VMAX, which is getting a substantial …

    Storage 16 May 09:41

  • Sony outs 1080p skinny laptops

    Vaio Z revamped

    More updated Vaio laptops from Sony, this time the Z series - the latter the original Ultrabook, introduced before the MacBook Air and long before Intel coined the term. Of course, World+Dog is making slimline notebooks now, so the new Z's 17mm thickness and 1.2kg weight are not the leading edge laptop specs they might once …

    reghardware 16 May 09:47

  • ASA tuts at TalkTalk over broadband speed estimator

    Tool can stay, but ISP must add warning about potential inaccuracy

    TalkTalk got rapped on the knuckles by the Advertising Standards Authority today after it upheld a complaint that its broadband speed checker was rather overestimating the actual speed of web surfing. A customer had complained that when he typed his postcode into the box, he was told his estimated speed was 3.8Mbps with a …

    Broadband 16 May 10:01

  • Carphone Warehouse touts cut-price iPads

    Catch: they're last year's model

    Carphone Warehouse still has plenty of iPad 2s in its stock cupboard and has just knocked up to £50 off the price to shift them. Officially, the iPad 2 is now only available with 16GB of storage, which will set you back £329. But CW has some 32GB and 64GB models left, in both their Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi plus 3G forms. The two 32GB …

    reghardware 16 May 10:07

  • The Incredible 4PB Hulk: EMC monsterises VMAX

    Last big primary data array push before flash tsunami

    EMC has gained top datacentre dog bragging rights with a coming 4 petabyte VMAX 40K storage array, storing 60 per cent more than HDS's biggest VSP array and 74 per cent more than IBM's DS8000. This is possibly one of the last massive primary data arrays before flash takes over the primary data storage universe*. EMC says its …

    Storage 16 May 10:14

  • Dell feeds Xeon E5s to hungry new PowerEdge beasts

    Cheaper duos and quads, so we hear

    Dell has added nine new Xeon E5-powered boxes to its PowerEdge 12G lineup as it chases the booming market for quad-socket machines in Asia. These latest workhorses use Intel's new Xeon E5-2400 processors for two-socket servers and the E5-4600 for four-socket servers, and will add to the five rack, tower, and blade servers and …

    Servers 16 May 10:28

  • HTC phones held up at US ports after Apple patent ban

    Stocks low as customs search boxes for illicit gear

    US sales of two new HTC smartphones have been held up at customs over the company's patent battle with Apple. The fruity firm bagged a small win against HTC in December last year with the International Trade Commission that covered just two claims on a patent. HTC immediately said it would put workarounds in all its new …

    Mobile 16 May 10:47

  • Lost Winds 2: Winter of the Melodias

    iGamer Blow job?

    With his Chibi proportions and boyish looks, Toku cuts an extremely familiar figure, as do most of the things around him: talking animals, impish sprites and elemental deities. So pervasive is Nintendo's influence throughout Winter of the Melodias, in fact, that neither the land of Mistralis nor its diminutive hero would seem …

    reghardware 16 May 11:00

  • Confused, pessimistic on G-Cloud? You must work in government

    VMware's ex-G-Cloud man's cure: communication

    Confusion and pessimism about the government’s G-Cloud and ICT plans is widespread among civil servants running the nation’s technology . A VMware survey of more than 180 senior public sector IT staff found 63 per cent doubt the Cabinet Office will be able to hit its stated spending goals on cloud computing. Nearly half of IT …

    The Channel 16 May 11:16

  • Fasthosts officially not the best in UK for virtual servers

    Boasts in adverts banned by ASA after rival complains

    Brit web biz Fasthosts has been slapped down by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) for boasting that its virtual servers were the "best" in the UK. The hosting company was unable to prove that its virtual machines were better than all the other virtual servers in the country, or that they used "industry-leading technology …

    Hosting 16 May 11:27

  • Watchdog bites bar over 'offensive' Facebook ad

    NSFW Stoke venue's man oysters leave ASA open-mouthed

    The Advertising Standards Authority has sunk its teeth into the Manhattan Bar in Stoke on Trent, for a Facebook promotion "likely to cause serious or widespread offence". The ASA ruled the offending ad, seen right, in breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 4.1 (Harm and offence), and ordered that it must not appear again in its …

    Bootnotes 16 May 11:45

  • Real-time drone videos get GPU-tastic

    HPC blog Swimming in sensors, drowning in data

    Here at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC 2012), you see a lot of things that you didn’t think were quite possible yet. Case in point: cleaning up surveillance video. The standard scene in “24” or any spy thriller is of agents poring over some grainy, choppy, barely-lit video that’s so bad you can’t tell whether it’s four …

    HPC 16 May 12:02

  • 'Catastrophic' Avira antivirus update bricks Windows PCs

    rundll32.exe? cmd.exe? You clearly don't need those

    Security software biz Avira has apologised after its antivirus suites went haywire and disabled customers' Windows machines. A service pack issued in Monday caused its ProActiv monitoring software to think vital operating system processes were riddled with malware and blocked them from running. Users of the affected products …

    Security 16 May 12:17

  • Why GM slammed the brakes on its $10m Facebook ads

    Analysis Wheels fell off 'boring inefficient' car adverts

    In the week that Facebook finally went public, General Motors has axed its paid-for advertising on Mark Zuckerberg's social network. GM said today that it was still going to have a Facebook page and everything, but it wasn't going to buy any more ads because they just aren't shifting enough cars. It reportedly spent $10m on …

    CIO 16 May 12:38

  • Pints under attack as Lord Howe demands metric-only UK

    Weights and measures a 'uniquely confusing shambles'

    Lord Geoffrey Howe of Aberavon has demanded that the UK goes fully metric as soon as possible, describing the current mix of miles and kilometres and pints and litres as a "uniquely confusing shambles". Speaking yesterday in the House of Lords, the former chancellor and deputy prime minister insisted: "British weights and …

    Government 16 May 13:03

  • Social Network scribe to turn hefty Steve Jobs tome to popcorn-fodder

    Plus: Aston Kutcher grows creepy beard for role in the OTHER Jobs film

    The screenwriter who brought a bratty young Mark Zuckerberg to life in the film The Social Network has been appointed as the writer of new Steve Jobs biopic. Aaron Sorkin will continue his lionisation of tech superstars with the new film, funded by Sony. The film promises to tell the story of Jobs' rise from rude-but- …

    Media 16 May 13:26

  • Google unleashes Chrome 19, flattens 20 bugs

    Hot fuzz spawns QuickTime patch

    Google released a major update to its Chrome browser on Tuesday that tackles 20 security vulnerabilities, eight of which are classified as high-risk bugs. Chrome 19 – a cross-platform update for Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome Frame – also includes a number of improved features such as tab sync. Google paid security researchers …

    Security 16 May 14:02

  • Pure pushes flash stash, mocks spinning disk with YouTube gag

    Vid Cheap as NAND chips

    Pure Storage is pushing the idea that its deduped flash array is cheaper than tier one enterprise disk array storage but miles faster and more reliable. The start-up has been engaged in a prolonged, two-year beta trial for its flash array technology and has just announced general availability of its first product: the Flash …

    Storage 16 May 14:19

  • Juniper taps former HP man to sort out distribution matrix

    Channel bigwig Will Hamber signs up

    Juniper Networks has lured Will Hamber to head up its fragmented distribution business across EMEA. Hamber is moving across from Edge-Core Networks, where he was GM for Europe and Africa from June last year, prior to that he held various management roles at HP, latterly as channel sales director for networking. He will link …

    The Channel 16 May 14:20

  • BBC deletes Blue Peter from BBC One

    Children's TV staple sent away to digital

    Blue Peter - home to four-legged rascal Shep, the coat-hanger advent crown and school-boy favourite Janet Ellis, is being turfed out of its home on BBC One. The 54-year-old show that gave kids the drama of hibernating tortoises, out-of-control baby elephants and, yes, Janet Ellis, will be shoved into the back end of Freeview. …

    Media 16 May 14:38

  • Logicalis profits throttled by tight-fisted biz

    UK earnings down a quarter

    Logicalis UK has been hit by a freeze in demand as customers weathered the biting economic storm. The British subsidiary saw sales edge up 1 per cent to $296m (£185.8m) year-on-year and a 24 per cent fall in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to $9.7m (£6.09m) for fiscal 2012 ended February. At …

    The Channel 16 May 14:53

  • NASA found filming August's Mars landing in California desert

    'Just a rehearsal for the real one', insist rover boffins

    NASA boffins have been found at a site deep in California's Mojave desert with a Mars rover of the exact type they say will land on Mars this August, filming the machine as it drove about among the Earthly sand dunes. 'Hey, we just wanted a lot of footage for, erm, our kids' But it's all above board, apparently: this is no …

    Science 16 May 14:58

  • Three pitches 'cheaper' MiFi mobile hotspot

    As good as the current model, but less expensive

    Three hasn't said how much cheaper its new MiFi device is than Three's existing one, but that's what the telco is promising. The new model, the E5331 from Huawei, delivers the same 3G HSPA connectivity - 21.6Mbps download, 5.76Mbps upload - as the E586, the current offering. It supports up to five connected devices and will …

    reghardware 16 May 15:05

  • Britain has 10 million twits, tweets Twitter

    Why shout at the TV when you can yell at the web instead?

    There are ten million active Twitter accounts in Blighty, the microblogging wunderkind announced on, er, Twitter this morning. And 80 per cent of UK twits access the site on their mobiles. The UK is believed to be the world's fourth most active nation of tweeters, after the US, Brazil and Japan, going on a 2011 analysis by …

    Media 16 May 15:17

  • Is there life after ads for St Zuck?

    Analysis Facebook credits, and what they might buy

    As we reported today, the third-largest advertiser in the United States says it's going to stop advertising on Facebook, citing lack of engagement. General Motors is taking the $10m it spunks on Facebook ads somewhere else. This is a tiny proportion of GM's $1.1bn annual advertising budget, but it's hardly a vote of confidence …

    Financial News 16 May 15:48

  • Speaking in Tech: The worst government IT deal of ALL TIME

    Podcast The one about the oversized Cisco routers

    It's the eighth episode of our enterprise tech podcast – and it's a special one. The podcast is split up into two parts: in the first part, your hosts interview a journalist investigating the State of West Virginia's absurd purchase of drastically oversized Cisco routers – it's an incredible story you have to hear to believe. …

    Government 16 May 15:59

  • Samsung and SK Hynix shares slide on Apple snub

    Memory-makers hurt by losing contract to bankrupt Elpida

    Shares in Samsung have fallen over 6 per cent on news that Apple preferred to place huge chip orders with bankrupt firm Elpida Memory. It was reported in Taiwan yesterday that Apple had booked up half of the mobile DRAM capacity at Elpida's plant in Hiroshima for future iPhones and iPads. Despite the multiple patent battles …

    Financial News 16 May 16:32

  • Mobile fee dodgers will get away with enough cash to bail out Greece

    US code paranoia lets cash trickle through cracks

    Mobile customers are dodging fees running to hundreds of billions of dollars by a combination of accident and design – both facilitated by badly designed billing systems which aren't up to the task. However, US paranoia plays its part too. The numbers come from Juniper Research and estimate that by 2016 operators will have …

    CIO 16 May 17:01

  • Nvidia shows off superjuiced Kepler GPU

    HPC blog From workhouse to racehorse

    There were quite a few surprises in today’s GTC12 keynote by NVIDIA CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang. If NVIDIA were just introducing a new and faster rev of its latest GPU processor, one that brings three times the performance without breaking the bank on energy usage, that would be a solid win, and in line with expectations …

    HPC 16 May 17:27

  • UK.gov's G-Cloud 2.0 pushes back launch date

    Public sector IT bazaar turns to open source

    The launch of the second version of the UK government’s IT shopping catalogue G-Cloud has slipped to the end of spring. G-Cloud 2.0 is now slated to arrive by “end of May to start of June”, the Cabinet Office has confirmed – which will be several weeks behind the planned early May rollout date. An announcement on the delay is …

    The Channel 16 May 18:03

  • Pirate Bay struggling to get on feet after DDoS to the knee

    Anonymous says 'not us, dude'

    The Pirate Bay claimed to be “getting back up! Stronger than ever!” this evening after crumpling under a DDoS attack for most of today. The draining of the Pirate Bay sparked speculation that it was a victim of Anonymous, after the torrent site slated the hacktivist collective last week. The torrent site cum copyright freedom …

    Media 16 May 18:29

  • Australia's first space park launched

    WA set to track space stations Swedish style

    Australia’s only dedicated satellite park, SSC Space Australia, is now open for business and is currently in advanced negotiations with two international space agencies from Europe and Asia to use the new West Australian (WA) facility. The park is owned and financed by its parent, Swedish Space Corporation, which selected WA …

    Science 16 May 20:00

  • Gates' Corbis busted again for fraud

    Infoflows wins US$12m in damages, Gates still mad

    Corbis, the digital stock photo company founded by Bill Gates in 1989, remains embroiled in a protracted fraud case instigated by Seattle based Infoflows. In the latest instalment Corbis has been ordered to fork out US$12.75 million in damages by the Washington State Court of Appeals as part of the three-year fraud and breach …

    Business 16 May 22:29