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21st May 2012 Archive

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  • IBM’s first tape drive turns 60

    Model 726 Magnetic tape reader/recorder replaced punch cards

    IBM’s first tape drive turns 60 today, May 21st 2012. The Model 726 Magnetic tape reader/recorder was announced just a few weeks after IBM did the same for the model 701 computer, the first electronic computer the company produced in quantity. The 701 was also known as the “defense calculator”, reflecting its intended use …

    Hardware 21 May 00:31

  • Noise can improve quantum computing, says ANU scientist

    It’s quantum computing: of course there’s a paradox

    Here’s a nice paradox: since noise gets in the way of quantum computing, cure it by adding more noise. That startling proposal is the work of a team led by the Australian National University’s Dr André Carvalho, along with collaborators from Brazil and Spain. Noise is normally treated as the enemy in quantum-level experiments …

    Science 21 May 00:47

  • iinet poaches Internode CTO

    John Lindsay gets top technologist role

    High profile internet industry CTO John Lindsay is moving from his role as chief technologist at Internode to running the CTO function at parent company iiNet. The move is being viewed as part of the anticipated executive shifts following iiNet’s AUD$105 million acquisition of South Australian based broadband disrupter …

    Business 21 May 01:38

  • Alain de Botton wants better online smut

    Site will liberate net from "stupidity, brutishness, earnestness and exploitation"

    Clearly not satisfied with being the thinking woman’s sex symbol, philosopher Alain De Botton is taking on sex in a new digital venture that will attempt to position pornography – mostly the online iteration- as a therapeutic tool rather than a grubby thrill. De Botton issued a press release from his philosopher think tank The …

    Music and Media 21 May 02:23

  • Cloud mega-uploads aren't easy

    Google, Microsoft, can't explain how to get big data into the cloud, despite rivals' import services

    Google and Microsoft don't offer formal data ingestion services to help users get lots of data into the cloud, and neither seems set to do so anytime soon. Quite how would-be users take advantage of the hundreds of terabytes both offer in the cloud is therefore a bit of a mystery. Data ingestion services see cloud providers …

    Cloud 21 May 02:55

  • Anonymous takes out Indian CERT as attacks continue

    DDoS aplenty in retaliation for site blocking order

    Hacktivist group Anonymous continued its attacks on the Indian government and creative industries at the weekend by taking out the web sites of the national CERT and the country’s President in retaliation for widespread blocks on video and file sharing sites. The group’s @opindia_revenge Twitter account documented the latest …

    Security 21 May 03:42

  • Microsoft, NetApp, Citrix, team for FreeBSD on Hyper-V

    Cunning ploy to boost ONTAP-v virtual array?

    NetApp, Microsoft and Citrix have teamed up to let Free BSD run natively in Hyper-V. The move makes sense for Microsoft: FreeBSD may not be a major OS player, but W3techs says it still has 1.2 per cent of the web server market. If it enjoys even half of that market share for other servers, that almost certainly means plenty of …

    Virtualization 21 May 04:44

  • China blesses Google's Moto buy, patent problems persist

    Chocolate Factory must achieve fine balancing act

    Analysis Google has finally won approval from Chinese anti-trust authorities for its $12.5bn takeover of handset maker Motorola Mobility, removing the final major obstacle to the deal, but analysts believe the securing the long-term success of Android will be the Chocolate Factory's priority, rather than producing hardware. …

    Hardware 21 May 05:36

  • Windows Phone beats iOS sales in China

    Where did all the fanbois go?

    Microsoft is claiming something of a PR win over arch rival Apple, after a senior exec reportedly revealed that its Windows Phone devices are outselling the iPhone in China after just two months. Redmond’s COO for Greater China, Michel van der Bel, told Dutch business title Emerce that the platform has a market share of seven …

    Networks 21 May 06:00

  • Creatives spin copyright licence that sticks to web

    Using baton of new technology to enforce rights

    A range of organisations from across the global creative industries have formed a coalition with the aim of developing a universal standard framework for licensing out use of their copyrighted material. The Linked Content Coalition (LCC) officially launched late last month and said its "remit" over the next year is to "create …

    Law 21 May 07:02

  • Smoke-belching flash drive self-destructs on command

    Vid Do not press the red button!

    Chinese flash biz Runcore has built a self-destructing solid-state drive. The ironically named InVincible SATA SSD is aimed at military applications and customised SSD markets where a very high degree of data protection is required. It comes in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch rugged form factors with SATA, PATA and CF Card interfaces, …

    Storage 21 May 07:27

  • UK mobile broadband carriers compared

    Product Roundup Network vs network

    Two years ago, I plugged a selection of 3G dongles into my laptop at various locations to see what the coverage and speed offered by the major mobile networks was like. You can see the results here, but with HSPA being introduced at ever higher upload and download speeds, it's time to compare them afresh. Source: Vxla/ …

    reghardware 21 May 08:00

  • NHS car-crash spatters CSC accounts with red ink

    'Very poor' results, blubs CEO

    The CEO of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) said that his company's performance in the last year had been "very poor", as he announced a staggering yearly loss of $4.2 billion. The loss compares to a profit of $759 million the year before and has pushed the CEO Mike Lawrie to declare cuts of $1 billion. Revenue for the …

    Financial News 21 May 08:19

  • Facebook and IM apps abused to spread social-climbing worm

    Points you to a .zip archive full of badness

    Security watchers are warning users about a new worm that spreads via Facebook's instant messaging feature and also inserts itself under the guise of misleading messages on other social networking websites and IM services. The malware typically arrives in the form of a private Facebook IM that points towards a malware-loaded …

    Malware 21 May 08:38

  • New Oyster online service goes live at TfL

    Allows travellers to check the damage online

    Transport for London (TfL) has launched an online service for Oyster card holders, which allows them to look back over their journey history and fares paid. London's transport authority hopes that the online account will allow season ticket or pay-as-you-go users to easily check that they have been correctly charged for their …

    Applications 21 May 09:05

  • Brit knits jumper for NASA space chicken

    Rubber mascot wraps up warm for solar eclipse mission

    A British woman has enjoyed the peculiar honour of knitting a jumper for Camilla the rubber chicken – the mascot of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Rugby lass Sue Drage, 62, was recommended to the space agency by BBC Coventry & Warwickshire, after she took part in a charity "knitathon". Camilla (pictured), was due to soar …

    Space 21 May 09:18

  • Yahoo! gets! $7.1bn! injection! from! Alibaba! stake! sale!

    Web biz flogs tasty slice of online tat bazaar

    Chinese e-commerce biz Alibaba has signed a deal to buy back half of Yahoo!'s 40 per cent stake in the company, marking the beginning of the end of their partnership. The web bazaar will fork out $7.1bn (£4.4bn) for the 20 per cent holding with the option to grab back the remaining stake if it later goes public with its stock …

    Financial News 21 May 09:46

  • Met bobbies get CSI kit to probe perps' mobes

    Skip lengthy lab analysis, press here for clues

    The Metropolitan Police is deploying mobile phone forensic systems in 16 boroughs, allowing ordinary coppers to play their favourite CSI character with wrong 'uns' handsets. The kit comes from Radio Tactics, and is basically a Windows 7 PC loaded up with forensic software and a touch interface complete with step-by-step …

    Crime 21 May 10:23

  • Zuck weds self to lady friend in surprise ceremony

    That's how you top a $104bn IPO... bitch

    Moneybags Mark Zuckerberg updated his relationship status to "married" on Saturday - just one day after floating Facebook on Nasdaq. The 28-year-old billionaire founder of the social network tied the knot with long-term sweetheart Priscilla Chan, who Zuck met at Harvard and started dating in 2004. No hoodie at my nuptials …

    Business 21 May 10:39

  • Sony starts taking advance orders for PSN titles

    Ready to play... on release

    Gamers can now pre-order upcoming titles through the PlayStation Store and have content downloaded automatically on release - or ahead of it, with the activation code coming through on the big day. If auto-download is switched on, the console will come to life from standby and begin the download as soon as content is available …

    reghardware 21 May 10:53

  • Raspberry Pi gets snappy with camera add-on

    Say cheese

    While the the Raspberry Pi foundation continues to struggle to meet the demand for its £16 Linux machine, it has already revealed improvements. The latest: a prototype camera add-on. The peripheral plugs onto the CSI pins found in the middle of each Raspberry Pi board by means of a ribbon cable. Although the version on show …

    reghardware 21 May 10:59

  • Bang & Olufsen Beolit 12

    Geek Treat of the Week AirPlay exemplar

    There are AirPlay speakers and there are AirPlay speakers. This unit from Danish hi-fi gods Bang & Olufsen is eye-wateringly expensive but has plenty of features, including a built-in re-chargeable battery which, B&O says, will give you eight hours play time on one charge. The sleek chassis comes in four different colours, …

    reghardware 21 May 11:00

  • Acer crosses Ivy Bridge with latest laptops

    Drive up the M5 and Travelmate

    Acer has revealed a pair of Ivy Bridgers through a new addition to its TravelMate laptop range and another Aspire M-series Ultrabook with dedicated graphics and an optical drive. The Acer Aspire M5 comes in both 14in and 15in models with screen resolutions of 1366 x 768 pixels. As with the Aspire M3 - launched earlier this …

    reghardware 21 May 11:02

  • T-Mobile slip exposes 1,100 punters' email addresses

    Telco sweats it in the Hothouse

    Subscribers to T-Mobile's Hothouse - a focus group-like mailing list - got an added benefit this morning: the email addresses of everyone else on the list. The gaffe was swiftly followed by an apology and a request to delete the offending information. The mistake was a failure to use our old friend Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) by …

    Spam 21 May 11:19

  • Waterstones stores surrender to Amazonian invaders

    Kindle deal to fire up bookseller's bottom line

    UK bookshop chain Waterstones will start stocking Amazon's Kindle ereaders in an attempt to revamp its stores for the digital age. There were rumours last year that Waterstones might release its own ereader, which sprang from managing director James Daunt's discussion of digital libraries last year as a guest on BBC Radio 4's …

    Business 21 May 11:41

  • Another NHS trust coughs up £90k fine for lax fax acts

    Patients' privates sent to wrong address for months

    The taxpayer-backed NHS has suffered another fine from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for outing patients' private information to the wrong people. The Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust was slapped with a £90,000 ($142,000) penalty after the "serious breach of the Data Protection Act" that saw the …

    Security 21 May 12:03

  • Resistance is futile? Memristor RAM now cheap as chips

    UCL breakthrough after team toyed with LEDs

    Cheaper memristors could result from an accidental discovery at University College London. The HP-popularised memristor device is a form of ReRAM – resistive RAM – and is fairly expensive to make. Metal oxide-based ReRAM technology promises to combine minimum memory speed with NAND non-volatility and be able to provide higher …

    PCs & Chips 21 May 12:21

  • Brussels throws antitrust settlement lifeline to Google

    Almunia urges Schmidt to offer quick fix or face possible 'abuse' charges

    Google has been given the chance to settle an antitrust investigation of the company's business practices in Europe, competition officials in Brussels confirmed today. The EU's competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia said this morning that he would consider "proposals of remedies" from the internet giant if it quickly …

    CIO 21 May 12:28

  • What's copying your music really worth to you?

    Quite a lot, it seems

    How much would your iPhone be worth to you if the only music it could play had been bought on the device itself, from Apple? If your answer is "a lot less" or "not very much", then you're not alone. New empirical research has attempted to measure how much we value the ability to copy our music across formats and devices – and it …

    Cloud Business 21 May 12:42

  • Ouch! Facebook slumps below IPO value on day 2

    Updated Stock stumbles after mega-hyped debut

    Facebook's stock tumbled below its initial public offering valuation to $37.46 per share in pre-trading figures on Wall Street this morning. Although technical problems at Nasdaq delayed the IPO, Mark Zuckerberg's web firm eventually floated last Friday, valued at $104bn with an opening price of $38. The dominant social …

    Financial News 21 May 12:55

  • Core Wars: Inside Intel's power struggle with NVIDIA

    GPU Technology Conference Kepler takes Knights Corner?

    Intel and NVIDIA are battling for the hearts and minds of developers in massively parallel computing. Intel has been saying for years that concurrency rather than clock speed is the future of high performance computing, yet it has been slow to provide the mass of low-power, high-efficiency CPU cores needed to take full …

    HPC 21 May 13:01

  • Nasdaq red-faced after software snafu stalls Facebook IPO

    'Humbled' chief promises fix for temperamental public debut system

    Nasdaq OMX chief Robert Greifeld has said he is "humbly embarrassed" by the technical glitch that held up Facebook's IPO on Friday. Greifeld said that problems with order cancellations interfered with the social network's debut, delaying it by more than two hours from the ringing of the bell at 9am EDT. "This was not our …

    Financial News 21 May 13:18

  • IP law probe MPs hunt for smoking gun, find plenty of smoke

    Analysis The IPO whodunnit continues

    There’s an elephant in the room as Parliament’s informal inquiry into intellectual property policy rolls on. In the foreground, there’s the role of the officials who are supposed to support it. In the background, there’s something more troubling. Within the past two years - and without a hint, let alone a fanfare - the UK’s …

    Music and Media 21 May 13:32

  • Does private cloud follow virtualisation?

    Consolidation or construction

    A general assumption is often made that private cloud is the next logical step after virtualisation. But is this really the case? Many people got into x86 server virtualisation as part of their efforts to simplify and consolidate their application and hardware landscape. The motivation was primarily to cut costs and overheads …

    Cloud 21 May 13:46

  • Met cops' CSI mobe-snoop tech sparks privacy fears

    Analysis Data held onto even if you're cleared in court

    The mobile device data extraction system that has just been rolled out by the Metropolitan Police is designed to provide an easier way to slurp evidence from the mobile phones of suspects brought into custody. But some argue that the move is likely to change how crimes are investigated while it raises several data retention and …

    Crime 21 May 14:01

  • Audi proposes PC-packing stunt bikes

    CPU assisted wheelies, anyone?

    Audi has revealed what it believes to be the future of e-bikes: the Wörthersee, a electric bicycle that features smartphone connectivity and a built-in computer system. The Wörthersee is built for the sporty types, encouraging punters to record trick sequences through the bike's computer system and then share those feats with …

    reghardware 21 May 14:12

  • NVIDIA VGX VDI: New tech? Or rehashed hash?

    HPC blog You comment, we respond

    My article about NVIDIA’s new VGX virtualised GPU being a potential holy grail for task- and power-user desktop virtualisation inspired reader comments that are well worth addressing. They also brought out a few details that I didn’t cover in the article. First, let’s address a few of the specific comments. From reader …

    HPC Blog 21 May 14:31

  • IBM parks parallel file system on Big Data's lawn

    Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fattest of them all?

    The IT universe is seeing a massive collision taking place as the worlds of high-performance computing, big data and warehousing intermingle. IBM is pushing its General Parallel File System (GPFS) further to broaden its footprint in this space, with the 3.5 release adding big data and async replication features as well as …

    Storage 21 May 15:03

  • ALL NHS patient records online by 2015

    If at first you don't succeed...

    The nation’s medical records are going online by 2015 as part of a consumerisation of the NHS under a digital strategy unveiled today. Blighty's health service patients’ medical records will be made available online "securely" in three years’ time under the NHS Information Strategy. Patients will be able to view and refer to …

    Channel Register 21 May 15:23

  • Google snubs Euro watchdog's 'abuse of dominance' claims

    Happy to have a chat about 'concerns'

    Google remains at loggerheads with anti-competition officials in Brussels, who today went public for the first time with concerns about the search giant's "abuses of dominance". The company's European public policy spokesman Al Verney has told Reuters that Google was disappointed by the European competition commissioner's …

    Business 21 May 15:37

  • 'Dated and cheesy' Aero ripped from Windows 8

    Never liked Windows 7 anyway

    Microsoft must really love Windows 8, or hate its legacy install base. The Aero interface introduced with the hated Windows Vista and perpetuated with the loved Windows 7 is being canned from Windows 8, the company has revealed. In another achingly long Windows 8 blog post, Microsoft called the Aero interface it once …

    Windows 8 21 May 16:03

  • Tech Data still feeling the burn from Brazilian shave

    Country exit keeps hitting sales, but profit creeps up

    Tech Data Corporation, the IT distie giant and parent of Computer 2000 and Azlan in the UK, has seen net income rise to $51.7m in the first quarter of the year, despite a fall in revenue. The firm's total revenue dropped 6.9 per cent to $5.9bn, missing the Zacks Investment Research consensus estimate of $6.18bn. Tech Data's …

    Channel Register 21 May 17:01

  • Backdoor sniffed in ZTE's US Android smartphones

    Dial R for Root

    Chinese handset manufacturer ZTE has confirmed the presence of a backdoor in one of its Android smartphones. ZTE's Score M ships with an application featuring a hardcoded password that gives the user, or software running on the device, administrator-level access. Running the program with the password spawns a root shell prompt …

    Malware 21 May 19:04

  • Oracle juices homegrown Xen to match own-brand Linux

    One Ellisonized kernel to bind them all

    System maker Oracle has upgraded its version of the Xen server virtualization hypervisor with its own variant of the Linux kernel to bring it in synch with its Enterprise Linux server operating system distro. The new Oracle VM Server also includes some nips and tucks specifically for admins babysitting hypervisors. A bare- …

    Virtualization 21 May 19:43

  • Mindspeed gets China Mobile femto gig

    Must rig out support for political legacy, though

    Mindspeed, sugar daddy to the UK-based Picochip, will be setting up a development lab with China Mobile to deploy cells using TD-LTE tech, but also supporting TD-SCDMA – as politics, rather than technology, demands. The deal will immediately put small cells from Mindspeed into the city of Suzhou, providing both 3G (TD-SCDMA) …

    Small Biz 21 May 21:01

  • IBM to park mainframes on the cloud

    Rolls out SmartCloud Enterprise+ for public consumption

    IBM is gussying up its SmartCloud public cloud to make it more useful for enterprise-class customers, in the hope it can lure them away from Amazon Web Services, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others. Big Blue is also promising to put its System z mainframes on its cloud. With the SmartCloud Enterprise 2.1 release, based on the …

    Hardware 21 May 22:28

  • Cloaked light detector sees without being seen

    Invisible pixels a small, but large, step forward

    Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University have created a nearly-invisible photodetector, by exploiting the different ways that silicon and gold scatter light. By tuning the nanoscale geometries of silicon nanowires, using a gold doping, the team has demonstrated that the destructive interference of …

    Science 21 May 23:00

  • Microsoft launches its own 'so.cl' network

    Redmond content for new service to co-exist with Facebook, Google

    On the off chance that you have spare moment left in your life after checking Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, your email and your SMS inbox, Microsoft has launched its very own social network, so.cl. The site's name is pronounced "social". Microsoft has been hinting at so.cl since last …

    Networks 21 May 23:46

  • Australia rocks to Spotify

    Would you like ads with that track?

    Swedish digital music streamer Spotify is ready for downloading in the Australian market. Marshalling steam since November, the advertising supported Spotify has launched with a raft of revenue kickers including the Commonwealth Bank, CUB, Fairfax Media’s websites Daily Life and TheVine, McDonald’s, ninemsn and Virgin Mobile …

    Music and Media 21 May 23:52