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13th June 2012 Archive

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  • World+dog discovers hi-res aerial maps, thanks to Google and Apple

    ‘Military grade spy stuff’, my arse

    While I’m happy to join in the general outrage about intrusions on our privacy, the metaphorical 72-point front-page headlines about Google and Apple display a deep ignorance about the existing, common, mundane uses of aerial imaging. When people add the words “military”, “grade”, “spy” and “imaging” into a story also …

    Security 13 Jun 00:01

  • Oracle staffer accused of sex-for-favours in Singapore

    Corruption case gets steamy

    Oracle is red-faced in the Asia-Pacific, as one of its staffers has been accused of trading sex for favourable treatment by Singapore’s narcotics agency. The case, reported by Reuters, centres around Ng Boon Gay, former director of the country’s Central Narcotics Bureau, who is facing two charges brought by Singapore’s anti- …

    Law 13 Jun 00:15

  • Exploit posted for vulnerable F5 kit

    Metasploit code on Github gives remote access to BigIP

    A vulnerability in F5 kit first announced in February may be in the wild, with code posted to Github purporting to be an exploit. The original advisory stated that vulnerable installations of F5’s BigIP and other systems allowed an attacker to log in as root, because the vulnerability exposed the device’s SSH private key. F5 …

    Security 13 Jun 00:30

  • BYOD will cost a packet, warn experts

    HTML5 touted as way to keep app dev costs down

    Enterprise mobility experts have warned IT managers not to enter bring your own device (BYOD) programs with cost reduction in mind, arguing that application development and support costs can quickly get out of hand if not strictly controlled from the start. IDC VP Tim Dillon told attendees at the analyst’s Asia Pacific …

    Business 13 Jun 06:00

  • China fingered as lappie disappears from Taiwanese boat

    Machine could contain info on high-speed stealth ships

    Taiwanese military types are trying to allay fears that a laptop which went missing from a high-speed missile boat last month could pose a risk to national security after concerns that the device was stolen by Chinese spies. Colonel Lin Gau-joe of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence told reporters that the laptop was being …

    Public Sector 13 Jun 06:15

  • Media moguls urged to go mobile in Asia

    PRC to account for a third of net-connected mobe-sters

    Around a third of the world’s mobile internet users will come from China by 2016, driving a boom in the digital entertainment and media market, although concerns persist over digital piracy across some Asian countries, according to a new report. PricewaterhouseCooper’s Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2012-2016 reveals …

    Networks 13 Jun 06:45

  • Asus Transformer Pad TF300

    Review Plastic fantastic

    It’s no secret that I like the Asus Transformer Prime a lot. Still, £500 is a lot for a tablet even if it does go like the clappers, is made of aluminium and has a cracking keyboard dock with a built-in extra battery. Can you tell Pad from Prime at a glance? No Asus has now addressed that issue by launching the Transformer …

    reghardware 13 Jun 07:00

  • Foreign Office commercial chief: Suppliers, don't be liars

    Director calls for more honesty on procurement risks

    The commercial director at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has argued that if the government is to achieve its goal of procurements taking 120 days, both Whitehall and suppliers have to understand what they are procuring and the risks associated with it. Ann Pedder told the Intellect World Class Public Services conference …

    Government 13 Jun 07:02

  • W3C: 'Do not track' by default? A thousand times: NO!

    Punters should have to switch it on, says standards body

    New technology that stops websites gathering information about users should not be switched on by default, but should require an explicit instruction to begin working, an internet standards body has said. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is responsible for ensuring that web technology is based on an agreed set of …

    Law 13 Jun 07:33

  • Apple's Retina Macs: A little too elite?

    Analysis Ouch! Video makers asked to dig deep for work-able models

    Apple loves to be ahead of the competition on the technology curve, but has it shuffled up that curve a little too far? The new retina MacBook is causing angst among Apple's most loyal professional users. The problem isn't the retina display: that's a technological marvel. It's the absence of serious storage. The default …

    PCs & Chips 13 Jun 08:01

  • UK.gov cloud is 'biggest breakthrough' - UK.gov cloud CIO

    CCWF2012 I am great, no really

    The UK public sector's IT bazaar Cloudstore sold about £500,000 of services between February and April this year, government CIO Andy Nelson said. Speaking at the Cloud Computing World Forum, Nelson said the launch of the G-Cloud and Cloudstore, from which government departments can purchase technology, was the “biggest single …

    Cloud Business 13 Jun 08:30

  • Cisco vs TiVo DVR smackdown: Whose patent is it anyway?

    Analysis Time for a slow-motion replay of telly tech battle

    It‘s hard to read a "TiVo is sued by someone" headline these days and get excited about it. Multiple courts, going up to the highest in the US, have backed TiVo‘s claims to its Time Warp and other patents, dating back to 2001, so how can it get its patents re-examined once again? But the US press got all excited this week …

    Wireless 13 Jun 09:02

  • Updated MacBook Air sports tweaked SSD tech

    Retina display Pro too

    Apple has changed the MacBook Air's SSD connector - again. A dissection of the skinny new machine by iFixit reveals the SSD, which is implemented as a slot-in slimline daughtercard containing Flash chips and controller, uses an almost but not quite mSata interconnect: 26 lines in the slot, 24 lines on the SSD. Now... Source …

    reghardware 13 Jun 09:20

  • Newbie German team 3-to-1 fave in cluster building compo

    HPC Blog Just don't mention ze /var

    Early money makes Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) a heavy favorite to win both the LINPACK and Overall number-crunching benchmark competitions at next week’s Student Cluster Challenge in Hamburg, Germany. The high-performance computing competition, also known as “Hell on the Elbe: Student Kluster Kamph” will …

    HPC Blog 13 Jun 09:28

  • Three touts 'unlimited' Euro data roaming for a fiver a day

    Browse but don't stream

    Three has promised its contract-bound punters unlimited internet access in the rest of Europe for just a fiver a day. The packaged is called the Euro Internet Pass. The catch is, it needs to be bought on a daily basis, each Pass becoming invalid at midnight on the day of purchase. Three also warned that "Euro Internet Pass is …

    reghardware 13 Jun 09:51

  • CSC UK touts jobs at RIVALS to techies facing chop

    Bungling NHS IT outsourcer outsources vacancies

    Outsourcing biz CSC has allowed rivals to advertise job vacancies on its intranet as hundreds of workers face redundancy. In February the integrator wrote off nearly $1.5bn in the fallout of the NHS IT fiasco and threatened to axe 500 techies working on its project to provide electronic patient records. A 90-day consultation …

    Channel Register 13 Jun 10:03

  • Xperia Tipo tips up as two-Sim Sony

    Social smartphones out too

    Sony today signalled a few fresh Xperias, including a low-end social smartphone and a handset with dual-Sim capabilities. The Sony Xperia Miro comes equipped with a 3.5in display, 4GB of internal memory, a 5Mp rear-facing snapper, a front-facing chat cam and integrated social media features. Various colour schemes are …

    Mobile 13 Jun 10:27

  • Blighty's new anti-bribe law will do more HARM than good

    Analysis Ban on palm greasing could knacker UK in global trade

    We used to draw a distinct line between what was acceptable business conduct here at home and what we did abroad with Johnny Foreigner. Inviting Bertie from your major customer to Henley or the Derby, or waving Cup Final and Olympic tickets in his face was entirely acceptable. Slipping him £500 for an order was bribery and …

    CIO 13 Jun 10:33

  • Top bosses admit: Tweets, Facebook Likes influence decisions

    'This guy in his shed lol'd at our product - axe it'

    Nine out of 10 execs think Big Data - the hoarding of information from server logs to social networking posts - is the fourth most important input to a business. The execs questioned in a survey published yesterday described data sets as the fourth factor of production after land, labour and capital. The research by the …

    CIO 13 Jun 10:48

  • Dell global channel boss talks up dealer training

    Hard-pressed resellers struggle to make sales grade

    Dell is talking up the importance of training to resellers despite upping the revenue requirement for those wanting to cling onto the Premier Partner badge. The Texan-tech titan, which put resellers through 34,250 training courses in Q1, claims certified partners have been growing at a 40 point premium to non-accredited …

    Channel Register 13 Jun 10:54

  • Watch Smarter: video guide to... memory cards

    Smarter Memory All the info you need

    Memory cards come in a dozen different shapes and sizes. And speeds too. Selecting the best card match to the gear that uses them isn't as simple as it might seem. Our exclusive video has all the info you need to make the right choice. var MediaPlayerVars = { '_': { 'http://youtu.be/LYIBNPw1h8E': {autostart: 'true …

    reghardware 13 Jun 10:58

  • All of Europe's data in US servers? We're OK with that - EC bod

    CCWF2012 'It shouldn't matter where your files are held'

    A European Commission director has said that it shouldn’t really matter where Europe’s data is stored, as long as it’s secure and protected. Megan Richards, acting deputy director general of Information Society and Media and also part of the Converged Networks and Services directorate, said it wouldn't necessarily be a problem …

    Platform 13 Jun 11:06

  • Red Bull races gamers for Grand Prix prize

    Got what it takes?

    Red Bull has launched a videogame competition to find the UK's best virtual racer, who will then be taken to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to hang out with its F1 team. Gamers who think they've got what it takes should submit in-game footage of their skilful driving in either Forza 4, Gran Turismo 5 or F1 2011 to the Red Bull …

    reghardware 13 Jun 11:24

  • Speaking in Tech: Dell loves acquired firms like 'adopted kids'

    Podcast LIVE from the Dell Storage Forum

    The crew at our enterprise tech-cast pushed past the storage crowds yesterday at the Dell Storage Forum in Boston to bring Reg readers a special recording of Speaking in Tech. Greg Knieriemen, cloud and storage expert Ed Saipetch and new media ace Sarah Vela recorded the podcast LIVE at the forum mere hours ago, where they …

    Cloud Business 13 Jun 11:27

  • 'You don't have to take Prozac to work at Capita - but it helps'

    Staff morale withers under lingering job cuts threat

    Capita IT Services' morale-zapping redundancy programme is not running to schedule nor playing out smoothly, say company insiders. Although 1,000 workers were put at risk of losing their jobs at the end of March, layoffs have yet to be comfirmed: programmers were given 90 days of notice but other employees were given 30 days …

    Channel Register 13 Jun 12:01

  • Music SEVEN times more valuable to UK plc than first thought

    Gov beancounters discover photography, gigs and dance

    Government statisticians and economists have revised their estimates of the value of copyright investment in the UK economy - and found it's worth £3.2bn more than they previously reckoned. Old figures were biased against copyrighted work and crudely undervalued it. The new figure for music investment alone has increased nearly …

    Music and Media 13 Jun 12:28

  • Nokia eyes private equity buyer for bling-phone firm

    Vertu can be yours for €200m

    Private equity firm EQT appears to be back in the running as a potential buyer of Vertu, Nokia's wholly owned maker of bling-phones for the extremely well-heeled. Newsagency Reuters today said sources familiar with the sale negotiations had claimed Nokia wants €200m ($251m/£161m) for Vertu and its currently trying to persuade …

    reghardware 13 Jun 12:54

  • Watch out, world! Ofcom is off the leash to bite radio jammers

    Watchdog back in the kennel after the Olympics

    The UK radio regulator will start regulating the use of radio spectrum, but only at Olympic venues and only for the duration of the Games, despite calls for Ofcom to be given longer-lasting clout. Anyone interfering with public safety radios during the Olympics, and near any Olympic site, will have Ofcom on their backs, thanks …

    Wireless 13 Jun 13:02

  • Trust lawyers, not techies, when it comes to the cloud

    CCWF2012 Minefield of privacy and data laws - so tread carefully

    CIOs thinking of shifting to the cloud or kicking off a flagship big data project would be better off talking to their lawyers than their techies before starting to leaf through glossy corporate presentations. Mark Webber, partner and head of technology at law firm Osborne Clarke, speaking at the Cloud Computing World Forum …

    Cloud Business 13 Jun 13:32

  • That new 'Microsoft GCSE': We reveal what's in it

    What the Windows 8 maker wants Brit kids to know

    Exam board AQA's head of accreditation Mary Jane Newman has revealed a few more details about the so-called "Microsoft GCSE", which will be taught in Britain from September. The Redmond-backed ICT GCSE with-real-actual-programming aims to redress the big fall in pupils taking the qualification, counter accusations that the …

    Developer 13 Jun 14:02

  • Apple silences mute kids' speech app in patent blowup

    iThing maker plays judge, jury and executioner

    Apple is accused of silencing children after its App Store pulled an iPad speech synthesiser that gave mute youngsters a voice. Touchscreen-controlled software Speak For Yourself allowed kids with speech problems to use a picture-based on-screen keyboard to string words into sentences, which were then spoken by their iThing. …

    Developer 13 Jun 15:01

  • Finally a use for quantum computers: Finding LOL-cats faster

    Really big search engines need really tiny gates

    Boffins at the University of Southern California have been looking at applications for quantum computing, and discovered that it's going to make for some serious search engine tech. Not that quantum computing is practical yet – the first quantum circuits are experimental devices at best – but it is possible to emulate a basic …

    Physics 13 Jun 16:04

  • Torvalds splits 2012 Millennium Technology Prize with gene scientist

    'Socialist' Linus on capitalism in Silicon Valley

    Linus Torvalds picked up his share of the world's largest technology award, the Millennium Prize, along with a check for €600,000 ($752,000) at a ceremony in Finland. For the first time in the history of the award, the judging panel from the Technology Academy Finland couldn't choose among the contenders and decided to split …

    Developer 13 Jun 16:58

  • AMD to plunk ARM core onto Fusion, Opteron chips

    Don't get too excited – it only runs TrustZone security

    In February, when the new management team at Advanced Micro Devices presented revised roadmaps for PC and server processors that were a bit more conservative than what the old AMD might have drawn up, the company's top techies hinted that they were interested in integrating other intellectual property into Fusion and Opteron …

    PCs & Chips 13 Jun 17:02

  • AU domains on security alert

    auDA proposes world first domain registration security measures

    Australia’s self-regulatory domain name registration regime is set for a shake up, following a proposal from governing body auDA that calls for the introduction of a mandatory information security standard (ISS) for all existing and potential registrars. The requirement for all .au registrars would be a “world first” …

    Networks 13 Jun 20:45

  • Serengeti corrals Hadoop with VMware hypervisors

    Hadoop World 2012 Squeezing elephants inside ESXi VMs

    It is a wonder why VMware has not rolled up its own Hadoop stack yet and made it part of its Cloud Foundry project, but perhaps a new project called Serengeti, the virtualization juggernaut that wants to rule the cloudy world is taking another step in that direction. VMware has already created a Spring framework tuned …

    Infrastructure 13 Jun 21:04

  • Pegasus rocket lofts NuSTAR X-ray telescope into orbit

    Black hole scanner air launch successful

    NASA has confirmed the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) X-Ray telescope has successfully made it into orbit after an airborne launch over the Pacific Ocean. NuSTAR was launched at 9am Pacific Time in a Pegasus rocket slung under a L-1011 “Stargazer” aircraft flying at 39,000 feet above the Kwajalein Atoll in the …

    Science 13 Jun 21:05

  • No API in spec for new Sydney traffic model

    3000 Sydney intersections to be modelled, developers left to watch .. for now

    The State government of New South Wales has invited interested parties to build a new “Mesoscopic traffic model of Sydney road network,” but seems to have made a policy backflip by leaving out a requirement for a public API, or even public access, to the model. The tender says a new model is needed because: “Queuing and …

    Public Sector 13 Jun 21:45

  • Teradata hitches Aster hybrid database to Hadoop

    Hadoop World 2012 SQL-H makes elephants chatty

    Like everyone else in the business analytics racket, Teradata has to come up with ways to integrate its products with batch-style Hadoop data munchers. The company partnered with Hadoop distie Cloudera in September 2010 to create a pipe between Hadoop clusters and Teradata data warehouses, and now Teradata is providing a little …

    Cloud 13 Jun 22:26

  • Skype launches in-call ads

    Sticks its fingers down the throat of conversation

    In the kind of emetic doubletalk that can only be produced by highly-trained university professionals, Skype has justified its launch of in-call advertising by saying the move will let people “have meaningful conversations about brands in a highly engaging environment”. Admittedly, it’s proven devilishly difficult over the …

    Business 13 Jun 22:33

  • SAP smashes HANA forecasts, adds big iron benchmark

    HANA birthday to you

    Next week will see the one year anniversary of SAP's launch of HANA in-memory database processing, and the company is preparing to push the boat out in the wake of better than expected sales. SAP forecast $100m in revenues from HANA, but doubled that to over $200m and has signed up over 64,000 end users with 354 customers, …

    Software 13 Jun 22:50

  • Counting the cost of cloud computing

    Not quite a free lunch

    Among the benefits of cloud computing are lower infrastructure costs, reduced time to market and greater flexibility, with no need for enterprises to buy, install and maintain IT infrastructure and software. It can allow companies to become more agile and entrepreneurial, while the cloud computing vendor can deliver economies …

    Cloud Business 13 Jun 23:00

  • Purdue researchers add ‘wakelock’ cleanup to phone power research

    Fixing the ‘no-sleep’ bug

    The Purdue University team which in March published a paper identifying how rogue apps and user-tracking can sap Android batteries has followed up with research into detecting and fixing the “wakelock” bugs. The new study is to be presented at the MobiSys conference in the UK later this month. The researchers have extended …

    Security 13 Jun 23:45