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18th June 2012 Archive

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  • Can your cloud balance supply and demand?

    The perfect match

    Private cloud involves a multi-layered approach to architecting IT systems and delivering services to the business, making the most of virtualisation to provide a separation between the two. There is no clever magic involved, nor does there have to be anything particularly special about the servers, storage and networking …

    Cloud 18 Jun 00:00

  • ITU to G20 leaders: Follow Australia's broadband policy

    It might just heal crocked economies

    Western economies buffeted by the Great Recession and subsequent Euro-crises can accelerate out of their current fiscal fug if governments invest in a jolting dose of fast broadband, says the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The Union has made that case in an open letter (PDF) to the leaders of the G20, who have …

    Broadband 18 Jun 00:16

  • Voyager ticks one box for interstellar arrival

    “Very rapid escalation” in galactic rays hints at new region of SPAAAAAACE

    The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft seems to be a little closer to leaving our Sun's neighbourhood behind and entering interstellar space, says NASA. The space agency has outlined three criteria that must be satisfied before Voyager will be deemed to have left the heliosphere, the first of which is detection of galactic cosmic …

    Science 18 Jun 01:25

  • 'Jogobot' lures lonely lardies

    RMIT geeks create jogging drone stalker

    The lonely life of the lazy runner need not be desolate or uninspired ever again thanks to a new companion robot from RMIT’s Exertion Games Lab, the Joggobot. The unmanned aerial gadget, based on the A.R. Parrot, is equipped with a camera which zeroes in on sensors in a custom designed shirt tracking the jogger and putting him …

    Science 18 Jun 03:18

  • Japan and Vietnam push on with rare earth mining plans

    Asian nations chip away at Chinese monopoly

    Fears the global technology supply chain could be throttled by China's interest emerged over the weekend after Japan and Vietnam announced the inauguration of a rare earth technology centre in Hanoi, as the two countries look to accelerate their mining plans. Rare earths are highly coveted by the technology industry where they …

    Business 18 Jun 03:47

  • Six in Tokyo slammer after Android smut scam

    Malware was distributed through adult site

    Six men including three IT executives have been arrested in Tokyo in connection with an Android malware scam which netted them over 20 million yen (£160,740). Japan’s first arrests for the crime of distributing a smartphone virus came after over 9,000 people downloaded malware disguised as an application designed to play …

    Security 18 Jun 04:57

  • Mozilla plans multi-engine search results, native iOS browser

    Proclaims intention to disrupt again, dares rivals to follow, may kill Trillian

    Mozilla wants to resume its role as a disruptor in the browser world and has started work on a trio of projects it hopes can help it regain market share. The plans are revealed in a new video* in which Mozilla reveals it has created a Product Design and Strategy team to “identify where we can be the first or the best”. The …

    Software 18 Jun 05:21

  • Linus Torvalds drops F-bomb on NVIDIA

    NSFW Linux hero flips out, flips bird, over lack of support

    Linus Torvalds has exhorted GPU-maker NVIDIA to indulge in sexual intercourse with itself, and angrily raised his middle finger to the company to re-enforce the suggestion. Torvalds' “remarks” were made last week during a live interview at Finland's Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship. After the interview, Torvalds took …

    Operating Systems 18 Jun 06:15

  • Baidu eyes up UCWeb deal to spur mobile growth

    Search giant could swoop for stake in browser firm

    Chinese search giant Baidu is set to take another important step towards expanding its mobile footprint in a tie-up with leading domestic mobile browsing player UCWeb. The search firm, which now claims around 80 per cent of the huge Chinese market, is holding preliminary talks with company, according to a “person familiar with …

    Business 18 Jun 06:25

  • China goes Alt with root proposal

    Because the DNS doesn’t scale … no, really

    China Telecom has only our best interests at heart, which is why it’s proposing that a Balkanised DNS system would save us from the disastrous effects of failure to scale. It’s been a long time – a long, long time – since this author has written up an IETF RFC that wasn’t dated April 1, but it’s time to make an exception, for …

    Networks 18 Jun 06:45

  • Korean telly factory power cut costs Samsung $30,000+ per second

    Substation bloke whoopsie adds to troubled LCD div's woes

    Samsung Display has suffered a power outage at one of its LCD plants that could cost the firm tens of millions of dollars. Lights went out at the Samsung Electronics' telly division plant in the western city of Asan for around 10 minutes last night, the Yonhap news agency reported. A Samsung official said that the plant's key …

    Financial News 18 Jun 07:01

  • IBM: Our kit needs to be sold with '-as-a-Service' on the end now 

    Woke up this mornin', 60k servers went up in a Cloud a smoke

    IBM is warning that mid-market customers are now spending as much with managed service providers as they are with the classic value-added reseller that deploys tech onsite. This is according to Andy Monshaw, Big Blue's global GM for small and medium enterprise, who warns that the clock is ticking for any solution provider that …

    The Channel 18 Jun 07:21

  • Habbo Hotel to 'unmute' chat so users can show they love it

    Updated 'Many of the inappropriate adults are journos', says CEO

    Teen social network site Habbo Hotel is going to allow its users to chat again soon, as its parent company removes the restrictions imposed after allegations of inappropriate sexual content. The CEO of Finnish firm Sulake said on Friday that Habbo would stage a "Great Unmute" to allow users to tell the site what it wants to …

    Networks 18 Jun 07:39

  • Want to meddle with IP rights? Use the law, not amended regulations

    You want loopholes, don't use loopholes to introduce 'em

    Government plans to change the law so that future reforms to the copyright framework can be made through regulations rather than primary legislation could create problems for businesses, an expert has said. The proposed changes would make it easier for the government to change the law in relation to copyright. Earlier this …

    Law 18 Jun 07:58

  • Health dept puts off NHS 111 helpline roll-out for 6 months

    Avenue for non-urgent problems not urgently needed

    The government has extended the deadline for the roll-out of NHS 111 to make sure areas have enough time to plan for the service. The announcement follows criticism of 111 by the British Medical Association and other unions, as well as pressure from clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and private firms. In a letter to CCGs ( …

    The Channel 18 Jun 08:19

  • iOS was SO much more valuable to Google than Android - until Maps

    Opinion Apple cash hose dislodged from Choc Factory maw

    So what about this Apple Maps thing then? Isn't it just so wonderful that Cupertino wants to improve the fanboi experience and thus has decided to replicate a perfectly serviceable alternative from a competitor? Sorry, become a competitor to its previous supplier... As we might expect the reality is all about money and really …

    Mobile 18 Jun 08:40

  • Buy Smarter: what you need to know about... HDDs

    Buyer's Guide Bulk storage for your computer

    Despite advances in other kinds of storage, hard drives are the backbone of the vast majority of desktops and notebooks. And they are still the most cost-effective way of adding extra storage capacity to an older machine. They are cheap to buy, easy to use and remarkably robust in service. Typical warranties run from three to …

    reghardware 18 Jun 09:00

  • IBM US nuke-lab beast 'Sequoia' is top of the flops (petaflops, that is)

    ISC 2012 Roaring monster chews up absurd amounts of Linpack

    For the second time in the past two years, a new supercomputer has taken the top ranking in the Top 500 list of supercomputers – and it does not use a hybrid CPU-GPU architecture. But the question everyone will be asking at the International Super Computing conference in Hamburg, Germany today is whether this is the last hurrah …

    HPC 18 Jun 09:14

  • America's X-37B top-secret spaceplane returns to Earth

    Hardly anybody knows what it did last summer

    Super-secret spaceplane the X-37B landed back at Vandenberg Air Force Base on Saturday after 469 days of mysterious missions in space. The second unmanned reusable Orbital Test Vehicle, which carried out unknown experiments in orbit, launched from Cape Canaveral in March last year. "With the retirement of the Space Shuttle …

    Science 18 Jun 09:27

  • Lightsquared cremation postponed

    Corpse can keep walking about for another year

    Troubled cellular disrupter LightSquared has apparently managed to extend its debt burden again, potentially keeping the company afloat until September next year. The deal with its debtors releases $190m of locked-up collateral, but still sees LightSquared paying off $6.25m a month on its $1.1bn debt as part of its bankruptcy …

    Broadband 18 Jun 09:48

  • IK Multimedia iRig Mix

    Geek Treat of the Week iDJ

    The iRig Mix is the latest IK Multimedia accessory aimed at iPhone and iPad-toting musicians and DJs. It’s a three-channel mixer that can be used to combine input from two iOS devices and either a microphone or guitar. Alternatively, using a DJ app like Algoriddm’s dJay or IK Multimedia’s own DJ Rig, you can split the output …

    reghardware 18 Jun 10:00

  • Can't watch Flash vids in Firefox? It's not just you

    Mozilla, Adobe working on fix for Vista/Win7 problem

    The latest update to Adobe's Flash has been crashing Mozilla Firefox users on Windows since last week, but the firms behind the products are still searching for a fix. "We are aware that some users of Firefox on Windows updating to Flash 11.3 encounter issues watching videos ... We are working with Adobe on a fix," a Mozilla …

    Applications 18 Jun 10:13

  • Microsoft next-gen Xbox details leak

    Redmond rapidly requests removal

    An allegedly leaked Microsoft presentation which details next-gen Xbox plans, has been removed at the request of the software company's lawyers, adding weight its authenticity. The 56-page document claims the next Xbox will feature a Blu-ray Disc optical drive, support for augmented reality glasses and the second-generation of …

    reghardware 18 Jun 10:24

  • BYOD: The great small biz security headache

    The great reseller opportunity

    After surveying more than 1600 IT professionals late last year, the analyst firm Freeform Dynamics concluded that the consumerisation of IT is a real thing, and it is not just down to those pesky young people and their shiny iPads. Company founder Dale Vile says the trend is driven not just by the so-called digital natives, …

    The Channel 18 Jun 10:30

  • Steely Neelie: EU is crippled by its clueless tech-ignorant workforce

    Who will free us from this rabble of dunderheads?

    Half of Europe's workforce is too tech-challenged to fill all the extra ICT jobs that will be knocking around in the next few years, the European Commission has said. The EC's Digital Agenda crew released its scoreboard of how well the continent is doing on figuring out the interwebs today and said there were still a few …

    Jobs 18 Jun 10:45

  • T-Mobile outs low-cost mobile data roaming bundles

    Gets in before new EU price limits bite

    T-Mobile is the latest UK cellco to announce a revamp of imobile data roaming charges ahead of the introduction of Europe-wide billing rules on 1 July. The Everything Everywhere brand will offer customers the opportunity to buy "Travel Boosters" when they use their smartphones or 3G modems overseas. Smartphone owners can pick …

    reghardware 18 Jun 10:47

  • Apple MacBook Air 11in 2012

    Review For the love of Ivy Bridge

    The 11in MacBook Air took top spot in El Reg's recent round-up of the best Ultrabooks – even though, strictly speaking, it isn’t actually an Ultrabook, according to Intel’s proprietary definition of the term. This 2012 model doesn’t tamper with the winning formula, but it does provide a respectable update that should keep it at …

    reghardware 18 Jun 11:00

  • Olympic Phone touch-payment details revealed

    Updated Games to be a hotbed of bonking for money

    Samsung's "Olympic" Galaxy S3 is being posted out to athletes and game officials next week, complete with pay-by-bonk functionality and a customised interface for those who need to know how great Samsung is. The details came out at NFC Payments Europe, attended and reported by the chaps at NFC Times who got Visa to talk about …

    Broadband 18 Jun 11:12

  • Python wraps its coils around the enterprise

    Open... and Shut Look out C++, the Years of the Snake are upon you

    The enterprise, long the stodgy bastion of mainframes, Oracle databases, and Windows servers, is starting to look a lot more like the consumer technology companies that eschew it. As enterprises embrace the web as a way to conduct business and manage employees, they're embracing the very technology stacks originally made …

    Cloud 18 Jun 11:30

  • Facebook shells out $10m for using users faces in adverts

    It's a Book of Faces, get used to it ... bitch

    Facebook has settled a suit that could have seen it compensating 150 million people in the United States. Facebook will pay out $10m to charity to settle a class action lawsuit that challenged the social network for using punters' mugshots in adverts. The case was settled on Friday, 15 June, and Facebook have agreed to pay …

    Cloud 18 Jun 11:43

  • Nokia after the purge: It's so unfair

    Analysis What, we fire thousands and the shares go down?

    Last week Nokia did exactly what analysts have been begging it to do for years - it took an axe to the company's bureaucracy and purged the leadership. The latest 10,000 redundancies leave the company with its smallest workforce since 1998. Nokia's reward was a further 18 per cent fall in its share price. Thanks, markets. The …

    Financial News 18 Jun 12:00

  • Chinese 'nauts reach Heaven after 8-minute coupling

    Three taikonauts safely aboard Tiangong-1 after spaceship docking

    Three Chinese astronauts floated into the Tiangong-1 lab module just after 11am BST, after the first docking of a manned spacecraft this morning. The taikonauts aboard the Shenzhou-9 spaceship made their way onto Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace, around three hours after completing the automatic docking, the Xinhua news agency …

    Science 18 Jun 12:14

  • Watch Smarter: video guide to... HDDs

    Smarter Memory All the info you need

    Hard drives are still the most cost-effective way of adding extra storage capacity to a desktop or laptop. They are cheap to buy, easy to use and remarkably robust in service. Solid-state drives may be quicker, but while the prices of hard drives continue to fall, their capacity goes on climbing, so the overall cost per …

    reghardware 18 Jun 12:47

  • Dell spills its hot cache Fluid, hopes to beat off rivals

    Can its new weapon produce reliable shots of money?

    Dell recently lifted the lid on its "Hermes" project, named for the speedy chap from Greek mythology, at the Dell Storage Forum. The product, which Dell hopes will smack down EMC’s VFCache, will carry writes between flash caches in a Dell cluster to make sure they all carry the same data. That's a big deal, so project "Hermes" …

    Storage 18 Jun 13:02

  • Calling all resellers:Cloud, security, SMEs and you

    Mini-poll Lightning survey time

    Vendors may have declared that 2012 is the year of the cloud, but it's resellers who have to deal with the fall-out from over hyped expectations and half-baked product strategies. You know what your customers really think of the cloud, and what you need to help them make the switch. So please help us enlighten the vendor …

    The Channel 18 Jun 13:26

  • 'Kindness of America' snapper shot himself in 'act of self-promotion'

    Hoped shot in the arm would give his book a ...

    The hitchhiking photographer who captured the hearts of a nation after being shot while researching "The Kindness of America", has admitted administering the lead supplement himself and making the rest of the tale up. Authorities in Montana are considering whether to charge Ray Dolin over the whole sorry saga. Dolin was found …

    Bootnotes 18 Jun 13:32

  • Google coughs up what it coughs up to govs - and what it suppresses

    'Governments are scary! Not us! Look!'

    Canada asked Google to remove a video of a Canadian flushing his passport down the toilet and the US police wanted a blog that defamed a cop in a "personal capacity" taken down. Google has published the censorship requests that it received from governments and government agencies worldwide in the six months from July to …

    Cloud 18 Jun 13:58

  • Juniper Networks eyes up EMEA distributors, axe in hand

    If you ain't laying eggs, you could be going in the pie

    Juniper Network's recently installed EMEA distribution boss admitted he has a "big job of work" to untangle its web of wholesalers across the region and determine which it wants to keep on board and which will be jettisoned. Industry vet Will Hamber was confirmed as the networking firm's distie bigwig last month after joining …

    The Channel 18 Jun 14:21

  • Crytek says future is free-to-play

    Waves goodbye to retail

    Crytek has revealed plans to leave traditional retail behind, with the developer set to go all out free-to-play for future games releases. “We are in the transitional phase of our company... from packaged goods games into an entirely free-to-play experience," said Crytek boss Cevat Yerli in an interview with Videogamer. "All …

    reghardware 18 Jun 14:31

  • Tech boffins: Spend gov money on catching cyber crooks, not on AV

    Cure is the best form of prevention, say Cambridge brains

    The UK government should be spending more on catching cybercriminals instead of splurging taxpayers' money on antivirus software, tech boffins have said. Blighty goes through around £639m a year trying to clean up after attacks or prevent threats – including £108m it spends on antivirus – but the country is only spending £9.6m …

    Security 18 Jun 15:02

  • CAPTCHA-busting villains branch out from spam into ID theft

    'CAPTCHA in the Rye' report delivers captcha and verse

    The cybercrooks attempting to defeat CAPTCHAs are no longer just traditional junk-mailers who want to get around the test to send spam. In a recent study, security researchers have discovered that criminals are also using circumvention techniques in attacks that harvest financial or personal data. A CAPTCHA (Completely …

    Security 18 Jun 15:56

  • Intel slaps Xeon Phi brand on MIC coprocessors

    ISC 2012 Cray to plug them into future 'Cascade' supers

    The name "Many Integrated Core" doesn't roll off the tongue – and even Intel doesn't know whether to pronoun MIC as "mick" or "mike" – so with the future "Knights Corner" x86 coprocessors intended to thwart the coprocessor plans of Nvidia and its Tesla family, Chipzilla is settling on the brand name of Xeon Phi to peddle its …

    HPC 18 Jun 16:24

  • Intel, Google ink patent deals with InterDigital, Magnolia Broadband

    Massive haul and boutique buy

    Both Intel and Google started the week in acquisitive modes, with the former announcing a massive $375m patent deal with InterDigital, and the latter acquiring over 50 patents from Magnolia Broadband for an unspecified amount. It appears that the mobile-broadband patent wars are not only continuing to churn the tech world, …

    Mobile 18 Jun 18:17

  • FunnyJunk lawyer doubles down on Oatmeal Operation Bear Love

    Sues creator, charities, and hosting company

    FunkyJunk lawyer Charles Carreon has filed his own personal suit against Matthew Inman, creator of the popular internet cartoon site The Oatmeal and the charities Inman is raising money for, after the abuse Carreon received since filing FunnyJunk's claim. Acting on behalf of his clients at humor website FunnyJunk Carreon …

    Law 18 Jun 18:20

  • TSA screeners spooked by Apple's 'futuristic artifact'

    Design Award winning developer snagged by suspicious scanners

    A glowing, cube-shaped Apple Design Award trophy prompted US Transportation Security Administration airport staffers to give one award winner special scrutiny when he tried to board a flight back to his Seattle digs. Juraj Hlaváč had won the award at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco for the educational …

    Bootnotes 18 Jun 20:14

  • Facebook fesses up to Face.com face finder financing

    'All your face are belong to us'

    Facebook has confirmed the acquisition of Israeli facial-recognition software vendor Face.com for an undisclosed sum. Face.com software is already in use on Facebook in the Photo Finder app, which scans untagged images and tries to match the subject to the social network's 901 million claimed account holders. Coupled with the …

    Business 18 Jun 20:20

  • Nvidia shows off Tesla K10 performance

    ISC 2012 No single-precision flops anxiety here

    The Top 500 supercomputer ranking is based on the performance of machines running the Linpack Fortran matrix math benchmark using double-precision floating point math, but a lot of applications will do just fine with single-precision math. And it is for these workloads, graphics chip maker and supercomputing upstart Nvidia says …

    HPC 18 Jun 21:14

  • Telstra's scoops in-house YouTube contender

    Injects US$35m into Ooyala

    Telstra’s Application and Ventures group, quietly created last year and headed by Deena Schiff, has made its first international play leading a US$35 million investment in video platform Ooyala. Ooyala is part of a slew of competing YouTube-for-enterprise styled IP video companies currently vying for acquisition or additional …

    Business 18 Jun 22:00

  • Big layoff (singular) at Oracle on Thursday

    Possibly a 'massive' reorganization, or not

    The rumors are going around that someone high up in the organization was going to get the axe at software giant and systems playa Oracle when the company reports its financial results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012 on Thursday. According to a report written by JMP Securities, and published in Murdoch Wall Street rag …

    Business 18 Jun 22:07

  • VLSCI's supercomputer passes acceptance test, lands in top 50

    BlueGene/Q nearly ready to unleash 65 TB of RAM, 65,536-cores

    The Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative – VLSCI to its friends – is close to opening up its BlueGene/Q powerhouse for user jobs. The system passed its acceptance testing over the weekend of June 18, and is expected to be in full production in a matter of weeks, the organisation’s CEO Peter Taylor has told The …

    HPC 18 Jun 23:00

  • Earthquakes will release captured carbon: Stanford study

    Shake, rattle, roll, leak

    Carbon capture and storage (CCS) won’t work, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, because underground earthquakes are certain to cause the carbon to be released too soon. That’s the gloomy prediction of a group of Stanford University scientists, and a blow to those seeking …

    Science 18 Jun 23:30