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27th June 2012 Archive

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  • Intel invests millions in social computing research center

    Looking to avoid the curse of Xerox PARC

    At Intel Labs' annual outing, Chipzilla has announced it is investing millions in a new social research center and explained how it plans to avoid the mistakes of researchers in the past. The new Intel Science Technology Center is a $15m program funding five years of research into social and anthropological research into how …

    Business 27 Jun 00:52

  • Zeebox set to put ze bomb under Aus broadcasters

    Ex-BBC CTO launching Oz social TV with mystery broadcaster

    Anthony Rose, the brains behind the BBC's iPlayer and former Kazaa CTO, is preparing to launch his social TV platform Zeebox in Australia. The high profile start-up has already secured a deal with a local broadcaster buy has yet to confirm its identity. The service offers a personalised two-way, social, commerce and …

    Media 27 Jun 00:53

  • Tech giants on trial as report reveals more Chinese factory abuses

    VTech in the firing line as attention shifts from Foxconn

    Analysis First it was Apple and Foxconn, now Motorola, AT&T, Sony, Deutsche Telekom and others have come under the spotlight after a new report made shocking allegations of human and labour rights violations at the Chinese factories of technology supplier VTech. Not-for-profit the Institute for Labour and Global Human Rights …

    Broadband 27 Jun 05:52

  • Sony SmartWatch Android remote

    Review Bluetooth strap-on second coming

    Sony has tried this remote phone manager and viewer malarkey before with its LiveView that first appeared almost two years ago. The idea was sound but the execution was somewhat undermined by the fact it just didn’t work. Evidently, Sony thinks it’s time for another crack at this concept with the SmartWatch Sony's SmartWatch …

    Hardware 27 Jun 06:00

  • Anonymous turns ire on Japan after anti-piracy law passes

    Key sites get a good DDoS-ing

    It was only a matter of time – hacktivist group Anonymous has taken aim at the web sites of political parties and government departments in Japan in retaliation for a tough new anti-piracy bill passed last week. The update to the Copyright Law was brought about after heavy lobbying by a content industry dismayed that illegal …

    Government 27 Jun 06:15

  • Biz MPs gung-ho for 'Google Review'

    Happy for bureaucrats to gain new powers – over your stuff

    The Parliamentary committee which monitors the Business Department has warmly backed No 10's copyright revolution, and urged the Hargreaves' Independent Review of IP and Growth – aka the Google Review – to speed ahead. MPs recommend going further than many copyright radicals, supporting greatly expanded powers for the …

    Government 27 Jun 06:34

  • NASA counts down to nuclear tank invasion of Mars

    New vid Blitzkrieg from space over in 7 minutes of terror

    It's T-40 days unti NASA's nuclear powered Curiosity rover arrives at Mars and commences re-entry and descent to the surface beneath its hover-rocket sky crane lander - and the space mission's engineers are biting their nails. It's not the first time the space agency has talked about "seven minutes of terror". Pretty much …

    Science 27 Jun 07:00

  • I'm the world's fastest! No, I am! And I'm staggering, too!

    HPC works of heartbreaking genius argue as HP goes SMB

    ISC 2012 Xyratex has formally launched its ClusterStor high-performance computing drive arrays, saying it's the fastest data storage array for high-performance computing in the industry. At the other end of the scale HP has revved its X5000 NAS filer upping capacity and adding iSCSI SAN access. Xyratex' ClusterStor 6000 is a …

    Storage 27 Jun 07:19

  • Cabinet Office: We've cut taxpayers' SAP and Microsoft bills

    Tearful giants face starvation on < £300m this year

    The Cabinet Office estimates it will squeeze out £65m in savings this fiscal year through a public-sector-wide deal it recently cut with Microsoft. As revealed by The Channel, the Public Sector Agreement 2012 replaces the last iteration (PSA09) from 1 July – with licences locked for three years at 1 per cent above previous …

    The Channel 27 Jun 07:29

  • 69,000 sign petition to save TV-linker O'Dwyer from US extradition

    Gov might be made to listen - if it wasn't Jimbo Wales

    Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has got over 69,000 signatures on a petition to save a 24-year-old Briton from extradition to the US. Wales wants British Home Secretary Theresa May to save the youngster from being sent to the US, where authorities want to try him for copyright infringement. The Wiki-daddy sees the plight of O' …

    Government 27 Jun 07:44

  • Microsoft: We tried to use Azure ourselves last year, and couldn't

    But now we're fully ready to cannibalise our own server biz

    In the first half of 2011, Microsoft made a series of changes at the top of the team running Windows Azure, its cloud. “A large group of new people came into the Azure team,” general manager Bill Hilf said at a Microsoft cloud event in London last week. “Satya Nadella came over, Scott [Guthrie] came over, I came over at the …

    Cloud 27 Jun 08:00

  • Automatic Wi-Fi roam, signup and billing via SIM card to be tested

    Like cellular data but without the cell network

    Thirty-seven communications companies around the world have signed up to trial Hotspot 2 Wi-Fi roaming – and billing – using commercially available routers later this year, it has been announced. Hotspot 2 tech allows a mobile handset (or tablet, or ereader) to automatically detect, connect to and register with a Wi-Fi base …

    Broadband 27 Jun 08:14

  • Android Firefox: Screaming, awesome, you'll go blind etc

    Updated Really my dears, you'll wear yourselves out

    Mozilla has galloped a new version of Firefox for Android out of the gates just ahead of the expected full launch of Chrome on mobes later this week. The open-source firm has had a version of its popular browser on little green phones since 2010, but it hasn't lit many Google-mobe-lovers' fires so far. Chrome has been …

    Applications 27 Jun 08:27

  • Be co-founder mows BT's long grass in bid for fibre success

    Interview 'We can best service a lot of the council estates'

    Dana Pressman Tobak can probably be spotted in the footnote of broadband history, having founded Be Unlimited with her university pal Boris Ivanovic, before quickly selling it on to O2 within a year of offering the product to the company's customers. And now the duo are back, this time under the guise of Hyperoptic – a Shepherd' …

    Business 27 Jun 08:44

  • Ultrabook makers take the Ivy Bridge path

    Extreme Hardware Intel sets the rules

    Intel launched quad-core versions of its Ivy Bridge processor in April but held back on dual-core versions, apparently to sell out its Sandy Bridge dual-core chips. With the dual-core Ivy Bridge CPUs out this month, PC makers are already starting to announce notebooks based on the new architecture. First, a recap. Ivy Bridge …

    Laptops 27 Jun 09:00

  • Administrator eyes DVR firesale after TVonics collapse

    Freeview HD recorder firm founders

    UK DVR maker TVonics has gone into administration. The maker of Freeview HD recorders, including the DTR-Z500HD and DTR-HD500, was placed in the hands of Bell Advisory on 12 June. And, though it’s been in administration before and survived, back in 2008, things don’t look good this time round. A spokesman confirmed today that …

    Hardware 27 Jun 09:06

  • Crypto boffins: RSA tokens can be cracked in 13 MINUTES

    No practical risk to SecurID 800 users – RSA

    Crypto boffins have developed an attack that's capable of extracting the protected information from hardened security devices such as RSA's SecurID 800. The research (PDF), developed by a group of computer scientists who call themselves Team Prosecco – due to be presented at the CRYPTO 2012 conference in August – is a …

    Security 27 Jun 09:13

  • Apple wins US ban on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1

    No American can fondle Korean firm's slabs

    A US judge has granted Apple's request to ban Samsung Galaxy Tabs 10.1 in the US over a single patent. Judge Lucy Koh had previously denied the request for a preliminary injunction on the fondleslabs while the two tech giants duke it out in the patent arena, but an appeals court instructed her to think about it again. Her …

    Law 27 Jun 09:29

  • Data-furtling execs look to establish cohabiting silos

    It's all about contextual relationships

    EqualLogic alumni are at it again; running a storage startup to virtually tier data in different silos and extract information simply without complex server analytics software. Nashua, New Hampshire-based DataGravity is led by Paula Long who co-founded EqualLogic. She and her co-founder John Joseph started up Data Gravity to …

    Storage 27 Jun 09:43

  • Apple iPhone turns five this Friday

    Staggering money spinner - and that's just the hardware

    The iPhone first went on sale five years ago this week and it has already clocked up more than $150 billion in revenues - more than the annual GDP of Hungary - for Apple. More than 250 million iPhones have been sold since 29 June 2007, the day over-the-counter sales began in the US, almost six months after its January 2007 …

    Phones 27 Jun 09:43

  • Doug Cutting: Hadoop dodged a Microsoft-Oracle stomping

    Interview Elephant daddy on breaking into mainstream IT

    We’ve all heard plenty about open source changing the dynamics of the tech industry and upsetting the old order. Open source, we’re told, is manifest destiny. Companies that ignore it will be consigned to history and CIOs who assert there’s no freebie code behind their firewalls are out of touch with devs happily humming to …

    Software 27 Jun 10:00

  • FBI nabs 24 in card-fraud forum sting

    Updated Feds had been having tips-and-tricks with fraudsters for YEARS

    An FBI sting operation against an underground carding forum has resulted in 24 arrests. The Carder Profit forum had been run by undercover Feds for the last two years, yielding intelligence that resulted in arrests in eight countries. The sting - dubbed "Operation Card Shop" - began in June 2010 when the FBI itself set up the …

    Security 27 Jun 10:17

  • Automated bank scam 'Operation High Roller' stole from the rich

    To give to unknown auto-mule crims in the cloud

    Security researchers have uncovered a sophisticated, multi-tiered financial fraud ring that may have defrauded businesses, wealthy individuals and banks of tens of millions of dollars. Operation High Roller bypasses multi-factor authentication technology employed by banks to attempt fraudulent transactions of &euro,60 million …

    Security 27 Jun 10:29

  • Raspberry Pi to skipper microship across Atlantic

    FishPi served

    Raspberry Pi's journey to punters pockets has hardly gone swimmingly, but as it prepares to cross the Atlantic in a homemade autonomous boat - aptly dubbed FishPi - the budget Linux PC continues to make quite a splash in the tech pool. FishPi - the brainchild of enthusiast Greg Holloway - is a 20in long vessel that navigates …

    Hardware 27 Jun 10:30

  • Cisco CTO Warrior to head up strategy

    Exec shake-up after Hooper exits

    Cisco chief strategist Ned Hooper is leaving the firm to create an investment fund, CEO John Chambers has confirmed in a blog. Hooper is a 13-year veteran at the networking firm and as well as masterminding numerous acquisitions during his tenure, he managed Cisco's $2bn investment portfolio. "Ned pioneered the model for …

    The Channel 27 Jun 10:44

  • T-shirt race stragglers aim for student cluster compo crown

    ISC 2012 Colorado Buffaloes DID breeze through the supercomputing bits

    We catch up with the University of Colorado team (profile here) on the last day of the 2012 ISC Student Cluster Competition (aka Hell on the Elbe) in Hamburg. Even though they were the last team to get started on the challenge (owing to their lackadaisical approach to the opening t-shirt scramble), they feel good about the …

    HPC 27 Jun 10:46

  • Bletchley Park gets £7.4m to tart up WWII code-breaking huts

    Donations + lotto cash will also help build exhibition centre

    Bletchley Park has successfully raised the £2.4m it needed to start restoration on code-breaking huts at the World War II site and build a new visitor centre. The park's Trust had to raise the cash to unlock a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £5m, giving it £7.4m in funding to restore the derelict huts 3 and 6, where code- …

    Science 27 Jun 11:04

  • Dell extends XPS laptop line

    14in Ultrabook and more

    Dell has extended is XPS line of laptops, with 14in and 15in models joining the 13in Ultrabook it launched earlier this year. The bigger of the new machines can't claim the right to attach Intel's skinny laptop trademark to their names, but the XPS 14 does. XPS 14 Ultrabook It comes with a choice of Core i5 and i7 Ivy …

    Laptops 27 Jun 11:09

  • Microsoft loses appeal against EU antitrust smackdown

    Court upholds fine, but knocks it down to €860m

    The EU's second-highest court has rejected Microsoft's appeal on the antitrust fine levied by the European Commission four years about, although it did knock a cool €39m (£31.2m) off the total. The General Court was unmoved by Microsoft's arguments against the fine, which was imposed by the European Commission after Microsoft …

    Law 27 Jun 11:14

  • SanDisk drives to Valley, picks up new kid for enterprise flash

    Schooner strengthens server flash cache and memory creds

    Flash product maker and shaker SanDisk has bought Schooner Information Technology, which makes virtual machine-based MySQL and Memcached web cache program acceleration software using cores, threads and solid state drives. The payment terms are secret. Start-up Schooner's database and flash optimisation team have joined SanDisk …

    Storage 27 Jun 11:29

  • Star Trek app warps into TiVo space

    Remastered original series, cartoons too

    Star Trek buffs who still haven't bought all the DVDs, HD DVDs and Blu-rays will be able to enjoy the original series on telly, courtesy of Virgin Media's CBS Action channel, which is not only showing the series again but has a tie-in app for Virgin's TiVo box. On show is the digitally remastered version of the series, the …

    Hardware 27 Jun 11:36

  • HP asks court to force Oracle to obey Itanium contract

    'But there is no contract!' - Oracle

    HP has told a US court that it should force Oracle to keep supporting its Itanium-based servers for as long as HP sells them. The firm's lawyer said in closing arguments in the case that Oracle was contractually obliged to support Itanium chips based on the Hurd agreement. Oracle stood by its position that the Hurd agreement …

    Law 27 Jun 11:54

  • YouView 'launch event' to take place next week

    Hush-hush pre-launch trial begins today

    YouView may be about to finally go public with its would-be IPTV platform standard. It has scheduled an announcement next week and is today kicking off a in-home trial of the service. Next week's event looks set to reveal the timetable for YouView's launch, presumably timed to coincide with the summer's Olympics coverage. …

    Hardware 27 Jun 12:07

  • ISC cluster kids KIT plan to drive off with vendor swag

    ISC 2012 ... and perhaps a trophy too

    The home team at the 2012 ISC Student Cluster Challenge, Team KIT (profile here), are a confident bunch. Not quite cocky, but confident. They made it through their first cluster competition with almost-flying colours – they had significant problems on only one of the surprise applications (WRF) on the first day of competition …

    HPC 27 Jun 12:33

  • HP open sources WebOS TouchPad tablet GUI

    Luna system manager code posted

    HP has released the first part of WebOS Community Edition (WOCE), the latest incarnation of the one-time Palm operating system. Aimed at owners of the HP TouchPad tablet, WOCE's first release is based around Luna, the WebOS System Manager and GUI. According to HP, it's availability allows coders to get right into the WebOS …

    Tablets 27 Jun 12:39

  • Speaking in Tech: Who uses Google Wallet?

    Podcast Surface vs Nexus, the resurrection of Lotus Notes

    This week in El Reg's enterprise and consumer tech-cast, our hosts Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela chat about slabs, VMWare's new desktop virtualisation strategy, Microsoft's Yammer buyout and more. This week they discuss: Uncle Larry buys an island Google's new tablet, Nexus 7, leaked Microsoft Surface vs …

    Business 27 Jun 13:01

  • Suppliers finally get contracts for £4bn gov IT shopping centre

    Appeals process ends, programme goes live from July

    Suppliers bidding for a place on the delayed IT Hardware & Services (ITH&S) framework have finally been awarded their contracts. A provisional list of suppliers dominated by resellers emerged some weeks ago as The Channel exclusively revealed, but companies that failed to make the cut were then given a 10-day period in which …

    The Channel 27 Jun 13:26

  • China's NUDT students hope GPUs will grind down rivals

    ISC 2012 GPU-heavy system surprised punters back in Seattle

    China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT, profile here) is staying true to its heritage by being the only team to use a hybrid CPU/GPU system at the ISC 2012 Student Cluster Competition in Hamburg. NUDT, like Team Tsinghua, had to fight its way through five other Chinese university competitors to secure its spot …

    HPC 27 Jun 13:33

  • Fraudsters phish for NatWest clients with 'Stephen Hester' email

    Web link snare asks for personal info

    NatWest customers are being targeted by a run of fake "phishing" emails exploiting the recent disruption in the bank's services, Action Fraud warns. The fraudulent electronic messages offer prospective marks access to their accounts in exchange for personal information. In reality the opportunistic scam is purely designed to …

    Security 27 Jun 13:58

  • ISC 2012: China's 'Pop Idols' seek Klusterkamph glory

    ISC 2012 Intra-China winners look for win in Germany

    The Tsinghua University team (profile here) didn’t take the easy route to the ISC 2012 Student Cluster Competition in Hamburg. They had to fight their way in a Pop Idols-style smackdown along with five other universities, which all competed to carry the Chinese flag in an intra-country play-in round. Tsinghua won that …

    HPC 27 Jun 14:01

  • Scaling the heights of private cloud

    Infographic Take me, take me to the top

    We’ve done it again. Another couple of slices through our Private Cloud research delivered in stunning Technicolor gloryvision. For this beauty, click the pic to see it (PDF), we’ve zoomed in on the route from virtualisation to private cloud, showing adoption, how challenges are tackled, the progress made by your peers. And …

    Cloud 27 Jun 14:30

  • HPC whizzkids battle own software on final day of student compo

    ISC 2012 Stony Brook Uni team repairs, rewinds and completes

    It's the last day of the 2012 ISC Student Cluster Competition, and Stony Brook University (profile here) has had their work cut out for them so far... From the very beginning, they had software problems with their cluster, requiring them to concentrate on troubleshooting and repairing while their competitors were running code. …

    HPC 27 Jun 14:35

  • Microsoft's offices gutted in Athens arson attack

    When the Greeks flame someone ...

    Microsoft's Greek headguarters in Athens have been attacked by arsonists, who caused serious damage but didn't injure anyone. The software giant said that the assailants drove a van up to the entrance of the building in the early hours of this morning and made the security guards keep away while they set fire to the vehicle …

    Bootnotes 27 Jun 14:57

  • Microsoft says tablets will trump PCs in 2013

    Slate domination

    Microsoft reckons tablets will outsell standard PCs next year - and Windows 8 will be the catalyst for the shift. "Everything used to be desktops, now 60 per cent of PCs sold are laptops. Next year, tablets will outsell desktops," forecast Microsoft's Antoine Leblond, head of its web services operation. Talking at the …

    Tablets 27 Jun 15:13

  • SurfTheChannel site operator found guilty of conspiracy to defraud

    First major UK decision against a links site

    A landmark legal case has ended with the operator of streaming links website SurfTheChannel.com being found guilty. The case against the Gateshead couple who operated the venture was brought by the Federation against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the Motion Picture Ass. of America, the MPAA. Anton Vickerman, 41, was found guilty …

    Law 27 Jun 15:34

  • UK Supremes back Oracle against reseller who brought Sun kit to EU

    What happens in China stays in China. Until Larry says

    Oracle has won a UK Supreme Court ruling in its long-running battle with dealer M-Tech Data that upholds the database-maker's right to be the first to bring its gear to EU markets. The case was originally brought by Sun Microsystems, which sued M-Tech in 2009 for importing Sun drives into the EU after Sun had only sold them in …

    The Channel 27 Jun 15:48

  • Atari turns 40: Pong, Pac-Man and a $500 gamble

    Did 1980s joystick deathgrip give you a claw hand?

    Forty years ago today, one of the most iconic names in computing was born: Atari. With just $500 between them, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded Atari on June 26, 1972. Atari quickly became a successful computer games company: titles for Atari broke the one million units sold barrier and 10 years later Atari was making $ …

    Vintage 27 Jun 16:00

  • Ten... highlights from 40 years of Atari

    Antique code show Pong on...

    With Atari celebrating its 40th anniversary today, we thought we'd look back at the company's rise and fall in the computing world, in case you're either too young or - worst case scenario - too addled to remember. Or you haven't yet seen the Atari feature on El Reg. Either way, here's ten highlights from Atari's history that …

    Games 27 Jun 16:48

  • Microsoft concocts cloudy mixture with System Center 2012

    False dawn or genuine breakthrough?

    Is it possible to have cloud and on-premise computing intermingled in a hybrid called the private cloud? Such arrangements are mocked by Salesforce.com chief executive Marc Benioff, who has said “beware the false cloud” on several occasions. But the concept appeals to enterprises that want the benefits of on-demand computing …

    Cloud 27 Jun 19:48

  • Google unveils Nexus 7 tablet, Android 4.1 and Nexus Q

    Google I/O Balls to Apple, Microsoft and Amazon

    Google has used its annual developer conference, Google I/0 2012 in San Francisco, to announce its long-expected tablet, the Nexus 7, along with a new 4.1 build of Android (codenamed Jelly Bean) and a hackable home streaming Android computer called the Nexus Q that is shaped like a ball. Built by Asus, the Nexus 7 packs a quad …

    Tablets 27 Jun 21:09

  • Red Hat: Keep clouds open, like Linux

    Red Hat Summit You'd expect Shadowman to say that – again

    At last year's Red Hat Summit, it was CEO Jim Whitehurst who preached to the open source choir about the need to keep virtualization and the cloudy extensions of it open. And at this year's event in Boston, it was Paul Cormier, president of products at the billion-dollar commercial open source software powerhouse, who banged on …

    Cloud 27 Jun 21:35

  • Google wingmen rain Project Glass on San Francisco

    Google I/O Wearable computers launched in style

    Google's Sergey Brin has confirmed that the first units of Project Glass, his pet project of wearable computing systems previewed earlier this year, will be available to US customers early in 2013. The glasses have a screen above the right eye, with a CPU, wireless radios, memory and a camera with a touchpad and control button …

    Hardware 27 Jun 21:36

  • Patent trolling cost the US $29 BILLION in 2011

    Boston Uni researchers slam ‘NPE’ lawsuits

    New research from Boston University suggests that “patent trolling” is a very expensive business, costing $US29 billion in 2011 in America alone, and that trolling reduces the funds available for innovation. The research, by James Bessen and Michael J Meurer of the university’s School of Law, drew on information published in …

    Law 27 Jun 22:05

  • Australia goes cold on ACTA

    This dead cat won't even bounce properly

    Another bit of flesh dropped off the decaying zombie that is ACTA, with the Australian parliamentary Treaties Committee recommending that ratification be deferred - partly because of its near-collapse in Europe. The committee states that ACTA should not be ratified until a range of conditions, including a cost-benefit analysis …

    Government 27 Jun 22:30

  • Red Hat Storage Server NAS takes on Lustre, NetApp

    Red Hat Summit A veritable Gluster, fsck

    Red Hat has a server operating system, middleware, virtualization, and a cloud fabric – and now it has production-grade, scale-out clustered network-attached storage now that it is shipping its Storage Server 2.0 software. The software is a gussied up version of the GlusterFS file system that was spun out of a project at …

    Storage 27 Jun 23:27