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29th June 2012 Archive

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  • Pigment powered gadgets

    Queensland Uni trailblazers in melanin infused electronics

    The natural pigment, melanin, which endows humans and animals eye, skin and hair colour is set to be the driving force behind a new generation of bio-powered gadgets. A research team from the University of Queensland led by Professor Paul Meredith and Associate Professor Ben Powell and incorporating an international team of …

    Science 29 Jun 03:32

  • Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes

    Review Gotham bricky

    The only Batman I have ever cared about is the cynical desperate anti-hero of Frank Miller's The Dark Night Returns but Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes may have just changed my mind. The fall of Superman Like the Batman franchise the Lego game series is prolific. Since 2005 we have Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry …

    reghardware 29 Jun 07:00

  • Free tool inspects all your personal 'ware automatically

    Can't tell your wife you're doing updates any more

    Secunia has taken the wraps off a new version of its consumer patch management tool, Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) version 3.0. PSI v3.0, released today, offers a free Windows security scanner for private PC users that covers applications from more than 3,000 vendors. The technology differs from previous versions …

    Security 29 Jun 07:17

  • DataCore orchestra tunes up for the Ninth SANsymphony

    Thats SANsymphony, not sans symphony

    DataCore has pushed out its ninth SANsymphony release, which is orchestrated for the cloud, large data centre deployments, and storage-as-a-service. SANsymphony software runs in a PC or server and virtualises storage behind it into a thinly provisioned virtual pool. It competes with FalconStor software, IBM's SAN Volume …

    Storage 29 Jun 07:38

  • The Open Rights Group gets rights wrong again

    Opinion Defender of parody is becoming a self-parody

    When Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock opens his mouth, his foot soon disappears inside. The UK's leading digital rights advocate has just demonstrated still more difficulty understanding the "rights" the group campaigns about. At a Citizen 2012 data conference in London yesterday, where he was introduced as " …

    Media 29 Jun 08:00

  • UK spectrum row: What we need is more national disasters

    Future of Wireless Only that way will there be proper emergency comms

    The problem with UK radio spectrum policy, apparently, is that we have too much competition and not enough proper disasters, which means our emergency services won't get enough radio spectrum until people start dying. That's according to Motorola's Jeppe Jepsen, who does have a vested interest as a supplier of kit to emergency …

    Broadband 29 Jun 08:14

  • PS3 fans buy more digital content than Xbox buffs do

    Sony supporters splash out

    British PS3 owners are more willing to splash the cash on digital content than their Xbox 360 counterparts, it has been claimed. Research showed that 17 per cent of PS3 gamers paid for digital content during the last 12 months, compared to 11 per cent of those who own an Xbox 360. Sony shills will probably say that has …

    reghardware 29 Jun 08:22

  • 'Backing out of a failed update really ought to be a trivial matter...'

    QuotW Plus: 'I'm not panicking AT ALL about Surface. No'

    This was the week when there was an almighty tech disaster at RBS and Natwest that froze millions out of their bank accounts. Stories abounded of houses lost because sales hadn't gone through, people stuck in prison because their bail hadn't been paid and legions of folks just plain old p***ed off because they couldn't put their …

    Business 29 Jun 08:30

  • BPM today, tomorrow and beyond

    Broadcast Embrace and evolve

    Are you tough enough to take on Business Process Management (BPM) and win? Someone has to. It has never been more important to handle workflow efficiently. But it has never been more tricky: different types of information, acquired in different locations, for different business needs, need to be integrated into the process. …

    Business 29 Jun 08:40

  • Teleconferencing 'shifts hundreds of NHS bed-blockers out the door'

    Virtual meeting re-ablement triumph saves £150m

    The Whittington hospital NHS trust is speeding its discharge rates and saving about £150,000 a year by using teleconferencing, according to Jar O'Brien, team leader for Islington's community rehabilitation services. He said the system, a hosted audio-conferencing service supplied by BT, costs £6,000 a year to run. O'Brien said …

    Government 29 Jun 08:47

  • Nexus 7 and Surface: A bonanza for landfill miners

    Comment The fish aren't going to get on the bicycles

    It would be charitable (that is, untrue) to call the consumer electronics strategies of Microsoft and Google coherent today. But what they lack in coherence they make up for in er, … sheer recklessness. That's OK, then. Both stalwarts are now in head-on competition with their customers, having launched their own-brand tablets …

    Hardware 29 Jun 08:56

  • Half-Life 3 concept art leaves fans wanting more

    Valve gets sketchy

    Concept art for Half-Life 3 has leaked onto the web, whetting fans appetites for what might be in store if Valve ever releases the long-awaited followup. The images - uploaded by an anonymous source - show landscapes that were mentioned in the last game, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, as well as known characters, including Eli's …

    reghardware 29 Jun 09:10

  • Join the gov consultation on net porn ... and have your identity revealed

    Tick 'confidential' if you like: it means simply nothing

    A parental internet controls consultation document released by the Department for Education yesterday is currently exposing the email addresses, unencrypted passwords and sensitive answers of members of the public who fill in the associated form. Many Register readers have alerted us to the serious security flaw this morning, …

    Security 29 Jun 09:14

  • Reg hack attempts gutsiest expenses claim EVER

    Napkin hieroglyphs leave top beancounter ROFLing in tears

    We're certain that plenty of Reg readers have at one time or another been given short shrift by the company finance department for presenting a dodgy receipt as part of an expenses claim. Last weekend, though, we obtained a bit of paper which we reckon would be hard to beat if you're determined to be shown the beancounters' …

    Bootnotes 29 Jun 09:28

  • Vodafone to let you roam in Europe at UK prices

    Plus, of course, a small daily consideration

    New European Commission-imposed EU mobile data roaming price regulations kick in on Sunday, and Vodafone has announced a modification of its European roaming package. The new arrangement, Vodafone Euro Traveller, allows Brits to pay no more for calls, messages and data when they're on the continent as they do at home, Extras …

    reghardware 29 Jun 09:41

  • First lady taikonaut and pals plunge into the dirt after space mating

    Smack down after withdrawing from Heavenly Palace

    The three taikonauts aboard Shenzhou-9 have returned safely to Earth, touching down in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region as planned. Chang Wanquan, chief commander of China's manned space programme, said that the space docking mission had been a complete success and that all three of the astronauts were in …

    Space 29 Jun 09:43

  • B&O Beoplay A3

    Accessory of the Week iPad entertainment centre

    Stick an iPad in B&O’s Beoplay A3, take a step or two back and look at it square on. It looks like a mini B&O TV. Put it down on a kitchen worktop or office shelf and you have a video player or jukebox capable of producing rich, full-bodied audio which does iPad far more justice than its own tiny speaker. As well as standing …

    reghardware 29 Jun 10:00

  • Open-source password keeper to get 'minor' weekend security fix

    You'd need to make several dumbass moves to get bitten

    The developer of KeePass, the popular open-source password management utility, has promised an update this weekend following the discovery of a "minor" security bug in the tool. KeePass Password Safe is a free-of-charge and open-source tool that offers consumers the ability to manage multiple passwords from a central vault. …

    Security 29 Jun 10:14

  • Apple patent may foretell an end to iPhone autocorrect Tourette's

    Intriguing new special asshole filing

    An Apple patent application just published by the US Patent Office shows that the masterminds of Cupertino have figured out (or hope to figure out) a cunning way to work out what words you're going to tap into your little Jesus mobe before you type it. The US Patent Office has not yet granted the patent, but in accordance with …

    Applications 29 Jun 10:31

  • Governments probe domain land-snatch: many.gTLDs.suck

    Patagonia? You mean that's a place?

    Governments have started to put ICANN's massive top-level domain name expansion under scrutiny, after the revelation of 1,930 applications for new naming suffixes two weeks ago. During sessions here at ICANN's 44th public meeting in Prague, government representatives have raised their eyebrows over several types of application …

    Hosting 29 Jun 10:48

  • Dimming the lights on smart(arse) TV

    Something for the weekend, Sir? When consumer devices go bzzzt

    "The TV has stopped working." This is the kind of announcement that I both dread and am accustomed to in the Dabbs household. A bit like the bath-fitter who is expected to know how to fix blocked sewers, as a computer journalist I am held personally to account upon the failure at home of anything electronic... or indeed …

    reghardware 29 Jun 11:00

  • Just how do you build the perfect Olympic stadium?

    London Olympics What have the Romans ever done for us....

    On 27 July, London will be transformed as the biggest celebration of sports in the world kicks off in the newly built Olympic Stadium in Stratford. The stadium has been designed to hold 80,000 people, and the Olympic Village will certainly hold many more. On a normal day, Stratford tube station handles somewhere between 220, …

    Physics 29 Jun 11:15

  • BMW, Toyota to build fuel cells for sports cars

    Next-gen e-car tech partnership struck

    BMW and Toyota are to work together on the development of fuel cell and electric powertrains, the two automotive giants said today. Neither firm went into any detail about the R&D programme, but the two companies' principals were keen to stress how the agreement is good for both: BMW gets access to Toyota's work on hybrids and …

    reghardware 29 Jun 11:19

  • Android Jelly Bean won't get Flash Player

    Never mind, there's lots of HTML5 porn content now

    As part of the slow death of Adobe's Flash Player, the company has announced it won't be making a certified version for Android's new 4.1 OS – aka Jelly Bean. Adobe said on its blog that it won't be developing Flash for Android 4.1. The software company said it will also start taking steps to phase the player out of the Google …

    Operating Systems 29 Jun 11:38

  • War On Standby: Do the figures actually stack up?

    Analysis Will you stop turning the TV off at the wall

    The War On Standby rumbles on: this week, courtesy of the UK government and "third sector" quangocracy, we heard yet again that gadgets left on standby suck vast, planet-wrecking, expensive amounts of energy from our electricity sockets. It's an idea which has gained a lot of traction over the years. Many Reg readers (and …

    Energy 29 Jun 12:00

  • Ultrabook demand soars Stateside

    But they're still a tiny percentage of the market

    That Ultrabooks have grabbed almost 11 per cent of the $700-and-up Windows notebook market in the US during the first five months of the year sounds impressive, until you realise how small that market segment is. The statistic above comes from US retail market watcher NPD. It said Ultrabooks' share of the $700-plus segment has …

    reghardware 29 Jun 12:08

  • Tsinghua, NUDT flatten rivals in ISC cluster smackdown

    ISC 2012 Teraflop barrier busted across the board

    The 2012 ISC Student Cluster Challenge ended last week, and it’s high time we take a look at the winners, the awards and some of the results. Each of the five teams put in months of work designing its cluster and learning how to optimise it to run the various benchmarks and application codes featured in the competition. They …

    HPC 29 Jun 12:29

  • Resellers: Cloud is BIG, but it's a sales commission minefield

    Maybe that's why market has been slow to pick up?

    We’ve all read about how cloud computing is "more than just a buzzword" or a passing phase. And we’re all well-versed in selling the benefits of cloud and managed services in terms of cost-savings, flexibility, managing complex tasks and only paying for what you use. There have also been plenty of wise words written about how …

    Channel Register 29 Jun 12:38

  • Chrome hits iPhone and iPad, storms to top of download chart

    Google slips new tentacle into fanbois' walled garden

    Google's new Chrome browser for iOS has stormed the iTunes download charts - hitting the top spot for free apps worldwide. Announced at a dev meeting yesterday, the mobile browser was quietly released in Apple's App Store on 26 June. It is not significantly faster than Safari, the Jesus phone's native browser, but Google's …

    Cloud Business 29 Jun 12:43

  • Gouged by cloud - but it's so convenient

    Open ... and Shut Last to know, first to pay

    Most everyone believes that cloud computing is taking off in a big way. Finding agreement on why it's booming is a bit more problematic. The issue becomes particularly nettlesome for private cloud adoption, which is either heavily driven by public cloud cost management... or the exact opposite, depending on whom you ask. There …

    Cloud Business 29 Jun 13:00

  • Do you work in IT at RBS? Or at the next place to get hit ...?

    Here's a handy guide to riding out the storm

    Those nice people at RBS have provided me with a worked example for how you can best get through fan-hitting situations without having to take up minicab driving or going to work in local government. What I’m writing applies to the any of the very worst of screw-ups, when technology has gone so wrong that the IT director …

    Jobs 29 Jun 13:15

  • Apple's Mountain Lion to offer automatic security updates

    Crikey - now there's a thought

    Apple is building in automatic update checking into the next version of Mac OS X – Mountain Lion. OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion can be configured to automatically poll for security updates every day instead of waiting for users to check for them, which describes the current set-up, AppleInsider reports. Alternatively, Mountain Lion …

    Security 29 Jun 13:27

  • HPC cloud belches from top UK universities

    Rent yourself a rack at the (tera)FLOPhouse

    At last, one can rent tens of thousands of cores-worth of HPC teraFLOPS on demand from an HPC cloud. It's called CORE and is based on high-performance computing (HPC) labs at Cambridge University and Imperial College and the STFC DiRAC national HPC service. Users can get access to over 300 teraFLOPS of sustained, double- …

    Infrastructure 29 Jun 14:02

  • Ethiopia: we are not jailing Skype users

    Western media 'mistaken'

    The Ethiopian government has refuted reports that anyone caught using Skype in the country will go to jail. It insists the claims publicised by western media are completely groundless. Earlier this month, it was widely reported that a new Ethiopian law prohibited the use of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, with …

    reghardware 29 Jun 14:02

  • Berkshire bigboy 2e2 in the pink - apart from crushing debt burden

    Amphibious workforce gets its feet wet

    Integrator 2e2 recorded steep losses in calendar 2011 caused by crippling interest repayments, discontinued operations and restructuring costs, but despite all this, some progress was made in the underlying operations. The privately held Berks-based firm, which pushed out the numbers in a glossy annual report, made a net loss …

    Channel Register 29 Jun 14:14

  • Mad fan-fitted mouse keeps mitts moisture-free

    Play for hours, no sweat

    Suffer from excessively sweaty palms when you're gaming on your PC? Accessory maker Thermaltake has a - rather bizarre, IMHO - answer: a mouse with its own tiny clip-on fan. The Thermaltake Black Element Cyclone Gaming Mouse blows a gentle breeze over a player's hand, thanks to its detachable USB-powered air cooler. The …

    reghardware 29 Jun 14:23

  • Stratfor settles class-action over Anon megahack with freebies

    You want fries with that bucket-o-geopolitical-intel?

    Stratfor has agreed to forgo $1.75m in income to settle a class action lawsuit arising from a high-profile hack by hacktivist group Anonymous against the global intelligence firm's systems last December. Anonymous-affiliated hackers broke into Stratfor's systems in the run-up to Christmas last year before publishing hundreds …

    Security 29 Jun 14:31

  • Behold: Today marks Year Five of the iPhone Era

    Fire. The Wheel. Steam engines. Just trinkets

    Apple has been credited with the first smartphone, with creating the mobile application business and pioneering touch interfacing. None of these things are true: but actually the launch of the iPhone, five years ago, was a much bigger revolution than that. Apple's wasn't the first smartphone by a long chalk, and people (your …

    Hardware 29 Jun 15:00

  • IBM chiefs order pay freeze at US services tentacle

    Update Big Blue shivers - rumours that even bosses will be hit

    The employees at the Global Technology Services unit of Big Blue got some unwelcome but probably not unexpected news that there would not be a broad-based salary increase at the unit this year. There are also reports that IBM has frozen salaries of higher-level executives across the company, which the company has not confirmed …

    CIO 29 Jun 15:29

  • Gov IT buying body: Mega hardware gig to save £6.5m in 2013

    Margins driven to the bone, claims GPS

    The forthcoming mega IT Hardware & Services public sector framework is expected to yield savings of £6.5m this year, according to Government Procurement Services (GPS). As exclusively revealed by The Channel weeks ago, 17 firms made the cut to bag a place on the provisional list of suppliers across the 12 lots – which include …

    Channel Register 29 Jun 15:37

  • Capita ITS asks to-be-axed staffers to pose for marketing pic

    Want to present realistic image of company

    Capita IT Services staff waiting to hear if they have a future at the integrator-cum-reseller have been invited to attend a photo shoot to be used in marketing material. As exclusively revealed, Capita ITS put 1,000 workers at risk of redundancy on 30 March, giving back office employees 30 days notice and 90 days to …

    Channel Register 29 Jun 15:41

  • Jaw-jaw no more-more as calls fall down tally of phone tasks

    Talk to people on it? Don't make me laugh

    You think phones are for making calls? No longer, if a poll conducted by O2 is anything to go by. Talking to people is not even in the top three activities folk spend most time doing on their handsets. Top of the list, with a daily usage time of 24.81 minutes, is web browsing. Social networking comes in at number two; 17.49 …

    reghardware 29 Jun 15:48

  • Two weeks 'til the internet disappears, for 58 Fortune 500 companies

    Stand by for 4 per cent of the US gov to go dark, too

    Even though the DNSChanger safety net deadline expires in just two weeks, 12 per cent of Fortune 500 firms still have at least one infected machine on their network, according to a new survey. DNSChanger screwed up the domain name system (DNS) settings of compromised machines to point surfers to rogue servers, redirecting …

    Security 29 Jun 15:52

  • Mac-based Trojan targets Uyghur activists

    Human rights attacked online

    Security researchers have intercepted a Mac-based Trojan attack targeting Uyghur human rights activists. The Uyghur are a minority ethnic group that live in Eastern and Central Asia, mostly (but not exclusively) within the geographical borders of China. A run of infected emails sent to Uyghur activists, and intercepted by …

    Security 29 Jun 16:27

  • Apple hardware fixer Bob Mansfield retires from Cupertino

    Walks away from fortune in share options

    Bob Mansfield, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, has announced his retirement from the company after 13 years in situ, and it seems he's also walking away from tens of millions in unclaimed share options. "Bob has been an instrumental part of our executive team, leading the hardware engineering …

    Business 29 Jun 19:58

  • Texan team paints batteries onto beer steins

    Flexible future power storage in the offing

    Researchers in Texas have discovered a way to break down the components of a battery into liquid form and paint power cells onto everyday objects. An electrifying brew In a paper published in Scientific Reports, the team at Rice University detailed the development of fluids that mimic the conventional lithium-ion battery …

    Energy 29 Jun 21:55