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4th July 2012 Archive

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  • Full Tilt Poker boss arrested over $430m 'Ponzi scheme'

    Hands himself in to authorities over missed payments

    The CEO of Full Tilt Poker has handed himself in to American authorities to face charges of running a Ponzi scheme against its users. Raymond Bitar was arrested by the FBI at JFK Airport, in New York over allegations that his website, at one time the second biggest online poker company in the world, defrauded players by taking …

    Security 4 Jul 01:06

  • Judge: Twitter offers free speech, American style

    Just don't expect privacy, too

    A New York judge has ruled that Twitter offers freedom of speech in the grand tradition of American liberty – but that won't help you when the police come knocking to take a peek at your posting history. "It is probably safe to assume that Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson would have …

    Law 4 Jul 01:24

  • Pretty returns to telco land with Mahindra Satyam

    Lands chairman role, set to drive A/Pac expansion

    India’s IT outsourcing giant Mahindra Satyam has resurrected former high profile Telstra and Optus executive Ted Pretty, placing him in the chairman’s role for its newly fleshed out Australia and New Zealand operations. Signalling a new push in A/NZ, Pretty has been tasked to drive Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra strategy …

    Broadband 4 Jul 05:21

  • DDoS blackmailers busted in cross-border swoop

    Cyber hoodlums targeted gold and silver traders

    Chinese and Hong Kong cops are hailing another success in their cross-border cyber policing efforts with the scalp of a high profile DDoS blackmail gang which targeted gold, silver and securities traders in the former British colony. Six cyber hoodlums were arrested on the mainland in Hunan, Hubei, Shanghai and other locations …

    Security 4 Jul 05:24

  • Orange San Diego Intel-based Android phone

    Review First Atom-powered smart talker

    If you own a smartphone then you are almost certainly using an ARM CPU. That’s good for ARM and its licensees but bad for Intel, as it wants a piece of the vast mobile chip market. Cue the San Diego, a retail version of Intel’s own Gigabyte-built smartphone reference platform built around a hyper-threading 1.6GHz Z2460 Atom …

    reghardware 4 Jul 07:00

  • GPS spoofing countermeasures: Your smartphone already has them

    Analysis BAE Systems gets to where Google was in 2007-odd

    There's suddenly a lot of panic about GPS satellite navigation spoofing, and BAE Systems among others would like to sell the military some tech to resist it. But in fact, most modern smartphones already have strong countermeasures against this sort of thing. UK-headquartered but largely US-based BAE's latest grab for …

    Security 4 Jul 07:19

  • Border Agency comes out with another e-Borders deadline

    Pop it in the diary so you can have a laugh in 2014

    The UK government has defended its under-fire Border Agency after MPs blasted the e-Borders passenger-scrutinising system as broken and its £9m iris scanners a waste of money. The written response to a Parliamentary select committee's report on the agency does make some concrete promises including extending the e-Borders …

    Security 4 Jul 07:38

  • Big Data megaslurp 'to save UK.gov £30 BILLION pa', raves thinktank

    Gov should be more like FaceGooglezon! <wipes foam>

    Politicians should use their own expectations of privacy to judge how far the government should go when digging through databases and marrying up disparate information on individual citizens. That's the conclusion of a report published by Tory think tank Policy Exchange, which counts among its list of trustees California-based …

    Government 4 Jul 07:58

  • Security boffins brew devilish Android rootkit

    Experimental vileware turns your mobe into a TRAITOR

    Computer scientists have identified a weakness in the Android mobile operating system that allows users to be tricked into silently installing hidden malware. A research team led by Xuxian Jiang at North Carolina State University discovered that they could redirect a fandroid's touchscreen taps - a technique known as …

    Security 4 Jul 08:13

  • Will Android, HTML5 tempt tabloid tablet tyrant Rupert Murdoch?

    Analysis Wants his balls back from over Apple's garden wall

    Rupert Murdoch has split News International in two, separating publishing (including his British phone-hacking-accused newspapers) from broadcasting and entertainment (everything else). Commentators reckon the move is to protect the latter half from the “contagion” of the press ethics scandal engulfing the journalism arm of …

    Cloud 4 Jul 08:30

  • Amazon buys 4-person 3D mapping startup, claims report

    Accidentally hit 'buy with one click'?

    Amazon have marked a sharp change in corporate direction by buying up 3D mapping start-up UpNext yesterday for an undisclosed sum. It's a bold move for the e-tailer and puts it head to head with other tech giants piling into the area. Apple bought up a 3D mapping start-up C3 several years ago and will release a native mapping …

    Cloud 4 Jul 08:44

  • Mexican election loser and Anonymous say vote was 'fraudulent'

    Nameless chaps say bad things found on server they hacked

    Mexico's defeated leftist presidential candidate has claimed his country's election was "fraudulent", a claim supported by the local chapter of Anonymous. Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), declared victory late on Sunday after official results showed he landed 38 per cent of the vote. Andres …

    Security 4 Jul 08:58

  • Tosh handed $87 MILLION fine in LCD price fixing case

    Japanese electronics firm vows to fight verdict

    Japanese electronics giant Toshiba has come out fighting after becoming the latest big name to be found guilty of a widespread price-fixing racket relating to liquid crystal display (LCD) panels sold in the US. The company has now been ordered by a northern California court to pay $87m in damages – $70m to consumers who bought …

    CIO 4 Jul 09:13

  • Micron 'fesses up: Yes, we plan to eat limping DRAMurai warrior

    Signs 'definitive sponsor agreement to acquire and support Elpida'

    After months of speculation and rumours, Micron's acquisition of Elpida has finally been announced. The firm has now signalled its intention to buy Elpida for 200 billion yen ($2.5bn, £1.6bn). Here's the Micron statement: Micron … and Elpida Memory's … trustees announced today that the parties have signed a definitive sponsor …

    Storage 4 Jul 09:29

  • CERN catches a glimpse of Higgs-like boson

    Answer to life, the universe and everything coming soon

    CERN boffins have finally hit paydirt with the Large Hadron Collider, finding a particle that is pretty much almost certainly the long sought-after Higgs boson. LOOK - THERE IT IS! IN THERE SOMEWHERE! Where before numerous findings of "strong evidence" for the God particle have made researchers sort of sure Higgs boson is …

    Science 4 Jul 09:44

  • US defence biz fined for busting China arms embargo

    No need for cyber-spying - just buy the damn software

    A top US defence contractor has been fined $75m (£47.8m) for flogging software to China that was a vital component in the country's first attack helicopter. United Technologies and its two subsidiaries Pratt & Whitney Canada (PWC) and Hamilton Sundstrand 'fessed up to more than 500 violations of export restrictions in a …

    Security 4 Jul 10:02

  • Who runs UK? 'Tories, Lib Dems and Google' says Labour

    Harman: Number 10 can't stand up to web giant

    Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman has slammed Google's extraordinary influence over the UK's ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. The Shadow Deputy Prime Minister said "there are three parties in the Coalition: the Tories, the Lib Dems, and Google". It's the strongest attack yet on the Google-Tory …

    Government 4 Jul 10:17

  • Can you judge a man by his Twitter followers?

    Sysadmin blog The enemy of my enemy is my Facebook friend

    Is following someone on Twitter (or friending them on Facebook) an endorsement of that person? Social networking isn't going away, and increased corporate awareness of it means that systems administrators need to be prepared to answer these sorts of murky questions. As a case study, I am going to pick apart my own use of …

    Servers 4 Jul 10:32

  • Google Maps takes shelter from the British summer

    Indoor mapping comes to Blighty

    Google has extended its indoor mapping, launched in America last November, to the UK, providing guidance around any property the owners care to share. Google is priming the pump with floor plans for 40 sites around the UK, including Kings Cross, City Airport and the V&A, but anywhere else that wants visitors to be able to …

    Cloud 4 Jul 10:47

  • Sluggish banking sector brings us down, moans Redstone

    Integrator sales flat in fiscal 2012, but it's close to break even

    Managed services outfit Redstone made little progress on the sales front in fiscal 2012 ended 31 March – albeit in a stagnating market – but it did come closer to breaking even, according to prelims. Turnover at the firm edged up just £100,000 in the year to £67.2m and it made an EBITDA of £5.2m compared to £1.1m in the …

    The Channel 4 Jul 11:03

  • Speaking in Tech: Apple, Oracle and Google SUCK at cloud

    Podcast Plus: Does VMware's acquisition of DynamicOps change the game?

    Our special guest this week at El Reg's enterprise tech-cast is George Reese, CTO and co-founder of enStratus, a cloud infrastructure management solution for deploying and managing enterprise-class applications in public, private and hybrid clouds. Your hosts Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela spoke with the cloud biz …

    Cloud 4 Jul 11:03

  • BBC TV boss George Entwistle nabs director general post

    Ofcom's Ed Richards sent back to his spreadsheets

    George Entwistle, a BBC insider since 1989, was today appointed the corporation's new director general and will replace Mark Thompson. Entwistle has the strongest programme-making background of the shortlisted hopefuls for the top job. He is currently in charge of TV - or "director of vision" as the BBC calls the post. That …

    Media 4 Jul 11:14

  • YouView launches with pricey premium DVR

    No low-cost option. No unique content. No chance?

    YouView's long-awaited - no longer eagerly so, perhaps - set-top box will arrive in the shops of Britain's best-known electrical retailers "by the end of the month", but you'll have to pony up £300 for one. Two years on from its original launch window, the platform, which now combines Freeview over-the-air programming with net …

    reghardware 4 Jul 11:22

  • Microsoft claims Wii U is Nintendo's play for Xbox 360 gamers

    Ninty, natch, disagrees

    Microsoft and Nintendo continue to squabble over the capabilities of their respective consoles. While Microsoft says the Wii U is no better than the Xbox 360 in terms of visual power, Ninty claims you'll barely notice a difference between its forthcoming console and any other next-gen gaming hardware. Nintendo is "building a …

    reghardware 4 Jul 11:27

  • EC competition concerns stall UK's superfast broadband plans

    Scrutiny of BT and Fujitsu deals 'will not delay rollout', insists gov

    Competition officials in Europe have stalled the UK government's plans to lay superfast fibre optic networks for 90 per cent of homes and businesses in the country by 2015. However, a spokesman at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport insisted that the next generation broadband rollout would not be delayed as a result of …

    Broadband 4 Jul 11:34

  • Cisco, Fusion-io's blade lovechild in EMC flash face-off

    Blocks and Files Will VBlock partner be forced to line a rival's pockets?

    Will VCE ship Vblocks - its virtual machine battery farms - with Fusion-io flash cards inside instead of EMC's VFCache memory rival? In June Cisco entered into an OEM deal with Fusion-io whereby the networking hardware titan would incorporate Fusion's ioDrive2 PCIe flash cards into its UCS B-Series blade servers. The aim is to …

    Virtualization 4 Jul 11:45

  • Apple to build freakish headgear with peripheral vision

    Files patent to fill fanbois' fields of vision with shinies

    Apple has filed a patent – number 8,212,859 – for the treatment of peripheral areas in a head-mounted visual display... iGlasses anyone? IT elements in Apple HMD patent The patent is not about the design of any particular type of head-mounted display (HMD) but rather around how one treats the peripheral area in the field of …

    Hardware 4 Jul 12:01

  • Samsung fails to stall Galaxy Nexus sales ban

    Google pulls mobe from Play store, works on fix

    Samsung's bad luck in the US courts continues after Judge Lucy Koh refused to delay a ban on its Galaxy Nexus smartphones. The South Korean electronics giant tried to get a stay on the preliminary injunction won by Apple while it appealed the decision, but Judge Koh was having none of it. The iPhone maker was granted the …

    Mobile 4 Jul 12:27

  • 41 London tube station platforms now WIRED for Wi-Fi

    HELLO, HELLO. I'm on the Underground

    Virgin Media has now installed Wi-Fi kit in more than 40 London Underground stations as it continues to connect its fibre backhaul network to around half of the capital's tube stations – although the service will only be available at platform-level. Passengers will be able to use VM's monopoly underground wireless network for …

    Broadband 4 Jul 13:01

  • HTC bags UK win in patent war with Apple

    No infringement... plus 3 patents lobbed by Cupertino ruled invalid

    A UK court has decided that not only did HTC not infringe on four patents Apple brought against it, but three of them are invalid. HTC was first to file in the UK, trying to invalidate patents that were already at issue in the firms' cases in Germany, but Apple quickly counter-sued over patents dealing with multi-touch, photo …

    Law 4 Jul 13:58

  • Sophos slips Junk into gap left by departing EMEA veep

    No word on Ciaran Rafferty's permanent replacement

    Sophos veep for northern Europe, Middle East and Africa Ciaran Rafferty has quietly left the organisation, The Channel can reveal. Rafferty joined Sophos as UK and Ireland country manager a little over three years ago and was handed a wider remit in August 2010. "After three years of significant contributions to Sophos, …

    The Channel 4 Jul 14:50

  • Boffins pull off room-temp quantum computing with home-grown gems

    Diamond test gives hope to luke-warm server strokers

    One of the very many reasons there won't be quantum computing any time soon is that the quantum bits (qubits) need to be at absolute zero - not very practical for the average server room, much less the lowly desktop. 'The room temperature thing is good, but how do we get rid of this eerie green light?' However, Harvard tech …

    Science 4 Jul 15:02

  • New gov.uk site hits beta, flashes SINGLE typeface to punters

    Designer: People want to get in, get what they want, get out. Quickly

    The government has released the beta version of its new digital portal – Gov.UK – with a search-focused homepage and a batch of fresh content. The site – which will pull together all government services in a smooth, sexy web package – is slated to go fully live by the end of 2012; the soft launch today is to test out features, …

    Government 4 Jul 15:28

  • Arrow ECS gets in on cloud aggregation game

    Not so sceptical now, are we?

    Arrow ECS has lifted the covers off a cloud services aggregation and brokerage platform for resellers, ISVs and SIs. The mid-market infrastructure distie, which usually rides the crest of emerging tech, has been sceptical about cloud in the recent past, instead claiming data centre transformation was the major opportunity for …

    The Channel 4 Jul 15:48

  • New UK network touts FREE* mobile broadband

    * After you've watched these adverts

    The UK's latest mobile operator Samba won't charge punters for its wireless broadband. Instead it will ask customers to watch adverts in exchange for network access. Samba is camping on Three's network and offering almost 7MB of data for every minute of advertising viewed. That's enough for the company to claim 2.5 minutes of …

    Mobile 4 Jul 16:01

  • Euro Parliament kills ACTA treaty before court can look at it

    Intellectual property is theft, says Brussels

    As widely expected, the hapless Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) treaty has been rejected by the European Parliament. European MPs wanted to push through a vote before the European Court of Justice had ruled on whether ACTA is compatible with European Treaties - and succeeded. Altogether 478 MEPs voted against …

    Law 4 Jul 16:26

  • Ten... alien invasions

    Sci-fi round-up Take me as your leader

    Earlier this week, alien hunters donned their tinfoil hats for World UFO day and with Yanks celebrating Independence Day today, the topic of extra-terrestrial takeover lingers in the air. The public has even been debating who would be best equipped to tackle an alien invasion. Whether that's Mr. Obama, his political opponent or …

    reghardware 4 Jul 16:28

  • Bill Gates: iPad is OK, but what Apple really needs is a SURFACE

    Still has his old knack for branding

    Bill Gates foresees a future without PCs or tablets - where there are only "Surface-like devices" - he told PBS chat show host Charlie Rose last night. Evangelising about the new Microsoft tablet – Surface – Gates sketched out his vision for a world where everyone is using the Surface, saying that the device which promises to …

    Hardware 4 Jul 17:02

  • Facebook: Our phone app DID seize your email

    Blame the bug... bitch

    Facebook has admitted its mobile app altered phones' contacts books to use @facebook.com addresses. The hijack stems from a flaw in the website's design and the decision to provide every user with an @facebook.com handle that forwards to their Facebook message inbox. These addresses are now shown on the site's Timeline to …

    Security 4 Jul 17:59

  • Japan Anonymous aims to fight download law by picking up litter

    Japanonymous aligns itself against nuclear power, too

    Japan has set up a task force to battle Anonymous and potential cyber-espionage attacks. The move follows online protests by the hacktivist group against Japan's new law against illegal downloads on June 22. The Finance Ministry was forced to suspend one of its websites on 26 June after it "had been alerted that some of the …

    Law 4 Jul 20:02

  • Facebook signs on for Malaysia cable

    Putting the social into a new network

    Facebook has emerged as an investor in the Asia Pacific Gateway submarine cable project, being built to link eight countries in the region. The investment by The Social NetworkTM emerged in a stock exchange announcement by Malaysian ISP, Time dotCom, which has become the latest investor in the under-construction cable system …

    Business 4 Jul 21:54

  • Crafty cuttlefish mimics male and female – at the same time

    Too sexy for my body, on the right side only

    Male cuttlefish try to avoid fighting other males over mating rights, and new research from Macquarie University in Sydney has revealed the trick one species can play to look harmless: it can imitate male and female simultaneously. Changing colours and patterns is well-known among sea creatures like cuttlefish, squid and …

    Science 4 Jul 22:29

  • Apostrophe’s cause problem’s in e-health system’s

    Record stupidity in Australian PCEHR rollout

    Australia’s bug-ridden PCEHR – personally-controlled electronic health record – has run into another first glitch, with its registration site reportedly rejecting names containing non-alphanumeric characters. If you’re an O’Dwyer or have a double-barrelled surname, the registration process for PCEHRs would have failed, …

    Policy 4 Jul 23:00