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10th July 2012 Archive

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  • Facebook App Center goes global

    Translating the apps will be the hard part

    Just over a month since it debuted its App Center store in the US, Facebook is rolling out the service to global markets. Predominantly English-speaking countries will come first, with localized stores for other languages to launch in the next few weeks. As of July 9, the App Center is available in markets with a high density …

    Developer 10 Jul 00:28

  • Apple unveils tightened Mountain Lion requirements

    Learn if your Mac can tame Cupertino's next big cat

    Apple has released the System Requirements for its upcoming new version of OS X, Mountain Lion, and as is usually the case with any operating system release, not all Macs need apply – even some that qualified for the Mac's current operating system, Lion. The basic System Requirements are rather straightforward, although as 512 …

    Operating Systems 10 Jul 00:50

  • Pandora plays beta beats downunder

    The box re-opens for mobile music wars

    After months of speculation and a dress rehearsal back in 2007, one of the original online music streamers, Pandora, has re-emerged in Australia. Pandora was briefly available in Australia but in May 2007 the service was shut down due to draconian decentralised legal restrictions which meant that licencing was not available …

    Media 10 Jul 02:30

  • ACTA can't get its act together

    Colder feet for Aussies and Kiwis

    The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is losing its international momentum following the European Parliament’s rejection of the global treaty, which many member states claim is flawed. Australia and New Zealand, who have signed the agreement but not ratified it, are under increasing pressure to withdraw their support …

    Government 10 Jul 02:45

  • Anonymous hack hands WikiLeaks TWO MILLION Syrian emails

    Hacktivists and whistle-blowers turn ire on Assad regime

    Hacktivist group Anonymous is claiming responsibility for an attack on the computer systems of the Syrian government and its evil overlord Bashar Assad thanks to which over two million emails ended up in the hands of whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks. As of last Thursday, the site began drip-feeding sections of the ‘Syria Files’ …

    Government 10 Jul 05:56

  • Chinese smartphone shipments outstripping feature phones

    All aboard the mobile internet

    China is celebrating another technology milestone after claiming that smartphone shipments in the world’s biggest mobile market have now exceeded feature phone shipments, although analysts have their doubts. China’s IT ministry revealed (via TechInAsia) that around 195 million mobile phones were shipped in the first half of …

    Business 10 Jul 06:15

  • Apple boss Cook may have stumped up $60m IPAD pay-out

    Proview claims Cook wanted to take responsibility

    Apple’s IPAD trademark opponent Proview has suggested that CEO Tim Cook may have personally stepped in to fund the $60 million settlement fee paid to the failed monitor company last month. In an interview with Chinese tech title IT-Times, independently translated by The Reg, Proview founder Yang Rongshan said the fee was noted …

    Business 10 Jul 06:30

  • Museum of Computing recognised as PROPER MUSEUM

    So IT really is old fashioned and boring now

    The Museum of Computing has been awarded full accreditation with the Arts Council of England, which means it is now officially a brilliant curator of all things tech. The museum, which is located in Swindon town centre and open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays, was required to meet stringent standards to bag the …

    Bootnotes 10 Jul 07:29

  • Being a skinny is much more unhealthy than being fat – new study

    Maybe you can't be too rich – but you can be too thin

    Yet another study has shown that the so-called "obesity" epidemic sweeping the wealthy nations of the world has been massively over-hyped, as new results show that is is far more dangerous to be assessed as "underweight" than it is to be assessed even as "severely obese" - let alone merely "obese" or "overweight". "There is …

    Science 10 Jul 08:00

  • KIT drives off with memory win: 1-bit-per-MOLECULE storage

    Does with 51 atoms what a hard disc does with 3 million

    While its students may not have managed a win in the cluster compo smackdown last month, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) scored a resounding victory for storage technology when its researchers managed to read and write a bit of information from a single molecule. Toshio Miyamachi, first author of the study and a …

    Storage 10 Jul 08:17

  • Cerner questions Epic win for Cambridge patient records

    Short-listed supplier queries NHS trust over procurement process

    Patient record supplier Cerner has written to Cambridge University Hospitals foundation trust over its recent award of a major software tender to Epic, Government Computing understands. The letter, understood to be from Cerner's European managing director Alan Fowles to the trust's interim chief executive Dr Karen Castille, …

    Policy 10 Jul 08:42

  • Gov: How can renewable power peddlers take on UK's Big 6?

    Seeks views on access to electricity market for little green energy firms

    The government is seeking views on how it can reduce the barriers to entry in the electricity market for smaller renewable energy generators. The call for evidence follows reports that these companies are finding it harder to obtain guarantees that companies will purchase their power. The government has published a call for …

    Science 10 Jul 09:04

  • Atos IT workers threaten strike during Olympics over 'living wage'

    Union: Games sponsor 'makes millions on the backs of its low-paid staff'

    Atos IT workers are threatening to strike over pay in industrial action that could hit the London Olympics. The Public and Commercial Services union said it was balloting members on strike action this week after they voted not to accept "below-inflation pay offers". Over 1,500 members across Atos Healthcare and Atos IT …

    Management 10 Jul 09:19

  • EMC unveils new Networker tool, thrusts it into clouds

    Faster and more scalable

    EMC has caught on to the cloud computing trend across most of its product lines, and now it has cloudified its Networker backup product, adding multi-tenancy, three times more scalability, and better performance. With Networker 8.0, EMC's Networker customer base – which stands at just 23,000 worldwide, so it's not that large a …

    Storage 10 Jul 09:36

  • How to screw LIBOR and alienate people

    Dominic Connor presents another tutorial in Rogue Trading

    The financially illiterate arts graduates MPs who tried to question Bob Diamond last week never stood a chance of getting down to how it was possible in the first place to screw with the single most important set of numbers in finance. So if you know an MP or someone at the Financial Services Authority, pass this on to them. …

    Jobs 10 Jul 10:02

  • 50 years in SPAAAAACE: Telstar celebrates half-century since launch

    Vid World's first active comms satellite stopped bouncing signals in'63

    On 10 July 1962, the privately-owned Telstar 1 was blasted into orbit on the back of NASA's Thor-Delta rocket, and despite only working for a year it proved that commercial satellite communications was possible. Telstar 1 was owned by the US telephony monopoly Ma Bell, and was built in the Bell Telephone Laboratories, though …

    Science 10 Jul 10:18

  • Google Nexus 7 Android tablet

    Review Stonkingly good seven incher

    Amazon may have done more that most to get Android onto tablets, but Google's Nexus 7 tablet, built by Asus, isn't so much a shot across the bows as a full torpedo attack on Jeff Bezos' ambitions in the fondleslab market. Amazon attack: Google's Nexus 7, built by Asus At £159 ($199) for the 8GB unit and £199 ($249) for the …

    Tablets 10 Jul 10:21

  • Google expected to cough measly $22.5m for Safari privacy gaffe

    Report: Choc Factory close to settling with FTC over fanboi-tracking blunder

    Google is reportedly set to cough up a piddly penalty payment of $22.5m to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to settle its sneaky bypassing of the default privacy settings of Apple's Safari browser. It was revealed by the Wall Street Journal in February this year that Google, Vibrant Media Inc, WPP PLC's Media Innovation …

    Security 10 Jul 10:39

  • Level 3's UPS burnout sends websites down in flames

    London data centre hit by 3.35am scorcher

    UK sysadmins woke up to a headache this morning after a major power cut at Level 3's data centre in Braham Street, East London, lasted for approximately five hours. The electrical fault developed at 3.35am, according to an error report seen by The Register, and knocked dozens of companies offline. The facility provides space …

    Hosting 10 Jul 10:58

  • Quantum just can't seal the deals, slides deeper into red

    Hard drive biz hits another bad block

    Storage purveyor Quantum has blamed a weak Europe, and a failure to close large deals, for an estimated $19m loss in its quarter ended June 30. In a warning to Wall Street about the bad news, Quantum said it expects to bank revenues of $141m in Q1 of fiscal 2013, the lowest the company has taken for more than two years, and …

    Financial News 10 Jul 11:17

  • Salesforce goes titsup, causes CRM outages worldwide

    Seven instances go down, knocking customers offline

    CRM services have been disrupted for companies all over the world after seven of Salesforce's instances went down. Salesforce said on its status update page, which was also down for a while, that service from seven of its instances was being disrupted, – though at the time of publication it was claiming to have whittled this …

    Applications 10 Jul 11:28

  • Climate was HOTTER in Roman, medieval times than now: Study

    IPCC has got it all wrong, say boffins

    Americans sweltering in the recent record-breaking heatwave may not believe it - but it seems that our ancestors suffered through much hotter summers in times gone by, several of them within the last 2,000 years. Phew, what a scorcher, Marcus. Let's get in the frigidarium A new study measuring temperatures over the past two …

    Science 10 Jul 11:44

  • Google fattens up Android devs with Jelly Bean sauce

    Mmm.. buttery

    Google will release the latest official build of its Android mobile operating system, version 4.1, to developers today. The web giant will parcel up the source code, codenamed Jelly Bean, ahead of the rollout later this month. Jean-Baptiste Queru, the tech lead on the Android Open Source Project, announced the release on its …

    Operating Systems 10 Jul 12:03

  • Ballmer plays down sales impact of Surface

    'Just a design point ... may sell a few million'

    Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has downplayed the impact of Redmond's "iPad-killer" – aka the Surface tablet – as he wrapped a comforting arm around PC OEMS that may feel a little unnerved by the move. The covers were lifted off the shiny slate weeks ago, but it was dismissed by several hardware vendors, including long-time …

    The Channel 10 Jul 12:29

  • Beyond MapReduce: Hadoop hangs on

    Open ... and Shut Tooling up

    Hadoop is all the rage in enterprise computing, and has become the poster child for the big-data movement. But just as the enterprise consolidates around Hadoop, the web world, including Google – which originated the technology ideas behind Hadoop – is moving on to real-time, ad-hoc analytics that batch-oriented Hadoop can't …

    Developer 10 Jul 13:03

  • RIM: Maybe we can't flog BlackBerrys, but would you like a jet?

    Embattled execs may have to share just one plane

    Beleaguered mobile firm Research in Motion is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, and is looking to sell one of its two corporate jets to try to save some money. The BlackBerry-maker has put its nine-passenger Dassault Falcon 50EX up for sale in an attempt to bag $6m to $7m, a person familiar with the matter told …

    Business 10 Jul 13:18

  • WD: HDD prices won't fall to pre-flood levels until 2013

    Biz, consumers still footing bill after Thai production went underwater

    Hard disk drive pricing may not tumble to pre-flooding levels until next year as consumers and businesses continue to foot the bill for reparation work, WD has claimed. The once waterlogged WD fabs in the Navanakorn Industrial Estate Zone in Thailand were cleaned up earlier this year and are back up and running following the …

    Storage 10 Jul 14:02

  • LCD to have killed all* other TV technologies by 2016

    *OLED excepted (if it's accepted)

    Bye-bye, plasma. Farewell, reverse projection. By 2016, the TV market will be a two-horse technology race: LED-backlit LCD and OLED. So said market watcher NPD DisplaySearch today, forecasting sales of 281m flat-panel tellies in 2015, up from around 245m this year, itself down from 2010's 250m-unit peak. For plasma, there's …

    Hardware 10 Jul 14:12

  • Phishers jailed for lifting over £300k from student loan applicants

    Met: Fraudsters' email scam pulled in bank details

    A UK-based phishing fraudster who netted an estimated £300K by targeting students was jailed for three-and-a-half years on Friday, London's Metropolitan Police confirmed. Damola Olatunji, 37, tricked victims into submitting their banking details to bogus websites in response to dodgy emails supposedly related to student loans …

    Security 10 Jul 14:25

  • Bondholders: US firm's 'rescue' offer for Elpida is CHEAP

    Micron's not paying enough ... see you in court

    A group of Elpida Memory bondholders is trying to block the sale of the bankrupt DRAMurai to Micron because they claim the US firm isn't paying enough. The bondholders, who identify themselves as "multi-billion dollar Japanese and international investment funds", have filed with the Tokyo District Court to try to stop the sale …

    Management 10 Jul 14:32

  • Sharp bungs Dell and pals $198m to silence TFT price-fix spat

    That'll be one amazing expenses claim

    Sharp has agreed to fork out $198.5m to make the TFT monitor price-fixing lawsuits go away. The Japanese firm announced it had settled with Dell and two unnamed companies out of court, and will slap the nine-figure payout into its next quarterly report as "extraordinary expenses". It is understood the legal action was …

    Financial News 10 Jul 15:01

  • Cut'n'paste UK launch for cut-price Motorola Android

    Company 'droids speak identical lines

    Motorola's Motosmart budget Android is coming to Blighty, courtesy of T-Mobile, which will be offering the cut-price smartphone for £100 on PAYG. That buys you an Android 2.3 Gingerbread touchscreen handset with a 3.5in display, a 3Mp camera, 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi and a wee bit of on-board storage that you'll need to add a …

    Phones 10 Jul 15:17

  • Finnish boffins don tinfoil hats, admit Northern Lights are noisy

    Aurora borealis makes a 'clapping sound', claim researchers

    Cranks who claimed that the aurora borealis makes a noise when it lights up the Northern sky have been proven right by science. Boffins from Aalto University in Finland recorded the 'clapping' sounds of the Northern Lights back in 2004, but only discovered the noises when they switched the recording from DV tapes to disc. …

    Science 10 Jul 15:33

  • Microsoft to lob out Windows Server 2012 by September

    WPC 2012 VMware v Redmond: Now it's personal

    Microsoft is releasing Windows Server 2012 a month ahead of Windows 8 and will be aggressively promoting it against virtualisation rival VMware. Satya Nadella, president of Redmond's server and tools business, said that Server 2012 will be handed out to manufacturers in August and go on general availability in September – a …

    Applications 10 Jul 15:58

  • Cabinet Office names bean counter as chief buyer

    Former Accenture man Crothers as chief procurement officer

    The Cabinet Office has anointed a bean counter to the role of Chief Procurement Officer, it confirmed today. The department must be hoping that Bill Crothers lasts longer than his predecessor John Collington who came on board in April 2011 and resigned at the start of this month to join a recruitment firm. The plan is to …

    Government 10 Jul 16:08

  • Anonymous vows to wipe web clean of child abuse scum

    'For the good of mankind, and for our own enjoyment'

    Sections of Anonymous have once again turned their ire towards online sites frequented by child abusers. OpPedoChat follows earlier campaigns by sections of the hacktivist groups that subjected websites linked to the distribution of paedophile material with denial of service attacks and membership exposure. For example, …

    Security 10 Jul 16:10

  • VMware weaves Oracle databases into vFabric Data Director

    Leisure Suite Larry

    When VMware tuned the open-source PostgreSQL 9 database for its ESXi 5.0 hypervisor in the vFabric Spring Java framework, it knew it had to do more to make a convincing production database. With vFabric Data Director 2.0, the company is therefore adding Oracle databases to the mix and hopes to add support for other obvious …

    Virtualization 10 Jul 16:34

  • Aluratek, Coby license Microsoft patents for Android

    Device makers join majority of Android vendors in paying tribute to Redmond

    Two more makers of Android-powered devices have signed patent-licensing agreements with Microsoft, proving yet again that Windows Phone doesn't need to match Android's sales for Microsoft to eat part of its lunch. The two latest companies to ink deals with Redmond are Aluratek and Coby Electronics, both of which manufacture …

    Mobile 10 Jul 19:02

  • Intel pops $4.1bn to save Moore's Law from repeal

    'Shoots first' in deal with wafer-baker equipment-maker ASML

    Intel will invest $4.1bn in ASML, widely regarded as the world's leading semiconductor-lithography equipment manufacturer, in an effort to keep Moore's Law alive and kicking for the foreseeable future. The deal includes $1bn in cash to support ASML's research and development efforts on extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), …

    Business 10 Jul 19:13

  • DarkComet creator kills Trojan tool after Syrian police abuse

    Updated RAT's all folks

    The developer of DarkComet has quit further development of the controversial remote-access Trojan after it emerged that the technology was being used against Syrian dissidents. Jean-Pierre Lesuer (DarkcoderSc) announced the decision to stop further development of DarkComet and cease downloads on Twitter, then provided a …

    Security 10 Jul 19:21

  • Racketeering suit filed over smut-piracy charges

    Woman fights back against grumble-flicker's 'extortion'

    A Kentucky woman has started a class action suit against five pornography vendors after harassment over claims that she was downloading their content over BitTorrent. The suit, filed on behalf of Ms. Jennifer Barker, states that she started getting phone calls claiming that she had been named in a case regarding piracy of …

    Law 10 Jul 20:21

  • Megaupload's founder downloads on Hollywood

    Extradition hearing delayed till March

    New Zealand’s Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has dodged extradition to America until at least March 2013, following a New Zealand court’s decision to delay the hearing. Both Dotcom's lawyer and Crown lawyers representing the US government agreed to the delay, the result of concerns over the methods used to search Dotcom’s house …

    Media 10 Jul 21:42

  • Nutter bans Apple purchases over environmental fudging

    San Francisco government says Apple not green enough

    The city authorities of San Francisco have banned departmental purchases of Apple hardware after Cupertino dropped out of the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) green-standards scheme. "We are disappointed that Apple chose to withdraw from EPEAT," Melanie Nutter, director of San Francisco's Department of …

    Hardware 10 Jul 22:01

  • Websense boosts defenses against spear-phishing, data theft

    Also improves email security

    Websense has added a slew of new defenses with the launched of Triton v7.7, which it says are designed to prevent the advanced data-theft attacks that have emerged as spear-phishing becomes more sophisticated. Of particular interest to security managers will be a focus on detecting the more patient attacks (in industry …

    Security 10 Jul 22:54

  • Quanta taps Mellanox for snappy interconnects

    Storming America with whitebox servers

    Quanta QCT, the server and storage manufacturing arm of $37bn Taiwanese giant Quanta Computer, is teaming up with Mellanox Technologies to weave its network gadgetry into its various wares as it takes on the whitebox incumbents here in the United States. In case you don't know it, Quanta is one of the people the hyperscale …

    Servers 10 Jul 23:13

  • Oz asteroid-hunt at risk as NASA cuts funding

    ANU offers only interim fix: report

    A near-Earth object search described as the Southern Hemisphere’s only asteroid survey is under threat because of NASA funding cuts, according to The Canberra Times. The report (warning: contains infuriating Fairfax auto-play video segment) states that the Siding Spring Survey, which under Rob McNaught has identified more than …

    Science 10 Jul 23:18

  • Geek darling GitHub nabs $100m investment

    Wants to become the Facebook for software developers

    Software developers aren't always known as the most social of creatures, but the venture capital firm of Andreessen Horowitz is betting big that the social networking craze will be a cash cow even among hardcore geeks. The firm, which was cofounded by Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame, has sunk $100m into GitHub, the online …

    Developer 10 Jul 23:21

  • Smartphone-wielding Obamaniacs trounce Romney in poll

    If only iPhone and Android users could vote, November 6 would be a rout

    With the US presidential election less than four months away, it's high time for the opening of the Silly Season™ of polls and surveys – such as the one released by mobile marketing and advertising firm Velti, which claims that if only iPhone and Android-device owners could vote, Barack Obama would trounce Mitt Romney in a …

    Mobile 10 Jul 23:22

  • Stealthy Big Switch plugs into OpenStack clouds

    Floodlight OpenFlow control-freaks virty networks

    Big Switch Networks is not even out of stealth mode and has not yet revealed its aspirations and products for software defined networks – SDNs, in modern parlance – and yet the company is nonetheless contributing to the open source efforts to build more flexible and virtual network infrastructure and hoping to build awareness …

    Cloud 10 Jul 23:50