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11th July 2012 Archive

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  • Oracle acquisition gets Larry more Involver(ed) with Facebook

    Bags tools to help marketeers become your BFFs

    Oracle is about to gain millions of fans – by buying software that powers Facebook fan pages. On Tuesday the database giant announced it would acquire Involver, a social-media software company, for an undisclosed sum. Involver offers a suite of tools that allow companies to develop marketing campaigns enriched social …

    Software 11 Jul 00:31

  • Zeebox lands in Aus with a click from Ten

    Second screen dollars set to roll in

    IPTV guru Anthony Rose has officially launched his new social TV platform zeebox in Australia in a joint-venture with Network Ten. Australia is the third market destination for zeebox after launching in it’s HQ of the UK last year and most recently in the US. Network Ten is being termed as an “anchor partner” which has made a …

    Media 11 Jul 02:43

  • Apple's new iPad set for July 20 China launch

    Scalpers prick up their ears

    Scalpers take note: Apple’s long-awaited shiny new iPad will finally launch in mainland China as of 20 July. The new fondleslab has been on sale in Apple stores in every other major market in the world for some time, and Cupertino will be rubbing its hands together in anticipation of what is likely to be a big seller in the …

    Business 11 Jul 03:30

  • China's censors move to stamp out sex and violence online

    Save the children from the Grass Mud Horse!

    China’s shadowy army of government censors have turned their attention to online video with strict new guidelines set to further curb freedom of expression on the internet. The State Internet Information Office and State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) said in a statement that they want to stamp out “vulgar …

    Government 11 Jul 04:02

  • Gaping 'open data' loophole could leave your privates on display

    Comment Gov's white paper calls open season on enforced subject access*

    The government has just published its ideas for allowing general access to data, which includes the intention to grant individuals online access to their own personal data. In general, I support this measure but sadly, the Open Data White Paper (PDF) has not even considered that it has widened the privacy problems associated …

    Law 11 Jul 06:32

  • ICO: Nearly HALF all FOI complaints are about local councils

    Even central gov's hefty heap can't compete

    The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) received 1,922 freedom of information complaints about local authorities in 2011-12, accounting for 43 per cent of the total number of complaints, according to the watchdog's latest annual report. The document says that of the 4,633 freedom of information complaints during the year, …

    Government 11 Jul 07:04

  • WTF is... WiGig

    Feature Wireless wonder to soup up networks, kill USB, HDMI cables?

    It's now more than two years since the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WGA) released the first full version of its 7Gb/s would-be next-gen Wi-Fi technology. There's been some activity in the intervening 26 months, including the first big multi-vendor interoperability test, but the second of these "plugfests" has only now taken place …

    reghardware 11 Jul 07:30

  • Multi-platform exploit sniffs your OS, penetrates your back door

    Offers tasty applet to fanbois, beardies, Win users alike

    Cybercrooks have begun deploying a web exploit which detects whether the victim is running Windows, Mac OS or Linux before firing an appropriate Trojan. The multi-platform backdoor was found on a Colombian Transport site by security researchers at F-Secure. The backdoor uses a JAR (Java ARchive file) to figure out if a user's …

    Security 11 Jul 08:02

  • Watch out, Apple: HTC ruling could hurt your patent income

    You might want to reconsider chasing patents that dissolve in court – expert

    Apple may review its patent licensing and enforcement strategy in light of a ruling by the UK's High Court last week, an expert has said. On 4 July the High Court ruled that three European patents that Apple sought to rely on in legal proceedings against HTC were invalid and that the Taiwanese device manufacturer had not been …

    Law 11 Jul 08:19

  • New electronic labels squeal to spare you from food poisoning

    No more nights on the porcelain throne

    Packaging giant Bemis and Norway's ThinFilm will print sticky labels capable of monitoring and remembering the conditions in which their attached goods have been stored. The labels will be developed from ThinFilm's printed memory and PARC's printed transistors (which are licensed exclusively to ThinFilm). Bemis will fund the …

    Broadband 11 Jul 08:39

  • Top spook: ISP black boxes NOT key to UK's web-snoop plan

    We fully expect Google, Facebook and Twitter to hand over your data

    Government-funded black boxes that monitor the UK's internet traffic are not "the cornerstone" of the Home Office's web super-snoop plan, a top spook has told MPs and peers. Ex-MI6 man Charles Farr, who heads up the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, dismissed claims that Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) probes are the " …

    Security 11 Jul 08:55

  • Retina MacBook Pro nukes Apple's green credentials

    Eco body urges hippies to return Foxconn-marketer's gear

    The tightly packed new Apple MacBook Pro prevents the laptop from meeting requirements laid down by eco-friendly technology catalogue EPEAT. The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) announced on Monday that the shiny Retina-display lap warmer is "difficult to disassemble for upgrades, repairs, and recycling …

    Hardware 11 Jul 09:16

  • Fusion-io server strokers show off 2.6TB RAM extension

    Is that a PCIe card in your socket or are you just pleased to see me?

    Fusion-io and Princeton University boffins have used a PCIe flash drive to virtually extend a server's main memory into the terabytes. Engineers at the storage company collaborated with the computer scientists to design the Extended Memory subsystem using Fusion's ioMemory hardware. Applications built with Fusion's software …

    Storage 11 Jul 09:31

  • Ebuyer on the naughty step for fondleslab promo cock-up

    ASA told 'it was the new guy's fault'

    Ebuyer has been rapped for a "misleading" tablet promotion and ordered not to repeat similar claims of cost savings in future. The Advertising Standards Agency gave the online IT bazaar a stern ticking off after receiving a complaint about an email sent to customers touting the Storage Options' Scroll Extreme Tablet PC. The …

    Channel Register 11 Jul 10:03

  • IBM database strategy chief on DB2: Devs are people too

    Big Blue looks beyond DBAs for input on features

    Developers are exerting greater influence on new versions of IBM’s DB2 database, according to one of Big Blue's information management strategy chiefs. Bernie Spang, director of strategy and marketing for database software and systems, said while IBM has historically consulted DBAs on new features they’d like in IBM’s mighty …

    Developer 11 Jul 10:19

  • MS squashes 0day bug in July Patch Tuesday

    Patches under-attack XML Core Services flaw in Flame-proof update

    Microsoft has patched an under-attack zero-day vulnerability in XML Core Services as part of the July edition of Patch Tuesday. The critical security update (MS12-043) addresses a security flaw that has made its way into the Blackhole Exploit toolkit since its discovery last month. A further two critical updates cover a …

    Security 11 Jul 10:38

  • Fujitsu QUITS bid for superfast broadband gov funds

    BT left as sole provider, but hey - who needs competition?

    Fujitsu has walked away from bidding for a slice of the £530m Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) pie that the government set aside to improve the country's broadband network. The move leaves incumbent BT as the only provider to have successfully secured state investment to date for the project. "At the moment there are no bids …

    Networks 11 Jul 10:56

  • iPad Mini maquette spied on web

    Sculptured slab

    What's claimed to be an engineering mock-up of the upcoming 'iPad Mini' has appeared on the web. Pictures of the maquette show a smaller, thinner iPad with a two grille stamps on the bottom edge for speakers and a slim docking connector that some observers are saying is the new, 19-pin port Apple is said to be working on. …

    reghardware 11 Jul 11:04

  • Minister of Fun bends Ofcom's ear on Freeview-4G knockout

    Open letter backs watchdog on operator bribes

    Culture minister Ed Vaizey has published an open letter to Ofcom broadly supporting the regulator's efforts to mitigate disruption to Freeview by next-gen mobile broadband. When LTE (4G telephony) kicks in there's likely to be some interference in the neighbouring TV channels, so £180m of the money raised from selling the …

    Mobile 11 Jul 11:19

  • Dixons: Brits to get iPad Mini, Kindle Fire for Xmas

    Crystal balls up?

    Our generous gift of the oxygen of publicity today goes out to Dixons, which this morning forecast that Brits will be able to buy not only Amazon's Kindle Fire but also a "mystery" Apple product by Christmas. Not exactly staggering leaps of the imagination, you might reasonably think, given the flood of rumours concerning the …

    reghardware 11 Jul 11:19

  • 'Proud' RIM supremo survives shareholder showdown

    Board reelected, stock tumbles

    Research in Motion faced some seriously ticked off shareholders at its annual general meeting yesterday, who received little in the way of comfort from the BlackBerry-maker's board. CEO Thorsten Heins and chairwoman Barbara Stymiest told the gathering that RIM was staying the course of strategically reviewing itself, cutting …

    Business 11 Jul 11:43

  • Android games console scheme nets $2.5m

    Free to play, sort of

    Ouya, the tablet-spec games console being pitched at Android hackers, has netted pledges of almost $2.5m in its first round of funding, organised through Kickstarter. That's more than double what the company was seeking. The machine is planned to be built around an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, coupled with 1GB of Ram and 8GB of …

    reghardware 11 Jul 11:46

  • LOHAN fizzles forlornly in REHAB

    Rocket motors feel the lack of pressure

    It's been a lively couple of days down at the Special Projects Bureau, with the first of our Rocketry Experimental High Altitude Barosimulator (REHAB) experiments, designed to determine whether solid propellant rocket motors will fire under simulated high altitude conditions. As we previously explained, we decided to do the …

    SPB 11 Jul 12:04

  • Can neighbours grab your sensitive package, asks Post Office

    By Christmas you'll know if next-door trusts you

    The Post Office has asked for permission to drop parcels and recorded delivery letters with a neighbour, so Ofcom wants to know if you're OK with that. Trials of deliver-to-neighbour started last summer and apparently went very well, so the regulator is considering allowing the postie to leave packages with a neighbour unless …

    Bootnotes 11 Jul 12:21

  • Microsoft tightens squeeze on TechNet parasites

    Oi cheapskates, just buy the bloody software

    Microsoft is restricting the software available on IT-pro hangout TechNet to thwart illegal use of its gear. The company is removing software not intended for use in an "IT professional managed business environment" – such as the Home Edition of Windows XP – while products no longer covered by its extended support cycle have …

    CIO 11 Jul 12:44

  • US mulls outlawing rival product bans using standards patents

    Congress probes essential designs used to win injunctions

    The US Congress is holding a hearing today to consider whether companies that own standards-essential patents (SEP) should be allowed to use them to get sales and import bans on their rivals' products. The Senate Judiciary Committee is meeting to hear from the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice on whether …

    Government 11 Jul 13:02

  • ElasticHosts push out white label services for channel

    Ditch cloud monsters, we are channel friendly, honest

    Direct selling infrastructure-as-a-service provider ElasticHosts is the latest vendor to set up a channel to rebrand and flog its white label cloud utility. Clearly it has realised that without investing in a larger internal sales force, the reach of the business is limited. According to ElasticHosts CEO Richard Davies the …

    Channel Register 11 Jul 13:27

  • UK.gov to clear way for Britain's first SPACEPORT

    Science minister dreams of skies filled with spaceplanes

    The UK government is trying to open up the skies to revolutionary new spaceplanes and other such craft like Reaction Engines' Skylon. Science minister David Willetts said in a speech at the Farnborough Air Show yesterday that the UK and Europe had an opportunity to "seize the advantage" in space technology. "At present, in my …

    Space 11 Jul 13:29

  • UK's brazen copyright land grab sneaked into Enterprise Bill

    Analysis Committee 'ordered to rubber-stamp' rights shakeup

    A huge expansion of bureaucratic power over UK copyright has been smuggled quietly into draft legislation – giving civil servants the ability to sweep away copyright protection by statutory instrument rather than primary legislation. The new amendments also allow new agencies to be established to permit the licensing of …

    Law 11 Jul 14:03

  • Chemical giant foils infected USB stick espionage bid

    Malware-laden drive falls into the right hands

    An attempt to infiltrate the corporate systems of Dutch chemical giant DSM by leaving malware-riddled USB sticks in the corporation's car park has failed. Instead of plugging the discarded drives into a workstation, which would have infected the machine, the worker who first found one of the devices handed it in to DSM's IT …

    Security 11 Jul 14:27

  • Microsoft drags 9 resellers to court in fresh piracy blitz

    New PCs 'sold with illegal copies of Windows'

    Microsoft has its sights trained on another bunch of Chinese software pirates, this time pitting its formidable resources against nine resellers it said installed illegal copies of Windows onto PCs they sold. Redmond said it started proceedings against the resellers in seven cities across the People’s Republic including …

    Channel Register 11 Jul 15:04

  • Speaking in Tech: Will big biz swallow the seven-inch tablet?

    Podcast Plus: The 'death' of social media

    It's another episode of The Register's enterprise tech cast, and this week your hosts – Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela – are debating whether it's still worth engaging with social media – Greg thinks not – and whether widespread adoption of the 7-inch slab is really going to take off in the BYOD enterprise game …

    CIO 11 Jul 15:29

  • McAfee vows to swell resellers' bottom lines with MEGA framework

    On-again off-again channel lover promises sweet deal reg

    McAfee has herded its channel "profitability" programmes into one mega global framework as it continues to court resellers. The security giant has put six schemes – including deal registration, tiered pricing and rebates – into its Profitability Stack. In a PR statement, McAfee senior veep of worldwide channels Gavin …

    Channel Register 11 Jul 15:36

  • All-in-one PCs: bright star of the desktop biz, says analyst

    Saving the market - or re-arranging Titanic deckchairs?

    World+Dog will buy - or, rather, the planet's PC makers will produce and ship - some 16.4m all-in-one computers. So forecasts market watcher IHS iSuppli, which gleefully notes that the resultant "robust" growth - shipments will be up 20 per cent from 2011's 13.7m - could see the AIO platform become the saviour of the desktop …

    reghardware 11 Jul 15:37

  • O2, GiffGaff network goes titsup for unlucky punters

    Some phones working, others down in outage lottery

    Parts of the O2 network have fallen over leaving punters unable to make calls, send texts or surf the web from their gadgets. An O2 spokesperson told The Reg that its systems are having problems detecting handsets. The outage, which started at lunchtime today, also affects operators that piggyback on O2's network, such as …

    Mobile 11 Jul 15:41

  • Formspring springs a leak: 28 MILLION passwords reset after raid

    At least OUR hashes were salted, says CEO

    Formspring has told its 28 million users to change their passwords following the discovery of a security breach. A sample of 420,000 password hashes for the question-and-answer website have been posted online, sparking concerns that the entire user base might have been exposed. In response, Formspring disabled users' passwords …

    Security 11 Jul 15:55

  • Tech Data gobbles Brightstar's piece of their Euro biz pie

    Coughs $165.5m for equity in Brightstar Europe

    Distribution behemoth Tech Data Corp has gulped down Brightstar's 50 per cent stake in the firms' European joint venture for around $165.6m (£106.4m) in cash. The two wholesalers set up Brightstar Europe in 2007 to share the risks and rewards of tapping up the burgeoning mobility and wireless device space in the region. Bob …

    Channel Register 11 Jul 16:28

  • Hadoop's little buddy Nutch 2.0 gulps down web's big data

    Apache projects united

    Hadoop daddy Doug Cutting's Nutch, the open-source web-search engine written in Java, has been updated to crawl through piles of big data on the web. Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released Nutch 2.0 featuring a data abstraction technique that plugs into big-data stores and frameworks Apache Accumulo, Avro, Cassandra, …

    Developer 11 Jul 16:32

  • IBM lets fly single-socket Power7 Penguin server

    Yellow stripe, big price cut, Linux only

    Big Blue has launched a third Power-powered Penguin box and pitched it against x86 server rivals. The machine, called the PowerLinux 7R1, is a single-socket machine that complements the two-socket PowerLinux 7R2 rack and tower server, and the Flex System p24L half-width node for PureSystem modular servers. Back in April IBM …

    Servers 11 Jul 17:01

  • Oil the wheels of virtualisation with 802.1Qbg

    The magic of protocols

    Virtualisation enables dynamic workloads within a data centre by easing and automating virtual machine movement. While the ability to move any virtual machine from any system located on any rack to any other system located on any other rack has become commonplace, elasticity of network configuration has lagged behind. A new …

    Network Futures 11 Jul 18:18

  • Microsoft promises resellers bumper 2013 with total line-up refresh

    WPC 2012 $12bn up for grabs by April 2014

    Microsoft closed down its Worldwide Partners Conference in Toronto with a promise that the coming year will provide the best year yet for its resellers, with a complete refresh of its ecosystem to restore Redmond's future. "For the very first time, every single product in our portfolio is getting refreshed and relaunched in a …

    Channel Register 11 Jul 18:28

  • Kindle Fire adds APIs for cloudy gaming features

    Preparing for global war with Google, Apple this Christmas

    Amazon has beefed up gaming on its Android-based Kindle Fire platform, in hopes that adding cloudy goodness will help bolster the device in the upcoming fondleslab wars. The online retailer's new set of services, collectively called GameCircle, allow games to store various kinds of data in Amazon's cloud, where it can be …

    Developer 11 Jul 18:49

  • The Great TLC flash cash-slash: Coming soon to tablets, Ultrabooks

    Super-dense storage tech moves towards 20K cycles

    SMART recently announced that its controller technology, the Guardian Technology Platform, could get MLC flash to do 50 full drive writes/day for five years. Now SMART's president has said 1Xnm TLC could be driven to 15,000 to 20,000 PE cycles using SMART's Guardian controller technology, representing a 30X - 40X increase – …

    Storage 11 Jul 19:13

  • DOE doles out cash to AMD, Whamcloud for exascale research

    Pushing compute, memory, and I/O to the limits

    The US Department of Energy used its massive budget to push supercomputers to gigaflops, teraflops, and petaflops in the prior three decades and it is being tasked to put the pedal to the exaflops metal before the end of this decade. To get there, the DOE has to fund primary research at IT vendors who might otherwise not get …

    HPC 11 Jul 20:10

  • Google pushing Jelly Bean updates to Android devices

    Or one device, anyway, with three more to come

    Google is pushing out the Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" upgrade on Wednesday, but only to customers who have the unlocked version of the Samsung-built Galaxy Nexus mobile. According to a post on the Nexus team's Google+ page, owners of Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ devices should receive a prompt to download the update "over the next several …

    Operating Systems 11 Jul 20:21

  • Microsoft hires hippy to lecture resellers on being nice to the world

    Deepak Chopra touts new age cures for world problems

    The third day's keynote at the Worldwide Partners Conference is always a tough act. The night before is generally a time to party, and no one in the IT community parties harder than resellers. So 9am is not a good time for them to show Microsoft some love. There were more than a few shaking hands and pale faces in the audience …

    Channel Register 11 Jul 20:24

  • VMware cranks Zimbra collabware up to 8.0

    'It's down to Microsoft, Google, and us'

    Maybe Yahoo! should have held onto Zimbra instead of selling it off to VMware two and a half years ago. But for the sake of users of the email and collaboration tool that Yahoo paid a stunning $350m to acquire in September 2007, it is probably best that Zimbra ended up inside VMware, which is playing for keeps on the desktop as …

    Infrastructure 11 Jul 22:17

  • Telco industry slapped with new consumer rules

    Watchdog to stamp out bill shock and shonky tactics

    The long-awaited telecommunications consumer protection (TCP) code, designed to push Australian telcos to clean up their terrible track record, has been adopted by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. The regulatory authority’s recent inquiry into telcos' customer service found that annual recurring costs …

    Broadband 11 Jul 22:41

  • Dwarf galaxy conundrum untangled

    Electron energy puzzler resolved

    An ANU scientist has produced a model for electron energies in distant gas clouds, based on measurements taken within the solar system – and along the way may have resolved a long-standing controversy in astrophyics. For many years, an inconsistency listed under “remaining to be explained” has existed in astrophysics: our …

    Space 11 Jul 23:03

  • Disable Gadgets NOW says Redmond

    Remote execution vuln

    Microsoft has advised Vista and Windows 7 users to put Gadgets and the Windows Sidebar to the sword, following the revelation of yet-to-be-detailed remote code execution vulnerabilities in the features. Redmond issued this advisory ahead of an upcoming Black Hat presentation by Mickey Shkatov and Toby Kohlenberg. The two have …

    Security 11 Jul 23:25

  • Hubble finds fifth moon orbiting Pluto

    New orbiter for the planet that isn't

    The Hubble Space Telescope has found yet another moon orbiting what used to be the last planet in the Solar System. The moon, the fifth that's been spotted orbiting Pluto, is an irregularly shaped lump around 6 to 15 miles across and orbits in a plane 58,000 miles around the dwarf planet. It was spotted in nine images taken …

    Space 11 Jul 23:42

  • Microsoft offers beta of Windows Server 2012 Essentials

    Small Business Server it ain't

    Microsoft made the beta release of Windows Server 2012 Essentials available for download Wednesday, but some customers are already miffed about the changes the new product brings. As Microsoft's David Fabritius wrote in a July 5 blog post, Windows Server 2012 Essentials is now a full-fledged member of the Windows Server …

    Operating Systems 11 Jul 23:49