The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

16th July 2012 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

  • Boffins build eye-controlled interface out of game-console cams

    £40 device lets you play Pong just by looking at it

    Neurotechnologists in London have invented a £40 device that lets you control computers with your eyes. Costing hundreds of times less than existing 3D eye tech it could revolutionise the life of the disabled say the team at Imperial University, allowing users to direct a wheelchair by simply looking at where they want it to …

    Science 16 Jul 06:28

  • Apple Store staircase flagged as Peeping Tom black spot

    Hong Kong ladies told to beware covert up-skirt shots

    Apple’s flagship store in Hong Kong has been placed on a black list by the region’s biggest political party after fears were raised that its trademark glass staircase could provide Peeping Toms with a perfect vantage point for some sneaky up-skirt viewing. The Women’s Affairs Committee of the Democratic Alliance for the …

    Bootnotes 16 Jul 06:35

  • India preps craft for first mission to Mars

    Launch date expected in November 2013

    Not to be outdone by China in the space race, India is set to flex its muscles on the world stage, planning a mission to Mars late next year. K Radhakrishnan, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told reporters on Saturday that there will be a definitive announcement on the scientific research-based …

    Science 16 Jul 06:45

  • Will the titans of storage decide to flash their bits?

    What religion do you suppose the Pope is

    The fundamental decision facing most of the online storage industry is whether to use spinning or flashing bits or both. Flashing bit growth, solid state NAND storage, is booming and set to grow strongly. Why aren't Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital, the spinning disk-supplying tri-opoly, as successful with flash drives as …

    Storage 16 Jul 07:00

  • Spotify coining it at home in Sweden: But are artists getting any?

    Counting out the royalties with sticky fingers

    New figures from the Swedish music market suggest that streaming services are good for music. Revenue from streaming services grew 79 per cent in the first half of the year, making up for declines in CD sales and digital downloads, according to local trade body GLF. Spotify launched in Sweden first, in 2008. CD sales were …

    Media 16 Jul 07:19

  • Ex-Google Books man hired to drive private MOON BUS

    Jimi Crawford snapped up by Moon Express

    A man who was formerly in charge of scanning books for Google has transferred to a private space company and will be programming robots for trips into space. Jimi Crawford used to work as engineering chief at Google Books at Mountain View but now he's going to be working with a team of engineers on sending a spacecraft to the …

    Science 16 Jul 07:42

  • IBM's new Power7+ hotness - we peek through the veil

    Analysis Saucy internet pictures reveal Big Blue secrets

    A few weeks ago, El Reg told you that IBM was getting ready to start talking about its future Power7+ and System zNext processors at the Hot Chips conference at the end of August. Like you, I am an impatient sort when it comes to getting some insight into future processors from any vendor, and I like to poke around and see what …

    Servers 16 Jul 08:00

  • Vodafone jumps into bed with Three in Ireland

    Pair get a little place in Dublin

    Vodafone and Three will be sharing cell sites and support infrastructure in Ireland, reducing costs to both parties while each operator maintains its network independence. The operators aren't sharing networks, only the supporting infrastructure, but that's how Vodafone and O2 started in the UK before finally taking the plunge …

    Mobile 16 Jul 08:21

  • Prince Charles whips out jumbo red ball for Blighty's code-breakers

    Unglamorous sloggers of yesteryear earn binary-encoded royal stone

    Prince Charles unveiled a ball of rose marble inscribed in binary and Morse Code on Friday - a tribute to the men and women of the British intelligence services over the last century who have worked at the "slog" of cracking, interception and security. The new memorial a stone ball with a plaque in the National Memorial …

    Government 16 Jul 08:42

  • Ex-gov man McCluggage on G-Cloud's slow descent

    Cabinet minister says 'privacy' no excuse on Open Data

    It’s a long march towards realising G-Cloud and releasing consistent data across government, says Bill McCluggage – who until recently helped lead the charge on cloud. He also spoke about how government would manage the release of Open Data from its data centres and on the public cloud. The former deputy government CIO told …

    Government 16 Jul 09:03

  • US Energy dept starts handing out cash for exaflop superputer quest

    Need to get the 'leccy bill down below that of a city

    The Department of Energy is continuing to dole out cash to pay for some of the basic research that needs to be done if the United States is going to field exascale-class supercomputers by 2020 or so. This time around, Nvidia and Intel have taken down some contracts, and El Reg hears that Big Blue is getting some funding as well …

    HPC 16 Jul 09:19

  • Web crams down 7 MEEELLION more domain names

    At least third of net addresses officially useless

    The number of registered domain names on the internet increased by 7.5 million to stand at 233 million in the first quarter of the year. That's according to Verisign, which found that the web address universe grew 11 per cent year-on-year and 3.3 per cent sequentially in Q1. The mega-registry's own mountain of .com and .net …

    Hosting 16 Jul 09:31

  • Patent scrap loser RIM ordered to cough up $147m

    Will BlackBerry maker ever catch a break?

    RIM has been ordered to pay up $147.2m (£94.3m) for violating a patent covering device management. A court in the US Federal District of Northern California ruled that the troubled handset maker's BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) infringed a design owned by Mformation Technologies. The nine-figure payout was calculated from …

    Financial News 16 Jul 09:45

  • Fukushima powerplant owner forced to cough teleconference vids

    Claims missing audio due to 'full hard drive'

    Japan’s troubled Tokyo Electric Power Co, Tepco, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, will be forced to release hundreds of hours of in-house teleconference video footage revealing executive briefings to staff during the unfolding events of the nuclear disaster. The footage will include Japanese Prime Minister at the …

    Science 16 Jul 09:58

  • New 'nauts ride Russian rocket to shift change at the space station

    Crew still rejoicing at absence of Pettit's didgeridoo

    Thee new crew are on their way to the International Space Station, successfully launching over the weekend to replace the three who made it back to earth earlier this month. Russian Yuri Malenchenko, Akihiko Hoshide from Japan and NASA's Sunita Williams launched on Saturday and should make it to the station tomorrow. They'll …

    Science 16 Jul 10:08

  • Sky launches movie, sports on demand service

    IPTV alternative to Netflix et at

    Sky will begin offering pay-to-view films over the internet to non-subscribers tomorrow. The satellite broadcaster is calling the service Now TV, and it will offer 1000-odd films to rent, including back catalogue content and new releases. 'New' in this context means 'now out on DVD', rather than 'out at the pictures' or even ' …

    Hardware 16 Jul 10:24

  • GM to slash vast outsourced IT empire

    Much of it from HP. The GM CIO used to work there ...

    You fire me? I'll fire you! It ain't that simple really, but GM CIO Randy Mott, sent into the cold, cold outside by HP's then CEO Leo Apotheker from his HP CIO post, has announced GM will stop outsourcing IT, bringing it back in house. The big loser? HP. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) control IT spend and Mott, the arch- …

    Management 16 Jul 10:27

  • UK tech biz grinding to halt as Reg space programme sucks in talent

    Code biz kingpin volunteers his firm's services

    The Special Projects Bureau is raising a few pints of foaming real ale today in honour of Escher Technologies, which has kindly offered to probe the intimate inner workings of our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project. The Aldershot-based company "researches, develops and delivers tools for the efficient …

    SPB 16 Jul 10:47

  • Lego ponders Portal pack

    Blocked Valve

    Lego may introduce a kit based on the Portal videogame series now that a petition to do so has gathered enough support to trigger consideration from an official tribunal. The Lego Portal concept was pitched to the brick maker through its Cuusoo platform, the same petition-style site which helped Lego Minecraft come to …

    Hardware 16 Jul 10:59

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1

    Review Sammy brings knife to gunfight?

    Judging by the lawsuits flying around, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been the only Android tablet to seriously worry Apple. Quite why is a mystery, because it has sold in nothing like the numbers of the iPad. Will the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 prove more of a threat by being cheaper rather than better? Take two: Samsung's Galaxy Tab …

    Tablets 16 Jul 11:00

  • Wobbly Chinese telecom giant 'may sack 12,000', shares nosedive

    ZTE struggle to get feds off its ass, cash in the door

    Chinese telecoms kit maker ZTE is in for a rough ride: its shares fell to a three-year low on Monday amid a profit warning and rumours that it may axe up to 12,000 workers. The firm, second in the domestic market for telecoms equipment behind Huawei, warned last week that its net profits for the first half of 2012 could fall …

    Financial News 16 Jul 11:03

  • Microsoft sells out of MSNBC.com, plans to open own news pipe

    No more MSN, MSNBC, NBC alphabet soup confusion

    Microsoft’s sold its stake in the 16-year online news venture it shared with US TV giant NBC. NBC has bought out Microsoft’s half of MSNBC.com with the partnership dissolved so both companies can update their online offerings. Financial terms have not been disclosed but the deal is reported to be worth £300m. Microsoft is …

    Media 16 Jul 11:18

  • Intel gobbles Lustre file system expert Whamcloud

    Chipzilla prepares to gorge itself on exascale pie

    Intel's ambition to dominate the exascale era of computing is a little closer to realisation, as Chipzilla has written a cheque to acquire Whamcloud, a company which develops and supports the open source Lustre clustered file system. Brent Gorda, president and CEO at Whamcloud, quietly announced the deal late last Friday. The …

    HPC 16 Jul 11:43

  • UK snoop system had 1,000 COCKUPS - including 2 duff cuffs

    Whoops, sorry. Spied on you and locked you up by accident

    Police, security services and other public bodies bungled nearly 1,000 requests for citizens' communications data in a year, a new report has revealed. Communication service providers (CSPs, which include ISPs and telcos) were also blamed for some of the cock-ups: the study for 2011 found that two people were wrongly arrested …

    Government 16 Jul 11:52

  • Nokia prunes Lumia 900 price

    Upfront costs Yanked in half

    Nokia has cut the price of its Lumia 900 smartphone, halving the handset's upfront cost when punters sign up for a new contract in the US. Barely three months have passed since the Windows 7 phone was launched in the States, but after recent revelations that the Lumia 900 will never see a Windows 8 upgrade, the handset is now …

    Phones 16 Jul 11:58

  • Olympics security cockup down to software errors - report

    Tech blunders at G4S lie behind mobilisation of troops

    A computer software failure caused the security fiasco at the Olympics, the Independent on Sunday has said, after talking to insider sources at security contractor G4S. G4S defaulted on their Olympic security contract two weeks before the start of the games, meaning that 3500 members of the armed forces have been drafted in to …

    Government 16 Jul 12:26

  • Raspberry Pi sales limits lifted

    Order as many as you want, but expect a long wait

    Hardware hackers and ageing coders have snapped up more than 200,000 Linux running Raspberry Pi gadgets, the charity behind the cut-price computer said today. And, in a far cry from the desperate struggle for kit following the Pi's launch in the Spring, the Raspberry Pi Foundation said its resale partners are no longer …

    Hardware 16 Jul 12:33

  • Sleek new Macs violate fanbois' Retinas with display garbage

    God, it's like using an ordinary poor people's computer

    Buyers of Apple's "jaw-dropping" Retina display MacBooks are indeed picking their chins off the floor - in reaction to bizarre on-screen glitches blighting the expensive lap-warmers. Two fanboi-support forum topics have sprung up to detail problems encountered when the shiny kit runs Mac OS X Lion and is woken up from sleep …

    Laptops 16 Jul 12:58

  • It costs $450 in marketing to make someone buy a $49 Nokia Lumia

    Smell of death emanating from mobe maybe puts people off

    Every Windows phone Nokia sold in the US has been backed by a $450 slice of AT&T marketing cash, it's estimated. The mobile network threw its weight behind the handset maker's comeback device, the Lumia 900, with its biggest-ever advertising blitz for a phone: $150m, according to Ad Age. Nokia also spent $25m on Lumias for AT&T …

    Mobile 16 Jul 13:53

  • Slash for cash: boozers' bladders primed for Olympic pee game

    Wee sports

    British pub visitors will soon be able to 'sample' the Olympic' competitive spirit, by battling each other at the urinal in a micturation-managed game, the 100ml Dash. Captive Media - the firm behind the bladder-emptying title Clever Dick - is fitting various bars across Europe with more piss-powered action to celebrate the …

    Games 16 Jul 13:56

  • Symantec update killed biz PCs in three-way software prang

    Encryption, cache and antivirus in head-on crash

    Symantec has apologised after an update to its security software sparked repeated crashes on enterprise Windows XP machines. The antivirus giant withdrew the misfiring definition update, issued on 11 July, hours after problems first appeared, releasing a revised update the next day. No new issues have been reported since this …

    Security 16 Jul 14:34

  • Yes, you can be sacked for making dodgy Facebook posts

    Employers aren't invading your privacy by reading them

    Ignorance about Facebook privacy settings is no excuse for complaining about the consequences of publishing off-colour online comments, a US judge has ruled. Robert J Sumien, an emergency medical technician in Texas, wrote a Facebook wall post about giving "boot to the head" to unruly patients. The comment came to the …

    Security 16 Jul 15:09

  • Sage: Where's this double-dip disaster everyone's crying over?

    Europe still rattling the abacuses, though

    Sage revealed the fragility of the Eurozone economy continues to give management sleepless nights as the recovery it touted didn't show up. Back home in Blighty, though, growth was described as good. The UK-based accounting software biz pushed up sales two per cent to £661.2m in the six months to 31 March. Pre-tax profits …

    The Channel 16 Jul 15:34

  • Cisco warns of major vulnerabilities in TelePresence kit

    Watching you watching them

    Cisco slipped out four security advisories on Friday warning of serious vulnerabilities in its high-end videoconferencing system – or TelePresence, as it prefers to call it. The flaws affect versions of Cisco TelePresence Manager, Recording Server, Immersive Endpoint System, and Multipoint Switch, and would variously allow an …

    Security 16 Jul 18:17

  • Apple fails to block stolen iOS in-app content

    Donations keep cheeky Russian hacker's servers alive

    Apple has moved to shut down a hack that allows users of iOS devices to download in-app content without paying for it – but the service is still operating and its creator remains defiant. The exploit relies in part on a custom DNS server that intercepts incoming purchase requests from iOS devices. Over the weekend, Apple …

    Security 16 Jul 19:51

  • Microsoft pops preview of 'biggest, most ambitious' Office yet

    Redmond shifts Office from installed code to cloudy service

    Microsoft has released the last preview of its latest build of Office – the first release of one of Redmond's biggest cash cows. "This is the first round of Office designed from the get-go for Office to be a service," said CEO Steve Ballmer at a press conference in San Francisco. "We've transformed Office to embrace design …

    Applications 16 Jul 20:29

  • Yahoo! Poaches! New! CEO! From! Google!

    Google's 'Employee No. 20' Marissa Mayer will captain sinking ship

    In a surprise move, Yahoo! has named top Google exec Marissa Mayer its new president and CEO – the fifth in five years. "I am honored and delighted to lead Yahoo!, one of the internet's premier destinations for more than 700 million users," Mayer said in a statement. "I look forward to working with the Company's dedicated …

    Business 16 Jul 21:16

  • E-Cat pitching cold fusion to Australians

    Pre-order Website open

    A company established in January 2012 is offering the Rossi E-Cat (“energy catalyzer”) to Australians. E-Cat Australia is offering pre-orders for a 1MW unit with “an estimated delivery time of 3 months”, and allowing people to pre-register for a domestic unit promising shipping in 2013. Attempts had been made to promote E-Cat …

    Science 16 Jul 21:17

  • Giant super-laser passes 500 TRILLION watts

    Quick, fetch the shark and the backpacks

    The National Ignition Facility has followed up on its March firing with yet-another record, flicking the switch on a pulse that topped 500 trillion watts and 1.85 megajoules of UV laser. Back in March, the NIF at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had previously fired a 411 trillion watt pulse. As noted by the lab, …

    Science 16 Jul 22:00

  • Dell bundles up SQL Server 2012 data warehouse appliance

    Swaddled in PowerEdge metal, sipping Boomi ba-ba

    Dell might be chasing large enterprises like mad these days, but it has not forgotten the small and medium business customers that made the company a player in IT. SMBs need data warehouses as much as the big boys, but they have less money and less skills with which to slap one together. That's where, Dell hopes, its QuickStart …

    Servers 16 Jul 22:18

  • More Steve Jobs iPad mini attacks from beyond the grave

    Not just 'sandpaper', but 'developers, developers, developers, developers'

    Rumors of an impending Apple iPad mini continue to proliferate, with The New York Times being the latest to weigh in, and Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal already having had their say, so it's a good time to recount the late Steve Jobs's arguments as to why such a device will be doomed to failure. Much has been made about …

    Mobile 16 Jul 22:45