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17th July 2012 Archive

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  • US, Iraqi lawn chair balloonists blown out of sky

    Record-setting attempt ends around the bend from Bend

    A pair of intrepid aerial adventurers aiming to fly from Bend, Oregon, to southwestern Montana in a tandem-seated lawn chair craft buoyed by 350 five-foot balloons had their dreams deferred when their aircraft came down in a thunderstorm 30 miles from liftoff, dumped them off, then sailed away on its own, destination unknown …

    Bootnotes 17 Jul 01:28

  • Dell Inspiron 17R SE 17in Ivy Bridge notebook review

    Core i7 beast of burden

    I’m currently mourning the demise of the 18-inch Dell XPS that I’ve been using as a TV/DVD player in my bedroom for the last five years. Hardly anyone seems to make 18-inch laptops anymore, but Dell has come up with a good alternative in the form of the new Inspiron 17R SE (Special Edition). Dell's Inspiron 17R Special …

    Laptops 17 Jul 07:00

  • We'll punish crims faster... with lots of shiny new tech - minister

    Computers, is there anything they can't do?

    Effective use of technology will be at the heart of the criminal justice system, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has promised. In a white paper, Swift and Sure Justice: the Government's plans for reform of the Criminal Justice System, the government says exploiting its investments in technology will help improve service delivery …

    Government 17 Jul 07:02

  • Cockfighting Reg hack cursed with cancer

    FoTW Animal lover less than impressed with battling poultry

    My piece last week on a chance encounter with the film Cockfighter didn't go down to too well with one anonymous animal lover. Hiding behind the safety of a Tor Exit Router, the evidently unhappy bunny flamed away: For promoting cockfighting, I hope Lester Haines entire body gets riddled with cancer and dies a slow and …

    Bootnotes 17 Jul 07:29

  • Behold: First look at Office 2013, with screenshots

    So you say you want Metro everywhere, all the time?

    Microsoft announced the details of Office 2013 at noon on Monday, San Francisco time, so your humble Reg hacks have only had it their sweaty paws for a few hours, but it's not too soon to give some first impressions of the suite, and in particular its revamped UI. The first thing you notice when launching any of the Office …

    Applications 17 Jul 07:52

  • LG execs fingered in Samsung OLED tech theft

    Samsung wants its rival to come clean

    Samsung has urged its South Korean tech rival LG to ‘fess up and apologise after several of its execs were indicted on charges of orchestrating corporate espionage relating to Samsung’s OLED display technology. Eleven people were charged on Sunday with leaking the technology from Samsung, according to Korean newswire Yonhap. …

    Business 17 Jul 08:03

  • EMC in comprehensive reshuffle of top sales chaps

    We're just madly busy driving and building things here

    EMC has replaced its sales boss and three top regional sales heads and recruited an OEM/HPC heavy-hitter. Bill Teuber, EMC's vice-chairman, ran EMC's Global Sales and Customer Operations. That role goes to Bill Scannell, now president of global sales and customer ops, who was "driving revenue growth across EMC’s full range of …

    Storage 17 Jul 08:22

  • Lenovo ups in-house notebook production

    It's all about control...

    It could be sweaty palm time for Taiwan’s ODMs after reports emerged that Lenovo is set to step up in-house production of its notebooks and PCs. The Chinese hardware giant is planning new production lines in Japan and Brazil as well as at its LCFC joint venture with Compal Electronics in northern China, Digitimes reported. …

    Hardware 17 Jul 08:30

  • Acer EMEA boss: PC crash hit us like a coal mine GAS BLAST

    Lessons learned, hopefully in time for the Olympics

    Acer's channel-cramming strategy that left it with a pile of unsold PCs almost visible from space was "terribly wrong", a top boss has admitted. EMEA president Oliver Ahrens, who led Acer China while Europe's inventory mountain grew, told The Channel the hardware vendor has learned its lesson after consumer demand swerved …

    The Channel 17 Jul 08:39

  • Cleversafe cuddles up to MapReduce, kicks HDFS out of bed

    Hey Hadoop, we think your filesystem sucks

    Object storage specialist Cleversafe is after a piece of Big Data analytics action, and has wheeled in MapReduce to make it happen. In the same stroke it rejected HDFS as vulnerable and wasteful of storage capacity. MapReduce is the analysis part of Hadoop, the flavour-of-the-month open-source data hoarding software. It …

    Storage 17 Jul 09:02

  • Sky's TV-on-demand registers with regulator just hours before opening

    Took that long to work out who the regulator was

    Sky today launched its Now TV vid-on-demand service, but only managed to notify the right regulator hours before the off as it's getting harder to remember who controls what. Video-on-demand services in the UK are regulated by ATVOD (the Authority for Television On Demand), and on-demand services are required to notify the …

    Media 17 Jul 09:14

  • Intel prunes SSD prices

    Extends budget range too

    Intel has pledged to make its solid-state drives less expensive. It has reduced what it charges resellers for its 320, 330 and 520 SSDs. It also added a 240GB drive to the 330 line, which previously topped out at 180GB. The 330 series is pitched at consumers seeking a cheaper option than its better-performing 520 family. Alas …

    Hardware 17 Jul 09:19

  • Are things looking up in biz? Rosier prospects for Computacenter

    In the English Channel and across the English Channel

    Computacenter's UK ops have begun to shine again, driven by IT services wins, following something of a stagger in the opening three months of the year. In a trading update, CC said group sales were up eight per cent in constant currency for H1, the six months ended 30 June, with services and products revenues up 15 per cent …

    The Channel 17 Jul 09:29

  • Raspberry Pi used as flight computer aboard black-sky balloon

    Pics PENGUINs in SPAAAACE!

    A Brit amateur balloonist has pulled off two major achievements: getting his hands on a wallet-sized Raspberry Pi computer and then sending it heavenwards to 39,994m (131,200ft). Over the weekend, Dave Akerman's PIE1 payload was carried aloft into the stratosphere under a latex meteorological balloon, sending back live webcam …

    SPB 17 Jul 09:43

  • iPhone 5 to be skinniest Apple yet SHOCK

    But as much to do with the battery as the touchscreen tech

    The next iPhone will be skinnier than the current one, but not entirely - as the Wall Street Journal would have us believe - because Apple will use advanced touchscreen tech. How does the paper know that's what Apple plans to do? The inevitable people familiar with what Apple is up to but who can't allow themselves to be named …

    Phones 17 Jul 09:57

  • Much of China still has rubbish net connections, stats show

    Fleabitten British lion still faster than snoozing dragon

    China may have the full weight of the government behind its push towards improving fixed line broadband penetration in the country, but it’s still lagging far behind the UK, according to the latest stats from local content delivery firm ChinaCache. The report, handily translated by TechInAsia, show the average connection …

    Networks 17 Jul 10:01

  • Valve to raise Steam for Ubuntu

    Zombies let loose on Linux

    Valve has confirmed that Steam will launch on Linux, with an Ubuntu port of the 'iTunes for PC games' download service set to roll out alongside zombie thriller Left 4 Dead 2. The company used the first post on its new Valve Linux blog to reveal that it is currently refining the software, optimising L4D2 to a suitably high …

    Games 17 Jul 10:15

  • Finally some QUALITY apps for Android: PalmOS emulator ported

    Just woken up with long beard, curly fingernails?

    PalmOS users who've become objects of ridicule with their refusal to upgrade can now switch to Android while keeping the favourite PalmOS apps. The technology comes from StyleTap, whose PalmOS emulators made Windows Mobile and Symbian usable for so long. Now PalmOS obsessives can buy a port of the emulator for Google's Android …

    Operating Systems 17 Jul 10:17

  • Samsung swoops on Brit chip biz CSR, grabs talents'n'patents

    Actual real technology, no web-2.0 rubbish here

    A British chip-design company has sold its mobile and GPS location-finding tech wing to Samsung for $310 million (£198m). Cambridge-based biz CSR sealed the deal today, according to a regulatory notice from the London Stock Exchange. It will shift 310 employees, and an attractive sheaf of patents, over to the South Korean …

    Data Networking 17 Jul 10:33

  • Euro cellcos hoard nano Sims ahead of iPhone 5 launch

    Order! Order!

    More evidence, perhaps, for the iPhone 5's not-far-off-now launch: European mobile network operators are eagerly ordering millions of nano-sized Sim cards. Keen to avoid being stuck for suitable Sims - which happened when Apple launched the micro Sim-equipped iPhone 4 in 2010 - the cellcos are this time laying their mitts on …

    Mobile 17 Jul 10:40

  • Google makes fresh offers in Euro anti-trust negotiations

    Ads dominatrix hopes to slip out of Brussels' clutches

    Advertising giant Google has sent a revised package of concessions to Europe's competition commissioner after it was asked to clarify aspects of its proposed antitrust settlement, according to the Financial Times. It's been two weeks since the colossal advertising company submitted to Brussels' competition watchdog what it …

    Government 17 Jul 10:44

  • Making SMEs cyber-safe for fun and profit

    Whitepaper Let the Vultures show you how

    Big firms stand to lose a lot when their defences are breached. But small companies have their own crown jewels, and stand to lose at least as much as their larger rivals without the resources to fall back on. So, The Register has created the whitepaper The Business of Security in collaboration with McAfee. It looks at what …

    The Channel 17 Jul 10:45

  • 'Unfair' tariff tweaks yield networks £90m

    Fixed-price contracts need fixing, says Which?

    Mobile networks unfairly make up to £90m a year thanks to contract Ts&Cs which allow them to raise the price of fixed-rate tariffs, consumer reviews site Which? has claimed. We've highlighted this kind of behaviour before, most notably when Orange customers faced a 4.34 per cent monthly price rise last November, bit Which? …

    Mobile 17 Jul 11:04

  • Skype so sorry for sending that saucy IM to mum instead of pash

    Wait for update, or simply join the Foreign Legion?

    Skype has admitted its IP-chat software can accidentally send punters' private messages to the wrong person on their contact lists. Skype 'fessed up to the cock-up on Monday, promised a fix was in development, and added that this would be available within days. Reports of the bug first surfaced on community support forums last …

    Security 17 Jul 11:27

  • Microsoft 'didn't notice' it had removed Browser Choice for 17 months

    Brussels may get 'severe' over breach of competition pact

    Brussels' competition commissioner has opened a fresh investigation into Microsoft's practice of using its Windows operating system to push people into using its Internet Explorer browser, following allegations of non-compliance with an EC settlement deal the software giant agreed to in late 2009. Microsoft, under the legally- …

    Operating Systems 17 Jul 11:53

  • EMC CEO succession blown wide open by VMware rumblings

    Analysis Pat Gelsinger to run VMware, Maritz to run, er, what?

    The VMware cloud spinout rumour mill has churned up speculation that VMware CEO Paul Maritz is leaving - and will be replaced by Pat "golden boy" Gelsinger of parent company EMC. Gelsinger, once favoured to succeed EMC boss Joe Tucci, effectively runs his company's core storage hardware business, being President and COO of EMC …

    Storage 17 Jul 12:27

  • VMware CEO exile rumour: Not a punishment for Maritz

    Analysis The message - Our future is cloudy. Sorry! Cloudy

    VMware boss Paul Maritz is rumoured to be exiting his virtualisation software powerhouse - and could be replaced by Pat Gelsinger, the head of storage products at parent company EMC. You'd be forgiven for thinking this is a shock move, yet simple facts and observations from our sources point to this being a management tweak …

    Servers 17 Jul 12:52

  • Wouldbe Apple App Store killer WAC disappears into GSMA

    The Once and Future best hope of the networks

    The Wholesale Applications Community has been voluntarily subsumed by the GSMA, selling off its technology and giving up its independence. The app store which never was will now never be. The technology owned by the WAC, a platform-independent JavaScript-based runtime and a billing API with hooks into various network operators …

    Mobile 17 Jul 13:23

  • New 'Madi' cyber-espionage campaign targets Iran AND Israel

    Attackers 'fluent in Persian', say security sinkholers

    Security researchers have discovered a new cyber-espionage campaign targeting victims in the Middle East. Kaspersky Lab and Seculert identified more than 800 victims located in Iran, Israel, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the course of monitoring control servers associated with cyber/espionage operation over the last eight …

    Security 17 Jul 13:40

  • New UK immigration IT system late and £28m OVER BUDGET

    On time, on budget, works. Pick two, er, one. Er ...

    A £385m computer system being built for the UK's Border Agency and Border Force to process immigrants' paperwork is a year behind schedule and £28m over budget. That's according to the National Audit Office (NAO), which today published findings from a study it undertook in March into the stumbling IT project. The NAO said …

    Government 17 Jul 13:57

  • Morphlabs distills concentrated OpenStack cloudy system

    A stiff one for service providers, SMBs

    Morphlabs, Are offounded five years ago to peddle a cloud management tool called AppSpace on top of Amazon's EC2 compute cloud, is moving more aggressively into the cloudy hardware business with its second preconfigured cloud-in-the box setup based on the open source OpenStack cloud controller. This new stack, called mCloud …

    Servers 17 Jul 15:02

  • Nasa guides Mars Rover with Kinect

    Lunar Lander de nos jours

    Nasa has launched a free game for Kinect owners which sees players guide the Mars Rover through its landing sequence. The game - a joint venture with Smoking Gun Interactive - puts players through the "seven minutes of terror" landing procedure, which makes use of Nasa's as-yet-untested system for reducing the vehicle's speed …

    Games 17 Jul 15:13

  • Fresh shift of 'nauts comes aboard space station from Soyuz podule

    What craft needs 83% of its crew to be flight engineers?

    The latest shift of 'nauts has successfully boarded the International Space Station for their stint of orbital duty, arriving at the sky-high outpost last night (UK time) aboard a Soyuz TMA-05M spacecraft sent up from Russia. Off to work, heigh ho NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and …

    Science 17 Jul 15:16

  • Hacktivists lift emails, passwords from oil biz in support of Greenpeace

    Operation get behind the hippies

    An Anonymous cadre has hacked into major oil corporations' computers to protest against drilling in the Arctic. The attack, dubbed OpSaveTheArctic, has led to the lifting of email addresses and encrypted password hashes for about 500 email accounts at five leading oil exploration corporations: Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Gazprom …

    Security 17 Jul 15:57

  • Micron mass-produces Phase Change Memory

    Flash superseded? Maybe...

    Memory maker Micron has become the first firm to put Phase Change Memory (PCM) - one of the possible non-volatile successors to Flash - into mass production. Caveat: we're talking the technology's use for mobile devices only. Micron is pitching its initial offering at mobile devices, combining 1Gb of 45nm PCM and 512Mb of low- …

    Hardware 17 Jul 16:01

  • Dell airdrops military-grade data-centre-in-a-crate

    Big data goes to war

    You need to compute everywhere and anywhere in this world these days, and thankfully you can always get some iron on the end of a cable to crunch the numbers. Unfortunately, connecting into a central data centre is sometimes not only difficult but undesirable for security reasons. That's when you go for what Dell is calling …

    Servers 17 Jul 17:03

  • CumuLogic puffs up Java platform cloud 1.0

    Memory pricing is the wave of the future

    CumuLogic, a platform cloud provider founded by some ex-Sunners with Java and cloud expertise, is delivering its first platform cloud layer for public and private infrastructure clouds. Interestingly, it's using a RAM-based utility pricing metric to charge customers for using its wares, a pricing method you should expect to …

    Cloud 17 Jul 18:09

  • iPhone 5 poised to trounce Android, devastate BlackBerry?

    Small-scale survey sees 80 million iPhone 5 sales 'in the bag'

    A new report on smartphone buying plans provides excellent news for Apple, so-so news for Android-handset manufacturers, and downright lousy news for RIM. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster's annual smartphone purchasing survey – which was conducted by querying 400 people in Minnesota, New York, and California, and in China …

    Mobile 17 Jul 19:46

  • Cisco buys Virtuata for virty security

    Taking on Bromium? Beating Citrix to the punch?

    Networking juggernaut and server player Cisco Systems has snapped up Virtuata, a stealthy startup that is working on security software for virtual machines that has not really said much about itself to date – and now never will. The acquisition was announced in a blog post by Hilton Romanski, vice president of corporate …

    Security 17 Jul 19:56

  • Intel grazes Q2 numbers, but 'growth will be slower' in Q3

    Revises full-year projections downward

    Intel has reported its second-quarter 2012 financial results, and you can almost hear the Wall Street moneymen breathe a muted sigh of relief – although the sound of popping champagne corks is not likely to be heard. Although total Q2 earnings were just under expectations at $13.5bn, the all-important earnings-per-share (EPS) …

    Financial News 17 Jul 20:50

  • Study: Users prefer Google+ over Facebook

    For a ghost town, it's a nice place to visit

    Google+ is regularly derided as a "ghost town," but at least the spirits who haunt it are happy. According to a study from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), the Chocolate Factory's fledgling social network scores top marks in customer satisfaction, leaving Facebook far behind. According to ACSI's figures, Google …

    Media 17 Jul 21:53

  • RMIT in Japanese space hook-up

    JAXA on loan for evaluation

    Australia’s RMIT University has secured an agreement to develop global navigation satellite systems with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The collaboration, recursively dubbed the Multi-GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) Joint Experiment in the Asia-Oceania Multi-GNSS Demonstration Campaign, consists of a …

    Science 17 Jul 22:22

  • Attacker pleads guilty to hatchet-job on ISP

    Careful with that axe, Eugene…

    A South Australian man is awaiting sentencing after hacking an ISP’s servers and threatening the owner with an axe. The Herald Sun is reporting that Bryce Quilley pleaded guilty to four charges. They included three counts of “unlawful modification of computer data”, all of which took place on June 14 last year, as well as …

    Security 17 Jul 22:40

  • Top EMC execs play multi-cushion musical chairs

    But who gets Gelsinger's old job?

    It's happened: three of EMC's top execs are playing musical chairs – but no one takes a chair away. Paul Maritz, VMware CEO, leaves that job and becomes EMC's chief strategist, a new EMC role starting on September 1, reporting to EMC Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci, and staying a member of VMware's board. Maritz's particular focus …

    The Channel 17 Jul 22:46

  • Grum botnet loses Dutch servers

    Still alive and spamming in Russia, Panama

    ISPs in Russia and Panama are continuing to host Grum botnet command-and-control servers, after Dutch authorities silenced C&Cs in their country. According to FireEye Research, two Netherlands-based servers were taken offline on July 17. “With these two servers offline, the spam template inside Grum's memory will soon time …

    Security 17 Jul 23:00