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18th July 2012 Archive

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  • XBMC media player now running on Android, Nexus Q

    But you'll need to build it yourself from scratch

    The developers of the popular XBMC open source entertainment hub have released a preliminary version for Android, which means the software could soon be running on a wide range of smartphones and tablets – even Google's Nexus Q media device. Though originally designed for home theater PCs, XBMC now runs on a wide range of …

    Developer 18 Jul 00:38

  • Intel CEO Otellini promises $699 ultrabooks by fall

    140 svelte laptops in the pipeline, 40 'touch-enabled'

    Despite relatively slow initial sales of the thin and light laptops that his company is making such a huge bet on, Intel headman Paul Otellini remains bullish on ultrabooks, and is confident that $699 versions of the svelte "reinvented PCs" will hit store shelves this fall. "Ultrabooks continue to build momentum, and achieved …

    Hardware 18 Jul 00:42

  • Gelsinger to take over as VMware CEO

    But don't count out the ol' Intel hand as eventual EMC CEO

    The rumor mill was churning out chatter about succession changes at EMC and its virtualization minion, VMware, and this forced EMC's and VMware's hand and made them make their executive change announcements a week ahead of schedule. As expected, Pat Gelsinger, who is 51 years old and who for many years had run Intel's Xeon and …

    Storage 18 Jul 00:56

  • Alister Dias to take reins as EMC ANZ MD

    Longtime ANZ President David Webster booted upstairs into APAC sales role as part of global reorg

    EMC's global reorg, which The Reg has reported here, will see Alister Dias take over as the storage-led company's new head for its Australian and New Zealand operations. As Chris Mellor reported at the link above, longtime Australian EMC head honcho David Webster will head sales and customer operations in Asia Pacific and …

    Business 18 Jul 02:11

  • ZTE claims it's hiring, not firing

    Mobile giant says rumours are wide of the mark

    Chinese telecoms outfit ZTE has hit back at rumours suggesting it will respond to sliding market share and a scary balance sheet by shedding 12,000 staff. Instead, the company says, we can expect a graduate hiring spree. The Shenzhen-based firm, which last week warned that profits for the first half of 2012 could fall by as …

    Business 18 Jul 03:51

  • China risks mountain of unsold PCs

    Analyst warns of sales drop-off

    China’s domestic PC market is set to go from strength to strength in 2012 with shipments forecast to rise at three times the rate of the global market, although analysts warn there could be trouble ahead. The China Electronics Research report from market watcher IHS iSuppli claimed that PC shipments in the People’s Republic …

    Business 18 Jul 05:13

  • Drones, sub-hunting planes to attack cyber-Chinese army

    Taiwan boots up virtual war games

    Taiwan has launched a five day computer-aided war simulation exercise designed to test the country’s army, navy and air force against an attack from near neighbour China. The virtual war games will see how well Taiwan’s armed forces cope with ballistic and cruise missile attacks as well as intrusions from drone-like unmanned …

    Security 18 Jul 06:35

  • Streetfighter 2: The World Warrior

    Antique Code Show 1990s beat master

    Yoga-fire! Had-uken! A-shab-dap-whoo-jit! In the early 1990s, such was common playground talk up and down the country, as children re-enacted their Streetfighter 2 fantasies, and dinner-ladies looked on in bewilderment. Eight controllable characters was something of a revelation 20 years ago At the time, the grey import …

    reghardware 18 Jul 07:00

  • Wikipedia failing to recruit any new admins

    Fears that nerditor community may have heard of girls

    The number of people approved as full Wikipedia admins is falling faster than expected, according to a report from the Wikimedia conference by The Atlantic yesterday. The admins or sysops are the crack nerd troops of Wikipedia - they have the power to delete posts, block editors or protect pages that are being vandalised. …

    Bootnotes 18 Jul 07:18

  • Backups? Use disk. Archives? Disk. Particle accelerators? Fine, tape

    Tape, the red-headed stepchild in the house of EMC

    What's EMC's attitude to tape? Who better to ask than William "BJ" Jenkins, the bigwig running the storage leviathan's backup and recovery systems business. So we did. Last year EMC said loud and proud that digital tape sucks, and featured the world's biggest ball of tape at marketing events. This year there is no such …

    Storage 18 Jul 07:38

  • UK's tax-funded boffinry to be published FREE for all

    Analysis You paid for it, now you can read it on the bog

    Universities will be provided with funding to ensure that their academics' research papers are made more widely available, the government has said. The government broadly backed recommendations contained in a report by the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings in its policy aimed at supporting 'open …

    Science 18 Jul 08:00

  • Olympic Security cock-up was down to that DARN software

    Buck up Buckles, for *uck's sake

    The CEO of beleaguered security company G4S blamed his "scheduling system" as he explained his company's failure to adequately secure the Olympics. Facing MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee yesterday, Nick Buckles said that the company took 100 per cent of the responsibility for the cock-up that has led to 3400 squaddies …

    Security 18 Jul 08:13

  • Surprise! BT pockets £70m North Yorkshire broadband rollout

    Updated To win one-horse race in Cumbria also

    BT has been awarded a £70m contract from North Yorkshire county council to improve broadband service in the area, and will win a similar contract for Cumbria by default. Japanese tech giant Fujitsu, the only competition faced by BT for the work, withdrew from the contest in Cumbria but remained in the running for the North …

    Broadband 18 Jul 08:27

  • New police-run IT biz to take top cops out of the server room

    Who will run tech guru outfit an unsolved mystery

    The Home Office has finally fleshed out the details of its Police ICT company, which aims to help forces improve their IT and get better value for money from contracts. However, its long term role and influence is already under question. The Police ICT company, dubbed "Pictco" - created to offer access to better services and …

    Channel Register 18 Jul 08:44

  • McDonalds staff 'rough up' prof with home-made techno-spectacles

    Updated Computer Vision pioneer suffers Mac Attack

    A man wearing computer-assisted spectacles was assaulted by staff in a Parisian McDonalds, who tried to pull the glasses off his head then threw him out of the restaurant, according to a blog post written by the victim. The staff seemed angered by the high-tech vision-ware worn by Dr Steve Mann who is an academic at the …

    Bootnotes 18 Jul 08:55

  • Behind-the-scenes payment operation gets e-money capability

    Competition for WorldPay muscling up?

    Payment processor Ogone has bought up e-money operation Tunz, allowing it to expand into virtual currencies and make the world marketplace a little more real. Ogone is a competitor to WorldPay, so merchants sign up with Ogone to accept payments using credit cards as well as alternatives such as PayPal or iDEAL depending on the …

    Financial News 18 Jul 09:14

  • PayPal is bleeding market share and it's all eBay's fault

    Open ... and Shut Hands up who knows what X.commerce is... yes, that's why

    Six years ago, PayPal could claim a 91 per cent market share in the US. Today it's struggling to claim long-term relevance in the surging online payments market, the market it helped to create. The problem isn't really a matter of functionality, it's a matter of focus and being able to sell its new services clearly and …

    Business 18 Jul 09:30

  • Pyrotechnic boffin poised to light LOHAN's fire

    Reg reader expert brews up custom rocket motor igniter

    Cometh the hour, cometh the man, as the old saying goes, and we're delighted to report that a Reg reader has stepped forward to resolve the thorny problem of just how to get our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mighty thruster to fire at altitude. The first rocket motor tests in our shed-built Rocketry Experimental …

    SPB 18 Jul 09:44

  • Yahoo! profits! derailed! by! restructuring! costs!

    New CEO silent on her plans as payouts hit Q2 income

    A hefty restructuring bill has pushed troubled web firm Yahoo!'s second quarter profit down 4 per cent. The firm announced its results just a day after appointing its latest CEO, ex-Googler Marissa Mayer, the third chief to take the reins in little over a year. Yahoo! said profit eased down to $226.5m in Q2, slipping from $ …

    Financial News 18 Jul 09:59

  • Facebook cybersquatter stitched up by own Facebook account

    Non one believed his 'generic dictionary word' defence

    The man who registered the domain name facebook.info has lost a cybersquatting case, after Facebook used his own eight-year-old Facebook account as evidence against him. Occasional web entrepreneur Igor Dolgalev registered the facebook.info address on 25 September, 2004, while he was still a student at Cornell and Facebook …

    Hosting 18 Jul 10:14

  • Tape juggler gets BILLION FILE capacity

    'Ingesting' petabytes and, ah, moving them outside itself

    Quantum has raised its StorNext storage virtualisation software's game, adding support for up a billion files, automatic archiving onto tape and tiered tape storage. Meanwhile its share price has abruptly fallen to levels seen two years ago, as if all the recovery work since then has been worthless. StorNext presents a single …

    Storage 18 Jul 10:29

  • Sony preps PS3 with old-school design

    Low-cost play?

    Sony is set to release a third design of its PlayStation 3 console, with a higher storage capacity and a top-loading disc tray. The unannounced PS3 - spotted in testing labs in Brazil - will apparently touch down with a choice of three new storage capacities: 16GB, 250GB and 500GB, Brazilian site Tecnoblog reports. The …

    reghardware 18 Jul 10:33

  • Nearly 2 MILLION US Facebook users quit social network

    Wall Street bitches... bitch

    Shares in Facebook continued to slide on Tuesday, after an analyst claimed the dominant social network had seen a modest drop in its userbase. Capstone Investment's Rory Maher said Mark Zuckerberg's company suffered a 1.1 per cent fall in US users over the last six months. The number of European Facebookers had also declined, …

    Media 18 Jul 10:48

  • Gamer fails STAM roll, dies after 40-hour Diablo III stretch

    Way to go, dude

    A sleep-deprived gamer has died after playing Diablo III for 40 hours without a break, prompting advice from developer Blizzard about moderating one's gaming habits. A Taiwanese teen known only as Chuang booked himself into an internet cafe's private room on Friday and spent the next two days playing Diablo III, apparently …

    reghardware 18 Jul 10:56

  • Devolo dLAN 500Mb/s powerline network adaptor review

    Fast Ethernet through a three-pin plug

    Devolo's dLan 500 AVmini adaptors score highly for me for two reasons: they operate at powerline's highest speed grade, 500Mb/s, and they're compact. Powerline adaptors used to be fairly small, but that was back in the 14Mb/s days of HomePlug 1.0, one of two original competing powerline standards of the early 2000s. Upping the …

    reghardware 18 Jul 11:09

  • Ice island snaps off Greenland: Just a fifth the size of 1962 whopper

    And half the size of last big one two years back

    A vast island of ice has broken off a glacier in Greenland: but it is just one-fifth the size of one which snapped off from Canada in 1962 and half the size of one seen in 2010. The new monster iceberg is assessed as covering 46 square miles by professor Andreas Muenchow of the University of Delaware, which he calculates as …

    Science 18 Jul 11:19

  • Raspberry Pi rolls out speed surge Raspbian OS

    Floating point fruit-filled Linux distro

    The Raspberry Pi team has posted its new, recommended Linux distro for its tiny, ARM-based computer. Dubbed Raspbian Wheezy, it's a custom Debian build that, for the first time, taps into the Pi processor's floating point unit for much faster performance. "Users who are still using Debian Squeeze will definitely want to …

    reghardware 18 Jul 11:29

  • Britain: A nation of txt addicts who prefer Twitter to phoning mum

    Don't bother calling, we're too busy 'turfing' - Ofcom

    Brits are chatting online and spewing messages from phones more than ever as gossiping in voice calls declines for the first time. Calling from mobiles is only down a smidgen on last year, slipping about 1 per cent, according to an annual report from communications watchdog Ofcom. But the volume of fixed-line calls dropped by …

    Mobile 18 Jul 11:44

  • Cumbria County Council: We'll sort our own ICT support, thanks

    Fails to agree terms with third-party providers

    Cumbria County Council has opted to run its ICT services in-house after failing to agree terms with a third-party provider. The previous seven-year contract with Agilisys, which covered ongoing ICT and business consultancy services, had been due to expire on 1 April. Following a tender process, Computacenter (CC) was …

    Government 18 Jul 12:03

  • Dropbox brings in crack team to probe spam leakage

    Email accounts crammed with gambling site grossness

    Dropbox has begun investigating complaints that users are receiving spam to email addresses only associated with their accounts at the file-sharing service. The spam, sent to addresses only used for Dropbox accounts, advertises a particular gambling website, according to users on Dropbox's forum. The behaviour has sparked …

    Storage 18 Jul 12:17

  • Bunging apps, files into virtual desktops ain't worth it - Gartner

    Server and network costs annihilate cash savings

    The financial arguments for turning PCs into glorified remote terminals just don't stack up, says a Gartner bod. The bean counter estimates "virtual hosted desktops" - which shift applications and file storage into a centralised farm of servers - will form a market of 80 million units worldwide by 2016. This is a four-fold …

    Channel Register 18 Jul 12:39

  • Sage site outage knackers Blighty's payroll depts

    Reports of abacus sales soaring unfounded

    Brit biz Sage left UK customers without critical software - including its Payroll suite - after toppling offline. After the firm's web servers for sage.co.uk went down, the business programs were unable to connect to the website to automatically check for upgrades. "Yesterday we experienced an outage on sage.co.uk. This meant …

    Channel Register 18 Jul 13:13

  • Firefox 14 encrypts Google search, but admen can still strip-search you

    Updated Referrer strings go naked for marketeers

    Mozilla has rolled out Firefox 14, which automatically encrypts web searches through Google, but the new release leaves an important back door open to advertisers. The move also quietly undermines Mozilla’s crusade in the past years on maintaining the privacy of netizens by using Do-Not-Track as a plea to websites not to track …

    Applications 18 Jul 13:18

  • BSkyB punches Virgin Media in ads watchdog fist fight

    ASA rules for Rupert's baby as accusations fly

    Virgin Media has lost its battle with BSkyB over a TV, newspaper and website ad that flogged "totally unlimited broadband", after VM claimed the commercials were misleading. However, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) declined to uphold Virgin Media's complaint – in which the telco asserted that BSkyB's network was …

    Media 18 Jul 13:39

  • Rest of world catching Eurozone plague, warns Datatec

    Bring out your dead, bring out your dead

    Economic malaise in the Eurozone is spreading to the global stage, channel behemoth Datatec has warned. Despite this, the parent of distributor Westcon and integrator-cum-managed-services-provider Logicalis said in an interim management statement that sales had risen across the group in the last four months. "Trading and …

    Channel Register 18 Jul 13:48

  • AT&T may charge fanbois for FaceTime vid chat, hints iOS 6

    Video calling on 3G? There's a bill for that

    Early adopters playing with iOS 6 fear users will have to beg AT&T to let them make FaceTime video calls over the cellular network. An alert box, shown over at MacRumours, pops up and urges fanbois to have a word with the telco if they attempt to make a FaceTime call and Wi-Fi isn't available. The discovery sparked rumours …

    Applications 18 Jul 13:50

  • Servers save Intel's Q2, and probably the year

    Xeon E5 push to 2012 timed perfectly

    Intel was expected to start rolling out its "Sandy Bridge" Xeon E5 processors last fall, perhaps around September and then by the end of the year. And it is a good thing for Intel that this didn't happen. In the second quarter ended in June, Intel's Data Center Group – which includes processors, chipsets, motherboards, and …

    Servers 18 Jul 14:24

  • WinPho to eke out 4% of US smartphone biz

    Windows 8 halo effect? What halo effect?

    Nokia, the Windows Phone 8 upgrade and all the promotional hoopla surrounding Windows 8 will have a very small effect on the take-up of Microsoft's mobile OS this year, market watcher Strategy Analytics has forecast. Focusing in the US, SA predicts that some 123m smartphones will ship Stateside during 2012, up from 102m in …

    reghardware 18 Jul 14:48

  • Skyhook offers 'Always-On' background STALKING feature

    Pah, who needs more battery juice at 40,000 feet?!

    Location data provider Skyhook has debuted a new "Always-On" feature in version 4.6 of its mobile software development kit for coders. The Boston-based outfit said that more and more applications, particularly in the social networking market, demanded persistent background location information. But smartphones with location- …

    Applications 18 Jul 15:02

  • Outage outrage: O2 dishes out 3 free days, £10 voucher

    Keeping the punters happy

    Following last week's O2 mobile network outage, the telco is giving contract customers three days of free connectivity in compensation. Pre-paid users will get an additional topup, and everyone gets £10 to spend in the O2 store. Of the operator's three million customers, only those who suffered connection difficulties will get …

    Mobile 18 Jul 15:27

  • Sony: Walkman, meet Android

    Jam sandwich

    Sony has launched an Android-based Walkman, the F800, with which it hopes to topple the supremacy Apple's iPod Touch holds in the PMP market. Good luck. The Sony Walkman F800 boasts a 3.5in display and runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, providing access to Google Play and its wide array of apps and games. It'll come in 8GB …

    reghardware 18 Jul 15:36

  • Psst, UK software devs: Up for a Cyber Security Challenge?

    Future Stuxnet-style attack defenders wanted

    A new Cyber Security Challenge UK competition aimed at finding people to protect the country against future Stuxnet-style attacks was launched on Wednesday. Previous Cyber Security Challenge competitions focused on crypto-cracking, penetration testing and malware forensics – but this is the first competition in the challenge …

    Security 18 Jul 16:02

  • Gov: We want cheap police tablets and by God we'll get them

    SCC pressurised to cut costs of fondling cop-slabs

    The Minister for Policing and Justice is leaning on reseller-cum-integrator SCC to slash the cost of fondleslabs for cops by reducing the number of sub-contractors it works with under the pan-government Sprint ii framework. The 43 forces in England and Wales were mandated in March 2011 to use Sprint ii to procure commodity …

    Law 18 Jul 16:19

  • New lightest-ever material: Ideal power for electric car

    Pitch-black Aerographite could juice batteries of the future-ture-ture

    A light-absorbing midnight-black substance dubbed Aerographite has stolen the crown for the lightest material in the world, weighing just 0.2mg per cubic centimetre. And because of its special properties, it's a serious contender to build lithium-ion batteries small and light enough to power the electronic bikes and cars of the …

    Physics 18 Jul 16:32

  • Speaking in Tech: Did Yahoo! suddenly get ... interesting?

    Podcast Plus: Post-Katrina IT culture in New Orleans

    Host Greg Knieriemen – sans trusty sidekicks Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela – brings you a piping hot, brand spanking-new podcast wrapping up all the latest in enterprise tech in an easy-to-digest chat with a squirt of social media, lettuce optional. This week he chats to Christina Weil, district director at network support firm …

    Data Networking 18 Jul 17:04

  • Intel accidentally outs 'Poulson' Itanium specs

    The Intertubes giveth and taketh away

    The webmeisters of the world have given once again, with Intel accidentally outing some of the feeds and speeds of the impending "Poulson" Itanium processors for midrange and high-end servers. Some of the data has already been taken down, and all of it will probably follow shortly. An intrepid reader of El Reg pointed out to …

    Servers 18 Jul 17:25

  • TryStack pits ARM against Xeon in the cloud

    Take OpenStack out for a test drive

    If you are dying to see how software running on a bona fide ARM server stacks up against a Xeon server, then TryStack.org has some time slices running the OpenStack cloudy fabric that have your name written all over them. TryStack was launched in February, when the companies behind the open source OpenStack project – which …

    Servers 18 Jul 20:46

  • Washington State to allow voter registration via Facebook

    All your friends will be at the polls

    Social networks are rife with online polls, but beginning as early as next week, residents of Washington State will have a new way to sign up for the real things, when Washington becomes the first US state to allow citizens to register to vote via Facebook. "In this age of social media and more people going online for services …

    Government 18 Jul 22:20

  • Five mobile devices per person for 2040?

    ACMA reveals plans for 100 million more mobile numbers

    Australia needs an extra 100 million phone numbers for mobile devices, says the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which has taken the first step towards that goal by setting out plans for new numbers that start with “05”. All Australian mobile numbers have, until now, started with “04”. ACMA says the new 05 …

    Networks 18 Jul 23:00

  • Kiwi judge steps aside from Dotcom extradition hearings

    Calls the US the ‘enemy’, sparks outrage, quits case

    The New Zealand judge hearing America’s Great Collapsing Extradition Case against Kim Dotcom has removed himself from the case, after telling a New Zealand forum “we have met the enemy, and he is the US”. The remark by Judge David Harvey – made to the NetHui conference while discussing the unpopular (except among international …

    Policy 18 Jul 23:02

  • IBM juices profits in Q2 despite sales drop

    Servers stall, currency flux erases $1bn

    Big Blue has once again demonstrated that it knows how to wring profits out of itself even as revenues across its many product lines have stalled in the wake, of or in anticipation of, product transitions. In the second quarter, which ended in June, IBM's sales were down 3.3 per cent, to $25.78bn, but intellectual property …

    Financial News 18 Jul 23:14

  • Vendors responsible for ‘Aussie Tax’: Choice

    Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 wins the gouge-fest

    Australian consumer group Choice has pointed the bone at vendors for the infamous “Aussie tax”, in a submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into IT Pricing. Having studied the price of software, hardware, downloads and games in the Australian market, Choice has noted that Microsoft seems to want Australian developers to call …

    Business 18 Jul 23:30