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20th July 2012 Archive

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  • Microsoft posts first-ever quarterly loss

    It was the Online Services Division's fault, honest

    As was widely expected, Microsoft announced a loss of $0.06 per share for the fourth quarter, ended in June, which marks the first time the software giant has posted a quarterly loss in the 26 years it has been a public company. Most of that drop is attributable to a previously announced $6.2bn charge that resulted from …

    Financial News 20 Jul 00:38

  • New! Yahoo! CEO! Mayer! awarded! mucho! mazuma!

    Near-$60m compensation package for ex-Googler and current mommy-to-be

    Yahoo!'s new CEO Marissa Mayer will be handsomely rewarded for taking the reins at that troubled company – she's been granted an annual base salary of $1m, and can earn up to another $2m in bonus money during her first year. But wait. There's more. According to an SEC filing made available on Thursday, Mayer will also receive …

    Business 20 Jul 00:41

  • AWS says disk is to cloud as tape is to disk

    Spruiks flash-powered cloud services with backhander for spinning rust

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) says magnetic disks cannot handle modern NoSQL-powered applications, which have such high throughputs and generate such weirdly bursty traffic that spinning rust looks and feels as slow and awkward as tape. Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels says as much on his blog: “Magnetic disks are rapidly …

    Cloud 20 Jul 00:52

  • Ocean-seeding experiment re-ignites geo-engineering debate

    Destroy the planet to save it…

    German researchers have re-ignited debate over geo-engineering by saying that “seeding” oceans with iron is an effective way to lock up CO2. While the principle behind seeding is simple enough – the iron acts as a fertilizer for phytoplankton, which multiply and consume carbon dioxide as they grow – the topic is fiercely …

    Science 20 Jul 01:00

  • Optus HFC network gobbled by NBN Co for AU$800m

    "Black day indeed for the ACCC and competition in Australia" says Turnbull

    SingTel Optus will hand over its 400,000 HFC network customers to NBN Co and decommission parts of the network following the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s final approval of the AU$800 million HFC asset deal. The original agreement was announced last June, subject to a raft of conditions including …

    Policy 20 Jul 01:59

  • Atlassian heading for the exit?

    New Board members have extensive experience selling software companies to the big boys

    Atlassian has appointed Doug Burgum, a software entrepreneur and former head of Microsoft’s Business Solutions Group, as its Chairman in a move viewed as taking the Australian software darling into the global tech major league. The company which now operates in Sydney, San Francisco and Amsterdam, also plumped up its board …

    Business 20 Jul 02:47

  • BIG BOOBS banished from Linux kernel

    Microsoft apologises as storm in D-cup resurfaces

    Microsoft has ‘fessed up to inserting the hexadecimal string “0xB16B00B5” in the Linux kernel. Redmond has hung its head in shame because, once you remove the initial zero and x, then squint at the remainder in just the right way, the result is the term “BIG BOOBS”. The offending string is no mere frippery: it is apparently …

    Bootnotes 20 Jul 03:20

  • Indonesia in pre-Ramadan web porn blitz

    Another government comes down hard on smut

    Indonesia’s government has decided to come down hard on internet porn, blocking access to at least one million smutty sites ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The vast south-east Asian nation, which has a larger Muslim population than any other at over 200 million, has strict laws relating to “negative content” …

    Policy 20 Jul 03:59

  • Lenovo CEO Yang doles out US$3m bonus to staff

    Production line workers, receptionists, call centre workers and others score CEO cash

    In an almost unheard of act of selflessness and generosity from a CEO, Lenovo boss Yang Yuanqing has decided to distribute $3 million (£1.9m) from his annual bonus to junior members of staff working at the Chinese PC giant. The firm had a bumper 2011, setting new records in market share, revenue and shipments and posting a …

    Business 20 Jul 04:27

  • Even China can't halt PC sales decline

    IDC blames economic woes in the West after APAC PC numbers fall

    The powerhouse of the global PC market, the Asia Pacific region, has finally succumbed to economic volatility in other regions with Q2 shipments set to decline, according to analysts. IDC’s latest forecast for the period put shipments in the region (excluding Japan) at 30.7 million units, down one per cent from the same time …

    Business 20 Jul 06:24

  • Pentax K-01 16Mp APS-C hybrid camera review

    Mirrorless maverick for grown-up lenses

    Mirrorless camera sizes seem to be ever-reducing, yet the company that brought us the tiny Pentax Q, has now produced its antithesis. The Pentax K-01 is a big, rubber-clad, brick-shaped monster – a 16Mp APS-C interchangeable lens camera which rather defies categorisation. Hybrid heritage: the Pentax K-01 utilises the well- …

    reghardware 20 Jul 07:00

  • UK.gov IT supremos chat up software suppliers for next summer

    We got a good thing going on, right?

    Government bigwigs overseeing the UK's public sector IT buyers hobnobbed with suppliers this week to keep them onboard after their current contracts expire. Civica, Computacenter, Softcat, SCC, Equanet, Fujitsu Services, Insight, Trustmarque, Software Box and Phoenix Software convened at the offices of the Government …

    Channel Register 20 Jul 07:09

  • BT bags MASSIVE £425m broadband rollout deal in Wales

    Company gobbles all the fibre, nobody else gets a look-in

    BT has unsurprisingly won hefty government funds to roll out a faster broadband network to Wales. Sole rival Fujitsu withdrew from the race for securing BDUK investment in the country earlier this year, leaving BT as the only bidder. The national telco confirmed on Thursday that the Welsh fibre broadband project was worth …

    Broadband 20 Jul 07:15

  • BP hires Deutsche Telekom to send email up in smoke

    Staff messages to float up into private cloud

    BP Oil will push 100,000 staff mailboxes into the cloud after the fuel giant signed a deal with Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems division to reorganise its internal communications. The five-year contract tasks T-Systems with setting up an internal messaging system for 83,000 BP employees worldwide, an overhaul that will include …

    Cloud 20 Jul 07:37

  • Lazy password reuse opens Brits to crooks' penetration

    With 26 to remember, some punters think up just 5

    The average Brit maintains 26 online accounts but only uses five different passwords to keep them secure. A poll of 2,000 by Experian found that one in four people uses a single password for the majority of profiles, and one in 25 stick with the same one for ALL their accounts. In addition to chronic password reuse, failing to …

    Security 20 Jul 08:04

  • Watching Olympics at work? How to avoid a £1k telly-tax fine

    Hint: You'll need a laptop

    Watching the Olympics at work may annoy the boss, but not as much as the £1,000 fine the company could get if doesn't have a TV licence. Watching live telly in the UK requires such a licence regardless of whether that video arrives over the internet or is broadcast. The TV tax collectors have provided a useful cut-out-and-pin- …

    Media 20 Jul 08:19

  • Microsoft: Azure now holds FOUR TREELLION objects

    Whup-ass can opened, drained, crumpled to size of pea

    A trillion here and a trillion there; pretty soon you're talking about real storage. In a classic peeing-up-the-wall contest Microsoft has said it pees four times higher than Amazon. Actually there are 4.03 trillion objects stored in its Azure Storage cloud compared to 905 billion in Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3). Brad …

    Cloud 20 Jul 08:39

  • Why British TV drama is crap – and why this matters to tech firms

    Analysis Platforms, platforms everywhere. And nothing to watch

    It has been years since a contemporary BBC drama caused an office discussion round here. The best American imports such as The Wire and Breaking Bad are all regular conversation pieces but I can’t remember a British one being interesting enough even to worth a mention. And you’ll know why. They’re glossy, expensive and dreadful …

    Media 20 Jul 09:03

  • Austrians drool over 15th-century jub buckets

    Earliest known bra unearthed in East Tyrol

    A team from the Institute of Archaeologies at the University of Innsbruck reckons it's unearthed the earliest known bra - a pair of 15th-century linen jub buckets which turned up in a castle in East Tyrol. The antique büstenhalter was among 2,700 textile fragments in a rubbish-filled vault in Lengberg Castle. The university …

    Bootnotes 20 Jul 09:13

  • View 21 readies content-flinging Freeview DVR

    First look Tablet vision

    Harvard International, the company behind the iLuv and Goodmans gadget brands, revealed its latest venture this week: View 21, which will launch a Freeview DVR with on-board IPTV apps and mobile integration next month. The View 21 Smart HD DVR attempts to tie all telly activities together in a user-friendly package and it's …

    reghardware 20 Jul 09:32

  • Russians in audacious stratobeer mission

    Vid Czech ale in 70,000ft shock claim

    A crack Russian team has made its pitch for High Altitude Ballooning (HAB) glory by claiming to have sent a couple of beers cans into the stratosphere. The experiment's goal was to determine whether light or dark ale has that little extra lift. The result, as you can see from the above video, appears to be that the Kozel …

    SPB 20 Jul 09:32

  • Readers fret over LOHAN's chilly bits

    Will igniter batteries clap out at -60°C?

    As the ongoing saga of our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) rocket motor igniter continues, readers have been expressing concerns that the igniter batteries are going to suffer from the extreme cold at altitude. As we explained earlier this week, our current igniter box packs eight AA batteries. These pump out 12V …

    SPB 20 Jul 09:47

  • Where there's brass, silver and gold ... there's also muck

    The great Olympics clean-up challenge

    “Danny Boyle wants to give the impression of 'British countryside' at the opening of the Olympic Games, but he appears to have missed out a few items,” writes Ann McLachlan of South Lanarkshire in the letters page of the Daily Express. “Where is the graffiti-decorated bus shelter? The burst mattress at the field gate? The …

    Jobs 20 Jul 10:03

  • Google impervious to world's cash drain, Moto's lameness

    Page feeling lucky with 2.8 BEEELLION dollar Q2 profit

    Despite the West's failure to adequately emerge from the global economic quagmire, Google is still raking in piles of cash as its second-quarter results show. The number of clicks on the web giant's search adverts increased by about 42 per cent from the same quarter last year, which offset the 16 per cent cut in cost-per-click …

    Financial News 20 Jul 10:17

  • Watch out Fibre Channel: 12 gig SAS has arrived

    LSI and Xyratex team up to penetrate cloudy customers

    Xyratex is plotting to build a drive array with doubled SAS interface speed using LSI 12Gbit/s SAS gear. SAS – or Serial-Attached SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) – is a way of linking storage media and controllers/servers that is enterprise class but without the complexities of Fibre Channel. First generation SAS runs …

    Storage 20 Jul 10:33

  • CEO of fallen flash sweetheart STEC charged with insider trading

    SEC alleges boss made $134m in 'fraudulent' deal

    US financial watchdog SEC has charged STEC CEO Manouch Moshayedi with insider trading. The agency alleged the flash guru exploited confidential information to make some money in a secondary offering of STEC shares. The SEC alleged: Moshayedi learned critical nonpublic information that was likely to have a detrimental impact …

    Storage 20 Jul 10:46

  • LG readies bonkers big telly for sale

    84in ultra-high def monster, anyone?

    Want an 84in (2.1m), 4K x 2K TV? Fly to South Korea next month and join the back of the line. LG today said it was putting just such a 3840 × 2160 beast on sale in its native land, promising to ship the supersize screen, which integrates 2.2-channel audio - toward the end of August. Mind you, you should expect to write a …

    reghardware 20 Jul 10:47

  • Darth Vader is a pansy

    Something for the weekend, Sir? Wearing black doesn't make you cool

    American country music doesn't appeal to me, but Johnny Cash atoned for its worst sins. Whitney Houston’s foghorn cover of Dolly Parton’s funeral-favourite I will always love you could finally be forgiven when Cash returned the favour with his version of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus. But if you had turned up at the wrong …

    reghardware 20 Jul 11:00

  • Apple boots privacy name-and-shame app Clueful from store

    iPhone fans denied right to know what's fondling their data

    Apple has pulled from its App Store a utility that revealed how the software installed on iPhones is fondling punters' data. The Clueful app was created by security company Bitdefender and approved to go on sale in May. However, the privacy tool was yanked this week for reasons that are unclear. Clueful analyses apps …

    Security 20 Jul 11:16

  • CentOS penguins maul Oracle's Linux migration pitch

    Don't trust Ellison, won't pay support

    Having tried, and failed, to kill Red Hat Linux with Unbreakable Linux, Oracle is now sneaking up on CentOS. Larry Ellison's database giant is now touting a piece of code it claims will let you convert your CentOS machine into Oracle Linux systems with no strings attached. Well, there is one catch: switching actually provides …

    Operating Systems 20 Jul 11:34

  • 'Google can do whatever it wants with the data once it gets it'

    Quotw Plus: 'We forgot to give browser choice to 28 million PCs – sorry!'

    This was the week that wasn't so great for Apple, what with former CEO's Steve Jobs' words coming back to haunt Cupertino again, a bad time in the UK courts and an iOS hack attack. Rumours of an iPad mini have been circulating among the more reliable grapes on the vine, with The New York Times, Bloomberg and The Wall Street …

    Bootnotes 20 Jul 11:47

  • Dutch payment-by-bonkers bonk payments on the head

    Phone networks flee incoming Google, Apple NFC onslaught

    The Dutch mobile operator-banking consortium, formed to create a level-playing field for pay-by-wave NFC technology, has broken up. The move leaves networks free to compete while customers wait to see what Apple will offer them. The Dutch consortium intended to provide a consistent platform for wireless NFC app makers, such …

    Broadband 20 Jul 12:02

  • Survey: Deal registration will never stop channel bloodshed

    But it's the best protection you can get

    When it comes to maintaining a fair and level playing field in the channel, solution providers say deal registration is the most effective tool in the arsenal of a vendor or supplier. However, deal registration itself is not always effective, according to the new 2112 Channel Conflict Study. The survey of 150 solution …

    Channel Register 20 Jul 12:04

  • Let's talk about the RBS IT cock-up

    Live chat Reg readers join an after-hours chat

    One month ago a rookie IT mistake crippled the banking network of the RBS Group. Sixteen million customers – individuals and companies - of RBS, NatWest and the Bank of Ulster were locked out of accounts, unable to withdraw cash or pay into accounts for days. The cause? An “inexperienced operative” pressing the wrong button …

    Security 20 Jul 12:17

  • Google urged to rethink mobile in crunch EU antitrust talks

    Just one more thing...

    Brussels' antitrust watchdog is reportedly trying to strong-arm Google into making sweeping changes to its mobile services. It's understood the European Union's competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia waited until the final stages of negotiations over fair practices with the web colossus before bringing up the matter. Google …

    Law 20 Jul 12:38

  • Climategate cops: We'll NEVER solve email leak hack riddle

    Probe axed after inside job ruled out

    Detectives have shelved an investigation into the high-profile hacking of computers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The so-called Climategate attack led to 1,079 messages and more than 3,800 documents being leaked online in November 2009. Critics of the unit's work seized upon the messages to …

    Security 20 Jul 13:03

  • Has Nokia bottomed out? El Reg drills into the detail

    Analysis Is that light at the end of the tunnel or an oncoming train?

    When a company is in crisis, it wants to tell the world that it’s still got oodles of cash and is jolly busy putting things right. This is true even if you're Europe’s biggest technology company - right, Nokia? The phone firm got the bad news out of the way first in its financial results this week. The company is €675m poorer …

    Mobile 20 Jul 13:28

  • Iran: If the Madi cyber-strike was us it would've been another Stuxnet

    Analysis 'Cos we're as good as US/Israel! Analysts divided

    Iranian state media has angrily rejected suggestions that the Madi cyber espionage campaign is anything to do with the Islamic Republic. Madi had claimed more than 800 victims located in Iran, Israel, Afghanistan and elsewhere, according to the results of an eight month investigation into the cyber-espionage tool by Kaspersky …

    Security 20 Jul 13:50

  • Up the ZIL LANE to the Beach Volleyball changing rooms with BONG!

    ¡Bong! Our social-webpreneur columnist gets his OLYMPIC on

    "Young workers, peasants and soldiers learn while they work, and so adequate attention should also be paid to their work and study as well as to their recreation, rest and sleep" - Mao Tse Tung: 'The Youth League In Its Work Must Take The Characteristics of Youth Into Consideration'; a talk on receiving the Presidium of the …

    Bootnotes 20 Jul 13:57

  • Samsung SMACKDOWN: US appeals court keeps ban on Galaxy Tab

    Not listening to that Limey judge, nossiree

    A US appeals court has denied Samsung's second try at holding up a ban on its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country. District Judge Lucy Koh already said that the preliminary injunction she ordered wouldn't wait until Samsung had completed its appeal against it and the Court of Appeals has backed her up. The Korean chaebol has no …

    Law 20 Jul 14:26

  • BT Engage IT overlord Thornhill slips off

    After 24 years... leaving to 'pursue other opportunities'

    BT Engage IT CEO John Thornhill is leaving the organisation after less than a year in the role, The Channel can reveal. Thornhill was head honcho of BT Business Direct and dabs.com, until last September when the two businesses merged with BT Engage IT and he was made overlord of the group He then oversaw restructuring …

    Channel Register 20 Jul 14:58

  • IBM plans to axe staff in UK, Ireland despite hefty profits

    Exclusive Big Blue bottom line means 'workforce remix'

    IBM is planning a round of redundancies in the UK and Ireland despite healthy growth in profits in the second quarter. In company documents seen by The Register, employees in the UK-based Strategic Outsourcing Delivery division were told Big Blue will start an employee consultation period of 30 days on 2 August. El Reg …

    Business 20 Jul 15:06

  • Top plods reconsidering mega deals with Olympo-blunder firm G4S

    Support staff may be spared move to vast rentacop outfit

    Cambridgeshire police are reviewing a potential contract with troubled Olympic security provider G4S. The deal on the table would see G4S take over back-office functions inclusing ICT for three forces - Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire - and would result in 1,191 staff being rehired by G4S, according to the …

    Law 20 Jul 15:23

  • Google shakes up Android Jelly Bean to fend off malware meanies

    ASLR shuffles 4.1's pack... and properly this time

    Android Jelly Bean 4.1 promises to be more secure than previous versions of the Google's mobile OS. The big news is that the software now properly implements Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), a technique designed to make malware-based attacks more difficult. The latest Jelly Bean iteration was released to select …

    Security 20 Jul 15:50

  • SanDisk: Yargh, nobody does SD-cards bundled with phones anymore

    Damn you, with your capacious embedded blower storage

    We thought the flash storage market was booming, but even so SanDisk came within a whisker of making a loss in its second quarter as revenues of $1.03 billion tumbled 25 per cent annually and 14 per cent compared to the first quarter. The profit was just $13 million, compared to $114.3 million the previous quarter. Revenues …

    Storage 20 Jul 15:54

  • 'Sacrifice another goat!: iCloud is Apple's biggest failure before Google

    Open ... and Shut 'Cloud in, not device out' the best policy

    For a company that prides itself on craftsmanship and a beautiful user experience, Apple's cloud services continue to be more than a blemish on the company's reputation. They are a serious black hole. Google, meanwhile, was born in the cloud, and it shows: things like document and calendar synchronisation just work, and across …

    Mobile 20 Jul 16:32

  • AMD pins its server hopes on SeaMicro technology - maybe in APUs

    Trying to dance between Chipzilla's pounding reptile feet

    The bad news for Advanced Micro Devices in the second quarter is that server processor sales did not save its financial cookies as they did for archrival Intel. The good news is that AMD doesn't appear to be losing market share or money on server chips and has a new engineering team focusing on longer-term plans to try to give …

    Servers 20 Jul 16:58

  • Judge frees nude TSA protester, citing free speech rights

    Oregonian 'genitalia' law trumped by First Amendment

    The techie who stripped naked to protest invasive airport security, saying he was sick and tired of being harassed by Transportation Security Administration screeners, has been cleared of all charges. "It is the speech itself that the state is seeking to punish, and that it cannot do," said Judge David Rees when dismissing …

    Law 20 Jul 17:44

  • Microsoft promises Metro developers 'fame and fortune'

    What, this stuff doesn't sell itself?

    With the official launch of Windows 8 just a few months away, Microsoft has kicked off a new incentive program that promises developers "fame and fortune" if they build Metro-style apps for the new OS. The program, hosted on Microsoft's Generation App website, follows on from an earlier, similar initiative for Windows Phone. …

    Windows 8 20 Jul 18:50

  • Bio-boffins create world's first digital STD

    Without the unpleasant burning sensation

    A bacterium that in humans can cause genital pain, itching, and a burning sensation while urinating has become the subject of the first-ever complete software simulation of an entire organism, the New York Times reports. The simulation is the work of a team of boffins from Stanford University and the J. Craig Venter Institute …

    Science 20 Jul 21:58

  • Intel, AMD financials: Bad news for Obama campaign

    Comment 'Presumptive nominee' Romney giggles quietly to self

    Nothing affects the outcome of a US presidential election more than the state of the economy, and if Barack Obama heard the comments made by Intel and AMD execs when they announced their company's earnings this week, he may very well have broken into a flop sweat. "As we look ahead to the second half of this year, consumer …

    Business 20 Jul 22:25