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24th July 2012 Archive

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  • VMware: More revenue now from services than software

    Profits dip, but past license sales rake in cash for services

    Server virtualization juggernaut VMware wasn't resting on its hypervisor laurels in the second quarter, but it certainly did benefit on the uptake and renewal of services on already installed sales to meet its revenue growth targets. Last week, VMware pre-announced rudimentary results for the quarter ended in June during its …

    Financial News 24 Jul 00:12

  • Vodafone drops 178k customers in 6 months

    Hard to shake the Vodafail saga

    The Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) union continues to be plagued by customer leakage, after the company's recent results saw it admit 178,000 users abandoned the carrier in the last six months. The JV now sits on 6.8 million customers, a new two year low, following the 2010 season of network meltdowns. The carrier has …

    Business 24 Jul 00:39

  • Sally Ride, trailblazing Shuttle astronaut, dies at 61

    First American woman in space

    Sally Ride, the first female American in space, has died at the age of 61 after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Ride was born on May 26, 1951 in Encino, California, where she spent her childhood. An athletic child, she was a competitive tennis player even at a young age, but she also always loved math and science, …

    Space 24 Jul 01:23

  • Anonymous hits Australia

    State government web sites defaced and taken down over data retention policy

    People operating under the name “Anonymous” claim to have defaced several websites in the Australian state of Queensland, in protest against draft Australian policies on data retention. The Twitter handle @Op_Australia makes the claim in this tweet. A webchat channel at anonops.com named opAustralia referenced in other tweets …

    Security 24 Jul 05:33

  • Hong Kong IT pros gloomy about the future

    Asia still worth a punt for wannabe-expats

    IT pros in Hong Kong are the least optimistic about their job prospects of all professionals, as Asia’s financial services hub struggles to adapt to continued global economic instability, according to a leading recruiter. Michael Page International’s latest Employee Intentions Report (PDF) for the Special Administrative Region …

    Jobs 24 Jul 05:53

  • Vodafone Oz pulls claim of Android 4.1 emergency call problems

    Blog post down, eyebrows up

    A blog post from Vodafone Australia alleging a bug in the latest version of Android has been pulled, casting doubt on its claims that emergency calls may not work on the new Jelly Bean edition of Google's mobile OS. The post was made last Thursday, July 19th, when a post titled “Nexus S by Samsung – Android 4.1 update” stated …

    Networks 24 Jul 06:25

  • GPS-equipped sheep prove herd mentality exists

    Woolly thinking helps tight-knit groups of animals to survive

    British Boffins from Cambridge, University College London and The Royal Veterinary College have used an Australian farm to research flocking behaviour in herd animals and feel they have validated theories about how herds of animals protect themselves from predators. Detailed in Current Biology, the team started with the long- …

    Science 24 Jul 06:48

  • Foxconn plans massive plant in Indonesia

    Apple ODM set to expand outside of China

    Controversial hardware maker Foxconn looks set to expand its manufacturing empire outside of China by getting down to work on a 1,000 hectare site in Indonesia, which the government there hopes will be the first of a $10bn investment in the country. There had been suggestions for weeks that the ODM was planning to set up a …

    Business 24 Jul 06:52

  • Android 4.1 Jelly Bean review

    Google's mobile upgrade chewed over

    Only eight months have passed since I took a shufti at Ice Cream Sandwich, back then it was the new version 4.0 of the Android operating system for mobile devices. A few days ago, my Asus Google Nexus 7 tablet landed on the doormat. It's preinstalled with Jelly Bean, the ICS replacement and lends itself to poking with the …

    reghardware 24 Jul 07:00

  • France: Forcing Google to police YouTube is a non-non

    No need to hunt down re-posted copyrighted stuff

    Google does not have to proactively remove copyright infringing content that has been re-posted on YouTube because such a measure would breach EU law, France's highest court has ruled. The Court of Cassation said it would be "disproportionate to the aim pursued" for Google to prevent online postings of infringing videos from …

    Law 24 Jul 07:02

  • HTC disses Dr Dre by diluting Beats deal

    Reduces investment in hip hop headset house

    Taiwanese handset maker HTC has pulled around half of its stake in Beats Electronics, the audio kit maker co-founded by US hip hop star Dr Dre, less than a year after buying a 51 per cent majority share in the company. HTC said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange filing that it sold 25 per cent of its stake in the company for $150m. …

    Data Centre 24 Jul 07:03

  • O2 attempts to muscle in on voucher biz with SME freebie scheme

    You get ads, we get the simple joy of being your friends

    O2 is opening its Priority Moments service to any business with an O2 phone, letting one-man-bands offer vouchers to O2 customers just like the big boys can. Small businesses, who've not yet ventured into Groupon or Vouchercloud or who just fancy broadening their options, can now use O2's Priority Moments for some free …

    Small Biz 24 Jul 07:27

  • UK.gov warned: Halt exports of spyware to brutal regimes

    Or see Privacy International in court

    The grubby practice of allowing UK-stamped surveillance tech to be shipped to brutal regimes could land the British government in court to answer allegations of aiding human rights breaches. London-based NGO Privacy International has repeatedly asked the UK to exercise existing powers under the Exports Control Act 2002 to help …

    Government 24 Jul 08:02

  • Osborne accused of derailing UK.gov's green dream

    Energy law 'will only work if Treasury stumps up cash'

    The UK Treasury is accused of dropping an oil slick in the way of the government's Energy Bill, a draft law to lower carbon use and make Blighty more energy efficient. MPs on the influential Energy and Climate Change Committee said the proposed legislation was "unworkable" because the country's penny counters have refused to …

    Government 24 Jul 08:17

  • 4G? Pah! Boffins charge up the dial to 5G data EXTREME-band kit

    The wide open bands where a man can breathe free

    A project headed by New York University has scored $2m to fund research into 80GHz radio, as a potential home for 5G in the spectrum land rush up the dial. $800,000 is coming from the US National Science Foundation, the rest from commercial companies and from NY State as represented by Empire State Development. The money will …

    Broadband 24 Jul 08:44

  • From virtualisation to private cloud

    Small steps to big results

    There is an assumption, which has been repeated over and over, that private cloud naturally follows on from virtualisation activities. As such it has almost become accepted as inevitable, particularly amongst the IT vendors, that the way to improve IT effectiveness, agility and efficiency is to implement a private cloud. To top …

    Cloud 24 Jul 09:09

  • UK Border Agency to create 'national allegations database'

    What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

    The home affairs committee has welcomed plans by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to create a National Allegations Database to manage information provided by the public on possible immigration violations. In a report (PDF) on the UKBA's work between December 2011 and March 2012, the committee says that overall, only 4 per cent of …

    Security 24 Jul 09:24

  • Asda snaps up Polaroid telly tech

    Focused on home entertainment

    Polaroid has a deal in the frame with Asda, which will see a range of the photography-mogul's other tech – including budget tellies and home theatre systems – retail through the supermarket exclusively. The range includes a Polaroid 42in passive-3D 1080p LCD TV, which comes with four sets of glasses for £399. You can pick up a …

    reghardware 24 Jul 09:36

  • Non-volatile memory: It's nothing to SNIA at - NetApp

    'Storage class memory' could soon outclass NAND Flash

    A non-volatile memory technical workgroup has been set up by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and NetApp's canned quote on the move sheds a bit more light on the Sunnyvale storage giant's flash thinking. From the wording, it would seem that the storage firm is preparing for its arrays to move fast data storage …

    Storage 24 Jul 09:42

  • The Higgs boson search continues ... into ANOTHER dimension

    Special report CERN physicist drills into mirror universe theory

    Now that all the fanfare over the sighting of a Higgs-like boson in the Large Hadron Collider has died down, CERN scientists have a few burning questions about the particle. The gigantic proton accelerator will be shut down this year, but physicist Paris Sphicas told The Register the boffins should be able to gather enough data …

    Physics 24 Jul 10:02

  • X-IO builds million-dollar brick tower for Big Data players

    ISE Station X: 10-enclosure stack rack for cloudy punters, data centres

    X-IO aiming for the serious data-swillers with its latest piece of kit: the ISE Station X. It's 10 ISE enclosures stacked in a rack, all ready to rock and roll. The storage firm wants to build on its progress with its ISE-2 all-disk and HyperISE mixed SSD and HDD products in enterprises by crafting a product for customers …

    Storage 24 Jul 10:31

  • Blizzard faces court battle for 'misleading Diablo III fans'

    Think outside the game's box, demands German watchdog

    Blizzard faces a court showdown unless it agrees to change its Diablo III packaging to better reflect the role-playing game's online requirements. Fans of Diablo III were already peeved that a constant network connection is mandatory to run the title, but while the most of the world sits and moans, the first legal salvo has …

    reghardware 24 Jul 10:45

  • Ofcom saves piece of 4G spectrum pie for '4th operator'

    Three could disturb Big 3's threesome when auction starts at end of 2012

    UK regulator Ofcom said today that the spectrum auction for 4G services would start on time at the end of this year, although actual bidding won't start until early in 2013, and it's holding back a chunk of the spectrum from the big three operators. Ofcom announced that it would reserve a portion of the spectrum up for grabs …

    Broadband 24 Jul 10:55

  • Brooks, Coulson to be CHARGED over phone-hacking

    Eight suspects face 'realistic prospect of conviction', says CPS

    Rupert Murdoch's one-time right-hand woman Rebekah Brooks, and Prime Minister David Cameron's ex-spin chief Andy Coulson, face "a realistic prospect of conviction" of alleged phone-hacking offences, the Crown Prosecution Service said this morning. Erstwhile News International boss Brooks, who had edited the Sun and the now- …

    Law 24 Jul 11:27

  • Virgin Media staves off cable punter seepage

    14,700 subscribers fled, sales still above £1bn in Q2

    Virgin Media told the City this morning that it lost 14,700 cable punters during its second quarter ended 30 June. But the telco said this figure is far fewer than 36,000 customers who scarpered from the company in the same three-month period a year ago. All of which means that Virgin Media is pleased with itself. The ISP …

    Broadband 24 Jul 11:47

  • Toshiba slices chip production by a third

    Japanese NAND warrior shrinks with falling prices

    Toshiba, the world's second-biggest NAND chip-maker, has announced a 30 per cent cut in flash memory chip production today to respond to market oversupply, declining prices and losses at the firm. Toshiba is the last of Japan's big chipmakers after Elpida Memory – which had been Japan's only DRAM flash maker – filed for …

    Financial News 24 Jul 12:02

  • Home Secretary to decide on McKinnon extradition by October

    Scots sysadmin waits to hear if he'll face NASA hacking charges in the US

    The UK Home Secretary is due to decide by mid-October whether or not to order Gary McKinnon's extradition to the US, a hearing at the High Court heard on Tuesday. The hearing followed a decision by McKinnon and his legal team to decline to undergo a Home Office medical test by a doctor, Professor Thomas Fahy, whom McKinnon's …

    Government 24 Jul 12:28

  • LOHAN acquires mighty igniter arsenal

    REHAB fireworks imminent, small island nations at risk

    Our Rocketry Experimental High Altitude Barosimulator (REHAB) tests are back on track, following the arrival of the custom Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) igniters. As you're doubtless aware, our shed-built hypobaric rocket motor test rig has proved a bit of a palaver, and the first foray into REHAB ended with both …

    SPB 24 Jul 12:47

  • Dell uncloaks trio of muscular mobile workstations

    Two no-nonsense workhorses and one 'shiny object'

    Dell has introduced a trio of new Precision Mobile Workstations, with the 17-inch top-of-the-line models offering such goodies as Intel Core i7 Extreme processors, 32GB of 1866MHz RAM, Nvidia 3D Vision Pro technology, a raft of graphics-chippery choices hooked up via third-generation PCIe x16, and four storage bays that support …

    Hardware 24 Jul 13:00

  • Three punters' data use doubles

    Most rock through a gig

    Mobile customers now consume double the amount of data than they did last year, says Three. The operator's contract customers now use an average of 1.1GB a month, compared to the 450MB they gobbled up this time last year. The culprits of high data use are unsurprisingly top-end smartphone users, who swallow roughly 1.5GB a …

    reghardware 24 Jul 13:15

  • Postgres-on-steroids wields bare metal in Oracle, IBM skirmish

    TransLattice's database doesn't need no stinkin' OS

    Distributed database provider TransLattice is taking the fight to Oracle and IBM: it's breaking its TransLattice Elastic Database, or TED, free of its database appliances and selling it on bare metal or virtual machine instances. TransLattice was founded in November 2007 and came out of stealth mode in August 2010. The company …

    Applications 24 Jul 13:26

  • Sony delays micro-PS3 and colours current crop

    Hue what?

    Sony has its hands full with PlayStation this week, discussing its top-loading PS3 release and unveiling three 'limited edition' PlayStation 3s, now available in current design with red, silver and white casing. The Japanese firm confirmed the existence of a forthcoming third-gen PS3 model, although quashed rumours it would be …

    reghardware 24 Jul 13:45

  • EC probes 13 resellers over global optical disc drive CARTEL

    Fingered for bid-rigging

    Thirteen optical disc drive resellers are being investigated by the EU on its suspicions that the firms may have broken antitrust laws and artificially suppressed the price they paid for the drives. The resellers are suspected of acting as a worldwide cartel for at least five years, the European Commission said, laying out its …

    Channel Register 24 Jul 13:56

  • Apple wins EU-wide Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 ban

    Not ALL German courts are loving Cupertino though...

    A German court sided with Apple today and agreed that Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.7 infringes iPad design patents, granting Cupertino permission to push for a European Union-wide ban. The same court threw out Apple's claims against the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, though. Cupertino had previously tried to squash the 10.1N in the Munich …

    reghardware 24 Jul 14:16

  • Cisco's $5bn telly encryption biz gobble wins EU blessing

    NDS acquisition approved after competition probe

    Networking giant Cisco's $5bn takeover of pay-TV software maker NDS was approved by Brussels' competition officials today. The European Commission said its "investigation confirmed that the merged entity would continue to face competition from a number of strong competitors and that customers, namely pay-TV providers, would …

    Applications 24 Jul 14:44

  • Sharp mulls mass layoffs amid $1.28bn loss fears

    Price-fix settlement kicks LCD biz while it's down

    Sharp may consider laying off thousands of workers and flogging some of its Tokyo offices as losses swell. The Japanese firm is likely to announce net losses of around ¥100bn ($1.28bn) in the second quarter as its settlement in the US LCD cartel case adds to its woes, spurring the firm to consider restructures, daily business …

    Hardware 24 Jul 15:03

  • Storage top dog EMC shows off swollen Q2 profits

    But full-year outlook remains the same

    Networked storage appears to have given EMC a boost, after the storage giant declared another solid set of results, with revenues and profit in its second 2012 quarter increasing on both an annual and a sequential basis. There was no visible sign of any wider economic issues restricting the company's performance. Revenues were …

    Storage 24 Jul 15:22

  • Months later, Gamigo hacker takes dozy dump, exposes 8 million

    Slow post-breach leak for login credentials file

    More than eight million email addresses, usernames and password hashes from German gaming website Gamigo have been dumped online, months after the site was hacked. A 500MB file containing 8.2 million Gamigo user login credentials was uploaded and publicised via a post to password-cracking forum Inside Pro, according to the …

    Security 24 Jul 15:37

  • Russian cargoship fluffs Space Station docking test

    Performance anxiety for new automated system

    Russian cargoship Progress M-15M has failed to couple with the International Space Station in a test of its new automated docking system. Russian Progress not making much progress today Progress had already dropped off its supplies to the ISS, but it disengaged and backed up on Sunday to sit for 24 hours before attempting …

    Space 24 Jul 16:04

  • Santander's banking website craps out

    Did it melt in Blighty's soaring temperatures?

    Santander's banking website has been up and down today like a demented frog, forcing punters to hotfoot it to bricks-and-mortar branches. Customers took to Twitter and El Reg's inbox to report being booted off the online service shortly after logging into their accounts. Other complaints suggest that the online banking service …

    CIO 24 Jul 16:26

  • US Justice Dept rejects criticisms of ebook settlements

    Apple and hundreds of other complainants are wrong

    The US Department of Justice has hit back at criticisms of its ebook case against Apple and five major publishers, saying its critics either don't understand or are just looking out for themselves. The DoJ filed a case in April accusing Apple and five publishing houses of colluding on ebook prices in their attempt to …

    Law 24 Jul 16:32

  • Cray bags $21m Cascade super deal down under

    Xeon, Xeon Phi hybrid to do radio astronomy

    Supercomputer maker Cray has bagged a $21m contract to supply the Perth, Australia, Pawsey Centre for supercomputing which will be used to run simulations for geology, life sciences, and nanotechnology research, as well as support radio-astronomy workloads that are the organization's main work. The contract was awarded to Cray …

    HPC 24 Jul 17:37

  • Apple seeks whopping $2.525bn Samsung patent payout

    Could start tablet tax on anyone using rounded rectangles

    It looks as though scheduled talks between Apple and Samsung CEOs to discuss damages for patent infringement were doomed to failure from the start, as court filings show Apple is demanding $2.525bn in costs and penalties for the use of its fondleslab and smartphone designs. Apple claims that Samsung has knowingly infringed on …

    Mobile 24 Jul 18:19

  • Facebook's Zuckerberg awarded privacy patent

    No one can summarize your settings like he can

    Mark Zuckerberg cares about your Facebook privacy settings. He cares about them so much, in fact, that he's patented a method of finding out what they are. The patent, number 8,225,376, was filed six years ago but only approved last week, and is attributed to Zuckerberg and former Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly. …

    Applications 24 Jul 19:18

  • Pano does browser-thin virty desktops

    Chrome is the only thing you need in a SaaS-y world

    For some end users, giving them a PC is like giving them a sports car when all they really need is a bike and a helmet – a fact of life that Pano Logic, a maker of desktop virtualization tools, aims to capitalize on. A PC, Pano Logic knows, is way overkill for the actual work many users need to do, and they are a risk to …

    Virtualization 24 Jul 19:56

  • Apple misses earnings targets, Street reacts

    iPad sales up, but iPhone sales slip big-time

    Apple released its earnings report for the third quarter of its 2012 fiscal year, and its numbers came in well below most Wall Street moneymen's projections – largely, it seems, on a steep quarter-to-quarter drop in iPhone sales. Shares in after-hours trading took an immediate hit, down from just over $600 per share before the …

    Financial News 24 Jul 21:12

  • Google asks YouTube commenters to stand up and be counted

    New option asks for user's ID

    Google has altered the comments system on YouTube to encourage those who wish to share their views to step up and identify themselves. Under the new system anyone trying to leave a comment on YouTube will be asked if they would like to identify themselves using a Google+ account. It's not compulsory, but those that decline …

    Security 24 Jul 21:44

  • Juniper disappointed by skittish service providers

    Gets in bed with Riverbed for optimization

    Switch and router maker Juniper Networks, like rival Cisco Systems, has been adversely impacted by the skittish economy and has now been rattled by VMware's $1.26bn acquisition of network virtualizer Nicira. The conversation will quickly shift from what Juniper is doing to get an edge on Cisco to what it is going to do to blunt …

    Data Networking 24 Jul 22:14

  • iiNet buys up more bandwidth on Southern Cross

    Need for speed behind deal, not TPG/PPC1 hookup

    iiNet has boosted its international cable capacity reserves by securing a new supply agreement with Southern Cross Cables, which will upgrade the ISP's bandwidth from 20Gbps to 200Gbps. The multi-year agreement deal is an extension of a long-standing supply agreement with Southern Cross, which provides capacity from Australia …

    Networks 24 Jul 22:53

  • ABS pulls Census app, points it at the right data

    Party like it's 2006

    For a couple of days, the Australian Bureau of Statistics looked like the coolest government statistician on Earth, after it launched an iOS app linked to Census data. Be patient: the ABS says it will launched its fixed app "soon" Today, however, database administrators and app developers somewhere in Canberra will be …

    Policy 24 Jul 22:55

  • Greenland melt surprises NASA Earth-watchers

    Giant slushy attributed to ‘heat dome’

    Repeated ridges of warm air passing over Greenland since May have induced what NASA says is the largest surface melt in the mostly-frozen island in the age of satellite observations. The once-in-150-years surface melt – which will, it’s important to note, still leave most of the huge 3.2 km centre ice sheet in place – took …

    Science 24 Jul 23:06

  • Murchison adds astronomical cluster

    Linux GPU lovin’ for WA’s widefield radiotelescope

    Hard on the heels of yesterday’s win for Cray at The Pawsey Centre, the Murchison widefield array in Western Australia is pulling in some new iron in the form of a high-powered Linux cluster from IBM. As previously noted in The Register, modern radioastronomy poses a considerable computing challenge: it generates too much data …

    HPC 24 Jul 23:30

  • Unisys swings to profit on ClearPath mainframe spike

    Pays off debts ahead of schedule

    Mainframe maker and services provider Unisys raked in more dough than it might have expected in its second quarter, thanks to a jump in sales of its ClearPath mainframes – and it used the occasion and the cash to prepay some if its debts to get its balance sheet in order. Knocking the balance sheet into shape and stabilizing …

    Servers 24 Jul 23:49

  • Tax office will let you deduct virtualisation software

    Want to use e-tax on a Mac? Australian Tax Office says you can deduct virty software

    The Australian Taxation Office's (ATO's) e-tax software doesn't run on Macs, which has long been a grumpiness-inducer for those who like their computers fruity and their tax affairs digital. But the ATO now has a cost-effective way out: run Windows in a virtual machine, run e-tax in that VM and then – this is the good part – …

    Policy 24 Jul 23:50