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7th August 2012 Archive

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  • Rackspace hints at big Oz investment

    Welcome, but no cure for Australia's "cloud cringe"

    Rackspace has hinted strongly at the announcement of a local data centre, with Australia/New Zealand Country Manager Mark Randall promising the company's "most significant investment" in Australia will be revealed on August 22nd. While the cloudy company is not saying exactly what it plans to launch, the wonderfully-named …

    Cloud 7 Aug 00:18

  • Cheap laser could help save expensive aircraft

    UNSW pitches ice-proof alternative to conventional airspeed monitors

    The Pitot tube is ubiquitous on aircraft because it offers a cheap, reliable and accurate way to measure airspeed. But the device is also vulnerable to icing, which is why a group from the University of New South Wales wants now wants to supplement the airspeed indicator with lasers. Using the low-cost Doppler techniques found …

    Science 7 Aug 00:38

  • Curiosity needs OS upgrade before getting down to science

    Curiosity Mars mission New software release on the way to wimpy martian computer

    The Curiosity Rover will upgrade its operating system before getting down to serious science, NASA said today. The Rover's onboard computer has wimpy specs, boasting just: A BAE RAD 750 single-board computer with a 200Mhz Power PC CPU; Two gigabytes of flash memory; 256 megabytes of DRAM; 256 kilobytes of electrically …

    Science 7 Aug 01:44

  • Alleged Anon arrested for planning gov DDoS attacks

    21-year-old could face five years in a Hong Kong slammer

    Hong Kong police have arrested a 21-year-old man after he apparently bragged on Facebook of his intent to disrupt several government web sites. Local cops are not releasing much information except to say that the man was arrested last Friday and later released on bail, with an order to report back in October. He was cuffed …

    Security 7 Aug 05:01

  • FaceTime in the dock

    Taiwanese man claims he invented Apple's tech to save call costs

    It looks like Apple’s set for yet another court room showdown in China after a Taiwanese man claimed that the fruity toy maker infringed one of the patents he owns with its FaceTime video calling technology. Apple’s lawyers in the region have been a busy bunch ever since the firm settled out of court with Proview over the …

    Policy 7 Aug 05:50

  • Why women won't apply for IT jobs

    If they're not a perfect fit, they may not throw hat into ring

    Women won't apply for IT jobs unless they are certain they meet every single criterion for the gig, according to John Ridge, Executive Director of the Australian Computer Society Foundation Trust Fund (ACSF). Ridge and the ACSF run a national Work Integrated Learning scholarship scheme for IT workers in Australia and have, …

    Jobs 7 Aug 06:12

  • Ten... console games you may have missed

    Product Round-up Playing for keeps

    Although the release schedule for console games hasn't been quite as unenventful as its PC counterparts, Q2 has been pretty quiet with the majority of top titles shelved to swamp the autumn setlist. Indeed, you'd usually expect a steady flow of quality retail games, but this has all but evaporated. While various disappointments …

    Games 7 Aug 07:00

  • HSBC brands EVERY Apple iPhone 'an insecure PC'

    iOS app urges fanbois to pull on some protection

    HSBC's iPhone app for online business banking warns customers that their reassuringly expensive Apple mobiles are in fact PCs - and insecure ones at that. In a surprising cock-up, the bank's app incorrectly identifies the shiny phones as Windows PCs, and scolds fanbois for not having security watchdog software Rapport …

    Business 7 Aug 07:31

  • WD's 2TB Green giant can't jam hardness into standard slot

    Little big boy

    WD has added a 2TB Green small form factor drive to its line-up. The Tweaktown website has a picture of the drive in a Japanese retail store. WD's website says it is 15mm thick – meaning it won't fit in standard 2.5inch drive bays you'd find in a laptop or netbook; comes in 1.5TB and 2TB versions; and has a 3Gbit/s SATA …

    Storage 7 Aug 08:02

  • Using copyright to avoid Freedom of Info law? Ha, ha, NICE try!

    You're exempt* anyway, sniffs ICO

    Public bodies that disclose copyright-protected information in order to comply with a request under freedom of information (FOI) laws are not guilty of copyright infringement, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said. Although the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) states that public bodies must not disclose …

    Law 7 Aug 08:21

  • Microsoft upping Office 365 fees for resellers AGAIN

    Here a wedge of cash, please sell our cloud stuff

    Microsoft is once again plumping up the cheques it dishes out to channel folk across the globe as a sweetener to dealers as they try to push its Office 365 cloud services to customers. The software titan already pushed up advisor's fees to 18 per cent at last month's Worldwide Partner Conference and vowed to pay top accredited …

    The Channel 7 Aug 08:43

  • Cameron: We'll turn NHS patients into real-time drugs lab rats

    Unless they remember to opt-out

    Prime minister David Cameron said his government is launching a consultation on changing the NHS constitution so that the "default setting" is for patients' data to be used for research unless the patient opts out. In a speech to the Global Health Policy Summit in London, he said that the UK is going to be the "world leader" …

    Government 7 Aug 09:02

  • Black helicopters circle Street View car crash

    India prang 'a hoax', insists Google

    Google has told El Reg that the video allegedly showing a crashed Street View spymobile in northern India is a hoax. As we reported yesterday, the 22-second vid shows what appears to be a pranged Great Satan of Mountain View black Opel, with someone rather unkindly pelting it with rocks. Since the video hit YouTube last …

    Science 7 Aug 09:35

  • Devon NHS trust left data of 1,373 staff online for MONTHS

    Must cough £175k for opening employees to ID fraud, ICO sniffs

    A painful £175,000 fine has been slapped on a health trust in Torquay, Devon, after it published sensitive details of nearly 1,400 employees on its website. The Information Commissioner's Office issued the penalty, following the embarrassing incident that took place in April 2011. A spreadsheet containing the information was …

    Security 7 Aug 10:06

  • Copyright bot boots NASA rover vid off YouTube

    Space agency's copyright-free vid triggers infringement flag

    YouTube was a bit keen in the prosecution of copyright laws during NASA's victorious Curiosity rover landing yesterday morning, booting the first video excerpt of the livestream off its site for infringing a news service. NASA's video coverage and pics are actually generally copyright-free, which made the overzealous bot …

    Science 7 Aug 10:16

  • Microsoft's Office 2013 app-maker cloud drenches developers

    Visual Basic macros are dead! Long live JavaScript macros!

    It was in 1994 that Microsoft declared Office a development platform, and released the Office Developer’s Kit 1.0 for coders to turn out useful utilities. Using Visual Basic and COM automation, programmers could control Office applications using software. Automating, say, document editing in heavyweights Word and Excel in the …

    Developer 7 Aug 10:32

  • Samsung fingered in child labour allegations at China plant

    Report: Workers' rights group claims abuses at manufacturing partner factory

    Samsung has become the latest big name tech brand accused of allowing widespread labour rights violations, after a new report claimed that Chinese manufacturing partner HEG is exploiting child workers as young as 14 at its Guangdong plant. China Labor Watch (CLW), the not-for-profit organisation which last week warned a …

    Mobile 7 Aug 10:47

  • Tesco helps high flyers avoid actual shops

    Bored airport punters can pluck fruit from 'virtual fridges' for delivery

    UK grocery giant Tesco has devised a new way to ensure people don't actually have to enter its many stores – by setting up a glowing virtual shop slab at the airport. Customers making their way through London Gatwick's Airport can now distract themselves from bickering and boozy fellow passengers when flights are delayed by …

    Management 7 Aug 11:02

  • Virident lures Web2.0 biz punters with refreshed server flash card

    App acceleration with the Gen 2 FlashMax card

    Virident is on its third annual refresh of its app-accelerating server flash card and is full of discreet excitement about what backers Intel, Cisco and a secret but major IT supplier are doing with its FlashMax 2 product. This is a PCIe-connected server flash card, using SCM (storage-class memory) architecture, with up to 1. …

    Storage 7 Aug 11:17

  • Microsoft Surface slate: Acer, resellers predict a riot

    Who the hell does Ballmer think he is? Apple?

    Microsoft has scored two own goals by getting into the hardware game with Surface, the software giant's design for a laptop that thinks it's a tablet: long-standing PC manufacturers are alienated, and there is growing disquiet in the channel over Redmond's decision to sell the lap slab direct. The Pegatron-built Surface slate …

    The Channel 7 Aug 11:29

  • Apple and Google go head-to-head over Kodak patent sale

    Tech firms draw battle lines in IP auction

    Apple and Google have joined rival investor groups hoping to bag Kodak's 1,100-strong patent portfolio. The groups are offering warm-up bids of between $150m and $250m – though Kodak reckons the patents could eventually haul in up to $2.6bn. Apple is part of a group that includes Microsoft and patent aggregation firm …

    Law 7 Aug 11:47

  • Bill Gates, Harry Evans and the smearing of a computer legend

    Source code of DOS, CP/M diff'ed, expert miffed

    The roots of Microsoft's success in using a clone of Gary Kildall's CP/M operating system are well-known and supported by a court ruling five years ago. But that hasn't stopped a software consultant from making claims that could smear Kildall and the late computer pioneer's legacy. In an astonishing piece published by the IEEE …

    Business 7 Aug 12:03

  • Facebook touts gambling to 'responsible' Brits

    One arm bandits are go... bitch

    Facebook has - for the first time - opened up its network to gamblers wanting to play online via the service in the UK. The first gambling application on the social network was added this morning. The Mark Zuckerberg-run company has "age-gating" and "geo-location" technology to help determine that anyone wishing to play real …

    Hosting 7 Aug 12:17

  • YouTube app wrenched from next Apple iPhones, iPads

    Prefers a 3D map of Brum for iOS 6

    YouTube has been unceremoniously dumped from iOS 6, the latest beta version of Apple's mobile operating system reveals. The Google-owned video website's native app for iPhones and iPads is bundled with Cupertino's shiny gadgets, and pops up to play video on behalf of other applications, but this cosy relationship is coming to …

    Mobile 7 Aug 12:42

  • HP yanks 2-week-old VMware server crown from Cisco

    Flash-boosted ProLiant beats down rivals in benchmark test

    Hard on the heels of Cisco bragging about a flash-assisted VMmark win, HP has kicked it into touch with a better score using a flash-boosted ProLiant server. VMware's VMmark benchmark measures how a server runs simultaneous VMware virtual machines (VMs) which, in turn, run typical business applications. The VMs are grouped …

    Storage 7 Aug 13:02

  • Amazon exploited by hacker in scribe's epic Apple iCloud pwn

    Address and 4 digits was all fast-talking fraudster needed

    Unfortunate journo Mat Honan has said the demolition of his digital life by a hacker started with a call to Amazon customer support. Just minutes after the call ended, the WiReD writer's Apple iCloud account was compromised and his iPhone, iPad and MacBook remotely erased. The writer's Google Mail and Twitter accounts were …

    Mobile 7 Aug 13:34

  • Apple: Samsung was in 'crisis' over our iPhone awesomeness

    'As if!' say the South Koreans

    Apple has told a court that its iPhone put Samsung into a right tizzy and that's why the South Korean giant had to go and copy all its stuff. The fruity firm trotted out an internal Samsung document that likened the features of the iPhone to "Heaven and Earth" and revealed Samsung staff were suffering a "crisis in design" over …

    Law 7 Aug 14:02

  • Doctor Who to unwrap new sidekick in Christmas TV special

    Richard E Grant to star in Jenna-Louise Coleman's debut ep

    A ghostly tweet has arrived from the outer reaches of Gallifrey - OK, more like the BBC canteen in Cardiff: Richard E Grant will star in this year's Doctor Who Christmas special in which fans will see the Time Lord's newest companion for the first time. The latest series of the hugely popular sci-fi telly drama is in …

    Media 7 Aug 14:33

  • Gemalto gets NFC gig: Singapore punters will all bonk the same way

    Rest of world still struggling to agree on standard platform

    Operators, banks and loyalty schemes in Singapore can now use a common API to interact using short-range radio tech Near Field Communications, while in Europe similar schemes continue to flounder. The scheme was commissioned by the Infocomm Development Authority, a department of the Singapore government, which has asked …

    Mobile 7 Aug 15:05

  • Russian rocket fails to orbit 2 satellites after booster bungle

    Cargo floats in space after burn-boost orbit ballsup

    Russian space agency Roscosmos has suspended use of its Proton-M rocket carriers with Briz-M boosters after one of them failed to put two satellites into orbit late yesterday. The Proton rocket was launched successfully from Baikonur, but the secondary engine burn failed when the Briz-M booster only fired for seven minutes, …

    Science 7 Aug 15:35

  • Comstor names Dohmen as EMEA boss

    Ex-army man and Cisco veep to whip troops into shape

    Cisco distribution unit Comstor has lured one of the networking firm's veterans, Andreas Dohmen, to manage its operations across EMEA. Parent Westcon is trying to organise its business to be more EMEA-aligned, and earlier this year hired former Avaya channel boss Jeremy Butt to manage the region. The Comstor business unit is …

    The Channel 7 Aug 16:19

  • British radio telescope genius Sir Bernard Lovell dies

    Scientist the Soviets tried to kill was 98

    Sir Bernard Lovell - the brilliant British physicist whose inventions observed cosmic rays and ended up on the front lines of the Cold War - has died at the age of 98. Bristol-born Sir Bernard is best-known for establishing the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, whose Lovell radio telescope was used to …

    Science 7 Aug 16:33

  • Cloud backup drama: Mozy kicks Carbonite after ASA's had a go

    Ad body smacked it for 'unlimited' claims, but what is Mozy on about?

    Cloud backup service vendor Carbonite recently had its knuckles rapped by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority for misleading punters by saying its cloud backup service is "unlimited". Now EMC-backed Mozy, a Carbonite competitor which doesn't offer unlimited backup data amounts, has waded in to the fray. The ASA quoted a …

    Storage 7 Aug 17:02

  • AMD launches 4 teraflops FirePro graphics at Nvidia Keplers

    Piledriver cores debut in CPU-GPU hybrids

    AMDevices is keeping the heat on rival Nvidia in the workstation graphics market with the launch of four FirePro graphics cards, topping out at 4 teraflops of floating point oomph, and two CPU-GPU hybrids based on the new "Piledriver" Opteron cores and bear the FirePro rather than the Fusion APU brand used for consumer gear. …

    Hardware 7 Aug 17:26

  • Office for ARM will lack features, report claims

    Macros, developer tools yanked

    Sources close to Microsoft claim that the version of Office 2013 that ships for Redmond's Surface tablet and other ARM systems will be missing features from the build for rival Intel-based Windows machines. Among the items to be pruned from the version of Office for ARM-based Windows RT will be macros, third-party add-ons, and …

    Applications 7 Aug 19:45

  • First full landing site and colour pictures back from Mars

    Now leave Mohawk Guy alone

    NASA is firing up a new camera on the Curiosity rover, offering the first color pictures of the landing site, while another pass by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has given a more detailed look at the landing area and its debris on the Martian surface. The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) has been undocked from its housing …

    Science 7 Aug 20:55

  • NT Telehealth's high-definition medicarts are really CoTS

    Thanks for the meaningless NBN jargon, Senator

    Australia's Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy last week announced a telehealth initiative in the nation's Northern Territory. The initiative is certainly worthy as the Territory's many remote communities are among the nation's most impoverished and least healthy places. The …

    Policy 7 Aug 22:00

  • Rackspace profits from cloudy transitions

    The OpenStack effect, even before the code went live

    Rackspace Hosting, which co-founded the OpenStack cloud controller effort with NASA two years ago, was bragging last week that it had finally went live with OpenStack on the compute side. But the funny bit is, as Tuesday's results show, that business has been booming even before it moved to the Essex release of the OpenStack …

    Cloud 7 Aug 22:32

  • Facebook pulls race-hate page

    Updated: Vilification continues, site not pulled

    Facebook, whose legendary misogyny means that breast-feeding images posted by mothers are considered taboo and pulled as soon as they’re noticed, has managed to lurch into action and take down a race-hate page in Australia after a storm erupted on Twitter. The page, which was called Aboriginal Memes, offered up a string of …

    Networks 7 Aug 22:50

  • Microsoft offers alternative Lync-like web chat spec to W3C

    Work by Google, Mozilla, Opera not good enough, it says

    Microsoft has submitted a proposed standard for real-time web communications to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), in a move that could upset the apple cart for other browser vendors who have been working on their own such standard since early 2011. Microsoft, like Google, Mozilla, and Opera, all want web browsers to be able …

    Applications 7 Aug 22:53

  • IBM shoots higher and lower with x86 Flex Systems

    Plus: Expansion node for GPUs, flash, and other goodies

    Big Blue is adding two new compute nodes based on recent Xeon processors from Intel and a PCI expansion node that can be used to strap on GPUs, flash storage, and other system goosers as it continues to flesh out its Flex System modular servers - the basis of its PureSystems integrated server-storage-networking stacks and the …

    Servers 7 Aug 23:26

  • The policy that helped Anonymous hack AAPT

    How vigilant is your host or public cloud provider?

    Anonymous' theft of data from a dormant AAPT server might not have been possible had the telco used a different host. AAPT has said the Cold Fusion server Anonymous accessed was, essentially, forgotten. In its un-patched state it was therefore easy meat. One question the Anonymous incident therefore raises is just why the …

    Cloud 7 Aug 23:30